Why Ulduar was and still remains to be the best raid ever?

[Ryme]

I'd like to add the following reasons why Ulduar is revered:

- It was large, detailed and highly varied in asthetics perhaps the most varied raid ever made
- It had the highest number of achievements to date, staggeringly many giving lots of replay value
- It had some of the best artwork ever seen on armours and weapons
- Algalon was exceptionally cool
- It offered some inspired hard modes
- Many of the fights were very fun, even Flame Leviathan (vehicle fight)

[Zantera]

Yes, Karazhan remains my favorite raid. The atmosphere in that place was amazing, nice mix between bosses, and it speaks for itself that you continued running it on alts and your main every week until WotLK came out, despite really not needing the gear that much. It was pretty good challenge-wise as well, even in better gear, you still had to focus and do the stuff, you couldn't have 2-3 people drifting off and dying, because then it would probably be a wipe.

[Ehrenpanzer]

Want to talk about trash, Ulduar had more than most raids have ever had.

Uh.....and your basing this on WoW right? since you've clearly never actually raided anything before Uld..or after Uld...

Raids with FAR more trash then Uld:
Classic: MC, BWL, AQ40, Naxx
TBC: SSC, TK, BT, Sunwell, Hyjal
Wrath: Naxx (again) ICC
Cata:BoT, DS
MoP: HoF, MSV

come to think of it, the only real trash area in Uld was Freyas room....and you didnt have to kill half of it...

[McNeil]

For me Icecrown Citadel still remains the best raid ever. Only reason it gets some hate is because it lasted too long, but that raid alone still gave WoW 12 million subs.

Ulduar is probably my second, I had a great time raiding that place. Too bad it was too short, we were only on Vezax (25 man normal) at the time

[Meatmcmichal]

Uh.....and your basing this on WoW right? since you've clearly never actually raided anything before Uld..or after Uld...

Raids with FAR more trash then Uld:
Classic: MC, BWL, AQ40, Naxx
TBC: SSC, TK, BT, Sunwell, Hyjal
Wrath: Naxx (again) ICC
Cata:BoT, DS
MoP: HoF, MSV

come to think of it, the only real trash area in Uld was Freyas room....and you didnt have to kill half of it...

Really, MSV? Really? You're clearly not actually paying attention.

[Deleted]

Ulduar wasn't even the best raid in wrath.

As far as opinions go, I think most people will stick with Ulduar being the best raid in Wotlk :P

[dacoolist]

Visually Stunning:
Even tho one might argue that the beginning of the instance with boring gray scenery and iron dwarves isnt visually impressive at all, once you get indoors you are just blown away. The amount of detail they put into most random stuff like the holograms on the walls when its just a minor corridor with nothing special to it apart from killing trash to move on is just mindblowing. The scenery just screams titan origins and they havent put so much effort making raid feel epic after ulduar.

Hardmodes:
The way you unlocked hardmodes was just brilliant. Something as simple as nuking XT's heart in one go or leaving the Ancient's alive on Freya to make the boss harder and the fight completely different was amazing. Really disappointed that blizzard has moved away from this kind of mechanic to introduce the hardmode to the current "hi lets click it to heroic" which is rather insulting towards the player base. You used to feel that you achieved something when you finally had enough dps and raid capable of nuking Xt's heart in one go rather than just toggling heroic on.

Alternative Progression Paths:
The freedom you felt in ulduar was amazing also, didnt feel like killing Razorscale first after Flame Leviathan? No problem you could do Ignis instead. Same with council and Kologarn not to forget keepers also. Rather than making raid this linear pipe you actually made it feel like you had choices to advance onwards in this massive titan made prison.

No clue why i wrote this random stuff, stopped serious raiding weeks after i got my legendary daggers in cataclysm. After that only done Lfr to see the current content once and quite frankly nothing comes close to what ulduar was.

I think Ulduar is pretty amazing, although - KZ, and the OG ZA Bear runs were far greater in terms of Raid feel IMO.

-> Everyone has their own opinion.

[Frozen Death Knight]

If looking at all the raids in WoW overall without going into a ton of details, I could say that Ulduar is easily at the top of the list, if not number one. The raid simply gave a very good experience overall and succeeded at being entertaining even at parts that should not have been well received (i.e. Leviathan vehicle fight), because of how similar bosses and mechanics had been received before.

Just looking back on it all, it is in fact amazing that the raid became so popular despite it starting off with a vehicle fight, something highly despised by a lot of players in both PvP and PvE at that time. That alone does say a lot about the quality of the raid.

If a raid manages to make many people (in the WoW community no less) overlook things they otherwise would not have overlooked, then it definitely deserves a medal or two, since that is quite an achievement.

---------- Post added 2013-03-20 at 06:35 PM ----------

Uh.....and your basing this on WoW right? since you've clearly never actually raided anything before Uld..or after Uld...

