Ulduar

[Ishido]

For countless millennia, Ulduar has remained undisturbed by mortals, far away from their concerns and their struggles. But since its recent discovery, many have wondered what the structure's original purpose may have been. Some thought it a city, built to herald the glory of its makers; some thought it a vault containing innumerable treasures, perhaps even relics of the mighty Titans themselves. They were wrong. Beyond its gates lies no city, no treasure vault, no final answer to the Titan's mysteries. All that awaits those who dare set foot in Ulduar is a horror even the Titans could not, would not destroy, an evil they merely... contained.

Beneath ancient Ulduar, the Old God of death lies, whispering.... Tread carefully, or his prison will become your tomb.

As the next step in tiered raid progression in Wrath of the Lich King, Ulduar is set to blow players away with gorgeous setpieces, sprawling battlefields, and innovative boss encounters. Ulduar's design aims to provide a fun, unique, and innovative raid experience, but it also includes additional challenges - and rewards - for seasoned raiders. In this sneak-peek at World of Warcraft's newest raid dungeon, we'll take a look at some of the new content that makes Ulduar rise above the crop of amazing dungeons already available in World of Warcraft.

Welcome to Ulduar
Many players have already gotten their Wrath of the Lich King raiding feet wet in Naxxramas and the Sartharion raid, but Ulduar is the first example of the expansion's much larger, truly epic scope of raiding, as will be evident from the second you set foot in the instance. The most obvious difference between Ulduar and its predecessors is that the dungeon actually comprises two separate raid areas. The first section is an epic battle against a vast army standing between you and the entrance of the dungeon proper; in the second area, you will dive into the heart of the dungeon itself and finally discover the secrets of Ulduar.

Ulduar's new master has rallied his own massive Iron Army to guard the entrance to Ulduar and to prevent any unwanted guests - including you, especially you - from reaching the inner sanctum. Thankfully, you'll be able to face the Iron Army on even footing: although the main Horde and Alliance forces are focused on the forces beyond the Wrathgate and on each other, some who are better able to appreciate the true magnitude of Ulduar's threat have managed to scrap together a small fleet of siege vehicles to aid you in the assault.

You and your friends will have to use these vehicles wisely to break through Ulduar's defenses. A mix of motorcycles, demolishers, and siege engines will be at your disposal, each granting unique abilities to the pilot and the passenger. Motorcycle drivers, for example, can create pools of liquid tar that snare opponents and can be set on fire by area effect attacks, while demolisher passengers can load themselves into the vehicle's catapult so that the pilot can launch them into the distance. If used judiciously, these and other abilities will help decimate the Iron Army and any other threats lying in wait between you and Ulduar.

One such threat is the Flame Leviathan. After you've plowed through the innumerable ranks of the Iron Army, you will be confronted by an enormous tank. Mimiron built the Flame Leviathan as part of the V0-L7R-0N weapons platform, which means that it packs quite a punch. Normal spells and abilities won't be enough to take down this juggernaut, so you will have to rely on your siege vehicles to outmaneuver and defeat the boss. After wearing the massive war machine down, you will have to launch players onto the tank's back to destroy its defense turrets and sabotage the Leviathan before you can move on. Of course, if you'd like an additional challenge beyond this naturally frantic (but extremely fun) fight, you can try your hand at one of the Flame Leviathan's different Hard Modes (see sidebar).

Of course, the vehicle gauntlet, the Iron Army, and the battle against the Flame Leviathan are only the start of World of Warcraft's most ambitious raid to date. Patch 3.1 will hit the Public Test Realms very soon, so you will be able to see for yourself what other challenges await beyond the gates of ancient Ulduar.

Hard Boiled
Ulduar brilliantly illustrates the new design challenges and innovations that come with the bigger scope of the expansion's raids. In order to make raid content more accessible, it has to offer a lot of variety, but it also needs to include a very granular means for players to adjust a raid's difficulty. This concept was first realized in the Burning Crusade with the introduction of Heroic mode, and Wrath of the Lich King is developing the idea even further with new Hard Modes.

