Okay kids, sit down and make yourselves comfortable while grandpappy Frostheim tells you a little story about a boss called Razorgore the Untamed in a place called Blackwing’s Lair.
This will maybe learn you kids something about what wiping was really like, back in my days.
Now this was a long time ago, before most of you were even rolled. Our guild had finally gotten Molten Core down on farm status and many of us were itching to move into BWL and start collecting more T2 pieces, the legendary Dragonstalker’s set.
As you can imagine, we had our share of wiping while learning Molten Core. There were the wipes while learning each new boss, and the retro-wipes on Sulfuron when we didn’t get the priest positioning right. But to be honest, I never learned what wiping really was until BWL.
You step in to BWL and you’re in the room of Razorgore, the first boss. No trash, no wasted time – just step in and fight the first boss. At the time we were raiding twice a week. One night we cleared MC and Onyxia, and the other we started learning Razorgore.
And how we wiped. We would play for three hours, wiping on the same boss over and over and over. And then the next week we’d come back and do it again. Then the next week, and the next.
The fight required someone to control Razorgore and use his ability to pop all the eggs in the place. Meanwhile, various mobs spawned continuously until there were 40 of them in the place. Every time you killed one, another spawned to replace it.
It was chaos.
Our strat was to have two tanks kiting the mobs around in circles while the dps took out the one kind of mob that wasn’t kitable (hoping that the random respawn would be a kitable type). The result of this is we had tons of mobs spawning with no aggro.
As hunters, we had some unique roles in this fight.
Now this was before Misdirection, so we had no way to direct the mobs to the tanks. We could and did lay freezing traps to slow them down — and that was no easy task as the time. You see, back then you couldn’t lay traps while in combat, so when the cooldown was up we’d have to recall our pet, Feign Death (which dropped us out of combat) and try to instantly lay a trap before we were thrust back into combat.
Now a big problem was healers getting ganked by the newly spawned mobs from healing aggro. One way that we combatted this is the healers were only allowed to heal their kiting tanks — they could not heal anyone else because they had to keep their threat down. We had a whole other set of healers who weren’t allowed to heal at all — they were on standby for phase 2.
Healing the dpser and the healers was the hunters’ job.
Seriously.
Whenever someone (usually a rogue) in our vicinity was low on health, we ran over to them in a pause between spawns and bandaged them. They couldn’t bandage themselves because, again, they would get healing threat. As hunters this was our job because we could Feign Death to remove the threat we got from bandaging.
However, this was much harder back then than it is now. You see, back in vanilla days FD worked just a bit differently than it does now. As you know, all mobs have a chance to resist your FD, and anyone who resists isn’t fooled and can keep attacking you (and remembers your threat). Well back then if any mob resisted your FD, then every mob resisted your FD. And, of course, you were in a room with 40 mobs. The chances of just one of them resisting was pretty darned good.
Of course back in those days we hunters had honed a slightly different skillset than kids today. We’d bandage our comrades, a mob would aggro on us, and FD would get resisted. So then we’d whip off a concussive shot and start kiting the mob over near one of the kiting tanks in hopes that they’d have a taunt available to take him off our hands. Once the handoff was made we’d return to our assigned group to find them all dead, and shortly after we’d die too as the whole raid wiped. Again.
It was good times.
Nothing in Molten Core had prepared me for this kind of wiping. And while it was at times frustrating, it was mostly exciting. Raiding in vanilla was an elite occupation. Very, very few guilds could even get the necessary 40 people together for a raid, and fewer still could get through MC. Just by being in BWL we were fighting a boss that fewer than 1% of players had ever even attempted. We were thrilled to be there, and excited by our slow progress from week to week.
Nowadays things are a bit different. I can’t imagine many guilds today that could wipe for 3 hours on the same boss, first in the instance, week after week after week without having half the guild members give up and probably deguild in anger.
Heck, when my 10-man group starts to approach an hour of wiping on one boss people start suggesting it’s time to give up and move on.
Kids these days don’t know how easy they’ve got it.
Back in my day we had perseverence. Those first couple bosses in BWL were designed so that you would spend weeks wiping on the boss before getting it. Nobody one-shot them. I can tell you we appreciated the slightest progress from one wipe to the next. We were encouraged by living an extra few minutes; that was progress. Back in my day we knew how to HTFU.
So that’s how endgame raids were in my day. And after a month of wiping on Razorgore I can tell you it felt good to finally take him down, and we were excited to step into the next room to fight the next boss, Vael, who required more weeks of wiping.
