@@michaelkennielsen1422 He didn't forget it to be fair, he said in part 1 that he won't rank Throne of Thunder because he didn't progress it as current content due to real life commitments
@@DomerNoodle It was shenanigans! ToT beats Ulduar, but that would mean the crown would go to a MoP raid and certain mouth breathers would only screech "fucken pandas, reeeeeeeeeeeeee!" Any pre cata raid has no business to be #1 mechanically wise and they are only given a pass because of the expansions they were in. Slap the ICC story on BRF mechanics and the original would be considered shit by comparison.
@@Granolie possibly why there is huge number of people replaying classic/BC/WOTLK content over and over and over again on private servers, why every time Ulduar releases, there are huge spikes of people just pouring in for 10+ years old content. IDK if its sad or joy to see, but it has gravity. Imagine replaying BfA.
These really are the best vids Preach has made since BfA. Reminds me of when legacy vids and other more casual/fun vids were the frequent upload here. Rather than just discussion topics about the state of the game or tdps, obviously I still like those videos but that's all it's been for a while
@@aroundthefur1210 I think TDP is a great format to just have a chat, it's also clearly a lot less effort for him to make, so its not either those videos or these. But yeah, sprinkling these in much more often would be great.
@@aroundthefur1210 He stopped doing them for a reason. For one they were very draining to do them every patch for every single spec. For another reason is that classes change a lot all the time so a video format besides the basic gameplay is useless. Another reason is that there are la lot of guides on different places as well and people with the help of discord can constantly interact and help each other. It would be basically cost a lot of time with no benefit.
@@TheAssirra Totally get that, its just what brought me to his channel in the first place and would be cool to see it come back. Discords have a wealth of information but part of the reason you go to you a TH-cam video is for the entertainment in it all. If he did a few less TDP's he could maybe put a class discussion video once in awhile was my thoughts on that basically. The TDP videos are him spacing out (to concentrate on the game), or side railing his own thoughts, and it just turns into a very disconjointed conversation most of the times. Probably wont see the old content come back but a person can dream at least, lol.
Mike, this is the first time i comment on any of your videos even though i've been a lurker for many many years but i felt the need to do so here as you've brought a tear to my eye. Reminiscing all these great moments i've had in this game while raiding made me emotional. It just made me realize how WoW has been such a large part of my life and reminded me why i still play it to this day even though it has its ups and downs. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
@@axl4394 And yet time and time again Preach stresses the importance of spectacle. And if that is important to a guy like him, imagine how much it means to someone less progress oriented? And even disregarding the spectacle and the visuals of the place (which are so so far below even a place like Molten Core), the design of the raid tier made sure you had to do the place 4 times every week and then return to and outdated raid to get some healer their legendary. The encounter design is quite literally the only redeeming quality of the entire tier and every single other aspect of it is a stinking heap of garbage.
Ya saving that dude just to find out onyxia has been corrupting sw the whole time you were playing was awesome. Also when she spawns with all her dragonkin to fight everyone in the throne room, thats peak rpg shit
Ulduar is by far the best raid in wow history. I will always remember the reaction of my guild when we ran through the doorway and Kologarn popped up and killed several people. It was epic and fun and unforgettable.
The guild I was in were pretty much baby's raiding, but we started going through the old raids to learn and gear up when ulduar was out. By the time we got to Ulduar, we had made it to the Conservatory of Life when TOC came out, and half the raid got antsy so we stopped running Ulduar. Which was heart crushing, because it was such a fucking joy to be there.
As a member of the silent majority for all these years, I have to say that it's an absolute joy to listen to you speak about all the fond memories you have on this game we all love. And to see your face lighting up, while pouring your heart and mind out, is priceless. You sir, are a legend.
It doesn't quite beat out Ulduar for me, but it's easily nr. 2. There are so many genuinely great fights in the raid, environment is cool and being a Demo Lock at the time was probably one of my fondest times playing Lock in any raid. It kind of suffered from a super weird difficulty curve and Tortos being a really awkward boss, but otherwise really well designed raid overall.
@@Traumglanz It wasn't as much the raid as the people playing in WOLTK that fucked my experience with the game, with people demanding stupid high gearscore for doing fucking normal mode lich king lol, despite having more gear than the raid you wouldn't get invited by idiots with blue gear, not to mention the group finder which fucked the community in the same expansion. I much much rather play BC and Classic, because despite the stunning zones and raids, it's where activision started to fuck the game and ruin what made it good for a MMORPG
Love hearing these stories. Raiding and WoW was so different back then and I'm sad that I'm way too young to have experienced it. Also love the ranking of the raids from someone who was actually there
Hearing you talk about Serpentshrine Cavern, and how you got into Killcount Lost just put a massive smile on my face. It's so clear how fond you are of those times, and how much you enjoyed doing things like nailing Illidan on your first night, or showing them how you tanked the Striders on Vash that remind me of the amazing experiences you can have in this game.
I'd say it would take 4th place, based on how biased Preach is towards the early expansions (which is very understandable). Ulduar, Kara and ICC are just iconic, and for someone like Preach who's been around since day 1 of the game, I don't think they'll ever be topped. ToT was insane though. I'd say my personal top 3 is Ulduar, BRF and ToT
I also really, really liked Siege of Orgrimmar. Classes were sooo fun, and then the tuning perfection with five insanely good bosses with Malkorok->Thok->Siegecrafter->Paragons->Garrosh was probably my favourite time ever in the game. I liked all its bosses, even Spoils of Pandaria felt like a such a great race against time (though I may be biased in favor of this one cause I got a world rank 4 dps parse on our progress kill without any padding shenannigans). And I still feel like Malkorok is by far the best dps race boss ever made, it was so HAM all the time. I wish I had enjoyed ToT as much as other people, but my guild at the time was such a mess. I remember wiping on Horridon (or Horror-don) so many times because our tank was giga shit. I don't feel like raids since then have been nearly as consistent, and their difficulty curves weren't so well tuned.
@@Immersed94 Indeed. I'm not saying raid design is bad nowadays (because it isn't), but it has had a slightly hit or miss quality ever since Legion where there's always something dragging it down. You have occasional great bosses, but more often than not, those are tuned way too easy, and then there's some extremely annoying boss that's tuned too hard. - Emerald Nightmare... - Nighthold was pretty great, but Botanist was shit and Gul'Dan had zero mechanics for melee dps and was a 14 minute fight. Loved Elisande though. - Tomb of Sargeras had Avatar that was great, but also had Mistress and Maiden and Kil'Jaeden that were all horrible - Antorus was ugly as fuck for its first 80%, and had no interesting bosses outside of the last two (of which one was shit) - Uldir I didn't really progress - Battle of Dazzlerazzle had Jaina who was just annoying - Eternal Palace had Azshara and Zaqul, both of which were giga shit and annoying - Nyalotha was much better, but its most fun boss (Carapace) was undertuned as hell and it had a lot of stinkers (Ilgy, Drest, Vex) and Nzoth was.... loooong with only phase 2 being interesting - And Nathria is pretty boring, looks and mechanics wise. And people say it becomes horrible with SLG. What I find interesting is how most of the modern raids are also kind of one-boss raids. There's always one boss that takes up 60% of your total progress time. So if that boss isn't stellar (and they haven't been), then the raid becomes shit. Only Nighthold and ToS had more than one difficult boss. SoO, ToT, BrF and HFC all had 2-3 end boss quality fights.
