Why do you love Ulduar? Why do you hate TOC?

[Legendary_Zer0]

Ulduar reminded me alot of a Classic good raid feel where ToC kinda reminded me of a 10/25 man heroic dungeon it was cleared before buffs dropped off ya.

[bigjenk]

Toc was one room with pretty much little change other than harder hitting bosses for heroics. There was no real progression in toc it came out and if you had a raid with a pulse and didn't all dc on gormak you won. Every guild that really tries was at least 4/5 hms really quick as well with the only challenging fight of the instance being about how hard you can aoe down shit once they fixed hw and was pretty simple and easy if you had a tank with old gear they kept. Yes top guilds zerged through normal mode uld on the first week but yogg was amazing to figure out strats for. It wasn't gated so it wasn't like toc or icc where once hms activated you already had so much of the normally mode gear in your guild already as well. And it really had 4 different sets of difficulty in there, the easy first half, the keepers were difficult for many casual guilds and took a while to get down. The easier hardmodes, and then "those" fights. Firefighter, freya+3, yogg1 and algalon that pretty much every guild that got them down felt great about. Plus thematically and artistically it was 500x better than one brown room with a generic wrath blue cave.

And no faction champs.

[Deleted]

ToC, no good esthetics, boring bosses, takes less then one h.

Ulduar. The esthetics(spelling?) made me jizz my pants, and nice llookin loot, mostly fun bosses. And the feeeeeeellllll!

I think you mean: Aesthetics - principles of art?; seems a bit out of context here though.

[Deleted]

< Yogg and Anub down before the release of the next raid tier.

1: ToC had what, 5 bosses?
2: ToC hardmodes were just 'flick a switch'
3: ToC had incredibly repetitive graphics. 2 rooms, that's it.
4: Resurrected Anub'arak. 'Nuff said.
5: Ulduar had pretty much the opposite plus Yogg, Mimi, Council, some of the most fun fights in the game.

TOC was the first time Blizzard implemented their philosophy of everyone experiencing their content, and they did it right by allowing players to get epics and do TOC and gear up for TOGC.

No offense to my previous guild but it wasn't exactly the best yet we still managed to push onto Yogg before ToC was released and we spent what, 2 hours per raid night with optional follow-ups?

[Naoto]

I liked ToC simple because it was a small instance with bosses, no trash and no running all over the place and before you undergeared it, it was fun and challenging, I don't like big instances full of trash that involves alot of walking about because chances are people are going to slack ALOT. I remember doing trash in ulduar which was harder than most bosses because people think it's trash and it's cake, when it clearly wasn't so you spent too much time dealing with trash and whiping because of slack and it just put me off, it's also the same when it comes to walking in, people just slack and ask for summons because they can't be arsed running.

I can understand why people hate toc because it's short but raids also shouldn't be 2-3 hours long with a fair chunk of that spent on trash and running around the place picking up the slack from the lazy shits. I raid to do bosses not to do trash, so I'm happy with the toc setup of jumping into a raid, killing bosses and getting out without tons of trash and alot of running.

People act like toc was an easy raid made to give away free epics, even to this day I join toc 25 pugs that fail even on the beasts, yea, the beasts, the very first boss that has been around for ages, the same boss pretty much all of the raid outgear yet time and time again people fail and it isn't just 1 guy that fails, it's alot. When you had ulduar gear toc was a challenge, hell I can't even remember the last time I managed to do toc 25 or ony 25 with a pug yet these are pretty much easy instances.

[Brasko]

I think you mean: Aesthetics - principles of art?; seems a bit out of context here though.

It isn't out of context. Ulduar is much more aesthetically pleasing to a vast majority (I would assume from even just the responses to this topic) of players than ToC.

[skyesfury]

Ulduar fit the progression of the sub-story for the expansion.
TOC didn't fit anything. It felt like an experiment Blizzard was trying out with "boss only" raids. I mean seriously... holding a tournament to see who to send into the Citadel? That has to be the lamest plot line I've ever heard of or read.

"You must be this tall in order to fight the Lich King!" /wtf?

[Hottie4Hire]

I'm afraid I wasn't able to experience Ulduar much when it was relevant, because I had to take a break right before the patch and sometime after, but I did get to raid the place for like 3-4 lockouts, and got to clear up to Vezax. We cleared ToC the day it was released. Although a good challenge does make way for a good raid, it's not the sole reason for Ulduar's success and ToC's infamy.

Ulduar looks awesome, feels awesome, and has lots of lore associated with it. ToC is just a filler raid. A tiny arena with generic-looking bosses coming in waves. It feels like it was put together in just a couple days while they were preparing ICC because people were getting bored.

Does anyone else just love obvious liars? Pro tip: that wasn't possible.

[Deleted]

I hate ToC for it's repetitivity (if that's even a word). 4 times a week, the same room, same average mechanics, same cavern, same setback.
Ulduar for one is.... In the mountains... not so repetitive every boss room is different and somehow surprises me every time, in fact just yesterday I realized how cool the light effects look in Vezax's room. Boss mechanics wern't as dull and still keep me entertaintained to this day. ToC not so much.

/contributing

[Zanter]

You stated the reason why Ulduar was so much better than ToC yourself. You actually WIPED.

[Proshift]

I did ulduar long time ago and didnt zerg it and i love ulduar best raid in Wrath! toc was so boring, just press 1 button and BAM! boss was out!

[Lykoris]

raids also shouldn't be 2-3 hours long

Tell that to Kara, SSC, BT and Sunwell.

