So... Dragon Soul... Anyone as disapointed as i am?

[ssjgohan4life]

I find it funny that the OP complains about number of bosses, he seems to forget that we already fought most of his servants, ToT4W, BWD, BoT, and Firelands, and now there are even MORE before we fight him, that seems more than enough for me.

I think the fights look amazing, can't wait.

[Samin]

Basically designing this boss took like 1 day me thinks...

This sums up your whole post. And you're so wrong you probably can't comprehend. But I guess it doesn't matter how often Blizzard explains it, you just think that they're lying just so they can be lazy and you could basically design all of their game in 1/10th of the time.

You base the worth of the game on the amount of "new area and mob graphics". Sorry but that's not how it's going to work. Looking back to TBC and WotLK raids most of the bosses were rehashed and the instances were bound inside the styleset(s) of the expansion so you could just as well argue that there wasn't much work either because they didn't come up with something "new".

Blizzard rehashes stuff...breaking news. Sound the alarms, cancel your sub!

But hey, there's hope for Pandaria. Completely new contintent. New races. New lore. All new stuff. But look people don't like that either. Just start to understand they can't make everyone happy and don't get mad if you're among those who aren't happy for once.

[Deleted]

Altough I really like WoW, and I'm fine with a lot of Blizzard's decisions, I do feel this is a bit of a ToC 2.0. Every single boss (minus DW) is a rehash, and the raid takes place in an environment where every player has already quested in for hours. It's just a bit too lazy. For me, models and places matter (if they didn't, we could play with numbered grey boxes and call it a day), and if I have to kill a boss that is a terrible menace to Azeroth, I don't like him looking like an oversized quest mob. It just shatters the immersion for me.

On the mechanics of the fights, I'm not gonna complain. I understand there's only so much they can do with WoW's engine, and for what I've downed on the PTR they are acceptable. It's just the dreary model rehashes that kill me.

[implicationmmo]

As you said, you only watched videos, and most of them are of normal mode, so I am not going to take your judgment too seriously, nor should you take mine.

All I say is: Nearly all bosses in FL have new abilities (except Shannox), but people dislike it, so new abilities is NOT that important.
Nor is looks.

I believe that people like the feeling when doing a raid, ie: feeling of entering into a dangerous zone, feeling of challenge, feeling of satisfaction once downed, ...

I think these are more important.

And these are nearly impossible to get a feel of from a video.

Also, the hardmodes are not yet 100% final, so let's wait.

And just your comment about add boss fights: some of the best bosses are with add (Nefarian 60, Gothik, C'thun, Keal Thas + Vashj, Felmest, MURU!!!, Yogg, ...).
So add fights can be really good (and equally not so good), but they are not automatically bad!

[Dexiefy]

OP is a clueless numpty, i have killed all these bosses in both LFR mode and normal mode (wasn't good enough to test hc mode) they were pretty rough going, and "watching a video" from the PTR where boss fights can and will change and trying to say your "disappointed" with the fights is just a retarded thing to say and claim, after you have finally managed to pull ur head out from ur anal canal OP and realise there are millions of players who this game has to cater to, and not just you then u will realise just how bad at this game u are, if u have the time to stop and stare at teh bosses art model or the spell effects it uses then ur playing teh game wrong, all i see is a big bad guy (or gal for the femenists among u), i see a red health bar and a challenge for the next 10-15 minutes of killing said boss, i don't care too much what they look like, i like the look of stuff sure, but to care to the detail u do i'm sorry is just laughable.

