Altcrown Citadel

Have you heard the news? Blizzard came out with some information on the patch 3.3 Icecrown Citadel raid. And everyone nods their head in agreement. They all say:

"Waitwut?"

Icecrown citadel is the raid that keeps you from raiding when you want to raid. It cockblocks you by keeping you from doing more than 4 new bosses a week (or two weeks), and no attempts at heroic mode until you beat Arthas in normal, who won't be ready for 2 months. That's 9 weeks. That means by the time Arthas is available, everyone in your 10 man raid has gear from the first 4 bosses. That means they don't need gear from the first bosses anymore. On top of that, you only get a limited amount of attempts at the last bosses of each wing. At first, it will be 5, but later on it will be 20 or whatever Blizz arbitrarily decides.

So who benefits most from this? Is it casuals? Is it the truly hardcore?

Or is it the people with Alts?

Blizzard has made it very clear that they want you to play alts. Heirloom items, faster leveling, and now smaller instances that can be run over and over again.

Say I'm in a hardcore 10 man raiding guild, going for world firsts on bosses. Assuming ICC is as difficult as they claim it is, people are going to need to get the most out of their attempts. A small, well-oiled team can go ahead and run their alts through the content the first night to learn the fights, then follow it up the next night with mains to clear the content. So in order to get the most attempts in, you need to field multiple teams.

If I were in charge of a major raiding guild, I would tell people I want a second 80 immediately. If I wanted to be really hard about it, I'd make you reroll your character.

I bet that's what Ensidia does...

Game, Blouses.