The Dragon Soul -- a post-mortem
by Matthew Rossi 
Mar 30th 2012 at 4:00PM
Dragon Soul as an experience was fascinatingly diverse compared to previous raids. It eschewed the static finding of some dark cave or towering fortress to instead create a raid wherein we traveled the world, with different environments for the bosses to suit the locations and set pieces for our transitions. One complaint I've seen is that by reusing the Dragonblight and Wyrmrest Temple, Blizzard's design team was cutting corners -- but frankly, I don't find that criticism very accurate. First off, Wyrmrest is where the dragonflights typically meet, as demonstrated by Malygos' assault during the Nexus War, so it makes perfect sense for it to be where Deathwing sends his full Twilight's Hammer forces to try and crush them.
Thrift, Horatio
Secondly, there's no reason Blizzard shouldn't reuse art assets if and when it makes sense to do so. Sure, it may save time and allow them to devote more development to the complicated Spine and Madness of Deathwing fights, but there's nothing wrong with doing that at all.
The interesting thing about Dragon Soul is how it pulls together every single thread we've explored since the Destroyer burst forth from Deepholm. Giant elementals, Faceless Ones who serve the Old Gods, Twilight's Hammer cultists, a Twilight Dragon, and a wing of Twilight Drakes ridden by more Hammer cultists (including vrykul using the very same models and carrying the same weapons as the Twilight's Hammer cultists we saw in Ulduar) serve to show us that yes, Deathwing has called in every force he has.
All our adventuring and sacking of bastions and descents served a purpose. Narratively speaking, the bosses and trash mobs we fight in the lead up to Deathwing himself are a means to call back to the entire expansion to date and clean sweep it away at the same time, to say thanks to you, this is all that is left -- finish them. While it is inevitable that some cultists out there somewhere survived, at the end of the Warmaster encounter, we have demolished the cult leadership and scattered its rank and file.
I tend to personally prefer the fights on heroic difficulty just because it feels like I'm seeing the desperation of Deathwing's forces in the additional mechanics, but I have to focus a lot more on my individual role there and can't really sit back and see the fight. In general, the mechanics are interesting -- sometimes too interesting or too buggy (I'm really tired of the ball not bouncing properly on Zon'ozz), and that mars the instance for me to some degree.
If I were rating the raid purely as a series of encounters, I'd rate everything up to Warmaster as a 7 out of 10, with Zon'ozz at a 5 and Ultraxion at a 4. I especially loath Ultraxion as a boring DPS check and a boring healing check with an interesting mechanic that ends up being more a timing check. It would have been improved if it had taken a page from the Halion fight and had something for us to do when we zoned out.
Die, Destroyer, die
As lukewarm as I am on some of the encounters, I am hardly that when it comes to the Spine and Madness of Deathwing fights. Not only do I find them well executed, well tuned, and interesting with unique mechanics, those mechanics serve a function beyond simply being unique. Zon'ozz's pong ball mechanic is a unique one, but the Spine mechanics serve to immerse you in the idea that not only are you striding on the back of a colossal dragon, but that dragon is so hideously warped and corrupted that his very blood and sinew will rise up to attack you. Once you conclude the fight and descend to the edge of the Maelstrom itself, the Madness encounter succeeds in giving you a fight that is both frenetic and representative of the capstone event of the expansion.
This is it: the final fight against Deathwing, and the only options are victory or death (to quote the Horde), and it feels like that. These two fights are well executed, well designed, both satisfying to play through and defeat and satisfying as lore moments. Quite frankly, I view these two encounters taken together as the best raid design in this entire expansion and on par with any fight I've experienced. (You could argue for Sinestra and heroic Ragnaros being in this league as well. I hate heroic Cho'gall and found heroic Nef and Al'Akir fiddly.)
Maybe more than we needed
If I am going to be honest, I frankly feel like there are too many encounters before we get to see Deathwing. I probably would have skipped one of the two Faceless Ones (probably Zon'ozz), and I might have considered a way to put Hagara and Warmaster together to consolidate the raid down to six encounters, two of which are Deathwing. Frankly, I feel like the Warmaster fight, while technically very well executed, feels like a strange appendix after beating Ultraxion. We should go straight from that victory to chasing Deathwing down, because the Ultraxion fight serves to shift the tone of the instance from a siege to a pursuit.