"."<- please, use it sometimes...
So from watching a video, i cannot determine w/e or not they rehashed a model or area where you face a boss?
First boss mechanics are laughable and i will be suprised if this boss wont get literally 1 shot by tons of guilds who have seen the video (including my own). There is nothing to this fight, other than having 2 groups soaking the balls...
You stack up, you deal damage, tanks wait for 3 stacks and then then let other tank taunt. When crystals come you hide behind them (just like in BWD dragon boss) and you decide w/e its melee or ranged who have to go the the balls. Whole fight... sounds almost as hard as heroic fandral tbh ~~

Then we are different types of players cause i actually like the boss and area where he is placed to look nice and NEW. This is what makes those fights epic, but im guessing for you there could be orgrimmar arena with target dummies with various abilities...
Also, i "love" how you assume im bad just because i like bosses im fighting to look nice nad original

ps. I tought the game was about having fun, not epeen... guess i was wrong ;o

[Actual]

1) Morchok is an entry level boss. He is designed so that casual players can feel like they are raiding without making them actually require a large level of skill. It is logical that Blizz would design him to be relatively easy.
2) Zon'ozz can be an extremely difficult fight, especially on hard mode. As far as reskins go, who cares? How the boss looks adds to the fight sure, but in the end it is the mechanics which make it fun, not the look.
3) Yor'sahj as you said is a good encounter which requires quick thinking. Also, he isn't a reskin at all. He looks nothing like Herald from OK, the only similar thing they have is the trunk thing, but that is common among the Faceless. What do you want Blizz to do, create a boss which is classified as one of the Faceless and then completely change it's features so that they don't resemble the race? Makes a ton of sense hey.
4) The idea behind Hagara is that she IS an shaman. Orcs are the most shamanistic race other than maybe Tauren, so it's either going to be an Orc or a Tauren. I see no issue there. And her mechanics are excellent, it's one of the most mechanically driven fights around.
5) Like Patchwerk apart from the fact you have to actually do something to avoid having random people in the raid get 1-shot? And it's a Twilight Dragon who has been given new features. I don't see your problem with the model at all. If lore says Deathwing has a Twilight Dragon that is designed to be a living bomb, then it wouldn't make sense to turn him into some sort of gigantic red scorpion which would be a new and original texture, it would make sense to make him look like a Twilight Dragon.
6) Have you even done the fight? It's a fair bit harder than Lootship and is actually a relatively fun fight. Took my guild a fair while to learn it and we're 7/7 HM. Makes me doubt that you've even done the fight and that you're most likely just making stuff up based on what you've heard.
7) As someone else said, why would there be a boss on Deathwing's back? What other kind of design could they make for him considering that you've just destroyed the boss in charge of his air support and also the majority of Twilight Dragons in the game?
8) Eh, I'll agree here. It's a disappointing fight. Just a rinse and repeat fight with simple mechanics. Hopefully it'll be more challenging on HM.

You also need to consider the fact that this is most likely based on normal mode encounters, which quite honestly, don't matter at all. If you're into serious raiding, hardmode mechanics are where it's at and they are what you should be focussed on. If you're casual, there's no real point in you complaining about it because you won't be spending hours on end in here and will probably struggle with these bosses on live anyways.

tl;dr: You're wrong. Harden up.

[Deleted]

They've taken loot pinata to the next level. Now your final boss explodes into a chunk of loot and mystical colors.

Shouldnt matter to you since you're not gonna get to it anyways.

[thesmall001]

1) Morchok is an entry level boss. He is designed so that casual players can feel like they are raiding without making them actually require a large level of skill. It is logical that Blizz would design him to be relatively easy.
2) Zon'ozz can be an extremely difficult fight, especially on hard mode. As far as reskins go, who cares? How the boss looks adds to the fight sure, but in the end it is the mechanics which make it fun, not the look.
3) Yor'sahj as you said is a good encounter which requires quick thinking. Also, he isn't a reskin at all. He looks nothing like Herald from OK, the only similar thing they have is the trunk thing, but that is common among the Faceless. What do you want Blizz to do, create a boss which is classified as one of the Faceless and then completely change it's features so that they don't resemble the race? Makes a ton of sense hey.
4) The idea behind Hagara is that she IS an shaman. Orcs are the most shamanistic race other than maybe Tauren, so it's either going to be an Orc or a Tauren. I see no issue there. And her mechanics are excellent, it's one of the most mechanically driven fights around.
5) Like Patchwerk apart from the fact you have to actually do something to avoid having random people in the raid get 1-shot? And it's a Twilight Dragon who has been given new features. I don't see your problem with the model at all. If lore says Deathwing has a Twilight Dragon that is designed to be a living bomb, then it wouldn't make sense to turn him into some sort of gigantic red scorpion which would be a new and original texture, it would make sense to make him look like a Twilight Dragon.
6) Have you even done the fight? It's a fair bit harder than Lootship and is actually a relatively fun fight. Took my guild a fair while to learn it and we're 7/7 HM. Makes me doubt that you've even done the fight and that you're most likely just making stuff up based on what you've heard.
7) As someone else said, why would there be a boss on Deathwing's back? What other kind of design could they make for him considering that you've just destroyed the boss in charge of his air support and also the majority of Twilight Dragons in the game?
8) Eh, I'll agree here. It's a disappointing fight. Just a rinse and repeat fight with simple mechanics. Hopefully it'll be more challenging on HM.