Raids with FAR more trash then Uld:
Classic: MC, BWL, AQ40, Naxx
TBC: SSC, TK, BT, Sunwell, Hyjal
Wrath: Naxx (again) ICC
Cata:BoT, DS
MoP: HoF, MSV

come to think of it, the only real trash area in Uld was Freyas room....and you didnt have to kill half of it...

The Vanilla raids should have been renamed to "Trash Core", "Blackwing Egg Nest", "Ahn'Bug Swarm", and "Naxx'Floating Graveyard'mas" with all their trash mobs.

[Deleted]

Personally, I liked how hard modes weren't just "pushing a button" (bar Mimiron) - they felt like "you can do the fight this way, or you can make it harder", rather than "clear it on normal, then start work the proper content".

As well as that, the instance was just all round fantastic, interesting bosses, great atmosphere (and this comes from someone who hated the titan aesthetics), large size etc.

It's also worth mentioning that Normal modes still gave you plenty of meat to chew on, some challenging encounters in there even without making them harder for yourself.

[Zantera]

Personally, I liked how hard modes weren't just "pushing a button" (bar Mimiron) - they felt like "you can do the fight this way, or you can make it harder", rather than "clear it on normal, then start work the proper content".

As well as that, the instance was just all round fantastic, interesting bosses, great atmosphere (and this comes from someone who hated the titan aesthetics), large size etc.

It's also worth mentioning that Normal modes still gave you plenty of meat to chew on, some challenging encounters in there even without making them harder for yourself.

YES. They need to get back to that system in my opinion. Having a raid in both normal and hc feels so boring, I'd rather have it in one difficulty, but that you could trigger a harder mode for the bosses and get achies and so on.

[blackblade]

I think Ulduar is pretty amazing, although - KZ, and the OG ZA Bear runs were far greater in terms of Raid feel IMO.

-> Everyone has their own opinion.

I agree with the Bear runs.

Having alternative objectives in a raid other than kill the bosses, get loot, go home adds a lot of flavor.

Kill bosses quickly, get more loot, get special mount, then chillax on the last two bosses (who, IMO, were amongst some of the better bosses of the xpac.)
You begin to develop a new strategy on pull order, you begin to rush, you open up new opportunities to make mistakes, and making mistakes is where fun begins.

Which was sort of what made ulduar special. "DO NOT PRESS" amirite?

[jaymzkerten]

Also, Ulduar was not the first (or only) raid to have that style of invoking hard modes. I do agree that it was awesome. But it is not isolated to Ulduar.

I'm curious what other raid had that ability to invoke hard modes? The *only* other one that followed that model was Obsidian Sanctum, and that was a 1 boss raid. No other raid before that or Ulduar had a hard mode, and every raid after was a toggle.

[Deleted]

Maybe because it was the best designed instance and had most actual gameplay to it.
After Ulduar they did something really lame - they replaced those optional "hard modes" with a MENU OPTION. All those ulduar hard modes had interesting and different method of activation, all you do now is click a menu option that increases the boss health/damage and gives it one more spell. That's it.

[Redmage]

I agree, ulduar was the best tier of raid content ever.

[TyrianFC]

I'm curious what other raid had that ability to invoke hard modes? The *only* other one that followed that model was Obsidian Sanctum, and that was a 1 boss raid. No other raid before that or Ulduar had a hard mode, and every raid after was a toggle.

You didnt play in Vanilla or The Burning Crusade, did you. If you dont know what you're talking about, its best not to say anything.

[Deleted]

The sheer variety of boss encounters and overall design of the instance with real progression throughout with bosses getting gradually harder and harder rather than the current state where one boss early on seems well out of place just highlights how well ulduar was thought out.

I remember getting our raid an achievement by pure and utter fluke by exploding a golem just out of the water 5 secs before we killed the boss netting an achievement that would be a pain to plan for, The fact it was even there was news to us as well as all we were doing at the time was going for the super fast kill achievement which we got as well.

[DeiVias]

Ulduar from a boss encounter perspective was good, from a general look and atmosphere to the place i really didn't like it

Maybe i just don't like it cause i still have bad memories of Firefighter.

Sunwell is still the best raid IMO, infact, pretty much every raid in BC except maybe Hyjal.

[Deleted]

Haha Firefighter was an awesome achievement, And one I rather enjoyed probably because I was playing a mage at the time and being ranged their really helped a lot.

I think Ulduar sticks out for many reasons but most will be from the different ways you could kill the boss, Adding a sense of variety to the game where usually there was one way only.

No other raid ever managed that.

[smokii]

what i loved about ulduar was the hard mode activation systems, was the same sort of thing used for sartharion - honestly wish blizz had stuck with it as it didn't make it feel like it was deliberately made for the hardcores, but still tailored to their needs as well as gave more middle of the pack raiders something to aim for.

the big red button on mimiron was a particular favourite

i'd love to see that style of hardmode make a comeback

[PrairieChicken]

No

Karazhan is much better