Why is Ulduar fondly remembered?

[ophion1990]

The way hardmodes activated was unique and pretty cool imo.

[soulstaz]

1- The hardmode activation.
I just find this way of doing Hardmode give a lot more immersion rather than change difficultie

2- Lore, you gotta kill a titan that want to destroy azeroth !!!
I mean Algalon fight, how could this not be epic.

3- Graphic
All of the raid environnement, the zone itself. We have a ice zone, a natural zone etc.

4- really nice boss Design
General vexazz fight, one the coolest boss design ever, specialy for healer imo, yogg fight was awesome, and still wipe people at 90 if they dont know how to do yogg +0.

5- Big red button for Firefighter!
NOthing else to say on that!

[Heladys]

Titans.

/10char

[flambookey]

Visually stunning, amazing story, non-linear progression , introduction of hardmodes, a challenging end boss that people were proud to have killed, I mean there are tons of reasons why it was so good. Ulduar is on a high pedestal as it should be, but blizz set the bar very high with ulduar and it has been hard to replicate such a magnificent instance.

[Celarent]

Interesting, quest-established, emotion-evoking story with three-dimensional characters and clear motivations; imaginative, enthusiastic scale and scope; immersive encounter mechanics via easter-egg hard-modes; lovingly consistent art and atmosphere.

I don't think Blizzard has poured its heart into a raid like that since.

[Wilian]

First of all, it was filled with lore. Everything in the place had explanation and reasoning of being there and not just some hasty "experiement of this and that", but actually something that had been built up at times through several questing zones at best.

Second of all, it wasn't "gamey" in it's different "versions". You didn't interact with UI, you interacted with world by your own actions with your character. That is million times more immersive to the experience than clicking around options from the UI. Hell, even teleports had an in-game reasoning for them rather than just being slapped in for the sake of convenience without any indication of them existing.

Third, the areas each had their own distinct look, feel and hell, systems and the raid did feel due to that GIGANTIC (which it was), yet sensible. The fact that it wasn't linear also contributed hugely to it.

Those three are something that popped into mind without even trying to think on it too much and the more I start considering, the more smaller and larger things come up.

[stumpy]

I remember it fondly for one reason.

Amazing. You have nothing to do now that people who aren't you have cleared Ulduar.

[Tekkommo]

Pros

- It wasn't current tier for long (why???)
- Besides Sarth 3D, Hardmodes for the first time
- Mimiron and Yogg-Sarron were great fights
- It was a lot of peoples first proper raid
- I remember you... in the mountains...

The Bad

- Worst boss in raid history (the first boss)
- Lots of boring fights, I hated having to clear the instance up to the keepers every week
- It wasn't current tier for long (yes also a bad thing)
- The above helped people not get sick of it
- Activating hardmodes wasn't that exciting as some people make it out to be, if they stuck with that version of hardmodes it would get boring and repetitive very fast
- It came after Naxx 25 man, which was terrible
- It was followed by ToC, which was even worse, this can make something look better than it is, and wow players have short term memories, they forget a lot of things

Remember this is just my opinion

[Deleted]

I still get goosebumps all over me when I think of the first time drivin that sweet machina towards mimirons "tinkering chamber".

Ulduar was epic, reasons which justify fondly rememberance have been said enough already, but I want to add that SoO and ICC are almost on par with ulduar for me. The only two things missing from ICC and SoO are the hard mode system and pure personal preferances of style and music, though icc and soo lore is more appealing to me.

I dont think blizzard is lazy on encounter design. I also loved some encounters in cata (encounters, not the size of the raids nor the ambience and feeling - cata was bad, but the encounters were fun, f.e. the hms of ascendant council or nef, alakir, ragnaros, gunship in ds).
Tbh I would surely stop playing if raids didnt feel epic and big for me anymore. That's why I haven't had a single raiding break since about mid tbc where raids were far more disappointing than today.

[Golden Yak]

I think it's the culmination of the Yogg-Saron storyline for me - that was a great moment.

[BetoDS]

All im going to say is: You seek the secrets of Ulduar? Then take them!

[caninepawprints]

Everybody pretty much covered everything I would've said. I'll just add that the biggest reasons I liked it is because of the immersion into the story itself was fantastic, plus all of the different ways you could do the raid content itself.

[Orcindauh]

Idk, tbh the best thing I liked about it was yogg. I'm an old god fan. Old gods are the most badass thing in this game imo.

For the actual raid encounters, they were neat but every tier has had at least a couple nice raid encounters imo. I don't remember Ulduar for Ulduar, I remember it for yogg.

I can't honestly say which tier is the best, I try to judge individual bosses rather then the whole instance. Such as Heroic Rag was one of my favorite bosses but I won't go as far as saying Firelands is one of my favorite tiers.

[Buxton McGraff]

It felt MASSIVE and it truly was. The fights were interesting and the hard mode was unlocked by doing certain things during the fight. The story was awesome and there was just so much diversity between the bosses. Not only that but the "Descent Into Madness" just felt so eerie and ominous.

