Patch 5.2 interview with Dave Kosak
Inside an old alt's vault
The latest patch 5.2 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsMore on Ulduar and hard modes
by Eliah Hecht 
Jan 3rd 2009 at 6:00PM
Daelo, the lead encounter designer, has dropped a few more details about Ulduar, the tier 8 raid that is coming in patch 3.1 (whenever that happens to be). We heard yesterday that there will be more "hard modes" in the raid, analogous to Sartharion. Today we learn that, again like Sartharion, completing the hard modes will give you not only achievements but also additional, better loot. There is also, apparently, going to be an optional encounter in the raid that will be hard-mode-only; I'm picturing something like Nightbane here.
Furthermore, Ulduar in general, according to the post, will be harder than Naxxramas is. Naxx was tuned easy on purpose, and the devs have been saying for a while that Ulduar will not be that way, to the same extent. The analogy Daelo makes in his post is that if Naxx is "the introduction to raiding 101 class for players who have never raided before," Ulduar is "the second year class." So we won't be hitting a brick wall, but it probably won't be compared to UBRS either like Naxx often is now. Either way, we won't know much for sure until it's up on the PTR, but I'm certainly looking forward to it.
Filed under: Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King, Achievements
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 6)
The Elitist Jerk Jan 4th 2009 5:13AM
@ Mesla
I'm still not sure whether it's a tragedy or a comedy.
* notices *
Aww, how cute, people learned2use the rating feature. Oh novos.
SunwellVialist Jan 4th 2009 1:54PM
"I worked my ass off for this item,"
-Stop-
This is what you do not understand.
People who work 9-10 hours a day do not come home to *work* in a -game- that is supposed to be their downtime, where they can relax.
It is very easy. Those people are the main customers for Blizzard, and of course they will be the main focus of their development.
You either understand and accept it, or leave for another game, because, no matter how much you will froth at the mouth, that will not change, ever again.
EVER. (EVEr...EVer...Ever...ever) (yes, that was an echo effect).
Azhariel Jan 3rd 2009 9:14PM
I hope they don't let players test the "optional encounter" in PTR. It's really easier to "one shot" the instance on live servers if you actually wiped 40 times "testing" it.
Ves Jan 3rd 2009 9:38PM
I hope they don't let players test the optional encounter on the PTR, then when it goes live it turns out they forgot to flag a trash demon which has an ability "Deals damage to the target equal to 100% of it's maximum health over 4 seconds." as immune to being Enslaved, resulting in Ulduar being solo cleared on day one in 32 minutes.
The Elitist Jerk Jan 4th 2009 8:57AM
That specific demon you're obviously referring to was outside his specific instance.
Zul Jan 3rd 2009 11:43PM
I don't want to be a troll, but I guess I will be. T7/.5 appears to be the common style, sure I don't mind a good number of players with it but when 75% of the level 80 raiders have it without a hitch is kind of sad. T4 meant a lot more in its prime time so did T5. It is apparent T8/.5 will be the same story as T7. It doesn't make sense when any random pugger can 1 shot a boss they read a 5 minute strategy on.
Solution, make tier loot drop from the "hard modes" like shoulders and helm. That way people can differ the elitist from the puggers...
Chris Laverdure Jan 4th 2009 12:13AM
@Zul
Did you ever do Hyjal or Black Temple? There were many bosses in the two that could be one-shot pre 3.0 after reading a 5 minute strategy... and I'm not talking about particularly skilled players either.
Liel Jan 4th 2009 1:23AM
just a video game
Lemons Jan 4th 2009 12:51AM
Speaking of Uldar and instances and junk...
They need to tone down freaking Tribunal of Ages in HoS! Everyone's yelling how everything is so easy, ya know what? Not ToA (as I will now call it)! It's hard to get a group for HoS and then every group I've been in (up until today) has gotten raped by ToA!
I shouldn't have to have a healer with 2k+ BH and some godly boomkin aoe just to complete one freaking heroic instance.
Then think about this! they put the best pre raid-dagger in the game put at the end of an instance that requires you to do a boss event that is nothing but adds thus requiring massive aoe, and I'm a rogue!? Ironic? Ironic..
Something tells me this FoK buff isn't going to save me in there either...
Saiforune Jan 4th 2009 3:34AM
Wow, get a better group of friends to do heroics with. That event is beyond easy. I do admit our Mt is is full T7 with .5 mixed and same goes for the healer and myself. But the 2 pugs we pick up don't slow us down with their 1.8k dps. Us three in vent can down bosses easily. ToA isn't hard. Read the strat+ explain it to the group and you 1 shot it.
Basically,
1. Stand on the stairs
2. Mobs start from the left
3. Usually 4+ in a group at a time
4. Grab a mage to Frost nova (Myself)
5. AoE down the adds
6. Halfway through the fight a lazer starts AoE'ing the group, MOVE OUT OF IT
7. Repeat 4,5,6 until timer is up.
REMEMBER TO NOT LET THE ADDS HIT THE BOSS
Learn that you've got an easy 1 shot for the failchest.
