Ulduar difficulty = why

[Jamesadams1988]

I read the post on the front page about Ulduar difficulty and why it is remembered as such a good raid. I want to give some counter points and my opinion on why this raid set the bar for a good raid and why it hasn't been broken.

- Ulduar wasn't completed by the majority of the player base.
- Correct, but the main reason people look at this raid as the most fun was the diverse mechanics, the huge set pieces, perfect amount of trash that had to be controlled, and most of all the difficulty. People play games because they want a challenge, something fun to do with friends in this instance. Ulduar got progressively harder and it required you to learn new and interesting mechanics. The biggest problem in WoW today that the developers are failing to understand is that people might say they want a casual experience aka EASY mode where a majority of the base can get to the final encounter and if they want a challenge they can try it next week by clicking hard mode and playing the same encounters with a few more mechanics hp and dmg. But the problem with this is that it's like playing a game with god mode on, it might be fun the first few times just for the fact you're watching a story and playing along, but there is no challenge. We need to stop playing with god mode on and actually make fights harder with new mechanics and not make dungeons easy but make them progressively harder JUST LIKE ULDUAR.

Also I would like to see not the character numbers on those achievements but account wide numbers on the ulduar achievements vs dragon soul. I believe alts are skewing both numbers particularly the first few bosses in ulduar.

[ElfinHilon10]

We need to make the game harder? Yeah no. I've already left because they are making it way to easy to get gear, but at the same time making the time investment just stupidly long (outside of badge gear of course). Raiding was awful in cata. By far, the worst I've ever seen. Nothing unique. Boring. Never bothered to learn fights because I didn't need to know the fights, and the raid themselves were so short.


/shudder.. Huge waste of money. :/

[EdisonTrent]

There's a good chance I'm a minority here, but speaking as a somewhat casual player I actually enjoyed being "stuck" in Ulduar, the fights themselves were interesting enough to keep doing them, and the feeling that something was lurking ahead was great. Sadly, I never actually got the chance to complete Ulduar while it was relevant, though I did complete a good portion of it on both normal and hard-mode, but even when I went back and finally kicked Yog's arse, it felt like I was fighting the final evil of the raid, and really provided closure to the entire experience.

I don't really have that feeling concerning more recent raids, there's no real "drive" to explore deeper into the depths of the dungeon and face its ultimate evil. I'm not the only one in my guild who only partially completed, but still loved the hell out of Ulduar.

To the above poster, I don't think it's really a matter of difficulty, but rather how compelling the content is, difficulty may be a part of this, but it's not the be-all end-all.

[Porimlys]

The game should be accessible with challenging hard modes available for those who want to pursue them, which is what we have in DS and probably is what we're going to continue to get in MoP.

[Proberly]

most ulduar heroic modes were on par with blackhorn I guess, but I don't understand how so few guilds managed to kill algalon before 3.2? He was a piece of cake :S

[Caiada]

most ulduar heroic modes were on par with blackhorn I guess, but I don't understand how so few guilds managed to kill algalon before 3.2? He was a piece of cake :S

Yogg+1 and Firefigher. Mystery solved.

[Devilyaki]

Hated the raid, stopped trying on all but one of my characters even then it got bad. The first 20 bosses took to long, car fight was lame after first kill. Just bad.

[sillabear]

Despite the fact that people continually make really broad arguments about hard raids being good because they 'feel epic', and 'don't become boring', there is a pretty obvious example from the first tier of Cata raiding that it completely fails in practice.

I really don't get why people feel the need to continually say that they like it and don't mind alienating people who can't deal with the difficulty etc etc when it is fairly obvious that the vast majority of people are the ones who get gated out of content and the hardcore players have their own content anyway so nobody really cares.

[Dither9]

I would like to have heroic mode removed altogether and just make the difficulty slope like Ulduar. Everyone was happy, because everyone had a challenge.

[DemoBytom]

Yogg+1 and Firefigher. Mystery solved.

The pool on the main page was normalized to people who got the Ulduar meta achi - which requires those two as well.

Reason so few guilds beat Algalon was that he was hard (simple mechanics, but hard to execute where 1 mistake killed you) and accessible for only an hour per week..

[Irony]

I would like to have heroic mode removed altogether and just make the difficulty slope like Ulduar. Everyone was happy, because everyone had a challenge.

