Ulduar difficulty and the blue post

[Desdonde]

"There was recently a blue post talking about the nostalgia people feel for Ulduar and the increased difficulty. Kaivax made the point that "Ulduar is an example of a raid where lots of players got to enjoy the first few bosses, and very few players ever saw the last few".

I really think Kaivax is missing the point.

While it was true back then that it was harder to see the final bosses due to the level of progression for normal modes, that can easily be solved and has been solved for recent raids such as Firelands and Dragon Soul. Let normal modes be accessible to raiders, there is no problem with that and I don't think anyone has an issue with it. Making this the only point for why a raid like Ulduar shouldn't exist is just baffling, however.

What the majority of us raiders who pushed beyond the normal modes enjoyed about Ulduar was the challenges that it presented after normal Yogg was defeated. The progressive hard modes, the number of choices when choosing what hard mode to do or how hard to make it (yes, we like choices), the number of achievements, the progressive nature (Working towards Algalon's key), and the fact that these hard modes had a lot of innovation and usually involved more than just a UI interface toggle.

Were some of the hard modes confusing to activate? Sure, Flame Leviathin is a great example. But it can be improved upon. Looking at just the bads of Ulduar and concluding "well, this and this is why we'll never make a raid like it again" and ignoring all of the good really is silly. I feel like Blizzard is avoiding making another raid similar to Ulduar because of the amount of effort that went into it, and they would rather take the quick path out (i.e. ToC and other very short raids)

But it turned out to be a hell of a raid instance, I have many fond memories of it, and even though 3.2 came out soon after and we were progressing in fail TotGC and banging our heads against Anub'arak the raid stacker, we still went back to Ulduar to progress on and finish up Yogg +0, despite the inferior gear. That is a true sign of great raid design.

EDIT: Typos

[Deleted]

While I also miss Ulduar and I really enjoyed raiding it, there are some reasons why we can't go back to that model.

The first thing is what they said recently in a blue post. They can only come up with a handful of ways to switch on the hardmode like Ulduar. This might sound silly since "they have so many raid designers, they should know these things blabla", but in reality it's not. If they started doing this with every single boss, things would again get repetitive and Ulduar would lose most of it's uniqueness.

But that's not the important factor here. The key thing is to understand what hard modes were then and what they are now. The "main content" in Ulduar was the actual normal modes. Because of the very successful difficulty scaling (Yogg with keepers was still a challenge early on the patch), guilds that now consider themselves "heroic mode guilds", back then they felt they cleared the instance as soon as they downed Yogg. And then they proceeded doing some heroic modes for the extra challenge or for the extra loot. Nowadays, however, normal modes are nothing. All they are is 1 week of practice before the actual content starts, aka heroic modes.

Now, don't misunderstand me, I'd prefer the ulduar model over what we have now any day. Atm we're stuck with killing the same bosses 3 times over and over. Guilds get bored of the content long before they clear it because of that. But as I said earlier, we can't go back to ulduar, simply because they can't make easy normal modes and at the same time hard modes that feel "something different, something extra".

However, what they should do imo, now that we have the lfr, is completely remove hard modes. Make raids much bigger, >10 bosses, and have some proper difficulty scaling from first to last boss. Lfr is still faceroll, so everyone can see the end-boss, and everyone gets the challenge he wants if the bosses are properly tuned on normal mode.

[Lucetia]

I really think Kaivax is missing the point.

While it was true back then that it was harder to see the final bosses due to the level of progression for normal modes, that can easily be solved and has been solved for recent raids such as Firelands and Dragon Soul. Let normal modes be accessible to raiders, there is no problem with that and I don't think anyone has an issue with it. Making this the only point for why a raid like Ulduar shouldn't exist is just baffling, however.

What the majority of us raiders who pushed beyond the normal modes enjoyed about Ulduar was the challenges that it presented after normal Yogg was defeated. The progressive hard modes, the number of choices when choosing what hard mode to do or how hard to make it (yes, we like choices), the number of achievements, the progressive nature (Working towards Algalon's key), and the fact that these hard modes had a lot of innovation and usually involved more than just a UI interface toggle.