Ulduar captured the scale of epic. In a oldschool RPG setting, Ulduar could've been an entire game. Only experience in gaming I've had that's come close to it since, is Legend of Grimrock 1 and 2.
Wow, what a nostalgic feeling ! You gushing about all of those Vanilla, TBC and Wrath raids really brought back some great memories, thank you, Mike ! Also: The striders on Vashj weren't difficult to kite without losing threat, at least not as a warlock (I was the warlock "tank" on the Twins in AQ40 and the striders on Vashj) - you just had to stutter step a little bit while spamming Searing Pain.
As good as ulduar was unless you were in a hardcore raiding guild. You were not clearing it weekly. So ToGC Atleast gave options to people who sucked and couldn’t do anything else. It was easier to pug too because it was a small raid
@@gostreiver8036 We were a large, semi-casual guild. Far from hardcore, raided 2 nights a week, 3hrs each night. We cleared every week with 2 25man groups, then whoever wanted went in with their 10 mans. We did put some effort into Sarth 3D though, first horde guild on the server to achieve that. And an achievement it was indeed. Several guilds working on that one at the time with some egos involved. We got the pleasure of sitting outside the bank surrounding the lucky individual that received the mount drop.
BT, the build up I think was the best for me. Having him in the background as you levelled up, progressed to raiding tiers...the quest to get in to BT. But Karazhan for me. Great guild at the time, really fun bunch of people. Good times.
Seeing Preach get nostalgic talking about the final 10 raids was super heartwarming. Reminded me of my fond times raiding/playing WoW. I think honestly these were some of the best videos you made and would love to see similar things like this in the future!
Trial of the Crusaders crime wasn't coming after Ulduar, it was how soon it came, how much better the loot was and how mandatory the different difficulty levels became. It was the start of the "throw away ALL old loot, here is new shit". Blizzard started down the path of loot not meaning Anything anymore, because in 2 months it's outdated.
Fucking thank you, Mike! I am one of those monsters that really really liked Trial of the Grand Crusader! It was a fun side thing to do while we farmed Ulduar. Those bosses were GOOD! Even the PVP style fight was fun. I loved that Raid and it gets slagged on all the time! Respect for ToGC!
I also am a monster. I thought it was cool. good idea. short. fun. what else could you ask for? people are just so hard focused on gear colors they forget to have fun
Trial of the Crusader was a decent raid and Anub on hard mode, (or was 25 or heroic, i can't remember, it was changing every raid) was a very fun fight!
I fucking LOVED the Beasts of Northrend, after a run where every DPS but me and 2 melees died in phase 1. We still managed to beat it, with the highest % damage I ever did. Jaraxxus was always fun as a mage. And Anub'arak finally got a little more justice... BUT! I still wish we had gotten a full Azjol Nerub raid :( Just look at the scenery in the Azjol Nerub dungeon, when you fall down after Hedronox lair. It's gigantic (spans all of Northrend), and it had SO much potential..! I still have a vague hope for a Azjole Nerub (REDUX) raid in Classic: WOTLK, but I doubt they'll retcon/redo content. Could have been a varied raid with the monsters, fauna, colours, undead, old gods etc. underground!
@@busshock Well for me the top 5 raids are Ulduar, ToT, ICC, Blackrock Foundry and Mogu Shan Vaults. ToT compared to Ulduar has better boss fights but in total epicness I put Ulduar above. Its just a pity we dont get such nice raids these days. They all seem rather monotonous and boring. Look at castle Nathria for example. Really nothing unique about this raid.
We have the same top 3. Except I rate Karazhan higher for my own reasons. And for me, Wrath Naxx was special because it was the first raid I was ever the main tank. But I agree with your list. I respect your unique point of view.
Serpentshrine Cavern was one of my more favored TBC raids. I didn't get to see it until long after the attunement quests were removed but I'd done both quests with my first raid guild before they fell apart in the summer of 2007 trying to take on TK for Fel Reaver. That raid tested your guild's mettle if Magtheridon wasn't enough of a complexity for you!
I get his nostalgia of remembering those early days of wow when people would know who you were if you were good. It felt incredible as a teenager to be the hunter that people would go to for help figuring out rhok'delar. I miss those days so much, and with everything being as open as it is now on the internet we'll never have those kinds of mmo days again.
I think the reason Ulduar was so good and why it wasn’t replicated is the scale of the environment. I remember when I was a kid and I was raiding with my dad, he said he loved the environment, how beautiful everything looked, the fact that the trash was the size of most bosses. Our guild only killed the cat lady, we never beat any keepers, yet it still was one of the best I remember.
Tks for sharing your memories and moments especially to those who never raid BT, SSC, EYE etc... Feels really good to see someone so passionate with the game that you can see their eyes shining when bringing back those events
I get shit for saying it's a good raid too. Contrary to Mike tho, I prefer the PvP boss to the Angels. Shaabad is a bad bad man if you're wearing toilet paper, you better have him on focus and be max range. First 2 fights and Anub were quality
To me that raid only had 2 good bosses Jaraxxus and the final boss. It had one of the worst bosses as well with faction champs and the rest were really forgettable and kinda bland. Maybe Icehowl charge for some memes but really that is it :|
I know in the last video you said you hadn't done Throne of Thunder while it was current, but hearing you gush about Ulduar and call it a fluke makes me think you would have loved it. The buildup with the Isle of Thunder was so good, and it's a good example of how Blizzard could still catch lightning in a bottle (pun slightly intended) at the time. I hope they can do it a third time, at least.
"it really felt like a MMORPG" in reference to AQ is kind of ironic, because if any event like this was implemented today the tears and ranging would be unprecedented....
@@WOWsusano I wouldn't even call it an RPG, I would (and admittedly this is based on personal views) call it a CPG (personal term, character progression game). Not even an MMOCPG, as I personally believe actiblizz has gutted the MMO aspect of modern wow. CPG I've replaced RPG with due to that most RPG's nowadays have very little to no role-playing in them.
I've never raided any content that was current - just went into old raids to smash them. Ulduar was definitely the one that made go "Ooohh, so cool" :)
@@andyyyz9114 Well you dont have to join mythic guild to raid. There are casual guilds with really bad players who only raid normal. I was never top raider but i got to see alot of group content. Raiding was WoW to me. Nothing wrong with playing solo ofc. Just think you miss much if you never joined guild and try raiding :)
@@andyyyz9114 You can still raid and be bad, have you tried WoW Classic? But on a serious note, we were all bad at one point, but I would rather be terrible with a group of friends than be the best player in the world on my own. But to each their own, if you like solo play that is what you like
Well... you should try it. As preach here says, the only thing wow does better than any other game is raiding, and every good wow player can confirm that. Even pvpers. Edit: dont be afraid! I have like 15 cutting edges and i know bad players thay have more of those than me, just try hard, dont be stuck in a guild that doesnt kill bosses and it will be enough, promise.
