Question about RWF during early expansions (ICC, Cata, etc.)

[Reptar]

Does anyone know/remember what it was like in early days when Paragon and Method dominated the RWF scene? I'm curious because with what the event has become now, it feels like it's going to be very difficult for guilds to take more than 2-4 days on a really difficult boss. They either solve it and beat it, or it's overtuned and it gets nerfed.

However, I imagine it was very different back then. Like, splits probably didn't exist, the raiders weren't streaming, nor playing nonstop every day. I imagine bosses took multiple weeks and that was just considered normal. So, anyone remember what it was like and can shed some light on it?

[aevitas]

Guilds back then definitely did put in a ton of time, some of them raiding 6 days a week / 5 days. Blizzard eventually even put in a limit/week of tries on the Lich King to slow guilds down.

Difference being Weak Aura's weren't being used really (they were not even a thing), streaming not being a thing yet and it not being a giga event with sponsors and tons of money involved.

[Ghost of Cow]

The race to be "first" in raiding situations in MMOs hasn't really changed that much, aside from the production, sponsorships, exposure, etc. If anything, it has improved in many ways.

You can go back to the era before WoW even existed and look at how guilds raided in EQ, for example. Your guild wasn't sleeping until it was done in many cases. Not like Liquid or Method having a "work day" of raiding and then they eat, sleep, etc. Oh, no. Guilds literally had their people in-game or on-call constantly. Even casual guilds were expecting you to be available at all hours to answer the "Batphone" to get raid targets as they spawned.

Even at the top end, MMOs in general have become less demanding, not more.

[Relapses]

My sorta dogshit US ~100 guild did splits in Highmaul and that was the very first raid with Mythic difficulty so they're not exactly a new idea. We didn't do as many as the RWF guilds but we weren't shooting for WF. It was a different time back then, though. One of the biggest controversies was that China got caught transferring toons to buy high item level gear on the BMAH so their raiders had a very small ilvl advantage over US/EU guilds. We wouldn't even blink an eye at that kind of behavior these days. IIRC, one of the Moonkins on the WF Blackhand kill was some other dude's account that was being piloted by a Method raider because the guy was pretty geared and they needed a lot of Moonkins for their strat. The fact that Normal/Heroic shared gear is what prevented a lot of splits prior to 20M Mythic.

I do miss some aspects of the RWF back then, though. The RWF thread on this forum effectively turned into twitch chat with players chiming in with different intel from inside sources within the guilds. We'd learn about bosses dying by rapidly refreshing the armory and would have to subside with screenshots of boss HP until World 5th was achieved. This general lack of information meant that guilds would be progressing on bosses completely blind. Every other race, some Chinese guild would be streaming end boss progression and it'd be the only way we could see an encounter live. But this dearth of information led to the WF guilds often approaching bosses with completely different strategies. I think the coolest example of guilds doing things differently was Paragon on Archimonde. Method developed a WA with arrows that made handling the Wrought Chaos a cinch (this WA eventually became the defacto way most guilds handled this mechanic), but Paragon used a number system that was almost assuredly the way Blizzard had actually intended for this mechanic to be handled. Video here:

[kranur]

Does anyone know/remember what it was like in early days when Paragon and Method dominated the RWF scene? I'm curious because with what the event has become now, it feels like it's going to be very difficult for guilds to take more than 2-4 days on a really difficult boss. They either solve it and beat it, or it's overtuned and it gets nerfed.

However, I imagine it was very different back then. Like, splits probably didn't exist, the raiders weren't streaming, nor playing nonstop every day. I imagine bosses took multiple weeks and that was just considered normal. So, anyone remember what it was like and can shed some light on it?

Splits started with ICC IIRC. Even though they have been in ToC, I don't recall anyone splitting before ICC.
In the early early days, Nihilum broke the ice with day raiding.

[Tech614]

Splits started with ICC IIRC. Even though they have been in ToC, I don't recall anyone splitting before ICC.
In the early early days, Nihilum broke the ice with day raiding.