So remember that next time you’re wiping endlessly on a boss. Remember what wiping used to be like, and quit paying so much attention to beating the boss. Just pay attention to living a little bit longer, making just a little bit more progress. Focus on just making the next step.
Eventually you’ll get there. One step at a time. And it will feel so good.
The good ole days
I love reading posts like this, because I never got to experience Vanilla WoW. I’ve only been playing for a little over a year now.
I was always grateful for being the MT and just having to control Razor. You all looked like you had a hard job!
But yes, I remember all the bosses in BWL (except for Lashlayer and the 2 pinata drakes) requiring days of learning. I still cringe when I recall the days of Chromaggus attempts.
It’s very sad that we used to be able to get 40 people who were dedicated to learning bosses and making small progress and now it’s hard to get 10 people reliably some days. People were indeed spoiled on the easy crap that WotLK launched with.
On the one hand I agree, on the other hand I don’t. In the old days only people with no life
in raid guilds could see this end-content. Today it is made open to all. I think that is a good thing. That said, I get frustrated too by people who join raids and then quit after a wipe (‘this won’t work’) or after half the bosses because ‘it takes too long’.
Yesterday I did a pug on Sunwell. Oh man what a dissaster. People just not listening even if you explained that this is not a tank-and-spank and lvl 80 still get you wiped. And even after you’ve wiped, they still don’t listenen … I don’t care about being inexperienced or making mistakes which get me wiped. I hate slackers though …
I think that is the biggest issue. There are all kinds of people with all kinds of attitudes and since we all pay for our own game, we are entitled to that, but it is damn frustrating sometimes getting serious people. In the old days all raiders were serious, because if you weren’t you would not even be allowed to get into it. MC and BWL requires on top of that heavy attunement to get telleported. No locks that day. So really only the serious ones made it. You made it, then you were serious. That I miss a bit
As a final note, BWL is still fun. You can still wipe on the first boss due to a persistent bug that kicks in sometimes that after you kill the boss, mobs will continue to come for ever. You can still wipe on the second because people forgot that armor doesn’t protect you against fire if you stand in it. Then after that it gets even better with the slow-spells and the tons of little dragons. Oh, I’ve seen so manny pugs end there because there you are own you’re own for a big part. It still separated the boys from the men sometimes
Great story…I would love to hear more, since I only started playing after BC came out. Also, is this reason Hrist is so full of hate now? It would make sense.
That no life crap has always pissed me off. As Frost said, we raided 2 days out of the week and those raids lasted about 6 hours on average. We were by no means the server 1st, 10th or even 50th I am sure, to drop any raid bosses but we were still able to do so without giving up any of our lives and I am sure this is true of a MAJORITY of people who have beat vanilla raid content. Hell, people who do nothing but play WoW 24/7 are having fun most likely, who are we to judge they are making poor use of their life?
I hate watching sports. I couldn’t care less who wins the bowls, cups or whatever dishes people are awarded for being good at handling balls. Does this mean I can say avid sports fans have no life? Of course not. That is what they enjoy doing and they aren’t hurting anyone (well, usually, I guess some people like to throw down over their favorite ball cradlers) so let them do it.
Nice post on the old days of wiping. Today the only boss I have spent 3 hours wiping too is 25 Yogg and a RL friend asked me are there many days like this? I told him about the many, many days of nothing but wipes learning BWL. The thought of Chromag tranq rot makes me cringe alittle.
We did things differntly (as most guilds do) Being horde we had shamans and earth bind totems, So we hunters kited all the dragonkins. Good times. back then if you could not kite you did not get invite into BWL. We kited so many differnt mobs through out that instance.
And that is why I will never get rid of my T1/T2 gear and weapons. That was a time that we my never see again.
My guild maxes out at about 5-6 wipes. I’ve seen pugs go to 3-4, but usually no more than 2. I’m not sure if it’s a shame, or if I should just feel lucky that I never went through entire nights of wiping. Way to pay your dues though….I guess.
Vezax this Monday should test our patience though. We’ve never had more than a couple tries on him before stopping time, but we’ll have a full 3 hours this Monday.
The first time I saw that place. I was hanging around with 40 level 70′s with the achievement system just released. Shiny Tier 6 with our level 80 abilities. A lack of wiping did occur until we reached Nefarion. The suppression room sucked. I don’t know how you dealt with that kind of frustration.
This is kind of parallel to the reason why the new flightspeeds suck..
