Why I believe Flask of Petrification ruins Hardcore
Warning - Oh boy, I guess I had a lot to say. This is long-winded post, if you hate reading, please ignore post.
To start, I know this post will get a lot of down votes and be unpopular. Any time I've voiced my opinion on Petri I'm always immediately downvoted get the same replies "Then just don't use them", "Don't tell me how to play the game", "anyone against petris hasn't raided in Hardcore".
I want to make it clear that I'm not telling anyone how to play the game or telling people not to use petris. I'm stating why I believe it ruins immersion, and in my opinion, ruin the spirit of a hardcore challenge.
Immersion:
I don't know why you all play wow, but for me it's the immersion. The world we live in is pretty F'ed up right now, and of all the video games I've played in my life, World of Warcraft offers the best escape. But, there are things about the game that asks you to use your imagination and work with what the game is showing you. When you spawn into Cold Ridge Valley or North Shire Abbey and see 30 wolves just roaming around in the area the size of a football field, you know that isn't realistic.
There's other things. The Social-aggro range between mobs is entirely unrealistic. I attacked one of the guards at Durnholde Keep yesterday and realized the mob on the other side of the door, about 10 yards away didn't aggro. In reality, the whole Fort would aggro and destroy any attacking party smaller than a raid. There are other examples here but I think you get the picture.
As a player that values immersion, I understand that there are concessions that must be made for gameplay. As in-depth as the world is, of course there are things that are unrealistic for the purpose of player convenience. But, you can work with this and I think there is a nuance to it that the game devs expect you to play to with a little imagination. The game with the help of the player is crafting a story on how this young hopeful recruit through many trials and battle becomes one of the most honorable and powerful warriors in the world. If you meet the game half-way with your imagination, that is the story wow gives you. The best immersive experience in gaming history.
This is supported by the quests. Typically, it takes what? 7 days play time to get to 60? In your starting zones you are often referred to as young [race] or young [class]. In later game quests, they don't refer to you as young anymore. You are a harden veteran. So all these quests of "go kill 10 wolves, that are a 15 seconds walk away", the game is asking you to use your imagination that you are actually out in the wild for days or weeks hunting these creatures down. In my opinion, every quest objective in the game is meant to be looked at in this light.
Non-Hardcore:
I played WoW when it first came out in 2004, then I played it pretty heavily when WotLK came out. During WoTLK I was co-leader of a strong raiding guild that cleared all content before I quit. I remember banging our heads against some raid bosses and dying 20 times before we cleared them. I remember during a 25 man Naxx raid, getting Heigan the Unclean down to about 50% (maybe he was lower, memory shaky and I was focused on healing), but 20 of our guild members died from the safety dance, then myself (healer), the main tank, and 3 dps, took about 10 minutes to finish him off.
I have wonderful memories of those raids, but, our victories came after many many deaths, and there's always that thought in the back of my mind that if this was a movie or a book, we would have been the group wiped out by the bad guys in the opening chapter. We didn't really beat these places, we hit the reset button hundreds of times until we got the results we liked. We rigged the game. There's no immersion in dying to Patchwerk, doing a corpse run, rebuffing, then repeating that process 10 more times until we finally defeat him on the 11th try.
I quit wow for 15 years. I thought my wow days were over because I had gotten that end game raiding experience, and sure there were aspect of it that I loved, but it didn't feel like there was any weight behind accomplishments. As long as you had 24 other people that were willing in invest time into dying over and over and over, you'd eventually clear the raids.
Hardcore:
I only returned when Hardcore WoW was announced. The thought of making it to 60 or achieving a goal that you had previously thought impossible was exciting. There's no feeling like it in gaming when you are in over your head and it is legitimately a lock-in or die situation. I had about 10 deaths before things finally clicked. Most were my fault, a couple were the fault of others in my party, and 2 were disconnects. I joined a leveling guild as a paladin and had a lot of conversation with my GM on petri. She told me at level 50 you are "basically safe" because you can just buy a couple petris.
It never really sat right with me. My feeling was if I die, then I deserved to die (excluding disconnects which is irrelevant to petri usage anyways). That's the whole point of Hardcore. It is relying on your instinct, battle prowess, and wit to get out of a bad situation. It's relying on your sense of judgement to ally yourself with party members who won't roach during the first sign of danger. Having a petri on my hotbar felt like I had a big reset button on my screen. I felt that I was cheating the game.
I got to level 59 on the paladin and these conversations on petri continued to the point that my GM stated that Hardcore dungeons and raids wouldn't exist at level 60 if it wasn't for petri. So at level 59, I quit my paladin and made a Self-Found Shaman.
I loved the challenge of SF. I loved that Petri wasn't even available to me. I loved that when my life was on the line in a dungeon, it was truly lock-in or die. My first 60 in HC WOW was a SF Shaman and after I hit 60 I decided that my goal was to see how far into the game I could get with my SF tag. I was a healer and made friends with some pretty honorable tanks. And you know what happened when they realized I was SF? They went all-in with me. They had petris, but refused to use them because they didn't want to abandon me.
