Tier 9 - Trail of the Crusader

[tennesseej]

So I think that most everyone feels that T9 was the worst tier in all of WoW. It's not so much that people feel it is the worst tier, but I get the feeling that people actually hated going in there, they dreaded raiding it.

I personally didn't mind it that much. Sure it wasn't super awesome or super epic, but it wasn't particularly horrible, I didn't dread going through the bosses.

I am just curious as to why people didn't like it.

You often hear things like:
It was too small, you kept fighting in the same area
The Faction Champions were a PvP style fight in a PvE style setting
It was too short
It didn't really fit in with the lore



While I agree it was pretty short, if I remember right it wasn't intended to be a full on raid patch, it was more like patch 4.1 (The Troll Dungeon patch), kinda a segue way patch in ICC. I think they had some ideas that they wanted to try out with Tier 9, and they learned a lot from it which makes subsequent tiers that much better. I personally liked the "gladiator" kinda feel of the whole thing.

[Megalithic]

I actually enjoyed ToC. Sure, it was the weakest tier of WotLK, but I still liked it. It was better than DS is. I liked being able to do all modes/sizes of the raid in the same lockout period. Overall, I thought it was an adequate filler between Ulduar and ICC, both of which were large, well-done raids. Think about it, if they had spent a lot more time on ToC, then it would have stolen resources from either Ulduar or ICC.

[Xeones]

There wasn't anything wrong with it. People just whine because it was so short and you've got the hardcore crowd crying about how easy it was.

[dogtastic]

i hated that place with a severe passion

[Deleted]

Horrible gating system, 5 bosses, having to run in 4 times a week with the normal and heroic lockouts to maxmimse your character, and being stuck with it for far too long. I enjoyed the bosses with interesting mechanics, but it went on for a long while.

[Deleted]

Think it was mainly about the fact that it came right after Ulduar, which was a huge raid with whole new and AWESOME mechanics, to this day Ulduar is my favourite raid atleast.
And Trial of the (Grand) Crusader, did not contain much content. It was 5 encounters without trash and the first 4 encounters was done in the same area (The Arena) and Anub'arak was done right under the arena. Personally I was dissapointed about the amount of encounters and that fact that it seemed like Blizzard development team hadn't used much time nor resources on providing us with this raid content.

[Deleted]

I think it is because of people expecting a full sized area for a raid where you actually have to use your mount/teleporters or run.

[Deeply-Fried Orange]

ToC was great. It was something different than a mile long corridor with tons of trash and ten bosses to which people are used to and that's why they didn't like it.

Worst raids ever are BoT and DS.

[Jalfrezi]

I enjoyed it actually, made a nice change from trash - boss - trash - boss and so on. there was RP involved which brought you into the game and learned about the story line.

Yeah of course it was too short, but when you could do all the modes/sizes it was being able to fit it all in and still have time to some Ulduar

[Deleted]

It was kinda fun. The bosses were fun and challenging, ah well, except for Faction Champions, which were crap-a-lot. The things that made it more to the bad way then the good, were in my opinion: It had no trash, you ran it four times a week, the Tier-set items were very bad looking, and one of the five bosses were a complete roflcopter. All this + the short time Ulduar had as the "Optimal" raid, made it bad. I honestly had a blast trying to complete Insanity each week, which eventually paid off.

A bit off topic, I think Trial of the Crusader was better than Dragon Soul is, which in my opinion, is the worst of them all.

[ro9ue]

I liked it a lot actually. Log on at raid, bang your shit out in a few boss fights, and leave. What I didn't like was doing it on 10m 25m, 10h 25h lol... and Tier 9 gear was the worst ever

[tennesseej]

I actually enjoyed ToC. Sure, it was the weakest tier of WotLK, but I still liked it. It was better than DS is. I liked being able to do all modes/sizes of the raid in the same lockout period. Overall, I thought it was an adequate filler between Ulduar and ICC, both of which were large, well-done raids. Think about it, if they had spent a lot more time on ToC, then it would have stolen resources from either Ulduar or ICC.

That is actually in interesting point. I wonder how receptive the community would be to alternating raids, meaning you always alternate between a huge epic raid with lots of areas/bosses/trash, and a smaller "filler" raid that wraps up small points in the story and gives players something to do. It would be well known that the big epic raid is currently in development while the filler is being pushed out.

[Hoddie]

I'd rather have TOC than Dragon Soul any day of the week. No trash instead of worthless, boring trash every time.

[Emane]

What I really hated with it, was that for raiding in a 25 man guild.. you were pretty much forced in running the bloody place four times per week. I would hate for that to be the norm again. They already streched it quite abit with the LFR. 2 times per week is not even fun. As it takes away time for everything else you can do in the game.

I think that's why most people hate Trial of the Crusader, Yes you had 10 and 25 man before that, for 2 times per week, and then they add Trial of the Crusader with 4 difficulties, just clogging in every week. It was hell.

ICC had the same kind of boring feel over it, where it had 2 difficulties that you HAD to run to stay competative. This is were Cataclysm went for the better, 1 lockout per week (awesome), and then later added OPTIONAL LFR, (okay to be fair, it wasn't optional in the beginning when it came out), so you had 1 MAYBE 2 raids to run per week.

[Marston]

I didn't hate it, but I paused during Ulduar (as my guild broke apart) and came only back midway during T9.

One of the things that at least I hated about it was the difficulty. My guild wasn't that good back then, but we had the point were normal mode as basically "Go in there and loot" and in heroic mode we wern't able to down the first boss in 25 mode (not sure about 10 man though). And that was just frustrating beyond everything. We couldn't progress, it wasn't possible for us.

[Slonato]

This raid was short and sweet. The boss fights were unique (as always), and there was NO TRASH.

The gating system was effective, and normal mode was tuned pretty low, with heroic toned quite high.

I think this was a very solid raiding tier. There were only 7 bosses in FL, 8 bosses in DS and 5 bosses here-and we sure as hell didn't have to spend as much time in here.

To me, the biggest problem with this tier is that it was released too early. My group still hadn't cleared ulduar (we had done like 3 heroics, but hadn't killed yogg yet), and we were putting time into this for better gear.

[A Dark Knight]

ToC was a filler raid that helped people by killing time until ICC, AND boost those who couldn't finish ulduar hardmode bosses

[Deleted]

I didn't hate it that much, I still enjoyed raiding it - but it was certainly a very poor tier.

It was right after ulduar, had poor lore, you fought in the same cramped arena, tier sets were shared between armor types and looked mediocre to terrible, purchasing tier upgrades was awkward and clunky and the multiple difficulties meant you cleared the same god damn bosses multiple times over.

Anub'arak was like Ragnaros though, a very good end boss in a poor / mediocre at best instance. I really enjoyed him.

[tennesseej]

I think the concern about it being brought up too soon after Ulduar's release is definitely valid, especially given how awesome Ulduar was.

And for the more Hardcore players, I can see how running it 4 times per week (per character) would get old really fast. I am glad the game is changing somewhat to discourage that, but I think that's the paradigm of being Hardcore, if there is something in the game that can give you a boost somehow, not matter how much time it takes the Hardcore players will go for it.

---------- Post added 2012-05-13 at 03:03 PM ----------

So if anything I applaud Blizzard for constantly trying new things, even if they don't float so well in the end.

I think that is the most important point, you can't be mad for them trying something new, you can only be mad if they try something new, it turns out poorly, and they keep doing it.

[Djuntas]

Cause it was just to simple, thats kinda it OP. I think Simple is a good word to describe it. Granted boss fights was okay (Not counting 3rd boss, arena style, maybe it did fit inn the arena-themed TOC instance but meh).