Ulduar raid design vs. current content

[Kazgrel]

Ulduar was the peak of raid design. I liked the creativity that went into how to activate the hard modes vs. ToC and beyond when it became just a toggle in the party/raid options.

[Gadzooks]

Thats quite a good Point. Having those bosses involved into certain regions of WOD would have been cool and more epic to kill them.

Absolutely! I mean, they haven't always built up every boss in every raid outside of the raid, but they did almost nothing to build up the Warlords, and this was supposed to be about them! Kargath got nothing, and died almost right away. Kilrogg does nothing until the Legendary quest - you'll probably kill him in the Iron Citadel, but where's his story? Blackhand has no backstory in the game, you have to go read a short story to get anything outside of the game, and that's unacceptable for one of the main protagonists of the expansion. Grom has gotten almost nothing until the Legendary quest. The ONLY Warlord who got any real attention is Ner'zhul.

Considering they sold this expansion as "going back to visit the SAVAGE Warlords of Draenor, and get to know them and their stories, because they're so cool and interesting", what we got is a fucking joke.

It's almost like Metzen came up with the idea, and got as far as Ner'zhul, before stepping down as Creative Director, and since then, Afrasiabi is like "Oh, yeah, the Warlords...I guess we better put them in somewhere".

[Kyrro]

The sad thing to think of is that Blizzard "Merged" with Activision in the middle of WotLK's development. From rumors/hints from developers it's suggested that Ulduar was planned to be available at release or an unlocked raid near the expansions release. So Ulduar was largely developed pre-merge meaning it really feels like the last non-Activision influenced bit of content.

I'm not saying everything afterwards has been bad, but there has been a lot of mistakes in design since Cataclysm. A lot of raids feel rushed and under tested. I can't help but think Activision influence is causing issues.

[rasako]

To be fair all the major plot points that Arthas achieved were not achieved in the WoW lore but rather in Warcraft. If we go by that I believe it was Blackhand that was leading when Stormwind fell during the first war.

In WoW Arthas was always playing with us rather than appearing as a threat. He was also stopped by 1 man with a sword after destroying the entire group and laughing at our best efforts? Hardly unstoppable.

I believe you mean defeated by deus ex machina and shitty writing after he WON

[Kickbuttmario]

Listen, Ulduar was that raid that released in a good time, had the right mechanics, art, story, and pretty much the entirety of old gods/titans going for it. No idea why you mention ICC, thought that place was bland as fuck.

The raid that I think came close its prowess was Throne of Thunder because it truly did feel like you were going inside this kingdom in search of a king who should be dead but lived because his people wanted the old mogu way of life back. I feel like that was what MoP did best, actually just completing its story arc.

WoD feels weird with Blackhand because I am not sure why a warlord, who was supposedly supposed to be built up, never really got built up. Same with the Doomhammer crap.

[birdyy]

The sad thing to think of is that Blizzard "Merged" with Activision in the middle of WotLK's development. From rumors/hints from developers it's suggested that Ulduar was planned to be available at release or an unlocked raid near the expansions release. So Ulduar was largely developed pre-merge meaning it really feels like the last non-Activision influenced bit of content.

I'm not saying everything afterwards has been bad, but there has been a lot of mistakes in design since Cataclysm. A lot of raids feel rushed and under tested. I can't help but think Activision influence is causing issues.

You know what really felt rushed and under tested? Naxx in wotlk being a literal copy of a raid they already had with poorly tuned difficulty.
ToC with faction champs being released so poorly tuned that if you had enh shaman you probably lost as he walked around randomly targeting your ranged 1shotting them. but dont worry even if you didnt have him the warrior charging one and 1shotting hapened too as well as any of the other melee targeting a cloth player on that fight pre-fix = 1shot. yet it was still downed and then they nerfed it to be laughable just like beasts, jaraxus, and twins. twins.. the 1attempt to down boss easier than kargath.
Were you there on ulduar at release btw? pretty sure i couldnt turn my vehicle and drove off a cliff to destroy it then got stuck and couldnt release and then when i finally did other vehicles wouldnt respawn.
ICC was the worst. LK being so overrtuned they needed to implement the buff for ppl to kill him. the rest? lol ez.really other than heroic sind, heroic princes and heroic LK icc was easy as shit.

i would take t11 and firelands over anything in wotlk any day. except maybe ulduar > firelands MAYBE.

[Shelly]

He channeled the holy light and shattered it with the most powerful lightinfused weapon there is in warcraft? Hardly just any man with any sword.

