Breakfast Topic: Where's the epic
by Anne Stickney 
Apr 27th 2010 at 8:00AM
So we got a lot of big news yesterday: Badges are going the way of the dodo (and I for one will not miss them), and on top of that astonishing bit of news, the way we raid is about to change forever. Loot from 10- and 25-man raiding will be identical, the only difference being in the amount of loot that is doled out, or so the changes seem to indicate. For those that enjoy 10-man content this is well and good, for those that enjoy 25-man content ... well. It may get that much harder to recruit. But I'm not really going to talk about that.
What I am going to talk about is the screenshot pictured above. That's my priest, my first raiding character back in vanilla. She's taking a siesta while waiting for everyone to run back from yet another wipe on Ragnaros, the final boss in Molten Core. By everyone, I mean all 39 other people involved in the raid at the time; when I say this was vanilla I mean this shot was taken before BWL had even been hinted at. See, there's something fundamentally ... off with raiding in Wrath, and I can't really put my finger on it -- but I keep going back to this screenshot and remembering fondly the small army it took to finally make that bastard up and die.
What I am going to talk about is the screenshot pictured above. That's my priest, my first raiding character back in vanilla. She's taking a siesta while waiting for everyone to run back from yet another wipe on Ragnaros, the final boss in Molten Core. By everyone, I mean all 39 other people involved in the raid at the time; when I say this was vanilla I mean this shot was taken before BWL had even been hinted at. See, there's something fundamentally ... off with raiding in Wrath, and I can't really put my finger on it -- but I keep going back to this screenshot and remembering fondly the small army it took to finally make that bastard up and die.
40 people. A virtual army, and it suited the encounter -- the size of that room was breathtaking. The sight of Ragnaros emerging from that lava gave me goosebumps. When we finally killed him, there was this sense of accomplishment, that we'd achieved something utterly amazing. Nowadays, I can go in and 3-man him. It makes me wistful. But what I miss most, what seems to be missing from Wrath is that feeling. The epic.
Fighting the Lich King was all right but not once did I have that "Oh god oh god we are all going to die" sensation that made those old zones so fun. I miss that sensation, the goosebumps, the feeling that when a boss died it was this truly momentous event. I don't know where they lost it -- Burning Crusade had it, when Kil'jaeden emerged from the Sunwell the "Holy s-" feeling was definitely present. But in Wrath, it just fell ... flat, somehow. I keep thinking I'm the only one, but a few more people are piping up here and there, so I thought I'd ask you all over the morning coffee -- do you remember the epic? Do you feel the epic now? Or do you, like me, think that maybe it got lost somewhere and we ought to send out a search party for it? Let's see what people have to say -- I'll be over here, on my porch. In the rocker, reminiscing about the good 'ol days.
Filed under: Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 13)
Cyrannos Apr 27th 2010 8:05AM
I felt the epic, throughout Vanilla and TBC. And o how do i miss it, those great moments!
Last time i heard nerdscreams on vent was M'uru.
Goodk4t Apr 27th 2010 10:34AM
I started to play this expasion, at patch 3.1. One of the most epic moments for me was to go in Deadmines with a group composed by a warlock tank (using the Voidwalker to tank) and a ret paladin healing. The zone is SO big and I knew we were going to die, so every pull had to be done carefully to let the Voidwalker grab aggro and such.
I think the epic feeling was lost in Wrath due to multiple sub-tiers every patch: everyone got too godly. You don't have that "Oh shit, we going to die" nor the "man, this gigantic boss gonna crush me". You know YOU are strong as hell. Sure, you might wipe a few times, but you know the boss will sooner or later. When YOU are the badass and the boss is only a rock between you and your loot, the epic feel is gone.
Heilig Apr 27th 2010 10:45AM
For me, the epic comes from the unknown.
Ragnaros was this giant mysterious powerful guy that we had no real clue what he REALLY was until he popped up and scared the shit out of us.
Nefarius was this little unassuming dude until he takes off and comes back as a MASSIVE dragon ready to eat your face.
C'thun was an unknown force among a legion of bugs and silit-OH CRAP HE JUST ATE ME.
We saw the effects of Vashj and KT but we never actually saw them until we got into their room and saw them patiently waiting, basically ignoring the insects come to bother them tonight. KT didn't even think we were worth his time and sent his councilors and weapons agai-HOLY CRAP I'M FLYING WTF?!