You also need to consider the fact that this is most likely based on normal mode encounters, which quite honestly, don't matter at all. If you're into serious raiding, hardmode mechanics are where it's at and they are what you should be focussed on. If you're casual, there's no real point in you complaining about it because you won't be spending hours on end in here and will probably struggle with these bosses on live anyways.

tl;dr: You're wrong. Harden up.

I don't normally quote something just to say I agree with it but your post is just perfect. It's everything that I didn't say. I Actually love you random forum user.

[Ferocity]

Weird, I didn't realize that a raid instance was supposed to have 12 bosses minimum. That is certainly news to me. I suppose quantity is always better than quality.

People were complaining about running ICC with 12 bosses for so long time, now having to run all same Firelands for quite a long time with twice less bosses is OK. I am not even telling about art masterpiece ICC is, and Wyrmrest Temple is nothing new TBH.

I don't know for you, but i'd rather have huge raid instance like AQ40, Naxx, KZ, BT, Uld or ICC with variety of bosses (and questlines for preWotLK ones) than anything what Cata brought. Even though bosses there were nowhere near as difficult as in Cata or in anyway overly complicated, the mere scale of those raids were making them epic.

Blizzard could stay away from that new paradigma, based upon Ensidia (or Premonition? can't recall now) statement - that they'd fight black cube in square room for as long as mechanics are interesting. You know, sooner or later you will learn those mechanics, when it will happen all you will be left with are just some soulless cube and square.

I count myself as being in casual guild. We are on Firelands 6/7 hc for quite a time now, but basically we cleared the whole instance on normal on 2nd week it was released. With afk here and there, some funny wipes we clear the whole tier 12 content (bar Rag hc) in couple hours and basically have little to no reason to log in next 6 days into game, as only viable endgame for Blizzard = raids.

Whole Firelands could fit into Ulduar's entrance or Black Temple's Sewers+outdoor area.

Btw as I recall, Sulfuron's Keep was supposed to be completely separate original instance? Why would it share the fate of Abyssmal Maw if so?

[Cereyeth]

While the encounters are interesting and fun from what I have played, I do have to agree that the first half of Dragon Soul feels very lazy and uninspired visually. It isn't until you get out of Dragonblight that it feels like they put much effort into it.

[Callax]

Hah. I'm sorry my friend but you clearly lack the understanding of game design to comment on what takes time and what doesn't and that's from a level designer. You have to understand first and foremost that everything you think is easy -even if it is relatively easy- will take several work days minimum and that's not including internal QA. (That's Quality Assurance/Assesment for someone who obviously has no idea how the game industry works.)

That Maelstrom fight? Easy? Do you not understand that they probably had to rebuild that whole set and more to make that fight work? Dragonblight was re-used heavily in this patch and I'll give it to you that it was lazier than they could have been but it does fit. That's where Wyrmrest Temple is, that's his rightful throne of power moreso than anywhere else.

As designers they re-use as much as possible as often as possible because time literally equals money so re-using textures and models (and other assets) and editing them slightly is more cost efficient than making a new one from scratch. It makes no sense to create a new model, costing lots of money and time thus delaying the patch, for a Twilight Dragon when they've long establish what the Twilight Dragons look like. Edit the Alpha, the colours, the textures slightly and you're done there.

