Is Ulduar overrated?

[Azerate]

People like different things.

The reason Ulduar is such an important raid and praised as godly is because WOTLK was the time when wow really became popular and raiding became less elitist = many more people experienced it.

Ulduar was my first ever raid done as current content and it will always have a special place in my heart. But yes, I think I enjoyed ICC more. On some level, nothing will ever beat Ulduar though.

[Deleted]

You do realise that the hc and mythic difficulties add things to fights just like hardmodes did in ulduar right?

Granted few things are as game changing as Firefighter but thats a very special case scenario. The issue is that there would virtually be no meaningful progression race with 1 difficulty and a hardmode of each boss.

I was talking about how they were activated

[Deleted]

ulduar is the best raid in the game imo lol

[Paulosio]

BWD and ICC were rubbish. The other raids you mentioned were very good imo though.

Part of the reason is the hard modes... It was the 1st raid to have hard modes (unless you count Sartharion + drakes) and no raid since has had an actual in game hard mode activation... Every hard mode since has simply been a UI toggle which just isn't as cool.

[TheRainman]

My brother raided back in vanilla and the raiding community in general did not like AQ40 when it was current content due to it's layout, bugged bosses, amongst other things.

That's the truth. It was a terrible raid. Was it huge in scale and feel epic? Yeah, it did, but it was an awful experience.

[Deleted]

Ulduar has a special place in many players' heart for several reasons, which combined make its legacy unique and most likely non-repeatable or replicable:

- Wrath was WOW's peak in terms of sustained subs
- Ulduar was the first true raid of the expansion
- Fully-fledged raid, many bosses, great atmosphere, great music (just look it up on Youtube), great design, diverse boss abilities, the right combination of trash
- Most PvE classes were neatly balanced and I do not recall any of them being overpowered or terribly underpowered - everyone felt he or she had a place in the raid.
- Hard-mode activation was a neat design trick - must have involved a lot of work on some bosses, and it was never repeated and probably never will.

I think the first and last points give Ulduar most of its enduring legacy as 1) that particular point in time in history cannot naturally be repeated 2) the way hard-modes are activated was basically a one-off.

[Craaazyyy]

I think it is. I didn't enjoy it anywhere near as other people did when it was current content, I mean Flame Leviathan was awesome and completely different and tbh the other bosses were good too, but there was just something about it for me that I didn't like as much. It was hyped up big when I played it because I missed the first 2-3 weeks of its release and was a bit late. I preferred Naxx, EoE, OS, but that also could've been because it was the first time I was competitively raiding. Saying that though, I enjoyed ICC the most and that was later on so I don't know, also enjoyed ToC.

Ulduar for me was nowhere near a bad raid, not at all, just not as good as other people say when they rave that it was the best raid ever made. Miles better than Cataclym's starting raid's though.

cata starting raids were really good.. outside of the fact that some bosses were buggy

if it wasnt buggy it would've been the greatest raiding tier ever imo

[Sykol]

Ulduar is one of the best raids, maybe even the best, WoW has ever put out. I raided it again recently at level, and it doesn't feel dated at all, even after farming it for literal years. The hard modes, as everyone has mentioned, were awesome to trigger and actually felt rewarding to beat. Tons of optional bosses, great lore, aesthetics to die for, and an amazing final boss fight with an even cooler one hiding after that. There isn't a whole lot to hate about the place, and it definitely isn't overrated because it deserves the praise.

If you never raided it at level, you might think plowing through it at 110 isn't so impressive. But even then, it looks better than most of the raids that have come after it.

[YouWillAllAnswerToSithis]

Some players like immersive interaction, while others don't or simply don't care (if speaking of the hard modes). With the lore tied to the raid, plus how Normal/HMs calibrated, the zone is number one in the hearts of many individuals. It is in mine. And the rewards that came with it were perfect. Without the general stuff though, the entirety of the raid is the reward.