Illidan was just this menacing presence that we never encountered until we see him thinking back over his 10,000 years. He wasn't this amazing boss model, just a slightly large night elf with horns and those awesome wargl-HOLY SHIT THAT DEMON IS FIFTY FEET TALL.
KJ was the freaking leader of the Burning Legion and didn't even bother to show up personally to handle his business, he just sent some lieutenants and 3 little casters to guard the Sunwe-OMG THAT DUDE JUST CRAWLED OUT OF THE FLOOR.
The Lich King is just this normal sized dude in some cool armor that (surprise) summons a bunch of undead while you fight him. It's not like we're surprised by that, seeing as how we played multiple quests AS THE FINAL BOSS OF THE GAME.
The disconnect from the Epic comes from Blizzard's conflicting design philosophy. In Vanilla and BC, all the most Epic moments were reserved for hardcore raiders. If you weren't raiding, you never even saw the guy on the front of the box, and that pissed people off. So for Wrath, they said they wanted people to feel that the Lich King was all around you, and they put him in damn near every quest in every zone. That is not a bad thing by itself, but when you combine that with a design philosophy of letting everyone and their brother into every raid to kill everything, it makes you lose the Epic feeling. It needed to be one or the other. You either make him very accessible in the general world and lock him away where only the most hardcore will see him die, or you keep him hidden during the whole expansion until he FINALLY shows his face when you walk up to his inner sanctum. Since we got both, it feels like Lich King overload, and just feels like we're stomping Dr. Evil after he stuck us behind a closed door and trusted #2 to take care of us instead of just shooting us in the head any of the dozen times he faced us while we were questing. He's this incompetent overlord who doesn't deserve his throne anyway, and there's nothing Epic about that. Combine that with a totally normal sized dude instead of a gigantic monstrosity and the total package is simply underwhelming.
Wreckage Apr 27th 2010 11:18AM
Heilig is right about the Lich King.. He reminds me of Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget or something... By the time you're on the home stretch of the Icecrown quests you practically expect him to show up every five minutes and kill whoever you're helping (or whoever failed to kill you), then conveniently ignore you or make a lame threat before disappearing. HE GETS DEFEATED BY SOME ROCKS at the end of HoR for crying out loud. I swear I heard him saying, "Curses, foiled again!"
I know the devs repeatedly said they wanted players to feel more closely involved with the Big Bad for each expansion after feeling like there was a disconnect in BC, but I think they made Arthas too familiar and sorta neutered him in the process.
And I really still think that raids are pretty epic. Tell me you didn't wig out the first time the ground broke away in EoE (You know, before you completely and totally hated the dragon-riding mechanics). Hell, there are some quests that feel really epic... The Wrathgate, telling old sourpuss that his kid was dead, and then helping Thrall and Sylvanas reclaim UC was amazing the first time through.
I will admit that I don't get the same charge out of some of the encounters in the game that I used to... I can vividly remember my heart pounding when my Pally finally got his charger after about 12 disappointing trips to scholo. The first time I saw Rag, my guild was farming him to gear up alts and newbies for BWL but I was still awestruck. This sort of thing should be expected. This game is incredible, but after playing for over 5 years, I'm just not as easily impressed. I'm still here, still loving it and really looking forward to the hopeful reintroduction of skill in Cata... I'm cool with everyone having access to raids, just really tired of the gear score pugs and perpetual expectation in heroics that every tank has to have 40k health and all of the other silly crap you see.
Meh Apr 27th 2010 11:22AM
I remember the screams on vent when we killed Lady Vashj, Kael or even the first time we got the Amani War Bear. What I remember from Wrath is having to quit the cinematic early after killing the Lich King, for the first time, as my raid leader was already handing out the loot. Wrath has been a race from one loot pinata to the next.
What strikes me is that I don't have the sense of accomplishment or individuality I had before, when you really had to strive and work to get something, whether that was the first tier sets that everyone could spot at a glance, to titles that really meant something, nothing in Wrath has compared to when I got my Hand of A'dal title.
Yes, Blizzard has made the game more accessible to more people, but for me it has taken away what I loved about the game, killing Yogg-Saron in 10 man feels the same as 25 and to be honest hard modes are the same fights all over again harder yes, but the same.
It has taken a while for me to accept that excitement that I got from WoW has been gone for a while now, I've been hoping each patch to find it again. My subscription is running out in 4 days and I don't think I will be renewing it.
cocoboom Apr 27th 2010 11:28AM
nah, it's the same old "everything was better back then" delusion.
