GC, ToC was awesome! Where are you getting this data?

[Mormolyce]

It had awful visuals for tier sets.

Well, sort of... depended which faction you were. Hated the Horde Rogue set, so envious of the sexy Alliance Rogue set!

[Zeldaveritas]

ToC took the least amount of effort from the developers as possible and it showed. It was so terrible the endless RP felt like a boss by itself. I hated the instance for various reasons (shared class gear skins? WTF!), but after going from the epic complex that was Ulduar where hard-modes were actually hard and actually took effort just to enable them during the various encounters to ToC where baddies could derp along and get carried by GDKP's for better gear it just felt wrong. Though I suppose anything put up against that would feel like it fell short of expectations. The only redeeming value ToC had was the that trophy allocation weren't class specific so guilds could chose who to gear up, and not terrible RNG. Yet this is the one thing they haven't done since. /facepalm

Then there's the often overlooked issue with regards to raid content in WotLK that Azjol'Nerub was supposed to be a massive Ulduar/ICC sized raid, foreshadowed by Arthas' journey in WCIII:TFT. I can't be sure whether or not the reason that Anub'arak was the final boss because they had already started upgrading the model because of work that had already gone into the Azjol'Nerub before they canceled the raid or because they wanted to give a nod to said raid after the fact, but every time we dropped down to his lair in ToC it made me sad to think of what might have been.

What Blizzard will never admit to is that they were in a panic mode to fill the gap between Ulduar and ICC with content...any content. Poor dev time management seems like a running theme when looking back on the WotLK expansion.

Naxx/Maly/Sarth: Recycled content and a couple solo boss raids
Azjol'Nerub: Canceled due to lack of time
Ulduar: Grats Blizz you did something right
ToC: What is this? I don't even
ICC: Well done raid, but gated
Ruby Sanctum: another single boss raid to split up a 10 month content drought

If anything they should have scrapped the ToC raid altogether, kept the Ulduar raid relevant for another 2 months, and finished developing the Azjol'Nerub content, releasing it fall of 2009. It would have pushed back the release of ICC, but that would have been fine since it would have just reduced the content drought prior to Cata.

[Tziva]

I actually liked some of the individual boss encounters in TOC, but overall I thought the raid was one of the worst. No one likes trash but at the same time, it is very helpful for setting the pacing in a raid and making it feel more substantial by drawing it out longer. The absolute boring physical environment and atmosphere and the fact it was consistent through almost the entire raid did not help. Finally, it had other issues like the timing (it was released too early when most guilds were still working on their legendary maces and Ulduar hardmodes, leaving us for too long in ICC later), the ilvls were too much of a jump from Ulduar (again influencing progression oriented guilds to farm a boring raid when they'd have rather been in Ulduar), ugly tier sets, weird token system, and a less-than-epic storyline as far as why you were fighting the bosses. And, frankly, the difficulty progression on TOGC was totally stupid with the first fight being the second hardest; it really should have been a lot more linear.

Pretty much the only positive thing you hear about TOC is "but it had no trash." If anything, though, it taught me that trash is a necessary evil.

[ablib]

I'm with you OP, I had no idea ToC was disliked until I hit the forums.

On my server trade chat was always full of pugs LFM for ToC all the way up until Cata came out.

I liked it. However, I understood it for what it was for -- a filler raid to tie us over before ICC. Blizz could have easily had let Ulduar last until ICC (which would have been an 8 month tier). Fuck Blizzard for giving us more content.

[Oppressionix805]

i liked it, it was refreshing... honestly I think people hated because it was different than the usual BS... but thats just an opinion, but following the best raid in that expansion is a tough gig I mean Ulduar was just brilliant and fantastical

[Defengar]

Indeed, there has been many polls and feedback presented that ToC was the worst raid design ever done. Short, and frequently mind numbing. It was not a fun tier at the time.

Every Poll I have seen in the last year and a half voted Dragon Soul the clear winner of "worst raid ever". Which I definitely have to agree with. Was total garbage.

I loved TOC. But its problem was it came to soon after Ulduar, and Ulduar was so good, almost anything following was bound to leave a bit of a sour taste in everyone's mouth. The other issues it had was it was to short. I loved that there wasn't any trash to pad it out, but it definitely needed a couple more bosses, or many some mini boss encounters. The other issue of course, was that a lot of the sets were butt ugly.

