iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 05/10/2025

Felt like I had to get this guy framed.

Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

Thanks! Vanilla Ashbringer lore is a bit questionable as it is with changes that came later, but we felt it was really important to build around what existed in vanilla and make it work with that original lore rather than try to work in later concepts and characters to make vanilla "fit" better.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

This is awesome, Jesse! I love Dark Sun! <3

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

Being honest, unlikely we'll do xfers between SoD and other versions of WoW. We made thousands of new items, spells, and other game data that doesn't exist in other versions and porting that over would be messy at best, game breaking at worst. Never say never, but no plans for now.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Mini bosses do not affect the loot at all.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

FFXI was my first MMO love, so there are no words for how happy this card makes me. Chef's kiss.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

But we are watching it, very carefully. Caldoran is still hard (but NOT impossible) for groups that aren't running 25+. Luckily, its very easy to recruit right now if you want a few more people help get over the hill. So again, before we pull that trigger, we are taking a measured approach.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

Being honest, when we think its needed and not before. We aren't sure its needed yet. We are looking at raiding data and week over week the raiding population is increasing rather than decreasing. So we need to be careful to respect the progression of groups working through it before we nerf more.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

Honestly I'm disinclined to go much deeper on my opinions as a dev. It's just going to end up on wowhead/reddit and fuel anger for someone. I'll just say, the two guilds I run with that average 21-25 people per raid are 5/8 and we are having a lot of fun. That's my experience and YMMV.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

I could see a few more adjustments in the coming weeks, but we don't want to be too hasty and overnerf it.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

Its going extremely well. Started out hard but now that the first 5 bosses are very surmountable for most decently organized and balanced groups and set bonuses are coming online, we'll see some serious power spikes which will help even more. It's still going to require prog for most groups.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty excited to get home and play Oblivion Remastered tonight, but dang I'm devastated it wasn't Morrowind (aka the best elder scrolls game).

media.tenor.com

a man says next time baby in a blurry picture

ALT: a man says next time baby in a blurry picture

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

The dungeon thing never really got past the idea phase. I think we knew pretty early that we didn't want to do that and our hearts weren't in it, which is ultimately why we pivoted to making it a raid. I think that was the right choice. Way more work, but the right choice.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Yeah it was a kerfuffle. We meant to bundle the first round of fixes with the second because we were afraid people would think that was all the changes, but I didn't properly line that up with our community team, hence the blue post at 9pm to clear it up. my bad.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

... but that crowd is a fraction of a fraction of the playerbase. We can't exclusively design for them any more than we can exclusively design for the bottom % either. I'm looking forward to going in with my midcore guilds this week and making good satisfying progress (but still not full clearing).

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

To your point though, we do want to hold the line and keep a challenge. This is sort of the pinnacle of raiding in SoD and it wouldn't feel right if we nerfed it to the point where you could walk over it, and today's nerfs still are not that. If you cleared it week 1, yes it will be easier now...

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

But trying to manage some expectations, If you were killing HM2-3 naxx only for two months, then SE will still be a really tough challenge for you and you may need to change things up. If you were clearing HM4 consistently, it hopefully feels like a more natural progression from HM4 Saph and KT now.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

But it's a super fair complaint that the guilds that are doing it in the "right" way feel really crappy watching other guilds just take 30-40 and kill it while they are still just trying to gear up to prep for the harder challenges later. Not entirely fixable without REALLY heavy nerfs, but fair.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Being honest, a lot of 20m guilds will go in this week and still probably hit a bit of a wall. It's just not quite so impossible of a wall to incrementally progress anymore. I am very certain we'll be asked soon for more nerfs beyond this.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

I sent you a DM asking for the name of the character so I can look into it. Hit me back, please. Thanks.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

He also cut off the next sentence in that post that says “not to say there won’t ever be hard content”. The philosophy changes over time as well. We learn stuff, we experiment, we try other stuff. It’s just part of the process. We are watching and will adjust as needed as time passes.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

It’s live now. Jociphine should respawn in a few minutes and be visible to players who’ve completed decapitation strike. Apologies.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

I sent a fix for this on Monday and this should be resolved now. I’ll check on it on my end.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

