Agreed, to a point. Ulduar was badass because- I mean, c'mon. Ulduar was badass. The lore of it fit where WoW was going with Archaeology and such, but you're right. It had nothing to do with the fight against Arthas.
HoF fits well lore wise- but it doesn't exactly emanate "fun." Squish bugs. Yay.
Honestly, I want something like ICC again. Think about it. Defeating Arthas Menethil, the leader of the Scourge, in an epic battle against that colossus of a character and his undead lackies, fighting your way through his sword, Frostmourne, fighting along-side legendary lore characters wielding a sword that nearly everyone knows the name of? (Ashbringer or Assbringer), etc. How does that compare to you squishing an evil bug lady? How does that compare to killing a starry sky serpent in some vaults? Let's hope The Thunder King can match up to this.
Last edited by Azeryx; 2013-01-25 at 05:57 AM.
I don't have a valid opinion on t14 content because my rl situation has pushed me into being so casual its painful. But from everything I've seen I don't think these raids are any more linear than any of the other 13 tiers. Yes some raids have had an open battlefield (really just firelands, hyjal was just alot of running trash was in waves) but you always had to follow a basic pattern to get to the final boss.
I raided almost entirely HM since WOTLK (cleared 4/6 SWP TBC but thats before HMs) and I can say most encounters have continued to be challenging, and raids in general have continued to be as good as they use to be. Even tiers that people like to bash like tier 9 are actually really good encounters, just lack of trash made it feel less like a raid, not to mention the loot design kinda blew. If I had to rate my experience with the expansions, id say WOTLK > Cata = TBC > Vanilla with MOP being unranked as i havent done anything but LFR. WOTLK had the best raid design, bosses, feel and everything. Cata wasn't bad for me until tier 13, firelands heroic was one of my favorite raids ever. TBC was very epic but looking back spamming fireball over and over and over again on every boss with minimal movement wasn't really hard. and vanilla, never raided, but everyone i know said it was a joke.
I think you're probably just really bored with the game, making everything new feel... boring. My only complaint with the design of tier 14 is the lore, and i guess its because its the least warcraftish lore yet, really not leaving much to be excited for... just kinda like okay whats gonna happen with wrathion, hope this is good... but even with alliance vs horde lore going on I don't even feel like im playing warcraft anymore.
I assume OP has not faced Elegon. If you ever need a slap to the face about how raiding is in MoP, Elegon will school you.
It's pretty hard to beat Tier 11 and firelands as "worst raids ever".
I'd take trial of the crusader in a heartbeat over those pieces of !#@.
its all subjective
i for one liked wrath raids waaaaaaaaaay beyond all other raids (except kara/Zor'lok in HoF), but someone else might like BC raids more than everything else
you cant make a universal decision about 'which expac raids are best' because not everyone likes the same raids you do
altho i think 'DS was bad' is pretty universal
I think T14 is pretty good. It ramps up in damage well and gets increasingly more difficult. If anything ToES is the worst part since it is so much easier after HoF (not sure about HC yet since I am not in HC ToES yet). So balance wise I really like it.
Mechanics wise I think it is pretty good as well. Sure, a lot of mechanics are old but you can't invent 16, 100% new bosses every time. However, they did do new things with them or just ram as many as possible into a single bossfight. I remember in vanilla every boss having 1 or 2 mechanics except for the end of raid bosses like nefarian had some more. So definatly a big improvement.
Aesthetics wise (which I think you mostly mean) I agree that HoF is a little less interesting then ToES but I think MV for instance, for a first raid instance is fitting to the whole theme. And aesthetically Cata was a disaster in my book but I guess that is obvious. Even if you don't like the Chinese theme in MoP, at least it is one overaching theme.
Honestly, BC raiding was amazing, Wrath was very nice overall, not everything was great, but not so bad. Vanilla was.....hard...very very hard, annoyingly so. I can't call MOP raiding worse than Vanilla, because it's really not. Cata...well....I loved Firelands....but that's really all I loved about raiding that whole expac. Truth be told, I feel like most of the raids have been just really boring since Wrath.
I'm sorry, but if anyone feels it's appropriate to claim that Firelands and ToGC were not the absolute worst pieces of garbage in all of gaming, I feel the need to question their understanding of fun.
ToGC - Just laughable how little effort went in, shocking, no interesting fights save double valks, no interesting loot, armour, set bonuses art assets, dialogue, lore (suddenly anub out of nowhere for no reason!) - nothing.
Firelands - Black and orange as far as the eye can see! Want fun boss mechanics? Oh well, enjoy buggy ones instead (lol Rhyolith), want lore? Fandral is now a scorpion becuase why not, kill him and we'll never mention it again. Want legs? Got that down. Did I mention the orange, we found some more and threw it around some.
Firelands is the first and only tier I hated being in after the first raid night.
I am the lucid dream
Uulwi ifis halahs gag erh'ongg w'ssh
I am enjoying MOP raids (in LFR as im lol casual now) Some very fun fights - whirlwinds sucking up raid members left and right on one boss and will of the emperor (LOVE that fight)
I've raided vanilla while it was current, only epic moments were rags intro aq40 opening and cthun reveal for me personally. To be fair the mop raids have been linear so far (helps LFR peeps as they needed to be herded!) but its not a big issue. Most raids in wow are linear.
MC - linear - only option was doing luci/mag first in their cave in 40man we split into 20man teams and killed those two and cleared the to geheness with the other team
BWL - linear
AQ40 - 3 optional bosses afaik rest linear
Nax - 4 wings each wings pretty linear but thats fine
Kara - few optional bosses the layout of the place is quite linear but its a huge instance
SSC/TK not linear!
Hyjal - linear
BT - 2 bosses linear then 4 bosses can be downed in any order but to be efficient you went akama, teron, ros,bloodboil choice was yours however then linear for last 3 bosses
SWP - linear
Ulduar - has some linear elements but overall you can do the bosses aside from yogg in any order (kologorn and decontructor have to be killed to get to yogg/other keepers)
totc - linear
icc - seperate wings can be do in any order but on release were these wings not staggered in opening?
throne of the four winds - linear
BOT - linear
BWD - first two bosses required to enter the place but can be done in any order rest of the bosses can be done in any order to unlock nef
firelands - not done it cant comment
DS - I only did this in LFR and we did the bosses in the same order so assume its pretty linear?
Tier 14 had its issues but I still consider it one of the better tiers of all time. To me, it is easily fighting for a spot in the top 5.
I do agree with you on the fact that the environmental designs could be less linear. That said, the linear raids did not start with Dragon Soul.
Last edited by Keoren; 2013-01-25 at 02:54 PM.
T14 has been a good raid tier. The raiding has been the only thing I actually like about MoP so far.
Enjoyable raid tiers: 2.5, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11 (TotFW only), 12, 14. The rest were not so good/meh/etc.
There was a reason people referred to MC as Molten Bore...>.<
Last edited by Celista; 2013-01-25 at 03:19 PM.
WHAT!!!!
There is no way a former pawn of the legion is/was/will ever be stronger than an OLD GOD.
The Lich king was afraid of Yogg, to the point that he left most (like 99%) of stormpeaks alone. Yogg was working his magic as far south as Grizzle hills, His blood was spread across most of northrend and was used my the LK forces.
The Titans lost some of their own fighting them, hell they had to jump them, and they still could NOT kill them.
We stopped them from being released because they where at a faction of their power.
"Humility defeats pride, Master Yang has preached. Pride defeats man"
I have to say this is one of my least favorite teir of raiding.