Wrath of the Lich King encounters: What do you want?

I think there are two things to be aware of, one, there are elitist guilds/players who only want the bragging rights, and there are guilds who are strong enough in both gear and sheer numbers to take on just about anything, then there are those who belong to small guilds, or are guildless.
So Blizz should have a couple of instances that are very difficult <bragging rights etc.> but don't forget the little guy, we also need gear and reward for our efforts and to enjoy the game as a whole.
Before anyone says that's our problem, go join a guild etc. some of us have real lives, work, mortgage, kids etc and cant play 24x7.

Is is a possibility to have an instance where you can do it as a 40 man, down to a 5 man, the landscape and Mobs are just scaled, more members (5. 10. 20. 40) the more mobs and more loot to go around, it would just mean multiple bosses depending on raid/group, they would be random, so you were never sure which boss/bosses you would get. Sure would multiply the interest and the enjoyment of one instance and for a longer period?
Just a thought. But please Blizz, dont forget those players who don't fit the "elite" mold, we enjoy playing too :)
Cheers

An interesting encounter would be:

If you ever played Metal Gear Solid, then you might know of a boss named Physco Mantis. During the boss fight he would (seriously) change which input your playstation was on, bring up data from your memory card and switch which controller port you had to be plugged into! it was crazy!

A encounter with a boss that did that or something similiar or atleast somehow faked that he did, would be awesome :D
Granted it would never happen but its fun to think of :)

Platform jumping for a raid? Probably not. For a heroic, however, I can see that happening.

Generally, I always felt that heroics should be harder-- not gear wise per se but harder in a way that requires every person in the group to be aware of their surroundings and to move when necessary. Platform jumping might be one such solution to making heroics harder though I could see that upsetting some players who didn't sign up to play world of mariocraft.

Blizzard has been tossing around the idea of adding moving objects in arenas as a way to make the standard pillar hump fest a tad more interesting to watch. Perhaps they should consider incorporating that mechanic into future heroic boss battles. For example, make a boss that does an aoe breath attack that kills anyone who's not at the top of the aggro list if they're not behind cover. To illustrate this concept, lets say the boss is a shadow themed monster who has a 5 second charge attack that will kill all party members save the tank if they're not behind one of the many boxes in the room. Every time the boss charges up this attack, the ground shakes and the boxes float just above the ground, spiraling around the boss until the attack finally goes off. It is the dpsers and the healer's responsibility to hide behind one box and follow it as it orbits the boss, forcing the players to keep in mind where each box is in the room and to position oneself close to a box throughout the battle.

Perhaps the above example seems a bit simplistic or contrived. Anyways, its the best I could come up with in about 5 mins time. Point is, Blizzard should make heroics require more than just a pulse and decent gear to pull through. MgT was a step in the right direction-- I'm sure Blizzard will come up with something come WotLK.

It would be awesome if a boss did this spell from AD&D (can't remember what it's called) basically it summons "the death" to ALL players, basically this is your nemisis. It's like an exact copy of yourself (thereby scaling with your gear and stats) and the deal is the you have to kill it before it hits you ONCE! Now at the beginning it's rather dumb, but... Everytime you do an action it learns from it, so it will not take many seconds untill it can become quite a formidable opponent.
And now comes the really fun part, you can actually see (and attack) the others' version of "the death" as well... Yet if you hit it, your own will instantly spawn again EVEN if you just beat it.

That way warriors or rogues could be put on the task of taking out the healers' nemisis' but that means that they have to run around like chicken to avoid their own meanwhile :D

The good thing about having a boss with this spell is that even at the first try he will actually be beatable, but when you have raided a ton of times and got PHAT LEWT this boss will still be a bit hard as "the death" scales with your gear :D

Edit: Also if the whole WotLK could be opened with a war similar to the one when NAxx was released, but where there is need for a certain amount of players to actively fight of an entire army of undead, and if there's not enough players, they will loose the war and be punished by fx delaying acces to the instances in Northrend or Northrend itself. But if they win the war they will gain the acces as well as being able to obtain certain small bonus stuff, like a rare Simple Clockwork Gnome non-combat pet or something cool like that

This is similar to GW's doppleganger (SP?) challenge and similar to GISP down a 6-8 entries below. This too could be fun although it could be too impossible... depends on game design...

