The Abandonned Raid : The Abyssal Maw

[backupoffmeson]

I laugh at people saying Blizzard "dropped the ball" on raid content in Cataclysm. Cataclysm had its faults, but they certainly weren't the raiding part of it. As someone who has raided all content since Vanilla as current content I can confidently say this is the best overall expansion for raiding they have released. Tier 11 is the best raid tier ever released. Tier 12 has the best boss ever released in Heroic Rag and Firelands is overall very good. Tier 13 is above average across the board in terms of boss mechanics and enjoyability of the bosses.

[Defengar]

if this had been released with firelands in 4.2, 4.2 would probably be remembered as one of wows best raiding tiers.

---------- Post added 2012-02-15 at 01:13 PM ----------

maybe they didn't want the 4.2 to have nearly 3 times the bosses of 4.3

[Drilnos]

It probably was conceived as a 5 man. Then one thing led to another and they decided they didn't need a 5 man, but the concept was there, they had some artwork and ideas, why not upgrade it to a raid and toss it in with Firelands? Then one thing led to another, and they didn't. So it started life as a 5 man concept, became a raid concept, and ultimately was scrapped for thematic reasons. Stuff like this happens all the time. See: Well of Eternity.

Back in Vanilla, Blizzard played its cards extremely close to the vest. Blue posts on the official forums were rare, and hardly ever had anything concrete to say. Soon(TM) and all that. They've gotten increasingly loose-lipped over the years, and looking back, I can see the reason for their original reticence. Letting the community know what they're thinking about putting in just sets expectations of delivery - and if the content doesn't fit, or isn't fun, or has problems serious enough to warrant scrapping it, they'll still have people furiously banging the drum over what they "lost." Take Path of the Titans. They announced it at Blizzcon. It looked fun enough. Had some conceptual problems. Then they come back a few months later and say "well guys, we turned it all different directions and no matter what way we looked at it, Path of the Titans sucked the fat ass, so we had to put it out of its misery." And to this very day, we still see people moaning and wailing about how Blizz dropped the ball on not implementing PotT.

I loved Vashj'ir, and I wanted to see the conclusion of the Neptulon story. But we didn't get the Abyssal Maw. I've come to accept that. What we got was probably better than the Abyssal Maw. This place in the OP's video is nothing more than a whiteboard with notes scribbled on it. Every single thing in there is a placeholder. It doesn't even look to me like the floor plan had been finalized yet.

[Deleted]

I already get an awesome feeling with this map in its concept stage... This would definitly make me resub to the game.

[Bblubbs]

OP, Well done video. Fascinating stuff.

This is what probably happened. Blizzard at one time considered making this instance a 5 man and at another time considered making it a raid. Hence the confusion. Being satisfied with neither, they scrapped the project.

Its clear that the project was scrapped while placeholder art was still in place. Its pretty obvious blizz is not going to put resources into model art beyond concept art, when the instance is at 25% completion; hence they use Old Kingdom platforms as placeholder.

I'm very intrigued by the posters who put up the hypotheses that Shannox, Zonozz, and Yorsahj were moved from this to Firelands and Dragon Soul.

[lphomiej]

WTB new raids. Done with DS. MORE

[Liinxy]

I hope they do something with this dungeon/raid! It looks awesome and more content is always good

[Drilnos]

OP, Well done video. Fascinating stuff.

This is what probably happened. Blizzard at one time considered making this instance a 5 man and at another time considered making it a raid. Hence the confusion. Being satisfied with neither, they scrapped the project.

Its clear that the project was scrapped while placeholder art was still in place. Its pretty obvious blizz is not going to put resources into model art beyond concept art, when the instance is at 25% completion; hence they use Old Kingdom platforms as placeholder.

I'm very intrigued by the posters who put up the hypotheses that Shannox, Zonozz, and Yorsahj were moved from this to Firelands and Dragon Soul.

Shannox is a flamewaker, not a naga. Flamewakers (aka salamanders) have been in the game since release - there's one in BRD, and Molten Core is packed to the gills with them. They might look like naga. They might move like naga. But they are not naga. Zon'ozz and Yor'sahj might - might - be holdovers from AM, but Firelands was always going to have a flamewaker boss, AM or no.

http://www.wowpedia.org/Flamewaker

[chrisisvacant]

I'm confused. Are you saying I am imagining things or the person I quoted is imagining things. I don't see how your comment could possibly be aimed at me.

Then why presume it is directed at you??

[Deleted]

Shame, looks like it could have been a great raid. I for one quite liked Vash'jir and was disappointed that there was no associated raid.
Funny though how blizzard are always saying "fixing this problem in the game is just not a valuable way to spend our time and resources" - whereas spending a great deal of time making a raid only to abandon it is? :-p

Shame, nonetheless. Great footage :-)

[Helbereth]

So nobody had the thought that the old god corruption deal was something Blizzard didn't want to finish off with this expansion - especially with so much else going on?

Think of the conflict to come in MoP with bad karma generating monsters from the void. That sounds like old god trickery to me. If they built the place, they probably plan to use it - maybe in MoP.

[Skez]

Thanks for sharing!

[Deepsidedj]

It's clear they had major problems with their development team in Cata, so they probably just couldn't get the thing done by the patch deadline so they had to drop it and quickly recycle a couple of old raids as 5-mans instead.

- Let's go back in Wrath ... at a point when ZA ZG are live as raids. Nobody does them, only some small percent does ZG for the mount farming.

- Blizz take ZA ZG out. People are "OMG BLIZZ Y U TAKE ZA ZG BRING IT BACK"

- Blizz bring ZA ZG back. People are "ZOMG REHASED CONTENT WTFZ"


Whatever Blizzard do, people will always bash.

[notorious98]

- Let's go back in Wrath ... at a point when ZA ZG are live as raids. Nobody does them, only some small percent does ZG for the mount farming.

- Blizz take ZA ZG out. People are "OMG BLIZZ Y U TAKE ZA ZG BRING IT BACK"

- Blizz bring ZA ZG back. People are "ZOMG REHASED CONTENT WTFZ"


Whatever Blizzard do, people will always bash.

Or Blizz could have left them in the game and worked on Abyssal Maw instead, right? Or release Abyssal Maw AND 2 recycled dungeons? Considering the significantly fewer bosses in their raids, you think they would have had the time, right?

[Zukiji]

Would have been great if they implemented it, whenever (if I can ever be bothered) I go personally to the entrance of Throne of tides, I always see the unused Dungeon / Raid entrance and feel a little bit of emptyness. Almost like "dance school", but let's not get into that.

[Deleted]

This will probably have been similar to Throne of Tides.

I think we'll get to see what happened to the Kraken and Neptulon in the future.

[spirits330]

Seriously, can someone explain to me what's so amazingly awesome about THIS, which is basically a copy-paste vashjir with some platforms added?

You can make the same argument against Dragon Soul and its bosses save for the last two encounters.

[Deleted]

Thanks for sharing, looked pretty awesome.

[braxx]

*see also, the abandonned raid 3.x ruins of the nerubian empire

[Yossarian]

*see also, the abandonned raid 3.x ruins of the nerubian empire

what? where?