Robin's post about
fun with kiting yesterday immediately reminded me about the old days of 40 man raiding. Don't worry, this isn't a nostalgia trip per se... in many ways raiding is better now than it's ever been... but one of the things I enjoyed back in classic WoW were the world bosses. Bosses like Azuregos, the
Emerald Dragons and Kazzak (as well as summoned bosses like
Maws and Eranikus) added a feeling of competition that simply couldn't be had by being the first to clear a raid. If Blizzard wants to bring the antagonism between Alliance and Horde back to the forefront, well, even on a PvE server back in the day one could watch Horde and Alliance guilds jostle over
Azuregos. Heck, we were griefed pretty hard doing the green dragons, especially
Emeriss, as Horde players would come running up to die under our tank and become mushrooms.
Burning Crusade had a couple of world raid bosses (a recycled
Kazzak and
Doomwalker) but for the most part they weren't terribly compelling: the gear they dropped was comparable with Karazhan (eventually it was made BoE to try and drive raiders towards it to harvest them for sales, which happened to some degree but is hardly what you'd call a sign of an exciting time, scavenging bosses for BoE's) and it seems like the practice has fallen out of favor since those days. While there are wandering big elites in Howling Fjord and Zul'Drak, they're either just there with no real rhyme or reason, or they're involved in quests.
So I ask you: would you like to see big world bosses return in
Cataclysm? Or do you think they're an artifact of an older time, and we're better off without them?
Tags: Azuregos, cataclysm-guide, cataclysm-news, Doomwalker, dragons-of-nightmare, Emeriss, expanion, expansion-three, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, Kazzak, Lethon, Maws, next-xpac, Taerar, third-expansion, third-xpac, world-of-warcraft-cataclysm, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-hot-topics, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-4.0, wow-4.0.2, wow-cataclysm, wow-discussion, wow-expansion, wow-guide, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-third-expansion, wow-topics
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Jan 15th 2010 at 8:00AM 
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 5)
BlackTiger™ Jan 15th 2010 9:49AM
I think it they should!
Take the best from vanilla/BC, forget about WoLK failure!
The End of WoW Universe must be epic.
ciskos11 Jan 15th 2010 9:53AM
Yeah, I'd love to see this. I think there's no good way to make them part of the normal progression, and I worry about the issues with who gets to tag it first. So imagine a world boss that's a bit different -- more on the order of the Brewfest Dark Iron attacks:
You're chilling at the AH when a /yell comes out: "Citizens of Stormwind! The village of Goldshire is under attack by minions of Deathwing! Your king requires your assistance in its defense!" So you mount up and head to Goldshire, where a big 'ol black dragon is burning up the place.
Everyone can pitch in. It's the kind of fight that doesn't require a raid group or tight organization, but it does require a certain amount of participation; there's no guarantee that you'll take him down. Maybe it's a 50/50 chance. Characters die sometimes -- he attacks semi-randomly -- but you can zerg him too. The fight lasts for about 15 minutes. If everyone collectively does enough, you take him down and receive the gratitude of the king.
Everyone who was in combat with the big guy -- damaged him, or healed someone who did -- gets a reward. (Either loot the body or be rewarded by the king, who shows up to say thanks.) You get something similar to the [Satchel of Helpful Goods], with material tuned to your level. Plus, there's a chance for some nice drops. For example -- if you did this today, a level 80 toon would definitely get something like a few gems or a couple potions. But you also have a chance for more -- maybe 10% for a Runed Orb, and a very small chance for a BoE epic or a mount.
It's not quite the same thing as a traditional world boss, but you'd get the same kind of OMGWTF effect, along with some fun of contributing -- even for lower levels -- and a decent reward. And it doesn't lead to the 'who tagged it first' worries or the hassles of fitting it into normal raid progression.
Sintraedrien Jan 15th 2010 12:00PM
"The Town Is Under Attack!!"
Frank Jan 15th 2010 9:54AM
i would love to see world bosses return. but, as people pointed out, there were problems with the old way, and if they did bring them back, i hope they would change them so they add flavor and danger to the world again for 80s and a sense of fear and fun for all.
Doomy doom Jan 15th 2010 10:06AM
Abso-freakin-lutely.
kunukia Jan 15th 2010 10:07AM
Bring on the epic raids!!!
katrinejenson Jan 15th 2010 10:16AM
YES!!!