Yea, splits as we know them now though really started in WoD when the old raid ID lock system was changed to current one where you can enter any instance ID on normal/heroic. They where extremely limited before that when you where locked to specific instance IDs and it was essentially just maintaining a few alts to run a few normal runs to gear mains no where near as insane as they got post WoD.

This is why blizzard is probably hesitant to change mythic to this style of ID and it still uses the legacy one. These dudes would 100% start splitting the first few bosses on mythic if they could.

[Kehego]

Yea, splits as we know them now though really started in WoD when the old raid ID lock system was changed to current one where you can enter any instance ID on normal/heroic. They where extremely limited before that when you where locked to specific instance IDs and it was essentially just maintaining a few alts to run a few normal runs to gear mains no where near as insane as they got post WoD.

This is why blizzard is probably hesitant to change mythic to this style of ID and it still uses the legacy one. These dudes would 100% start splitting the first few bosses on mythic if they could.

blood legion 100% did "community runs" to funnel gear to mains in ICC. 2-5 mains in a 25 man group to take all the good loot.

Splits been a thing since at least ICC.


oh and people 100% do alt runs on like the 2nd week on geared alts because why not? You gotta have several toons for sales anyway

[Tech614]

blood legion 100% did "community runs" to funnel gear to mains in ICC. 2-5 mains in a 25 man group to take all the good loot.

Splits been a thing since at least ICC.

Splits have obviously been a thing since before ICC even, Paragon did it in TGC if you want to get technical. The modern splits that take half of a fucking week to finish though? Those started in WoD. Trying to say anything else is your boomer brain not even remembering how it went down and confusing the years together.

So please, save your correction when you clearly don't even know how the fuck ICC lockouts worked if you think it was possible to only have 2-5 mains per 25 man run. You had to clear normal to unlock heroic, you saying they killed normal lich king 25 in those splits with 5 mains and 20 random "community members" from your claim? Everyone who played at the time knows you're full of shit if you're claiming that. When they're actually progressing on heroic, they also can't split normal cause it shared the same lockout if you where going to claim that you're also SoL sorry. If you're thinking lockouts back then worked like they do now and they could just mix runs together to clear, again wrong. Once you killed a boss you could not enter another instance ID on 25 man.

So what where they splitting with only 5 mains? 10 man ICC? Yea probably, this shows how brain deterioration works over time. It's a helluva thing.

[Tehalbino]

Does anyone know/remember what it was like in early days when Paragon and Method dominated the RWF scene? I'm curious because with what the event has become now, it feels like it's going to be very difficult for guilds to take more than 2-4 days on a really difficult boss. They either solve it and beat it, or it's overtuned and it gets nerfed.

However, I imagine it was very different back then. Like, splits probably didn't exist, the raiders weren't streaming, nor playing nonstop every day. I imagine bosses took multiple weeks and that was just considered normal. So, anyone remember what it was like and can shed some light on it?

Nothing really happened on a significant scale until after Ulduar (midway through WotLK). eg.) Things like soulstone on an entire raid for ToC 1shot run

We did BT splits for an extra chance at Warglaives leading up to Sunwell but that was it (and we usually tried to get a lockout from a guild on shahraz+ if possible). Outside of that splits were strictly for alts and fun.


Everything post Sunwell had abilities available or datamined. (We would give all of our logs and everything literally mid raid to the author of DBM on PTR and progression).
After that you never had to waste pulls or time just to see a specific ability. Which albeit cool when looking back on, it's not something I'd ever want to experience again having done it since original launch.


As far as the RWF goes what we have now is probably the best we're going to get, at least until raid loot eventually goes currency/valor based (which will happen, hopefully sooner rather than later) and eliminates degeneracy and 'stacking' splits.
I'd rather them do that then have a much more aggressive buff template per week to help natural progression.

Might even have the 'race' go into a 3rd week due to lower natural gear progression and difficulty.

