Monday, March 14, 2011

Favorites and Least Favorites (Part 3)

So, everyone pretty much remembers Wrath for what it was. A zerg fest. I don't know if I am alone on this, but I actually quite enjoyed smashing through instances at break neck speed. It was a nice time to socialize with friends while actually getting something done in game without the stress of wipes and failure. I love romping through dungeons. It was like a version of Diablo almost.

What I also remember about Wrath is that they really stepped up in the beautification of the game. It looked tremendous when compared against BC. This upgrade in looking all hawt also applied to all of the new Dungeons. So, without further ado, here are my favorites.

The first instance I did in Wrath was actually one of my favorites. Utgarde Keep was short and sweet, looked nice, and let you get in and out and be on with your day. The bosses werent hard at all, and the trash was easy as well. I enjoyed this instance because of how it looked. I loved the first time I stepped into the forge room with the giant dragon furnaces spitting fire all over the place. You make your way through a winding castle to finally find yourslef on an outdoor Terrace where there is a commander overseeing the siege of the Alliance City and giving orders to drake riders. I enjoyed it from the very first time I did it, and always had a soft spot for it.

The second instance I wanted to talk about was Culling of Stratholme. I really enjoyed that instance for another reason. In the beggining, it actually pushed you, especially in Heroic when you were trying for the drake. It was all kinds of awesome. Run here there and everywhere killing ZOMBEHS. I also enjoyed the whole RP thing with Arthas, Jaina, and Uther at the beggining. It was cool the first few times. I am just glad they added the option to skip it a bit later on. The bosses were not very difficult, but you had to bust you ass to get that Drake back in the day. If your groups DPS sucked, you probably werent going to get the timed run. If you tank or healer sucked, you probably werent going to get through the gauntlet and miss the timed run. Also, the Heroic version dropped one of the cooler looking shields in the game. I had to run it a ton of times to finally get that thing. I think the fact that original Strat was one of my favorites probably helped with this particular instance.

Now, for the ones I hated. There are two that come to mind and there will probably be a lot of people who agree.

The first one was Occulus. Nothing can breed tremendous amount of fail quite like vehicle combat. Come on. Ridiculous. The hopping on and off of mounts was annoying. Drakes aggroing when you are not on your mounts and killing you was annoying. Having one hell of a time trying to actually kill the last boss when your drake only had 75k health was also annoying. Pre-nerf, everything about it was annoying. Even after the nerf hit it was still annoying because as soon as someone got in, they were dropping group. Because the old version was annoying. The newer version was only slightly less annoying. Dragons= Good. Vehicle Combat= Bad.

The second one I will mention is Old Kingdom. Long, tons of trash, and did I mention long? When you get used to zerging instances like we did in Wrath, that is kinda what we expect. A bit of a cake walk. We don't really want to go in with an AOE mindset and then go up against mobs that nobody want to interrupt because "lulz it hrts my dpsz". Said mob then smashes tank to smithereens. There were a lot of bosses, and most of the bosses made the fights become drawn out. The first boss would phase out and make you kill adds. The second boss would vampire fuck somebody and make the fight go longer. The third boss would float up in the air while you had to kill adds. The last boss would put you into a dream where you had to kill everyone else in your group. I mean, WTF? Come on. If you are going to have some of those fights in an instance, fine. But at least make it so that there are a couple quick tank and spank bosses as well.

Anyways, those are my good and bad from Wrath. What ones would you have choosen?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hated Occulus and that piece of shit Old Kingdom.

Joar said...

I would add Pit of Saropn to the list of most hated - again - some nightmarish trash pulls, especially those groups before the tunnel.

Vordan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Vordan said...

My favorites for Wrath were Culling of Stratholm,simple for the reason healing it as a paladin was easy peazy and the whole storeline rp was like you said pretty cool the first few times. My second fave is probably Drak'Tharon Keep because it was very simple and the whole old war base taken over by Drakarri setting was neat.

I have a few I hated like Old Kingdom entirely and also Halls of Reflection in its entirety. HoR just sucked because of the stupid waves and if you didn't get the boss down, oooh you have start all over again. Thats just like Violet Hold if you wiped you had to start from wave one...annoying!

Other then that I have specific fights I hated like Skadi in UP simply because healing it was a pain since no one ever got out of that bad and in Halls of Stone, before Bronzebeard sped up, and nerfed it hard.

Rades said...

I always loved that last fight in Old Kingdom for a special reason - it was HILARIOUS to go there with a guildie or friend who'd never done it before, an witness their reaction. Just priceless. In my opinion it was a lot like Heigan's Safety Dance in Naxx - one of those things that everyone has to experience for themselves. :D

The instance was a nightmare though. Murderous nerubians + VERY closely packed trash packs made for many wipes and much frustration.