The latest kara run was done in 2 minutes, very impressive. At first I thought it was approved in error because all bosses must be killed for the run to count. Then I read the rules and saw that you can skip any boss/encounter in kara.

This brings me back to a question I had earlier: Why are we allowed to skip 90% of the encounters in this raid but we must kill the fishing boss in SSC? I just don't understand this.

EDIT: Also, why are we allowed to skip any bosses? Seems to undermine the whole point of these speed runs.

There's actually been just general complaint about Karazhan being too long of an instance, and the chess counter just being monotonous to sit through and complete. The chess encounter is actually mostly RNG, from what I've been able to test, and it's simply not fun to try and get the best "cheating" rng. I mentioned to Gerion that I was going to have to go back and change some rulesets, and that's just one of them I've been able to get around to changing.

The fishing boss in Serpentshrine adds a little more competitiveness to that run. It's a generally short raid, and with a high enough fishing skill that greatly improves the chances of fishing up Lurker. The amount of RNG is minimal, there is actually hardcode that improves the chances of fishing Lurker up if you have a higher skill. Simply increase, or max, fishing for the best odds. Semi-rng.

As far as skipping any bosses, there are certain raids I've looked back at and realized they were either:

1. Impossible to complete solo.
2. Incredibly difficult to complete solo.
3. Took to long to complete solo, reducing the amount of times that category, or raid, would be ran.
4. Some classes are just unfairly advantaged. The goal has never been to discourage from running on your main, just so you can achieve a faster time on a class that has better movement utility or access to certain glitches.

As far as what I've been able to recreate with Kara, this appears to be possible due to Demon Hunters double-jump. I thought it was rather ingenious, and also thought it would help us into breaking some other raids. I remember doing a glitch similar to this in Dalaran Sewers and could actually get to the Arena section below the grate. It used to require having a large mount, like a mammoth, but Sheik here did it with just a Dark Phoenix.

I found Sheik on youtube earlier today. I sent him the whole run down of what we have going on for our individual raids and im happy he decided to take part.

I do have a few thoughts tho, and these will really be important to making sure we have a comprehensive understanding on what we are constituting as a passable run.

1. If we are going to allow an Any% category within our individual raids, then we probably should consider putting a 100% also. I know that adding these increases the space needed on our speedrun section. But having a 100% and an Any% is undeniably the identity of this website. While Kara is a long instance, it is not much longer than Mount Hyjal or BT at 100%. Sure Kara's chess event is boring and monotonous, but there is a strategy there. If one of us nails it, we learn from that.

2. Timer must be present on screen. That is only so we have consistency amongst all runs. In sheiks video, he forces the game to disconnect, but how long did it take for him to come back? We cant really know since there is no timer running.

2a. This begs the question on whether a timer should be created during a run, or will allow after run timing. I know i have personally screwed up 3 runs on various raids by accidentally hitting my timer stop before the boss actually dies. It sucks, but i didnt want to compromise the integrity of the run.

3. Ultimately, there is nothing that a player can do, that another player cannot. If Vengence DH is the fastest class, for single raid boss sprints, then if i want to beat it, its time to level my DH. If having rocket boots is undeniably the best way to compete, then i have to pick up engineering. Which brings me to my final point....

4. PTR? Accepted? No one wants to compromise the identity or the work someone has done on their main. But if you can create the perfect speed run candidate on the PTR... then why shouldnt we. Whats the difference between Live/PTR when you have SM64 speedrunners using Japanese versions of the game so the RP at the start isnt counted. Plus ptr allows mutliple attempts per week :DDDDD

I would be very happy to fully nail down every rule with you guys. We can workshop it on skype/discord.

I understand much better what's going on now, didn't know there were ruleset changes in the works. Although skipping an entire raid via out of bounds with a demon hunter exclusive toolset appears to break #4. OOB would be fine if any class could make it to the last boss but this isn't the case, and I really don't want all the speedruns to turn into oob glitchfests unless we want to start an any% board or something.

Shiek's run was really fast and well executed, I'm not trying to discount their efforts. But we all have to agree on what is fair and what isn't.

EDIT: That PTR idea sounds interesting, never played on it so I don't know what it's like but if we can make a 110 character and hop right into running I'm game.

I also like the idea of 100% and any% boards, yeah there will be more clutter but they could be organized like the potion and no potion tabs so it wouldn't be too horrible.

@ConjuredBiscuit : On the PTR you can literally copy your Live character and play on it, or you can create premade cookie cut classes.

@cdgexe: If you look through alot of Sheiks videos, you will see that glitching and finding shortcuts are how he likes to play. Its a core part of speedrunning history, and i think it is smart to allow this kind of bracket. I move to have this established.

Sheik has done some ingenious work in various communities.

1. Any% | 100% I think are both fine additions to accept. The only thing to keep in mind here is with certain raids, the any% definition is it going to be defined by achievement, legacy, etc. Vault of Archavon was originally with stone-bearer. We could say that any% is the legacy definition of this raid. It would mean that under the rule sets I would make sure to include the exact rules for each. Any% for example would be Archavon, 100% would be all of them. This then could be a "formula" used for all raids.

