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

[Relapses]

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.

Just a slight correction: Mythic was released in its current iteration with the WoD pre-patch. All of SoO's relevant progression occurred with the "old" 10/25M raid structure that was established at the beginning of Cata.

[Eapoe]

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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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.

You could cheese Heigan as well. There was a safe spot on the platform and positioning the boss in a way that allowed melee to hit him and rdps/heals stood with them and ignored the dance completely.

[Elestia]

ToC was an adhoc rush job in order to "stay ahead" of Aion. Aion was in 2009 a mega popular Korean MMO that was launching in the US and was the first of many acclaimed "WoW Killers."

Dragon Soul in Cata was released prematurely as well... Sure Firelands had a good run and all BUT Blizz made sure DS went live ahead of the SWtoR launch. (Even SWtoR being a complete ripoff of WoW menus, UI and game mechanics right down to the default keybinds couldn't kill WoW...) The irony was that DS was so shit, most guilds didn't bother returning from SWtoR to WoW until much later. I know my WotLK/Cata guild only came back mid WoD and it was just because there's no endgame in these MMOs.

Aion - TotC
Rift - ZA/ZG revamp patch
Guild Wars - Firelands
SWtoR - DS
WildStar - forget when... WoD?

...

They were all entertaining... But Blizz has definitely done their homework on damage control, for better or worse with WoW as a game.

[Micronetic]

Why are people saying ToC was terrible? I mean something like Onyxia is more terrible, just a 1 Boss fight, no?

[Stardrift]

I remember people still ran Ulduar when TOC was out.

Also back then, it didn't take you 4 fucking months to gear up. The fights were laughably easy and pugs just plowed straight through.

I'd say it shouldn't take you 4 months to progress through even todays raids.

[KaPe]

Why are people saying ToC was terrible? I mean something like Onyxia is more terrible, just a 1 Boss fight, no?

Onyxia didn't obsolete any raid tier/other boss. She also had a heavy lore build up and good drops, including the cloak which you needed to take on her big brother without instantly dying to Shadowflame. Plus it was a vanilla encounter, you didn't exactly expect much back then.

Onyxia re-release in whatever expansion it was caused a lot of tears though. It was just a little fun anniversary update, but people were all like "how can there be Onyxia when we already killed her?! This is a travesty, my trust in Blizzard is now shattered." I remember shaking my head and thinking "you're murdering the same bosses every week and don't complain about them coming back to life, but this is what gets you? Seriously?"

[Asrialol]

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.

Oh how I loved doing Algalon 10 for the meteorite trinket on my hpala every week. Those were the times.

[Tradu]

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

Because it was too hard for them and while current the loot was kinda shit(it wasn't until EP patch that the loot became super good). They were also burned out from Jaina progress and just wanted to chill. That doesn't change the quality of CoS itself in terms of the bosses, it just got screwed over by weird release timing and short CE/AotC window.

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Why are people saying ToC was terrible? I mean something like Onyxia is more terrible, just a 1 Boss fight, no?

I guess some people actually like trash. Mostly I think the issue people have with it is that they didn't get a bunch of cool new boss rooms, which is fair but doesn't really bother me much.

[Steelangel]

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".

Crucible was not terrible. The boss mechanics are pretty good, because they demand the raid not be a pile of potatoes. The trinkets alone were pretty fun.

Ruby Sanctum, however, was an afterthought that barely offered gear upgrades worth the effort to even walk in the door.

[owbu]

Wotlk launched with straight forward, nerfed Nax that showered you in loot. Then they released Ulduar which was hard, less rewarding, really confusing and unrelated to the scourge story.
And then they rushed a new raid that was as straigh forward as it gets, super easy, showered you in loot and had lots of fan favourite characters yelling exposition at the players.

Ulduar was liked by the hardcore raiders (especially after we go to experience doing colloseum 4 times a week), but was causing the rest of the audience to run away in droves. It's the original "dungeons are hard! Deal with it!" ..."WAIT! Dungeons are easy! Please come back! We are so sorry! Loot for everyone!" moment, that repeated itself in cataclysm.

[Dracullus]

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

Another dumb post from you. Eternal Palace will have just 6/6.5 months on January, when Nyalotha will likely launch. Yes, 6 months is better than 4 months for raid tier.

[ydraw]

Wotlk launched with straight forward, nerfed Nax that showered you in loot. Then they released Ulduar which was hard, less rewarding, really confusing and unrelated to the scourge story.
And then they rushed a new raid that was as straigh forward as it gets, super easy, showered you in loot and had lots of fan favourite characters yelling exposition at the players.

Ulduar was liked by the hardcore raiders (especially after we go to experience doing colloseum 4 times a week), but was causing the rest of the audience to run away in droves. It's the original "dungeons are hard! Deal with it!" ..."WAIT! Dungeons are easy! Please come back! We are so sorry! Loot for everyone!" moment, that repeated itself in cataclysm.