You also don't seem to understand how encounter design works. Coming up with the bare basic mechanics of the fight takes a few hours. That's roughly 5% of the work done, GG. AI programming, sound bite recording, spell balancing and more. All this will go through hours of testing and will be bounced from programmer to developer several times so tanks don't get one shot by two overlapping mechanics etc. ala your precious Burning Crusade where big raids were released with several encounter broken beyond completionand you just had to make do with "RNG Fights" as you called them where sometimes you Tank regardless of skill or gear would just take a nut cleaving 20k damage and die instantly.

You're biggest problem with this raid appears to be with the re-use of old assets though. I already mentioned hopefully enough points to explain to you why you're ignorant but let's use your examples. You seem to revere Icerown Citadel as the example of how a "final raid" should be done. Did Icecrown use unique models? Marrowgar, yes. That's it. Blood Queen and her ilk were MAYBE unique models but they were fundamentally just edited Blood Elf or Night Elf models. The important difference is the texture changes. Even the last boss was a model they'd used repeatedly -nay, excessively- throughout the expansion. Admitedly they did use some models like Putricide that hadn't been used that much beforehand. Dragon Soul bears no lesser or greater quality than anything before it. If you think you can do better then do what I'm doing and join another MMO company and see if you can do any better. Become a game artist and try to never re-use assets and not get your ass fired.



This ^^ pretty much perfectly sums up how little of the process you actually understand. You can't just "copy and paste" stuff like this. As you yourself conceeded there are new animations, those are one of the most labourious jobs involved with the process of setting these things up and every model will have to go through it's own animation process, not even just the ones with new models. The movement of bones of the skeleton on a model at one size doesn't neccesarily scale up like you'd expect it to - check this video for an example of that in another game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZDgj...eature=related

There is so much more that you're wrong about but you're just a spec on the internet and I can't really be bothered to correct you so hopefully you can just take what I've said at face value and trust me on it. Dragon Soul is fine. If you no likey then it's not because Blizzard has dropped the ball, it's because your standards are too high or because you just don't like WoW anymore and are looking for problems, in which case it's time to leave the game and it's forums.

Good luck, have fun.

This post x 1000.

OP, please read up on how things work before you QQ. Oh, and fights appear 10X easier on PTR then they actually are (know from experience in testing HM's)... Having done all the fights in a 7/7 HM guild, the only one I'm disappointed in has been MoD, I don't like the idea of just killing tentacles. As for Morchok, he's an entry boss, what did you expect? M'uru 2.0? No, first boss is almost always some shit fight like Marrowgar or Halfus.

TL;DR, OP please go outside, and find some girl that is fine with listening to you whine about shit all day long and hopefully then I'll have one last person to read a pointless QQ post from.

<Infracted>

[shiftbull]

ya for some reason Ulduar, even ICC, keeps in people mind has new, engaging, and fun to raid. What I see of Dragon Soul in the PTR is far from that, the DW fight is ridiculous.. all that tentacles and lame DW head sleeping on a side, feels dull, pointless, just remember Blizzcon 2010 and the Paragon vs DeathWing raid on Orgri ... so, its disappointment what i feel, yes.

[Dexiefy]

1) Morchok is an entry level boss. He is designed so that casual players can feel like they are raiding without making them actually require a large level of skill. It is logical that Blizz would design him to be relatively easy.

which is understandable, but couldnt he have interesting, NEW model at least? ESpecially when we are talking about raid instance that is half of what ulduar was

2) Zon'ozz can be an extremely difficult fight, especially on hard mode. As far as reskins go, who cares? How the boss looks adds to the fight sure, but in the end it is the mechanics which make it fun, not the look.

