What makes a Great Raid?

[LilSaihah]

I can't agree with you on every point. I think parachuting off a flying ship onto a Dragon Aspect's back is pretty strong environmental design, and easily as grand as anything in Karazhan or Ulduar. But I do like the idea of working backwards and looking for themes in all the comments.

Cinematic moments are not the same thing as environment design. Dragon Soul was repeated environments for every single encounter and every single trash mob. Deathwing's back is the closest thing to a unique environment, and it lasts all of 50 yards.

[Twistedelmo]

Class specifics.
Examples: you needed Priests in Naxx to mind control, AQ40 you needed frost mages to kill that slime.
High king maul'gar (sp?) warlock controlling the Fel hounds made the fight a lot more easier.
The crazy cat bitch in ulduar: prot warriors being able to break fear and interrupt was huge.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Cinematic moments are not the same thing as environment design. Dragon Soul was repeated environments for every single encounter and every single trash mob. Deathwing's back is the closest thing to a unique environment, and it lasts all of 50 yards.

It wasn't just a cinematic moment! They did a great job giving you the feel of that encounter. First you had to ask the pilot to bring the ship in close. Then, after the brief cinematic, you do land and have this precarious footing where you're likely to get tossed off at any moment.

I mean, would you rather have another surround-the-dragon-but-look-out-for-tail-swipe dungeon encounter?

[RedGamer030]

Good mechanics, boss variety, and a great atmosphere.

[Auxora]

To be a truly great raid it has to incorporate all parts. Good and *original* fight mechanics are a critical part, but there is more to it. The size of the raid, tuning, immersion, the area outside the raid leading up to it (which increases immersion), art, music, lore, etc. Kara and ICC stand out to me for those reasons as the best, but of course it's all subjective. Kara in it's time had an amazing area that added to the immersion leading up to it, needing a key or someone with the key to enter, optional paths, a back door, INCREDIBLE pvp outside Kara in it's day, awesome art/music/fights, random fights (the play), lore, new fight mechanics, chess I know people hated but was still cool. And ICC had really all of the same incredible immersion, art, fights, etc.

Ulduar was very good too and gets an honorable mention for sure, but I still personally rank ICC and Kara just a hair ahead. I'd also add Sepentshrine Cavern as an honorable mention as well. It's often overlooked, but in it's day SSC was great, had awesome fights, immersion, great pvp outside the door , The Lurker Below was about the coolest thing ever, and SCC had a couple of quite challenging fights for the time in the latter parts of it. Sadly many of the people that would vouch today for how great SSC and the other good wotlk and prior raids mentioned are no longer play wow or are around to speak their praises.

P.S. Dragon Soul takes the cake as the worst raid ever in my opinion for all of the same reasons. No immersion, just a hodge-podge of boring and copied fight mechanics from older raids (felt like a best of at times), and the Deathwing fight was beyond awful. All of Cata led up to fighting Deathwing, and the final fight of the expansion is to kill his feet, and you barely even see him? Gah that was a horrible raid.

[Mirishka]

I can't agree with you on every point. I think parachuting off a flying ship onto a Dragon Aspect's back is pretty strong environmental design, and easily as grand as anything in Karazhan or Ulduar. But I do like the idea of working backwards and looking for themes in all the comments.

Not being the end tier in an xpac is an interesting point. Perhaps that's the one people most tire of while waiting for the next xpac? ICC seems to be the exception; many people still list it as a favorite.

Memorable characters for sure. The Lich King has to be Blizz's most iconic villain and they did a great job building him up (remembering the impending doom as he pursues you in Halls of Reflection) leading into that raid. ICC also has Marrowgar, Saurfang, Putricide, Syndragosa... I suppose Dragon Soul was lacking in that category as every boss other than Deathwing himself was brand new and without much of a backstory.

Art & Music: Lots of people mentioning these. I think Blizz does a great job with the music overall for the game. Some raids are certainly more memorable visually than others.

What most players aren't mentioning is loot. While it's important to feel like you're advancing your character in some way - that's integral to games of this sort - the loot all gets replaced at some point. I'm actually more excited about gear that looks amazing for transmog than gear with better stats, as the transmog piece has the potential to stay with my character a whole lot longer.

ICC got a smaller, follow-up raid in the form of Ruby Sanctum. So people that were tired of it had something else to do.

- - - Updated - - -

It wasn't just a cinematic moment! They did a great job giving you the feel of that encounter. First you had to ask the pilot to bring the ship in close. Then, after the brief cinematic, you do land and have this precarious footing where you're likely to get tossed off at any moment.

