Page 5 of 6 FirstFirst ...
3
4
5
6
LastLast
  1. #81
    Elemental Lord Spl4sh3r's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Sweden
    Posts
    8,518
    I believe both Ulduar and Naxxramas are nice. They are because of the simple reason of you can choose the order of bosses in multiple ways. Most times when you can't choose the order of bosses it becomes less nice. Even in Molten Core you got to choose order of bosses in someway or another (even though most just went the normal way).

  2. #82
    Quote Originally Posted by Spl4sh3r View Post
    I believe both Ulduar and Naxxramas are nice. They are because of the simple reason of you can choose the order of bosses in multiple ways. Most times when you can't choose the order of bosses it becomes less nice. Even in Molten Core you got to choose order of bosses in someway or another (even though most just went the normal way).
    You can tell there was a lot of effort and passion put into the design and implementation of those two raid instances and a lot of lore to back it up. The bosses in ICC for example felt like there were just placed there to be in your way while uldar and naxx had bosses you needed to go out of your way to do or reach.

  3. #83
    The Lightbringer Adramalech's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Location
    Portugal
    Posts
    3,409
    Quote Originally Posted by Xylev View Post
    I'm sorry, but maybe I'm just suffering from Alzheimer's. What Vanilla or BC raids offered optional hard modes? I'm at a loss here...
    Hakkar (leave his priests alive, he gets stronger), Eredar Twins (kill them in the harder order, drops extra loot if you succeed). You didn't have an achievement to track it, and Hakkar didn't drop different loot if you did his "hard mode" (I think), but twins did. But they were there. Those are the only I can think of, but they existed. If you look at it, Hakkar's "hard" mode was pretty much like Sartharion's in trigger, and Eredar Twins are just like Iron Council or Protectors of the Endless.

    Also, before you try to kill the twins and tell me they drop the same thing regardless of who you kill first: they were changed (don't remember which patch, but likely 3.0) to drop the same loot regardless of Alythess or Sacrolash going down first. But originally, their loot would change.
    Quote Originally Posted by Tya View Post
    As a warlock, allow me to be the first to say that I get tremendous amounts of joy from watching fear pathing take you to Africa.
    Quote Originally Posted by Drayarr View Post
    Twinking is like going back to school when you are 30, just to be smarter than the other kids.

  4. #84
    Quote Originally Posted by Medanielle View Post
    The only thing that no other raids have on Ulduar: the soundtrack, and the interesting way of activating hardmodes.
    Please tell me more... because I don't know what was the interesting way of activating hardmodes...

    - Flame Leviathan: don't kill the towers. Wow, how interesting...
    - Ignis: kill the boss fast enough...
    - Razorscale: what hardmode? can't remember anything special about that boss...
    - XT-002: "dps race" to activate hardmode. Annoying for some guilds who activated the the hardmode without knowing
    - Assembly of Iron: kill the bosses in a specific order. Hmmm, we had that already at AQ40?
    - Kologarn: kill the arms right before the boss...
    - Auriaya: don't kill the adds... that's cool!
    - Freya: don't kill the adds... oh wait, we had that before
    - Hodir: kill the boss fast enough...
    - Mimiron: Press a button. Wait, what?
    - Thorim: dps race to activate hardmode
    - Vezax: don't kill the adds... again
    - Yogg-Saron: don't talk to the titans

    None of that sounds interesting. Interesting would be something like triggering the hardmode by doing something really special (like the activation of the celestials during the Twins fight). But not "kill adds", "do not kill adds", "have enough dps" or "press a button"...

  5. #85
    Quote Originally Posted by Spotnick View Post
    the major reason why people will never put ICC as the best raid is because it was current content for over a year.
    I hate to be picky, but it really wasn't "over" a year. Patch 3.3 released on Dec 8, 2009 and Cataclysm released on Dec 7 2010, so obviously from those dates you can tell that it is just about a year, but certainly not "over" a year. That isn't even taking to account the fact that the instance was gated, and as such it wasn't even fully open until February 2 2010.

  6. #86
    Titan vindicatorx's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Where ever I want, working remote is awesome.
    Posts
    11,210
    I'm sorry I know a lot of you really liked Ulduar but I hated that place it was just drawn out and boring to me in general. I thought the mechanics of most encounters were kinda lame after a while. My favorite raids were old raids like MC and BWL where there was more challenge I feel in general due to the trash.