[Biomega]

Does anyone know/remember what it was like in early days when Paragon and Method dominated the RWF scene? I'm curious because with what the event has become now, it feels like it's going to be very difficult for guilds to take more than 2-4 days on a really difficult boss. They either solve it and beat it, or it's overtuned and it gets nerfed.

That's really kind of inevitable with escalating optimization efforts by the players. We're already running into the problem where there's an effective unofficial extra difficulty, just to make sure the race isn't over in a day. There is no way to tune things on a common ground against people who play 14 hours a day and have dozens of staff plus hundreds of helpers. That's a level of efficiency so outside of the realm of regular mortals, it cannot be squared with the demands and expectations of the average player.

That being said, it's still possible to tune bosses in a way that they don't roll over even to RWF guilds but are still killable for them, however the question becomes whether or not they actually WANT that. The final boss is a bit of a special case, but anytime we've seen before-final bosses take several days to kill it came with significant problems. Sepulcher is probably the epitome of that, though of course it had a special quirk to extend the duration of the raid further, too. We've had several bosses since then where the RWF ran into walls and ultimately nerfs, but where the guilds stated that these were nerfs for efficiency - not because the bosses were unkillable. But adding +300 attempts or whatever onto a mid-raid boss is very often simply not where you want to be.

However, I imagine it was very different back then. Like, splits probably didn't exist, the raiders weren't streaming, nor playing nonstop every day. I imagine bosses took multiple weeks and that was just considered normal. So, anyone remember what it was like and can shed some light on it?

Splits existed, after a fashion; and then came into the fore fully once the logout system was changed. Streaming was in its infancy, and there existed the infamous gentlemen's agreement of not releasing any footage of bosses until they'd been killed 5(?) times. And of course it took a while for people to find modes of playing long hours for sustained periods of time despite RL commitments etc.

This was really just a history of optimization - things started off casual, then people realized you could do better by pushing harder. And they gradually pushed each other higher and higher, an escalating arms race of competition. As things like streaming developed further, this allowed people to push even more, as they could afford to make playing the game their actual job etc.

It's all about the baseline: what is the expectation? For a while, it was normal to just raid in the evening. Then eventually, you raided in the afternoon. Then all day. And so on, gradually increasing all levels of efficiency as the competition became more and more fierce. Now these are professional organizations with staff, marketing departments, all that. Just the normal way of professionalization, really, when you think about it. Once you go pro, you have more options to play with - and then anyone who wants to compete with you will have to match or better those options. And so on.

You could argue that the race was more "innocent" in the day, but whether it was more FUN is entirely subjective. We didn't really have a streamed community event to follow - so the race was mostly about the people directly involved, with very little audience. Videos came out after the fact, without a way to cheer or follow and largely without any insight into progression (as the videos were mostly just the kills). There was some community involvement like drives to buy consumables etc. and then gradually splits or split-like events, but it was all very small and very remote compared to today.

What's important to keep in mind, though, is that the genie is out of the bottle now. There is no squeezing this particular toothpaste back into the tube. As we've seen with e.g. Classic, even if they just reduced the difficulty back to kiddie levels, there'd be no end of people ready to smash into that, and we'd have races of sub-2h or whatever. Not exactly very fun for the community. You can't go back in time, because people have become too good at things - and even if the content was easier, they wouldn't suddenly become worse players.

[exochaft]

What's important to keep in mind, though, is that the genie is out of the bottle now. There is no squeezing this particular toothpaste back into the tube. As we've seen with e.g. Classic, even if they just reduced the difficulty back to kiddie levels, there'd be no end of people ready to smash into that, and we'd have races of sub-2h or whatever. Not exactly very fun for the community. You can't go back in time, because people have become too good at things - and even if the content was easier, they wouldn't suddenly become worse players.

