The hard modes are bogus because they should be the normal fights. More than elite players will see the hard modes because outside of may Algalon, Mimiron hard mode, and Yogg-Saron hard mode most of the hard modes aren’t that hard. Most of the hard modes are just adding more health, increasing the power of the boss, or having to kill a boss faster. Not much to hard mode imo. Maybe if the fight changed completely it would be harder, but so far Blizzard didn’t add anything truly new, exciting, and challenging with hard modes. There will always be people carried through content though so expect to see more than just the “elites” with hard mode achievements. Plus I’ll bet there will be quite a few casuals with some of the hard mode achievements(esp FL achieves).

I’m just of the point of view of why make hard modes? Why didn’t Blizzard add them as part of the normal fights? As most would say it was to please the hardcore minority. I’d argue these modes haven’t appeased the majority of hardcore raiders. For a fact I’ve seen some hardcore and casual quit citing these hard modes as the downfall of WoW raiding. I think Blizzard didn’t want to hear all the crying over the bosses being too hard. None of these hard modes are equal to C’thun pre-nerf so to me it wouldn’t have been too hard.

Val,
That idea would mean a lot of crying from bad players. Plus all content is doable by anyone who takes the time. Like I said this game is about the time you put into it.

@Latus – Definitely agree with Latus on the point that was made in regards to better preparation. In vanilla wow raiding there was no PTR testing, no videos to watch strategies/mechanics and being as wow was a fresh game, every mechanic was brand new and not a rehashed revision that is reused in future fights (which may make things seem easy)

Lets consider this scenario. Instead of having 14 easy mode and 14 hard mode encounters, what if Ulduar was designed to be 7 easy mode and 7 hard mode, where the front half was doable by majority of guilds and then the backhalf was really only doable by progressive hardcore raiding guilds. That would turn Ulduar back to a pre WOTLK instance. Would that be in effect better?

Al, you still seem to be leaving out Algalon as a boss of Ulduar and yes unfortunately to see him you have to complete a quest that involves doing hard modes but it does account for seeing 100% of Ulduar.

Also Al, I don’t think people have an issue with the way people feel about the current state of raiding just surprised that people that are not finishing the instance are the ones complaining/bashing the design and challenge.

Saying that hard modes are bogus from a challenge standpoint makes no sense to me. You make the fights tougher, the rewards are greater, and ultimately if you are successful you get to see an encounter only elite players will experience. Just because the core mechanics don’t change doesn’t make it any less of a challenge, especially in fights where new abilities are gained in the hard mode.

Lastly, thanks for coming to the site Al and posting your thoughts. It’s nice to see everyone can comment here and keep a good civil debate going.

1. Strategy sites, video guides and blogs are growing almost exponentially with each patch. Players can have a solid strategy for every boss in Ulduar before ever stepping foot inside. Players are expected to do this. Smart players will have done this.

2. We’ve had 8 tiers of raiding to get experience. Dungeons today incorporate almost all the elements you will see in boss fights. We ARE prepared.

Combine experience with knowledge and ressources and you get good results. While I don’t disagree that Ulduar is not on par with the difficulty of previous tiers of raids (ignoring the joke that is tier 7), this is not purely a design flaw.

Finally, accessibility != difficulty. Just because we HAD to farm for months to get the right sets of gear on enough people, or to get attuned, doesn’t mean it made an encounter difficult. It meant it catered to those who had a lot of time to raid, and I hope we’ve moved on from the thinking that being online 24/7 makes us hardcore raiders.

(for the record, I’m against all the nerfs going on in Ulduar, and in theory I’m for making things harder… but I just can’t justify that reasoning once I get down to truly thinking about it, at least not in a way that isn’t me being bitter or from some sense of entitlement)

All content is accessible to casuals. It’s a person’s choice how much time they put into playing WoW. If you don’t put the time in you won’t see the end bosses. WoW has always and will always be a game based around time. If you can only play five hours a week then chances are you most likely won’t see much end game raiding content. We’ve already got people asking for soloable raid instances. I find that absurd. Last I check I’m playing an online game with millions of other people. The content takes working together to down. If I wanted a solo game there are hundreds of others out there. I mean why is someone playing a game with other people if they want to avoid working with the other people? Defeats much of the point of playing an online game.