  7. #87
    Quote Originally Posted by Jshadow View Post
    Still, the lack of "turn on heroic button" would really make it on par if not even greater than Ulduar.
    Why? Every boss in hard-mode boss in Ulduar still had what was essentially a "hard-mode button." Yes, it wasn't a feature of the UI, but you'd have to be pretty silly not to understand.

    Flame Leviathan: Don't kill the towers
    XT: Kill the Heart
    Iron Council: Kill the mobs in a certain order
    Hodir: Kill him fast
    Thorim: Kill the tunnel mobs fast
    Freya: Don't kill the trash
    Mimiron: Literally had an in-game button
    General Vezax: Don't kill the green clouds
    Yogg: Don't talk to the Watchers

    Nothing really special there.

  8. #88
    There's a lot to like about Ulduar and Kara. However I do want to point out a major difference that I feel hasn't really been addressed.

    Kara was experienced by a very large portion of the population for a very long time. Even raiders who were doing BT and sunwell would go back and do Kara, in part for tokens and in part cause it was a fun way to pass the time.

    Ulduar was experienced by a small fraction of the population for a very short period of time. When Ulduar was current content, it was considered very hard (especially early on before the nerfs). Further, the loot was on par with Naxx/OS loot and hence many people just ran FL and maybe some of the other first 4 bosses. Then when TOC came out, the loot was so far above what Ulduar offered and was so much easier to get, that Ulduar effectively dropped off the radar. With the exception of the occasional achievement, Valynir/Algalon/Mimi farm, or weekly raid quest being in Ulduar, the instance was dead.

    So ultimately both were very cool and innovative instances, but they were experienced very differently. Kara was seen by many people for a long time and still remained popular and beloved. Whereas Ulduar was only experienced by a small fraction of the population and often only for a very limited time. While I personally love Ulduar, I think part of its mystique is akin to that of Naxx40, in that it was very cool but most people either didn't experience it directly or never came close to risking "burn out" on the content.

  9. #89
    Most of the (supposed) final raids of an expansion are great in quality.
    Naxxramas was orginally a great raid. 15 bosses with various mechanics. Pinnacle of vanilla raiding, granted few seen it.
    Black Temple was originally supposed to be the final raid of BC, and was a great raid. It had a lot of lore within and bosses were amazing and varied. Gear was beautiful.
    ICC. How can you not like the design of this place? The unlocking mechanism was different. Gear was great looking. Lore packed.
    Cata. Dragon Soul was great too. Gear was nice looking. This is the smallest "final" raid in game.

    Ulduar vs ICC is a tough one. I couldnt tell you which was "better."

  10. #90
    Elemental Lord
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Wales, UK
    Posts
    8,527
    Quote Originally Posted by Spinachsandwich View Post
    Ulduar wasn't even the best raid in wrath.
    Agreed, never liked Ulduar, it just felt somebody had just updated Uldaman and stuck on bits from Maraudon (Freya), Gnomregan (Mimiron) and AQ (General/Yogg).

    My favorite all time is Naxx 40, and I said 40 not the EZ mode 10/25 rehash, the old nightmare before Christmas style scourge theme was super cool, the layout with the different "wings" was ground breaking and the encounters were just amazingly designed/tuned, sadly you don't get raids like that anymore.

  11. #91
    Elemental Lord Tekkommo's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Scotland
    Posts
    8,054
    Quote Originally Posted by Keashaa View Post

    - Flame Leviathan: don't kill the towers. Wow, how interesting...

    Probably the worst boss in raiding history, I hope they never do anything like this again.

    - Ignis: kill the boss fast enough...

    Boring fight.

    - Razorscale: what hardmode? can't remember anything special about that boss...

    Horrible slow boring fight, having the achievement when others wanted to do it /wrists

    - XT-002: "dps race" to activate hardmode. Annoying for some guilds who activated the the hardmode without knowing

    Sounded worse than Sindragosa imo, I hated this boss.

    - Assembly of Iron: kill the bosses in a specific order. Hmmm, we had that already at AQ40?

