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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsOptional boss modes making a comeback in Mists of Pandaria?
by Mathew McCurley 
Jan 26th 2012 at 4:30PM
Rather than selecting a normal or hard mode toggle before pulling an encounter, Ulduar raid groups were tasked with completing different objectives during the encounter or defeating the boss mechanics in a different order to activate hard mode. Famously, players would press a large red button behind Mimiron labelled "DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON," activating the encounter and a rather angry Titanic watcher. Other fights during Wrath of the Lich King such as Freya and Sartharion featured a "choose your own difficulty" mechanic wherein the player's choices before the encounter increased or decreased the boss' overall difficulty. Harder combinations of abilities would yield more impressive items.
Will Mists of Pandaria bring back our beloved "choose your difficulty" encounters and in-fight hard mode triggers? I know I'd like to get another Sartharion-style encounter, especially with mount rewards like the original provided.
Read the full blue post behind the break below.
Optional Boss Modes Making a Return in MoP?
What a coincidence! We happened to talk about raid design and results with Ghostcrawler and Mumper yesterday, and everyone looked back fondly on Ulduar, among others.
Yes, the same designers and artists who worked on Ulduar are still working on raids.
Here's the thing -- Ulduar is an example of a raid where lots of players got to enjoy the first few bosses, and very few players ever saw the last few. Yogg Saron and Algalon were among the least-killed bosses ever, and not because they were exceedingly difficult. Rather, clearing the dungeon all the way to Yogg took up a big chunk of a raiding week (and you only had an hour to kill Algalon), and the ability to extend raid lockouts came later in 3.2.0 (but extending raid lockouts means getting less loot overall). Raid Finder partially resolves the length-of-raid problem, so we can consider designing longer raids, but that's not always an easy call. Long raids mean longer development time, and while some players might be willing to wait, we understand why others might get impatient.
Of course, having multiple raids in a tier (like the combination of Bastion of Twilight and Blackwing Descent) has the advantage of giving players different environments to play in while potentially making scheduling and logistics easier.
Pushing a big red button for Mimiron was very cool, and again is fondly remembered. We have created something like 40 raid bosses since the creation of those encounters however, and we cant help but think that it would start to feel really gimmicky and forced if every raid encounter had its difficulty set by pushing a button, (or not killing adds, or changing the order you kill the bosses, or the other mechanics we used in Ulduar). We think Mimiron would feel less special if there were six more bosses in the game with big red buttons, and we're just not sure the design space is there to have a near infinite variety of means by which players launch a heroic mode in game.
Nonetheless, because there are so many requests for those style mechanics, we are considering doing a few bosses with optional modes (in the same way Mimiron, Freya or Sartharion had them) in Mists of Pandaria.
Yes, the same designers and artists who worked on Ulduar are still working on raids.
Here's the thing -- Ulduar is an example of a raid where lots of players got to enjoy the first few bosses, and very few players ever saw the last few. Yogg Saron and Algalon were among the least-killed bosses ever, and not because they were exceedingly difficult. Rather, clearing the dungeon all the way to Yogg took up a big chunk of a raiding week (and you only had an hour to kill Algalon), and the ability to extend raid lockouts came later in 3.2.0 (but extending raid lockouts means getting less loot overall). Raid Finder partially resolves the length-of-raid problem, so we can consider designing longer raids, but that's not always an easy call. Long raids mean longer development time, and while some players might be willing to wait, we understand why others might get impatient.
Of course, having multiple raids in a tier (like the combination of Bastion of Twilight and Blackwing Descent) has the advantage of giving players different environments to play in while potentially making scheduling and logistics easier.
Pushing a big red button for Mimiron was very cool, and again is fondly remembered. We have created something like 40 raid bosses since the creation of those encounters however, and we cant help but think that it would start to feel really gimmicky and forced if every raid encounter had its difficulty set by pushing a button, (or not killing adds, or changing the order you kill the bosses, or the other mechanics we used in Ulduar). We think Mimiron would feel less special if there were six more bosses in the game with big red buttons, and we're just not sure the design space is there to have a near infinite variety of means by which players launch a heroic mode in game.
Nonetheless, because there are so many requests for those style mechanics, we are considering doing a few bosses with optional modes (in the same way Mimiron, Freya or Sartharion had them) in Mists of Pandaria.
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria is the next expansion, raising the level cap to 90, introducing a brand new talent system, and bringing forth the long-lost pandaren race to both Horde and Alliance. Check out the trailer and follow us for all the latest MoP news!
Filed under: Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King, Mists of Pandaria
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Johnny.ramos1 Jan 27th 2012 10:00AM
He's right, considering how big of a raid, Ulduar was not out very long and then they made up ToC right after, which was by far easier with better gear. only thing that kept people going was drake runs
freebeatfly Jan 28th 2012 4:32AM
@Imnick
Yes, BUT, there should be some sort of general "time frame" for every tier. Why only get 3.5 months for Ulduar and then get ICC for a whole year (Ruby Sanctum doesn't count, most people ignored it and the HC version was undoable). If they'd paced it a bit more, maybe people would be less burned-out?
I for one, am dreading having DS for 6 months or more. Especially after seeing it in full, every week, in Raid Finder.
Kurly Jan 28th 2012 9:34AM
@imnick,
Yes, I understand the same thing is said about every tier, but the point was made about how few groups saw the final bosses.
The point is that there was not enough time allotted for Ulduar. TOC should have had the same iLVL gear as Ulduar (or TOC delayed) so that guilds would still have a reason to bring their raiders into Ulduar.