During level 60 dungeons, mistakes happen, you will have extra pulls and a lot of time, people will petri during battle they could have won. What is the fun in Hardcore if you remove the risk of dying?
There was one situation we got into in Dire Maul West that I thought we were dead. At one point I told my tank "Hey man, petri if you have too, save yourself". He refused. We all made it out alive and the tank said "I was just worried about you man". Surviving battles like this where the vast majority of players would petri gave me some of my best memories of WoW I've ever had. Even better than exploring the world for the first time way back in 2004.
After healing, I don't know about 60 or 70 level 60 dungeons, I was full pre-RAID BIS and decided I should join a RAIDING guild. Due to the lack of Shaman on the server, it wasn't hard to find a guild and despite it being a requirement to have petri while raiding, guilds were willing to make an exception in my case after I explained my goal of seeing how far into the game I can make it as SF. So, I ended up clearing both Onyxia and Molten Core with my SF tag active. Something I'm guessing not many players have done.
I died in Stratholme just a few days later. One of the main tanks of the guild asked me to heal an undead run. I'd never grouped with the tank before outside of the raids we just completed, but he was in full MC gear and the 3 dps were reasonably well geared. This was an experienced group and by far the best geared group I've done a dungeon with, I've cleared strat with people who still had green gear and less experience so I had no worries. Well, after the second boss the tank pulls and extra group. Having been in this situation before with people who were geared way worse, my thinking was "alright, lets lock in", but then I hear the tank yell "petri petri" and immediately petris and alt+f4. The rest of the group either petris or runs out. All the mobs lock onto me because healing aggro, and I'm taken down.
I didn't blame the tank. Throughout my entire playthrough, I figured party members of mine petri'ing out is what would kill me. It was just disappointing, because double pulls were situations I've faced hundreds of times before and yeah they are tough and scary, but if you lock in, you can handle them. It was disappointing that the best geared group I ever ran with, used an immersive breaking game mechanism to escape danger. It made me ask "Were these guys legitimately good, or did they dip out at any sign of danger?"
Circling back to Immersion and Petri:
And that's the part that makes me feel that petri ruins the game and the spirit of a HC challenge.
Earlier I spoke on the player having to use their imagination to meet the game half way to create a story of a warrior overcoming challenges. But there's no accounting for being completely surrounded by enemies, dead to rights, then just disappearing from existence to arrive safely back to your hearth. Imagine seeing this in a movie, or reading this in a book, where hero completely surrounded by enemies with no possible way to escape, then in a blink of an eye, he is just safely back in his own house....then imagine this happens 10 more times in the story. Would you keep watching/reading? Or would you say "this is dumb, there's no stacks in this story, any danger and the hero just blinks out of existence". I think you know the answer to that.
I'm sure people would argue "a hearthstone blinks you out of existence" and this is also where the game sacrifices immersion for player convenience. There's a reason it has a 10 second cast time. I believe its the assumption that if nothing has hit you within 10 seconds, odds are, you are in a position that you could have escaped by running anyways, basically the hero finding a place to hide or the ole jumping into the river to escape enemies. For the game to make you walk out of every dungeon would be a major time wasting experience. It's similar to a "quick travel" function, something that most games don't allow you to do if you are actively engaged in combat.
So in terms of imagination of crafting this story with the game. There's no accounting for petri alt+f4 (or petri and leave group - countdown timer) just blinking you to safety, literally at any moment you want. You pull 1 extra mob? Alright, blink out of existence. When I think of a Hardcore challenge, this feels *wrong*. Lets just hit the reset button and remove the stakes and turn a Hardcore challenge into softcore.
Did that tank decked out in MC gear earn it? Or did he petri at any sign of danger leaving the rest of his group to fend from themselves? I don't know. But I do know had it been one of my ride or die tanks (who had worse gear), we likely would have survived.
As for the quotes I made to start this post:
"Then just don't use them" - I don't. But other people using them directly led to my death.
"Don't tell me how to play the game" - I'm not. It's a game, play however you want. I'm just saying that my personal belief that if you use petri, you are not truly playing hardcore. You gave yourself a reset button.
"anyone against petris hasn't raided in Hardcore" - well, I did make it raiding and clear the first 2 40 man raids without ever using a petri. I do have more to say here. I think the spirit of Hardcore is all about "how far you can get with 1 life" not "how can we game the system to clear all content with just 1 life". Petri Alt+f4 (or petri countdown timer) gives you that cheat code. I'd love to see a server that either nerfs petri to 20 seconds with a forbearance timer after, or a pause the countdown timer while petri is active. It's be awesome to see how far people could get under those rules.
Anyways. I doubt many people will read this. I know its long, and from the title alone, I know it will be downvoted immediately. But I also know there are a few of you out there like me. That appreciate what it means to play Hardcore without petri.
edit: grammar correction.