Full disclosure: If not for the first round or two of nerfs in Ulduar, my guild would not have progressed as far as we did into Ulduar25 this week.
And for sure, that first round or two was definitely justified. The guilds that tend to run raids on the PTRs are often ahead of the curve in terms of gear and tactics, and tuning a dungeon to them invariably tunes it upwards to a difficulty level that the average guild would find hard to meet.
Initially Ulduar was very obviously overtuned for the average guild. And they toned it down a bit. Awesome.
But then they went overboard. Initially one of the big selling points for Ulduar was the challenge it presented. No more would we see forum posts complaining about how easy the raid of the moment was, no more demands for a bigger challenge for these leet dewds.
No, instead, people started complaining that Ulduar was too hard. Geez people, make up your damn minds.
So Blizz dutifully complied with the wishes of the legions of QQers as they are wont to do these days. Ulduar received a swift wack with the nerf bat. And then again. And again. And again.
Now dare I say it, they are making Ulduar too easy.
It’s T8 content for pete’s sake, it’s supposed to be hard! I know this is beyond the level of patience that many on the internets possess these days, but you don’t need to full clear the whole place the first week. It won’t kill you to gear up first and slowly progress.
Because Blizz is incapable of saying no to QQing, we’re going from the original scenario where normal mode Ulduar was initially difficult but after a month or so of farming would be easy, to a new status operandi where Ulduar will be initially of medium difficulty, and after a little farming will be a cakewalk (in normal mode at least).
I know the goal is to make raid content accessible, but honestly, it won’t kill people to farm for two months before they down Yogg-Saron.
This disappoints me because I haven’t had a chance to try anything other than FL. I am going to be sad if my guild goes into the place and is able to clear half of it in our second attempt (Sad because it was too easy, happy with the success). I was equally disappointed when doing Emalon. We 2 shotted it and none of us had ever seen it. It should be harder than that.
I must agree with you two. I did ulduar the first few nights it came out – and was very glad at the difficulty we were having. I remember back even in BC that Raids were RAIDS… now, including the ‘new’ ulduar, it’s more like… well not RAIDS… aw well
As you know Rhidach, I completely agree with you. It’s sad to see a perfectly balanced raid instance so nerfed. It was a bit hard at first, well, it provided us with a challenge and with joy when downing a boss.
Seriously ? For how long have you not heard cries of joy when downing a boss ? Easy raids means no real fun into them, and no real joy when downing a boss.
I guess it means Blizzard think we all only raid for loot now … sadly I don’t.
I’m going to disagree with you there. Guilds are still out there having problems downing bosses even with nerfs. Blizzard wants the player base seeing the content.
Hard modes are where “progression” is now. You can farm Ulduar all you want on easy mode and stop there, but now you can make raiding as hard as you want it to be. FL is too easy, activate hard mode and leave a tower or two up. Ingis is cake? Can you down him in 4 minutes or less?
We’re complaining that content is too easy, but still only 14% of ranked guilds, according to WoW Progress have even completed “The Siege of Ulduar.
I agree with Kostya. My guild is about half skilled-casual-tending-toward-hardcore and half plain casual. I want the regular casual players to be able to see the content. When those of us that want a challenge, well, want a challenge, we’ll hit Ulduar 10 and knock out some hard modes.