It's clear that everything up to Ultraxion is part of the assault, that Deathwing expects this combination of forces to erode the dragonflights and weaken them enough for Ultraxion to complete the job and kill the aspects, and he would have if not for us. That moment, and the unleashing of the Dragon Soul against Deathwing, marks the turning of the tide and the shift from Deathwing constantly attacking us to us attacking him. The Warmaster fight just serves to bog it down. It would have made more sense for the Warmaster to have been used before as part of the attrition war Deathwing is waging, gambling everything on his superweapon in dragon form after having done everything to whittle us down to size. That's probably a minor quibble, but it is one that keeps popping up in my head every time we do the fight.
It works as a raid instance. It works as a story. It's a raid composed of almost everything we've fought up to date. (We don't see many fire elementals because, well, we took care of them in the Firelands already, and we don't see Azshara or the Naga because, well, they're not really that closely allied to Deathwing and sure as heck aren't willing to die for him the way the Twilight's Hammer is.) It provides both a sense of scale and of dramatic movement. And it ends with two huge encounters that use their mechanics to at once challenge the players and tell the final chapter of the expansion's story.
I'm glad I raided this, and I'm glad Blizzard chose to end the expansion here instead of some filler raid somewhere else. This is a good end to Deathwing and to his Cataclysm.
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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Lore, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Jyotai Mar 30th 2012 4:11PM
This may have been the raid with the most diversity...
But it was also way too simple.
Half the fights were just timing mechanics which, once learned, one could put on mental farm while watching the latest lolcat video on youtube...
I felt like I was doing Heigan's dance all over again, on most of these bosses...
- wipe a few dozen times until you all learn the dance and the folks who have two left feet get replaced... then never wipe, again, ever... even when on an undergeared alt...
I'm tired of 'line dancing' bosses... where the challenge is for everyone to touch their elbow in sync... Or where the biggest hassle on raid night is trying, yet again, to get your GL's best friend to be willing to download Deadly Boss Mods so you're not stuck wiping until his bed time at 10pm...
Give us challenges that are not so predictable and repeatable.
Jyotai Mar 30th 2012 7:59PM
An example of this:
The most controversial patch in the history of Guild Wars back when people would "raid" in that game (before you could bring 7 NPCs and solo it), was to the AI.
They made the AI adjust its tactics based on what the players did - mobs would switch up what moves they would use, in what order, and would try to 'kite' players by playing positioning games in order to get at healers (its a game with a difference concept of threat, and no tanks).
- Controversial because it proved to be smarter than 50% of the players, and had no lag time so faster than 90%...
- But also controversial because people were thrilled with what it hinted at: encounters you could no longer put on a timer.
An addon like Deadly Boss Mods is great in WoW. It counts down the fight. But it should not be possible...
It should not be the case, that every time you fight 'Boss X', he does Y at z% health, and does 'A' 3 minutes in, then B 30 seconds later...
- Sometimes, the boss should just say... "lets try something else."
Not as extreme as Guild Wars did - where the game became suddenly unbeatable to the point that full max sized groups (8 in that game) in top gear, could not beat world mid-level trash mobs... (until they hot-fixed their AI down and gave it built in lag).
- But at least something... some level of 'not predictable'.
Even just a 5% chance of 'random order to my next move'... would be an improvement...
In other words;
- Raid Bosses should have a priority list, not a rotation.
Snuzzle Mar 30th 2012 9:26PM
The problem is, what's the opposite of predictable? RNG. Because it's impossible to make a fight where stuff is timed/has triggers in a way that players won't eventually figure out
And no one likes the RNG fight (she deep breaths more, anyone?)
sup Mar 30th 2012 9:29PM
"Deep Breath"?
Philster043 Mar 31st 2012 4:51AM
Talking about Onyxia, I think.
Radioted Mar 30th 2012 4:12PM
Speaking of post-mortems, are we ever going to see one for Twilight Highlands?
Nyold Mar 30th 2012 4:13PM
"All our adventuring and sacking of bastions and descents served a purpose. Narratively speaking, the bosses and trash mobs we fight in the lead up to Deathwing himself are a means to call back to the entire expansion to date and clean sweep it away at the same time, to say thanks to you, this is all that is left -- finish them."
