Tuesday, October 13, 2009

RIP Ulduar: The death of the progression path

TotalBiscuit's great show Blue Plz! brought up a really important argument this week when discussing the badge changes. That, of course is the death of the progression path and the removal of Ulduar as a legitimate outlet of progression. Ulduar is a great instance. It's not as great as Sunwell was, but it was still pretty darn good. And now, it won't even be seen anymore except from a small minority of players who are looking to complete achievements/hammers.

It could be argued that "it's old content" and it doesn't need to be a relevant instance throughout an entire expansion, which the "badgers" (TB's affectionate name for supporters of the badge change) have argued at great length. However, the content that people will be running (i.e. heroics) is even older and much less interesting. Why do players want to be running easy, boring as sin content when they could be running a great, challenging instance? More importantly, why is Blizzard abandoning the former for the latter?

Some of the most fun I've had in the 5 years I've played this game has been in the first two weeks of Ulduar. Now, it will be abandoned. It's funny that Blizzard's policy of allowing everyone to see the content is in fact leading to people being unable to see content.

~P

1 comment:

  1. I guess at this point it becomes a trade-off between sheparding everyone into the current raid and instance longevity. Ulduar was a great instance, absolutely agreed, and this is one of the few anti-badge arguments I support, but it's such a specific thing. I have no desire to ever set foot in ToC again once ICC comes out, just as I have no desire to ever go into Naxx again. If there was a way to keep the "good" instances in mainstream gameplay, I'd be all for it, but as it stands, taking out 2 lame instances (at the cost of one that was great) in order to get to the new ultra-badass raid is justifiable in my opinion. Yes, it is sad that newer raiders won't have as much of an opportunity to see Ulduar, but I'd rather be in ICC than Naxx/ToC any day.

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