Boss fights that have a Hard Mode are affected by certain variables which players can control and which change the encounter's difficulty. For example, spread throughout Ulduar's vehicle section are four defense towers you can destroy. The more towers you leave intact, the harder the encounter with the Flame Leviathan will be, but the loot will also be better.

Ulduar isn't the first dungeon to include Hard Mode, but it certainly makes the most use of it. Out of 14 bosses, 11 will have a Hard Mode that offers additional challenges and rewards. Ulduar will appeal to a wide range of play styles, but the dungeon also has great longevity and a high replay value.

To me this sounds very promising. 14 bosses is nice, with hard modes for 11 of them is even nicer. The vehicle combat seems sort of sketchy to me, as has been said in EJ it's annoying when an encounter remains largely the same through progression. They seem to have some aspects of the fight where you use your character, so that is nice, but it has potential to be good or very bad.

Also the new PTR testing method seems to be a great idea, provided they can gain enough feedback and bugfix everything sufficiently.

[Pendas]

As long as its not as annoying as Oculus, I'm all up for originality and vehicle combat against bosses.

[Lordshin]

Awesome.
I'm kinda glad they're adding vehicles, its nice to have a change of pace and something that isn't very gear dependent
and I've like WotLK's visuals so far, can wait to see the final version or Ulduar :O

also,

V0-L7R-0N

LOL

[Norellicus]

I've liked LK's visuals all except for the god damn HELMETS. Can we get something that's just a nice simple helm, no grotesque horns or faceguards plz? ._.

This does sound awesome though.

[Ramor]

V0-L7R-0N is fantastic.

Also, from a lore standpoint, anyone happen to know what the "Old-God" actually is? I'd wager a guess at it being Yogg-Saron, he's mentioned in the Herald fight in AN and is supposedly the whispers coming from beneath the failed attempt at a world-tree.

Seems like a lot of fun though, hopefully the 'army' thing will pan out to be a hugely entertaining event.

[Korietsu]

Fuck vehicle events. They definitely need to rework the vehicle system in patch 3.1 to make it not as buggy/laggy as hell.

[Ishido]

The first boss has you enter 1 of 3 different vehicles (Chopper, Demolisher, and Siege Engine) to fight your way through an immense Iron army to the Flame Leviathan and defeat him. After that, there's very little use of vehicles by players. We'll have the fight up on the PTR at a later date, but this fight isn't in the first wave of boss encounters to be tested. (Source)

Actually, the effectiveness of the vehicles in the Flame Leviathan fight changes depending on the quality of the gear. So someone in full Naxxramas epics (or Ulduar epics!) will have an easier time than someone in greens.

My worries are somewhat assuaged.

[Gulkeeva]

Supremus 2.0!

http://www.neko-sentai.com/forum/fil.../t_ss5_105.jpg

[Naramaska]

Fuck vehicle events.

Agreed for raiding, at any rate.

While I think that they are a cool idea to implement for things like Wintergrasp or Strand of the Ancients, there's a fundamental flaw in building a player up from level 1-80 and teaching them the nuances and dynamics of a class only to have them scrap everything they'd already learned so that they can instead learn an entirely new set of mechanics and playstyle on-the-spot.

[Correction]

Agreed for raiding, at any rate.

While I think that they are a cool idea to implement for things like Wintergrasp or Strand of the Ancients, there's a fundamental flaw in building a player up from level 1-80 and teaching them the nuances and dynamics of a class only to have them scrap everything they'd already learned so that they can instead learn an entirely new set of mechanics and playstyle on-the-spot.

Teron Gorefiend wasn't that horrible, was he? Malygos p3 is kind of annoying but if you wipe more than twice I question your ability to play your class if you can't master 3 buttons.

[Ramor]

Teron Gorefiend wasn't that horrible, was he? Malygos p3 is kind of annoying but if you wipe more than twice I question your ability to play your class if you can't master 3 buttons.

i think the point is more that what's the point of learning any class (assuming you also pick your classes based on a particular playstyle which you perceived your class to have when you made your characters) if you're just going to have the exact same playstyle as the other people who make up the same role? i.e. p3 in malygos, what good does it do to have a decent unholy DK rotation when i'm going to be mashing 112112112112 like 22~23 other people in the raid?

meshing everything together does get kind of annoying, i agree it would be nice if they left it out of raids (although the vehicles scaling with gear is nice)

edit: suppose i should rephrase, rather what good does it do me to pick a DK (big axe, undead minions etc...) when i'm forced to use a vehicle?