Im not making a comment about difficulty of any boss but first and the main point of my thread is to discuss the ammount of work blizz puts into isntance. Mechanics are 1 thing, every boss has new ones, DS bosses are no different in that regard. What is the problem is the fact that models are rehashed along with terrain... Wouldnt you rather see 14 bosses with interesting mechanics (even in rehashed models)? cause i would most certainly welcome such 14 boss DS much mroe than 7 boss DS... We all know blizz can push out 14 bosses per patch with interesting mechanics and actually only then, rehashed models would be jsutified.

3) Yor'sahj as you said is a good encounter which requires quick thinking. Also, he isn't a reskin at all. He looks nothing like Herald from OK, the only similar thing they have is the trunk thing, but that is common among the Faceless. What do you want Blizz to do, create a boss which is classified as one of the Faceless and then completely change it's features so that they don't resemble the race? Makes a ton of sense hey.

Maybe perphaps different animations? different armor? jsut 2 examples...

4) The idea behind Hagara is that she IS an shaman. Orcs are the most shamanistic race other than maybe Tauren, so it's either going to be an Orc or a Tauren. I see no issue there. And her mechanics are excellent, it's one of the most mechanically driven fights around.

I dont mind her being an orc (besides the fact that its 1 boss that prevents new model from showing up and jsut adds insult to injury in instance where no boss actually has new model). And again, mechanics are not my concern.

5) Like Patchwerk apart from the fact you have to actually do something to avoid having random people in the raid get 1-shot? And it's a Twilight Dragon who has been given new features. I don't see your problem with the model at all. If lore says Deathwing has a Twilight Dragon that is designed to be a living bomb, then it wouldn't make sense to turn him into some sort of gigantic red scorpion which would be a new and original texture, it would make sense to make him look like a Twilight Dragon.

You mean retard check w/e or not they can push macro?
Sure it can look like twilight dragon, but why its theralion 2.0? Couldnt he be adjusted to look differently?

6) Have you even done the fight? It's a fair bit harder than Lootship and is actually a relatively fun fight. Took my guild a fair while to learn it and we're 7/7 HM. Makes me doubt that you've even done the fight and that you're most likely just making stuff up based on what you've heard.

By lootship i didnt mean difficulty (even tough it gives impression of that, im just used to calling it looship form icc times). Again, ou talk about mechanics, not the fact that there is no background (other than few clouds thrown in) or the fact that you fight ont he ship from wotlk...
I belive you are missing the point of my thread completly and you talk about mechanics not actual aesthetics of the isntance...

7) As someone else said, why would there be a boss on Deathwing's back? What other kind of design could they make for him considering that you've just destroyed the boss in charge of his air support and also the majority of Twilight Dragons in the game?

For example exclude lootship battle and instead of lootship bring some boss with new model and in new setting? dunno, just a tought... Afterall its not like we could be fighting deathwings general on said dragons back, right? Its not like he is last line of defence... oh wait...

You also need to consider the fact that this is most likely based on normal mode encounters, which quite honestly, don't matter at all. If you're into serious raiding, hardmode mechanics are where it's at and they are what you should be focussed on. If you're casual, there's no real point in you complaining about it because you won't be spending hours on end in here and will probably struggle with these bosses on live anyways.

tl;dr: You're wrong. Harden up.

Again, i dont care about mehcanics. I have no doubt that heroic modes will give me challange im looking for. What is the point of my post is that blizz is giving us half the ammount of bosses of lower quality (model/setting wise) not the mechanics itself.
As i said new mechanics come with every single boss, however the same cant be said about bosses models or areas where you fight them. Simply i belive you completly missed the point of my thread.

[lolterribads]

I hear that raid bosses are now entirely judged on what models they are given + the room you fight them in, not the mechanics.

Nowhere in your first post about the bosses do you actually talk about the mechanics, you just say things like..

Herp it's like Patchwerk 2.0

..and don't really discuss it beyond that. Oh btw, Brutallis from SWP was Patchwerk 2.0, so it's technically incorrect also.

So... what the fuck happens to our money? TBC had WAY less subs than wotlk or even cataclysm so blizz income was way smaller, yet we got much more bosses in much bigger ammount of raids, where every1 of them was in interesting setting.
Im not trying to say"TBC>cata" here and i dont want discussion about that. I simply want to compare what we used to get from blizz to what we are getting nowadays.