But why stop at 40 players? Maybe a world Boss that you need 100 people to kill.
Ofcourse, 100 people can not be in a raid together, but it should still be memorable.
Maybe this is nostalgia trip, but one of my fondest memories from MMORPG are from another game than wow, where there was a huge dragon that dropped things you absolutely wanted. The thing is, you needed to be about 100ppl to down it.
Easy to say, she only went down about twice or month or something, on each server. The event was planned in advance on the forums, and on general chat.
Usually 1 guild took responsibility in planning, organizing and distributing loot afterwards.
When the dragon also had about 24h respawn time, yeah, this was a HUGE thing to participate in :)
One thing I miss about this game, is transguild cooperation, it would be nice!
Tokun Jan 15th 2010 4:04PM
Having been an avid player of FFXI for over four years, my personal opinion on this is a resounding NO.
FFXI, at least when I was still playing, was a game where "world bosses" were the norm. Aside from EXTREMELY limited options in instanced zones, all of which required you to actual ingame money, in large quantities, just to enter, almost all of the loot in the game was dropped by bosses on spawn timers. Open to the world, whomever tags him first and can hold aggro wins.
Yes, it does inspire a spirit of competition, but in my opinion, it is entirely the wrong type of competition. It inspires people to everything they can to have their guild tag the creature, and in FFXI, that included hacking the game client to do things such as change the model of the boss into something smaller so it appears on the screen faster, and therefore is targetable faster, to outright hacking of the client to zoom across the spawn area.
It brought out the worst in people, not the best. And as others in these comments have mentioned, it reserves the experience of fighting these bosses, and getting their loot, for only the top echelons of the elite.
I do not relish the idea of setting aside time in my evening to go camp the spawn area of a boss that I may not even be able to touch, just because someone had a little less lag than me.
I had enough of that in FFXI. It's one of the major reasons I left, and I was previously IN the elite group on my server that almost always tagged the boss.
No One Jan 15th 2010 10:26AM
No no no, a thousand times no!
Remembering back to my hard core vanilla raiding days, my guild and another made an agreement to lock down the 4 World Dragons between us, and to keep all their nature resist loot out of everyone elses hands. Why? Because back then to progress at all in Cthun's Temple of Ahn'Qiraj, you needed terrifyingly high amounts of nature resist gear, which only came from the dragons.
We parked alts and prepared phone trees to get everyone ready at the drop of a hat. It worked great, we had a monopoly on them for months and thanks to that head start, we got the server Cthun first kill. But to everyone else? I imagine they were furious.
After a while the devs put in the Silithus nature resist crafted items, and we had all we wanted so eventually we let other guilds kill the dragons and let it go, but to make a world boss be progression important? Expect it to be camped and camped hard.
zappo Jan 15th 2010 10:31AM
Not really. I think their time is done. People seem to think that world dragons were just some other boss like the current loot pinatas in the game. They weren't. The level of difficulty on some of them was unreal. If it's not going to be at that level, you might as well have another instance like Onyxia, otherwise it's just down to whatever group happens to wonder by it first and kill it.
gatorfan Jan 15th 2010 11:09AM
I am 100% for world bosses returning to the game. I miss them ::sniff:: ::cry::
Anuillae Jan 15th 2010 10:35AM
It's not like its gonna be hard to introduce World bosses in Cata, I mean, witht the big cracks in the earth and all, the whole world is gonna change, so there are bound to be some new extremely powerful mobs capable of demolishing cities...
Come to think of it, i hope Blizz demolishes a few cities XD Be quite cool to go and see ruins of the AH your bank alt spent years in =).
But yeh, I think we will be seeing some fire elementals etc in Azeroth after cata hits
Gimmlette Jan 15th 2010 10:37AM
Oh my yes! Absolutely!
I remember questing in Azshara and running into Azuregos. In Guild Chat I typed, "Does anyone know why this big blue dragon is over here taunting us?" People in chat told me there was no dragon and I said I was staring at him. So 9 of them came over to see the dragon and kill it. I think the tank lasted 30 seconds.
I miss Azuregos' taunts. They were hugely annoying while trying to get those stupid 3 pristine elk horns but once they were removed, the zone became way, way too quiet. And he never seems to be there now, when I go visit. The Shade is there to finish quests but I miss the real dragon.