I can't wait for Ulduar. Getting bored with Naxx and want a little more of a challenge.
Mesia Jan 4th 2009 4:32AM
I cannot believe you can't beat that instance and are actually complaining about its difficulty. I hope the dagger never ever drops for you.
The Elitist Jerk Jan 4th 2009 5:10AM
Play with people whose IQ is over room temperature. I oneshot the event with my guildies and I had never seen it before on normal.
TL;DR: l2p and get a better party.
Clifton Jan 4th 2009 5:57AM
God I want some freaking details. Bosses, lore, loot. You're killing me Blizzard.
The Elitist Jerk Jan 4th 2009 7:22AM
Hmm.
Bosses: 8 oneshottable bosses, 1 two-shottable boss.
Lore: Titans, Thorim the Corrupt & Shade of Sif (10g says it'll be a boss fight), something related to Yogg-Saron, perhaps more crap about the curse of flesh.
Loot: ilvl 226 epics from first bosses, ilvl 239 epics from latter and ilvl 252 loot from the endboss and the two-shottable boss.
That's my guess.
Mesia Jan 4th 2009 5:51AM
So I read the GM's statement after initially just lulzing at the comments:
"A raid group that's done Naxxramas, Malygos, and Sartharion and obtained the gear from those encounters should be well prepared for Ulduar. Not only is the raid's gear better, but players should now have some raiding experience under their belts. "
That makes me realize this new content is gonna be a joke like Naxx was. The problem is Blizz devs are walking into this thinking 99% of the players have never raided prior, and tuning to that case - "introductory content." The game started four frigging years ago, we don't need introductions anymore. I was there wiping to C'Thun when he was bugged, and I was there the night we fought for world firsts in KT's chamber. It was easy then and it's ridiculously easy now - when will the nerfing stop?
TBC was a decent balancing point, honestly. Raiding got opened up significantly to both hardcore and casual people alike. Baddies got their epic Karazhan and ZA, sometimes TK/SSC. Even more subpar people experienced top tier content; so many people saw Sunwell after the Muru nerfs, so many trash guilds killed Illidan after the new talent trees, and lots of people got their welfare epics.
So why continuously dumb it down? "Raiding experience under our belts?" I would bet the majority of WoW at least has entered a raid, be it a 10 or 20-man. Hell, even if you only raided in TBC, you had a good two years of raiding. You don't need stuff so easy a three-year-old with downs could do. It's like how they made Heigan's dance *SLOWER* so more people could do it, or how you can have a DK just pick up KT should your main tank fail at void zones.
And before someone replies about elitists and no lives, I'm all for raiding not taking up my life anymore. As someone who has had every tier of gear and now has a full-time job, I don't dig 6 days straight of wiping to a boss. But I also don't dig one day clears of all content, then sitting on my ass, maybe raiding 25-man on an alt, and my main's gear nearly done in just 5 KT clears.
Only to read some idiot's blog about how exhausting it was getting one wing of 10-man down. I'm just baffled at how bad people are, and how Blizzard makes things easier instead of making people try. Trying in a video game is what a game is all about - if we didn't wanna try or learn to play mildly, we'd just go play Tetris or something (which might be harder than WotLK raiding atm).
Whatever, I'm probably posting to the worst possible place. I'm awaiting the "elitist bitch" catcalls, the PvE is hard lines. But truth be told, PvE has always been a joke. All they're doing now is nerfing it into more than just a joke, to the point where it bores me to tears to even enter.
3 Drakes has been on farm in my guild for over a month now. And that's supposed to be as hard as the hardest content in this new dungeon. Just... facepalm. I'm glad the Karazhan kids are happy and have their gear, but I'm wondering why WoW even has PvE content anymore or why it bothers pretending this new zone will be anything more than a week of learning and then farm status?
At least they could make it 40 idiots raiding at once again. Or, hell, reinstate items like the Hunter's bow quest and the Priest's staff quest. Or make something mildly hard. Illidan pre-nerf at least took some skill, some amount of raid coordination. Nothing as hard as pre-TBC, but still. Every guild that downed Illidan had at least 5-10 decent players. Now the hardest we have is some dumbed down 4H encounter where the damn horses run to their perfect corners.
/end rant
p.s. Flame away, you're all bad if you disagree.
Eh? Jan 4th 2009 6:55AM
ROFL, you two really had me going there for a minute. You and Elitist there do a really good impression of some hardcore nutwhack who likes to pretend they only have everyone's best interest at heart when they go off on how "horrible and pathetically easy they think this game has gotten," when it's pretty obvious to everyone listening to them that the only thing they care about is their own ego.
You two do a really good job a satirizing the subject, though the delivery needs a little work. Maybe a little more foaming at the mouth perhaps? That would be really convincing.
The truth be told, blizzard has always been a game company that is able to learn and grow. This MMO has far outsized the size of the traditional MMO player base (you know, the ones who love banging their head against a wall until a well-nigh-impossible-dungeon is cleared) and has grown to involve the mainstream casual player base as well. So much so that now semi-casual to casual players now account for an overwhelming amount of the subscriber base.
