Ion Hazzikostas admits that the balance for the mythical Xavius in WoW was poorly planned.
In a livestream with community manager “Lore,” the newly appointed Game Director of World of Warcraft spoke about Xavius and the Emerald Nightmare. This has gained a bit of a bad reputation because professional raiders killed the final boss on mythic difficulty on the very first day after the raid opened. Hazzikostas says about this: “Yes, the tuning for Xavius wasn’t good. We messed it up on mythic.”
Overall, they were very satisfied with the balance of all bosses in the Emerald Nightmare on “normal” and “heroic”. One must not forget that the Nightmare is just the first raid of Legion, and there will be many more, so it shouldn’t be “insurmountably” difficult for elite guilds. The team didn’t want to create a second Mannoroth or Archimonde that would hold players back for weeks or months. The perfect goal, according to Hazzikostas, would have been if Xavius had been defeated after approximately 80 to 100 attempts.
Furthermore, the elite guilds that have defeated Xavius on mythic are an absolute minority. These players push themselves to the limit and occasionally even to the point where one might think, “this isn’t fun anymore.” This small group is simply not representative of most of the player base. Therefore, it is easy for the developers to accept that Xavius met his end on mythic fairly quickly.
Cortyn says: Overall, I find the discussion about “Xavius was way too easy” a bit tedious. So far, only very few players have defeated the current “final boss” on the highest difficulty, and most guilds are still struggling in heroic mode. Those who complain a lot probably don’t even play the game themselves or (in my opinion) are stuck in a “things were better back then” fantasy.
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