Were some of the hard modes confusing to activate? Sure, Flame Leviathin is a great example. But it can be improved upon. Looking at just the bads of Ulduar and concluding "well, this and this is why we'll never make a raid like it again" and ignoring all of the good really is silly. I feel like Blizzard is avoiding making another raid similar to Ulduar because of the amount of effort that went into it, and they would rather take the quick path out (i.e. ToC and other very short raids)

But it turned out to be a hell of a raid instance, I have many fond memories of it, and even though 3.2 came out soon after and we were progressing in fail TotGC and banging our heads against Anub'arak the raid stacker, we still went back to Ulduar to progress on and finish up Yogg +0, despite the inferior gear. That is a true sign of great raid design.

You are taking one quote out of that post and only going by it. I can't remember if it was in the same post or one posted shortly before that. They aren't using the excuse of "so few got to see all of it" as to why it hasn't been done again. They said in the post that the way the activation worked with the bosses and the instances fit so well. If an raid arose again to where they can fit something like that in they would. It was also mentioned that if the Ulduar HM model was done for every raid then people would no longer like it and reference it. Which I agree with completely. People would find this model old and stale and wish for something like it is now.

Point is, no matter what method is used not everyone will ever be happy.

[backupoffmeson]

Point is, no matter what method is used no one will ever be happy.

I think you mean, no matter what method is used its impossible to please everyone. There are plenty of people who are perfectly happy with the current model and loved the Ulduar model.

[rebecca191]

So few people killed Algalon because he was a heroic-only boss. I'm sure if he had a normal version like everything does now because people were mad they didn't see Sinestra or Raggy ph4, then lots more would have killed him. Plenty of other hard modes had completion rates that low (at the relevant time). If they are mad so few saw Algalon then the blame is for making it heroic only, not the difficulty of Ulduar HMs for the players that -gasp- like HMs.

[Litoru]

I don't require the ulduar model, even though I enjoyed it a lot. All I want is a challenge. THAT.IS.ALL.
For the people who don't have time to raid or whatever reason they have, normal modes should ofcourse be available for them. But dear god, I've said it so many times, just leave the heroic encounters for those who want a challenge. Casuals said they wanted to see content, so why isn't normal mode enough?

I don't understand what's so bad with "hitting a wall" for like 3-4 weeks? Work for it! Earn more gear, improve one's gameplay. I don't want stuff to be given to us. All in all, normals for casuals, heroics for those who want a challenge, it SHOULD NOT be nerfed. Also, the reason why a lot of people didn't manage to clear entire ulduar was because ToC was released too early. Like that happens in Cataclysm. Instances are facerolled and we're stuck with the most unsatisfying instance for another 4-6 months. It's amazing how the final boss of an entire expansion can be the most boring.

[Seriss]

I don't require the ulduar model, even though I enjoyed it a lot. All I want is a challenge. THAT.IS.ALL.
For the people who don't have time to raid or whatever reason they have, normal modes should ofcourse be available for them. But dear god, I've said it so many times, just leave the heroic encounters for those who want a challenge. Casuals said they wanted to see content, so why isn't normal mode enough?

I don't understand what's so bad with "hitting a wall" for like 3-4 weeks? Work for it! Earn more gear, improve one's gameplay. I don't want stuff to be given to us. All in all, normals for casuals, heroics for those who want a challenge, it SHOULD NOT be nerfed. Also, the reason why a lot of people didn't manage to clear entire ulduar was because ToC was released too early. Like that happens in Cataclysm. Instances are facerolled and we're stuck with the most unsatisfying instance for another 4-6 months. It's amazing how the final boss of an entire expansion can be the most boring.

It's one thing to hit a wall because you don't have enough gear or are making silly mistakes.

It's a completely different thing to hit a wall because you know that you can't possibly achieve the required dps for the simple reason that you don't have enough players that play a specific class.

[Necrolepsy]

I don't require the ulduar model, even though I enjoyed it a lot. All I want is a challenge. THAT.IS.ALL.
For the people who don't have time to raid or whatever reason they have, normal modes should ofcourse be available for them. But dear god, I've said it so many times, just leave the heroic encounters for those who want a challenge. Casuals said they wanted to see content, so why isn't normal mode enough?