I didn’t make judgement on the instance, as I did not say whether Ulduar is too easy or too hard. I have yet to complete hard modes in 10 or 25 man and until I do so I don’t think I can judge the challenge of the instance. My point was just because you have almost completed the easy mode version of the instance, that is only 50% of Ulduar.

It’s very easy to say that “so and so hard mode is so easy” especially when you’ve never tried/completed it. If it was all so very simple and easy, the question is, why haven’t you completed it? Why not do it in it’s original form before they nerfed it to all to accommodate more players accessing the content? I must say it really annoys me when people continually complain about content being so easy and not fun when to this point majority of guilds are nowhere close to completing the instance. Bottom line is, you’re 49% of the way through Ulduar, when you’re 100% complete then you can make judgement.

On a complete side note, Blizzard is changing easy/hard modes so now instead of people complaining that content is too easy, they’ll complain it’s not accessible for casuals and how it’s not fair.

About 0S3D I never said beat it. I said see it. I know quite a few guilds that attempted it and didn’t down it, but did 2D instead. OS3D isn’t that hard of a fight. It takes three things. Good healers, awareness by the whole raid, and high dps. My guild doesn’t do OS3D instead of hard modes. Don’t jump to conclusions. We pick the hard modes for the week we will work on. Sunday is our last raid night and it lasts from 4pm until 10pm with a nice long break in the middle. Before heading to do Yogg(normally on him by then) we do OS3D for drakes and free enchanting mats. It also breaks up the same old rut that a raid can get into after a week in the same instance.

How can you speak of dungeon being challenging when you have to push buttons and do other things to get to hard modes? It’s a joke. They should be part of the normal fight not some set apart special mode. And how can I not make a call on a dungeon being challenging when I’ve been through over 80% of it? I never denied Yogg to be a bit of a challenge. I’ve attempted most of the hard modes and they are all as a friend said:
“Every encounter is either “this boss does more damage and had more health” or “this boss gains one more ability” or (the absolute worst) “you have to kill this boss in a really short amount of time, so just stack DPS out the ass.”
None of these fights on hard mode are new fights. It’s the same fight with stuff added. I truly wish Blizzard would’ve just made these “hard modes” part of the normal fight. Or would have that been too much of a challenge? Personally I don’t think so. If you enjoy a challenge you would welcome the hard modes as part of the fight. Most of the hard modes are even doable in mostly T7. Maybe not so for bad players, but bad players will be bad no matter how much gear you give them. And as I’ve said I don’t equate casual player to bad player.

(Been raiding all night so just had the chance to reply.)

Professions for gear has nothing to do with having to clear something before raiding.

I can only speak for my druid and DK toons but there were no key pieces of Heroic gear I needed before going into Naxx. This is no different than BC when there was no gear I really need for Heroics to get into Kara.

I guess I should ask, what do you think the cooldown period should be between someone hitting the level cap and getting to actually start playing the game by raiding which many people refer to as “when the game really starts”.

I think you are off on when the content will be out, it will be sooner than later.

Where do you get 75% of the people that wanted to see S3D got to beat it? I know a lot of guilds that were on 2 drakes and started working on 3 when Ulduar came out.

So is your guild doing S3D instead of working on Ulduar hard modes? Why? With only so much time to raid what is the point in that?

How can you call a dungeon not fully challenging if you have not done all the challenges it presents?

I remember when seeing endgame content was about how many quarters you had… time wasn’t an issue which was nice… and having a crowd watching behind you was cool too.

I used to like dominating people when Killer Instinct came out in the arcades… that was always fun. I think my favorite games were the laserdisc Space Ace and Dragons Lair games. Those were always fun when they were working.

I think WOW is cheaper than my arcade habit was… wish I still had the same amount of free time though.