Utgarde Keep beta impressions
by Alex Ziebart 
Aug 3rd 2008 at 6:15PM
I guess that aspect of things is to be expected, it's an entry level dungeon that needs to be balanced for people in full green gear. Still, I wish it was a little more challenging. Even in level 70 blues you can completely brute force your way through the dungeon, slamming your face on your keyboard willy nilly while the bad guys fall over. I don't really want the trash mobs to be terribly difficult, but even in pulls of four and five giant hulking vrykul there's not much reason to use all of that brand new CC some classes are getting.
The bosses are all quite easy, too. However, each of them has a gimmick that will trip up players in greens and players in Sunwell epics all the same, and might cause you to wipe your first time seeing them. That will only really work once, though, if it even actually manages to kill you. They're just small, easily handled things that make you go, "Oooh, duh!" after you die.
The last boss, Ingvar the Plunderer, is the most notable example of this. Our first time pulling him we all laughed as our tank got nailed for 21,000 damage. The second time pulling him, we knew exactly how to avoid it and the boss was a complete joke. The boss's hits besides that special ability are so weak that it actually has a stacking debuff mechanic so you can't make the encounter last forever by kiting him around the dungeon. Still, that hasn't stopped people from doing it. Holy Paladins have solo'd him, and I actually took the final 65% of Ingvar's health off solo after everyone else died in a PUG once upon a time.
I wouldn't say Utgarde is a bad dungeon, but they took that "entry level dungeon" bit a little too far. I still enjoy the zone simply because of visuals and story, but there's really no challenge to it. As I said, you might wipe to the bosses once, but after that you never really should ever again. If you know how to play your class or have decent gear (both is overkill) then this dungeon is trivial.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Instances, Expansions, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
SpaceDog Aug 3rd 2008 6:29PM
I suppose it's good for the first one to be easy, but it does sound like it might get some tuning.
Most people will see it more in Heroic mode, I'm sure, anyway. :)
Archfiend Aug 3rd 2008 6:38PM
Can't say I didn't expect this with how easy everything else seems to be as well
Jamie Aug 3rd 2008 6:37PM
Well, it is Beta.
jay Aug 3rd 2008 6:42PM
Yeah I'm betting heroic mode will more than make up for this being a piss easy dungeon, and it kind of needs to be really.
Kidsmoke Aug 3rd 2008 11:44PM
It's a beginner dungeon for the expansion. It's suppose to be cake.
Just like Ramps was.
Tisen Aug 3rd 2008 6:49PM
Is the loot there good though?
stunts01 Aug 3rd 2008 6:50PM
How do you compare it to the first time you ran ramparts?
kabshiel Aug 3rd 2008 7:22PM
I hope it's nothing like the first time I ran Ramparts. My retarded group wiped three times on the first pull. After the third time, the hunter went AFK while running back to the instance, and our warrior got bored and decided to do some PVP right outside the instance and accidently fell to his death. At which point the healer d/ced and I ran for my life.
Alex Ziebart Aug 3rd 2008 7:28PM
Much, much easier than I remember Ramparts being, but I will admit my relative gear level is higher now than it was back then. I'm much closer to 'beating' Burning Crusade than I was WoW Classic. However, the mechanics in Utgarde seem more forgiving after you've seen what they do. Ramparts had a lot more you had to watch out for.
That being said, Utgarde is the extreme example of Wrath being easy. The Nexus, which is intended for the same level range, was quite a bit more challenging (though still not hard) and everything after that gets progressively more challlenging.
Jordrah Aug 4th 2008 4:06AM
the entry level dungeons will be easy for people who are going in on their toons with T5/T6+ gear, but if you're going in with a fresh toon, or a toon you leveled to 70 and then stabled (hit 70 and then stopped playing it, didnt even gear them up) while you wait for wrath it will prolly be harder
theRaptor Aug 4th 2008 6:29AM
@9
No, gear level has very little to do with difficulty. For example go look at good guilds like Nihilum running T5/T6 raids with characters in T4 equiv gear. I out perform epiced players with my greens and blue alts all the time. What the article talks about is a lack of difficult *mechanics* (hard to pull mobs due to pathing, packs of mobs that need to be CCed to live through, bosses that aren't just tank and spank with a simple gimmick etc).
