Why is Ulduar fondly remembered?

[Jimson]

As the title says, I am interested to hear your reasons for liking Ulduar. It consistently shows up in almost everyone's list of favorite raids.

I am probably biased because I was in a shitty raid guild when it launched and didn't transfer until after ToC was released, so by the time I got to do any serious raiding in there it was already outdated. I like a lot of things about the instance... it's huge, lot of bosses, interesting mechanics, organic hard modes. For whatever reason it just doesn't get me going, though.

[Baladash]

I loved the story, immersion, the difficulty (for my casual guild it felt like an accomplishment when we downed Yoggers), the esthetic - its a beautiful zone and most importantly to me - It was the most fun I have ever had raiding. It was the peak of playing wow with my IRL friends and probably similar feelings from other people.

[Muezick]

Nostalgia, wrath babies...oh and, Cataclysm sucked ass by comparison.

Infracted.

[Nuckels]

Because raiding became widely accessible in wrath, so after naxx/malygos/sarth (and that tier sucked hard except for s3d10) ulduar came and this was the first serious new raid tier for ALOT of people, due to tbc raiding being more hardcore orrientated. Same reason people think vanilla was amazing because they still had that "holyshit" factor for it.

Ulduar really wasn't that good, it had 2/3 bosses that were awesome that was about it, THIS IS MY PERSONAL OPINION.

[Benitora]

Ulduar really showed that Blizzard actually still had some creative minds among them to make interesting encounters, a special way to activate harder versions of the encounters (AKA Hardmode), and that basically it was a well developed raid with a good pacing.

I remember it fondly because it was Ulduar that introduced me to hardcore raiding. Sure, we wiped a lot, we may not have had the worlds best progress, but you can bet your ass we had fun doing those fights...especially XT-002 for some reason.

Edit:
To clarify something: I used to raid in TBC, but I would call it more casual than anything. I wasn't part of the main raiding team, I was part of the reserves and didn't think much of raiding.
Start of Wrath I never had a good opportunity to raid with the main team, but as soon as Ulduar was released, the gears for my raiding career started to roll.

[CosmicGuitars]

Three reasons that spring to mind:

1. It was a laaaarge raid with an infamously difficult end boss, which are both things seen as generally positive to the raiding community.

2. It offered a lot of options in how you wanted to approach the content. You could do the majority of the bosses in any order you'd like, and it allowed guilds to go at their own pace or skip bosses all together if they so chose to do so on certain nights. It was flexible, and we haven't really had a raid since that was like that, besides Icecrown.

3. Each boss had a built in trigger to start the heroic encounter, rather than it simply being a difficulty setting you chose at the start of the raid. It's debatable if this was necessarily a good thing or not, but it made things a little more interesting, in my opinion.

[Daws]

For me it's variety and choice that won out to make this the best raid, Just look at the options

Kill first boss -> Unlocks 2 optional bosses and 1 progression boss
Kill next progression boss -> Unlocks 1 progression and 1 optional
Kill next progression boss -> Unlocks next progress boss
Kill next progression boss -> Unlocks 4 progress bosses who can be done in any order

From there it's a straight run through to 2 progression bosses one after another. Now factor in the hard modes and the final unlock-able boss and you've got exactly what you want. Bonuses include variety of raid scenery and big differences in bosses making them fairly different from one another.

It also remains one of the most fun, after all who doesn't have a story or two to tell about the first time someone "accidentally" pushed that giant button.

[vitalic]

Aside from all the obvious things, i.e. it was simply a well-designed instance on every level, there was the fact that it was sandwiched between two turds which certainly makes it shine all the more.

[melodramocracy]

Nostalgia

Nostalgia = popular phrase that forum goers use to dismiss opinions differ from their own, but they have no actual basis for doing so.

Subjectively break down for us why Ulduar sucked. We'll wait.

[Kalcheus]

I think the main reason people fondly remember it is because they never had a chance to get sick of it - ToC came out about 3.5 months after Ulduar was released

[Thetruth1400]

Ulduar really showed that Blizzard actually still had some creative minds among them to make interesting encounters, a special way to activate harder versions of the encounters (AKA Hardmode), and that basically it was a well developed raid with a good pacing.

I agree with this. Additionally, the encounters were well designed, original, and had mechanics that could change things up on a dime. Instead of the flip a switch hard modes of today, you had to meet certain criteria to do hard mode in Ulduar. It was a hell of a lot more immersing then today's hardcore modes.