Watched most of these through Limit Maximum's stream, but went and found the spot when you talked about serpenshrine caverns which Max skipped, just to hear you flex. That was honestly the best part of the videos.
I loved this pair of videos so much! Now do dungeons! As many as you want, and by whatever criteria you want. It’s just really fun to hear someone else’s experience with encounters I remember so well.
Blasting everything with Razagore was a thing in classic too. We had garbage hunters and trying for a while to do the kiting until our tanks decided to screw that and let the DPS nuke everything. Though we were a little late to the party and basically formed late and our mt had like 7/8 T2 already ... well nuking worked for us. Next one was easy enough too. Guess we had damage even if we could not kite to save our lives.
the thing I loved with professor Putricide was his Futurama line right before and during and at the end of the fight... "good news everyone, I have perfected a plague that will destroy all of Azeroth", I also really like Festergut and Rotface
100% agree with the top 3. Had such a great time as a hunter in those raids. Our 1st razor scale kill all of our tanks died and for the last little bit of hp on the boss, 3 of us hunters distracting shot it and popped deterance, then had the next hunter do the same. My GM was a hunter and I just started doing the move and yelled to him what to do and when to do it. Then our 3rd hunter didn't have it on his bar and I'm like oh shit, popped aspect of the cheetah, hauled ass and group killed it. So many memories in there with great and wonderful people.
Been watching since...WoD? By far my favorite content you have ever done Preach. A lot of the WoW community sees you as this Git Gud icon, and these videos just show how untrue that is. It feels like Blizzard has really established (via your top 5, and a number of standouts, like Firelands) that when they come up with a meaningful, interesting concept and really deliver on selling the ADVENTURE and FANTASY of it, the developers bring their A-game to make sure mechanics match. So much of Castle Nathria feels like its meant to "Check a box", which is a damn shame. Like you said, the Boats in ICC were amazing because they helped to sell the fantasy of a raid on each faction for resources and good ol' fashioned Horde v Alliance, not because they were "hard." Maybe the new Torghast raid will be able to sell a similar fantasy, only time will tell.
My own top 10: 1) Karazhan 2) Ulduar 3) SSC 4) Blackrock Foundry 5) Tempest Keep 6) Ice Crown Citadel 7) Throne of Thunder 8) Nighthold 9) Zul'Gurub 10) Black Temple Crazy how close our lists really are. 5/10 don't have multiple tier difficulties. 1/10 has special hard modes requiring activation. Majority are also within the same time period. Makes me so excited for TBC Classic. I think the raids were definitely more memorable when there was only 1 difficulty. As a Cutting Edge raider, the feeling from killing bosses was just different back then because there was a finality to each fight. Gear became more illusive and it really gave you a benchmark to hit. Certainly the newness of the "raid" design itself played a factor, but man, just not the same these days. PS - Nice choice on Hades music.
I kind of agree with what you said about optional and summonable bosses, even though I never experienced it for myself. But you know as well as I that people would immediately start complaining about mandatory content. Because if you enjoy raiding, which you do, then you want to do all the bosses, which makes that world content required. And you made it very clear before Shadowlands that you don't want mandatory content outside of the raids itself.
Ulduar is so good because it didn't have you toggle on hard mode, you did something in the dungeon to trigger HM which gave not only a reason behind the HM but the ability to HM some bosses and not others. Greatest game design ever that they completely threw out the window with a toggle on your nameplate.
So funny btw to watch this as someone who stopped raiding in TBC. The difference between those raids and current raid content... just feels like LSD trips, man. Everything is glowing and blinking and so on and so forth, so cluttered. Not to say that has to be a bad thing but it really looks like a different game to me.
this is why i'm exicted for Wrath classic. I want to relive the fights that I barley remember because I was so young and had shit internet. So many great Wrath fights
Make the best out of it. But to be honest I did beat every boss in tbc, did a lot of crazy or unbelievable stuff back than with my friends and they did even more than me. But that is in the past and redoing it would not bring back the old days. I rather do new stuff instead of just feeding on nostalgia. I certainly would love to see more sense of adventure and theme in my current mmo, that is what I am missing from the good old days of tbc and even more from the vanilla days, but I could for example never go back to tabbed combat.
I think that it is universally believed that the top three in any order will be ICC, Karazhan, and Ulduar. I’ve never seen any TH-camr list another raid under top 3. Honestly I’m happy with it. Cool list, p.1 and p.2
Thought I was going to have to wait a while for this, so happy I don't. I can't stand retail atm (PvP focused) but I'm on my tbc prep. Happy that even though we are on different half's of the same coin that I can still enjoy your content. Keep preaching Preach!
Good newwws everyone, the slime is glowing again! I was wondering why he didn’t give this raid number one then I remembered he doesn’t play with sound so he didn’t experience the epic soundtrack and atmosphere like the rest of us.
We've done some ZG speed running for fun in p4 (me on my ele) and it was honestly the most fun I've had raiding in all of Classic. More than even being #1 in the country, for a bit. It's just such a flavourful place. Also, the music in AQ20, dude, you can just park your character there and vibe for an hour. And while it probably was a bit too easy with the gear we had, it was still heaps of fun, too.
I didn't expect mine and Mike's opinions to line up so much. Ulduar was just insane how good it was. The bosses were fun, but the sense of scale and awe in that raid have never been recreated since. Walking into the Antechamber of Ulduar and hearing the music for the first time... god, still sends chills down my spine. And the courtyard into the beggining with the skybox and the pillars of light from the towers. Yeah, Ulduar was just mental.
As an eternal Blackrock Foundry fanboy I'm more than satisfied with this result. The voice acting was so wonderfully expressive. Every boss was good to fantastic and the transmogs are still uncontested in my eyes for several classes. The DK, warrior, warlock, paladin and shaman sets hold up brilliantly to this day, 7 years later, and the weapons from that place were beautiful. This was the first time Blizzard really overhauled fire and explosion effects in WoW (Nazjatar redid them to look like liquid fire everywhere and it's strange), and bombs no longer looked like they let out a red fart cloud - they looked properly lethal. Gruul was the weakest boss and he was still fine, to tank he was absolutely thrilling and terrifying. At any moment you could accidentally cleave the raid and crush them, the next moment solo soak the other cleave and explode into flames.
Only old school raids I ever prog'd were Kara and Ulduar. For the longest time I thought it was just personal bias that I had those two as my top raids in the game. Guess I just got lucky. Quit Legion just before Nighthold, so thats kind of a bummer.
Karazhan is my favourite raid, hands down. It was absolutely perfect in every way. The fact that people continued to run Kara throughout the expansion just because speaks volumes. Also hunter (which I was at the time) absolutely trivialized Moroes, and that made me happy.
