Why did Ulduar (as current content) only last for 4 months?

[Piplupzero]

Ulduar has nothing on Highmaul when it comes to a raid being released too quickly afterwards. As many have stated, ToC wasn't meant to replace Ulduar, but it acted more as a stepping stone for less capable guilds to tackle harder version of Ulduar boss fights (while still allowing mini-raid status for guilds that had already completed Ulduar to its fullest with things like the Grand Crusader achievement).

However, Blackrock Foundry was release roughly a month after Highmaul mythic was available in WoD, and BRF did end Highmaul progression since the gear in heroic made farming mythic Highmaul pointless. I think it was technically 5 weeks in between, but it was during the Christmas holiday which generally has guilds not raiding for a week or so depending upon raid days. I think our guild was the only guild on our server that finished all of mythic Highmaul before BRF, and the timing had everyone in my guild actually feeling bad for those that couldn't finish it in time in other guilds.

There was some mention of old tweets/posts talking about how Ulduar didn't have many people actually able to see the entirety of the raid, but that was most raids at the point. It was the restriction of the time, as everything was locked by raid IDs instead of loot lockouts, there was no cross-realm, there was no flex raiding, all of which have raiding a helluva lot more accessible today compared to WotLK. Ironically enough, that's likely the main reason why mythic raiding today is very exclusive, because it retains all those former restrictions that kept people out of seeing raid content despite having the tech to do it immediately... but now you have to wait until 100 Alliance guilds clear the content to cross-realm mythic raids (but you still have the silly raidID lockouts to deal with, non-flex of mythic I completely understand though).

Actually they had the exact opposite problem. BRF gear wasnt seen as good enough versus the comparatively easier to obtain highmaul gear for the first couple of months. Blizzard had to increase the ilevel of BRF drops in a hotfix to make them worth it, that and the garrison missions awarding gear from a tier above the one you were currently doing made gearing in WoD a joke (I got BiS mythic gear from clicking "send on mission" every week despite never progressing beyond the 3/10 heroic I got through pugging.)

[KaPe]

Halfway through IC... are you serious? I was on a dead fucking ROLEPLAY server with like two raiding guilds back in Ulduar/TOC and we got Death's Demise the first or second week of TOC.

That's bullshit or this "dead fucking ROLEPLAY server" had some amazing raiding guilds. Two weeks of TOC would barely give you any gear to push Death Demise and that fight was far from trivial with just a couple of better items.

[styil]

It's ok, Blizzard 'learned' from their mistakes. Now we'll have Eternal Palace well into 2020.

[MrLachyG]

It's ok, Blizzard 'learned' from their mistakes. Now we'll have Eternal Palace well into 2020.

late Jan/early Feb is considered "well into 2020"?

[Lora]

because blizzard was fucking dumb and released the worst raid to have existed, trial of the crusader.

[Vorkreist]

ToC sucked so much ass it was amazing to behold. I could not believe the same people that gave me Ulduar also pushed Toc months later. For me it felt like the first time they tried to essentially scam the playerbase with a bs excuse of content. Hey guys we really don't have the time or interest in providing quality content anymore so here you go. Some placeholder like dungeon and raid.

[Milfshaked]

when ToC came out, for a majority of raiders, Ulduar became irrelevant.

I dont think you raided ToC and Ulduar if you believe this. Ulduar remained relevant for a long time. Guilds did weekly Ulduar 25 runs for gear and a lot of people even did Ulduar 10 for some trinkets and other stuff.

[Marrilaife]

because blizzard was fucking dumb and released the worst raid to have existed, trial of the crusader.

That's not true anymore, Crucible of Storms should hold this title now. Ruby Sanctum is also close. Unless you only count raid tiers / "seasons".

[VooDsXo]

that depends on what lots means to u...Also if "lots" of guilds were accidentally triggering hardmode on XT then they were really bad guilds....whats server were u on?

Let's be serious right now, the only time the heart died on accident was in pubs that had several high level players in the raid screwing around. Any guild BAD enough to accidentally kill it would not have had the DPS to do so in those days. Now there may have been instances of warlocks LATER in the game causing pushes when you were trying to do the achievements but otherwise no typically if you had that amount of DPS in WOTLK you were either not worried about the hardmode or over geared.