Good old Kara... remember spending 6 hours in that place.

[Naoto]

Tell that to Kara, SSC, BT and Sunwell.

Good old Kara... remember spending 6 hours in that place.

Aye same here, but kara ended up being a gear farm and by the time I got my rogue chest from nightbane I got fed up raiding, which is the problem, when you need 1 item and you're spending anything like 6 hours in kara every week for months for 1 drop it's wrong, but even then TBC was good WOTLK never had the same feeling, hell I even loved spending 2 hours doing heroic BOTA.

[Tobyone]

I hate ToC for many reasons. The fact that they reused the same couple bosses for 4 different dungeons shows a lack of effort put into the instance. They used the same map (a pathetic one for a raid) as the 5 man dungeon, and there was nothing special about it. Having no trash in a raid sounds great, cause the bosses are the most fun, however it gets rid of the epic feeling of the instance. The boss fights were okay, but besides Twin Valkyrs, there wasn't much innovation in the design of the fights.

For Ulduar, that raid was amazing. The size of it was awe inspiring because it was huge and beautiful. It had a good amount of trash and bosses. The boss fights were original and definitely had a learning curve. The fights really changed as you went between hard mode and normal, and most of all it wasn't with a flick of a switch. To me, the most important thing was the execution of hard modes and easy modes. This is the first real implementation of it, and I think they did it very well. Not separate raid locks, not same items and models but updated stats, but having the choice on each boss and having to activate it through some mechanic in game. The hard modes provided a great amount of challenge for the hard core raiding guilds, and the normal modes allowed the less hard core raiders, and eventually those without a guild, to enjoy and experience most of the instance if not all of it. It was a very well made raid. The thing that annoyed me about it was how irrelevant it was to the expansion. I got the part about how Yogg played a big role in a lot of major events in history, but what did it have to do with the Lich King and the scourge? There should have either been an alliance or a conflict between the two, and we just didn't see that. Maybe I'm missing some important piece in the lore, but it just didn't make sense.

Nevertheless, ToC was fun but amazingly repetitive, while Ulduar shook things up and provided an awesome raid experience.

[Raka]

I liked Ulduar very much and I cleared it when it was current including all achievements to get the Ironbound-Protodrake. Yes it was hard sometimes Freya HM and Mimiron for example ... al-inall it was and still is an epic instance with great theme / lore nice themed boss-encounters and especially for my ending in an fight against an old God (i like these mystery-loaded huge "Monster"-Bosses ... ok arthas is a bad MF but hey he was a human he is still human .... an undead mighty one but human in shape). So im really looking forward to the "new" old god showing up in cataclysm !!!

[crakerjack]

Ulduar was fun to a certain extent, just because as enhancement, i exploited the class and built a spec w/ double flametongue w/ the trinket off crazy cat lady 10 man. Once the trink procs, you basically sit there spamming lightning bolts every GCD since your haste is through the roof. Would end up pulling 10k~ steady on all bosses, though i do have to admit when trying yogg for the first time, people would take my portal and then i'd end up getting left out trying to find another portal before they vanished. Quit PvE 2 weeks into ToC, first week did northrend monsters and then did the demon guy, was like "Yea, this isn't very exciting." Now i'm full wrathful yippie?!

[Deleted]

I'm no fan of a lot trash, but ToC could have needed some. Also fighting in a single room (besides Anub) is boring as hell. Ulduar is a giant instance with nice and big bosses.
Also almost every boss in Ulduar looks better than those Pu**ys in ToC. Also a raid should really take more than one hour and have more than 5 bosses. (One boss raids such as onyxia and ruby sanctum not included)
Also the tactics of the bosses in ToC were pretty boring. But it really has some hardcore achievments like [A Tribute to dedicated Insanity] or [A Tribute to Immortality]
which not many people have, i guess. (I don't even know one player, who has one of those two)
Ulduar was just much more epic. Even the lame flame leviathan fight was some kind of cool, because of those vehicles and the big area.

I like ToC, but no way it could even beat Ulduar.

[rayvio]

Ulduar had the most fun mechanics for bosses and hard modes, interesting lore, great scenery and was overall a hell of a lot of fun
ToC was four boss encounters in the same small room that we'd also done a 5man in, with mostly recycled mechanics (though some were interesting) and most guilds ran it four times a week (10 & 25 normal and heroic) and the poorest excuse for a story ever seen in WoW

[TickTickTick]

So you were on crap server and that's why you say Ulduar was crap, too? Beware Cataclysm, you are going to blame entire expension.

[mercutiouk]

I was raid lead for a 25m guild that nearly cleared it (never quite got yogg down) and got a few of the hard modes done, Ulduar WAS an awesome instance. The fights took some explaining and a little attention was needed on excecution. We were in a race with my housemates guild at the time and hearing about XT down was a BIG deal (as was zoning into the inner bit of ulduar for the first time).
Some of the ideas in there were sweet (Kologarn bridge) and the place basically oozed quality.

I give ICC a little more props than most though. Yes we're all thoroughly sick of it by now but it is/was still a challanging instance. While many will be qq, it was easy, we could pug it. Yes, you could, first 6 bosses, gunship HM. Blood Council HM takes a little attention to detail as does Putricide. Basically, they actually got it right (according to where they wanted to be with it): Pugs could make some progress, guilds would clear it and work on hard modes.

If you wish to play the "ICC was too easy" ticket, lets see the HM clears.

Agree with the general thrust of things here though. For the time of their release Ulduar>>ICC. I'll not even mention ToC, best ignored.