    Wasn't that bad, as different kill orders gave different abilities.

    - Kologarn: kill the arms right before the boss...

    Pretty fun, but was very easy, basically a faceroll boss

    - Auriaya: don't kill the adds... that's cool!

    Again, very easy, nothing interesting.

    - Freya: don't kill the adds... oh wait, we had that before

    Trash was annoying and boring, room design made no sense (but hey, it's a game!), hardmode was pretty cool, but got boring fast.

    - Hodir: kill the boss fast enough...

    Never liked this fight as melee, mages seemed to love it, I wonder why.

    - Mimiron: Press a button. Wait, what?

    Top 5 fight in raiding history imo, firefighter was awesome.

    - Thorim: dps race to activate hardmode

    Doing the tunnel was cool, everything else was meh.

    - Vezax: don't kill the adds... again

    Boring as fuck, interrupt a slow as fuck cast.

    - Yogg-Saron: don't talk to the titans

    Cool fight, far too easy with all of the helpers up. 1 up was a good challenge at the time, never did 0.

    None of that sounds interesting. Interesting would be something like triggering the hardmode by doing something really special (like the activation of the celestials during the Twins fight). But not "kill adds", "do not kill adds", "have enough dps" or "press a button"...
    Answers in bold for my opinion on each boss you listed.

    I know you were talking about hardmodes, Ignis, Razor, Kologarn and Auriaya didn't have hardmodes.
    Last edited by Tekkommo; 2013-03-21 at 03:16 PM.

  12. #92
    Quote Originally Posted by Raintola View Post
    Why? Every boss in hard-mode boss in Ulduar still had what was essentially a "hard-mode button." Yes, it wasn't a feature of the UI, but you'd have to be pretty silly not to understand.

    Flame Leviathan: Don't kill the towers
    XT: Kill the Heart
    Iron Council: Kill the mobs in a certain order
    Hodir: Kill him fast
    Thorim: Kill the tunnel mobs fast
    Freya: Don't kill the trash
    Mimiron: Literally had an in-game button
    General Vezax: Don't kill the green clouds
    Yogg: Don't talk to the Watchers

    Nothing really special there.
    Would you argue that toggling a UI element with no feeback to the players other than a loading screen is more "special"?
    I am the lucid dream
    Uulwi ifis halahs gag erh'ongg w'ssh


  13. #93
    I don't understand why people are getting so defensive about Ulduar, haha. Aren't we just discussing our opinions?

    I raided about 2-3 months of Ulduar back in WoTLK (had the pleasure of seeing up to and including Yogg) and quit the game before my guild downed Yogg. As people above have pointed out, I felt like there were a handful of straightforward fights interspersed with some really innovative ones (Mimiron, Thorim, Yogg).

    In terms of actual boss mechanics, ToT is definitely up there for me. I like that everyone has their own responsibilities. In terms of aesthetics, I thought Hyjal was a really cool raid. My guild never got to Archimonde back in TBC, but after doing it a few months ago, that was a pretty cool environment.

    Perhaps it was the exclusivity of the raid, but I really enjoyed my time in BT. I remember being one of the few DPS alive, mashing my Fireball button on Naj'entus at 2% and then finally downing him. BT + T6 had some of the coolest looking gear IMO and most of the boss fights seemed really epic.

  14. #94
    Lol at all the Wrath babies. Ulduar? Nothing beats the epic feeling of stepping into the Molten Core for the first time in early 2005, getting freaked out by two molten giants standing at the entrance and wondering what dangers lies deeper within. Mechanics? Who cares? New toy effect + mystery = win.

    /Slight trolling mode = off

  15. #95
    Fluffy Kitten Colmadero's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jul 2011
    Location
    Miami, FL
    Posts
    1,759
    Kara > Ulduar.

    Enough said.

  16. #96
    You had to demonstrate skill to even activate some of those hard modes and many were story/lore driven which made them even better.

  17. #97
    You're talking like it's a fact that Ulduar is the best raid ever, which is 100% subjective to each individual person. But yes, Ulduar was a really good raid nonetheless, the scenery wasn't what got me, I'm actually not all that much into titan architecture even if it was well done here, but I really liked the Descent into Madness part of the raid, if it hadn't been for Yogg-Saron this raid really wouldn't have been exciting at all for me, the whole selling point is the fact that it's an Old God which has corrupted its own jailors. The only good raid in Wrath sadly (which could have been avoided if they hadn't made Naxx too damn easy.)

