I'm durnk, so I dnunno how to like spoiler the old wyy wher you can click to expand, anyone know how/ this was my initial runtrhough almost finished vanilla, was taking loner than expected tos I didn't finish it but I fiugure I'll post it.
Hoyl shit edit, these are giant walls of text, in notepad theyw ere like 2 lines each, fml. I'll format later. they're not even very detailed :/
Molten Core
Atmosphere:**
Bosses:*
Trash:**
Difficulty:**
Molten Core...the zone that started it all. I almost feel like it's unfair to hold it up to modern standards, but it would be lame to just give it a pass despite them too. MC was a zone designed by Everquest Raiders, to impress Everquest raiders. There was no other standard of raiding to look at in those days. The atmosphere was 'correct' in that it communicated that you were in the molten core of the planet/mountain/whatever, but just being 'right' doesn't mean it wasn't drab as hell. Caves, lava. Red. The epic music rolling in when you walk into Rag's lair and the design of his room is basically the only saving grace of the zone from that perspective. In terms of boss creativity...Rag was very creative and showed how awesome scripted bosses could be, he gets the single star for the zone almost single-handedly. The other bosses? a total chore. Designed around no mods, THIS is what wow would be. Dispels, LoS abuse, simple 'move out of things' mechanics. A tiny bit of coordination on the last 3 pre-rag bosses. that was it. Much of the zone was changed drastically a few times because of how barebones and abusable the stuff was (golemagg into garr's room, Shazzrah being basically a tank and spank with 0 chance to wipe, etc). Trash gets a slightly higher star because the trash was actually SORT OF interesting! you had the annoying destroyers, the quick respawning hounds, the hound PACKS with the interesting simultaneous kill mechanic for the time, lava packs which were difficult and rewarded coordination, and even annihilators and lava spawns demonstrating abilities more complex than some of the bosses here (random secondary targets and things even). Difficulty was low. Rag was very hard because it required different kinds of coordination than EQ had taught us, everything else was beaten using simple tactics we'd learned years prior in other games. not much to say about it. No boss commanded more than a day or two of work besides Rag.
Onyxia's Lair
Atmosphere:***
Bosses:****
Trash:*
Difficulty:**
Onyxia was the other launch raid, the most complex fight in the game through probably BWL. This was the first fight that had strong individual accountability, even though it was tuned lightly enough that most guilds didn't fully rely on it back then. A good transitory boss from the old EQ style to the new WoW style of scripted encounter. The zone itself had the cool dragon mouth entrance, a short but memorable 'shape' and the actual room the fight was in was appropriate and visually somewhat interesting. The random mechanics of the fight were debated for ages and not fully revealed for YEARS, and the multiple phases were interesting at the time. Challenge was good, comparable to Ragnaros in many ways. Trash was dumb. I decided 0 isn't possible, but it's pretty bottom of the barrel here.
Blackwing Lair
Atmosphere:****
Bosses:****
Trash:*****
Difficulty:*****
BWL was what I consider the first 'real' raid in WoW. It started off with a bang with Razorgore, who was a VERY interesting fight mechanically, and was a total cockblock for many guilds, progression felt meaningful, and while the middle bosses were mechanically boring, they were tuned well enough to still be challenging and thoughtful. Razorgore, Vael, Chromaggus and Nef stand out as exceptional bosses. Chromaggus only due to his extremely unique mechanics that made it fun and random each week, the fact that he had 5 times as much hp as necessary brought it down, however. This zone first highlighted the horde/alliance imbalances where Salv was ridiculously powerful due to threat being a huge mechanic in so many fights. The trash stands out because this was the first zone with DIFFICULT trash. The trash was so integrated that it would save its status per-trash pack each reset, with groups of up to 14 or so mobs with 4 or 5 types in each group they were a handful and required thoughtful approaches more than brute force, a hallmark of the vanilla and BC era of raiding. Atmospherically it looked like a demented lab, it was very cool. A lot of the difficulty still came from slightly EQ-esque puzzles (line of sighting and things) but even the more gimmicky bosses were genuinely challenging as well.
Zul'Gurub
Atmosphere:*******
Bosses:*****
Trash:**
Difficulty:**
The first 20-man raid, ZG had a lot of atmosphere, from Hakkar's whispers to the yells of the bosses and the jungle-y environments, ZG was a hallmark of design. Bosses were about as complex as BWL, slightly more scripted but generally a bit more forgiving and perhaps less abilities. Standouts were Bloodlord Mandokir, hex Lord Jin'do, High Priestess Arlokk, and Hakkar. The trash was mostly forgettable, only remembered for things like spiders that got you drunk and mummies that hit really hard, no challenge in any of them. Hakkar's loss of abilities as you killed the other bosses could be seen as the first iteration of a 'hard mode' encounter, although it was never intended to be done with his extra abilities some of it was done later (though there was no reward for doing so). Difficulty was fair for the first 20 man, they were finding their feet still. It was easier than MC, but more complex. Loot was good for the effort. A good zone that most people enjoyed that I know.
Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj (AQ20)
Atmosphere:*****
Bosses:****
Trash:***
Difficulty:***
AQ20 was a very strong followup to ZG. the atmosphere was probably a bit worse, due to it being above-ground. The desert-y floor was a bit drab, and the topsides of Silithid nests had been seen plenty in Silithus and other zones. The high walls around the zone made it difficult to really get a sense that it was a 'temple' but all in all it was still a unique look and it felt 'right' albeit a bit recycled graphically. Bosses are hit or miss. Kurniaxx, and Ayamiss are really forgettable, Rajaxx himself is only notable as the first 'gauntlet' style encounter. Moam is midrange, he was memorable for being 'difficult' relatively, but he was basically just souped up AQ40 trash. Ossirian and Buru are standout bosses that everyone remembers though. In fact, the voice of Ossirian alone probably bumps the atmosphere score up a star. Buru with the 'no tank' phase 1 while people took turns kiting around really emphasized individual responsibility, and Ossirian was an EXTREMELY unique boss that required good teamwork, scouting, thinking on your feet as a group...it had everything. Consequently it was extremely difficult for many of the emerging 'casual' guilds that were only doing 20 man content. This was the first zone/fight that incorporated weather effects (which were newish) as well that I recall. Who can forget "SANDS OF THE DESERT, RISE AND BLOCK OUT THE SUN!" and then your screen being COVERED with a sandstorm? Anyway, most of my good memories of this zone come from solely two bosses, so I can't give it higher marks, but those two bosses were really great. Trash is better than Zul'gurub in that I can at least remember some of it (big packs of scarabs that do random debuffs. Slimes that eat people and heal from it, wasps that did a poison + catalyst combo that would kill people). Difficulty was fairly low from the perspective of this review still. None of the vanilla or BC 'low man' content was very challenging, that was just not the design.
Temple of Ahn'Qiraj (AQ40)
Atmosphere:*******
Bosses:*******
Trash:*******
Difficulty:*******
AQ40! Great zone. Atmospherically you really felt like you were taking the battle deep into the bowels of the earth to face this massive threat, the scale was HUGE, and the look was actually varied despite the repetetive tileset purely due to lighting and coloring. It got more ominous the farther in you went. C'thun whispering to you that your heart is going to explode sure sounds like atmosphere to me, and the cutscene when you first got to Twin Emps was intimidating and badass. Can't forget Skeram taunting you when you are pulling trash either. Damn it was good. I think this was the zone that was really seeing Blizz stretch their scripting muscles for both bosses and trash. Blizz had done half a dozen interesting fights over the previous zones, but AQ40 only has a couple 'simple' stinkers in it, and it has what I consider several of the top fights they've ever designed. Skeram had an interesting splitting mechanic, and just enough other random stuff thrown on to require the coordination to be there. You didn't just randomly luck into a kill, you had to have a plan, yet it was tuned to be easy as it was the first boss. Perfect. The bug trio was the first GENUINE hard mode boss they made, and the difference in difficulty between easy->medium->hard was staggering and really showed who the good guilds were. Sartura was simplistic but was the first true test of who could actually manage their surroundings and avoid shit. Don't let anything else fool you. THIS was the boss that broke the shitty players, was the first boss I can recall having a hard berserk as well (this zone in general is the first zone with berserks afaik), so that your 5 good players had trouble carrying. It wasn't tightly tuned enough, but it was good. Fankriss was far too easy but he had a lot going on. Viscidus...ambitious but broken and stupid. Huhuran went from a joke boss to a very difficult one almost overnight, nature resist farming was idiotic, but the shift from control to burn was new and 'interesting' if not well executed. Then you get to the last 3. Twin Emps blew my mind back in the day. Their perfect voicework, the awesomely huge models and room, and the mechanics that had so many moving parts. You had tons of people doing tons of individual roles on this fight, and it was LONG. Tuned so that a mistake was not a wipe, yet not a forgiving boss of bad strategies or play. The interactions between the tanks, the physical dps, the magical dps, the bugs, it all worked for me. Ouro was an extremely clever boss with a lot of mechanics that people didn't fully figure out for a while after it had been killed. But that was the beauty, you didn't need to know how his aggro worked to beat the boss, you just had to play better. things like that are great imo. Then C'thun, a truly great boss. his legacy was marred by being horribly broken, but the mechanics are still badass. The giant Zelda laser is SUPER memorable, being eaten, being blasted for 4,000,000 damage from someone getting too close...all awesome. Trash was interesting and more complex than bosses in many of the previous zones. Pre-emps trash was random and required solid and adaptable strats. The giants that shared abilities as they died rewarded quick target prioritization, and the pre-c'thun trash could probably be an essay on its own (Quad Mindslayer setups were complex and intense. Also tedious but that's another story). All in all, this was the first raid that really clicked to me. I loved all of the prior raids, but this was a glimpse into the future.