I mean, would you rather have another surround-the-dragon-but-look-out-for-tail-swipe dungeon encounter?

A lot of people forget that Deathwing was absolutely flippin' gigantic, I mean his wingspan was 1200' - there was no way heroes could do a 'tank and spank' on something of that size.

[Deleted]

me healing it

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

To be a truly great raid it has to incorporate all parts. Good and *original* fight mechanics are a critical part, but there is more to it. The size of the raid, tuning, immersion, the area outside the raid leading up to it (which increases immersion), art, music, lore, etc. Kara and ICC stand out to me for those reasons as the best, but of course it's all subjective. Kara in it's time had an amazing area that added to the immersion leading up to it, needing a key or someone with the key to enter, optional paths, a back door, INCREDIBLE pvp outside Kara in it's day, awesome art/music/fights, random fights (the play), lore, new fight mechanics, chess I know people hated but was still cool. And ICC had really all of the same incredible immersion, art, fights, etc.

Ulduar was very good too and gets an honorable mention for sure, but I still personally rank ICC and Kara just a hair ahead. I'd also add Sepentshrine Cavern as an honorable mention as well. It's often overlooked, but in it's day SSC was great, had awesome fights, immersion, great pvp outside the door , The Lurker Below was about the coolest thing ever, and SCC had a couple of quite challenging fights for the time in the latter parts of it. Sadly many of the people that would vouch today for how great SSC and the other good wotlk and prior raids mentioned are no longer play wow or are around to speak their praises.

P.S. Dragon Soul takes the cake as the worst raid ever in my opinion for all of the same reasons. No immersion, just a hodge-podge of boring and copied fight mechanics from older raids (felt like a best of at times), and the Deathwing fight was beyond awful. All of Cata led up to fighting Deathwing, and the final fight of the expansion is to kill his feet, and you barely even see him? Gah that was a horrible raid.

I think it would have been terrible if we had been able to fight Deathwing as just another dragon. Having us attack whatever parts of him we could access made perfect sense, given his size. First it was prying at the scales on his back, then it was the claws he braced himself with as he stood in the maelstrom and tried to rip our planet apart. I've tanked lots of dragons over the years, from Onyxia to Syndragosa. Would have been terribly disappointing if Deathwing were handled the same way.

[Toxigen]

Interesting mechanics, tight-tuning, a great degree of difficulty so progression lasts a long time.

I'm the 1%

[Djriff]

I have to say mechanics and there should be a good reason I'm fighting the boss/going through the area.

Take SoO as an example. A lot of those fights felt great lorewise and most the same mechanically. They tied in a lot of stuff you did through the expansion and leveling up and brought it all together. Fighting paragons, which you knew would happen eventually, still felt great even if the fight was annoying as hell until the fix to the order. I have to say my favorite fight in the whole instance was Nazgrim. I was horde at the time and I honestly felt regretful I had to fight this guy, who had literally been with me every step of the way when I was leveling.

That's what I think makes a great raid.

[shaunika123]

1. look and atmosphere, it shouldnt look too similar and repetitive (like how literally 100% of firelands is just bright orange eye cancer)
2. diverse and interesting fights, it should have at least a couple mechanics weve never had before. and no 2 bosses should feel too similar
3. smooth difficulty curve (dont have one of the hardest bosses in the tier be one of the earliest hello gorefiend)
4. dont make the final boss too long with 55 phases and time for 2 bloodlust (hello kaelthas, imperator) lich king is sort of excused but i still hated how long it was.
5. lore/story investment, this is sort of personal for me and isnt necessarily so important for the masses but for me it is. i cant wait for emerald nightmare for that very reason

for bonus point i'd like to mention as little gearcheck fights as possible, i hated how kormrok was made infinitely easier if you split raided so you had gear to kill him before he went into the crazy phase at the end where everything happens at once, or the gear to kill gurtogg before he stacks the debuff to 4 and you dont have enough max health

[Deleted]

A raid without legacy players. Because they are bad and want to level.

[Shady47]

I do believe a good raid should have first of all a good design (both for bosses and environment), secondly good mechanics (involving the environment too, not only pewpew bangbang).

Also they should try to make old raids not feel too useless, I know it's obvious to do so, but at least try to make them useful in some ways

[Spotnick]

Apparently it needs to be either a Titan themed raid or an undead theme raid.

People are sick to death of Orcs and Trolls, and even bugs and demons.

Speaking of which, they have never done a human raid didn't they?

