Classic wow was a simple skill vs reward system for character gear progression. If you had the skill, you killed the harder bosses and got the better gear. If you didn’t then you either tried to play better, or remained at the low gear level. The problem back then was Blizzard were spending a lot of time creating content for a game when probably only around 15% of the players would ever reach the required skill level in the required time to actually see it.

They started to realize this in BC around the end of Black Temple and decided to make it a lot easier to get better quality gear via ‘casual’ methods such as heroics and removing the attunements to high end dungeons allowing people to skip tier5 content.  But this still didn’t work as people still complained the content (even after multiple nerfs) was too hard.

So they had a fantastic idea, and idea that was – at least originally – largely supported by most hardcore raiders at the time. This was to create 10 man versions of raiding instances, thus allowing guilds to play through generally a lot easier versions of content and without having to have as many players.  Both sides of the coin loved the idea in concept. Hardcore players liked it because it would surely mean that Blizzard would still create very hard encounters to test high end players, and stop nerfing these encounters due to pressure from the ‘but I pay my monthly $’ brigade – because the reply to them would be ‘go kill it on 10man’. Casuals also liked the idea because they would be able to see content and get rewards without having to be in a large guild or be highly skilled.

Naxx10 & 25 were born and both sides quickly realized that both versions of the instance were way too easy and so both were cleared by all types of player. The only saving grace early on was the Sarth encounter which had optional ‘hardmode’ in both raid types allowing hardcore players to get better loot and a mount.  A good idea since casuals could kill the normal version and there was a slightly harder version available for people who needed more of a challenge.  Sarth3d showed that optional hardmodes were a good idea, and so Blizzard continued with them.

Along comes Ulduar, possibly the best example of perfect raid dungeon implementation under the new ‘optional hardmodes’ ideal.  Plainly: this is the dungeon where it worked, mostly. They tuned the normal modes just right, hardcore guilds with skill breezed through the content and mostly killed Yogg Saron (the final boss) within the first week of the patch.  Casuals then came along and were happy with new fight designs which allowed them to progress at their own rate through the dungeon on both 10 and 25 man versions feeling challenged but not overwhelmed. While this was happening the hardcores were also happy because they now had the new optional hardmodes to contend with.  Even the most hardcore guilds still had hardmode content to complete right up until the 3.2 release.

Ulduar stands out as one of the most fun, well designed and played dungeons in the whole game.  It provided challenges to all skill levels of player and guild, and with over 70% of the guilded player base having completed at least the first 2 wings – it was a resounding success.

CC10 & 25 were born just after the completion of Ulduar.  The problem here is most people hate artificially gated content (1 boss unlocked per week rubbish), viewing it as just a crutch mechanic to make small amounts of raid content last longer than it deserves to.  The whole design caused problems with the 4 different lockouts per week (once hardmodes were out), killing the same 5 easy bosses over and over just to gear up.  The only encounter hard enough to give people something to cut their teeth on being the end boss (Anub’Arak’) in 25man hardmode. And that was still killed within the first week of the content. This was also compounded by people who’d slaved away in Ulduar hardmodes to get their precious ilevel 239 gear and therefore were more than slightly annoyed that the ‘faceroll’ 25 man normal mode instance in Crusaders Coliseum was so ridiculously easy and yet dropped superior ilevel 245 loot.

How long is CC10/25 supposed to last? All indications are that we won’t see 3.3 and Icecrown raid until early 2010 – do they really expect that CC10/25 will last that long? So Anub’arak 25 hardmode is already down and A tribute to skill has already been achieved, surely it wont take much longer than another month for most of the top 25 to have at least tribute to mad skill in the bag.  Then mabye a few more weeks for Insanity and Immortality – if not sooner – and then it’s just a gear farm, nice.

Seriously how did we go from the massive design step forward that was Ulduar, which hardcore and casuals alike loved, to this Coliseum piece of fucking shit?

Filler content is filler.