GhostWhoWalks Jan 26th 2012 5:34PM
Optional boss modes are actually more feasible now than before, thanks to the Dungeon Journal. The biggest argument against optional boss modes is that players would have little way of knowing what they needed to do in order to activate these harder modes...but now, a simple entry in the Dungeon Journal can explain "if you do this, the boss will enter hard mode and X additional rewards will be provided".
Pyromelter Jan 26th 2012 5:52PM
"we are considering doing a few bosses with optional modes (in the same way Mimiron, Freya or Sartharion had them) in Mists of Pandaria."
What's that sound? Oh, it's just about 2 million people turning their heads towards this statement and hitting the re-subscribe button.
themightysven Jan 26th 2012 6:08PM
with the LFR tool this has extra potential, like if your group seems pretty on the ball, try it the harder way, and if you succeed, you get normal level drops...
Tyler Caraway Jan 26th 2012 6:59PM
I'm over the whole "go back to the Ulduar way of Hard Modes" thing. It wasn't a smart system, it wasn't sustainable, and the toggle is perfectly fine. It was a neat shot, and, sure, do it every now and again for specific bosses like options encounters or one-offs, but only when they have a super awesome idea for it. Really don't need 20 more Hodir's or Mim's or FlameLev/Freya/Sarth's. I mean, they reused the same mechanic for 3 out of 10 bosses and people -really- think they could keep that up?
I do wish that Hard Modes would more interesting than "Oh look, the boss hit's harder now, whee!" and sometimes Blizzard does that, while often they don't. Morchok, Yor'sahj, and Zonozz are great Heroics -- okay, the first two are great, the second is decent at best -- but the rest of Dragon Soul? Ultraxion gains more damage, Hagara gains more damage plus a slow. Blackhorn is a little better because the dragon comes down to assist, but it still feels meh, and Spine is just a weak attempt at being different in forcing healers to actually dispel something for a change, other than that, things just gained more health.
I get that not every encounter is going to be new and unique every time, but a bit more effort would be nice. Again, I find Yor'sahj to be a fantastic example of how you can make so few changes yet make an encounter that much more engaging and difficult. The small matter of adding an extra slime and changing the combinations slightly totally flips that fight upside-down.
SamLowry Jan 26th 2012 8:01PM
Whew--I thought the article was saying that optional bosses will be coming back.
Sorry, but I don't think any boss is optional. I lost track of how many times I started screaming at my monitor during the otherwise good old days of Wrath because the tank decided to pass up a boss, especially if it was a holiday and I had queued specifically to attack that boss (Maiden of Grief, anyone?).
Pyromelter Jan 26th 2012 8:12PM
When tanking, I never skipped Maiden. It was like... kill 3 trash mobs and a super easy boss, take like 2 minutes tops, free gold and chance at some enchanting mats. I did skip that rock guy quite a bit, I don't think I ever really quite understood what the heck his spell did that one-shot people, and with so much trash to get to him, most of the time it wasn't worth it.
Tyler Caraway Jan 27th 2012 1:22AM
Krystallus?
He just had a Stomp/Shatter that was the exact same as Gruul's. It just that people don't pay attention and just think "Kill boss, kill" so once he stomps and knocks everyone back, people tended to stack right on top of each other -- especially melee -- which results in them being one-shot. Shatter causes you to explode, dealing low/no damage to you by high damage to anyone near you, with the damage reduced the further away they are.
Peebers Jan 28th 2012 3:44AM
lmao I never knew either! I got wrath late an was behind the curve. even with 5 85s I never bothered to ask.
THANKS FUSSY TYLER! =)
Ballmung Jan 26th 2012 8:05PM
Sad to say I never really raided Ulduar beyond anything not needed to kill the raid boss for the week. However I really like the idea of a choose-your-difficulty fight. Maybe not so massive or as thorough as Ulduar where I believe most of the bosses had such a mechanic. A boss or 2 every raid seems like a good balance to me. Maybe on the lighter side if multiple raids are released at a time.
arkhan Jan 27th 2012 1:19AM
Ulduar-style hard modes are fine and all but I really wish they would stick with the Tier 11 design of having multiple raids in one Tier. It just does wonders for not getting burned out if you don't have to raid in the same fucking place every week.
I really loved Tier 11. "Man, I can't see BoT anymore." No problem, let's do BWD instead! And then as the icing on the cake you still had To4W as kind of half a raid that you could do in addition to that.
Philster043 Jan 27th 2012 5:48AM
Anything inspired by Ulduar hast o be a good thing.
ZubaInverse Jan 27th 2012 10:26AM
I like the XT hard mode best I think. Doing extra DPS burst leading to a longer fight overall with extra mechanics for everyone and an actual stretch on healer mana.
Ninerva Jan 27th 2012 6:40PM
That's the best kind of hard mode activation there can possibly be. Activating the hard mode is a gear check in itself, and it's impossible to activate it accidentally at the appropriate gear level for the content. Thorim is similar, as the hallway group needs to be very fast.
Bad ones? FL and particularly Yogg. You have to do something to turn off the hardmode rather than to turn it on. "I accidentally a hardmode" is not something that should be easy to do.
Matt Feb 12th 2012 6:18PM
I think Morchok of this tier would have been a perfect boss to implement this on. DPS him hard enough, and it splits apart... into two! Large DPS check at the start, then a mechanical shift that effectively increases his health and makes healing harder.