But Mummy... they downed ICC Hardmodes really quickly :(

[Mowg]

EDIT1: Below I have compiled the data for Ulduar Hard Modes.

First I'm just going to make direct comparisons without any analysis.

Sunwell Plateau

Kalecgos
Released: 25th March 2008
Downed: 25th March 2008

Days: First Day


Brutallus
Released: 25th March 2008
Downed: 25th March 2008

Days: First Day


Felmyst
Released: 25th March 2008
Downed: 26th March 2008

Days: 1 Day


This is where the gating system was implemented...


Eredar Twins
Released: 8th April 2008 (9th April in EU)
Downed: 10th April 2008 (EU Guild)

Days: 1 Day


M'uru (a.k.a the "hardest" boss eva)
Released: 29th April 2008 (30th April for EU)
Downed: 4th May 2008 (EU Guild)

Days: 5 Days


Kil'jaeden
Released: 20th May 2008 (21st May for EU)
Downed: 25th May 2008 (EU Guild)

Days: 4 Days


Sunwell Plateau is often described as the "Hardest" Raid in WoW. It was the final raid of "The Burning Crusade", an expansion that is regularly compared to WotLK as a means to say "Wrath is too easy and TBC was much harder". Here is the data for ICC.


Icecrown Citadel: Hardmodes

Lord Marrowgar
Lady Deathwhisper
Gunship Battle
Deathbringer Saurfang
Valithria Dreamwalker
Festergut
Rotface
Blood Princes
Blood Queen Lana'thel
Released: 10th February 2010
Downed: 10th February 2010

Days: First Day


Sindragosa
Released: 10th February 2010
Downed: 11th February 2010

Days: 1 Day


Professor Putricide
Released: 10th February 2010
Downed: 12th February 2010

Days: 2 Days


The Lich King
Released: 10th February 2010
Downed: TBC


The numbers are quite similar to SWP with the obvious difference being M'uru and Kil'jaeden taking slightly longer. Apart from those two bosses, the rest of the bosses in SWP took roughly the same time to down as the Hardmodes of ICC. Time will tell when The Lich King will be downed, but he needs to survive for just 3 more days to last longer than M'uru and Kil'jaeden.

An interesting note, The Lich King normal encounter took 2 days to down, which means he took longer to down than the first 4 bosses of SWP (and most of the ICC hardmodes for that matter). Now, that may be contributed by the fact that there were limited attempts for the fight, but the cock-block limitation was largely softended by those guilds using multiple alts. That being said, it's probably still a bit of an unfair comparison.

Conclusion: So is ICC "Faceroll" easy because a few top guilds have downed so many Hardmodes already? If that's the case, then we can assume SWP was just as easy, since most of it's bosses took no longer than a single day to down.

===
EDIT
===

As suggested, here's the data for Ulduar Hard Modes. Since there were no limited attempts in Ulduar, we can easily make a direct comparison to SWP.


Ulduar: Hard Modes

All Hard-Modes were technically available as soon as Patch 3.1.0 hit (14th April 2009) but in order of fairness, it's probably best to say the Hard Modes were only truly attempted after the first reset (21st April 2009), since most guilds were focused on clearing the Normal modes.

Flame Leviathan
Available: 14th April 2009
Downed: 14th April 2009

Days: First Day


XT-002 Deconstructor
Attempted: 21st April 2009
Downed: 20th May 2009

Days: 29 Days
Note: XT-002 received a lot of nerfs and really wasn't tuned properly at the start of 3.1.0 (though the same can be said of M'uru)

Assembly of Iron
Available: 14th April 2009
Downed: 20th April 2009

Days: 6 Days


Hodir
Available: 14th April 2009
Downed: 19th April 2009

Days: 5 Days


Thorim
Available: 14th April 2009
Downed: 16th April 2009

Days: 2 Days

Freya
Available: 14th April 2009
Downed: 17th April 2009

Days: 3 Days


Mimiron
Attempted: 21st April 2009
Downed: 1st May 2009

Days: 10 Days

General Vezax
Available: 14th April 2009
Downed: 17th April 2009

Days: 3 Days


Algalon
Available: 1st May (when Firefighter was completed)
Downed: 3rd May 2009

Days: 2 Days
Note: Could only be attempted 1 hour per week, so it's safe to say Algalon was defeated in a couple of attempts and not truly in 2 Day

Yogg +0
Attempted: 21st April
Downed: 7th July 2009

Days: 77 Days


From the Data above, around 4 boss encounters in Ulduar took longer to down than it did with M'uru. It's quite clear that Ulduar Hard Modes took much, much longer to complete than Sunwell Plateau. Since there were no limited attempts in Ulduar, its a much more fair comparison. To anyone who says Wrath is easy and things were much harder with TBC because of SWP, you may want to redirect them to the data shown above.

[Deleted]

This deserves a bump for great justice.

[Dapuh]

Some think it is too easy because ulduar took so long, but they do not see that they had naxxramas gear in ulduar, now they have icc 25 man gear for those hardmodes. The ulduar hardmodes were suited for ulduar gear, not for naxxramas gear.

[myumsa]

yes but in ICC there is the limited attempts in hardmodes which is slowing down the progression because they are taking more time to learn/execute the strategies on alts; unlike in SWP where they could consistently wipe on the bosses without fear of being locked out.

[Magnett]

yes but in ICC there is the limited attempts in hardmodes which is slowing down the progression because they are taking more time to learn/execute the strategies on alts; unlike in SWP where they could consistently wipe on the bosses without fear of being locked out.