150%!? Come on that feeling of going from 60% to 280% was the best -_-
Haha, great memories. And no Hrist learned to hate long before we did 40 man raids. I remember when I was leveling the conversations of agony when Hrist, Awesome Mage and the one who I will call Blametaker would run 10 and 15 man pugs in Scholo, Strat and UBRS. The hilarity of the explanation in chat about the excruciating fiasco those raids would become. Although if Blametaker is to be believed, Hrist’s hate comes from long before even this time, but that was my first experience of it
I was a young stripling warrior, I don’t know how they could stand doing it over and over again, playing with idiots. I wanted hit 60 so that at least that would be one more person who could turn the tide back against failure.
As for not having a life, we used to play a lot, and now not as much, but I look at raiding as my bowling league. I do it every week and I take it seriously, but I do it because I have fun and enjoy it. Also the camaraderie of accomplishing things with friends is very gratifying. Some people watch TV, some people go out drinking at bars and clubs. I like to play a game with my friends and kill some mobs. To each their own.
Those were the days! I’ve been playing this game since ’05. Our guild had a helluva time getting past the Baron in MC and the Tiger Boss in ZG. Once everyone got on the same page it just seemed to click and we got pass them. Our guild leader played a shaman at the time and was a good healer, but when someone at his house turned on their microwave it would interfere with his router and d/c him. We had Tiger down to 5% and someone threw some popcorn into the microwave. Naturally he d/c’d on us and we wiped. We never let him forget that, even to this day. But you are absolutely right, when you did finally take them down it was pop the champagne time!
i remember doing this as an 80 when a few guys got together and decided to do bwl. its not the easiest thing to do for me then, i couldnt imagine a room full of lvl 60′s. you old farts got my mad respects
The whole ‘having no life’ statement is a bit overboard as Hrist said…
I agree that we choose to play video games, other people to choose to watch sports or do other things. Both choices are equally as much of a life as the other, and people shouldn’t be put down for doing something they enjoy.
But I also think Armin, and many other people, simply use the term in a similar way to calling something that you find stupid to be ‘gay’. It’s not actually gay, you just don’t like it…
Now back to the topic of those who had time to raid, and those who did not…
I love video games, when I was in school, I’d spend the vast majority of my spare time plowing through the latest Final Fantasy / Kingdom Hearts / Metal Gear several times over.
But as much as I love video games, I could never find 6 straight hours to guarantee to a group of 39 other people that I will be there, reliably, set nights of the week. It’s just not a reality to me.
The reason i love to see raids made more accessible to people rather than ONLY a challenge to the elite, is that I love taking in the story of a game and its universe. In WoW, a lot of the major plot-lines are involved in raiding. That story should be made more available to the people who put in the effort to get to that level, not only those with lots of spare time. Hell, make 5 man versions with quest greens for all i care, i’d just like to get in there and experience the content. Blizzard already has different difficulty and group sizes, why not cater to both by making a non-challenge version for people interested in the lore, and an uber-hard one for people looking to cry themselves to sleep every night?
If there was one thing I could wish for I wanted to go back in the Vanilla days and learn proper kiting, I can’t seem to kite adds at Gluth well. And I’m pretty sure that a few weeks of wiping would’ve taught me to kite. However I guess you will feel something similar when going from Naxxramas to Ulduar (exept for Flame Leviathan he is pretty easy). Thanks for the post love to read up on the good old days, before my hunter was born. I hope there will be a guide to proper kiting in the future, thanks.
Regards
Ghraal of Dragonmaw
Yeah the good old day….which i NEVER want to see again
I also still own the T1 and T2 sets and i am still proud that i “earned” them becaues it was really “work” back then. While we were actually quite fast with Razorgore (we only wiped 46 times, so it was about 4 weeks of trying) Huhuran was our nemesis and i remember farming, farming, farming, having discussions with raid members who did not want to farm, and wiping, wiping, wiping …. you get the picture.
I agree that in those days you really needed commited people that lived for the game (though still had a life, during our vanilla days several babies were born etc.). Sometimes I miss that commitment though we have a rather decent raid were a lot of old times are still active.