That's true to a point, but it also comes down to Blizz's ultimate decision around ICC to tune/balance raids around the existence of combat addons. If Blizz decided to disable combat addons in raids, the raids would look a helluva lot different than they do now... or at the very least they'd wouldn't be tuned nearly as tight as they are now. They've even admitted many times in blue posts that the addon decision basically started an arms race, but I always found it odd that they'd almost play victim when they were holding all the cards. You can't stop players from wanting to optimize, but Blizz could put their foot down on certain issues so things don't get out of hand.

I remember Blizz did disable the AVR addon back in ICC (the one that projected textures on the ground to show where mechanics would be) because it would make mechanics too easy. While they've disabled other functions over time from being public since, they've fundamentally missed the point that quite often the addons being disabled were felt as necessary because the mechanics/content were being overtuned because they were allowed in the first place; furthermore, designed content around the existence of addons makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Also doesn't help that Blizz was pretty bad at showing/signaling mechanics, which necessitated a bossmod addon for many. Weakauras (formerly Powerauras) was probably the biggest offender of them all, to where they have a pseudo-version of it as part of the WoW UI now. It's no secret that Blizz also used these addons as excuses to not fix things because they held the mentality that "why fix broken stuff when players will make addons to do it for us?"... again they made a statement akin to this back in BfA.

To be clear, this isn't an attack on players for making addons, this is a criticism of how Blizz addressed and responded to the addons issues when it came to raiding. Addons weren't the only issue that had fundamentally changed the raiding experience over time (especially the RWF as many teams have on-call coders to make stuff on the fly now), but it's one of the big ones.

Addons aside, a lot has changed since then to where you'd never get the same experience again no matter how much you tried. It's one of those things where you can relish in the memory of the early days of WoW and be grateful to have experienced it as it was back then. Quite a bit of the experience was a lot less access/availability of information, so that aspect can't really be undone at this point. Kind of makes one wonder what current-day aspect we can look back upon fondly 20 years from now when it comes to gaming.

[Biomega]

That's true to a point, but it also comes down to Blizz's ultimate decision around ICC to tune/balance raids around the existence of combat addons. If Blizz decided to disable combat addons in raids, the raids would look a helluva lot different than they do now... or at the very least they'd wouldn't be tuned nearly as tight as they are now.

Probably true, but just yet another genie. Can't turn back the clock on this, addons are a fact of the game now. Removing them would probably just lob off a significant chunk of the player base at this point.

While they've disabled other functions over time from being public since, they've fundamentally missed the point that quite often the addons being disabled were felt as necessary because the mechanics/content were being overtuned because they were allowed in the first place

They didn't miss this. They embraced it.

The existence of addons expands their design space, because it allows them to make more and more complex mechanics without the danger of being overwhelming. Particularly with the interface of a 20-year old game.

Of course there's dangers and downsides to this as well, and much like with AVR they have intervened with other things in occasion. And the level of functionality modern-day custom-code WAs offer is probably a little over the line. But in principle, the existence of addons increases what they can do with fight design, and pushes the limits of difficulty.

[Twdft]

Blizzard eventually even put in a limit/week of tries on the Lich King to slow guilds down.

At which point guilds started to prepare multiple chars to go in for more attempts.

[Kehego]

Splits have obviously been a thing since before ICC even, Paragon did it in TGC if you want to get technical. The modern splits that take half of a fucking week to finish though? Those started in WoD. Trying to say anything else is your boomer brain not even remembering how it went down and confusing the years together.

So please, save your correction when you clearly don't even know how the fuck ICC lockouts worked if you think it was possible to only have 2-5 mains per 25 man run. You had to clear normal to unlock heroic, you saying they killed normal lich king 25 in those splits with 5 mains and 20 random "community members" from your claim? Everyone who played at the time knows you're full of shit if you're claiming that. When they're actually progressing on heroic, they also can't split normal cause it shared the same lockout if you where going to claim that you're also SoL sorry. If you're thinking lockouts back then worked like they do now and they could just mix runs together to clear, again wrong. Once you killed a boss you could not enter another instance ID on 25 man.