MC sucked. It was just a cave where undergeared players died a lot to bosses which were just giant versions of mobs outside with the same boring trash all over.
My absolutely only complaint with wotlk raiding is that any player joining later on would bypass early raid content completely. I couldn't tell you the last time I saw someone looking for a Naxx group outside of a quick Razuvious kill. Same applies to everything up to and including Ulduar.
Baba Apr 27th 2010 11:35AM
I would agree with Heilig, but also go a step further and say that the 'epic' in that final boss fight is finally looking back and remembering the massive journey you and your team-mates went on in order to get to this level. Most often you would have had some people in your raid who were with you all the way, but now you can lose your end-boss virginity with a load of strangers.
Nowadays, we can grind heroics full of the most sub-par bosses imaginable, and then jump straight into ICC. You miss out on all the experiences of the lower tiers, and the knowledge that everybody is beating the Lich King lowers the excitement, for me anyway.
Jorges Apr 27th 2010 11:58AM
@ Heilig: Remember that quest in Howling Fjord, where you get transported to the spirit realm to see how the humans descended from the Vrykul? Just outside the house there was the LK with a Valkyr, if you get too near he chokes you to death. At that very moment I felt like the Game Over screen just appeared in front of me. The LK looked that this dude that could kill you even in the spirit plane, and it was awesome.
After that, I got to see him about 20 more times, each of one he just made a big speech and didn't even try to kill me, because he was creating his army (that he doesn't really need) and didn't have time for me... by the time I get to finally fight him it was like "Oh hey! what's up dude?". All the possible "fear" or surprise that I could have felt for an encounter like this, was totally gone months ago. People in my realm were more interested on "who killed him first" than in "how did they kill him, and how did they survive".
Making the ending movie available to everyone that interacts with the statue in Dalaran was a total killer of the Epic feeling too.
Like you said, Blizzard themselves killed the Epic feeling in wrath when trying to cater to casuals and hardcores at the same time. It is a hard thing to do, wich they did pretty well I think. Now they have to work on bringing back that Epic part of the game. And seeing that we're going back to Dragons (dragons are always epic, imho), we might see a lot of cool and Epic content in Cataclysm.
I see TBC as an Epic expansion, Wrath as a "Balancing Expansion", where Blizz successfully tried new gameplay and technology. And hopefully, Cataclysm will be a mix of the two.
alienears2 Apr 27th 2010 12:47PM
I just hit 80 yesterday after a 2 year break from the game. I realized something when I got off the boat in the Borean Tundra. The NPCs know who I am. My name carries weight in the world now. The "epic" no longer lied in the bosses or the battles, but in your character. You are the great hero from Outland. You've accomplished all of these amazing things in the world and have the reputation. Even the Lich King declares you one of Azeroth's greatest and strongest heroes.
I don't know if that was Blizzard's plan all along, but it seems to me like its what they were going for over the course of the game these past few years. The new bosses won't feel as insane anymore because...well dammit, look at all the shit you've done thus far!
er.cetas Apr 27th 2010 8:45PM
I remember when I was like ten years old (I'm 14) and my dad's friend was in town and staying at our house. He was a big vanilla raider and he brought his laptop with him. He would play for hours in our living room, and I would sit there looking over his shoulder while he messed around in Eastern Plaguelands or farmed rep or something. I remember this one time when he did an Onyxia raid and I just sat there for like two hours watching forty people try to kill this giant freaking dragon. It was just so epic. And since then I have always found little moments of pure awesome in the game. Little quests, this and that. I think how they did raids in Wrath is not quite as cool or whatever, but that does not dissuade from the fact that this is a very well done creation. Now maybe I'm just a kid, and a bit of a fanboy, but I love this game, and i love how they did Wrath.
cygnus Apr 27th 2010 10:15PM
Woah, all the epicness you guys are missing is found in the coments so far, plz reread em. I am AMAZED. People have no FRIGGIN idea of what they want. At all. And hopefully Blizz realize this.
4 years ago, people we QQ'ing EXACTLY like this because the grinds were boaring and unepic. lvl grinds, rep grinds, mat grinds... everything regarding of the path to an objective was boring, yet the objective was worth it, be it: ragnaros, sulfuras, AQ, winterspring kitty, etc...
2 something years ago: "Huh? Illidan?" "we want moaaaar illidan. We didn't read any novels nor palyed WIII, we want moaaar in-game interaction"... ppl complained bout not hating Illidan enough, cause he barely came out of his BT.
