Friday, March 30, 2007

Should Trash Respawn?

There's currently many complaints about the rate of trash respawns in the endgame. So far, it hasn't really been too severe in Karazhan yet, in my experience, but it looks to get a lot worse.

But is it really necessary to have trash respawn in an instance?

(Note that I am not talking about fights like the BWL Suppression Room, where the trash is part of the boss fight. Such trash should respawn if the fight was lost.)

I like trash mobs. It's a necessary part of the instance, and can lead to some interesting fights. Small twists without being a full on boss fight. An instance that was all bosses and no trash just wouldn't feel right to me.

But I don't really see the purpose of having trash respawn. I suppose it slows down progression, but unless the trash is truely excessive, I don't really think that it really affects the cutting edge guilds.

Realistically, trash respawns just make life hard on the lower tier guilds, the ones which aren't as good as the high end guilds. And I'm not sure that slowing down these guilds with trash is really necessary. The boss fight will block them from progressing.

I've disliked respawning trash ever since Scarlet Monastery. If I had a dollar for all the times I've gone through the instance, killed the bosses and been killed while running out, I'd be rich. And that's just silly in my view. Would it have hurt anything if the trash had just stayed dead?

If I recall correctly, trash in Blackwing Lair stayed dead once killed. (Well, sometimes you had to kill the entire group, if the trash was linked, which is an acceptable limitation.) And Blackwing Lair was a good raid dungeon. Did the fact that trash stayed dead make it a weaker dungeon? I'd argue that it made it one of the better dungeons.

Hard trash mobs, interesting trash mobs, linked groups of trash, that's all fine. But once the trash has been dealt with, it should stay dead.

11 comments:

  1. Even in a regular instance, there's nothing like wiping on the boss and having to fight through all the trash to get back there.

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  2. Excellent article. Trash mobs can be the reason why a guild does or does not give a certain raid a try. People don't want to reclear an instance to get to a boss they spent 2 hours getting to the night before.

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  3. I'll fully support a movement to get this idea enacted.

    It's insane to kill the guests of Moroes over and over and over again while trying to learn Moroes. I mean, think about it, if his entire first set of guests dies, he'd have to re-send invitations to his fancy ball and banquet, and you know that'd take some time (not 20 minutes!). What happened to RP?!?!? MMOMP (Massive Multiplayer Online Money Pot).

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  4. Moroes has a huge entourage in the back, they are the "B list" partygoers.

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  5. What many people are referring to with trash respawns is in Serpentshrine Caverns, where trash is very very hard, seriously contributes to repair bills, and has a 30 minutes respawn time or less.
    ...not to mention the fact that they only drop Shiny Fish Scales. No greens or other stuff to counter repairs and make it interesting.


    So basically, spend 40 minutes clearing to a boss, attempt it, wipe, and you have to completely reclear.
    And any flasks you had on will be running down while you spend another 40 minutes before the next boss attempt.

    This alone wouldnt be more than annoying (such as pre-Cthun trash was annoying for being really really time-consuming), however, there are some serious glitch problems and bugs with the boss encounters in that instance, requiring many many many attempts to work out ways to compensate.

    not only do you have to waste a huge amount of time, waste money, waste consumables, but you have to do it because the content is broken.

    thats why people are mad.

    For comparison, Naxx trash never respawns at all, and as you mentioned, BWL trash doesnt either.

    the nice thing about BWL too was that it begins with a boss fight, which is far better in my opinion than having to clear and reclear trash the first time a guild learns the first boss of an instance and doesnt have a saved ID yet.


    ~Brekke
    Spirestone PVP


    p.s. /salute to skywall. you guys are some of the most decent people i've encountered in this game.

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  6. Tigole has mentioned that they're increasing the respawn timer on some of the trash in a very recent post on the public forums. Outcry heard, message received.

    -Baelor
    70 paladin
    Runetotem server
    GM of Adaptation

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  7. Still, trash shouldn't respawn at all. If it does, it should be horribly easy and drop enough money and/or treasure to compensate.

    Trash does not respawn in BWL and Naxx, as people have said. People also generally consider those to be the most enjoyable raid instances. ZG trash usually didn't respawn until the next day, after a soft reset.

    Trash takes 2 hours to respawn in 5-mans. Why should this be any different for the current raid instances?

    Blizzard needs to learn. Make trash like ZG, BWL, or Naxx. Make it interesting or hard and not respawn. Or make it incredibly easy and fun with a 2 hour respawn.

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  8. I dont know what game you played, but naxx trash all respawned if you didnt kill the boss in a given time.

    Some of it was 2+ hours, some of it was 60 mins (Noth).

    But never was the trash to a boss so hard it took you 45 mins of your 60 minute timer to kill the trash. And to the point you needed a repair bot every hour and spend 150+ gold in conumables every hour for every person.

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  9. Just FYI, Naxx trash doesnt respawn, period.
    You must have been confused by an instance that your group hadnt killed a boss in yet and therefore hadnt been saved to.

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  10. Personally, I'm of the mind that trash respawning is good, but not as often as it sometimes does.

    If a guild heads into a new raid, clears trash to the first boss and spends the entire night wiping, the next day, they should come back to respawned trash.
    But 30 or 60 minute timers are bad. 2 hours is fine, as most guilds I've seen have a 4 hour long raid night, thats just 2 clears of one set of trash possible, and that's if they spend the entire night on one boss.

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