So what where they splitting with only 5 mains? 10 man ICC? Yea probably, this shows how brain deterioration works over time. It's a helluva thing.

if you remember ICC, all the wings didnt open at the same time
so they would carry mains into the putricide wing to farm trinkets up until sindragosa wing opened

that was at least a month

you're big mad for no reason brother, most of the good ICC loot was found in/before putricide wing (dbw, dfo, taiaj, etc)
hell, if you QM'ed tier tokens to raiders, you would get many mains geared up in these runs way faster than in main runs, especially considering you only got 4-6 sanctified tokens from the 2-3 wing bosses you killed.

please talk more about brainrot and misremembering because if you didnt factor the timegate between wings of icc you're the drooling octogenarian here, pal


unless you're a private server or classic andy, ofc

- - - Updated - - -

At which point guilds started to prepare multiple chars to go in for more attempts.

which ties in to my earlier claim about icc splits

funny how it all falls together lmao

[ThrashMetalFtw]

Dunno how it was with dayraiding for extended periods in Classic and TBC, but the modern standard was already set by the latter half of WotLK (ToGC and ICC).

Ensidia, Paragon, Method etc were dayraiding every waking hour just like the top guilds do today. T11 in Cata was so infamous because of how much of a physical and mental strain it put on the top guilds dayraiding like that for almost a month.



Modern splits started in Cata, at least that's when I first heard about it, and it was done by every top guild in MoP. This was only possible during the first reset though, since Normal always released one reset before Heroic (modern Heroic and Mythic).

Streaming started with Uldir in BFA. Before this, it was all very secret, with guilds trying to keep their own tactic a secret. There was even a "gentleman's rule" about the winner of the race not releasing their kill video until the 2nd guild got their kill.

- - - Updated - - -

Splits have obviously been a thing since before ICC even, Paragon did it in TGC if you want to get technical. The modern splits that take half of a fucking week to finish though? Those started in WoD. Trying to say anything else is your boomer brain not even remembering how it went down and confusing the years together.

So please, save your correction when you clearly don't even know how the fuck ICC lockouts worked if you think it was possible to only have 2-5 mains per 25 man run. You had to clear normal to unlock heroic, you saying they killed normal lich king 25 in those splits with 5 mains and 20 random "community members" from your claim? Everyone who played at the time knows you're full of shit if you're claiming that. When they're actually progressing on heroic, they also can't split normal cause it shared the same lockout if you where going to claim that you're also SoL sorry. If you're thinking lockouts back then worked like they do now and they could just mix runs together to clear, again wrong. Once you killed a boss you could not enter another instance ID on 25 man.

So what where they splitting with only 5 mains? 10 man ICC? Yea probably, this shows how brain deterioration works over time. It's a helluva thing.

As stated above, modern splits were done by every top guild for all of MoP. The first time I heard about it was during Dragon Soul in Cata.

This was obviously not the case from the 2nd reset and onward, since Normal and Heroic were on the same lockout, but this didn't matter during the 1st reset since Heroic was always released 1 reset after Normal.

So you had modern splits during the "Normal only" week, and from the 2nd reset they went straight into Heroic and focused on that for the entire race.


Only difference from WoD and onwards, is that you can do splits with 30 people instead of 25, and you can continue doing it after the Normal week.

[Keashaa]

Does anyone know/remember what it was like in early days when Paragon and Method dominated the RWF scene? I'm curious because with what the event has become now, it feels like it's going to be very difficult for guilds to take more than 2-4 days on a really difficult boss. They either solve it and beat it, or it's overtuned and it gets nerfed.

However, I imagine it was very different back then. Like, splits probably didn't exist, the raiders weren't streaming, nor playing nonstop every day. I imagine bosses took multiple weeks and that was just considered normal. So, anyone remember what it was like and can shed some light on it?