Still, while the purple tint of days long gone by bathes the vanilla experience in a dreamy glow, I am quite happy that I dont have to suffer through the 40 man raids anymore. Huge raid pools, the usual equation…the more ppl you have the more brasspoles are among them…fighting over the few drops there were, the aforementioned wipe orgies…yes it was fulfilling to finally kill a boss but by wipe week three i was on the verge of killing other raid members, because wiping is NEVER fun…
So yeah, vanilla raiding made me the player i am today, which is good (though ppl who suffer my scorn as they do not play properly might beg to differ there ^^) but if tomorrow Blizz would open new 40 ppl raids with the old ultra step learning curve i might actually say…HELL NO (might, because i had to learn the hard way, never say never in this bloody game
).
So I rather enjoy fond memories of days gone by, forgetting the wiping, bitching, bickering, while concentrating on the highs you got when finally one of the tough guys was down. The human mind is really amazing isn’t it?
Oh and Anders, get a MC pug, well 3 ppl are enough and get yourself the leaf for the hunters bow. Then up to Wintergrasp and get Demon there. When you manage to beat him (only use the vanilla skills) you know how to kite
Hargrim, Die Silberne Hand
Gees, people missed a smilie after the no-life comments. Stepped on a toe?
If people are still offended, let me say than, I’m a no-lifer in this respect too.
It was a joke. That said, to do serious raiding you need to put effort in it. It’s not just the hours you play, but also the thinking, playing with EJ’s sheet or other means of calculating or testing, looking up websites like these, making them (ducking …) etc. It is a fact that succesful raiders probably spend significant more time than the avarage 98% that hasn’t downed XT…
Yes, this place was wtf f-this game material. But once Shadow of the Necropolis came out, I realised how much I missed BWL. BWL will still always be my fav raid instance.
Oh and one more thing, Screw Vehicle Combat, rly -.-
The feeling of downing a boss back then was so much better, so much more intense, because you really worked for it! But it also required an amount of time and effort that I no longer want to put in this game
I do vote for new 40 player dungeons though. That always felt way more “epic”.
Anyways, nice post, brings up alot of nostalgia.
The Razorgore fight was definitely crazy. I really enjoyed the craziness, the challenge, and ultimately the progress.
@ Masaleo108
Oh you jest, EVERYONE loves sitting on dragons circling Malygos pressing 1 1 2 1 1 2
Great story, it’s representative of how current players can look back on vanilla WoW with misty eyes. I raided MC for awhile and was set for BWL but then BC came out and I never got to saviour the experience.
Funnily enought, I read this story when my guild’s 10 man team were wiping on Hodir. And I’m talking 60+ wipes over 3 weeks. It was hard on everyone, taxing on peep’s gold reserves and general confidence. I told some team mates about this story and I felt galvanised from reading it and our raid’s efforts so far. Our team persisted and never waivered through 2 hrs of pain last nite until we downed him on our final attempt.
Nice to read about Raids I’ll never get into. Dont know how many wipes I could stand, but that would mostly be a time-issue: there’s only so much time to play…
As for the ‘having a life’: I work 36 hours or more, I play squash one night a week, I have 2 small kids that need to be brought to bed and, during the day, want to be entertained, and I have a wife that knows and understands I like to play WoW, but doés want attention every now and then aswell. If you then count stuff like cleaning, getting the groceries, going to birthdayparties, talking to friends and, occasionally, sleeping, there’s just not a lot of time left to play WoW. Note that I havent even mentioned watching tv or, god forbid, reading a book…
Now I’m not saying that people who cán play a lot, don’t have a real life. Their real life must be a lot less time-consuming then mine though…. That said, I love every minute of it, and enjoy the few hours of WoW I can squeeze in all the more
well i never had the chance too play only vannila since wotlk was out already and i always buy all expansions when i can but i must say this frm all the vannila raids i dispise and love BWL the most and if ur a hunter in a raid where tanks and healers get 1st dibs on onyxcia cloacks ebonrock is the baddest mother off them all
Oh man the old raiding days, good times. BWL is the most awesome instance ive ever played. One thing I will always remember is from MC though, in our guild the hunters had something called main puller=P silly maybe but our class leader was always the main puller and when he wasnt there the raid leader would tell some other hunter to do it. I remember just waiting for my turn and i think i had atleast 5 or 6 gs before i finally got the chance=P boy was I nervous but I cant remember if i screwed up or not=P
I remember the first encounter in BWL we wiped sooo much.The Teamspeak Server Noises ranged from firstly “ambitious strategy talk” through “unnatural loud noises yelling and screaming from everyone” during the encounter to “X-rated curses” followed by “resigning sighs” and “my X is red” comments.
Hell we even handed out speed potions and enchanted a pair of boots with speed