Blizzard is a business and like any good business that wants to stay IN business, it will cater to the largest money paying audience, in this case it's the casual to semi-casual players.
No one is holding a gun to these players' heads and forcing them to play the game, getting this worked up over it does no one any good.
I do find it rather ironic that these same gamers want so much for gaming in general to be more socially accepted yet react in this way and treat people that badly when more people approach it with an open mind. All it does do is reaffirm the stereotype that gamers have, which is unfortunate.
While it would be nice for the people screaming negative and detrimental about the current state of the game (or gaming in general) to stop and check their ego before continuing, I'm afraid that they would likely only stop and check to see if it was hungry....
The Elitist Jerk Jan 4th 2009 7:19AM
It took my mediocre guild 2 nights to down Sartharion+3.
"It's like how they made Heigan's dance *SLOWER* so more people could do it"
Did they really do that? If so, /epicfacepalm; I don't see how failing on the dance is remotely possible unless your IQ = that of my pet.
@Eh?
You're an idiot. Seriously. Way to entirely miss the point about harder content.
That's also why 10-mans exist, in my opinion. Let the mouthbreathers who die to frogger slimes get their Ulduarazhan epics there and leave 25-mans for people with IQ > room temperature.
Read: LOOK I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT IDIOTS EXIST AND I'M GIVING THEM THEIR OWN SANDBOX TO POOP IN SO THEY PAY BLIZZARD 15$.
Only thing I want is to leave 25-mans for serious 25-men raiders. You know, those who don't play with one eye on TV and one hand on penis.
Mesia Jan 4th 2009 7:33AM
@Eh?
Don't be sad cause your guild can't even kill nerfed content and people like BRK are your heroes. Head over to World of Matticus for your 10-man strats.
Actually I can sum up all strats for all 10-man content: don't fucking drool on your keyboard and you too can have emazin gear.
@Elitist
Yep, they did. The splashes are slightly slower. Plus they removed the whole teleport factor (but I'm sure you did 40 man since you're not an idiot so you already knew). The fight makes me laugh when I see it now. It used to make me, well, at least look at the ground. Now I just auto-run forward :(
Honestly, it's so sad seeing what Naxx has become. They took arguably the best instance in the game and pissed on it. Even Gluth used to be "scary" - if he ate a zombie or two, you were in danger of wiping. I did a 25-man where our Mage dc'd, then our second Mage just died, and we still won despite Gluth healing to like 70%.
When I first cleared 25-man Naxx, it felt like it was the same Naxx at 70. You know, like the same HP and same abilities, only we had 20 levels on all of it.
It's not so much that it's easy, I knew Naxx would be easy. It's that this new content will be as well if they think Sarth with Drakes was an "adequate challenge," and that lots of freaking morons seem to think it's hard.
WoW raiding == standing out of red stuff, mashing 4-5 buttons (depending on class), and once in a very while hitting good buttons like LoH or shield wall at the right time because some other idiot failed.
And that's it. Unfortunately I think 99% of the idiots reading this hold delusions that this was hard, Karazhan was hard, and drops from Sunwell were something meant to drool over from WoWHead - not actually equip. Too bad I equipped them and am being punished for having the ability to not click my abilities by being given easier content anyone can PUG.
tl;dr -- How long til people say we're the same person!!!????
The Elitist Jerk Jan 4th 2009 7:50AM
I'd say a few more "Raiding difficulty is easy because we've been there when it was hardER" posts before the local BRK worshippers start calling us the same person.
"Now I just auto-run forward :("
I just start Safety Dance before the pull and do it without even thinking a nanosecond about it. It makes the fight slightly less boring.
"Karazhan was hard"
Karazhan WAS hard, man, you had to actually pay attention to what's going on the screen! WTF is this, I can't get my epics from drooling on the keyboard for 4 hours? This is an outrage and a slap in the face.
Seriously speaking, I thought Karazhan was a joke when I wore heroic TBC blues. I thought Gruul 1.0 was a bad RNG joke but a joke nevertheless.
Mesia Jan 4th 2009 7:58AM
Gruul was a joke. I killed him prenerf, but we just flasked out. That's all WoW PvE has ever been - flasking, overtuned encounters, and the nerfbat. Now it seems they've taken out the overtuned part and emphasized the nerfbat's presence.
SSC was the only place that was kind of difficult. In the begining, like March 07, I mean. Do you remember how the Murlocs used to spawn every 60 minutes like clockwork? So you'd be clearing to a boss, and right as you got him, have about 2 attempts before LAWL RESPAWNS.
Not that it was enjoyable, but at least it kept from everyone running around in Tier 5 until 1.5 years later. Now within a week or two fo hitting 80, everyone's got their Heroes' gear and drops from 25-man KT they pugged. I saw a Mage who pulled 800 DPS in EoE (a pug I did on my alt) with KT's sword. Same Mage who couldn't even make Thaddius' jump after tne tries :(
Whatever, afk waiting for the casualcore to call me an elitist prick and remind me that I represent no one in WoW and I care too much about my gear and it's... just... a game.