I feel that too. After finishing the weapons in his disposal one by one, then we get to fight the final boss himself, that does feel like an action movie narrative.
Scott Mar 30th 2012 5:21PM
And yet, I didn't get that feeling at all. I'm honestly surprised by that since I'm one of those lore junkies that pays attention to everything written and spoken. I have to admit that my brain never made the connection of "Oh Deathwing has gathered all his forces from the zones I finished earlier."
My exact thoughts on it were, truthfully, "Man, more reused models? For the final raid?!" Oh, there's Ozruk again(only bigger), there's General Vezax (and Erudax) again.
Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed the raid but I really am getting a bit burned out on the constant reuse of art assets. By all means use it for questing and even for dungeons, but raids should always be unique and have that "WoW!" factor. It's difficult to be wowed by something you've seen 20 times before already.
Philster043 Mar 31st 2012 4:53AM
Well, as Cataclysm was the expansion that re-used a lot of stuff (the 1-60 zone revamps)... the revamp mentality might've come in play for this raid, too.
Narayana Mar 30th 2012 4:14PM
I'm with you with regards to the timing of Blackhorn. It always strikes me when he says "Heh, I was hoping you'd make it this far!" As if Deathwing had somehow known we'd defeat Ultraxion- which is a bit silly.
andrey.pkk Mar 30th 2012 4:37PM
I think that Blackhorn was ordered directly by Nzoth as a B plan.
Sure, Deathwing in all his ego wouldn't even think about the HoT failing, but not the Old Gods, they're way more cunning than that.
TonyMcS Apr 2nd 2012 1:15AM
As an old English teacher and a voice-over artist, I must admit I wince everytime Deathwing says "I have been busy in my absence". It should be DURING my absence ;-) IN my absence is used to describe things that happened while you were absent.
Not that I'm nitpicking ;-)
Kkswarcraft Apr 3rd 2012 8:52AM
@tony
I felt the same way when I first heard it. The wording seemed so.... off.
Lloren Mar 30th 2012 4:21PM
Eh... Just my opinion but I hated it. Maybe I just had high expectations for it since it was the final raid of the expansion, but the fact that Deathwing was dead in the first week it was open and that it was so short and every single model and environment was reused except for Deathwing humself's encounters just made it lackluster... And then even the final cutscenes was kinda like huh? Lich King felt very epic to me and remains my favorite fight. I really felt like we were killing the final boss and when he died it felt great! I just didn't get that... I felt more relieved that the expansion was over and I've since taken the opportunity to take a break from raising.
I enjoyed the spine fight, and I'll admit that it had some nice moments, but overall it just wasn't very fun for me.
Lloren Mar 30th 2012 4:24PM
Ugh... Stupid phone keyboard and autocorrect type-os.
Zachariahs Mar 30th 2012 6:17PM
I was disappointed at normal difficulty because many guilds on my realm did finish off Deathwing in the first week. But my largest disappointment was that deathwing never fought back. We only fought adds on his back, or killed his tentacles and beat his exhausted face. That's part of what made the lich king fight so great. His abilities as well as the adds.
eel5pe Mar 30th 2012 7:43PM
I think the reason we got the DW fights we did was because of the (fair) criticism that given the scale of Deathwing, it wouldn't make much sense for us to be tanking him. I think Blizzard did their best, but I too was underwhelmed.
qwerty31 Mar 30th 2012 10:10PM
I was a tad disappointed when I beat deathwing on normal for the first time (about 2 months in) because I'd already beaten him on LFR difficulty 5 or 6 times. Not to diss on LFR, I think it's cool, and good that it exists, but it was nowhere near the euphoria I felt when my guild finally downed ragnaros.
Philster043 Mar 31st 2012 4:54AM
I do have to agree that defeating the Lich King felt more epic than it did Deathwing.
Heii Mar 30th 2012 4:33PM
I enjoyed the raid. I did not like how EVERY boss barring Deathwing himself was a reused model. And while the scope of the Deathwing fights were great, the Madness feels very repetitive for successive kills. It's the very ideal that add fights strive to be.
And I still remember that comment a CM made about player models and them saying, 'If we did new player models, we'd have to reuse a few models for the bosses in the next raid tier!'
Still waiting on those models, Blizzard.