[Blamblam41]

Nah, the most overrated raid goes to Naxxramas 1. Every Vanilla player will sit there and tell you about how hard Naxx was blah blah blah. Yeah, right. 99% of the difficulty was gear scaling/resistance, every one of the mechanics was so brain dead easy it painfully hurt. You could even start 15/20 manning most of the raid at the first part of TBC.

Then it got to the point where when it was rereleased as the entirety of T7 (along with Sarth and Maly) and it was cleared in literally a matter of hours, even by scrublords who had never set foot in the original raid. Think the only boss I had to really explain were the final ones in each wing, but that's my personal experience.
Infact, Naxxramas 2.0 directly influenced the hard modes in Ulduar, so no. I'd say the most overrated raid in the game is definitely first Naxx.

[Polarthief]

I think so. I don't get why people here put it on such a high pedestal. It was a great raid, don't get me wrong. At the time it was arguably the best raid released. But there have been several better raids since then. (ICC, SoO, BWD, ToT, BRF, Nighthold)

I think a big part of why it's held in such high regard is because it was sanwiched in between a rehashed raid and a bad raid

Thinks Ulduar is overrated, thinks SoO, BWD, ToT, BRF, and NH are better than it.

I mean, lol. You're welcome to your opinion but it's definitely an unpopular one.

Nah, the most overrated raid goes to every Vanilla raid

Fixed that for you. Literally all of them had almost no mechanics. Naxx finally had some with extremely overtuned damage.

[Miyagie]

*Reads SoO and BrF and slowly backs away from thread*

This. SoO was faceroll on mythic till you hit the last 3 bosses, also way to many bosses.
Design wasnt great and the raid felt stretched.
BrF wasnt that bad but 2 years of fighting orcs made most fights boring.

[McNeil]

It is all opinions but I wouldn't call Ulduar overrated in the slightest. There's so much effort put into this raid that it saddens me that they haven't made a raid like this afterwards, though I do like ICC about as much and I would rate raids on top. Its a nice break of dealing with the Scourge all the time, and instead you go for another major threat that has been looming all over Northrend aswell. The very story begins back in Howling Fjord, continues in Grizzly Hills, then you have Storm Peaks which is all about the titan lore, then you run both of the Halls dungeons, at the very end you raid Ulduar to complete this huge experience. There are hardly any other raids, especially mid-tier raids, that had this much build up as Ulduar had.

The quality is definately there. Most bosses were fun to fight and actually had some personality and story behind them, not just random ''this is the siege master and this is the dude that handles hounds'' kind of bosses that are completely filler. The hard modes were done really well which is what I loved doing the most, its much better then just switching to another difficulty from a menu. Most areas had their own theme (absolutely loved Mimiron's tram and chamber), the story was very coherent and it felt like you were actually dealing with a huge threat. Yogg Sarons introduction... Algalons room... the list of awesomeness goes on.

If there's any raid that I would call overrated its definately Throne of Thunder. There are no memorable bosses other then maybe the first boss (used to visit him a lot with my warrior in vanilla) and Lei Shen himself. Most of the bosses just felt like filler where they even had to have 3 beasts as boss fights in an uninspired cave, though admittedly Ji-Kun's room looked really cool. The fights weren't that interesting and I hated that road block at Horridon. Story wise its decent, though I did find myself connected to the mogu and Lei Shen as much as I would compared with other mid-tier bosses like Yogg Saron and Ragnaros. Aesthetically the place looked good, though the somber mood gets old which goes on for to long. I also absolutely hate how linear this place is while it doesn't even have to be. Its rather huge with a lot of pathways that are locked, they could've easily opened some of them up and allow a more adventurous experience, instead of traveling from hallway to hallway.

I know people will disagree with me but these are my 2 cents.

[Sigxy]

I'm not going to say it's overrated, but I really don't know why it's much better than other raids. It certainly didn't seem to do much for me. But for others, it seem to do a lot of good things.

In my opinion, I think Karazhan was a better raid.

[Blamblam41]

cata starting raids were really good.. outside of the fact that some bosses were buggy

if it wasnt buggy it would've been the greatest raiding tier ever imo

Ala'kir was probably the most boring one off fight in the game.

