Ulduar far more interesting than ICC

[seam]

this new thing called GearScore, yeah, it ruined the game. I probably won't see ICC thanks to the new "Gear > Skill" concept.

Do some heroics.

Get full 232.

Then get some crafted gear.

Gratz, you have a high enough gearscore to get into ICC. It's no different from BC or classic, you need gear from the last tier to get into the current tier, no huge surprise.

[Fishfeast]

I agree, Ulduar was the best. The Lich King Fight is pretty Epic, but other than that I think Ulduar blows ICC away in terms of design and fight mechanics.

[Waterisbest]

Give it 6 months before choosing. Raids NEVER look amazing while you do them, not even Sunwell did.

I agree with this.

After you're done with the raid and look back at it, you remember all the awesome parts and think it was amazing. Remembering Kara, SSC, TK, feels a lot more amazing to me right now then it did when I was doing them back in TBC. I f****** hated TK. Now I am so glad I did it and it feels awesome. Same with Ulduar and other raids.

ICC have really great mechanics and a lot of fun fights (PP is one of my fav fights in the game). And while doing LK (choose your preferred difficulty), it feels very epic. My guild is going for LK25hc, and all I can say is that, it is an honor. It is just an honor to say "My guild is at LK25hc." To say you're going for the most difficult boss in the history of WoW. Just like it was an honor when your guild killed Yogg/Vasjh/Kael/Illi/etc.

There was a lot of whining about Ulduar when it 1st came out, it is the same with ICC. It will change with time.

[Arlor]

2- most of ICC's focus is on LK (a little on Saurfang/Sindagosa/San'layn), while Ulduar had almost equal focus on keepers as Yogg (through quests in Stormpeaks). So most fights felt epic.

This is KEY. Blizz did a great job of building Ulduar lore into our leveling experience in Storm Peaks and elsewhere (even Grizzly Hills and Howling Fjord hinted at it). When it came to ICC, you'd think that the 150+ quests in Icecrown might have referred to bosses like Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Professor Putricide, etc. We had all those tainted cauldron quests in Icecrown, and seven bosses into ICC is the first we hear of the boss who presumably designed them?

ICC was lore-light aside from Sindragosa and Arthas. (Ulduar wasn't perfect, either, but at least it all fit together conceptually with the keepers, etc.)

[Lark]

The lore point is a good one. Also, Storm Peaks > Glacier, no butts

People said that Ulduar was fucking terrible when it came out and now its the best thing ever? Shit confuses me ???

People forget about Ulduar's trash when they haven't done it in a long time. People hate Ulduar's trash.

Overall fight design felt better in Ulduar; several elements are superior in ICC. Ideally, the next major raid will combine the successes of both with the more ambitious raid design that brought out the best fights.

I do definitely hope they don't go with another "all bosses on HM" design ever again though. There are lots of fights and fight ideas that don't expand up well and should just be normal mode. Look at hard mode gunship. Very exciting.

[SolidSnake]

I do definitely hope they don't go with another "all bosses on HM" design ever again though. There are lots of fights and fight ideas that don't expand up well and should just be normal mode. Look at hard mode gunship. Very exciting.

I lul'd. Hard.

[Aerikaya]

People said that Ulduar was fucking terrible when it came out and now its the best thing ever? Shit confuses me ???

I for one will say Ulduar bugged the hell outta me at its launch. But then once we got deeper into the instance, saw more and more of the story of how this old god controlled his jailors, I started to get into it. And then once I finally got to good ol' Yogg, well my opinion totally changed. Yogg is now probably my third favorite fight in the expansion, only behind the Lich King, and Mimiron.

I did really like what they did with ICC, but it did still have that Naxx feel to it. Oh look, the Plague wing again, ooo a vampire wing. And now the dragon wing. I understand there is only so much one can do with undeath but ICC could have felt more like a warzone than Naxx 2.0.

Lorewise, I think I enjoyed Ulduar more than ICC because it gave more of that epic feel to it, from the opening seige engine battle to the freeing of the keepers to the defeat(not death) of an old god. But when the boss fights themselves come into the mix, ICC has just as much variety as Ulduar, even with fewer bosses. Professor Putricide, Sindragosa, and naturally Arthas are very challenging just by mechanics, add in their lore and its one hell of an instance.

[Jubite]

Epic ICC Boss Fights:
LK: Well, its LK!
.....

Epic ICC Uld Fights:
Flame Lev: Dont deny it, when you first drove off the ramp into that fight you had a nerdgasm.
Kologorn: Amazing entrance, +10 to epic feeling
Freya: If that whole room didnt make you drool a little... no <3
Mimron: Firefighter was a legendary task back in that tier
General: Hard Is Hard.
Yogg+X: Different difficulties, epic fight all around.
Alg: No need for an explanation.


Bout sums it up.

[Malania]

I've played the game so long that i feel i can give a completely unbiased view of each raid instance compared with each other.