---------- Post added 2013-04-07 at 07:38 PM ----------

I felt faction champs was one of the most creative and epic fights in WoW.

[Henako]

I hated the theme of the place and how fucking short it was. Running the place week after week after week after week and fighting the same five bosses in the same room gets old.

[Daetur]

ToC wasn't terrible by any means, but it was also a raid tier of many, many, many flaws. Personally, I didn't care for it. At all. I think it lost its charm quickly because it was so short and had so few bosses and such little scenery, though it had an interesting and enjoyable theme.

In addition, I think one of the problems with it was the massive burnout from doing it 4 times a week per toon. UGH.

[-Ethos-]

ToC was utterly horrible as a progression guild. Having to repeat the same 5 bosses 4 times (or more for alt runs)... Especially off the back of Ulduar which is up there as one of the greatest raids of all time.

[PrairieChicken]

Because ToC had highest raid participation ever in history of WoW (LFR doesn't count)

[SDMF]

I really liked the Faction Champions and Twin Valkyr encounters, I thought they had cool and interesting mechanics. What makes me dislike ToC was not so much the actual encounters but rather that it did not bring any new models to the game. I also disliked the lockout system which made you raid ToC 4 times a week (at least in the very beginning of it) and of course, the infamous 50 attempt bonus loot system which I utterly hated.

[Cirque]

After reading the new blue notes, I ran across this and it just pissed me off to be honest:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-ToC was awesome because it stood on the integrity of it's encounter design. It was a minimalist approach that worked.
I thought the encounters were well crafted. Overall the raid was not popular though. New art and architecture are important
-Faction Champs was still one of the coolest encounters I've ever done though.
I liked it personally, but it was less popular with players not used to dealing with no aggro, interrupts, CC and the like.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GC, may I ask where you are getting your data from? I and practically every person I have ever spoken with, whether it be in-game, IRL friends, forums etc LOVED ToC, especially ToGC! The idea of being in a coliseum with your Faction Leader staring down upon you to engage in a no-trash, head on bout is, tbh, flipping awesome! Than to be able to do hard modes? WHAT?! dude. shit was baller status.

If I am not mistaken, the idea of the Brawlers Guild is somewhat of a 1man variation(with no end boss of course) of ToC, is it not? Yes, Brawlers Guild provides random mobs, but the foundation is very similar.

ToC brought out the inner badass in you, like watching Maximus Decimus Meridius in Gladiator, Achilles slay Hector in Troy, and similar to the feeling late in FF7 when you can do that gladiator style battling to see how far you can go for rewards.

So, community, did you like ToC, did you not like it? Who was your favorite boss? I don't usually post threads about pointing a finger at GC whom I highly respect, but I couldn't let that post go, it made me pound my desk and my goldfish got scared : /

Are you sure you actually played back then? Forums were full of hate and dismay, at the lazyness displayed by Blizzard, at the mediocre environment, and the endless jokes about the NOT ONE BUT TWO JORMUNGAR WORMS...

I have never met anyone, you're the first actually, who said they liked ToC. The encounters were sound, the rest was shit. You had a marvellous raid most people enjoyed (although a LOT of people never set foot in Ulduar, to be honest, most people who claim they love it did it afterwards, so maybe this argument is not that valid in the bigger picture, but for me, it's of paramount importance), and then to follow that up we got that piece of crap re-hashed everything with no clear lore purpose filler raid instance.

Really? Practice for the fight against the LK? Let's do that by wasting all our efforts in capturing dangerous beasts and killing your allies off, shall we? You'd think defeating an Old God was enough proof, but no. We shall test our worth against a worm. I mean two worms.

---------- Post added 2013-04-08 at 03:07 AM ----------

Because ToC had highest raid participation ever in history of WoW (LFR doesn't count)

This, really, is actually true I believe. ToC was quite accessible to pugs, something Ulduar hadn't been at all. I guess that's the one good thing that can be said about the raid, as I do believe accessible raids to be important.

---------- Post added 2013-04-08 at 03:13 AM ----------

Every Poll I have seen in the last year and a half voted Dragon Soul the clear winner of "worst raid ever". Which I definitely have to agree with. Was total garbage.

