Originally Posted by
Raugnaut
While "Hard Modes" like in Ulduar were interesting, Blizzard found them a nightmare to really balance. In an interview they did on it a while back, it was mainly an issue of effort vs reward. If you have a hard mode that's resoundingly more difficult then just the regular fight, how do you reward it? If you do it via ilvl, then you have to take into account ilvl inflation - It's already extreme enough with 4 seperate difficulties, not to mention Titanforging, if blizzard had added hard-mode ilvl on top of it, we would easily be over 1k ilvl in Antorus atm. If you add vanity behind it, then how do you reward that? One-time drop? Then you run into the issue of ppl wanting to do the hard-mode for the reward, compared to ppl who just want the loot and couldn't give a fuck about vanity.
So, Blizzard decided that achievements were good enough for a hard mode - While not all achievements are comparable to the difficulty between, say, Yogg'Saron 0 lights and +4 lights back in the day, most of them can be compared to the difficulty between Elders last and Protector last in ToES, with a few being as easy as FL+1 and FL no towers (Almost no difference in the fight, you just have to avoid extra fire or kill additional adds)
As for small raids, like Gruul/Magtheridon, VoA/BH, Blizzard completely replaced them with World Bosses, it's just that in WoD and Legion, you can't get tier from them like you could in MoP. Honestly, Legion is pretty crappy in terms of that - At least in MoP and WoD, the world bosses were decent - MoP world bosses actually related to the ongoing story, WoD world bosses were significantly powerful enemies, and the Gorgon world boss rotation was great, since it was just every other week.
In Legion, world bosses are HORRIBLE, and for most of them, the "lore" behind them is a enormous joke - A overstuffed Sea Giant? A Sea Giant who punches a mediocre mage to cast spells? Not to mention the fact that you maybe see a specific world boss once every half-year.
7.0 world bosses - Completely shit. Blizzard should have at least divided them up into zones - You get 1 world boss per zone per week. So Highmountain would alternate between Drugon and Flotsam, Stormheim would alternate between Nithogg and the Soultakers, ect. Maybe move Withered Jim to Surumar, so Azsuna would alternate between two, and Surumar could have alternated between three world bosses.
7.2 world bosses - Decent. They all could have used voice overs, ESPECIALLY Brutallus (I LIVE FOR THIS!!!!), and it would have been better if they were up for an entire week rather then 3 days (Disconnect them from the Nether Disruptor), but yea, decent.
7.3 world bosses - Should have been 2 greater invasions per zone, with 1 up in each zone per week imo. Should have also tossed in a number of known names rather then a bunch of nobodies - Magtheridon instead of "Vilemus(Lol that name)", Jarraxus instead of Sotanathor (Where the fuck was he this expansion?), ect.
Antorus was honestly a disappointment too - With the exception of a few bosses, most of them were basically "Dragon Soul"-esque bosses - Completely out of left field, with not a single mention as to who they, being EXTREMELY important, powerful, and seemingly influencial characters, were. Granted, ToS was pretty much like that for it's early bosses, but eh.