Dungeon Journals: What's the big fuss?

So the Public Test Realm is back. Yay! It's like getting to pre-open our Christmas presents! Or get a sneak peek at the final exam questions from our "Intro to Quantum Mechanics" course. Or like finding out what you're going to look like in 20 years.

This latest venture into the PTR has a new feature Blizzard it's testing: the Dungeon Journal. It's an interesting tool to help provide information on boss fights, locations, gear and more. I can see the value in the system but I think there's an unforeseen element that has caused some significant concern amongst the more serious raiders. I'm not saying it's exclusively an elite raider issue, either, because it's not. Any player who is serious about their raiding--even if they have to play at a more casual pace--would prefer not to know every little detail about a boss fight. We raid because we like to solve the puzzle: "How will 10 or 25 of us manage to get this boss down before we die from all of the stuff it throws at us?"

Yes this does impact the elite raiding guilds most directly because they are the ones that get to the heroic content first and for many of them, they are troubleshooting the very nature of the encounter to determine what happens and how it should be overcome. You see, raiding at the elite level isn't just about getting the bosses down, it's also about figuring out how to do it. So when Blizzard opted to include a lot of detail about the boss fights at the heroic level, it was not well received. Why give so much away when this particular group likes to figure it out on their own, they seem to be asking. Why take away one of the most important elements of our fun?

What do you think? I've got a new poll up on my research blog, please go and vote!