[Deleted]

Good times, wiping on Xt-002 because it's voice made half the raid choke in laughter. Herpaderp people at Thorim/Hodir. That one douchebag that ALWAYS pressed the big red button before Mimiron.

If only i could relive those moments, if only...

[GKLeatherCraft]

Nostalgia, wrath babies...oh and, Cataclysm sucked ass by comparison.

I would have to disagree with that on this occasion, "Nostalgia" seems to be a stupid excuse for things anyway, But regardless, everyone I know who loves Ulduar loved Ulduar while it was current, which totally rules those silly "bandwagon" reasons often thrown around.

[Karei]

Ulduar was constantly present. The instance was in the making from as soon as you set foot in Storm Peaks. You just knew something was going to pop up there.
The quests in the zones all tied in to the storyline Ulduar brought. Freya was in Sholazar Basin, Mimiron had his little henchman roaming the north end of Storm Peaks.
Hodir was tied into the Sons of Hodir daily zone, Thorim emerged in Halls of Lightning and Halls of Stone tying into the Iron Dwarves storyline after being betrayted by his brother Loken and having his protodrake being brutally plated into Razorscale.
There were some odd bosses in there that didn't really tie into the sotryline but it all felt really well designed.

[Zlebar]

Looking back there was quite a bit going on for Ulduar.

1. Boss Diversity - So many of the bosses involved different mechanics, some you had to stack, some spread, some a group stacks while the rest spreads, get out of void zones, dodge fire, dodge lasers, time your burst DPS to activate hardmodes perfectly(see Hodir and XT), there was a gauntlet fight, there was multiple kite fights, there were multiple fights where 3 tanks was completely normal. Some of the fights that you participated in had 3 or 4 different difficulties in which you had to contend.

2. Difficulty - There was such a wide variety in the difficulty in the instance. Some fights seemed astronomically hard until you got better gear, and each of the 3-4 bosses in each section gave you just the perfect amount of drops to fulfill the gear requirement for the next section. It was actually semi-gated, people didn't just walk in and kill all the bosses in the 2nd week the instance was out, it took even the top tier guilds over a month of grinding gear for us to see the first 0-Light kill(exodus you cheaters).

3. The raid had something for every guild. If your guild was a guild that really wasn't that good, you still had so many options as far as what to try next and how to go about clearing the dungeon(or at least what you could get to). The heroic encounters kept everyone busy right up until the next patch was released(albeit probably a month early tbh). None of the fights just seemed overwhelmingly unattanaible, and Algalon was a new mechanic that everyone had to bring their A-game to so that we could not waste our weeks worth of attempts(60 minutes was just sooooo short).

Overall the raid had an epic feel, you felt like you were a part of something the second that you stepped into that instance. It had that feeling of "this is so much bigger than just me".

I was a completely satisfied raider at the end of that patch, although sometimes I hated raiding it(that 40+ wipe for the week you had because some healer forgot to move for mimiron's spinning up during firefighter). It's those fights where the stars seem to align for you to get your first kill and it feels glorious that made Ulduar so special. It wasn't like there was just one of those fights in the instance there was 3 or 4 of them. Anyone remember trying to seperate perfectly for chain lighting on Thorim Heroic? How about running to get into the black hole on Algalon, or dancing around fire without losing too much DPS on Firefighter, and how about perfectly managing your level of madness on 0 Light Yogg.. All of those things made this instance truly one of the greats and I was truly glad that I got to partake in the killing of bosses in Ulduar.

[Orcindauh]

Looking back there was quite a bit going on for Ulduar.

1. Boss Diversity - So many of the bosses involved different mechanics, some you had to stack, some spread, some a group stacks while the rest spreads, get out of void zones, dodge fire, dodge lasers, time your burst DPS to activate hardmodes perfectly(see Hodir and XT), there was a gauntlet fight, there was multiple kite fights, there were multiple fights where 3 tanks was completely normal. Some of the fights that you participated in had 3 or 4 different difficulties in which you had to contend.

2. Difficulty - There was such a wide variety in the difficulty in the instance. Some fights seemed astronomically hard until you got better gear, and each of the 3-4 bosses in each section gave you just the perfect amount of drops to fulfill the gear requirement for the next section. It was actually semi-gated, people didn't just walk in and kill all the bosses in the 2nd week the instance was out, it took even the top tier guilds over a month of grinding gear for us to see the first 0-Light kill(exodus you cheaters).

3. The raid had something for every guild. If your guild was a guild that really wasn't that good, you still had so many options as far as what to try next and how to go about clearing the dungeon(or at least what you could get to). The heroic encounters kept everyone busy right up until the next patch was released(albeit probably a month early tbh). None of the fights just seemed overwhelmingly unattanaible, and Algalon was a new mechanic that everyone had to bring their A-game to so that we could not waste our weeks worth of attempts(60 minutes was just sooooo short).

So kinda like almost every other tier since wrath? Also 99% of players don't ever clear an instance the 2nd week it is out.

[Deleted]

Nostalgia = popular phrase that forum goers use to dismiss opinions differ from their own, but they have no actual basis for doing so.

Subjectively break down for us why Ulduar sucked. We'll wait.

Subjectively? Well, he just did didn't he.