I don't think it's simply a matter of income that justifies how raids turn out. Let's see some things here:

1) BC raids were harder - This limited rogression for many. This means that T5 content was still endgame for some when WotLK was around the corner. Also BC raids didn't have optional difficulties, so again it limited progression which eliminated the need to pump out more raids as it went along.

2) Since WotLK the devs have essentially been working on balancing 2+ versions of the same encounter through different raid sizes and difficulties. Let's not even pretend that there is no development time needed there. Also, 5 mans still require work so this takes development time too. Pre-BC and BC didn't really get many 5 mans released after the first few patches. Pre-bc had Mara and BC had Sunwell. WotLK + Cata have had at least 2 additional tiers of 5 mans designed since relea

3)Alot of mechanics still had that 'new car smell' to them during BC. There are only so many ways you can design a working encounter that involves 100% new and unseen mechanics that haven't been used in some form before.

Now I am disapointed however that the raids have been getting smaller, especially considering that they said they were looking to release more raids with less bosses (Think T6 - MH + BT) and so far we have had Firelands and now we are getting Dragon Soul, which each feel smaller then a full tier. I am not argueing that, but providing a few reasons which would work towards that design decision.

[Deleted]

from the limited amounts of Dragon soul raids I have been on in the PTR then I am interested to see how it plays out, sure theres not many (if any at all) new mechanics, Avoid this, Kill that, AOE them, oh is that fire lets stand in it. but then I was on the LFR system.

I wont complain about any of the raids untill I have seen them on heroic mode, untill then I will quietly hold my judgement.

[cFortyfive]

Only thing I am really disappointed with despite I didn't expect it any different is the models they used for the bosses. For instance I mean seriously...vezax ? They could have at least pimped that thing up a bit.

[wilzax]

i wasn't aware you designed these fights with blizzard, seeing as you know how long it took to design them. I applaud you in designing them, since i for one, am quite happy with the content.

[Deleted]

Weird, I didn't realize that a raid instance was supposed to have 12 bosses minimum. That is certainly news to me. I suppose quantity is always better than quality.

Which explains why Kara and Ulduar were so popular....

[Icecx]

ICC, almost every single fight was unique. I agree. Much of this seems rehashed, and the Madness of Deathwing encounter just seems boring compared to the Lich King fight.

[Polarthief]

So... what the fuck happens to our money? TBC had WAY less subs than wotlk or even cataclysm so blizz income was way smaller, yet we got much more bosses in much bigger ammount of raids, where every1 of them was in interesting setting.
Im not trying to say"TBC>cata" here and i dont want discussion about that. I simply want to compare what we used to get from blizz to what we are getting nowadays.
No new models, pretty much no new areas, no outdoor building which would represents the instance. Fights like first boss can be designed by 10 year old and only 7(8) bosses total in whole raid instance... Compare that to MH and BT which came together as 1 raiding tier. 13 bosses in 2 different settings. Granted some models there were reused and mount hyjal looked pretty much like mount hyjal in vanilla(duh! But then again only few ppl seen old mount hyjal since it was locked for players), but black temple wasnt rehashed blackwing lair or anything like that. It was made from scratch and bosses were really interesting.

I wouldnt mind dragon soul at all if it would be BONUS raid instance, not main raid instance. I dont mind rehashing old shit as long as it doesnt impact ammount of new stuff comming, which unfortunately is the case here. If we would get like 10 boss raid instance that is epicly made and then like 5 boss dragon soul that uses old models and areas, i wouldnt mind.

Also please, keep it civil and try to stay on topic. Express your feelings about upcomming raid and w/e or not you feel this is the best that blizzard can do nowadays (especially when you compare it to TBC raids or Ulduar)

"Please keep it civil after I said these fights could be designed by 10 year olds, followed by cursing"

Way to be a hypocrite :|

OT: Yes. Very disappointed. The entire expansion has been nothing but shit and I cannot wait for MoP.

PS: It's "Upcoming".