[Moggie]

I dont think you raided ToC and Ulduar if you believe this. Ulduar remained relevant for a long time. Guilds did weekly Ulduar 25 runs for gear and a lot of people even did Ulduar 10 for some trinkets and other stuff.

Guilds, least ones focused on progression were more focused on clearing 10/25 man lockouts each week in ToGC (remember, there wasn't the lockout like the game has nowadays) and if time permits, farming Yogg0 for mount. Folks were burning out big time, hence why many guilds folded.

ToGC was the most horrid raiding experience in the entire history of WoW, with maybe Crucible of Storms being a snoozer filler raid but that's mostly because it was a pointless raid.

[KaPe]

That's not true anymore, Crucible of Storms should hold this title now. Ruby Sanctum is also close. Unless you only count raid tiers / "seasons".

Neither Crucible of Storms or Ruby Sanctum made previous raids obsolete. This is especially true about Hallion, who was just an extra boss on top of Lich King and he did not replace Icecrown. It was just a small filler raid that offered something to do during the *long* wait for Cataclysm.

Meanwhile, CoS was a failure for entirely different reason, that being absurd tuning for weak rewards and extremely short time it was relevant - which is pretty much the opposite of Trial of Crusader. It also lacked any "self-nerf" mechanism, since players were pretty much capped on gear and raid drops were mostly sidegrades.

[shinji204]

Firefighter was my fav

[Tradu]

That's not true anymore, Crucible of Storms should hold this title now. Ruby Sanctum is also close. Unless you only count raid tiers / "seasons".

CoS was the best raid this expansion. ToC also wasn't bad.

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Neither Crucible of Storms or Ruby Sanctum made previous raids obsolete. This is especially true about Hallion, who was just an extra boss on top of Lich King and he did not replace Icecrown. It was just a small filler raid that offered something to do during the *long* wait for Cataclysm.

Meanwhile, CoS was a failure for entirely different reason, that being absurd tuning for weak rewards and extremely short time it was relevant - which is pretty much the opposite of Trial of Crusader. It also lacked any "self-nerf" mechanism, since players were pretty much capped on gear and raid drops were mostly sidegrades.

It's kinda funny how CoS gear was bad when it was current, then when the next patch hit it suddenly became insane thanks to the buff to damage procs, but people never learned the fights so nobody really went back for the gear.

[Marrilaife]

CoS was the best raid this expansion.

I wonder why most people didn't bother to set a foot in it then...

[Volardelis]

Ulduar was kind of weird and should have been pushed back a tier. From what I remember it was an "Argent Tournament Patch", which added all the argent tournament and dungeon and everything leading up to the big show Colliseum...

... and then Ulduar was there instead, and the whole narrative of the patch was kind of on pause until Crusaders Colliseum. Ulduar made sense as a culmination of the story of the Stormpeaks, but stuck in the middle of the the Tournament content it was a bit random.

I just don't think they thought it through too well tbh, and Blizz have even mentioned that they regret giving it so liittle time.

3.1 did release the Argent Tournament, however it was just the dailies. You even had some dailies during that time where you had to get resources to build the coliseum. 3.2 released the dungeon (trial of the champion) and the raid (trial of the crusader). But yeah, ToC was basically a filler raid and was not worthy of being made a full tier. It still is the tier raid with the least amount of bosses. Battle for mount Hyjal also had 5 bosses and was originally going to be T6, however no-one cleared it until BT was released due to Kael'thas being bugged like hell (in fact Archimonde was killed after Illidan for world first) so blizzard just combined BT and Hyjal into Tier 6. Which they would later expand to Sunwell, which they have regretted doing so.

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I wonder why most people didn't bother to set a foot in it then...

it was released a bit to late in BFA season 2 and most of the rewards were weak. Not to mention that blizzard removed AotC and CE when EP opened up. Making CoS last only 2 months. Meanwhile its legion equivalent, ToV (which was released while EN was the main raid), allowed players to get AotC and CE during Nighthold.

CoS also didn't have unique transmog sets like ToV did, which is a shame. Kinda sad that blizzard put a bit more effort into a raid they thought of at the last minute (ToV) then one they had planned from the start (CoS).

