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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsUlduar vehicles will scale with gear
by Mike Schramm 
Feb 18th 2009 at 10:30AM
Here's a little consolation to those of you, like Eliah, concerned about the Ulduar vehicle fights: Unlike some of the other vehicle fights in the game already, Daelo says on the forums that the vehicles in the next raid will actually scale with gear. He says someone in blues will have a much harder time in the vehicles than someone kitted out in Naxx gear.Personally, I've only done Oculus, but I do agree with Eliah that putting us in vehicles takes away a lot of the achievement we've gained by leveling and questing -- it's not fun to fail on a boss just because you're trying to deal with a whole new set of abilities you've had no control over until you jumped in the driver's seat. But the fact that the Ulduar vehicles will scale helps a little bit -- players were concerned that every time you went in there, it'd be the same fight, but with new gear that should change. And obviously Blizzard has heard the concerns about the Oculus, so you'd have to hope they wouldn't make the same mistake twice.
Elsewhere on the forums, Zarhym promises, comically, that we'll all enjoy this (and that we'll forget to post how much we enjoy it on the forums afterwards). He says that the fight is different from anything else we've done in the World of Warcraft, and that when all is said and blown up, it'll be an epic encounter. We'll see.
Need more news about Ulduar? We've got updates, previews, speculation, and everything else you need to know about the next big raid coming in patch 3.1. If the Titans are hiding it up there, we'll tell you about it here.Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 5)
AAron Feb 18th 2009 1:24PM
We already did that quest in Nagrand to get the cherries.
Am I the only one who can get tired of min/maxing...its not that hard...30 mins on forums and you got it...stop making it out to be some sort of God power to min/max...its not hard and it doesn't make you special.
rollin in my WoW vehicle Feb 18th 2009 1:59PM
I forgot to mention that the entire raid has to be wearing Lovely Black Dress otherwise the key isn't lootable.
And i never said maxing was god power or makes anyone special. but it does take more than 30 minutes if you're actually going to read more than one opinion and actually try out a few builds yourself. Not everyone does this, which is fine, but they're usually the ones consistently lagging in the dps dept.
Doorbasher Feb 18th 2009 1:35PM
Dear blizz:
Yes, we know that your programmers are competent enough to make a game with vehicles in it. Congratulations. You have proved your point. Now please knock it off and stop taking my class abilities away from me. If I feel like learning a new class mechanic, I will level an alt.
Just making something "new" and "different" doesn't make it "epic" or "fun". No more vehicle fights.
jrizutko Feb 18th 2009 2:53PM
/agree
Gardoch Feb 18th 2009 3:02PM
Hopefully this will end up being a Chess 2.0 encounter in terms of difficulty.
Let's stop pretending that vehicle fights are a new mechanic introduced in WotLK, they aren't. MC fights have been around since Razorgore in BWL. We have Razuvious in Naxx, Chess in Kara, and Teron Gorefiend in BT. Sure you aren't driving a tank or motorcycle, you are controlling a mob with an action bar with a reduced number of abilities which are all needed for a portion or the entirety of the fight. That description sounds and awful lot like vehicle combat to me.
I hate MC fights. I raid as a shadow priest so that means I have the pleasure of MCing Razuvious every week. I can't wait to be done with Naxx so I never have to do that again. I always petition the raid to start in that wing instead of spider just so we can get that fight out of the way. I don't mind the MCs required on Faerlina since they are a small portion of the fight.
Every single MC encounter or quest has felt clunky with the default UI nevermind custom UIs which are a mess. The first couple of attempts at them are usually disasterous since people haven't played with the MC bar and need some time to get used to it. Without any means to practice using the vehicles outside of the encounter, learning is expensive in terms of repair bills and consumables costs. Aces High was an exception to this and a nice addition. While not exactly a 100% replication of the fight solo, a group of 5 could do the quest and pretty accurately replicate Maly P3 with 4 DPS/1 Heal. I would hope that similar quests are implemented in 3.1 that allow use of the exact vehicles in the Ulduar fight.
I'll wait and see how it plays out before passing judgement, but I'm certainly not at all enthused to see that Ulduar will start with a vehicle fight, the same way that many of you are. It's required to do the rest of the raid so I'll slog through it regardless of whether or not I have fun doing it. Just like I do 2x a week with Raz and Maly.
goliathsdkfz Feb 18th 2009 3:10PM
WoW just isn't the game for vehicles. I love battlefield, I love ETQW, I dont love WoW.
jrizutko Feb 18th 2009 3:17PM
@ gundamxzero
I don't think anyone is complaining about those quests. The point is that if THAT's what Blizzard thinks is "Epic", its kind of skewed. they are neat moments, but have little to nothing to offer in the way of gameplay. Alsmot all of the vehicle quests play like mini-games. Mini-games are fun WHEN THEY'RE OPTIONAL. When you have to do them to access other content, they are bad design.