I just did the green shard Eranikus quest chain. I'd do that again in a heartbeat. The guild members who came to help said it was an exhilarating fight and we all realized we missed this kind of battle. There is an epic feel to having to defend a town from something. It's a random event but it can't be soloed. We had several low level druids in Nightfall for training, join the raid group to take Eranikus down because "this is the most awesome thing I've seen".
I'd like to see the respawn timer shortened on the current world dragons. I'd like to see them have an escalating hardness, so to speak. Kill one and the other 3 get 10% more HP and one additional ability. Kill 2 and the other 2 get 20% more HP and 2 additional abilities, etc. So, by the time you were at the 4th dragon to kill, she's got 40% more health and 4 more abilities. As with OS + drakes, have their loot table drop better loot depending upon which difficulty you're at when you down them.
I also like the idea of being able to call a boss. Hands down, my favorite boss in this game is Tethyr. You want help with Tethyr, you call me. I'll be there as fast as I can. I've often wished you could do a daily that would call Tethyr. Make the called a 5-man or a raid version. You need people to actually take the part of the archers. Once we can fly in Kalimdor, maybe you need people to drop bombs on him.
Have a boss who periodically menaces Menethil, Stormwind, Ruth'eran Village and Exodar's docks. Have a flying boss that menaces Orgimmar, Silvermoon, Undercity and Thunder Bluff. Make them killable by both factions, too.
I think the key thing though is that the current respawn timer for world bosses is too long. Fel Reaver respawn timers are much shorter than the emerald dragon timers are. This means that fewer people get to experience their fights. We drag all levels with us when we take on a world dragon. Sure, a level 35 dies the minute the dragon breathes but they get to see the fight and cheer us on. I like that aspect of a world boss. It makes the encounter inclusive and more fun.
So, bring 'em on, Blizzard. I'm sharpening my pole arm.
threesixteen Jan 15th 2010 10:43AM
i finally managed to complete the war of the shifting sands quest (threesixteen on quel'dorei). mostly soloing but with help here and there over the years (yes it took me about 2 years. sigh)... recently i joined a new guild (hellfire knights forever) and i roped them into the World Boss (emerald dream bosses) portion all the way til we got to summon Maws. It was so cool summoning the shark. I'd seen it a long time ago when Fire and Blood first did it but had no idea back then the effort it took to finally get to that point. And even tho as 40 80s we only had about a split second to admire the great beast (fish), it was so worth it.
Except of course for the fact that BLizzard took away the world emote for the kill. Really disappointed about that.
The Hammer Jan 15th 2010 10:44AM
Yes, I want them back! :D
Link Death Jan 15th 2010 10:48AM
I'm too new to the game to remember world bosses, but I have to say, I love the idea! I'm too casual a player to probably ever go to them, but I love the idea of some huge baddie out there you might want to avoid.
Speaking of which, isn't there a mini-boss in Dragonblight? Some big magnataur or something you have to kill for a quest? Oh yeah, like he said, part of a quest.
So yeah, I think the idea of world bosses is awesome.
Rem Jan 15th 2010 11:01AM
as long as i don't have to hear "ALL MORTALS WILL PERISH" every 60 seconds, I will be totally cool with tons more world bosses.
Hoggersbud Jan 15th 2010 11:02AM
No UNLESS they are phased, or summoned, or otherwise accessible to folks without interference from others.
Sorry, but it's too easy to screw up a raid outdoors by accident, let alone intent that it's just not a good idea.
catharsis80 Jan 15th 2010 11:24AM
I didn't start playing in Vanilla, but the world bosses have always sounded awesome to me.
jrb Jan 15th 2010 11:49AM
Personally, i was never involved in raiding world bosses. My answer to the question would still be a resounding yes, especially as cataclysm is going to be based alongside 1-60 content.
my fondest memories are of exploring azeroth's low to mid-level zones, and stumbling across lots of ?? level elites, or perhaps a wandering world boss and totally being awestruck by why these things were there. Or better yet, stumbling across a raid-group in the process of taking them down. My fascination with grim batol stems from this very same thing.. why were all those dragons in the wetlands.. what happened there?
It builds an understanding of the lore, a desire to progress to experience the content, and a longing to explorer the wonders that may lurk over the next hill.