[Alydael]

Ulduar today is a raid held in high regard. It was an absolutely massive raid with 14 bosses in total, with some of them being optional, and one of them being secret. Many bosses had a hard mode that could significantly change the way you would fight a boss, and was imo, pretty revolutionary in wow standards. Not to mention the massive amount of achievements in the place, with a lot of them not even being required for the meta.

Yet despite all of this content, blizz released ToC a mere 4 months later, a raid with only 6 bosses with only two rooms and no trash. While there were guilds pushing Alg, yogg 0 etc. when ToC came out, for a majority of raiders, Ulduar became irrelevant. So why did blizz cut's Ulduar's life so short? Were they scared at how all of those naxx guilds were struggling through it? Were they not satisfied with Ulduar? I've heard some talk that Ulduar actually wasn't as liked when it first came out, did that have something to do with it?

It's because a lot more people raided back then, so there was much more of a demand for new raid content, constantly. That was also the x-pac that saw the "filler raid" at the end.

I remember that people were looking for a new raid at that time. Most of the guilds had already cleared Ulduar through at that point and were (maybe) just working on wrapping up the achieves.

Nowhere near as many people raid nowadays- Blizz doesn't need to keep up that type of pace (or anywhere close to it). In fact- I think Blizz should be looking at developing other types of content besides raids- they have kind of been dying for awhile now.

[ydraw]

As great as Uludar was, and it was, it became boring rather quick. I remember that were working on 0 lights when TOC came out (every hm down + Algalon) and every night, pretty much all of us wanted to kill ourselves instead of running Ulduar.

Will never underatand the hate on ToC. The encounters were nice and it was also nice not having to do trash. Yeah, it was only 5 bosses, so? Plus that the Insanity trinkets were .. insane lol.

Same here. I actually thought Beasts Of Northrend was one of the best bosses in the expansion.

Probably what let a lot of people down about ToC was that the 2nd to last boss was totally cheesable, something that was never really possible before. I mean you had a really involved bullet hell-style encounter that could be totally cheesed by just standing in the doorway.

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It was not and you know it.

With 25 NORMAL TOC dropping gear 20 ilvls higher than Ulduar, the latter was dead as soon as the first guild on the server got Alone in the Darkness and the Death's Demise title.

For most servers that was like a year after Ulduar release...The world first kill took 3 months. Most servers never had any guild that got death's demise at all.

[DeltrusDisc]

It was the first raid with mythic.

lol Mythic was introduced with the last raid of MoP, literally two expansions later.
Ulduar was the first raid with "hard modes"... prior even to the heroic setting, which was introduced one patch later, 3.2, with Trial of the Crusader.
Check your facts, this is easily looked up on any WoW database website.

[Nefarious Tea]

For most servers that was like a year after Ulduar release...The world first kill took 3 months. Most servers never had any guild that got death's demise at all.

Lolwhat? You can only get that title ONCE per Yogg kill per server.

I was on Lightninghoof US, an RP-PVP server. We had like two guilds raiding Alliance side. The guild I was in got Alone in the Darkness about first week of October, I know this because I can never get the Death's Demise title due to a fucking exam in university. I will never forget how bullshit that was.

October 15th, 2009.

LONG before ICC went live, and before anyone on my server killed Anub'arak.

"Most servers never had any guild that got Death's Demise at all" Holy shit you're so wrong it hurts. The world first Death's Demise was just over a month after Ulduar went live (something like 43 days). Even dead realms had it long before ICC went live.

[ydraw]

Lolwhat? You can only get that title ONCE per Yogg kill per server.

I was on Lightninghoof US, an RP-PVP server. We had like two guilds raiding Alliance side. The guild I was in got Alone in the Darkness about first week of October, I know this because I can never get the Death's Demise title due to a fucking exam in university. I will never forget how bullshit that was.

October 15th, 2009.

LONG before ICC went live, and before anyone on my server killed Anub'arak.

"Most servers never had any guild that got Death's Demise at all" Holy shit you're so wrong it hurts. The world first Death's Demise was just over a month after Ulduar went live (something like 43 days). Even dead realms had it long before ICC went live.

Ulduar went live on April 14, the world first yogg +0 kill was July 7. There was a kill before that, but they all got banned for exploiting it.