I loved TOC. But its problem was it came to soon after Ulduar, and Ulduar was so good, almost anything following was bound to leave a bit of a sour taste in everyone's mouth. The other issues it had was it was to short. I loved that there wasn't any trash to pad it out, but it definitely needed a couple more bosses, or many some mini boss encounters. The other issue of course, was that a lot of the sets were butt ugly.

---------- Post added 2013-04-07 at 07:38 PM ----------

I felt faction champs was one of the most creative and epic fights in WoW.

You must remember however that polls like that aren't accurate. Those people who voted mostly have done DS in LFR, and did it till they burned out, week after week alt after alt, something a lot of those voters haven't been able to do in older raids. Sure, people who raided ToC did it week after week alt after alt and more than that because of lockouts too, but how many of said voters fall in that category? That makes those polls skewed and inaccurate. DS had a lot of the faults ToC had, and on LFR the encounters were garbage. But I for one prefered DS, because it had an actual lore purpose, no matter how poorly developed, and I really loved the fights in there (even spine! I loved tanking spine, for some reason). I mean, the environments were totally crap, but at least you went from A to B to C and your presence had a point - saving the world.

[Tunaria]

I loved TOC. But its problem was it came to soon after Ulduar, and Ulduar was so good, almost anything following was bound to leave a bit of a sour taste in everyone's mouth.

Felt like that was one of the biggest problems, yes. Compared to Ulduar, ToC was arguably a complete joke.

And while being the content patch that made it a lot easier to catch up in terms of gear, it practically killed any sort of raid progression that wasn't the current tier.
There was no reason to run Ulduar for gear anymore, since a couple of HC runs to get the points nescessary for purchasing statistically better gear was much less of a hassle.

I would say that at least ToC didn't recycle areas like ZA, ZG and DS did, but having a raid that consisted of only two rooms, one that was even shared with the 5-man version, isn't exactly that much better.

The premise of the tournament itself was a bit hard to swallow aswell:
Tirion is hosting a tournament to gather the strongest army for an assault on Icecrown Citadel? Sure, fair enough.
Said tournament happens during what is an active war against the Scourge and practically takes place at the enemy's doorstep? Wait, what? Why is this seen as a good idea?
The Lich King basically teleporting into the middle of the stadium and effortlessly collapses the whole ground just showed how silly this whole premise is.

This last one is just nitpicking, but Tirion offering him a chance to surrender, on the promise of an easy death, certainly didn't help either. Tirion, you've experienced his work first-hand, you've declared him the sworn enemy of the world, you've personally attempted to redeem his host and destroyed his heart without hesitation when you found nothing to redeem... And you ask him to surrender, or better yet, expect him to actually consider it?

[hyphnos]

ToC was utterly horrible as a progression guild. Having to repeat the same 5 bosses 4 times (or more for alt runs)... Especially off the back of Ulduar which is up there as one of the greatest raids of all time.

So, what you and your peers be saying about any raid from Cataclysm/Mists if you had to run them 4 times a week?

The OP is basically wondering why GC is trashing on ToC and everyone here is saying "bad art" and "the fact that at the time raids were run so often" and "one room".

So, I have to ask how on earth would running a raid 4 times a week have been better if it was in multiple rooms with pretty walls separated by piles of pointless trash?

On the other hand plenty of people like the fact that Toc was boss to boss to boss with no trash and yet all the arguments trashing it seem to be based on the encounters themselves, not the no-trash, no-nonsense style of the raid. Do we really need to give Blizzard the impression that spending an extra 45 minutes clearing trash is good design.

I value my free time and I don't see why the rest of you don't. Dragging a raid out with trash is not adding more "raiding" - it's adding more trash so the percentage of time actually raiding is lowered. How on earth is this good for anyone but Blizzard now that it's in full on, everything must take forever oh god oh god, people ran out of things to do before so let's slow everything to a crawl and pretend that the 10 months we didn't put out any group content had nothing to do with it.