And it really isn't buggy that held T11 back. It was blizzard fucking with 10 normal, 10 heroic, 25 normal, 25 heroic. They made 10 normal way easier than 25 normal, but then made 10 heroic much more difficult than 25 heroic.

Toss in those aforementioned bugs, though, and the shit show that is T11 rears its ugly head. You could definitely tell it was a rushed tier by how many art assets were reused alone.

[Pakheth]

Ulduar to me is the perfect mix of stunning visuals, had cool bosses with interesting mechanics, the hard modes were fun, the lore was interesting and the open layout gave you lots of choice in how to tackle the raid. Very few raids have had this combo since.
ICC was just too blue for me and a lot of the music sucked. Still a cool raid with very strong lore and an important part of WoW's history.
Firelands was fun, but it didn't have the same feeling of awe as Ulduar and ICC.
DS sucked balls in every way. So did the earlier Cata raids.
Throne of Thunder had stunning visuals, cool gear, ok-ish music and cool lore, but is ruined by its linearity. When I raided actively we always cherised choice. Still one of my absolute favorites. Still run it for mogs regularely.
SoO was good, but I absolute loathe the Orgrimmar part of the raid. I just can't stand orcish architecture and gear. It's fugly. And the music was dreadful. So for me the raid was only good up to Sha of Pride and the rest was meh. It also partly suffers from linearity.
WoD raids I couldn't care less for. Liked none of them for the same reasons as SoO, but BrF was entertaining to a certain degree.
I really enjoyed Nighthold, I only wished we could get our hands on the weapon models used by Nightborne, but alas no because of the Artifact system.
Haven't really made up a mind of the rest of the Legion raids yet, but so far I like them visually and lorewise.

Edit: Just gonna say I also adore Karazhan as a raid due to its amazing layout and secrets. The bosses were random as heck but that just added to the mystery. It is a very entertaining raid for sure and was for me, like many others, their first true raiding experience.

[Kieldon]

It's all about nostalgia. You can't compare Ulduar to modern raids but I still think there was never a better raid to experience for the first time. Bringing it back with TW was sure nostalgic and I was happy but its a thing long gone. I wouldn't want to raid it every week like before. It's the same reason I wouldn't play Vanilla again. It was something new and most people have nostalgic feeling about it. But no. Once is enough.

[Blamblam41]

Thinks Ulduar is overrated, thinks SoO, BWD, ToT, BRF, and NH are better than it.

I mean, lol. You're welcome to your opinion but it's definitely an unpopular one.



Fixed that for you. Literally all of them had almost no mechanics. Naxx finally had some with extremely overtuned damage.

I will give you that, but my biggest problem has always been with Naxx because you actually have just an extremely small amount of people that actually cleared before they shut it down and the mantra always was "omg Naxx is so hard, omg its the most difficult best thing Blizzard has ever done."

The fucking hardest part about OG naxx was getting a priest competent enough to do Rasuv. Everything else else? SSC, TK, BT and Ulduar did it better.

Shit Hyjal is a better fucking raid than Naxx 1 and Naxx 2 combined.

[Gaidax]

Ulduar is a genuinely great raid, but when it released people were not huge fans of vehicle part of it and for a good reason, so I wouldn't say it was as flawless as some want to think.

[endersblade]

I never raided Ulduar when it was current, I can only comment on it after the fact. I stopped raiding in Vanilla.

I liked Ulduar from a lore and theme standpoint. Even going in there vastly overleveled and over geared, I was in awe of the place. I'm not much of a WoW lore nerd by any stretch, but I love the overall theme, I love the whole curse of flesh thing, the origins of Azeroth and such. When you go in there, you get the feeling this place is old, and that you really aren't worthy of setting foot in it.

As far as the fights go, I liked the mechanics a lot. On some occasions I didn't just go in and blitz the place, I actually watched how all the phases worked and such. I feel like Blizz put a bit more effort into Uld than they did in many other raids. Many of the fights were completely unique, and not just the boss fights, but trying to push through there. The whole instance starts with vehicle combat. That's so freaking cool.