They showed that they could make things fun and challenging. That's something we haven't seen since.

[Dungeonravor]

Hardmodes, optional bosses. Awesome art work. Sick boss fights.

[Drikkink]

It's probably remembered so fondly because it was a lot of people's first raid experience ever.

If you ask people, at least 80% will either tell you Karazhan or Ulduar. People who started late vanilla/any time TBC had to start in Karazhan. Most people who started super late TBC/super early Wrath will either say Ulduar because it was their first real raiding, or something else entirely if they had the opportunity to do the first wrath tier(ICC is the favorite for some of these, T11 for others). Mid-Wrath definitely started Ulduar and they almost universally loved it.

I, myself, started TBC and was semi-hardcore (got through most of T5) and say Karazhan is my favorite. I skipped Wrath because Northrend was a bore. Going back into Ulduar since then, I think it's a cool place, but the bosses seem dull to me, for the most part. It was either "Nuke boss" or "Do super mega awesome hardmode"... until Yogg. How a fight can still wipe nearly full raids of 90s, idk.

[Caribald]

You could more or less do whatever you wanted. Hardmodes were there for you to tackle if you felt like it, and they were very dynamic. Flame Leviathan and Yogg-Saron both had 5 difficulties and you could choose to do whatever you wanted. Also, you could choose to skip a lot of bosses, you could choose the order in which you wanted to kill the bosses... and just generally awesome boss mechanics.

[Sliske]

I stopped raiding in tempest keep after a few bosses , did not raid any of BT / Hyjal / SWP. When Wrath came out i cleared Naxx 25 just like everyone else in pugs. When Ulduar rolled around you couldn't pug it, it was just like TBC. The instance was a big dungeon waiting to be explored, the only difference was that this time it required brains, not gear, like in TBC.

It was also really long to the point were for people who didnt raid much or made slow progression it seemed impossible to fit all of the bosses into one week. I raided all of Ulduar and did many hard modes but never once killed Yogg Saron.

It was 'the' hardmode instance. Before it, 25 man itself was refered to as heroic, while 10 man was normal.

There were a metric shit ton of new mobs and mechanics in the dungeon, many bosses having some of the funnest mechanics in the game (hodir buffs anyone?)

Ulduar was basically when raiding stopped becoming about gear and started becoming about skill and coordination.

[CosmicGuitars]

I think the main reason people fondly remember it is because they never had a chance to get sick of it - ToC came out about 3.5 months after Ulduar was released

I never really got sick of TOC, either. I'm apparently an anomaly, because I kind of liked it, besides the jousting crap in the 5man and daily hub. Not having to deal with trash was nice, and Lord Jaraxxus remains one of my favourite bosses to this day.

[Marston]

It only lasted for 4 (?) months, so you didn't burn out (and I sadly missed most of it, except for a 10 player Mimiron kill in the first week, becasue my guild died short after release >_>).

[Alsierus]

I loved Ulduar because it FELT big in a way that I hadn't really noticed since AQ40/BT/Sunwell. The zone design and art style still stand out to me as some of the best.

I've always enjoyed the inclusion of optional bosses in raids, hard mode options (as opposed to heroic modes), and the addition of extra fight options. For example, there were multiple difficulty settings for Flame Leviathan and Yog, and different kill orders for the council.

Going from Ulduar to TOC was kind of disappointing, really.

[The One Percent]

1.) Non linear progression.

2.) Activated hard modes.

3.) Amazing environmental design that encouraged you to push further to explore and see more.

4.) Many of the boss fights were well designed, especially Yogg+0 (was a very fitting end to an amazing raid).

5.) The story of the instance was better shown than most other raids, even the ones in this expansion which supposedly try really hard to tell a story.

6.) Karazhan was the second best raid of all time, it was only missing activated hard modes.

Hopefully flex takes down LFR so maybe we can have raids like Ulduar and Karazhan again. THAT would get me to resub in a heartbeat.

[brirrspliff]

ulduar was a great raid (i'm assuming your post is about the raid only?) and the first one with new "hardmode" mechanics as far as i remember. pressing the switch at mimiron's room... epic.

Nostalgia, wrath babies...oh and, Cataclysm sucked ass by comparison.

did somebody hear anything? was there a strange noise? nah, must have been the wind. *shrugs*