Method has a pretty good overview of the raiding history of WoW:
https://www.method.gg/raid-history

[Nitros14]

Updated for this tier.

I see a lot of misinformation out there regarding how long bosses took to die so I thought I'd recreate this thread. DISCLAIMER: This thread is not trying to measure difficulty.



These are from the date it was possible to begin working on them, or the previous hard mode was killed. I'm sure people might quibble with some of them but I did my best. Going with 25-mans here.

This is obviously not indicative of their relative difficulty but it's interesting. Lots of caveats of course. Like Ulduar's design lending it to people being able to progress anywhere and various limited attempt bosses.

The reason Yogg-Saron and Mimiron count from the opening of Ulduar is that from day one it was possible to immediately go in and begin working on Alone in the Darkness. With other bosses it was 100% impossible to start pulls testing them out until the previous boss was slain.

#1 Ouro - 87 days from the Twin Emperors' death. (1 day from C'thun's death) 26th April 2006.
#2 C'thun - 86 days from the Twin Emperors' death. 25th April 2006.
#3 Yogg-Saron, Alone in the Darkness - 83 days from General Vezax's death. (39 days from STARS' previous Ulduar kill) 7th July 2009
#4 Nefarian* - 75 days from Chromaggus' death. 26th September 2005. (15 minute respawn between attempts)
#5 Ragnaros* - 74 days from Majordomo Executus' death (Limited Attempts). 25th April 2005.
#6 High Astromancer Solarian - 59 days from Magtheridon's death. (24 days from Death Wish's previous tier 5 kill) 24th April 2007
#7 The Four Horsemen - 56 days from Gothik the Harvester's death to D&T's kill. August 25th 2006
#8 Lady Vashj* <Coilfang Matron> - 54 days from being unlocked. 5th May 2007 (17 days for Nihilum's bugged kill)
#9 Al'ar <Phoenix God> - 48 days from Magtheridon's death. 13th April 2007
#10 Heroic The Lich King* - 42 Days from Heroic Putricide's death (first pull). March 26th 2010 (Limited Attempts)
#11 Viscidus - 41 days from Fankriss the Unyielding's death. 5th March 2006.
#12 Heroic Al'Akir - 38 days from being unlocked. (3 days from Paragon's previous tier 11 kill) January 22nd 2011.
#13 The Lurker Below - 37 days from Gruul's death. (5 days from Morogrim Tidewalker's death.) 12th March 2007.
#14 Algalon the Observer* - 33 days from Firefighter. June 3rd 2009. (Limited Attempts)
#15 Morogrim Tidewalker - 32 days from Gruul's death. (1 day from Fathom-Lord Karathress' death.) 7th March 2007.
#16 tied Kael'thas Sunstrider <Lord of the Blood Elves> - 31 days from Solarian's death. 25th May 2007
#16 tied Heroic Cho'gall - 31 days from being unlocked. (13 days from 3/5 Bastion of Twilight) 15th January 2011.
#16 tied Fathom-Lord Karathress - 31 days from Gruul's death. (2 days from Leotheras' death.) 6th March 2007.
#19 tied Magtheridon - 29 days from the first 70 raid kills. (21 days from Gruul's death) 24th February 2007
#19 tied Leotheras the Blind - 29 days from Gruul's death. (16 days from Hydross' death) 4th March 2007
#21 Heroic Nefarian - 25 days from being unlocked. (13 days from 5/6 Blackwing Descent) January 9th 2011.
#22 Mimiron Firefighter - 17 days from the opening of Ulduar. (8 days from Ensidia's previous Ulduar kill) May 1st 2009
#23 Ra-Den* - 16 days from Lei Shen's death. April 11th 2013 (Limited Attempts)