So completely remove heroic mode and make all raids like Ulduar normal? So then the top progressions don't have a challenge? Make everything have an achievement for doing something special?

[whoranzone]

most ulduar heroic modes were on par with blackhorn I guess, but I don't understand how so few guilds managed to kill algalon before 3.2? He was a piece of cake :S

It was the time I'd guess - being what is referred to as being casual often also means that you can take about 10 minute breaks between wipes - at least that's the impression on my server.
I never felt that it was relevant to kill every boss in a tier - maybe now because we only have like 7 or 8. But "back in the days" none of my friends not playing in progress guilds cared that they haven't kill algalon or were not in full Tierxyz. Times change though I guess.
I mean at the end of the day I know that the people who don't raid bring in the money - but do they really care to not have everything ?

[Firebert]

The reason Ulduar is a great raid?

All the bosses were either breadcrumbed in Northrend (Freya, Hodir, Thorim, Razorscale, Yogg, etc) or had such good fitting personalities (Mimiron, Algalon with Brann, etc) that they were far more fun than the random bosses we have nowadays (who the hell is Blackhorn/Feludius etc).

Plus the music was amazing.

[UunaPriest]

I still do Ulduar anytime someone else is going.
Think I may start working on soloing it when bored.

I'm not sure the reasons why I like it so much tbh, I just do, and that's good enough for me.

[Caiada]

The pool on the main page was normalized to people who got the Ulduar meta achi - which requires those two as well.

Reason so few guilds beat Algalon was that he was hard (simple mechanics, but hard to execute where 1 mistake killed you) and accessible for only an hour per week..

Siege of Ulduar is definitely not the meta :/ and Algalon was only accessible if you beat those 2, which were major cockblocks, though of course the 1-hour thing is a big deal.

[StaeleAilar]

The game should be accessible with challenging hard modes available for those who want to pursue them, which is what we have in DS and probably is what we're going to continue to get in MoP.

Accessibility is not go in and faceroll because players are too lazy to even try to do things. That would require them to think and that somehow makes WoW a "Second Job". LFR is a perfect example of this with people in there pulling less than 10k dps and heals, and tanks who have no idea what they're doing and their defense when confronted about such things is "lol dude this is LFR, if you don't like it, go do normal".

And these are the very people they are aiming to grant "access" to content to in MoP and in the future. However in blizzards mind, as i stated, accessibility isn't making them still have to work to see the content even in the slightest its, lets make this so easy you can clear it in 2 hours tops and then hide behind the excuse that those who want more challenging encounters can click it to heroic. And then start an ICC style-ish debuff/buff 2 months into the content that we are going to probably be doing for the next 6 months at least.

I am all for accessibility, hell when i first started i was a casual in a social guild and at times it was a little saddening to know i would not kill the end of tier boss, but i still loved the encounters because i was forced to learn mechanics in order to progress.

TL;DR- DS is NOT "accessible" its just a load of crap.

[DemoBytom]

Siege of Ulduar is definitely not the meta :/ and Algalon was only accessible if you beat those 2, which were major cockblocks, though of course the 1-hour thing is a big deal.

Awww nevermind me, the poool is normalized to the Siege of Ulduar achievement, not the Glory meta, which do require Firefigter and Yogg 1 ;P My bad, I'm still a bit asleep xD

[Proberly]

I still do Ulduar anytime someone else is going.
Think I may start working on soloing it when bored.

I'm not sure the reasons why I like it so much tbh, I just do, and that's good enough for me.

Heh. We 3 man all ulduar 10 heroics from time to time because the fights are so awesome.

[Eon Drache]

I wasn't raiding when Ulduar was current. I was the guy that logged in, did dailies, and explored the world as it was. However, I did go to Ulduar, and loved the encounters. Why? Because I knew the bosses. I saw most of them while leveling. There was a story to each of them and you could understand it. To me, that what made Ulduar great, even after becoming "last tier".

Now, I have no idea who Morchock was, Blackthorn, or Yorsah'j, Zon'ozz, Hagara, or Ultraxion. None of them had any story. The only boss that did was Deathwing, and to me, they completely FUCKED up on the Deathwing Fight. You don't fight Deathwing at all. I've killed him on LFR and Normal and never once actually looked at his face during either fight.

That is what's wrong with today's raids for me. No story.

[jackmike008]

oh,yes,me too.