The last boss of Ramparts is a good example of a fairly difficult boss for the gear level. It isn't just simple tank and spank, and the damage output is quite high for the level range.
Michael Aug 3rd 2008 6:52PM
How long did it take to complete? Blizzard is supposed to make things go faster so we're not stuck in repetitious 2+ hour dungeon runs.
Brad Aug 3rd 2008 7:27PM
There was a video by WoWRadio awhile ago of them doing the instance, and it looked like it'll take about an hour.
I'm not surprised people in the Beta found the instance easy. Like you said, it's the first instance in the beta and therefore tuned to people in greens.
There were some interesting, if simple, mechanics to the boss fights though. What more do you want?
epsilon343 Aug 3rd 2008 7:00PM
This is something that seems to be expected, really. Blizz is either going to frustrate the raiders (this post seems to be a perfect example of it) who are running around in Sunwell Plateau gear and want it tuned to them, or they'll frustrate the players who may have just hit Outland and won't be 70 by the time Wrath comes out and don't get the pleasure of running raids non-stop.
I'm sure for the higher level instances we'll see them be more fine tuned as Blizz can better estimate what gear will be used. But in the end I don't really mind having the first instance a little loose with it's difficulty level, it's not like you'll run it more than a few times.
Michael Aug 3rd 2008 8:22PM
This should have nothing to do with Heroic v Non Heroic. I don't want an easy Dungeon. Easy Dungeon Normal = Easy Dungeon Heroic. Blizzard. Hello. Hi. Wake up.
denigrate Aug 4th 2008 12:46AM
if you've looked at the loot tables in WOTLK, BT/MH+ geared people are not going to be upgrading their gear until like level 76+ anyway - there's ultimately no reason to run this instance other than quests
the epiced people will only be the first wave of people hitting northrend. give it a few months, and everybody pushing 70 will be geared in quest blues/greens from the 60-70 grind. looking ahead, it makes sense to have the instance tuned for them. tuning it for epiced out people will result in an impossibly hard instance for everybody else down the track.
matt Aug 3rd 2008 8:02PM
One super-easy dungeon is a great idea.
Ever get that PUG that is just total fail? (Yes, you have. Probably more than once.) Now, while you're waiting to put together a decent group that has a clue, you can run this dungeon in the meantime.
They should even have it be somewhat easy in Heroic, and only give away one badge or something. Treat it as a training dungeon for people who solo to 80, or ebay, or whatever.
As long as this is by far the easiest dungeon, maybe that's okay. (And it'll probably get tuned up before release anyway.)
Jack Spicer Aug 3rd 2008 8:13PM
I think there is some confusion here.
Maybe you're coming from a raider's mindset, but you're not supposed to wipe repeatedly on a normal 5-man instance. And you're supposed to be able to clear it your first time through.
Plus, three months after release there will no longer be BT geared players to run these places with.
The Hammer Aug 4th 2008 6:50AM
Completely agreed, and to add...
Y'know, I support any dungeon which doesn't make you politely CC everything you see, bar one mob. One of the reasons I think that Burning Crusade dungeons weren't so popular (apart from CoT) was because it felt less like an adventure, and more a series of pulls, and CC contributes to that heavily. I'm sure there are a lot of people like myself who want the chaos of battle and fighting numerous enemies at once, not just looking at how long polymorph is gonna last for before he needs renewed.
When game mechanics get in the way of you feeling like a protagonist in a fantasy world, because you're too busy waiting for a patrol to move so you can lay down some CC, I think that's a bad thing.
OnniHopeDream Aug 3rd 2008 8:22PM
I'm praying that ALL heroics are gonna be very hard, but I don't mind this being super easy at all.