[clevin]

Step one: Be like Ulduar

Seriously though, Ulduar was great. The only raid where multiple difficulty modes combined with the then recently introduced achievement system made sense. I also liked the art, setting, sense of mystery and atmosphere. It was the lightning in a bottle that they probably never will be able to reproduce again, even though they don't exactly made many outright bad raids afterwards.

Creativity in the encounter designs is greatly appreciated of course. The Hans'gar and Franzok fight comes to mind.

I kind of agree with all of this. Ulduar had a lot of bosses but several were skippable (the Iron Dorfs, Razorscale, Ignis) and others (the Keepers) could be done in whatever order you wanted. Add in the variety of boss mechanics and it was mostly fun. The only thing I didn't like about it was the first boss. I get why Flame Leviathan was like it was, but that's a ton of trash to wade through to get to the first actual boss, esp if you wanted to take down some or all of the towers.

[FobManX]

1. Good lore. There needs to be a reason why I'm here besides just "lul purplez." Even bigger is when new lore is discovered during the raid.

2. BIG. It needs to feel like an enemy stronghold. Lots of room, lots of areas, lots of enemies.

3. Smooth transitions between zones. It shouldn't be one mass space of everything being the same. There should be a flow between the beginning, middle, and end portions of the raid zone.

4. Aesthetically pleasing on the eyes. Good color schemes, nice artwork, that kinda thing. You spend hours in a place you don't want to look at dreck.

5. Interesting bosses. Mechanics that are challenging but fun, something you remember.

6. Trash that doesn't feel like an endless grind. There needs to be some trash, but there's a line between too much and not enough. And it shouldn't just all be an AOE-fest. Make us use skill to get through the trash.

7. Catchy music. My favorite raids all had epic music that really set the tone for the raid(i.e. Illidan, Black Temple, Kara).

8. Amazing last boss that really challenges your entire raid and puts a finishing touch on the raid, really making you feel a sense of accomplishment.

[Kryos]

Diversity - that's why Ulduar is still so good.

[clevin]

6. Trash that doesn't feel like an endless grind. There needs to be some trash, but there's a line between too much and not enough. And it shouldn't just all be an AOE-fest. Make us use skill to get through the trash.

I ran Black Temple the other day to try for some glaives on my rogue (sad trombone here..) and that place has WAY too much trash that's just there, in the way especially after you get by Akama. Sunwell the same.

[Faerillis]

There are a few factors.

Decent mechanics are of course a necessity. A cohesive theme is important too — Firelands for example was a really impressive raid. Dragon Soul and Siege of Orgrimmar just feel like an Expansion Clipshow. But the most important thing? Threat.

Dragon Soul, well each boss is the 'Last of the [Insert Enemy Type]' so it feels less like you're battling for the fate of the world and more like you're doing a quick little cleanup. Siege of Orgrimmar? You spend the first part cleaning up Garrosh's mess, then moving on his last little bastion where he doesn't even have any really unique new things to throw at you.

Now compare those to Icecrown Citadel. You make a last ditch effort to attack the Lich King at the seat of his power, you spend 3 dungeons pushing to get any possible advantage and pretty much every push into it you make is a damn Pyrrhic Victory. Cohesive theme. Interesting and unique mechanics (if not always the best thought out). Strong sense of threat.

[SoulSoBreezy]

We get into debates about which raids are best. There's people arguing in another thread (in General section, not the thread here on favorites) about whether HFC was great or boring. It occurs to me that we aren't all judging by the same criteria.

What makes a raid great for you? The art? Music? Lore and back story?

Or maybe it's more about the mechanics of the boss fights. Are you mostly impressed by how tricky it is to multi-task all the hazards necessary to down a boss? By the teamwork and discipline required? The good challenge and sense of accomplishment when you finally get it?

What about creativity? I love when I see a fight for the first time and think, "Ok Blizz, hat's off to you, this is pretty cool." For example: Many players have complained about not getting a more traditional dragon fight with Deathwing, but I loved that we were chasing him through the air in a flying ship and then parachuting onto his back! I was thinking "Wow! This is so much cooler than just another dragon fight!"

I think I'm most impressed when Blizz tries something creative and mostly succeeds in pulling it off. You could fall off Deathwing's back and did feel like your position was precarious the whole fight. Battling Yogg-Saron was a crazy fight that felt disorienting and brute strength just wasn't that important.

What criteria have I overlooked?

If you were leading a team to create the greatest WoW raid ever, what would your criteria be?

The only thing that truly matters to me is the team atmosphere. A positive dynamic between the members powers its way through both punishing, fulfilling and garbage-ass content. As long as we can laugh and have a good time as a fam, I'm good.