Ok, wow. I really tried to keep my personal opinion out of the initial article since it was a reasoned and joint effort by the top guilds to bring Blizzard's attention to a very important issue for the hardcore raiding community. Well, Blizzard's (only) response so far was to delte the thread. Yes, you read that right. The reason is that you can't do "petitions" on the forums, which would be fine except this WASN'T one. The guilds wrote their opinions in the thread and other people wrote /signed to signify they agreed with the arguments being presented. Now, I'm sure that TECHNICALLY the mod that did it had a reason and the authority to, but, really? If they wrote "Agreed" or "Yes, that is a good point you made there" instead of /signed would that make it all better? This, in my own personal view, is a pretty hilarious slap in the face from Blizzard to the hardcore raiding community and as the only resoponse from them on the Encounter Journal issue so far, says quite a lot.
Now, we can hope this is just an overzealous PTR forum mod trying to stick it to the "elite" guilds by enforcing a technicality because he can, but there were a LOT of very, VERY good points made by many people in that thread which I doubt will all get reposted, so the loss is significant. (Some people saved the content of the original thread, but I doubt everything will get reposted and I'm sure Blizzard isn't aboout to download files from filesharing sites to see what the top raiders think, so it's still a loss.) Censorship like this is really something I never would have expected from Blizzard and, as a long time fan it frankly (melodrama incoming) breaks my heart.
So, in the future, if there's a thread you really hate and want to ruin, just get a few of your friends to write /signed in it and it will be deleted, no matter the content or intention of it.
The rumblings had already started yesterday, and now the top guilds are publicly speaking out on the Encounter Journal issue. They've taken to the official forums to voice their concerns over the implementation and general idea behind the new feature introduced 2 days ago on the PTR.
It's great to see the top guilds come together in a united effort like this, for a cause they feel is important and try to turn Blizzard's attention to an issue that, even if not important to the masses, is very important to the hard core raiders.
At the time of writing, among the guilds that talked about the issue, with many more joining them, are:
Here are some snippets from the thread:
Arx, Paragon
I seriously doubt anyone was expecting this. The vast majority of responses ranged from disappointed to outraged. Everything is documented in detail, and in some cases leaves only the details to be worked out on your own. Some of the available info could be deduced from mined data even before, but now speculation is out of the picture.
Rei, Method
When I first heard about the Encounter Journal, I was slightly worried, but I was looking at it as the next step in casualising the game. However, I did not expect it to be implemented in such a way. The current state of the journal, at least for me personally, takes away probably the most important part of competitive raiding, which is a major factor in why many of the players from top guilds play the game. No one is benefiting from the journal atm: hardcore players that are going to push progress don't need (or want) the journal, more casual players (which I guess is the target audience here), when they get to that point, will have videos and guides from other guilds on how to do bosses. Possibly the best solution for everyone is to just remove heroic mode abilities and phases from the journal until you at least get to that phase of the boss.
Mek, Ensidia
Now with the system we currently have where normal mode is done before heroic content, most of the information in the Journal does not affect anything for high end raiders. What is annoying is that even the heroic content which is being done by players who have absolutely no need for this feature is being included (such as the extra phase on Ragnaros). Since this is clearly not a feature that is being targeted at the players that would be doing bleeding edge progress on Heroic bosses, I think that at the very least Heroic modes and their additional abilities should be removed from the Journal.
Buschii, For the Horde
The new Journal takes away any "whoa" or "wtf" effect from new instances.
The information presented there is something you used to need a fair amount of tries to find out, and with it spoiled like that it really takes away from the fun of playing.
I can only hope that Blizzard rethink the whole thing and change something in the instance after Firelands. My suggestion would be to grey out the bosses in the journal until you've at least had a few tries on them.