I don't understand what's so bad with "hitting a wall" for like 3-4 weeks? Work for it! Earn more gear, improve one's gameplay. I don't want stuff to be given to us. All in all, normals for casuals, heroics for those who want a challenge, it SHOULD NOT be nerfed. Also, the reason why a lot of people didn't manage to clear entire ulduar was because ToC was released too early. Like that happens in Cataclysm. Instances are facerolled and we're stuck with the most unsatisfying instance for another 4-6 months. It's amazing how the final boss of an entire expansion can be the most boring.

That's what happens when

a) Aesthetics are prioritised over gameplay for Deathwing
b) All the bosses prior are recycled junk
c) You listen to your worst customers (whingers on forums with a sense of entitlement)

You get the abortion of a patch called Dragon Soul.

[Téuntjûh]

The thing is, that 1% that killed Algalon, was before ToC came out. Loads of guilds kept op pressing Ulduar HM's even when ICC came out.
The fun thing was the amount of choices and difficulities you had. Freya with 1 elder, 2 or 3!
I really hope blizzard realises that people don't want to see all content, people just want to have fun with raiding.
And the current system isn't working, no fun @ all.

[Necrolepsy]

Like you said Teuntjuh, it's not about seeing all the content, it's about having fun with it. I no longer have fun with it, hence I've quit for greener pastures.

If I wanted to purely see things they've made, I'd not play WoW, I'd go to an art gallery or something instead.

[Keoren]

Algalon was easier than at least Firefighter (even post-nerf), Freya+3 (pre-nerf) and Yogg+0. Firefighter and Freya were required to be killed for Algalon. They were what made the numbers so low - not the Algalon fight itself. It was also not out for very long, but DS hasn't been either. Madness on heroic on both 10 and 25 has been killed by 0.78%.

[Deleted]

the other problem with this analysis is that for a long long period of time ToC was not FULLY implemented as for weeks 1-4 there was only 1-4 bosses and no heroics.

so after clearing toc's 1-2 bosses you went back to uldaur and had fun, toc was a loot farm, Ulduar was a fun farm

[Deleted]

Some very good points have been raised here. As an Ulduar fanboy I am going to come out and say that blue post was just garbage. They claim not enough people saw Algalon - how many have seen Sinestra? I mean can they really say getting to Sinestra is doable for a large portion of the playerbase? Heroic Chogall / Ascendant Council are STILL going to be far too hard for a pretty big portion of the playerbase if you ask me, and that's before you even get to Sinestra herself. Just looking at wow progress reveals that only 2.8% of the playerbase has killed her. Sure that's more than killed Algalon pre 3.2, but don't forget this is two tiers of raiding later. I fully expect that more people had killed algalon by this time in ICC than have killed Sinestra now.

It also, as has been said, ignores that many people carried on working on Ulduar HMs even when ICC was current, for all manner of reasons and, *GASP* they were still quite hard.

Even in ICC gear, a group of bad players would still find Firefighter a serious challenge - in ToC 10 / 25 gear Firefighter was still a very tough fight, and so was Yogg +1

I adored the Ulduar model, it just felt like there was so much to do. If you got stuck on a specific boss you could go work on a different one, you could gradually ramp up the difficulty of an encounter, and I LOVED how each boss had like 5 achievements, 4 of which weren't even needed for the meta, they were just wild, fun things to do. Some of the most fun we had during ICC was going back to Ulduar and trying all those crazy achievements, like killing all 3 of freyas adds within a few seconds of each other (which was almost as hard if not harder than Freya's actual hard mode) or doing Kologarn without killing his arms, or killing the jumpy cat thing 9 times on Auriaya.

That stuff was entertaining in a way that the current system just isn't. I know lots of people didn't like the concept of "immortal" type achievements, as they ended up causing drama if one person made a mistake, but at least they gave people a reason to go back to an instance beyond just doing a boss that was the same thing but with more HP and damage.

