Comments on: TotC – The Verdict

By: Kells

Kells — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 06:12:29 +0000

I’m really glad I got to see Ulduar a few times before 3.2 came out. It’s a really impressive dungeon and I enjoyed doing all the boss fights. Sure trash isn’t exactly fun, but there wasn’t *that* much trash in Ulduar. There were too many bosses crammed in there though – deciding to raid Ulduar was a pretty big investment of time.

ToC is quick, relatively easy, and gives good loot. I just don’t feel any sense of accomplishment from pugging it every week.

By: drug

drug — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:35:32 +0000

The fun of a new instance is always simply the instance being new. So it’s absolutely clear, that whenever a new instance goes live the last Tier of Content isn’t as interesting as it used to be.

The only thing that annoys me is this huge step in iLvl combined with two steps back in terms of difficulty level.

Ulduar is a nice and challenging dungeon. So, lets say my guild has a not so ideal raiding line-up every 2-3 or so weeks. A lineup just not perfect for TotGC25. Does it make sense now to schedule a 25 man Ulduar Raid? Absolutely not. The emblems are worthless for every 25man raider. The loot is rendered ridiculous even by TotC10 man loot. It makes more sense to run TotC10 or TotGC10. It might even make more sense to kill Sarth3D for a nice drake and a very nice caster cloak.

I just don’t think it’s very clever to make 10 man loot that much better than 25 man loot of the last tier and taking away all motivation to visit the 25 man content from the last tier from time to time. 60% of all guilds in WoW Progress have beaten Anub’arak25 and only 33% Yogg-Saron25. That’s not just because Yogg-Saron is hard but very much also because TotC has made Ulduar so insignificant and guilds just have stopped trying, because even a very easy 10 man raid will yield better loot than killing Yogg-Saron25.

By: Zatosh

Zatosh — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:04:38 +0000

I agree totally that TotC10 killed Uld, and has pretty easy loot.

My experience with it is that a “Good” pug can get through TotC10 without much difficulty. However, majority of PUGs are not good – which adds to the challenge of the fight I guess. Also, the Faction Champs has too much random factors in it – one time you may easily one shot it, another time you may wipe several times…

3 Triumph is too many imo for reg mode 10.

For me, the jump from normal to hard mode is too extreme. While the difficulty of 10 vs 25 is not enough.

I’m looking forward to IC. It will probably destroy TotC .

Stumbled onto your blog and enjoying it thus far – added to my rss feed .

By: Zigi

Zigi — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:46:25 +0000

SSC was only 6 bosses?? It seemed so long. Maybe it was that awful trash.

I actually really liked ToC, but I am looking forward to the return to traditional instances.

By: drug

drug — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:09:53 +0000

Ulduar is too long in my opinion. But the reason why I see it that way is probably hidden somewhere in my annoying BC raiding nostalgia. I’m not very happy with blizzard’s decision to design huge instances with tons of bosses and nearly completely leaving the path of multiple instances of roughly the same size. All instances have their own vibe. And I don’t see a reason to keep everything in one instances, when you could split the content up in two beautiful instances. WotLK heroic instances give a glimpse at how great those guys are at designing instances.

Recap of Encounters in BC:
T4: Karazhan 11 + Gruul + Maghteridon
T5: SSC 6, TK 4
T6: MH 5, BT 9
Sweet extra was ZA, a very decent, pretty hard 10 man instance.

Recap of Encounters in WotLK
T7: Naxxramas 15 + Sartharion + Malygos
T8: Ulduar 14
T9: TotC 4
T10: A huge number of bosses in Icecrown.

BC had always a pretty constant number of encounter for every Tier level. Also, High-End raiding was Split up into two instances. This had numerous advantages: You hadn’t to stare at the same wall in every raid. You got to the final boss much quicker. There were more epic, challenging end bosses. There were less much too easy bosses, who just stand between you and the encounter you’re actually working on.

Yogg-Saron is by far the best and coolest fight in Ulduar. If the instances wasn’t as long as it is, a lot more people would have seen him. Also, the longer an instance is, the more can go wrong: People having disconnects, losing time because people want to do a hard mode, losing time because of silly errors. Loosing time because you can’t get the right setup for an evening.

The longer an instance is, the more such little events hurt progression and lead to fewer people seeing the end of an instance.

But as I already said, Nothing has hurt Ulduar as much as TotC.

By: @valkyrierisen

@valkyrierisen — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:38:31 +0000

Agree for the most part. I once powered through Ulduar 10 leading a pug of great players that don’t play together ever. We got to Mimiron pretty fast, downing every “optional” boss and a few hard modes, but at that point I just boggled at trying to explain the fight or come up with a strategy for it given the group I had. It took us 3 hours to get to that point. Isn’t 3 hours the average raid time? A good solid number? For most people’s patience, attention span, focus?
@valkyrierisen´s last blog ..More reason not to tank