This is not really how I remembered it. Anub'Arak was harder than any of the regular Ulduar Bosses. Only Firefighter and Yogg minus keepers were harder than Anub. Still one of the longer lived bosses in WoW history. Faction Champions and Beasts of Northrend were also harder than most Ulduar bosses. Jaraxxus and Twin Valkyr were a joke though.

[owbu]

This is not really how I remembered it. Anub'Arak was harder than any of the regular Ulduar Bosses. Only Firefighter and Yogg minus keepers were harder than Anub. Still one of the longer lived bosses in WoW history. Faction Champions and Beasts of Northrend were also harder than most Ulduar bosses. Jaraxxus and Twin Valkyr were a joke though.

Anub Heroic was definetely overtuned and didn't help hardcore raiders to like the raid (we got to the last boss within a couple of weeks and then were stuck there for another couple of month).

But I was mostly talking about the normal raider/casual. They cleared Nax without problems and then got stuck trying to get through Ulduar, because heroic mode was only half implemented, so some parts of the raid were tuned for them and then others were tuned for heroic raiders and then there was buttons you could press but maybe shouldn't press and also the raid was so large and (pseudo)linear that you had a tough time getting to the later bosses.

In colloseum, you just went into normal mode and killed everything within a couple of hours. It was basically the lfr beta.

[KaPe]

This is not really how I remembered it. Anub'Arak was harder than any of the regular Ulduar Bosses. Only Firefighter and Yogg minus keepers were harder than Anub. Still one of the longer lived bosses in WoW history. Faction Champions and Beasts of Northrend were also harder than most Ulduar bosses. Jaraxxus and Twin Valkyr were a joke though.

What you're not "remembering" is that Anub'arak had limited amount of tries, which were also shared by all the other bosses. The boss itself died rather quickly, especially since Paladins could use Holy Wrath to perma-stun the adds and make them a non-factor. It was hotfixed, but still, he was a pushover when compared to real end bosses, with limited attempt being the artifical way of making him last longer.

[Marrilaife]

In colloseum, you just went into normal mode and killed everything within a couple of hours. It was basically the lfr beta.

I envy the server you were on, back then I played on full pop albeit RP server and most pugs crashed and burnt at faction champions.

[Zensunni]

Regarding OP saying he or she had heard Ulduar wasn't well-liked when released - that's absurd. Ulduar blew everyone away right out of the gates. Everyone I knew that played WoW was talking about it, everyone in my guild was vocal about how amazing it was, etc. There were probably some whiners crying about it because it was *slightly* harder than Naxx, but I mostly remember people commenting on how uninspired and boring ToC was.

[exsanguinate]

It was the first raid with mythic.

mythic came late mop

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Well, its possible server identity was still a heavy thing influencing things like this, but just my 2 cents:

-People on both my servers loved Ulduar (Horde and Alliance)

-I don't know where you are getting it only last 4 months, Ulduar still had upgrades, a Legendary, and many achievements, world firsts too I think

-I don't get the hate for ToC. It fit thematically. It had many major lore characters and the LK. It was pretty cool, saved for the last boss being meh. Not every raid needs massive square footage. Though, ToC should have been between Naxx and Ulduar, or released simultaneously, or had the item level closer than Ulduar. ToC should have filled in some gear spots for classes instead of "trivializing" Ulduar, as you said. Not many spellcaster rings in Ulduar? Great chance to put it in ToC.

-I think they were trying something "new" with the "limited number of tries" thing... it has its pros and cons like anything else.

[ydraw]

What you're not "remembering" is that Anub'arak had limited amount of tries, which were also shared by all the other bosses. The boss itself died rather quickly, especially since Paladins could use Holy Wrath to perma-stun the adds and make them a non-factor. It was hotfixed, but still, he was a pushover when compared to real end bosses, with limited attempt being the artifical way of making him last longer.

No, I remember limited attempts. Anub'Arak was still harder than every boss in Ulduar bar Firefighter and Yogg +2.

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mythic came late mop

Mythic was just a name change. Heroic mode in WOTLK was the equivalent of Mythic in MoP.

[Temp1on2]

Honestly, a large part of this is most likely because it had such a short lifetime as current content

This. It remained "fresh" and so, even if if you didn't like some of the encounters you weren't forced to grind it for months on end - reducing the negative impact on your memory.

To be fair to Blizz the overwhelming majority of theie raids (for the time they were released) were pretty enjoyable and well designed (again, for the time) - its largely secondary factors (having nothing else to do for more than 6 months, specific class design, reputation grinds associated with them, weird mechanics that require specific items not local to the boss - looking at 'insanity' mechanic Nyalotha ) that make or break people's lasting impression of the raid.

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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.

Are you talking hard numbers or proportion? I don't think there were proportionally more raiders in WotLK than now. For better or for worse raiding is far more accessible than it was then.