Ulduar and Me

I am sure most of us have ventured over to the WoW community site or to MMO champions to check on the little amount of info on Ulduar, which is the next raid that will be coming to Wrath.

I am very excited to check out the new content as are most raiders. Blizzard is saying that "Ulduar is the first example of the expansion's much larger, truly epic scope of raiding." This stance leaves me with high expectations of raiding in the the future of WoW. And on a side note Blizzard has went in a new direction of making most fights accessible to multiple class, i.e. not needing a specific class to do certain jobs because other classes can do it. Also making buffs more raid wide rather than just party wide lends to more or rather less class diversity needed. So no more will be the days of needing a specific person to do a very specific important job that if they mess up wipes the raid. I view this as good and bad. It is good that multiple classes can do given tasks so when guilds are lacking in diversity they can still successfully get through content. However some of the group makeup is lost in that you don't have to place certain classes with other class so they get the right group buffs. Plus there is no new trial by fires, so to say, of a new guy that has a very specific job. I guess that means the new guild scrubs are off the hook. Well not exactly because you can still mess up. But this is always minimized by LISTENING to your raid leader. Plain and simple, imo.

Forgive me I got a little off track. The first encounter is apparently one with vehicles, that scale with gear. So no more naked wipes, i.e. last boss in Occulus and no more equality of players' vehicles like in maly. This sounds like a very interesting encounter that I won't go into detail about because there are the links to them. Although it sounds interesting, I also have a little tinge of dread about it. As my raid leader and me have commonly went on Occulus runs just to entertain ourselves with how even decent players can devolve to total noobs when you put them on the back of a drake. Same goes for maly; even with our more or less skilled raiding core it is still not possible for them to all stay in a clump. They feel a need to spread out and loss coordination. We will see how this first encounter turns out to be. Maybe it will be a noob check to get really going in the instance.

The new raids most interesting concept is a hard mode on bosses. It is stated that eleven out of Ulduar's fourteen bosses will have a hard mode to them. The increase difficulty will reward guilds with better gear and more challenge to fights. This is an excellent concept. Right now 10 man content seems to be harder than that of 25 man. Which is a backwards deal because it may seem like smaller guilds can easily just stick to 10 mans but with increased difficultly in fights like maly and OS with drakes up, 25 man instances have a clear advantage. The saddest part is that after completing these difficult 10 man raids the rewards pale in comparison to that of 25 man content. In a nutshell, I am hoping that the hard mode will prove beneficial and help balance 10 man and 25 man content, but I think I am reaching in hoping that.

All in all I am excited about the hard modes on the bosses and am looking forward to Ulduar. Blizzard claims to have PTR testing up soon on patch 3.1 where they will begin testing on Ulduar bosses, Freya, Thorim, Hodir, and The Iron Council. I am hoping to find the time to get on the PTR and do some Ulduar raiding so I will be more prepared for the upcoming raid. I will encourage and invite my guildies to undertake this adventure into Ulduar with me. Plus the prospect of jumping into unknown territory with no established strategy is just plain AWESOME and hardcore.

Quotes and info taken from WoW community website and MMO champions.