I remember leveling alts just to go back and do Kara again. We had a group of 10 of us that would even go after BT or Sunwell. Run till 2 in the morning just for the hell of it.
Please do more videos on stuff like this. Maybe rate expansion systems over other expansions? Dungeon list? There are so many good ideas you can do for more stuff around this its crazy! Love this Preach.
loved every seconds of this including the first part, lets us know abit more about you and how you shaped as a player. and ulduar has to be the top amazing raid so many good memories from this
As someone who raided almost exclusively in TBC & WoTLK and only came back to WoW to raid in Castle Nathria. My first thought when I started this two part video series was "I wonder where he is going to place Karazhan and Ulduar". Low and behold they are number 1 & 2 on the list. Seems like TBC & WoTLK were some good times for raiding. If not the best.
Everytime I go farm Ulduar for Tmog or the mount or even Timewalking and hear the music kick in when I enter the inside of Ulduar, I get this overwhelming wave of extreme nostalgia of being a kid and staying up far too late just to raid Ulduar with my guild. It was the start of my raiding career from what I remember and nothing hits me with such intense nostalgia like the raid music...
I agree with most of the list. But yes Ulduar and Karazhan is just pure magic. Gruul's lair is also up there. Its like your first ever Christmas eve. You was so immersed into the whole scenery and lore. Such good memories. I think Wow devs reached their peak during TBC and Wotlk. Such good content that was produced during those two expansion. I feel blessed and happy i was there to play through it. Not many new mmorpg players will understand how really good this was back in the day with optional hardmodes. I struggle to find anything remotely close to past content in today's games.
As a Boomkin I absolutely loved the nighthold, botanist especially! Mythic shoulders and aoe with moonfirenspam was amazing, never had such good logs again haha
I think you hit the nail on the head with Ulduar. Yes, the fights were very very good but it took you on an adventure which is the more important part for me now that I think about it. You went from ice caves to green planes to a planetarium to everything. Like holy shit that raid was amazing.
I never got the hate for Trial of the Grand Crusader. I really loved every fight in there bar the faction champions as well. As a more casual player by that stage it was great to have a raid that was on the shorter side and actually felt fun to play not like you were forced to dedicate days to.
Loved this vid and Pt1. Shame there's no option for you to create your own guild from everyone you've met and bonded with thus far. Feels really good to watch someone talk about genuinely happy memories. Cheers Mike.
A lot of good points, I definitely agree on the opening. Black Temple was a complete tedious grind to get through but it did end in one of the most memorable raid boss fights to date.
I think a lot people forget, when they praise Ulduar, that this was really the culmination of classic Blizzard's creative and technical drive. This was around the time they were bought out and their artistic vision for the game clearly wasn't their own anymore, when shareholder pressure and profit optimization started to limit what one could realistically do. Ulduar is in many ways a memento of what was, before modern ActiBlizz started to take shape.
I think it's such a shame Mike's missed Throne of Thunder, I feel like he would have loved it
When he came to top 4 i was like. Dude.... You forgot one of the absolute best raids ever made. Like it literally rivals Ulduar
@@michaelkennielsen1422 He didn't forget it to be fair, he said in part 1 that he won't rank Throne of Thunder because he didn't progress it as current content due to real life commitments
@@DomerNoodle It was shenanigans! ToT beats Ulduar, but that would mean the crown would go to a MoP raid and certain mouth breathers would only screech "fucken pandas, reeeeeeeeeeeeee!" Any pre cata raid has no business to be #1 mechanically wise and they are only given a pass because of the expansions they were in. Slap the ICC story on BRF mechanics and the original would be considered shit by comparison.
Lei Shen being the most epic, fun and most well tuned fight ever made, while classes were at their absolute prime gameplay-wise.
@@karlzone2 Definitely. Lei Shen is the pinnacle of a raid boss feeling consistently tough but fair through the entire encounter.
You can really see Mike feeling nostalgic when talks, and when pauses reliving his memories about each of this raids, awesome content
once he started hitting the top 10 you could almost see him getting emotional. Vanilla to WotLK were truly lightning in a bottle.
@@Granolie possibly why there is huge number of people replaying classic/BC/WOTLK content over and over and over again on private servers, why every time Ulduar releases, there are huge spikes of people just pouring in for 10+ years old content. IDK if its sad or joy to see, but it has gravity. Imagine replaying BfA.
@@Granolie qA
These really are the best vids Preach has made since BfA. Reminds me of when legacy vids and other more casual/fun vids were the frequent upload here. Rather than just discussion topics about the state of the game or tdps, obviously I still like those videos but that's all it's been for a while
Yeah; this is the kind of content that brought me to his channel in MoP. Would love to see a lot less TDP and instead some class guides.
@@aroundthefur1210 I think TDP is a great format to just have a chat, it's also clearly a lot less effort for him to make, so its not either those videos or these. But yeah, sprinkling these in much more often would be great.
@@aroundthefur1210 He stopped doing them for a reason. For one they were very draining to do them every patch for every single spec. For another reason is that classes change a lot all the time so a video format besides the basic gameplay is useless. Another reason is that there are la lot of guides on different places as well and people with the help of discord can constantly interact and help each other. It would be basically cost a lot of time with no benefit.
@@TheAssirra Totally get that, its just what brought me to his channel in the first place and would be cool to see it come back. Discords have a wealth of information but part of the reason you go to you a TH-cam video is for the entertainment in it all. If he did a few less TDP's he could maybe put a class discussion video once in awhile was my thoughts on that basically. The TDP videos are him spacing out (to concentrate on the game), or side railing his own thoughts, and it just turns into a very disconjointed conversation most of the times. Probably wont see the old content come back but a person can dream at least, lol.
Still waiting on Legacy of the druid !
Mike, this is the first time i comment on any of your videos even though i've been a lurker for many many years but i felt the need to do so here as you've brought a tear to my eye. Reminiscing all these great moments i've had in this game while raiding made me emotional. It just made me realize how WoW has been such a large part of my life and reminded me why i still play it to this day even though it has its ups and downs. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
This was so cool. Please do more stuff like this. I missed these kinds of videos.
Same
this person thinks genocide of 90% of a race is better than being totally mind controlled and doing objectively far less.
so stoked to be seeing the second part released just as i cracked a cold one open
Same, proverbially.
Exact same! Space Commander Gigahop!
Operator Thogar: Everything in that fight is massively on rails
Well....yes.
That´s kind of the point, right? xD
Lol! I thought the same thing when he said "on rails" rofl
everything is on rails.... HEH!
ToGC is massively underrated. No trash mobs and just bosses is great.
Everything about that raid except for the encounter design was thoroughly shit and lazily done though.
@@Hjiel well, most of a raid are the boss encounters -_-
@@axl4394 And yet time and time again Preach stresses the importance of spectacle. And if that is important to a guy like him, imagine how much it means to someone less progress oriented?
And even disregarding the spectacle and the visuals of the place (which are so so far below even a place like Molten Core), the design of the raid tier made sure you had to do the place 4 times every week and then return to and outdated raid to get some healer their legendary. The encounter design is quite literally the only redeeming quality of the entire tier and every single other aspect of it is a stinking heap of garbage.