Today: "w00t! I made a left and didn't crashed head first with the LK! /sarcasm". Now everyone is complaining because the bosses are not epic enough for them. But what about the 100+ hrs, that leaded you to those 2 min of "un-epicness" when killing a boss? For me they were EPIC.
BUT! where is the 'epic' of a boss contained? Is there a variable in the WoW source code? Is it in the Atlanta servers hiding? Is blizz stealing it? Or is it in your head?
Every time I enter ICC i watch the 3.3 trailer, and every time the hairs in the back of my neck raise of excitement... twice... and every time Im in there killing the LK minions I fill as all the epic of the world is before me and my guild.
But plz QQ more, I know WoW.com servers power from your tears...
Eisengel Apr 28th 2010 7:49AM
I dunno, I like the current trend. While I agree that scarcity does breed awe, I'm one of the people that never got to see a lot of the content because my schedule keeps me out of basically any raiding guild, and at a point, the game basically drops off a cliff if you can't raid. I never saw Black Temple, Sunwell, Vashj, Kel'Thuzad, and I saw Magetheridon once, Gruul 4 times, and Zul'Aman twice. In Vanilla I never got into Strath or Scholo, let alone something like MC. In Wrath I haven't seen the end of Naxx (still have 2 quarters I haven't completed), I haven't seen EoE, and I was in Ulduar only once for a weekly. I have been in ICC just up to Saurfang, although once again RL issues hit my guild and raiding has sputtered out.
I would love to raid regularly. When I can, I do, but unfortunately I'm about 4 hours away from any reasonable population on the best server I can find for raiding. Now, Blizz can't change the fact that there are oceans and not land in certain time zones, but I'm glad they're making the raid areas more accessible, since I may be able to actually see content before I can solo it.
Naolin Apr 27th 2010 8:06AM
Alagon gave me that epic feeling, the race against the clock I think.
Lich king, well not that much
Nexus Apr 27th 2010 9:44AM
I honestly think it was (the Lich King) one of the only 'epic' fights of the expansion. That first time beating Rotface by half a second was fun.
Yogg Saron only got 'epic' after you removed some of the easy mode stuff.
I wasn't a big fan of Algalon
pietrex Apr 27th 2010 12:30PM
Algalon WAS epic. He was (and still is) one of the hardest bosses to actually get to, and once you do get to him, you enter a friggin' ROOM MADE OF STARS. Everything is transparent: the floor, the walls, the loot, not to mention the boss himself! And once you engage him... HOLY CRAP, EVERYTHING HAS JUST DISAPPEARED AND I'M GOING TO FALL DOWN THE BLACK HOLE. He definitely gets my vote as THE epic boss when it comes to surroundings and this feeling of 'ohmygodIamsogonnadiehere'.
Hollow Leviathan Apr 27th 2010 2:23PM
From this article, it seems Anne gets her epic from big-ass dudes emerging from the ground. So, if Deathwing bursts out of the ground, she'll get the epic back. (If he breaks the ground and we fall into a pit of undead swarm of insects instead, it will not be epic.)
I strongly suspect the reality is that your sense of the unknown during vanilla wow was still strong, since the game was new, and the knowledge that raids were impossible places that only the best of the best of the best got to go made them feel that much more amazing when you came and saw and conquered.
Nowadays, we've all seen raids before, we have our DBM installed, instead of shrieking like babies when the Sons of Rag pop up, and raids are something that can happen to you YES YOU, even if you don't devote 15 hours a week killing fire elementals in Arathi and farming gold in the Deadman's Pass to pay for another week's rewardless 8 hour grind through Molten Core, the most boring place on earth.
Elmouth Apr 27th 2010 4:07PM
Ulduar was a better raid than Icecrown all around IMO.
jbodar Apr 27th 2010 8:41PM
I get the distinct impression that for many Raiders:
Epic = gargantuan boss + 40 players + exclusive access + very difficult
Everything else just feels like a trumped up 5-man Heroic to them. Unfortunately for them, Blizzard's design philosophy has eliminated most of that formula, so we get all this "back in the day" discussion. It is what it is.
Neuropox Apr 27th 2010 8:54PM
Epic in wrath: 2 words
Gunship Battle!
/thread
KB3420 Apr 27th 2010 8:07AM
its in my pants...
Get it.. epic!
epic staff!