I mean, no? The FIRST one you get will take ~4 weeks if you can full clear (but could be done in 3 if you get lucky on drops). Subsequent ones will go much faster because you'll be getting lightforged iron from the weekly quest until it's your turn to get them in your group as raid drops.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

You don’t get it on your priest. It only is there for classes that can use it.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

So as time goes by and your wars/huntes/pals who want this weapon are gathering the iron from their junkboxes when they eventually get the ruined lightforged blade they aren't starting from 0 and its fewer weeks for them to complete. /3

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

This means that even if you haven't started the quest from the Ruined Lightforged Blade and/or you haven't started being awarded lightforged iron that drop for you raid team, you can start making progress on this. The idea is that the first 2-3 legendary quests your guild does take 3-4 weeks each /2

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

Now that it's out and players are starting to notice: Hunters/Paladins/Warriors who have not yet completed the "Gathering Light" step of the legendary questline will get a single Lightforged Iron from their Scarlet Junkbox every week. This does not require you to have started the questline. /1

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

Yep, this is correct/intended and this is the thing I was alluding to in the post you quoted.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

I can’t say they won’t get adjustments but we are much more comfortable with those last few bosses having harder gear and damage requirements than the first few, so average groups might need to take a few weeks to gear up before being able to clear comfortably. We’ll keep an eye on it though.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

Additional adjustments to Beatrix are going out soon. For a 2nd boss tuned for 20, she's just a bit too stiff of a challenge. If she was the 5th or 6th boss we'd likely feel differently but this should help smooth out the difficulty curve of the raid a bit while keeping the later bosses hard.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 13/04/2025

I’m in camp “do green dragons.” We aren’t going to put every single old item on the real vendor.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 13/04/2025

Any mobs already spawned when the hotfix went live won’t be affected. However if you soft reset it will have new values. If the mini bosses had less health then your raid has got the hotfix. Not sure what this person was seeing or is talking about.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 12/04/2025

Nothing has been nerfed “into the ground”. Not even close.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 12/04/2025

Yes, it has been cleared with 20.

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Reposted by Josh Greenfield

World of Warcraft @worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com · 11/04/2025

Nobody expects the Scarlet Crusade!

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Yeah you are actually right, I wrote my post in haste and did very bad math. Its more like 16-20 items if you kill 4-5 bosses. Wups. Don't post distracted, I guess.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Last thing I'll say is, like everything in SoD, this is an experiment. Finding those boundaries has been important to us and it still is. I appreciate all the feedback we've gotten so far, both positive and critical. We are incredibly excited to see guilds see the entire raid and story play out.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

You should feel no rush or pressure to get through this content fast. Take your time, share info with each other, and keep at it. It will get easier over time either through you making incremental progress to gear up, or mechanisms we put in to make it easier. But it's been 24h. Let it breathe.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

We really want your progression through this content to be satisfying and part of satisfaction comes from overcoming a challenge. It's tough to make content that has, in some form or another, been well known for years truly hard. But truly new content deserves a bit more friction.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Anyway, this isn't a "get good" post. This just acknowledgement of some culture shock. We expected this to a degree, and we want to see what you are capable of. If you think it's too hard, fair enough. Give it a bit of time to get figured out by the community and take another shot at it next week.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

3. We have a system in place that, after a time, will allow you to gain a buff that will make it easier (similar to ICC). We don't want to flip this on just yet, but we are discussing timing for it and will likely make an announcement on that soon.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

2. The gear in SE is *dramatically* better than Naxx gear. By the time you get your 8/8 set you'll do between ~25 and 40% more damage. At full bis you'll be doing 50%+ more damage. Killing one or two bosses in the first lockout and then 2-3 in the next lockout gets your raid 25+ very strong items.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

1. No PTR - in contrast to all other level 60 raids, there's not 20 years of pre-knowledge. Figuring out mechanics is a thing that takes time and it's also something classic players have little experience with. If players want truly new classic content, they may need to get used to some prog again.

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Watching a lot of the back and forth about the raid being too hard and there's a few key things here to consider (in thread below). Before I dive into that though we agree that boss 1 and 2 are likely a bit too hard and have already made some adjustments to make them more manageable. Now, consider:

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Josh Greenfield @aggrend.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Well, you get one of those quest starter items every week, and there's something else to this that no one is aware of yet. Raid's been live 24h and we've not had a weekly reset yet, there's more to it than you can see now.

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