¤¤¤ I think it's safe to say the lower and leveling categories are locked and set at the moment, other than possibly dividing it among 0%, 300% and 600% still ¤¤¤

2. Timer is okay to not have on screen, personally. Even though I have a timer on screen, sometimes I don't split accurately, and I take my footage into Vegas and time it frame by frame to get the most accurate timing down to ms. It's why I've started having ms in my timings (short categories, also easy to frame count). I wouldn't constitute really any splicing here, it's more than likely having two battlenet applications open and simply hardlocking yourself. I've done it on my lower leveling runs to exit after the game faster rather than sitting and logging out.

2a) As mentioned above, I do after run timing mostly anyways, and use my timer as a reference while I'm playing. If it's a short run and I mess up the opening, or get a slow loading, then I just restart. I've actually got to mention something about "priming" loading zones. If you load into a zone, then out of it, it's exponentially faster to go back in a second time with a much faster load.

3. Of course, as I figured mostly the board was going to be saturated with Goblin Warriors, Druids, DHs, and Mages. These classes right now have the most movement utility with low cooldown times that work well with consumables. I've gone back and picked up engineering, have started and realized that the tinker belt and wearable boots don't share cooldowns, consumables obviously don't share this cooldown either, and I'm able to keep up in most on my mage. Do I think it constitutes me leveling my DH more to keep up? I might, but I more so enjoy pushing a single character to it's limit, especially when I know mage is going to be one of the fastest for the "all dungeons" categories o.o b

4. I've done thought into this. I've thought about the old-school days when people used to play on private servers, and some still do. I don't think I'm ever going to be open to the idea of being able to use private servers; however, the PTR is different. It's actually being hosted on live blizzard servers. Ultimately, I'd have to come up with a community desicion on this. I don't really know the difference between JP and ENG SM64, but I do know that the only difference between it and most games, usually, is text speed.

I don't think WoW Speedrunning actually has a discord at the moment. I'll look into setting up the discord soon with Sadruns.

In regards to #2 (heh), could we make it standard to have some timer present in the final video? You can add one in video editing programs afterwards to get frame perfect timing which I have been looking into because I split like a retarded banana.

1. I think there are only a few raids where the "Final boss" is in question. Lich King; Obvious. Ragnaros; Obvious. Archavon; Hmm, thats a good question. While it is called Vault of Archavon, was he really the final boss? Ultimately we might need to consider the Boss with the longest route by normal standards as the final boss. So, Archavon. But what about Baradin Hold? Same idea, Alizabal is the farthest from the entrance, AND the last boss activated in BH's History. While it will come down to community/mod choice, this should be easy to knock out. Really we can make a forum post and edit as we see fit.

2. Ok thank you for the clarification. At the moment i like having it be "whole seconds" vs ms... but if we see it needs to be changed than so be it. I do think having a timer on the final video is important tho, regardless when you time it.

2a. I have also been priming my load times.

3. Goblin warriors? Interesting. Ultimately the option is there for anyone to pick up any class/profession combo. Do you have to? No. Will that give you a competitive edge? Perhaps. If we have 100 people start putting ICC runs on the leaderboards, and the top 10%'s are Night Elf Druids Engineers, then if i want to take that spot, i need to make me a NE,D,E. We're playing the optimizing game. Thats what its all about.

4. Yea text speed i think is the main player there. If you are on a bracket based on milliseconds, shaving those off due to limitations on software/hardware is kinda important.

Set it up!

1. Of course, back in the day when VoA was initially released, stone was the only warden that was in the vault. It was over the course of future patches that others came out during Wrath. If you kill them and check their loot, it gradually increase ilvl based on the patch that they were released. I believe the order was stone, wind, and fire. If we wanted any% to just be a "rush to the final boss as fast as possible, no restrictions, do anything" type deal, the way it is supposed to be, then that's completely fine. I've already started to review the board and have the categories separated. Luckily, it's not going to be hard for us to export and move videos around since a lot of us have the links to our own videos still, or have archived their upload somewhere.

2. If we want to have a timer in the final video, I might see what I could do about downloading the video submissions for short categories under like 2-3min, and I'll add a timer in myself and then modify their video link to the correct run, or I'll just decline submissions on long runs without a timer if that seems fit.

2a) I don't see how any of us couldn't or wouldn't have noticed this after playing for years. Thought I'd still mention it 9.9

3. Yeah, Goblin Warrior = double jump, charge, consumables, engineering, it's kind of nice. Goblin mage is much faster than human mage, I just don't want to switch at the moment, lol.

Saw the addition of Any% and 100%. Do you want us to resubmit our runs for 100%?

Wanted to know this as well. What if we put all current runs in the 100% category because that's how we ran them and just move Shiek's over. They have the only true any% run as of now.