#24 Void Reaver - 15 days from Magtheridon's death. 11th March 2007
#25 Loatheb - 14 days from Heigan's death. 17th July 2006
#26 tied Heigan the Unclean - 13 days from Noth the Plaguebringer's death. 3rd July 2006
#26 tied Hydross the Unstable <Duke of Currents> - 13 days from Gruul's death. 16th February 2007
#28 tied Mythic: Kil'jaeden <The Deceiver> - 12 days from Fallen Avatar of Sargeras' death. 16th July 2017.
#28 tied Majordomo Executus - 12 days from Golemagg the Incinerator's death. 10th February 2005.
#30 tied Heroic Ragnaros (Firelands) - 11 days from Heroic Majordomo Staghelm's death. July 19th 2011.
#30 tied Onyxia - 11 days from the first 60 raid kills. January 19th 2005
#32 tied Archimonde <The Defiler> - 10 days from Azgalor's death. (6 days from Nihilum's previous tier 6 kill) 9th June 2007
#32 tied Gothik the Harvester - 10 days from Instructor Razuvious' death. 30th June 2006
#34 tied Heroic Spine of Deathwing - 9 days from Heroic Blackhorn's death. 22nd December 2011
#34 tied Mythic: Archimonde <The Defiler> - 9 days from Mythic Mannoroth's death. 16th July 2015
#36 tied Mythic: Uu'nat <Harbinger of the Void> - 8 days from Mythic Restless Cabal's death. May 3rd 2019
#36 tied Mythic: Queen Azshara - 8 days from Mythic Za'qul's death. July 28th 2019.
#36 tied Sapphiron - 8 days from Four Horsemen dying. 2nd September 2006
#36 tied Gruul the Dragonkiller - 8 days from Maulgar's death. 3rd February 2007
#40 Magmadar - 7 days from Lucifron's death. 26th January 2005
#41 tied Mythic: Argus the Unmaker - 6 days from mythic Aggramar's death. December 13th 2017.
#41 tied Reliquary of Lost Souls - 6 days from Supremus' death. 2nd June 2007
#41 tied Heroic Lei Shen <The Thunder King> - 6 days from Twin Consorts' death. 26th March 2013.
#41 tied Heroic Garrosh Hellscream <Warchief> - 6 days from the death of the Paragons of the Klaxxi. 30th September 2013.
#45 tied Mythic: Lady Jaina Proudmoore - 5 days from the defeat of Mythic Stormwall Blockade. February 5th 2019.
#45 tied Kel'Thuzad - 5 days from Sapphiron's death. 7th September 2006
#45 tied Kil'jaeden <The Deceiver> - 5 days from the opening of the third Sunwell gate. 25th May 2008
#45 tied Mythic: Fallen Avatar of Sargeras - 5 days from mythic Maiden of Vigilance's death. July 4th 2017.
#45 tied Sinestra - 5 days from Heroic Cho'gall's death. January 20th 2011.
#45 tied Mythic: Blackhand <Warlord of the Blackrock> - 5 days from mythic Blast Furnace's destruction. February 20th 2015.
#45 tied Mythic: Gul'dan <Lord of the Shadow Council> - 5 days from mythic Elisande's death. February 4th 2017.
#45 tied Mythic: The Blast Furnace - 5 days from mythic Oregorger's death. (1 day from Method's previous Blackrock Foundry kill) February 15th 2015.
#45 tied Mythic: N'zoth the Corruptor - 5 days from the defeat of Mythic Carapace of N'zoth. February 6th 2020.


Honourable Mentions:
#54 Heroic Anub'arak* - 4 days from Heroic Twin Val'kyr's death. September 6th 2009. (Limited Attempts)
#54 M'uru/Entropius. 4 days from the opening of the second Sunwell gate. 4th May 2008
#54 Heroic Sha of Fear. 4 days from the death of Heroic Lei Shi. 24th November 2012.
#54 Heroic Dark Animus. 4 days from the death of Heroic Primordius. 17th March 2013.
#54 Thaddius. 4 days from Gluth's death. 30th June 2006.