I imagine the OP to be a fairly new player to WoW and had his most enjoyable raid experience with Ulduar, because it was pretty much the first decent raid he attempted.

Therefore i group him with many other new players in a similar situation and put his/there opinion down to one thing -

Nostalgia.


Just my 2 cents.


The same/different people will be saying the same thing about ICC, this time next year and how epic the Lich King fight was.

Nostalgia is all well and good but I don't think you get nostalgic about a place still available to see and raid. I wasn't Nostaglic about Karazhan when I was raiding BT/MH.

[Djävul]

Icc is easy normalmode till LK, and only Defile the thing doin hardhs

[Spartanoble]

I agree 100% there mate

[Shieldslam]

I'm sorry but Ulduar was horribly boring. It's not that Heroic modes were hard, they were just stupid.

Although....downing Yogg 25 for the first time gave me a feeling I haven't felt in World of Warcraft ever since BC.

[Fictionseven]

After downing h 25 pp today I have to say, that fight is incredibly intense and requires a lot of coordination. i never got that feeling in ulduar. we just slammed our face against the wall until purples dropped.

[Florena]

I liked ulduar more personally. For one, I liked Yogg-Saron more than the Lich King. There was a bit of mystery behind Yogg where as I knew Arthas' back story long before WotLK came out, and we've seen the Lich King throughout the whole expansion. The Yogg fight itself is more epic than the LK one imo too. Don't want to give spoilers but I think the LK fight is too add centric. Not that adds are bad necessarily.

A few overall gripes I have about ICC:

Only 12 bosses, less than Naxxramas, less than Ulduar.

Festergut and Rotface share a model.

2 boss encounters centered around trash. (Gunship and Dreamwalker. While both fun and unique encounters, after downing them the first time they become dull and monotonous.)

The plague wing in general, including voice acting and the bosses having nothing to do with any lore. Where as Sindragosa and Blood Queen at least had some backstory.

I also wish that we actually ascended up the spire on foot rather than teleprinters. The fact that the citadel was built around the frozen throne and spire was cool, but with the way the teleporters are it makes it much less epic.

The instance also just feels kind of bland. Sure the front room is cool, but once you get past a few bosses you feel like you've seen it all before. The Forge of Souls was more interesting than the interior of the raid. The blood wing had slightly differing artwork but still the same overall theme. The Frozen Throne itself is cool, but getting there? Not so much.

Now I still enjoy raiding in ICC overall, I just liked Ulduar better. The boss fights are all fun and varied. The trash is, well meh, nothing spectacular but not bad.

[Miltiadhs]

each raid has its own concept and architecture and you cant compare them.Once Ulduar was one of the cities of Titans,ofc there will be lights and such or pretty architecture.While icc there is the concept of death and lost hope and it fits GREAT for the end game raid.Also icc in fact it is just a huge spire with some metal walls around it.Even thought,Valthiras room,blood queens room and such are uniques and good looking.We also have the professor(one of the funniest bosses of the game for obvius reasons:Futurama).Also the undead-scourge doesnt need lights or pretty sculptures around.Their only purpose is to serve the Lich King.I like em both.

[Chimpzilla]

I really like Ulduar. I stopped officially raiding right after killing Yogg though. I'm pretty sure the duneon burnt me out. I feel like the dungeon itself was really cool, but there was something about it that really bothered me. I can't place my finger on it, but I know there was something I really disliked about it though. Perhaps had we been able to extend lock outs then I wouldn't have burnt out.

[Intiriel]

I think part of the problem is that in Ulduar more or less every boss you kill was working toward the end goal of stopping the corruption of Yogg whereas in Icecrown every fight seems detached, having no link to any other fight in there other than being a minion of the Lich King. Not to mention Algalon was incredibly well done and was probably the most interesting fight of the xpac.

Quoting a post I made on another topic:

Actually, in ICC, you really weaken The Lich King. You break into his citadel, defeat his lieutenants, destroy the lab that was creating a plague, kill his powerful dragon servant, disrupt the cultists, annihilate his powerful vampire blood elves, save a dragon that he was going to kill to create a new powerful ally, and then, after f**king up with his whole operation, you go there and kick him in the ass.

It's not like "hurr durr kill random undead then lich king". We simply wrecked his party

[ChildeRoland]

I think you haven't been to the Frozen Throne yet.

[Fraza]

I loved Ulduar as an environment more, simply because in ICC there's not much else except a bunch of spikey saronite walls I've seen for the last 1+ year while doing Icecrown dailies. The frozen throne is different, sure, but Ulduar had much more variety even before the last boss.

[Naysar]

I agree with you @OP, I had alot of fun raiding Ulduar and it felt more epic. That partially is because I find the dwarf archeology and titan stuff more interesting than lich king related lore, perhaps that's why I always prefered Snow Peaks over Icecrown (never finished the zone). But I find myself wandering off in my thoughts when raiding ICC, instead of focussing on what needs to be done, less slacking on bosses obviously, but still doesn't grab my attention.