The real reason why wrath is so revered is because how they set it up. not only was the theme great, it had appearances from bosses outside of the raids so it kind of built up to it, and we geared up by actually defeating these raids instead of getting burnt out with raid finder or single player activities like garrisons/legendary quests.

OK, that bit right there. That's BS.

You were constantly grinding 5's as a catch-up mechanic. Now these were and are some pretty sweet 5-mans, especially the Frostmourne Halls which I think in a different world would have been a 10-man dungeon.

But the fact remains, you were grinding 5's like crazy to get justice points to buy your "starter" tier set. They started it with ToC and pretty much continued it for at least a 2-piece through Cat.

The biggest mistep in LK I think was that they should have released ToC before Ulduar, then after Ulduar they should have released the Frostmourne Halls as their own raid, then finally the assault on ICC.

But talking about just story, WoW isn't very good at their stories. Not because of their epic nature, but because of how fractured their stories are. If you say MoP was a lame story, well you weren't paying attention.

If you say BC was a lame story, you probably didn't finish all of your quests in Shadowmoon Valley or do the BT attunement.

As it stands both leave a lot to be read between the lines. BC was the worst at this, I'd say WoD is following in a close second as far as totally fractured story goes and MoP probably has the most cohesive plot line from start to finish that really does a great job connecting Cat right into WoD.

Anyway, stories you may have missed:

BC, Vasj is trying to control all the water in Outland we're stopping her. Kael is amassing large amounts of arcane power and acting as the power behind the throne of Illidan, the taste of demonic magics that Illidan provided for him in WC3 drawing him under the Legion's influence. Illidan is in a broken state, spending all his time pining over his loss to Arthas, he's actually lost control of his entire empire and with the fall of his lieutenants has only become more depressed. His Illidari council is the real power, all we're doing is putting him out of his misery to ensure the independence of the Ashtongue Broken. Kil'Jaeden, his resurrected Kael and found the embodiment of the Sunwell, will use her to supercharge himself and attempt to overthrow Sargeras.

LK, pretty heavy handed that Arthas has us playing through his downfall. Only thing is that we are rising and overcoming where he failed.

Cat, moving towards the final confrontation with Deathwing but hard to feel it with how scattered so much is. Would have been better with the Throne of Tides patch but frankly the more time we spent NOT underwater the better. The game just doesn't handle 3-dimensions well. This expansion had some great content but still felt more than anything like "parade of the guest stars!" with us fighting too many things we'd already taken care of. Still had some fun leveling up where it increased some of the alliance/horde tensions while still having an air of "ok, time to try and put this shit back together."

MoP, very consistent and easy to follow storyline. Followed exactly what they said they do and brought the "war" back to Warcraft and made sense for us to get involved in proxy-wars, when two great powers have disposed of their biggest outside threats it makes sense for them to attack one another and attempt to control any new land. While a lot of folks look at the superficialities of just the Pandaren race the expansion was actually very dark with extreme nuance. Garrosh was never corrupted, he knew exactly what he was doing from the start once he discovered that there was a hidden power in the area. Much the same as Grom will eventually succumb to the demon blood, it's part of their nature to seek power and they refuse to be seen as weak.

WoD, biggest issue is WTF is actually going on with Shattrath? It'll probably be the next raid or so, but a lot of it feels like they have some huge story gaps that make it hard to tell what happened right before we swoop in to save the day.

[proteen]

Vanilla raiding- Puke 3/10

I thoroughly enjoy when people target "how bad" raiding was in vanilla, yet it was the very start of the game - which gained a ton of momentum and has led WoW to still being a thing 10 years later. Raiding in vanilla was greatc compared with every other mmo at the time. It has obviously improved since (hence the whole "being around for 10 years" thing).

Its like saying that Mario on the N64 has terrible graphics, but a version made in 2015 has super awesome graphics! Currently? No duh. But please use comparisons to what was around at the time.

[Licarius]

Thats quite a good Point. Having those bosses involved into certain regions of WOD would have been cool and more epic to kill them.

I guess I would counter that with, its not the end tier raid and the "big bad", be it guldan or hellscream have had numerous encounters with players, building the hatred towards them, poisoning kadgar for example, much like LK showed up on occasion during Wrath.

Right now, I want to fight Guldan, I want to fight Grommash.... this is the same feeling players had in Wrath towards LK. I like everything about how the story has played out in wod and I suspect 6.2 will only exaggerate this more with the new raid/daily hub.

[Wondercrab]

It's surprising that they haven't done more raids with varied interiors. There's a lot to be said for a bit of diversity in the art, and it's refreshing to break up the visual pacing of an instance a bit.

Ulduar was certainly unrivalled in that regard, but other favourites like Karazhan, Black Temple, Sunwell, and Throne of Thunder, were memorable for their varied interiors as well.
It's always a bit disappointing for me when a raid sticks with one art style for the entire thing and doesn't do much to make the interiors exceptionally creative.

Blackrock Foundry is a great example of a raid that has some super cool fights, an interesting layout, and some set pieces that are really cool and unique. But at the same time, the theme and usage of colour feels about as bland as it gets. Everything's browns and blacks and fire. Despite having some awesome areas like the train depot, the conveyor belt rooms, and the underground dock, the visual style they went with just blurs them all together a little too much.

A focused style is cool for shorter instances, but when you have multiple wings and tons of bosses it just tends to leave things feeling a little more bland than they should have.

I think Black Temple and Karazhan are probably the best examples of raids mixing up their visuals while still keeping to the same overall theme. BT has more or less the same interiors throughout, but most of the areas vary distinctly in one way or another. You start out in the dilapidated, watery, naga-infested sewers, before moving out into the enormous open courtyard with drakes flying overhead. Then you head into the temple proper, filled with ominous statues and multiple sub-areas branching off from the grand central chamber. The Reliquary of Souls is crumbling and ruined, filled with spooky magical energy and spirits. Bloodboil's area is full of water features. Gorefiend's approach has indoor and outdoor areas, with many segments overlooking other areas of the temple. The section before Shahraz is full of lavish furnishings, fountains, food, beds, and a glorious promenade heading up to her, and the fight with Illidan takes place at the temple summit.

It also helps when a raid varies up its trash mobs significantly. A lot of those memorable raids also had completely different mob types to match the changes in visual style. Comparing that to Blackrock Foundry, all of the trash blurs together into "iron horde orcs" in my head, with the occasional ogron and goren thrown in.

So yeah. I guess that was a long way of saying that visual and thematic diversity is great way to make different areas of raids feel unique and memorable.

[TheMediator]

BRF:
Gruul - not seen outside of the raid.

Are you SHITTING me? He was a figure in BC, we have a number of references to him being the father of Gronn, etc.

Operator Thogar as an encounter gets built-up via the Pit and Grimrail Depot. All those trains and train tracks come from somewhere.

Blast Furnace was effectively built-up in the Blackhand comic, at least the Heart of the Mountain was. Also, you know, that whole Iron Horde stuff? Yeah that's all build up to the Blast Furnace.

Actually Highmaul is a lot better than BRF. Kargath was built-up. Butcher was a character in WC3:FT. Cho'gall enslaved earth elementals bing-bam-boom Tectus. The Magic Breakers were established via questing. Mar'gok has retroactively been established as a figure via comics.

Not every single raid boss is going to have whole story quests devoted to them. But a whole ton of them have sufficient backstory behind them. Yes, there are fights like Brackenspore which just come out of nowhere because some designer wanted to do some weird idea for a fight, but a heck of a lot more are rooted in the backstory than in the past, where like, the final boss of a raid might get mentioned here and there and that's it.

[Deleted]

You like the Space themes, Ulduar had, which was inspired by Stargate. Me on the other hand waited since Classic to get Orcish, Ogre savage raids.

Not everyone wants to do Titan raids.

[Hardkorr]

MoP, very consistent and easy to follow storyline. Followed exactly what they said they do and brought the "war" back to Warcraft and made sense for us to get involved in proxy-wars, when two great powers have disposed of their biggest outside threats it makes sense for them to attack one another and attempt to control any new land. While a lot of folks look at the superficialities of just the Pandaren race the expansion was actually very dark with extreme nuance. Garrosh was never corrupted, he knew exactly what he was doing from the start once he discovered that there was a hidden power in the area. Much the same as Grom will eventually succumb to the demon blood, it's part of their nature to seek power and they refuse to be seen as weak.

Imma have to disagree with you on this point, brosef. The main scene of war was in the Jade Forest cutscene/quests and it was only really continued in the Escalation content. Heck, I'm sure the Alliance fistpumping moment of the war was when during the Horde intro quests where a group of Alliance npcs take out Hellscream's fist. The majority of the leveling experience in MoP was helping out the Pandas and there was very little Horde or Alliance interaction/representation. Honestly, it would have been more warlike if Halfhill and our farms got razed (temporarily) from the Horde/Alliance war. Then maybe an epic confrontation of generals at the peaks of Kunlai (like Nazgrim killing Taylor which would have been a better death than WoD and finished the Jade forest confrontation), or HvA fighting at the walls of the Dreadwastes and getting sidelined by bugs but then comes to a 1v1v1 standstill. Really much more could have been done to develop that theme but nothing really came out of it. At least for WotLK, Arthas showed up at the end of each zone shaking his gloved fist at us giving a sense of direction and thematic ties as to what he did and why he's an ass that must die.

[Dom]

The theme of Wrath was superior indeed. Theme is extremely important. Try as we might to just see bosses as loot pinatas and mechanics, you can't help but notice all the "lol pandas" and "moat orcs" complaints on the forums. A more engaging theme would breathe life into WoW

We have been killing orcs and ogres in black and brown instances for 19 months now. It's starting to become very mentally draining. The only thing that will break that monotony in 6.2 is that the fire will be green instead of orange and there will be a couple of demon bosses. But for the most part, it's probably just more orcs with dirt floors and black iron walls.

[Deleted]

I think the way they're doing raids atm is fine, far better than MoP and Cata but WotlK was the king purely because of Ulduar. I can only assume that the effort they put into that place was just too much for them in the end, especially since friggin TOTC replaced it. The design was awesome, the fights were awesome and I loved the mechanics were you needed to do something to trigger the hardmore instead of just flicking a button on the UI.

- - - Updated - - -

We have been killing orcs and ogres in black and brown instances for 19 months now. It's starting to become very mentally draining. The only thing that will break that monotony in 6.2 is that the fire will be green instead of orange and there will be a couple of demon bosses. But for the most part, it's probably just more orcs with dirt floors and black iron walls.

I personally want to see what Algalon is up to, I want to see what the scourge and Bolvar are up to and I want to see bit more of the Titan storyline. I know that they touched upon it in MoP, but still the vast majority of the story was new stuff instead of continuing storylines we got interested in. Then we go to a damn alternative universe.

[Stormspellz]

Blackhand almost took down Talador. The Lich King completely destroyed Lordearon and Quel'thalas
Blackhand fights you on multiple floors. The Lich King fights you on the top of a 2000 foot pillar of ice formed by Kil'jaedan himself.
Blackhand represents the military strength of the Iron Horde. The Lich King represents an unstoppable plague of death and endless recruitment to his side.


I just...I just can't see how you think Blackhand was more of a threat.

the lich king in wow is much different the w3 version. In wow he's a bad Saturday morning cartoon villain, and the LK fight was lore wise rather sad for as much hype blizz gave about it....."oh look the ret paladin forgot he had bubble...gg"

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Ulduar was amazing because of how hardmodes activated. It wasn't a mode switch you flip entering the raid. It was basiclly doing a standard boss the "hard way" which was amazing. I wish that is the stance they always took instead of the new "add one mechanic.. maybe two, raise numbers, welcome to mythic".

[Ald]

Perhaps the theme could be "fixed" by not making every damn raid about Orcs. I know it's the main point of the entire IP, but i am so sick to death of Orcs.

[goblingirl]

Basically, I think we are all just really tired of fighting trolls, mogu, ogres, and orcs. It's all we've done for a very long time. The art people design the raid interiors appropriately for these races, but yes, it's all rocks, metal and dirt. Honestly BRF feels so much like SoO it's like we never left it. They got away with re-using a lot of the textures from SoO because of the conceit that Garrosh took his technology and aesthetic to the Draenor Horde, but yeah whatever. It still is simply too long looking at the same stuff.

I do miss fighting these in raids: dragons, elves, Titan avatars, etc. Places like Ulduar, ICC, Black Temple, Tempest Keep/Sunwell, etc. were all uniquely grand. Raid artwork hasn't felt grand in a long time. These days they just feel like giant gray caves full of rocks, dirt and fire. It's been a long time since I stayed in a raid instance after it was cleared just to run back through it and look at all the art.

Again, I don't blame the artists for this. They are designing the art for the raids to match the races. The real issue is that the storyline people have forgotten there's anything to fight except trolls, ogres, and orcs.

[TheMediator]

dragons

I'll give you this, I miss dragons as well. I didn't play Cata so I never got dragon fatigue. I wish Blizzard could have pulled a lore excuse out of their ass to have some dragons in WoD. And actual dragons too, proto-drakes don't quite cut it for me. I can only hope the Wrathion expansion has sufficient dragons.