Every now and again it's ok. A raid wouldn't feel like a raid without the trash
4 lockouts was the most dumb thing about that raid.
The time for the RP to finish was pretty dumb too.
"Operator Thogar ... everything in that fight is massively on rails." Yes Mike, that's the whole point of the fight.
fucking GOTTEEEEM!!!!
My thoughts exactly :D
I think he didnt even notice his accidental pun.
Best two WoW videos I've ever watched. Fair play Preach.
Another bit of the "cool" feeling of Onyxia is the attunement questline. Especially for Alliance
Ya saving that dude just to find out onyxia has been corrupting sw the whole time you were playing was awesome. Also when she spawns with all her dragonkin to fight everyone in the throne room, thats peak rpg shit
Ulduar is by far the best raid in wow history. I will always remember the reaction of my guild when we ran through the doorway and Kologarn popped up and killed several people. It was epic and fun and unforgettable.
Not really. That's by far your opinion. Your opinion never has been a fact. Never will it be. And Ulduar is by far NOT the best raid in WoW history.
@@davidfence6939 he never said he ment it as a fact. And then you do the same and state your opinion like he did (which is fine)
@@davidfence6939 I bet you're fun at parties. I thought it was pretty clear I was speaking from my own perspective. Lighten up David.
So what’s the best raid David? Or are you just arguing to argue ?
@@davidfence6939 god what a fuckin buzzkill lmao
The guild I was in were pretty much baby's raiding, but we started going through the old raids to learn and gear up when ulduar was out. By the time we got to Ulduar, we had made it to the Conservatory of Life when TOC came out, and half the raid got antsy so we stopped running Ulduar. Which was heart crushing, because it was such a fucking joy to be there.
As a member of the silent majority for all these years, I have to say that it's an absolute joy to listen to you speak about all the fond memories you have on this game we all love. And to see your face lighting up, while pouring your heart and mind out, is priceless. You sir, are a legend.
This was a cool list and listening to you reminiscing on your experiences was quite wonderful! Great stuff Mike!
So sad Mike never had time to experience Throne of Thunder. That's so close to Ulduar it's ridiculous.
ToT is my top for a raid. Absolutely amazing place and such unique fights
It doesn't quite beat out Ulduar for me, but it's easily nr. 2. There are so many genuinely great fights in the raid, environment is cool and being a Demo Lock at the time was probably one of my fondest times playing Lock in any raid. It kind of suffered from a super weird difficulty curve and Tortos being a really awkward boss, but otherwise really well designed raid overall.
It's for sure in my top 5! Amazing raid!
YES! ToT was AMAZING!!!
Yeah ToT is a close second for me too, really all of patch 5.2 was amazing.
"let hatred and rage guide your blows!" still gives me chills to this day
YES YES, SHOW THEM NO MERCY! GIVE NO PAUSE TO YOUR ATTACKS!
ICC, Karazhan, Ulduar. That is all I need in my life and I am happy.
Amen brother
Kara is love
Did not like ICC really. Maybe because I stopped progress Raiding after sun well. Ulduar got me going for some time, but ICC never clicked with me.
@@Traumglanz It wasn't as much the raid as the people playing in WOLTK that fucked my experience with the game, with people demanding stupid high gearscore for doing fucking normal mode lich king lol, despite having more gear than the raid you wouldn't get invited by idiots with blue gear, not to mention the group finder which fucked the community in the same expansion.
I much much rather play BC and Classic, because despite the stunning zones and raids, it's where activision started to fuck the game and ruin what made it good for a MMORPG
Love hearing these stories. Raiding and WoW was so different back then and I'm sad that I'm way too young to have experienced it. Also love the ranking of the raids from someone who was actually there
Hearing you talk about Serpentshrine Cavern, and how you got into Killcount Lost just put a massive smile on my face. It's so clear how fond you are of those times, and how much you enjoyed doing things like nailing Illidan on your first night, or showing them how you tanked the Striders on Vash that remind me of the amazing experiences you can have in this game.
I wonder where Throne of Thunder would be, it was awesome raid with such mechanically different bosses. Lei Shen is the best boss ever made for me.
I was wondering the same thing besides ulduar nighthold and throne of thunder were my favourite raids.
I'd say it would take 4th place, based on how biased Preach is towards the early expansions (which is very understandable). Ulduar, Kara and ICC are just iconic, and for someone like Preach who's been around since day 1 of the game, I don't think they'll ever be topped. ToT was insane though. I'd say my personal top 3 is Ulduar, BRF and ToT
I also really, really liked Siege of Orgrimmar. Classes were sooo fun, and then the tuning perfection with five insanely good bosses with Malkorok->Thok->Siegecrafter->Paragons->Garrosh was probably my favourite time ever in the game. I liked all its bosses, even Spoils of Pandaria felt like a such a great race against time (though I may be biased in favor of this one cause I got a world rank 4 dps parse on our progress kill without any padding shenannigans). And I still feel like Malkorok is by far the best dps race boss ever made, it was so HAM all the time.
I wish I had enjoyed ToT as much as other people, but my guild at the time was such a mess. I remember wiping on Horridon (or Horror-don) so many times because our tank was giga shit. I don't feel like raids since then have been nearly as consistent, and their difficulty curves weren't so well tuned.
@@karlzone2 100%. Raid and class design was never better than from ToT to HFC in my opinion. Truly a great time to be a raider
@@Immersed94 Indeed. I'm not saying raid design is bad nowadays (because it isn't), but it has had a slightly hit or miss quality ever since Legion where there's always something dragging it down.
You have occasional great bosses, but more often than not, those are tuned way too easy, and then there's some extremely annoying boss that's tuned too hard.
- Emerald Nightmare...
- Nighthold was pretty great, but Botanist was shit and Gul'Dan had zero mechanics for melee dps and was a 14 minute fight. Loved Elisande though.
- Tomb of Sargeras had Avatar that was great, but also had Mistress and Maiden and Kil'Jaeden that were all horrible
- Antorus was ugly as fuck for its first 80%, and had no interesting bosses outside of the last two (of which one was shit)
- Uldir I didn't really progress
- Battle of Dazzlerazzle had Jaina who was just annoying
- Eternal Palace had Azshara and Zaqul, both of which were giga shit and annoying
- Nyalotha was much better, but its most fun boss (Carapace) was undertuned as hell and it had a lot of stinkers (Ilgy, Drest, Vex) and Nzoth was.... loooong with only phase 2 being interesting
- And Nathria is pretty boring, looks and mechanics wise. And people say it becomes horrible with SLG.
What I find interesting is how most of the modern raids are also kind of one-boss raids. There's always one boss that takes up 60% of your total progress time. So if that boss isn't stellar (and they haven't been), then the raid becomes shit. Only Nighthold and ToS had more than one difficult boss. SoO, ToT, BrF and HFC all had 2-3 end boss quality fights.
