About Naxxramas

[Thanatos45]

I never raided retail Vanilla, but I did hardcore Sunwell progression in TBC, and Sunwell was very similar to Naxx in terms of difficulty. One of the guilds I was in died attempting M'uru (who was harder than any Naxx boss) after 300+ wipes, and I had to find a new home.

The way guilds die on bosses like that is you throw yourselves at it for months, can't kill it, and enough people stop showing up to the point where you cannot field a proper raid composition to make strong attempts on the boss. On top of that, you cannot recruit good/geared enough people to fill those slots, and eventually, when enough people burn out, the higher-ups will call it quits, and the guild will either disband or stop raiding until the next expansion. This will cause the core members to quit the game, raid elsewhere, or go casual until the next expansion, or forever.

Holy crap. 300+ wipes? Is this with the same strategy over and over with M'uru or what? At any rate, it's unfortunate that it ended up dying in the end. It's never fun watching a guild you've been a part of crumble away in your eyes.

That sounds about right. If I were to be in that situation, I'd probably just give up after several wipes in a row, not 300+. It's not fun watching resources you've built up for a whole raid (high level potions for example) suddenly being used and abused like candy in a middle of a tense boss fight, only to wipe out at the end. In the video I linked up above, the video owner's guild actually had to "borrow" several high geared warriors to tank for specific bosses(I wanna say 4 horseman, but I could be wrong). I guess the desperation was real, the want to clear Naxx and gain the fame and loot from the final boss. But things like that, as you said, can break guilds, hell, break people so that they may never want to run a raid or play a MMORPG for a while.

I actually wasn't expecting any responses today, but I was proved wrong. I like this forum

[WhistlerWCT]

I was raiding vanilla.
We got Cthun down around time when Naxxramas was released.
My guild was solid, battle hardened unit, that had core that played together from pre-MC leveling time.
We managed to get down 3 bosses in Naxx before guild fell apart.
The level of effort and dedication that instance required was many times more then raiding guilds saw or endured anywhere in vanilla before setting foot in Naxx. Illidan's words "You are not prepared" were much more fitting for original Naxx then BT.
Overall damage values, amount of preparation required for a single attempt at boss, hard enrages on very short timers while coupled with not that complex but very punishing fight mechanics was giving you feeling that you are banging your head against solid concrete block.

And yes i raided hardcore during BC (and further expansions) and i can agree with Robotron that M'uru in SWP was probably the most brutal raid boss regarding breaking apart guilds that considered themselves hardcore and got to him before nerfbat (not even speaking about WOTLK talent patch, after that whole instance became joke).
My guild was lucky to survive the process and kill him prenerf which took us over 500 pulls. We didn't manage to repeat the kill on the next reset after our first kill even though we dumped another 70tish pulls (with 15 or so sub 1%wipes) on him that reset. In any case Blizzard recognised that he was tuned a bit too hard and slightly nerfed him in few weeks.
When i analyze the situation back then i see that what helped my guild to survive is that M'uru was 25man boss so essencially your dedicated core could have been smaller comparing to 40man raid roster that was required for Naxxramas. Should M'uru have been 40 man that would mean total doom for guilds.


So yes... Naxx40 in vanilla was not treating raiders well.

[The Shortest Path]

There were only a few dozen guilds across all servers that had Kel'Thuzad down before TBC came out, and those were the nolifiest of the nolifers, massive tubs of lard with faces buried under rolls of fat and poopsocks decorating the walls of their basement hovel.

[Holmes]

naxx is totally overestimated nowadays imo
back then it was normal to raid aq, naxx and stuff. atleast for those who started playing wow early and did not have a fulltime job ;p i was surpsied how some glorify naxx nowadays on private servers

you just had to farm a lot in vanilla to progress. not only for naxx, but for all instances. all of them had been much more difficult back then than they will be here for various reasons.

so while 80% of the players were progressing MC, ZG, BWL and/or AQ, you still had to get your stuff for naxx somehow. also, those guilds that progressed naxx were usually still doing BWL+AQ, so the demand of time to farm and raid was high. so the struggle was not only naxx itself, but the vanilla progress in total. everyone was progressing, everyone was raiding (several raiddungeons) and everyone was farming 24/7.

so it was pretty common that ppl or even entire guilds quit playing during vanilla because of the time you had to invest. more and more realised its just a farm-fest that requires nothing but time. thats why many gave up and thats one reason why vanilla was so hardcore, not because of bossmechanics.


edit: another reason why vanilla wow was/is so time intensiv and addictiv/hardcore is/was the dkp system most guilds used. you had to participate in pretty much every raid if you wanted to get your items. plus many guilds let you trade consumables for dkp. so while you didnt earn dkp during raids, you've been farming consumables for your guild to earn more dkp

[Dementia]

I think Naxx was challenging for different reasons.

-Having to have 40 people do what they're suppose to
-Poor connections / servers
-Few resources available for theorycrafting

I also found it a bit amusing the guy in the video kept comparing the difficulty of Naxx40 to Naxx10/25. Of course it took people longer to down bosses in Naxx40- they had never seen them before and had to work out the mechanics themselves.

M'uru gets my vote for most difficult. The mechanics weren't necessarily hard but the dps + healing check was insane. One person making one tiny mistake resulted in a wipe. Literally only 3? or 4? guilds killed M'uru before any nerfs.

[Robotron]

Holy crap. 300+ wipes? Is this with the same strategy over and over with M'uru or what?

We did tweak the strat a few times. The fight was just stupidly hard and tuned to the point of ludicrousness.

If I were to be in that situation, I'd probably just give up after several wipes in a row, not 300+.

And that's one of the big things that separates the top tier raiders from the rest. You're willing to kill a boss, whatever it takes. My guild wiped 400 times on Heroic Lich King (even harder than M'uru), but we kept at it, and we finished that tier ranked world 49th.

