Time to clean out the trash!

Trash, what a funny name to give packs of mobs inside a raid. Just the fact that the World of Warcraft community decided to give it that kind of a nickname indicates how most people feel towards it. I on the other hand am quite interested in the concept of trash in a dungeon, and how important it actually is.

Having raided since vanilla, I’ve seen a lot of different trash, good and bad. For a time there was a lot of people complaining that trash shouldn’t exists, that was until Blizzard released Trial of the Crusader, and the players were reminded of how terribly boring a raid can be without any trash between the bosses.

Trash servers a very important role. Trash can in many ways act as a “break” between intense boss fights. It doesn’t necessarily have to provide anything in terms of gameplay, but I’ve often found that social activities on ventrillo/teamspeak often occur when the raid is clearing trash. I look back to trash-heavy dungeons such as Karazhan and I realize that one of the reasons why I look back at those raids so fondly was not just because I enjoyed them, but because my guild bantered a lot during the trash, and I bonded with my guildies greatly during that time.

Trash can also be used as a psychological preparation for a boss fight to come. Blizzard has been favoring adding trash that follows the gimmick of the boss they are “guarding”, and I quite enjoy that. A good example is the elementals before the Ascended Council boss in Bastion of the Twilight, which follows the gimmick of using the elements against each other to counter their abilities, psychologically preparing the raiders for what they have in store.

Now, what makes trash bad, and what makes it good? You may ask. Well, let me start off with what’s bad; too much of it!

You never want too much trash in a dungeon, and if you’re going to cram a whole dungeon full of it, make sure you can avoid most of it. Make it dangerous however, and make sure the raid must be very sneaky in order to avoid most of it, and add lots of patrolling packs that also needs to be carefully avoided. If you put a narrow corridor full of unavoidable packs that takes ages to kill however, congratulations, you’ve created boring trash!

Another thing that makes trash bad is by not making it difficult enough to keep the raiders on their toes. This is where the majority of Wrath of the Lich King went wrong. If you have easy trash, it just becomes boring and makes the raiders fall asleep. The trash must always be challenging in some form or another, and even when heavily out geared it should still have abilities that make it a threat to the raid if they don’t use proper crowd control or follow other important steps.

Good trash is difficult, yet there shouldn’t be much of it. In my opinion there should be a good 10-15 minutes of clearing trash between each boss, give or take. Also, why not include more traps in raids? Or even some platforming action? Make players jump between pillars above molten lava while rocks fall from the ceiling and fire erupt from the walls. It can certainly be done with the engine, but for some reason the raiding team simply doesn’t seem to value such challenges in raids. I think it’s a great shame, and I feel the raiders would find such things refreshing, but what do I know, I’m just a retarded, gay priest.

(I did that one for you, stupid guildies).