Ulduar captured the scale of epic. In a oldschool RPG setting, Ulduar could've been an entire game. Only experience in gaming I've had that's come close to it since, is Legend of Grimrock 1 and 2.
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, my dude.
Give Divinitiy Original Sin 2 a shot! Thats an epic single player RPG journey
Wow, what a nostalgic feeling ! You gushing about all of those Vanilla, TBC and Wrath raids really brought back some great memories, thank you, Mike ! Also: The striders on Vashj weren't difficult to kite without losing threat, at least not as a warlock (I was the warlock "tank" on the Twins in AQ40 and the striders on Vashj) - you just had to stutter step a little bit while spamming Searing Pain.
I was not prepped to feel this level of nostalgia. Great vids
" To supplement the Ulduar". Yeah, and almost every piece of loot it ToGC was better then from Ulduar.
Yeah my guild back then just about stopped raiding Ulduar as there was better and easy to get gear in togc.
Yeah, I really don't get what he's talking about. Trial killed off Ulduar way before its time, it didn't supplement diddly squat.
As good as ulduar was unless you were in a hardcore raiding guild. You were not clearing it weekly.
So ToGC Atleast gave options to people who sucked and couldn’t do anything else. It was easier to pug too because it was a small raid
@@gostreiver8036 We were a large, semi-casual guild. Far from hardcore, raided 2 nights a week, 3hrs each night. We cleared every week with 2 25man groups, then whoever wanted went in with their 10 mans. We did put some effort into Sarth 3D though, first horde guild on the server to achieve that. And an achievement it was indeed. Several guilds working on that one at the time with some egos involved. We got the pleasure of sitting outside the bank surrounding the lucky individual that received the mount drop.
Preach was no lifing back then so he used to clear everything probably
who the fck cares about Valnyr, ICC rendered that useless anyway
Having Nighthold be ranked so highly warms my heart.
First raid i got a realm first... brought up the tears :')
literally the most important ranking. idk why more people don’t understand how iconic nighthold is.
BT, the build up I think was the best for me. Having him in the background as you levelled up, progressed to raiding tiers...the quest to get in to BT.
But Karazhan for me. Great guild at the time, really fun bunch of people. Good times.
Ulduar was so.... so good. I feel so privileged to have been able to prog it.
Seeing Preach get nostalgic talking about the final 10 raids was super heartwarming. Reminded me of my fond times raiding/playing WoW. I think honestly these were some of the best videos you made and would love to see similar things like this in the future!
Trial of the Crusaders crime wasn't coming after Ulduar, it was how soon it came, how much better the loot was and how mandatory the different difficulty levels became. It was the start of the "throw away ALL old loot, here is new shit". Blizzard started down the path of loot not meaning Anything anymore, because in 2 months it's outdated.
Thanks for including my footage in your video!
Love your content!
Fucking thank you, Mike!
I am one of those monsters that really really liked Trial of the Grand Crusader! It was a fun side thing to do while we farmed Ulduar.
Those bosses were GOOD! Even the PVP style fight was fun.
I loved that Raid and it gets slagged on all the time!
Respect for ToGC!
I also am a monster. I thought it was cool. good idea. short. fun. what else could you ask for? people are just so hard focused on gear colors they forget to have fun
Pvp fight was shit tho.
@@nakki123 PvP fight was hilarious!
Mike, I personally love these type of videos. it's like sitting across from a friend at a bar and just chatting it up. Feelsgoodman
Am I the only one who absolutely knew the top 3 in exact perfect order? Epic video mike.
Trial of the Crusader was a decent raid and Anub on hard mode, (or was 25 or heroic, i can't remember, it was changing every raid) was a very fun fight!
It was ok but i really hated the pvp fight.
ToC is easily one of my top ten, I really enjoyed it
I fucking LOVED the Beasts of Northrend, after a run where every DPS but me and 2 melees died in phase 1. We still managed to beat it, with the highest % damage I ever did.
Jaraxxus was always fun as a mage. And Anub'arak finally got a little more justice...
BUT! I still wish we had gotten a full Azjol Nerub raid :(
Just look at the scenery in the Azjol Nerub dungeon, when you fall down after Hedronox lair. It's gigantic (spans all of Northrend), and it had SO much potential..!
I still have a vague hope for a Azjole Nerub (REDUX) raid in Classic: WOTLK, but I doubt they'll retcon/redo content.
Could have been a varied raid with the monsters, fauna, colours, undead, old gods etc. underground!
For sure Throne of Thunder would be at least top 10 if he had progressed it aswell. This raid was freaking awesome from every aspect.
ToT is the one raid that IMO came close to recapturing the spirit of Ulduar. Dunno if it beats Kara, but it's at least top 5.
@@busshock Well for me the top 5 raids are Ulduar, ToT, ICC, Blackrock Foundry and Mogu Shan Vaults. ToT compared to Ulduar has better boss fights but in total epicness I put Ulduar above. Its just a pity we dont get such nice raids these days. They all seem rather monotonous and boring. Look at castle Nathria for example. Really nothing unique about this raid.
We have the same top 3. Except I rate Karazhan higher for my own reasons. And for me, Wrath Naxx was special because it was the first raid I was ever the main tank. But I agree with your list. I respect your unique point of view.
Yea tbh, i'd say ulduar and kara are tied for first imo
Serpentshrine Cavern was one of my more favored TBC raids. I didn't get to see it until long after the attunement quests were removed but I'd done both quests with my first raid guild before they fell apart in the summer of 2007 trying to take on TK for Fel Reaver. That raid tested your guild's mettle if Magtheridon wasn't enough of a complexity for you!
The anticipation entering ICC for the first time knowing the lich king fight was imminent. I’ll never forget that feeling
I get his nostalgia of remembering those early days of wow when people would know who you were if you were good. It felt incredible as a teenager to be the hunter that people would go to for help figuring out rhok'delar. I miss those days so much, and with everything being as open as it is now on the internet we'll never have those kinds of mmo days again.
Seeing and hearing people reminisce about their favourites and all the stories they remember... I just love it.
Didnt expect myself to see me in a Preachvideo haha. Thanks for sharing xD
I think the reason Ulduar was so good and why it wasn’t replicated is the scale of the environment. I remember when I was a kid and I was raiding with my dad, he said he loved the environment, how beautiful everything looked, the fact that the trash was the size of most bosses.
Our guild only killed the cat lady, we never beat any keepers, yet it still was one of the best I remember.
Tks for sharing your memories and moments especially to those who never raid BT, SSC, EYE etc... Feels really good to see someone so passionate with the game that you can see their eyes shining when bringing back those events
such a delight walking down memory lane with all these sidestories.
Love these kind of videos from you! I know you aren’t as interested in dungeons, but would love to hear your top 10 if anything. Have a good one Mike
ToGC being so high on the list is BASED AF
No way, a raid with no trash? #1
No trash = more fun.