[Ishido]

Variety and unique encounters? Weren't people bitching about stale encounter mechanics in the Tigole thread? Playing your class is nice but there will be 13 other fights as well as trash you will be doing that on. I really don't see the problem with one encounter like this per raiding tier.

Also doesn't it show more "skill" to be able to play a generic vehicle well along with your main?

[Slott]

Holy shit. It's just one boss fight. ONE, and you'll still get to use your rotations if you get launched onto its back.

[Plow]

got to here:

have managed to scrap together a small fleet of siege vehicles to aid you in the assault.

and was going to quote myself on this:

If Ulduar is made tough by having you ride motorcycles that have 3 abilities you use while doing wheelies to safely move around between patterned shifting clouds on the ground while staying 10 yards away from everyone and killing certain adds in certain places to get buffs while wearing 350 nature resist and switching tanks every 25 seconds, while a few guys loot the dead adds for oil to make the boss slip and fall, then no, it's not creative or new just because they're motorcycles now.

and then I read like 3 more lines and was like ffs

[Naramaska]

Teron Gorefiend wasn't that horrible, was he? Malygos p3 is kind of annoying but if you wipe more than twice I question your ability to play your class if you can't master 3 buttons.

Teron at least had you playing your class for (usually) a majority of the fight, if not all of it; the same goes with Malygos.

I'm not outright objecting to the idea of having a fight or two like this in an instance, but I do think it's a poor decision to instantly make all of a players' learned skills with respect to their class null-and-void during a fight in favor of learning an entirely new set from the ground up.

[Arvin]

It's only for a single boss fight.. and I'm sure they won't do anything like P3 of Malygos for a WHOLE boss fight. It's gonna be great, stop doubting blizz. The only reason the start of wotlk feels stale is because the encounters were easy and entry level, plus for the rest of us who have done Naxx pre-tbc, Naxx itself was stale already. I'll fucking welcome any kind of new encounters in Ulduar.

Lorewise, I'm like 99% it's yogg-saron that will be the final boss. Theres only 3 gods left, one of which we have fought (C'thun) one in Northrend and another in I think BFD? I forget, he's somewhere.

Also, teron gorefiend was probably one of the most fun encounters ever. That ghost aspect was fucking awesome.

[Plow]

It's basically clear that it is Yogg, it's just a question of are they completely saying fuck the real lore with him, or is this raid zone (just the inside part, not the vehicle outside crap) going to span the entirety of Northrend underground.

Or, they could potentially be throwing in a 2nd old god in northrend, but who knows. It's unlikely, but some things have been said about old god*s* (i.e. plural) in Northrend.


Who knows, basically what we've been told at this point is that Yogg is in Azjol, which stretches all the way under Grizzly Hills, which is where he specifically sits, and that Loken is the "head jailer" for *all* old gods, but has fallen under the influence of Yogg specifically, and is now trying to free Yogg and destroy The Pantheon, which is the specific name given to the Titans' high council.


Expect everything from fights with Nerubians to pissed off Scourge that are lost or some shit to a likely revived and empowered Loken, and hell he and his buddies might even be naga-ized.

[Naramaska]

revived and empowered Loken

Oh god I can already hear the crappy players complaining about his stupid aura being too hard to heal for pally healers -_-

[Plow]

Oh god I can already hear the crappy players complaining about his stupid aura being too hard to heal for pally healers -_-

And I can already see the "lfm Ulduar 350+ NR required" shouts because moving away from it and then back in all as a group is waaaaaay to difficult.

[Gulkeeva]

Actually when I did that fight on my hunter... waaayyy back like 3-4 days into wotlk, aspect of the wild didn't resist any of that aura damage... ;/
Only his chain lightning (only used on heroic) type attack

Randomly, i hope they make an encounter like Kil'Jaeden in uldar, thats the funnest/craziest "oh shit stuffs flying everywhere" type fight