I'm pretty sure limited attempts counts as added difficulty.

[jarell88]

What we need, is to redo/addon to this post, but with ulduar hard modes instead, so that those complaining about limited attempts can finally shut up.

[Mowg]

yes but in ICC there is the limited attempts in hardmodes which is slowing down the progression because they are taking more time to learn/execute the strategies on alts; unlike in SWP where they could consistently wipe on the bosses without fear of being locked out.

I'm pretty sure limited attempts counts as added difficulty.

To be honest, I think the limited attempts mechanic is negligible. The top guilds already have two or three groups of alts that they use for separate Raid ID's, so they have absolutely no fear of lockouts when they use their practice team and they end up with double or triple the tries.

Some guilds deny using alt groups but its pretty obvious when you look at the time it took for Paragon to down some bosses (you can clearly tell that they wiped multiple times on Sarufang, Festergut, Blood Queen, Sindragosa and Professor) yet they have 14 attempts remaining for The Lich King.

[Deleted]

You need to take in number of attempts...

SWP they had infinite attempts on the bosses, so it probably took them more attempts to down each boss.

ICC theres limited attempts, so in terms of attempts, it was probably nowhere near as many attempts as it took to down bosses in SWP.

Therefore SWP was harder than ICC. ICC will simply take longer due to the shitty attempts limit.

Longer <> Harder

[Madrak]

Cookies for a solid post!
Assuming your information is solid, that is a good comparison. People seem to generically fail to realize the difference in end game now vs. when the game in vanilla WoW. To me at least;

End game in Vanilla WoW was almost any raid. It took a staggering amount of hours and coordination even though a majority of the content wasn’t overly difficult. The time sink is what made it end game. Compare that to now, and I would define end game as completing some of the hard modes and achievements associated with raiding. If you take that comparison I think you will find a lot of similarities in “end game”

Slightly off topic, but a funny read that I think a lot of WoW players fall into:
http://sivers.org/drama

[Maishian]

I think your forgetting one very important factor. As the above posters mentiond the limited try system. Do you really think KJ and muru would have been downed in 5 days with 20 trys? Not even close. Some of the top guilds at the time wiped over 200 times on Muru before downing this boss. Yes not 20, 200. I would like to see any of the bosses in ICC take 200 trys.

However I will say 0 lights Yog is up there with muru in terms of difficulty.

[Racer]

You, my good sir, are a genious!

[Simca]

You need to take in number of attempts...

SWP they had infinite attempts on the bosses, so it probably took them more attempts to down each boss.

ICC theres limited attempts, so in terms of attempts, it was probably nowhere near as many attempts as it took to down bosses in SWP.

Therefore SWP was harder than ICC. ICC will simply take longer due to the shitty attempts limit.

Longer <> Harder

Yogg+0 had no limits and took months to get a first kill on, making it by your standards the hardest boss/raid in the game by far.

[Maishian]

I'm pretty sure limited attempts counts as added difficulty.

Not really. All it does is provide a block, which is already being counterd by the top guilds by alt raids. Some even going as far as 2 or 3 alt raids, in both 10 and 25 man difficulty.

[bulvorg]

Hope this shows ICC HC isn't a faceroll. Whatever people say about the limited tries, the non-limited attempts bosses are aswell really hard as long as I've seen.

[Naturewalker]

You need to take in number of attempts...

SWP they had infinite attempts on the bosses, so it probably took them more attempts to down each boss.

ICC theres limited attempts, so in terms of attempts, it was probably nowhere near as many attempts as it took to down bosses in SWP.

Therefore SWP was harder than ICC. ICC will simply take longer due to the shitty attempts limit.

Longer <> Harder

Not really actually..
It's only 4 bosses that have attempts in ICC.. Paragon have killed everything except LK this reset.. but ok, i dunno how many attempts they had/have left on LK

Lets say if they kill LK in this reset with the same days laid behind as Muru and KJ .. then it's some sort of the same difficulty really. You cant really count in the attempts if they kill it all in this first reset with Hardmodes

[Scryn]

from my understanding the limited tries force you to actually think about what you did wrong instead of blindly leaping in and trying it 900 times

[Beace]

from my understanding the limited tries force you to actually think about what you did wrong instead of blindly leaping in and trying it 900 times

No actually it "forces" you to raid with 2-3 alts per week. At least if you want to keep up. The whole idea of limited attempts is just flawed from the start.

[Deleted]

Yogg+0 had no limits and took months to get a first kill on, making it by your standards the hardest boss/raid in the game by far.

Yep, I agree, yogg+0 was the perfect hard mode boss. Its just a shame all hard mode bosses arent close to that difficulty.

Normal mode = see content
Hard mode = FUCKING HARD

I dont think bosses being downed in under 20 attempts in ICC are hard. Theyre hard for the majority of us, but as every1 says, normal modes are for the majority of us. Theyre not hard enough for the elites.

[Beace]

Does anyone know of a site that has logged dates for more than the first kills in Sunwell? I'd be curious to see how long it took for #2-#10 to get their kills.

[Deleted]

People who think timers/limited attempts increase difficulty are idiots.

Its just a cockblock.

If SWP bosses had timers or limited attempts, they would have taken months and months to down.

If ICC bosses didnt have limited attempts, they would have been downed within the first day, no doubt about it. Apart from LK maybe, who might have taken a reset or 2 due to the dps requirements.