[Thanatos45]

I was raiding vanilla.
We got Cthun down around time when Naxxramas was released.
My guild was solid, battle hardened unit, that had core that played together from pre-MC leveling time.
We managed to get down 3 bosses in Naxx before guild fell apart.
The level of effort and dedication that instance required was many times more then raiding guilds saw or endured anywhere in vanilla before setting foot in Naxx. Illidan's words "You are not prepared" were much more fitting for original Naxx then BT.
Overall damage values, amount of preparation required for a single attempt at boss, hard enrages on very short timers while coupled with not that complex but very punishing fight mechanics was giving you feeling that you are banging your head against solid concrete block.

And yes i raided hardcore during BC (and further expansions) and i can agree with Robotron that M'uru in SWP was probably the most brutal raid boss regarding breaking apart guilds that considered themselves hardcore and got to him before nerfbat (not even speaking about WOTLK talent patch, after that whole instance became joke).
My guild was lucky to survive the process and kill him prenerf which took us over 500 pulls. We didn't manage to repeat the kill on the next reset after our first kill even though we dumped another 70tish pulls (with 15 or so sub 1%wipes) on him that reset. In any case Blizzard recognised that he was tuned a bit too hard and slightly nerfed him in few weeks.
When i analyze the situation back then i see that what helped my guild to survive is that M'uru was 25man boss so essencially your dedicated core could have been smaller comparing to 40man raid roster that was required for Naxxramas. Should M'uru have been 40 man that would mean total doom for guilds.


So yes... Naxx40 in vanilla was not treating raiders well.

I'm starting to see a trend now. Many guilds I'm starting to see thought that with their past experiences with other dungeons and raids, they would be able to handle Naxx. After many attempts and wipes, these guilds either break apart or eventually beat it..... but very few actually did.

I guess the same applies for M'uru, except he eventually got a nerf from Blizzard..... Wow. Blizzard really knew how to really knock people down to their knees with punishing raid dungeons. I assume that isn't exactly the same nowadays with MoP and WoD, right? I haven't played either, so if someone would correct me on this, pelase do so.

[Thanatos45]

I think Naxx was challenging for different reasons.

-Having to have 40 people do what they're suppose to
-Poor connections / servers
-Few resources available for theorycrafting

I also found it a bit amusing the guy in the video kept comparing the difficulty of Naxx40 to Naxx10/25. Of course it took people longer to down bosses in Naxx40- they had never seen them before and had to work out the mechanics themselves.

M'uru gets my vote for most difficult. The mechanics weren't necessarily hard but the dps + healing check was insane. One person making one tiny mistake resulted in a wipe. Literally only 3? or 4? guilds killed M'uru before any nerfs.

40 headless chickens running around trying to heal, buff, or revive each other while the boss just smiles and squashes them all..... does that sound about right for most wipes?

Poor connections/servers? Oh god..... yeah, I'm imagining my example up there, with added 5 m/s, more or less(is this kinda correct?) of lag....

That's true, theorycrafting way back then was limited due to the small amount resources available, no databases online or wikias that up to date movesets for each boss, as well as talent builders, etc...

M'uru for MVB (Most Valuable Boss) in raids prenerf.

[Thanatos45]

Holy crap. 300+ wipes? Is this with the same strategy over and over with M'uru or what?

We did tweak the strat a few times. The fight was just stupidly hard and tuned to the point of ludicrousness.

If I were to be in that situation, I'd probably just give up after several wipes in a row, not 300+.

And that's one of the big things that separates the top tier raiders from the rest. You're willing to kill a boss, whatever it takes. My guild wiped 400 times on Heroic Lich King (even harder than M'uru), but we kept at it, and we finished that tier ranked world 49th.

Ah, I see. I had a feeling that was the case, but I wanted confirmation.

That's absolutely true. If you don't have the resolve to accomplish a dream, you'll never be able to do it. And congrats on the Heroic Lich King, even if I'm very late on that.

[Xaeminos]

Naxx did break a part a lot of guilds. From my experience, 4H was one of the reasons. It was logistically a pain. It was a c*ckblock encounter. And back then server competition between server/world firsts was also fierce. So who really wanted to help each other? You had to know people. We were also fortunate that our guild was enormous (at the time). We had people lining up to raid.

But the majority of us had no lives. It was hard. My schedule was pretty much get back from work. Raid for like 5-6 hours everday week day except Friday. Friday, Sat, Sunday I'd party all night, and raid some more/farm mats for the following week of raids.

But i personally didn't find dying over and over again that big a deal. I enjoyed the social aspect - perhaps much more than others. What WAS tiring though was guild drama. It got 10 times worse because Naxx was so much harder. It was ahead of it's time. People got frustrated. People got burnt out. The players that weren't pulling their weight as much were exposed.

People talk about the skill level of players not be as good. Maybe at an absolute level, but not at a relative level. Naxx40 will be easier this time for most not only because the skill level is higher, but because there is more information now. People know what to expect. What pitfalls to plan for. Everything. This not only includes strategy and boss "mechanics", but logistically too. Want to finish Naxx? Get your bazillion well geared tanks ready.

It's just my opinion, but there's an epic feeling when you accomplish something with 40 people. That's a lot of yelling and screaming and people pew pewing at a boss. I burnt out early TBC, but there was something lacking with only 25 people. It was .... dull.

Enjoy the wipes and the social interaction. Even if it takes a billion tries. Naxx isn't hard because it's boss mechanically hard. Vanilla WoW is a journey. Each step is an accomplishment - one of many things that was missing when i came back briefly for WoD. And self-admittedly some of it is nostalgia talking as well. But god, who wants to play a game where everyone is in their garrison the entire time and there's no sense of server community.