I think old timers have grown up and got accustomed to WoW in general so that nothing really is new to them. It's like how everything looks fresh and exciting as a kid, but not when you grow up.
At the time being the important part of that statement. If firelands ragnaros had been in vanilla peoples tiny minds would of exploded. And no one would of killed him, because no matter what anyone says, new bosses are generally harder than old bosses. Just everyone in vanilla was generally terrible.
I shit my pants pretty hard when I saw rag's phase 4 transition for the first time in game.
And zoning into throne of the winds for the first time and seeing just how massive al'akir was, was pretty intimidating too. And then of course he would go on to be impossible in 25man for a long time.
Agree on Kiljaeden and Algalon. Sinestra had horrible anticlimactic voice, I guess everyone will agree with that.
My first feeling back then was - oh my, Thunderaan strikes back.And zoning into throne of the winds for the first time and seeing just how massive al'akir was, was pretty intimidating too.
For quite a time since Cata. Though I must agree on Elegon, probably because he was constructed based on titan technologies. Algalon and Elegon are just sight of things to come in one of next expansions.Now, everything is just bleh. Pretty bland, yet there are some fun fights.
I like morchok, hes pretty epic.
Just standing there with his split personality, ready for it to pop out and smash you.
Epic.
My vote goes to my first Ony encounter, Damn thats a big dragon o.o
My first memorable epic moment was when we first got to Vaelestrasz in BWL. Will admit that fight was frustrating for a while but the epic feeling really hit home when we finally beat him and TS erupted.
Razorgore.
The moment of 40 guys performing in unison and doing it "their way" was absolutely great (We had a lot of inept kiters at that time but the DPS was great so we tried it by killing most of the dangerous adds). I still remember that "OMG"-Feeling when we finally managed to get all the eggs down and Razorgore came down punting tauren butts!
It was actually the first boss (or second after Rags) that required concentrated personal effort and it was epic seeing him fall/explode.
when you fight quel in TK and the windows smash open that was pretty cool also tbh. I agree with most of the already said options.
Kil'jaeden, and Algalon were both more impressive than Sapphiron.
In before 10 pages of people pretending they were raiding back then and they do remember.
Algalon was pretty damn epic to me, but then again... Ulduar is my favourite raid out of all of them so I'm a bit biased :P
I also remember almost shitting my pants when I walked into Kologarns room and he suddenly popped up.
Also going up to the Frozen Throne for the first time to confront the Lich King felt pretty epic to me.
And obviously going all "WOAH!" the first time I saw Ragnaros pop up in MC while watching my friend raid. But then again almost everything was "WOAH!"-material when you were new to the game :P
Rag p4 and Algalon.
Also. when Sara turns into Yogg, the voice there was just amazing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6Pht3iRq8Y
Still give me chills lol.
It didn't look that fun in TBC but that's because we cleared the place in 1 night (it still wasn't that easy 10 levels above though, you probably couldn't PuG it).
If you were in one of the 30 or so guilds that saw it in Vanilla then yeah, you probably enjoyed that.
Felt the 'omgwtf' at a huge boss appearing that is just going to wreck your raid? Well I didn't feel that at Sapphiron, but I did at the following:
Kil'jaeden
Elegon
Algalon
Yogg'saron
Anub'arak (the falling through the coliseum part more than anything else)
Sinestra
Kael'thas
Lady Vashj (dat bridge)
And probably more.
I'm not really that emotionally invested in watching a cool animation that turns into a raid boss. What I am caring about is watching that after unlocking the boss, knowing it was damn hard to do it, and people all over the world struggled like mad to get there for weeks and weeks. THAT was the awesome thing. Not so awesome was of course the over-emphasis on geared tanks for the 4H fight in 40man.
As for the rest of the people in this thread, yes I'm a bit nostalgic for things like community and having player heroes and hard work to unlock bosses. Mechanics and class/spec balance sucked back then, though.
If I had not mentioned 40man in the title, it would have meant jack all to the people that just waltzed through Naxx10 (?) in WOTLK. There it was just a semi-cool animation with a boss model that was all over the place out in the un-instanced world. So seeing it in Naxx10 was a rather ho-hum experience in comparison, don't you think?
---------- Post added 2012-11-15 at 05:59 PM ----------
Your feeling of meeting Kologarry for the first time, multiplied a few times = about half what most people felt seeing Sapphiron40 after 4H fight. Epic, in the sense of "epic" before epic became the new quest greens.
I know it's hard to believe that low population servers don't make it that far but yeah we didn't have any heroic Lich king kills either or guilds able to get near KJ in Sunwell, we had 2 guilds I think down Illidan. This is why I hate all the d-bags who rag on LFR at least we are now able to see this content now.