Is Ulduar overrated?

[Pakheth]

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.

Exactly, it's a combination of different factors that makes it so great and for those that experienced it back then it was truly a pinnacle of raiding. It might not be possible to replicate, but I do wish Blizz could try at least replicate the raid layout somehow.

[Blamblam41]

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.

Maybe for the more difficult parts of hard mode Flame Lev (Like actually launching people, destroying things on the Flame Lev, ect) But for normal mode Flame Lev wasn't entirely too complicated. Get demolishers, drop blue goo, mash 2, have gunner pick up goo, ????, profit.

It only ever got super clunky when, like I said, you were tossing people onto the flamelev and you had Freya plants fucking everywhere and Ice oh my fucking god the ice.

[Gaidax]

Maybe for the more difficult parts of hard mode Flame Lev (Like actually launching people, destroying things on the Flame Lev, ect) But for normal mode Flame Lev wasn't entirely too complicated. Get demolishers, drop blue goo, mash 2, have gunner pick up goo, ????, profit.

It only ever got super clunky when, like I said, you were tossing people onto the flamelev and you had Freya plants fucking everywhere and Ice oh my fucking god the ice.

It was not the point of difficulty, it was simply that people did not dig the idea of switching their characters to some bulky vehicles with fuck all for abilities, basically that why they aren't doing this stuff anymore for raiding, but back then it was a fresh new idea they just had to put in every raid.

[Fennixx]

No It was the best Raid in wrath. Great scale, interesting bosses (my tops are mimiron HM, Yogg Zero, Freya HM, Vezax and FL), impressive art and music...

Like one said opinions are opinions. Mine (having raided ALL raids since release):
Vanilla: BWL
TBC: SWP
Wrath: Ulduar
Cata: Firelands
MoP: Heart of Fear
WoD: BRF
Legion: NH

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I don't think TW is the best venue to judge any raid, but I think Ulduar was the best of its time, and holds up well today. Good story telling, good art, engaging fights, memorable villain end boss.

[Aphrel]

Imo raiding has steadily become better and better every expansion. So comparing a raid from wotlk with one from Legion doesnt seem very fair.
But Ulduar beats ICC by miles. Stupid fucking limited attempt mechanic ruined whatever fun one could possibly have in ICC aswell as gated opening of wings taking fucking months before we could even start playing at the appropriate difficulty.

[Emerald Archer]

Nighthold though? Really? I just dont get that at all :P

Nighthold is likely up there because of star augur (post first nerf) and gul'dan were really good bosses, gul'dan one of the best end bosses they've done.

[Rezark]

Ulduar > ToT > Kara >>>>anything else.

[JustaWarlock]

I've raided with the same guild since Vanilla with no break in subscription, so I've experienced every raid as current content.

A lot of the opinions on raiding content will be different for people who started raiding later, especially people who only started in cata or later.

All raids had some element of frustration or unfun. I still think Ulduar as one of the best raids made.

Most of the vanilla raids were fun at the time, even Molten bore was OK initially though got boring pretty quickly.
Really enjoyed BWL, another of my favourites. Vael was awesome, razorgore was not and required scheduling taking turns with attempts with other guilds on the server as it was so unstable. AQ20 and AQ40 were quite fun, too much trash but still better than half of the more current raids. Naxx 40 was awesome too.

I enjoyed all of the TBC raids except Magtheridon and Sunwell. Sunwell was OK, but a bit last minute tacked on. Wrath obviously Ulduar was awesome. ICC was pretty good too. ToC was not. All the cata raids were terrible and forgettable, except Firelands. MoP - all the raids except ToT were pretty awful. Everything about WoD was boring and forgettable and nearly made me cancel.

Legion raids have been ok, except for EN, but overall mostly forgettable except Nighthold, which I mostly remember as a free pass for melee and Astromancer.

[In Ogres We Trust]

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

Is it overrated? Yes, the first boss is shit.

[Splenda]

Not if you ask me. Ulduar is one of the best in my eyes.

[Jastall]

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.