@Geri0n : I believe I've made the changes! I was able to set up the board simply by changing the name of the categories, rotating them in the edit section and simply moving Sheikrunner's run over to the Any% category. I'm still going to be working on the ruleset definitions, as those need to be worked on. :)

@ConjuredBiscuit : I've made the change! Let me know if you all can see it or if there is anything to edit. I hope I can figure out good rulesets / adjustments to any% and 100%, certain raids just have only standard completion, lol.

@cdgexe

Looks good, everything appears to be in order :D

Looks great dude, thank you! Let the new bracket begin!

For raids that only have a standard any% and 100%, I guess we can do dual submission. I'm not sure what else to do. The only thing I could think of is doing a similar board style to Doom that does Max% (where we kill all mobs, bosses, etc) and then we can have any%, 100%, max%, which is just the extension of killing all mobs.

Otherwise simply having the 100% runs transfer over is the only way to fill up those boards with current submissions.

• some raids just don't have anything past any%, such as eye, which is technically all three. -

Hmm, Max is definitely interesting, but its going to be more work for the verifyers. Having to make sure that its all mobs killed. I might be down to do them, but i do not envy you or sadruns having to make sure its actually completed.

I just had a thought about oob and glitches: Would this be considered bug abuse/could we get banned? We're not using it nefariously, only to go fast. But blizzard may see things differently, and we are providing video evidence lol. I'm sure none of us want to jeopardize our accounts doing this, any thoughts?

I dont think it will cause any problem since it doesnt give us any edge over current content.

Thought I'd bring a closing to the conversation here on this thread.

Out of Bounds and Exploits, usually, aren't really bannable offenses that Blizzard hunts for. There is actually an old memorial in Orgrimmar that was put there for a 19 year old Blizzard employee who passed from unexpected heart failure. It's a stone slab in a room on a wall that says WKM. Michel Koiter, a Blizzard artist, and also exploit and glitch hunter, was given this memorial in the older expansions of the game, you couldn't fly here normally, so you had to use glitches/exploits (or luckily rotate your camera to see the room) to even reach or see it.

As for that, I don't think there are any offenses that are ban-worthy enough (other than if you are really bad, and you keep logging in and out of your account, and that somehow throttles their servers). The out of bounds exploitation is minimal, as Blizzard has added a sort of "death barrier" in the out of bounds zoning, and I'm working on a video guide as for how anyone can get out of bounds. Some of the older methods don't work anymore, and some items were actually patched to not have the same growth effects. So, I''ll be working on that soon. It's actually quite hard, and I've used over 200 Giant Growths, so far, just trying to get new out of bounds documentation on Karazhan. I can see the final boss out of bounds, but just hit death barriers, so working on that or somehow slowfalling back in bounds to skip a portion of the raid.

As Gerion said, it doesn't really interfere with current content; HOWEVER, there is already a group of Demon Hunters who have figured out how to get out of bounds in Nighthold and were able to get to bosses further in the raid. Doesn't really help though (unless they could RaF a Warlock in, lol).

So, in closing: TLDR;

1. I don't think there is much to worry about. Blizzard has placed memorials in the game for exploit hunters.
2. It's not a forseeable edge over any current content, and also, most of our bosses don't have mount drops. It's not like we are skipping to just get to the last boss faster for mounts or something, ie, getting an edge over time>drops.
3. It's old content, and exploit hunting in these older areas is a lesser of two evils, in terms of bannable offenses.

As an additional post, I'm working on the leaderboards right now. Currently, I think the best naming and classification for categories are going to be the names: Any%, 100%, All Bosses. Technically, All Bosses means that you defeat all the bosses in the dungeon. Any% is going to mean you only have to complete, or kill the boss, that fulfills the basic achievement requirement for completing the raid. You can use exploits and out of bounds in all categories.

Any%: Defeat the final boss that fulfills the raid achievement. 100%: Defeat all the bosses within the raid journal, and all mobs that are not recurring. All structures must also be destroyed. (Ulduar exclusive). All Bosses: Defeat all the bosses within the raid journal.

I think this clears up a lot of confusion that would have been conceived in Max% (the all mobs definition). It didn't make much sense, and All Bosses versus 100% makes much more sense.

Obsidium Sanctum is going to be one of those raids where Any% is just run in and kill Sartharion, All Bosses is going to be moved to a definition where you kill each of the three smaller dragon bosses individually, and then kill Sartharion, and then a final 100% definition where you actually kill all of the mobs, (like oldschool days), and then kill each dragon individually, and then Sartharion. If we apply this kind of logic and definition to the rest of the raids, I think it will be really easy for us to start sifting through the board, and pumping runs out. Some raids fulfill multiple definitions within the same run, such as Eye, so that's nice as well.

--- Feedback on the previous post, and this post, are greatly appreciated. If you would like, see about exporting and redefining your runs whenever possible. I've been doing a lot of sifting, but I'm also working on the out of bounds guide, as well as the items guide. So, I'm just really busy with resources atm. ---