Project Lore

Groups tackling normal modes in Icecrown Citadel no longer will be limited by a fixed number of available attempts, Blizzard blue poster Daelo announced on the official WoW forums late Monday. Here's what was posted:

After each region's maintenance this week, raids will no longer lose attempts on wipes in Normal mode for Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. There will still be limited attempts in Heroic mode. We will continue to monitor developments in Icecrown Citadel in the future, especially since the Heroic difficulty has been unlocked by a significant number of raids.

A few hours later, Slorkuz expanded on the topic in the European forums:

Basic Q&A about this change: Q: If you extend your raid lockout this week, will you still lose attempts on Normal after the hotfix? A: No. Q: If you run completely out of attempts on Heroic, will the wing bosses and Lich King no longer respawn, even if the difficulty is switched to Normal? A: YES. So leave an attempt left if you wish to kill them on Normal. We'll try and correct this in a future update. Q: Why is the counter still visible in Normal? A: The hotfix being applied just stops the counter decrementing, and nothing more.

So if I'm understanding question #2 correctly, a group could potentially grind through all of their attempts on heroic mode, save one wipe, then switch to normal mode to start over again. Interesting. Unfortunately, neither blue post addressed why these changes are being implemented. Are not enough guilds getting close to success? Or perhaps far too many are getting in attempts, but then wiping so continuously in the Frostwing Halls that they have no hope for success? Or maybe it's a question of the philosophy behind heroic modes -- if guilds have unlimited attempts on normal mode then they can perfect their techniques before tackling heroic. So how are players reacting? So far on the forums, as expected, there's been a mixed bag of reaction. Some are upset that only a week after the release of Frostwing Halls, ICC already is getting a nerf. Others like the limited attempts because they said it encouraged groups to play through all of their attempts every week while trying for progression. On the flip side, others say the limited attempts in normal mode were just too frustrating for many guilds and that not enough raid groups have been able to defeat the Lich King as a result. Most forum posters seem to welcome the change. And to be honest I do, too. What's your take on things?