I get shit for saying it's a good raid too. Contrary to Mike tho, I prefer the PvP boss to the Angels. Shaabad is a bad bad man if you're wearing toilet paper, you better have him on focus and be max range. First 2 fights and Anub were quality
To me that raid only had 2 good bosses Jaraxxus and the final boss. It had one of the worst bosses as well with faction champs and the rest were really forgettable and kinda bland. Maybe Icehowl charge for some memes but really that is it :|
@@chrispartridge1369 and having 3 out of 5 trash bosses is fun?
I know in the last video you said you hadn't done Throne of Thunder while it was current, but hearing you gush about Ulduar and call it a fluke makes me think you would have loved it. The buildup with the Isle of Thunder was so good, and it's a good example of how Blizzard could still catch lightning in a bottle (pun slightly intended) at the time. I hope they can do it a third time, at least.
"it really felt like a MMORPG" in reference to AQ is kind of ironic, because if any event like this was implemented today the tears and ranging would be unprecedented....
So, like any expansion launch?
Would you call modern WoW a MMORPG tho ? To me it's more akin to a MOBA than a oldschool MMORPG
@@WOWsusano WoW today is an action RPG
@@WOWsusano Honestly, feels more like Destiny. You basically live in a central hub and everything you do is instanced.
@@WOWsusano I wouldn't even call it an RPG, I would (and admittedly this is based on personal views) call it a CPG (personal term, character progression game). Not even an MMOCPG, as I personally believe actiblizz has gutted the MMO aspect of modern wow. CPG I've replaced RPG with due to that most RPG's nowadays have very little to no role-playing in them.
I'm glad he enjoyed Karazhan as much as I did. My favorite dungeon of all time.
I teared up watching this. All the stories and the sheer joy you can tell Mike has when telling them just brought a flood of nostalgia back.
I've never raided any content that was current - just went into old raids to smash them. Ulduar was definitely the one that made go "Ooohh, so cool" :)
What? Why not?
@@nakki123 Because I'm a really bad player ! Like keyboard turning and spell clicking levels of bad :)
@@andyyyz9114 Well you dont have to join mythic guild to raid. There are casual guilds with really bad players who only raid normal. I was never top raider but i got to see alot of group content. Raiding was WoW to me.
Nothing wrong with playing solo ofc. Just think you miss much if you never joined guild and try raiding :)
@@andyyyz9114 You can still raid and be bad, have you tried WoW Classic? But on a serious note, we were all bad at one point, but I would rather be terrible with a group of friends than be the best player in the world on my own. But to each their own, if you like solo play that is what you like
Well... you should try it. As preach here says, the only thing wow does better than any other game is raiding, and every good wow player can confirm that. Even pvpers.
Edit: dont be afraid! I have like 15 cutting edges and i know bad players thay have more of those than me, just try hard, dont be stuck in a guild that doesnt kill bosses and it will be enough, promise.
Watched most of these through Limit Maximum's stream, but went and found the spot when you talked about serpenshrine caverns which Max skipped, just to hear you flex. That was honestly the best part of the videos.
could hear the emotion while you talked about these old loves of yours. great video.
I loved this pair of videos so much! Now do dungeons! As many as you want, and by whatever criteria you want. It’s just really fun to hear someone else’s experience with encounters I remember so well.
I was so upset on my commute home when I found out the first vid was only part 1!!
Yeah only stood in the title...
Just seeing your fond memories of SSC makes me want to play more
Lot of fun watching these, and I even just raided in vanilla TBC 1-2 times in MoP SoO, finally started again this expansion and having fun with it.
So glad to see TotGC up there, one of my favourite all time raids. Getting the Immortal achievement was one of my best moments in WoW. loved it!
Blasting everything with Razagore was a thing in classic too. We had garbage hunters and trying for a while to do the kiting until our tanks decided to screw that and let the DPS nuke everything. Though we were a little late to the party and basically formed late and our mt had like 7/8 T2 already ... well nuking worked for us. Next one was easy enough too. Guess we had damage even if we could not kite to save our lives.
the thing I loved with professor Putricide was his Futurama line right before and during and at the end of the fight... "good news everyone, I have perfected a plague that will destroy all of Azeroth", I also really like Festergut and Rotface
I could listen to Preach' old raid stories for hours
100% agree with the top 3. Had such a great time as a hunter in those raids. Our 1st razor scale kill all of our tanks died and for the last little bit of hp on the boss, 3 of us hunters distracting shot it and popped deterance, then had the next hunter do the same. My GM was a hunter and I just started doing the move and yelled to him what to do and when to do it. Then our 3rd hunter didn't have it on his bar and I'm like oh shit, popped aspect of the cheetah, hauled ass and group killed it. So many memories in there with great and wonderful people.
Man, the way you described seeing Onyxia for the first time, really took me back to my first raid into her lair. Definitely one my favorite memories.
Preach, this content is awesome. It's great to see you so happy again! Keep it up!
Following on from this you should totally do a Top 10 / Top 20 Raid Bosses - that would be even tougher
Great videos Mike. Brought me down nostalgia lane. I loved raiding through out the years.
Been watching since...WoD? By far my favorite content you have ever done Preach. A lot of the WoW community sees you as this Git Gud icon, and these videos just show how untrue that is. It feels like Blizzard has really established (via your top 5, and a number of standouts, like Firelands) that when they come up with a meaningful, interesting concept and really deliver on selling the ADVENTURE and FANTASY of it, the developers bring their A-game to make sure mechanics match. So much of Castle Nathria feels like its meant to "Check a box", which is a damn shame. Like you said, the Boats in ICC were amazing because they helped to sell the fantasy of a raid on each faction for resources and good ol' fashioned Horde v Alliance, not because they were "hard." Maybe the new Torghast raid will be able to sell a similar fantasy, only time will tell.
I FUCKING LOVE this type of content from you sir! Keep up the good work! MUCH
My own top 10:
1) Karazhan
2) Ulduar
3) SSC
4) Blackrock Foundry
5) Tempest Keep
6) Ice Crown Citadel
7) Throne of Thunder
8) Nighthold
9) Zul'Gurub
10) Black Temple
Crazy how close our lists really are. 5/10 don't have multiple tier difficulties. 1/10 has special hard modes requiring activation. Majority are also within the same time period. Makes me so excited for TBC Classic. I think the raids were definitely more memorable when there was only 1 difficulty. As a Cutting Edge raider, the feeling from killing bosses was just different back then because there was a finality to each fight. Gear became more illusive and it really gave you a benchmark to hit. Certainly the newness of the "raid" design itself played a factor, but man, just not the same these days.
PS - Nice choice on Hades music.
This was an enjoyable journey. I feel so nostaglic remembering the raids of past.
I kind of agree with what you said about optional and summonable bosses, even though I never experienced it for myself. But you know as well as I that people would immediately start complaining about mandatory content. Because if you enjoy raiding, which you do, then you want to do all the bosses, which makes that world content required. And you made it very clear before Shadowlands that you don't want mandatory content outside of the raids itself.