Yeah to me it seems people remember the great parts of Naxx (Deconstructor, Mimiron, Thorim, Yogg imo) while forgetting that bosses like Flame Leviathan were meh at the very best of times. Albeit the trash runup to Flame looked really cool the first few times you did it, what you you annihilating an entire army in tanks. And honestly I kinda forgot the sheer amount of CC Yogg tosses at you when we did it during Timewalking. I gotta say it's the only fight that I didn't really like doing.

And yeah, if Wrath had an obvious flaw it's that Blizzard were really in love with their shiny new vehicle combat and attempted to shove it everywhere they could.

[Chaosshadow]

I progressed through ulduar and almost got to finish all the hard modes before the next patch.

It is my favorite raid hands down. It is NOT overrated. That raid was one of the coolest and most fun gaming experiences of my life. Throne of Thunder and Karazhan come close.

[Deleted]

Atrocious story and starts off with a retarded vehicle fight. What's there not to like...?

[Kaleredar]

SoO, BWD and BRF better? Lolwat?

MAYBE AQ40/BT/SSC were better or as good.

Your nostalgia is showing.

SSC was a bunch of floating platforms in a lake. AQ was a bunch of tunnels filled with bugs. Black Temple was probably the best of the three you listed, but... come on. It's a jumbled maze of a place with pencil-lore bosses all tossed around a poorly explained villain. Yeah, I said it. In Burning Crusade, Illidan's motiviations and why the hell he was doing what he was doing was... poorly explained. At best. He shows up in maybe two quest chains. Then we kill him. Even Blizzard said they felt like they rushed Illidan.


Not only did EVERY keeper in Ulduar get an extensive backstory, they each had their own uniquely designed area and Yogg-Saron had been built up from the getgo in Northrend quests.



Part of why Ulduar is so fondly remembered is that the place is so vast and varied with bosses and forces you had been contending with for broad swaths of Northrend. It was payoff and execution done pretty darn flawlessly.

[Slaxx]

Ulduar was one of the better raids imo. I loved the art and especially how the encounter design for hardmodes worked.

[sam86]

no for one simple fact and reality
its hard mode is not just right click on and off, in fact i hate that they didn't continue that way, why did they decide that 'hard mode' become right click, instead of clever mechanic, that has even multiple layers like freya leave which tree, or which dwarf to kill first, and first raid to introduce secret boss (that however did continue)
while I LOVE ICC, nothing compare to Ulduar (back then) very fresh new ideas in almost every fight

[Nefarious Tea]

I mean sure, there have been better raids released since - Ulduar itself will be nine years old on April 15th - in terms of both structure and encounter design. Hell, the average boss in ABT has more mechanics than most of Ulduar's encounters combined.

A major part of Ulduar being rated so highly is that it was groundbreaking in a lot of ways. It was the first raid that really showcased the nature and aims of the Titans, gave us concrete lore on what the antagonism between them and the Old Gods. Ulduar showcased just what the Old Gods were capable of; how deeply their tentacles were burrowed in the events of the world. Although Obsidian Sactum (ie. Sartharion) was the first raid where the bosses had more than one difficulty, Ulduar really went HAM on it, providing not just bosses with multiple - up to five - levels of difficulty for the same size raid, but also unique ways of controlling the difficulty.

Even a lot of the mechanics were completely new. Fighting Flame Leviathan while driving vehicles was novel (although most people were so terrible at it that Blizzard never did it again). Council fights like Iron Council weren't new, but offering different mechanics in different ways depending on how you killed them was then-unheard of. Being able to pick and choose which - if any - Keepers helped in Yogg-Saron.

For its time Ulduar was an obscene success and easily the best raid Blizzard had produced to that point, and I look back fondly upon it. But I'm neither so foolish nor so nostalgic to think that it is still the best raid that's ever been created in WoW.

[Vestig3]

For me Ulduar is prob the last great raid instance blizzard has released, (i cant judge about MoP as i was on a break during that time)

[Morae]

At the time of its release it did some rather new things. Including altering difficulty of the fights, ect.

Its pretty high in my order of good raids, but I always liked ICC more. Ulduar was good, but not the best. I really dont get why people keep calling it the best, since it wasnt, but it wasnt bad either.