Alexious Feb 18th 2009 4:08PM
It's already been said, but many games, including WoW, throw MANDATORY gameplay changes into the mix. I mean, you can't skip the helicopter/grenade launcher section in CoD4. And nobody seems to think it ruins that game.
It's not bad design... it's called a change of pace. I just really don't understand all the complaints. If you like to be hardcore, you're really playing the wrong MMO.
jrizutko Feb 18th 2009 5:30PM
It has little to nothing to do with being hardcore. I say its bad design based on my experience of raiding in comparison to my experience of how blizzard has thus far been able to implement vehicle combat. Nothing about any of the PvE vehicle combat I have seen so far is enticing for me to do every week over and over as I work on the progression through new content. Thus far the PvE implementation has been fun once or twice, and then totally redundant to repeat. This was fine when no other goal forced me to repeatedly engage with PvE vehicle combat. It was a change of pace for those who liked it, and easily skippable after the first time you did it otherwise.
Now it sounds like you'll be forced to do it every week to access a totally separate dynamic of raid progression. that's not exciting. that doesn't sound fun. I'll give it every chance when its released, but if you ask me now if I want to see it implemented, I will not say yes. None of the evidence points toward it being a positive for my playing experience.
josh Feb 18th 2009 4:11PM
Plaugelord is right just another poor choice from blizz in an xp that gets worse every day it seems. Heres how uldaur goes imo you get the gimicky not new boss fight with vehicles. Then if there's 13 more bosses you probably will be able to faceroll 10 of those with a dps check that will stop the bads for a few weeks and a fight like the 1st boss from swp or maybe teron. The problem is blizz really screwed up with naxx because its so easy you cant just make the next instance 10x harder now that you have dumbed it all down. So ulduar becomes ssc/tk but easier and with nothing do for months because they wont release content any guild thats not full of retards will have this place cleared in no time. Then your so geared for the next instance it becomes even worse maybe they can fix the game but it seems like blizz gave up and is happy just to collect money for really a subpar game now.
Notatroll Feb 18th 2009 4:14PM
I hope that they introduce a mechanism that will allow you to have some out-of-raid training in the vehicles, in the way that Aces High works for Malygos practice.
A standalone daily quest wouldn't be an exact replica of raid conditions, neither do I think it should be.
But if you've had a chance to get entirely used to the mechanics of a vehicle then at least when you do it in Ulduar, you'll be free to concentrate on the stuff that really matters, ie. the tactics and teamwork.
Shade Feb 18th 2009 4:17PM
Honestly? I'm really excited about a vehicle combat boss. Phase three of Maly was awesome, but now that we've gotten it down, it's kind of repetitive. Seeing them encorporate vehicles into more boss fights? Man, that's awesome - as someone that's been raiding since Ony and MC were -new- content, seeing something that isn't just 'okay, ranged stand here, and when x happens, do a little jump and spin, etc, yay collect loot' is exciting.
I like learning new stuff. That's what makes raiding -fun- for me, is learning the new stuff. And if there's a twist that's never BEEN there before? Hey man, bring it on.
RetPallyJil Feb 18th 2009 4:25PM
Wah wah wah. God, you guys are amazing.
You: Wahhh WoW is boring! Give us something new.
Blizzard: Ok, here is vehicle combat.
You: WAAA it's too hard! BAWWW my phat lewts avail me not! I don't want to ride a dragon that's not heroic enough for me baawwww.
Pål Feb 18th 2009 4:54PM
What I'd like to see...
Being in a vehicle doesn't disable your own abilities, except for certain ones possibly (such as Charge or Mind Control), but instead simply change the way you move around, for example by allowing you to fly but still use your own abilities.
Or, alternatively, it could be a fight that uses vehicles like in other fights, but not all the time, you have to alternate. Not like the Malygos fight, where the boss controls when you're in a vehicle or not, but having you control when to be in a vehicle or not. For example, having the boss move similar to how Al'ar does, but requiring vehicles to move between the different spots he is at. Or giving the vehicles abilities that need to be used against the boss periodically, but nothing that can damage it.
Or they could even mix vehicles with regular players, for example by only letting you use one or two of each vehicle (depending on difficulty), the rest of the raid have to play as their regular characters.
Mastique Feb 18th 2009 4:57PM
"One such threat is the Flame Leviathan. After you've plowed through the innumerable ranks of the Iron Army, you will be confronted by an enormous tank. Mimiron built the Flame Leviathan as part of the V0-L7R-0N weapons platform, which means that it packs quite a punch. "
VOLTRON! YES.
sajaki Feb 27th 2009 5:15AM
well i don't like this whole vehicle thing AT ALL ...
1. They don't work properly with my tweaked action bars.
2. They are "clunky".
3. They are all called the same thing - you can't differentiate between people easily.
4. I want to play the character I created, not one that someone else made for me that is the same as everyone elses.
5. They don't look pretty.
6. Just .. NO.
if they turn raid instances into some stupid road race then it's a final sign off from me...