Thanks to SK-Gaming's handy list of all time world firsts and wowprogress.com.

http://www.sk-gaming.com/content/163...rld_first_list

Classic
Burning Crusade
Wrath of the Lich King
Cataclysm
Mists of Pandaria
Warlords of Draenor
Legion
Battle for Azeroth

Off the top of my head:

Ouro was bugged for months and C'thun spawned tentacles in the stomach that would just kill people going down. They both died within hours of the nerfs going in.

Yogg-Saron was a different beast. Bosses had simply never been tuned so hard before. People weren't as good at the game then.

Nefarian was bugged for months and guilds only got one try then he despawned for the week. Killed within hours of the fix going in.

Ragnaros originally you only got one hour per week and the original version was overtuned for 2005 players and the hilariously shitty 1.0 talents. Killed within hours of the nerf going in.

It was actually the third version of High Astromancer Solarian that was killed. The first two versions arcane resistance didn't work at all and the boss had 6 million HP for some reason. Killed within a day of the nerf going in.

The Four Horsemen just took 2006 players a long ass time to develop a working strategy and execute it. People didn't realize for a long time that you could make a safe spot in the middle if you tanked them properly. I don't know of any guilds that zerged Kor'thazz in 2006, DPS was considered too low and guilds didn't realize he wouldn't shield wall again if you pushed him low enough in the first shield wall.

If you did Lady Vashj in TBC classic you know the mind control version was kinda mean and guilds had 2.0 talents and didn't have the class/gear buffs from 2.1 and 2.3. In the Black Temple patch all level 70 raid gear got a 12 ilvl buff.

The original Al'ar was a bugged mess that didn't get fixed for months. Every meteor killed someone, guaranteed.

The Lich King and Anub'arak were the first time doing splits became commonplace to get around the limited attempts.

Shout out to the original Mythic Kil'jaeden that took Method 12 days and 900 attempts or something in Legion. I dunno if there's been a boss as stupid before or since.

[Biomega]

Yogg-Saron was a different beast. Bosses had simply never been tuned so hard before. People weren't as good at the game then.

It's complicated. Many (wrongly) considered the boss unkillable with +0 and so few of the top guilds put any real effort into progressing it. Also there were a lot of shenanigans going on with Yogg at the time when it came to things like aggro management (two words: downstairs Paladin) so people were wary of using strategies involving aggro manipulation, which is what was involved in the kill. You're not entirely wrong that this can largely be summed as people not being as good, but it's a many-layered issue and wasn't simply about in-fight performance - it was everything from larger strategies to specific tactics. The kill came out of nowhere because people thought there wouldn't be one until they nerfed it; not because one guild was somehow massively better than everyone else.

Shout out to the original Mythic Kil'jaeden that took Method 12 days and 900 attempts or something in Legion. I dunno if there's been a boss as stupid before or since.

mKJ is a legit contender for hardest boss of all time tbh. Forget all the other metrics, this boss in its original-kill state was just... something else.

[Nitros14]

It's complicated. Many (wrongly) considered the boss unkillable with +0 and so few of the top guilds put any real effort into progressing it. Also there were a lot of shenanigans going on with Yogg at the time when it came to things like aggro management (two words: downstairs Paladin) so people were wary of using strategies involving aggro manipulation, which is what was involved in the kill. You're not entirely wrong that this can largely be summed as people not being as good, but it's a many-layered issue and wasn't simply about in-fight performance - it was everything from larger strategies to specific tactics. The kill came out of nowhere because people thought there wouldn't be one until they nerfed it; not because one guild was somehow massively better than everyone else.


mKJ is a legit contender for hardest boss of all time tbh. Forget all the other metrics, this boss in its original-kill state was just... something else.

I'd say there's a bit of a difference between Exodus getting banned for a week for completely taking the adds out of the fight with the paladin and STARS distracting shotting the adds during empowering shadows.

[Ereb]

What is the point of that list, besides just for historical record's sake? Cuz it sure doesn't translate which bosses were harder than others very well, which was my initial assumption of its existence.