[Wilderness]

There are definitely some good things that could be taken from Ulduar and used to make the current model more fun or interesting in my opinion, and something that people would probably enjoy. You do have some good points in there but this:

the fact that these hard modes had a lot of innovation and usually involved more than just a UI interface toggle.

is just nostalgia talking. If you objectively look at the hard modes they were almost all exactly like toggling a switch nor were most of them innovative.

[Deleted]

That's what happens when

a) Aesthetics are prioritised over gameplay for Deathwing
b) All the bosses prior are recycled junk
c) You listen to your worst customers (whingers on forums with a sense of entitlement)

You get the abortion of a patch called Dragon Soul.

Pleast list in which ways the earlier bosses are recycled.

[Deleted]

Pleast list in which ways the earlier bosses are recycled.

1. Models are recycled

2. The areas you fight them in are recycled

3. 99.9% of the mechanics are recycled

Pleast list in which ways the earlier bosses aren't recycled.

Fixed that for you.

[DeulonUS]

There are definitely some good things that could be taken from Ulduar and used to make the current model more fun or interesting in my opinion, and something that people would probably enjoy. You do have some good points in there but this:

is just nostalgia talking. If you objectively look at the hard modes they were almost all exactly like toggling a switch nor were most of them innovative.

What switch did you toggle on XT in order to activate hardmode? I don't remember clicking something on the interface to activate Razorscale hardmode. Nostalgia is a small part of why people love Ulduar. It was a great raid instance and YES, hardmodes in Ulduar were innovative.

[Deleted]

3. 99.9% of the mechanics are recycled

Not quite. Ever fought a boss like Zon'ozz? Hagara's ice and lightning phases? Yor'sahj's globule mechanics (how he gets different abilities depending on spawns and kills)?

You can't take a boss who shares an ability or three with something else in this game and claim it's recycled garbage. They have made instances and raids for over 7 years. It's hard to do original content anymore.

Razorscale hardmode

Except that there was no Razorscale hard mode. It was just a speed kill.

[shise]

To be honest, Ulduar was really easy for a 25 normal raid, everyone, i releat, everyone could have done all the bosses just finding a medium-good guild, just one that takes raiding a lil bit serious.

Then Ulduar hard modes, at least 4 or even 5 bosses were easy for every kind of player aswell. For the rest you would just need a good guild, something not so hard.




The problem is:

a) People don't want to spend time but want to kill the last boss. That shouldn't be possible. If you don't have the time then do it on nomral mode, you won't need so many raiding hours, or else go for hard mode, which is the real and only boss.

b)LFD. Totally innecesary, but it was a great idea to get some subs from slacking players who jump from MMO to MMO and also for those who don't really care about putting any effort on raids, then at last but not less, for our lats : p


In my opinion, nostalgia has nothign to do with the game, not even when we say that... BC was the best, it's not nostalgia, it's a fact, and the same happens with Ulduar, there everyone was able on their very own way. BC, why better? because hard cores had a great time, not only doing the same boss again in a hard mode, it was only A boss, you kill it or not, if you can not, then go to the lower raid tiers and have the same fun at you own will. Now everyone can kill everything... doing hard modes is not that special, is like leveling up two times, once with heirloom, guild perks and the current improved damage and doing so wihtout any of those useless things, sure it's more fun, but it's the same again ; (

[Wilderness]

What switch did you toggle on XT in order to activate hardmode? I don't remember clicking something on the interface to activate Razorscale hardmode. Nostalgia is a small part of why people love Ulduar. It was a great raid instance and YES, hardmodes in Ulduar were innovative.

You probably don't remember clicking on the interface for Razorscale since there was no hardmode. Also, if you read what I said it was that nearly all of the hardmodes were "like" flipping a switch. Ok, you didn't toggle heroic on XT, all you did was dps harder. How innovative or interactive is that? Or not killing towers before FL? Or not killing saronite on General? Or literally toggling a switch on Mim/Yogg? Or just killing the boss faster on Hodir? And so on and so forth. Leaving towers/adds up before pulling a boss is no different than clearing trash and flipping a switch to heroic. The only hard mode which was actually activated in combat was council based on your kill order except for the handful of hardmodes which were just dps faster and that's not activating anything in a different way than just toggling a switch.