    As good as Ulduar was I have come to like ToT more though, it's just fucking amazing, like with Ulduar it has the best lore WoW has had to date (Note: WoW, not all of Warcraft), amazing scenery, and even better boss battles. It's like Ulduar's dad, it took everything Ulduar did right and improved upon it (maybe except for the interactive hard mode shit, but I never cared for it anyways, as it's essentially the same as clicking a button.)

    Quote Originally Posted by Awe View Post
    Lol at all the Wrath babies. Ulduar? Nothing beats the epic feeling of stepping into the Molten Core for the first time in early 2005, getting freaked out by two molten giants standing at the entrance and wondering what dangers lies deeper within. Mechanics? Who cares? New toy effect + mystery = win.

    /Slight trolling mode = off
    I'm one of the few Molten Core supporters here, many seem to hate it but I loved it. However, Molten Core doesn't even hold a candle to today's raid standards. It's filled with too much trash, all the Flamewaker bosses are essentially bigger trash mobs, the fact that you needed reputation with Hydraxian Waterlords to deactive the runes was utter bullshit, etc. It's all about learning to seperate nostalgia with the truth, which I see many TBC and Wrath fans also need to do, doesn't only count for Vanilla nostalgics.

    Quote Originally Posted by ghostprotocol View Post
    You can tell there was a lot of effort and passion put into the design and implementation of those two raid instances and a lot of lore to back it up. The bosses in ICC for example felt like there were just placed there to be in your way while uldar and naxx had bosses you needed to go out of your way to do or reach.
    That was one of the things I absolutely despised about ICC, the bosses were either extremely boring (Marrowgar, Saurfang, Gunship), unfunny joke-characters (Festergut, Rotface, Putricide, Blood Council) or just some weird out of place boss (Valithria). Only bosses other than LK that were enjoyable were Rotface, Putricide and Sindragosa, all of which they ruined with atrocious voice acting, essentially making them joke characters. It was like a watered-down Naxxramas in terms of lore and atmosphere. Each boss in Naxxramas has its own individual lore, as told in that Alliance keep right outside Naxxramas in Northrend. The Abomination Wing was actually pretty creepy and fucked up, as opposed to Futurama fun-land of ICC. Kel'thuzad was also a better character than Lich King, and that alone comes from the fact that they never fucked him up (at least until Wrath), The Lich King had been raped beyond belief character-wise in Wrath. ICC still comes off as the greatest dissapointment in WoW to me.
    Last edited by wariofan1; 2013-03-21 at 08:17 PM.

  18. #98
    Legendary!
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Not in Europe Anymore Yay
    Posts
    6,931
    Ulduar was a good raid, but honestly I preferred ICC to Ulduar. My all time favorite raid however was Blackwing Lair.

  19. #99
    Deleted
    I agree with everything OP said. There are three things though: visually ToT is not bad at all. its a very different theme and I personally dont like it as much as the theme that Ulduar has but it still looks good.

    secondly: Ulduar had portals that made travelling through the instance easier, I dont get why they they got rid of those.

    thirdly: There was a kick ass train in Ulduar.

    seriously though, the train had literally no purpose other than adding some flair to the raid. in the raid we loved to fight over who could press the buttons to interact with the environment. it was just a cool gimmick. ToT is lacking in that department in my opinion

  20. #100
    During Ulduar I was serious raiding and while I started in TBC I never got to see all of the 25 man's I will agree about Ulduar. I agree with most have said about Ulduar about hardmodes, art and all the other. Another thing which some may say good and bad but actually the first few bosses even most guilds could step in and defeat. I remember our first Ulduar raid and we had no idea (at least me) about Flame Leviathian and it was such an easy one shot. Now when we tried to do hardmodes with towers up that was a different story. So again different difficulties just by simply doing or not doing a few things.

    Also as a warlock had some of the very best tier gear Tier 8 (25-man) Conqueror's Deathbringer Garb, which behind the 2 lock sets from SSC and BT/Hyjal.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •