Why are there no HARD world bosses?

[Smank]

Recently I have been playing EverQuest Project 99 (Basically Nostalrius for Everquest but officially licenced) and it got me thinking, why are there no truly hard world bosses in WoW? Legion has quite a few world bosses, but they're all at about an LFR level of difficulty and require far less than a full raid group to down.

Personally I think world bosses should be at a Mythic level or maybe even higher and require a full raid group that knows what they're doing to tackle it. I think world bosses should feel just a bit more epic than Raid bosses since they are alone and out in the open world, but instead now they feel like a wimpy loot piñata.

I mean, just imagine how awesome it'd be if there were some giant bad ass dragon nested atop some mountain in a zone. Maybe it even flies around and Kills people at random like Deathwing did. I think this would really add to the atmosphere of whatever zone it was in. You'd have this feeling every time you see it that the area you were in is truly dangerous.

So what do you think? Should World bosses we epic bad asses or just something you decide to swing by and kill with a few others while you wait for a queue to pop?

[Chickat]

I think there should be both. Something like Oondasta would be okay. Hard for 40 players, but becomes easier with more than 40.

[ComputerNerd]

Difficult by the standards of what level of player ?

Like many complaints of difficulty, this seems to be another one which aims to "fix" the problem by pushing an increased difficulty onto everyone.

[Lucky Fable]

Game can't support them. When there is a hard world boss I have seen eight raid groups attack it together to zerg/crash the server to kill it.

[Eroginous]

Recently I have been playing EverQuest Project 99 (Basically Nostalrius for Everquest but officially licenced) and it got me thinking, why are there no truly hard world bosses in WoW? Legion has quite a few world bosses, but they're all at about an LFR level of difficulty and require far less than a full raid group to down.

Personally I think world bosses should be at a Mythic level or maybe even higher and require a full raid group that knows what they're doing to tackle it. I think world bosses should feel just a bit more epic than Raid bosses since they are alone and out in the open world, but instead now they feel like a wimpy loot piñata.

I mean, just imagine how awesome it'd be if there were some giant bad ass dragon nested atop some mountain in a zone. Maybe it even flies around and Kills people at random like Deathwing did. I think this would really add to the atmosphere of whatever zone it was in. You'd have this feeling every time you see it that the area you were in is truly dangerous.

So what do you think? Should World bosses we epic bad asses or just something you decide to swing by and kill with a few others while you wait for a queue to pop?

There are no hard bosses...

[Skeppio]

MoP had a good system, where there was always one easy world boss and one harder one (I guess it's still debatable on how hard the likes of Galleon and Oondasta were when they were brand new). They just fucked up and forgot about that in Draenor.

The big problem I see is: World bosses have a big flaw in that players of the opposite faction or an opposing raid team are free to pull when you're not ready, get in the way of players, and generally harass the group for shits n giggles. Imagine having to put up with that obnoxious shit while you're fighting a Mythic Blackhand-level boss. It'd drive you crazy after like three wipes.

[Smank]

There are no hard bosses...

So I take it you've cleared Mythic HFC?

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Difficult by the standards of what level of player ?

Like many complaints of difficulty, this seems to be another one which aims to "fix" the problem by pushing an increased difficulty onto everyone.

Who's to say there can't be some easy bosses and a few hard ones?

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MoP had a good system, where there was always one easy world boss and one harder one (I guess it's still debatable on how hard the likes of Galleon and Oondasta were when they were brand new). They just fucked up and forgot about that in Draenor.

The big problem I see is: World bosses have a big flaw in that players of the opposite faction or an opposing raid team are free to pull when you're not ready, get in the way of players, and generally harass the group for shits n giggles. Imagine having to put up with that obnoxious shit while you're fighting a Mythic Blackhand-level boss. It'd drive you crazy after like three wipes.

I think competing with other players over a world boss is fine. It adds a feeling that you're rushing to gain the glory of killing this mythic beast

[Thoughtful Trolli]

So I take it you've cleared Mythic HFC?

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Who's to say there can't be some easy bosses and a few hard ones?

What would the hard bosses reward? If they reward too little, they would be meaningless. Too much and they would be mandatory.

I think what you're asking for is Tarlna the Ageless, Drov the Ruiner, and Rukhmar way they were at the beginning of Warlords of Draenor and not the way they became as higher looting options were released.

Those had 40 man raids, lots and lots of deaths to mechanics, sometimes even wipes, and were still easywin lootbags who were kind of worth it, right?

Certainly not Supreme Lord Kazzak from Tanaan though; He's as kickoverable then as he is right now.

If you don't like Tarlna the Ageless, Drov the Ruiner, and Rukhmar please tell us why those don't meet what you're asking for because frankly a lot of people died to those.

[Sierra85]

don't you remember week 1 ordos?

[Summer]

Because they worked out so badly in the past. Oondasta was the last one. It wasn't even that hard but non-guild groups wiped so much, the normal way to do Oondasta became "die, corpse run back to boss" x 20 while her health slowly went down which was not exactly fun and engaging gameplay. It was nerfed fairly soon after.

A truly hard world boss would pretty much have to be instanced because if anyone can tag it and cause an add to spawn in the wrong place or whatever and cause a wipe no-one would ever kill it since even good groups trying it would get sabotaged, intentionally or unintentionally, by random idiots.

And tbh I don't see the point, there's plenty of hard bosses in raids, no need to put them out in the world.

[Leih]

A truly difficult world boss (mythic raid difficulty) just wouldn't work in today's game... not a chance.

There's a bunch of reasons why this is so.

The most obvious is that with world content there is an option not available to regular instanced raid bosses. Rather than beating it through strategy, the most obvious route to victory is just throw more people at it. So instead of practicing and learning the boss, you build a bigger group. How about two 40-man raids? Three 40-man raids? Maybe five 40-man raids? Whatever it takes to just have enough people to zerg the thing down.

The only way to stop people from doing this, since it's not in an instance, is to add some kind of mechanic which hurts you if you bring more people... like a debuff where the boss heals when someone dies, or a beam that jumps between people in the group and does increasing damage per jump. Sounds familiar? It should, they tried this already. It didn't really solve the problem. A mythic boss generally takes several nights of progression to beat, with the same team practising and wiping and dying over and over. Good luck getting the time to practice pulls over and over when competing with every other raid guild on the server and loads of random pugs swooping in out of curiosity, dying, healing the boss or chaining the mechanic to your whole raid and wiping you.

So the only other solution is to set some kind of tap where only one group can tag at a time right? Well sure, but then you end up INTENTIONALLY wiping each other to be the one to kill the boss next.

Any other solutions? Well you could have whoever tags the boss be the only ones who can interact with it, positively or negatively? But then it's not a world boss any more, it might as well be instanced from the beginning.

This is why it doesn't really work. World bosses are better as LFR-level content for groups of more casual folks to bash against while mythic raiders have their own content in instances.

[Daffan]

I don't even know why they put in bosses like Kazzak other then to goad people into logging in because they feel they need their free items each week. It is literally the most boring thing. Just stand there afk for 2 min.

[Nitros14]

They work real bad. WoW tried them. it was bad.

[chronia]

We had some world bosses in Vanilla that were atleast semi hard when they came out (a few of the green dragons, Kazzak), but they could also be very frustating to do (esp on PVP servers) and in some cases just a few ppl even of the same faction could sabotage the guild trying to do the world boss by just letting themselves get killed. also the competition over these bosses was pretty fierce if there were enough good 40 man guilds on a realm, and more often then not they were farmed by the same few guilds who had setup spotters for around the clock spawn detection, telephone chains in some occasions, without any one else on the realm even killing them.

The problem with hard world bosses i reckon is that they either promote griefing ppl trying to kill them, to get the tap yourself (in case of group tap), or that will be easy after all, by just zerging the boss down like for example Oondasta (faction tap or tap for everyone that gets a hit off).

[Gilgameshh]

They work real bad. WoW tried them. it was bad.

Did YOU try them? I did, and they were fantastic.

I loved doing every vanilla world boss. I loved doing every TBC world boss. I hated doing every single world boss in MoP and WoD (outside of Oondasta, maybe).

It's not necessarily that they're easy; it's more that they feel cheapened by CRZ group finder. It's as if there's absolutely no time of day when you can't queue up into a world boss group. Does that feel special at ALL? They may as well add the bosses as LFR raids at this point and leave them out of the world completely. It used to be incredible to run into a world boss in vanilla/TBC, but now it's almost an annoyance.

Maybe if they were more difficult they might actually feel more epic, even with CRZ group finder. Yeah tons of bad groups will be forming, but when you finally find the one that really has its shit together, you feel like you've accomplished something. I don't know why this game has to cater to those with extremely limited time so that they can complete every piece of content whenever they feel like it. Is there really a good argument that difficult content should be relegated to only high-end raiding?

[Sencha]

Because casuals' tears.

[Nights]

The only rly cool world boss was kazzak durning vanilla, rest are just free loot for those who needs it.

Reason is kinda simple i guess, wow is no longer proper mmo, its more like very casual friendly single player game with co option. So you are goin to log in, you are going to log in your garrision or hs streightbk to it cus of mission and stuff, u might wonna do some daily q, maby u will try to find dungeon co group for some valor if u still need it. 2-3 times in week you will co with some of your online friends durning farm run in year old content, my point is even tho ofc there are raids and stuff to do do in group most of the time you dont need anyone to help you in quest, farming or w/e

Thats it there is no room for hard bosses anymore, arguably we have those in mythic. How would you implement boss that will be hard for over year? It would required scalling like oondasta but even with that you can form 80man group and faceroll it cus scalling in wow ends on 40, with realm hoping and cross realm crap its ipossibru unless blizz will add scalling on much bigger scale.

[Eats Compost]

What does "hard" even mean in this context? Is it hard because players and the environment can mess with you, is it just a plain old hard boss out in the world?

If you want the obvious answer, there aren't hard world bosses because setting a particular level of difficulty is way less likely to succeed in the world. Oondasta was a perfect example of this - they wanted to make a hard world boss with punishing mechanics, and people just ended up brute forcing it. And if you add some really strict controls that prevent that, it very quickly starts to look exactly like a typical instanced boss, except out in the world for no special reason, which then leads to the question of why it isn't set up like a "Vault of Archavon, except hard" type of deal instead.

It sounds cool in theory, but everything is already so rigid, mechanical and predictable that it'd be a novelty for about 15 minutes, and annoyance/routine for 6 months. Unless you're willing to actually pit players against one another for a shot at the boss (PvP or otherwise) and get some good competition/drama out of it, then there's nothing interesting about it at all.

[munkeyinorbit]

I think there should be both. Something like Oondasta would be okay. Hard for 40 players, but becomes easier with more than 40.

Oondasta is the reason why there are no hard world bosses. It was designed to be the "hard-mode" world boss. What blizzard really didn't count on was 200+ people trying to kill a boss designed for 40 people. There was chaos and servers almost melted into the ground. To this day, no-one is even sure of the strat for Oondasta as it wasn't obvious to people running with .4 frames per second. Blizzard said they would find a way to do it but there has never been another attempt to make a hard world boss ever again.

[Pua]

Game can't support them. When there is a hard world boss I have seen eight raid groups attack it together to zerg/crash the server to kill it.

That's pretty much it.

If you make a world boss that's extremely hard, players either look for a way to zerg it or it gets entirely ignored.

It's pointless.