enjoy

I have always felt that many boss fights were simply too hard. In my opinion, every player in the game should be able to experience every part of the game and designing encounters that only a small percentage will ever see is just poor design and bad business. No fight should ever require everyone to be perfect. This kind of game design is what fosters elitism and bad feelings between people who pay good money to have fun, not be looked down on by elitist jerks.

one thing I always felt that I was interested in would be if they had some form of solo dungeon, something u have to do by urself, and there would be a different one for each class, and each one would be built to test the player's skill of their class, making it interesting, and u could possibly even learn more about ur class than u knew before. and at the end there could be some form of boss fight that would reward the player with a special piece of gear made specifically for that class, and the boss fights could even be more puzzle based, with various randomized types, to keep it interesting.
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another thing I always felt interested in would be if they had a boss fight where, every so often, he would send all but one player into some type of cage, and the other player to a platform, with a randomized type of puzzle that the player would have to solve to release the other players, and possibly even damage the boss or buff the party if completed fast enough.

Basic stats should have a role in interacting with the wow world. Some interactive tasks (the gear cursor function) should be performable by toons with a certain stat level or combination (STR, AGI, INT, STAM).

This could be apart of an encounter. The Stronger tougher toons need to pick up rocks, lift open doors, pull a large leaver, or stop something from moving (STR & STAM) to help the party overcome a particular task. With AGI and/or INT there are things that need to be grabbed/collected that move around requiring quick hands or unraveling a pattern (INT).

Back to the rock thing, Imagine an encounter starts with some explosion that shakes the entire room... this loosens rocks. The large rocks can be picked up and placed. They offer protection from a boss effect.

For that matter, toon profession could also work. There is an odd artifact requiring Engineering and Enchanting to fix and operate.

More Sandbox opportunities to effect the world:

Instances environment could be changed for large effects... Back to the rock... what if there was a aqueduct in a dungeon that if blocked... it could set off a chain of effects that might work for or against the party. several possible opportunities could be build into an area but one is helpful or some need to be done sometimes and others other times... I.E., experimentation is needed! 'Hey let's try this!" need to happen/said more rather than "NO there is only one way to pull this off, do it this way!!". Memorizing patters is not as much fun as try something new that effects things but Not makes the raid possible or impossible. Drama in stories is heightened by risk, but the risk can be range from important to mortal. Mixing it up helps make the story richer.

An example would be... In an instance, a boss opens a gate that releases water that fills the encounter chamber with water, then summons fish helpers. If the water had been blocked, it doesn't work, so the boss summons land helpers instead. The fish mobs are casters and the land mobs are hand to hand. Group config may deal better with one or the other....

I would love a raid where each party is separate from the others, but they are all working together. One group would work to say, kill trash mobs that drop crystals. And they put the crystals on some alter (one alter per team) and it gives the other parties a nice buff for 2 minutes. Another team would work to debuff the enemies in much the same way. 2 groups would be running through something like a normal 5 man and as they kill bosses, chests spawn for the all the teams (Each party's chest has a chance at different loot). The final party kills trash and gathers items required for the final boss, which they fight alone as the other teams watch from behind locked gates. The players could run by the gates to get buffs cast on them, but they would be unable to attack the boss (perhaps he is immobile out of range). Upon killing him, the gates would open and everyone would have a chance at loot.

I really enjoy the boss fight and has I couldn't do Plateau, MGT end boss is really cool.

What I would like to see is a real BLOOD BATH boss. Like this:

The boss is surrounded by 3 [Building?] that spawn adds. The adds aren't that hard to kill and don't do much damage but spawn very very fast. They spawn via a tunnel and we need to kill them all to reach the [building?]. Once your near the [building?] you have few seconds to destroy it quickly otherwise the boss teleport you to him and do some AoE damage and you need to start over.

Once the [buldings?] are down, the boss is killable and you can start figthing him. While the melee can't get near because of the AoE they need to keep Repairers mobs to repair the [buildings?].

Add to that some kind of debuff that boss do on players that damage others around you, and this could be a very nice fight.

For sure it's not very tactical fight, no a mana burn either more like a long dps fight. Keep doing things good and you'll win! But for DPS, specially Warrior DPS, that fight will be amazing.

Things that I hate: Enrage timer, that kill the fun, you always need X amount of DPS for each fight... that's uncool, if you are good but don't have the gear you can't do it. Blizzard should make things in a way that good players can kill boss even with low gear but with awesome skills.