Ulduar is so good because it didn't have you toggle on hard mode, you did something in the dungeon to trigger HM which gave not only a reason behind the HM but the ability to HM some bosses and not others. Greatest game design ever that they completely threw out the window with a toggle on your nameplate.
So funny btw to watch this as someone who stopped raiding in TBC. The difference between those raids and current raid content... just feels like LSD trips, man. Everything is glowing and blinking and so on and so forth, so cluttered. Not to say that has to be a bad thing but it really looks like a different game to me.
I started chuckling when you said Ulduar is a fluke. Me and a friend have said that so many times. But yeah, it is the best raid they ever created.
this is why i'm exicted for Wrath classic. I want to relive the fights that I barley remember because I was so young and had shit internet. So many great Wrath fights
Make the best out of it.
But to be honest I did beat every boss in tbc, did a lot of crazy or unbelievable stuff back than with my friends and they did even more than me. But that is in the past and redoing it would not bring back the old days.
I rather do new stuff instead of just feeding on nostalgia. I certainly would love to see more sense of adventure and theme in my current mmo, that is what I am missing from the good old days of tbc and even more from the vanilla days, but I could for example never go back to tabbed combat.
Finally!! The cliff hanger left me genuinely pissed lmao
I think that it is universally believed that the top three in any order will be ICC, Karazhan, and Ulduar. I’ve never seen any TH-camr list another raid under top 3. Honestly I’m happy with it. Cool list, p.1 and p.2
Great, wholesome videos with interesting and fun stories on top. Thanks, Preach-man, 10/10.
Thought I was going to have to wait a while for this, so happy I don't. I can't stand retail atm (PvP focused) but I'm on my tbc prep. Happy that even though we are on different half's of the same coin that I can still enjoy your content. Keep preaching Preach!
Good newwws everyone, the slime is glowing again!
I was wondering why he didn’t give this raid number one then I remembered he doesn’t play with sound so he didn’t experience the epic soundtrack and atmosphere like the rest of us.
We've done some ZG speed running for fun in p4 (me on my ele) and it was honestly the most fun I've had raiding in all of Classic. More than even being #1 in the country, for a bit. It's just such a flavourful place.
Also, the music in AQ20, dude, you can just park your character there and vibe for an hour. And while it probably was a bit too easy with the gear we had, it was still heaps of fun, too.
I didn't expect mine and Mike's opinions to line up so much. Ulduar was just insane how good it was. The bosses were fun, but the sense of scale and awe in that raid have never been recreated since. Walking into the Antechamber of Ulduar and hearing the music for the first time... god, still sends chills down my spine. And the courtyard into the beggining with the skybox and the pillars of light from the towers. Yeah, Ulduar was just mental.
As an eternal Blackrock Foundry fanboy I'm more than satisfied with this result. The voice acting was so wonderfully expressive. Every boss was good to fantastic and the transmogs are still uncontested in my eyes for several classes. The DK, warrior, warlock, paladin and shaman sets hold up brilliantly to this day, 7 years later, and the weapons from that place were beautiful. This was the first time Blizzard really overhauled fire and explosion effects in WoW (Nazjatar redid them to look like liquid fire everywhere and it's strange), and bombs no longer looked like they let out a red fart cloud - they looked properly lethal. Gruul was the weakest boss and he was still fine, to tank he was absolutely thrilling and terrifying. At any moment you could accidentally cleave the raid and crush them, the next moment solo soak the other cleave and explode into flames.
Only old school raids I ever prog'd were Kara and Ulduar. For the longest time I thought it was just personal bias that I had those two as my top raids in the game. Guess I just got lucky. Quit Legion just before Nighthold, so thats kind of a bummer.
Karazhan is my favourite raid, hands down. It was absolutely perfect in every way. The fact that people continued to run Kara throughout the expansion just because speaks volumes. Also hunter (which I was at the time) absolutely trivialized Moroes, and that made me happy.
Yeah i raided Kara from start of tbc till the end and never got bored of it.
I remember leveling alts just to go back and do Kara again. We had a group of 10 of us that would even go after BT or Sunwell. Run till 2 in the morning just for the hell of it.
Please do more videos on stuff like this. Maybe rate expansion systems over other expansions? Dungeon list? There are so many good ideas you can do for more stuff around this its crazy!
Love this Preach.
loved every seconds of this including the first part, lets us know abit more about you and how you shaped as a player. and ulduar has to be the top amazing raid so many good memories from this
As someone who raided almost exclusively in TBC & WoTLK and only came back to WoW to raid in Castle Nathria. My first thought when I started this two part video series was "I wonder where he is going to place Karazhan and Ulduar". Low and behold they are number 1 & 2 on the list. Seems like TBC & WoTLK were some good times for raiding. If not the best.
Everytime I go farm Ulduar for Tmog or the mount or even Timewalking and hear the music kick in when I enter the inside of Ulduar, I get this overwhelming wave of extreme nostalgia of being a kid and staying up far too late just to raid Ulduar with my guild. It was the start of my raiding career from what I remember and nothing hits me with such intense nostalgia like the raid music...
I agree with most of the list. But yes Ulduar and Karazhan is just pure magic. Gruul's lair is also up there. Its like your first ever Christmas eve. You was so immersed into the whole scenery and lore. Such good memories. I think Wow devs reached their peak during TBC and Wotlk. Such good content that was produced during those two expansion. I feel blessed and happy i was there to play through it. Not many new mmorpg players will understand how really good this was back in the day with optional hardmodes. I struggle to find anything remotely close to past content in today's games.
I really enjoyed myself watching you relive those memories in the vids. Good times preach... good times!
Another awesome video, loved it, thanks for the memories Mike!
Growing up raiding Naxxaramas, The Eye, Obsidian Sanctum, Ulduar, Trial of the Crusader, and Icecrown Citadel was something really fucking special
Oh and of course, Onyxia’s Lair
As a Boomkin I absolutely loved the nighthold, botanist especially! Mythic shoulders and aoe with moonfirenspam was amazing, never had such good logs again haha
I think you hit the nail on the head with Ulduar. Yes, the fights were very very good but it took you on an adventure which is the more important part for me now that I think about it. You went from ice caves to green planes to a planetarium to everything. Like holy shit that raid was amazing.
I never got the hate for Trial of the Grand Crusader. I really loved every fight in there bar the faction champions as well. As a more casual player by that stage it was great to have a raid that was on the shorter side and actually felt fun to play not like you were forced to dedicate days to.
Loved this vid and Pt1. Shame there's no option for you to create your own guild from everyone you've met and bonded with thus far.
Feels really good to watch someone talk about genuinely happy memories.
Cheers Mike.
A lot of good points, I definitely agree on the opening. Black Temple was a complete tedious grind to get through but it did end in one of the most memorable raid boss fights to date.
I think a lot people forget, when they praise Ulduar, that this was really the culmination of classic Blizzard's creative and technical drive. This was around the time they were bought out and their artistic vision for the game clearly wasn't their own anymore, when shareholder pressure and profit optimization started to limit what one could realistically do. Ulduar is in many ways a memento of what was, before modern ActiBlizz started to take shape.