[Seezer]

After reading the new blue notes, I ran across this and it just pissed me off to be honest:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-ToC was awesome because it stood on the integrity of it's encounter design. It was a minimalist approach that worked.
I thought the encounters were well crafted. Overall the raid was not popular though. New art and architecture are important
-Faction Champs was still one of the coolest encounters I've ever done though.
I liked it personally, but it was less popular with players not used to dealing with no aggro, interrupts, CC and the like.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GC, may I ask where you are getting your data from? I and practically every person I have ever spoken with, whether it be in-game, IRL friends, forums etc LOVED ToC, especially ToGC! The idea of being in a coliseum with your Faction Leader staring down upon you to engage in a no-trash, head on bout is, tbh, flipping awesome! Than to be able to do hard modes? WHAT?! dude. shit was baller status.

If I am not mistaken, the idea of the Brawlers Guild is somewhat of a 1man variation(with no end boss of course) of ToC, is it not? Yes, Brawlers Guild provides random mobs, but the foundation is very similar.

ToC brought out the inner badass in you, like watching Maximus Decimus Meridius in Gladiator, Achilles slay Hector in Troy, and similar to the feeling late in FF7 when you can do that gladiator style battling to see how far you can go for rewards.

So, community, did you like ToC, did you not like it? Who was your favorite boss? I don't usually post threads about pointing a finger at GC whom I highly respect, but I couldn't let that post go, it made me pound my desk and my goldfish got scared : /

ToC was regarded as a shit raid. It was awful. Entire encounter but one was in the same room, and one of them was a cc fest. ToC sucked a fat dong.

---------- Post added 2013-04-08 at 01:34 AM ----------

So, what you and your peers be saying about any raid from Cataclysm/Mists if you had to run them 4 times a week?

The OP is basically wondering why GC is trashing on ToC and everyone here is saying "bad art" and "the fact that at the time raids were run so often" and "one room".

So, I have to ask how on earth would running a raid 4 times a week have been better if it was in multiple rooms with pretty walls separated by piles of pointless trash?

On the other hand plenty of people like the fact that Toc was boss to boss to boss with no trash and yet all the arguments trashing it seem to be based on the encounters themselves, not the no-trash, no-nonsense style of the raid. Do we really need to give Blizzard the impression that spending an extra 45 minutes clearing trash is good design.

I value my free time and I don't see why the rest of you don't. Dragging a raid out with trash is not adding more "raiding" - it's adding more trash so the percentage of time actually raiding is lowered. How on earth is this good for anyone but Blizzard now that it's in full on, everything must take forever oh god oh god, people ran out of things to do before so let's slow everything to a crawl and pretend that the 10 months we didn't put out any group content had nothing to do with it.

"I value my free time and don't see why the rest of you don't". Is a copout. If you feel like playing a video game is eating away at your free time, or that your free time is better spent on streamlined content, that's you. But other ppl's free time is just as important as yours, and they value it as much as you do. If something seems like it's taking forever for you, it's probably a hint for you to stop doing it. And mmo's aren't your bag.

[Powerogue]

Didn't like it. The environment was boring, it was really, until the end at least, nothing but "bring in the next monster!" it doesn't really qualify as a raid.

The bosses weren't that bad, except that my raiders managed to constantly fail against the first boss. At least with Ulduar, if you only got partway in, you still saw a lot of awesomeness (like the first boss battle) but here if you barely get anywhere, all you see is the tent.

[Usagi Senshi]

I liked it, didn't shove a bunch of shit trash down my throat along with a truckload of dildos for flavor. Bosses were flavorful and fun and the loot (weapons especially were very nice) was decent. That and the Ony raid complimented one another well IMO.

To sum it up, you didn't like ToC if you don't appreciate boss rush mode from most 2D/3D action games.

[Veyne]

So you would be fine if ToC didn't contain any tiers? What's the difference? We now are 1 number higher in tier numbers than what you suggest, oh no! It still was a filler raid, and should be considered one.

It was filler content that was treated like primary content. A whole raid tier (I'm not just talking about gear, I'm talking about the months spent in the raid as a whole) devoted to two rooms and, what, 5 bosses? Lame.

[shise]

The only thing I didn't like about it was having the same gear looks ^^

It was a great fun raid, specially the champions fight, Imo we should have more of those fights. It was a great raid because it was different, so once in a while it's great to change the style a bit.

[Lovecrafts]

ToC was garbage it's a shame too since Ulduar was so awesome.