I'd like to see something involving interaction between raid groups. Perhaps you have 15 people allowed in one area, and 10 in another, and doing certain things affects other the other side's experience. Say: kill a boss, and an easier path opens up for the other group, or take one boss down while the other team is fighting another, the living boss takes a massive amount of damage. Or perhaps take it further, one group is doing an endurance wave after wave encounter, like Hyjal trash, while another group is taking down bosses to end the encounter.

Otherwise, I highly enjoyed the PvP style encounter in Magister's Terrace, where there's no tanking, and alot more dynamics from person to person. I think there should be much more dependance on the individual player, ala Teron Gorefiend, or cube clickers in Magtheridon's Lair.

Another enjoyable thing is "Dragon" encounters and world bosses. You can pick and choose what bosses you do, make a sweep on Gruul/Mag, Doomwalker, Kazzak, do whatever you feel like with minimal trash!

As for instances, I personally like the real time situations, like CoT's Old Hillsbrad. At one point of checking out a trial for Lord of the Rings Online, I was amazed at the storyline interaction in the opening sequences/quests. Granted, once you finished that, the game bored me, but the first couple hours were very cool!

One other thing: Big bosses. Very, very big bosses. It makes things much more epic! ^_^

I thought a fight which forces one player and the boss together is coolest. Much like Big bad wolf in Karazhan, I LOVE fights where one raider is put on the spot at a time, and either succeeds or fails. While he's doing it everyone else is like "cmon cmon do it [name]!" and it really brings the group together in a sports-like way, where the raiders are your brothers.

aknight14 makes a good point.

groups rooting for an individual to pull something off if fun. We get that in the roles we play withing a raid combat dynamic but aknight14 brings up a good point, non-combat situations can create the alternate roles for players to each shine in different moments.

These role shifts could also be doing something one normally gets to do... The warrior with enough STR to pick up the artifact, casting spells to hold the boss in check... or the Mage or Engineer who fixes and controls the robot, that tanks keeping the trashmobs at bay coming down a hallway.

nice

I like the Heroic Mechanar fight with the stacking buffs that can work for or against you.

3 connected "boss fights"

I emagine a Necromaner encounter to be like this:
A generated fight of NPCs that match every single player in the raid is summoned or risen from the ground, in terms of class and talent specs, an Army of 25 "former or turned raiders"
If the raid has 4 tanks whit em, so does the raid encounter.
If the raid has 2 fire mages and a single frost mage, so does the raid encounter.
A hectic 25 vs 25, NPC vs Players whit bolts trown, curses and heals are flying all over the place.
Every toon fighting for ther lifes.

It could be a timed event in terms of the necromancer performing a ritual to summon another army, which you have to prevent, by reaching him in time. ( chest loot )

When you reach him the 2nd "boss" encounter can start be started after ressing the death, and rebuffing, by starting a conversation whit the necro.
After his monolog the fight begins.
When the necro is death and the toon been looted, the Arthas reveals himself and starts another monolog, he then turns the death necromancer into a Lich, and both retreath to the icecrown and the the raid may move forward, leaveing the raid whit the knowledge of that they have to face the now turned lich again as a now even more powerfull beeing, and ofcouse Arthas himself.

A nice storyline whit you encountering an army, the force behind ( the necromancer ) and the final encounter ( the newly created lich ) may unfold before your eyes, getting a insight of how Arthas work and how he keep getting reinforcements.

The storyline could spand over 1 or 2 raids, the initial fight against the "Army boss fight" and the Necromancer as the first two fights in a raid dungeon, and the lich as the final encounter in the raid dungeon.
Or let the lich be a boss encounter in a entirely differnent raid.

-Thorghts?

BAD grammar, but nice ideas

the pictures are ace

How soon will players be contacted for this beta? I don't check my e-mail often.

I would like to participate in an actual battle for a raid encounter. By this I mean, 40 of my guild members (maybe even more) face an army of NPC's in open warfare. This would be the most intense experience WoW could ever offer.

I totally agree with that. I always wanted to feel like it was more than just the guild. Almost like Mount Hyjal, only I would like more NPC interaction. I have heard ideas before about alliance guilds having to work with an equal horde guild for a fight, and though there are tons of reasons why thats hard to coordinate, it would certainly make whichever encounter uses it to be EPIC.