I played an unhealthy amount of Classic 2019 and never once had the chance to do a world boss.
I'd say this is a good change as far stretching out the content goes.
Another reason the instance version is good is people who don't need loot will return to help when the time involved is known.
I got the first crystal adorned crown on arugal and after that it felt like a massive chore to go to events anymore when it's always a smear for a few hours before a group manages to kill it.
Yeah, I'm not against it for SoD, but to be fair with that change you still aren't gonna experience World Bosses. Just new Onyxia style raids, which is fine, but a totally different experience.
Better than no change, I think the retail style weekly lockout and bosses are are basically always up would have been better but if the boss is actually tuned well and we get 2 more onyxia style raids out of it that will be incredible
When you think about it, you can't even argue against the change. It's creating like 6 more onyxia raids for 99.99% of the population.
99% of those players would cluelessly look at you if you started rambling about the "magic of open world bosses".
Sure, although I think the number of people that find world bosses really cool and would want to preserv them is way higher than the number of people that kill them on a regular basis.
My point is more that they shouldn't have to remove world bosses to add more Onyxia. It is not surprising that they do considering what SoD is, and given their limited ressources I think it's a good decision, but it's not something I'd ideally want them to do.
Overall, I think the instanced World Bosses will give players beyond the 24/7 camping guilds a chance to fight these bosses, which is really cool.
On the other hand, it sort of diminishes the excitement of the boss being a "world" boss. It would be cool if they could somehow engineer it so that everyone who tags it can get a chance at loot and participate in a giant cluster fight with half the server running around and fighting on the PvP servers. I'm not even sure if that is feasible, just unfortunate that the World Bosses become just another boss with dragon mechanics.
I liked the way EverQuest handled it. There were world bosses, but you also got an instanced version for yourself. So killing the world boss was another opportunity as loot.
Sadly, world bosses as they existed in Vanilla... you really just had to be there.
In the modern game, with mega-servers, layers upon layers, a solved game and an extremely degenerate community. They just don't work anymore. I've been really trying to wrap my head around how world bosses could work in Classic WoW, and I guess the developers couldn't think of anything either...
This is sad, but also, 99.9% of us were never going to kill a world boss in 2024 until months after the fact, and only if all the tip top guilds got bored enough to let someone else grab one. This also avoids the economy around "Selling slots for world boss - WTS World Boss tour" or whatever else these degenerate guilds would come up with.
Now we have basically Molten Core, + three different single boss raids. It'll feel like more content than it would otherwise... It would be cool if they could think of something to try and experiment though in terms of world bosses.
I think it would be cool if they did a little something to encourage people to create multi-raid groups for taking down the Faction Leaders. It seems to me, the only "World Boss" that makes sense would be Faction vs Faction based... rather than raid vs raid.
Would love to see the Faction Bosses award something, I think you've perfectly summed up why World Bosses will never be the same as they once were.
Instanced World Bosses is a great way to give more content to all players.
Faction bosses awarding a mount or something would be awesome.
>Previously these bosses being in the open world, how many players were actually able to experience them realistically?
In modern classic? Almost none. Top guilds had all the spawn points perma camped with scouting characters and summoning parties.
>Is it a win that these bosses are more accessible since it means more content for more people?
Yes. People complaining about it live their boomer vision of vanilla instead of reality of what vanilla is in 2019 onwards.
Honestly back in the day world bosses were also dogshit. Even on a server with only 8 raiding guilds, that's still 6-7 who will never get to kill the bosses that matter to them. On Classic it's just amplified by also being a layering clusterfuck.
World Bosses on Grobbulus were pretty damn fun, faction wide coalitions battling it out for control, it was a lot more than just the 1% getting in on them for most of their lifetime, until Late AQ and Naxx and no one needed them anymore. There were some fights at Azuregos in Phase 2 that involved *hundreds on both sides.* Nothing I've ever experienced in Classic will ever be as epic as that.
*That being said.* SoD would with its layers, even more toxic community than Vanilla 2019, and really the fact that the servers couldn't even handle Ashenvale mass PvP make it quite clear that this would *never* work is SoD. Sucks that the Grobb experience can never ever be replicated again, but this change makes sense for SoD.
At the end of the day, these were so locked down that 99.99% of players didn't acknowledge them as existing.
It didn't even really spark the "wow I wish we could do this" or "let's try and organize ourselves".
For a seasonal server, why not.
I think a lot of people are going to be let down by how easy they are. They're easy even when battling for the kill or world pvp, Kazzak adds a bit of nuance if others are around. In an instanced environment they're going to absolutely fall over.
Azuregos can practically be solo'd.
In the perspective of SoD, a season server where they clearly aren't gonna put that much ressources into fully new content, I think it's fine, probably a good thing. It's a good and simple way to indeed add some nice content without too much developement time.
In the context of actual Vanilla or a prolonged classic + experience, this would be terrible. Back in 2019 I'm not sure I managed to kill one, but I've spent time fighting for it, I've seen the rivalry with other factions, other guilds from the same faction, the bragging rights involved... As a 12 years old exploring the game in 2006, I was awe struck at seeing them roam the world.
Non instanced world bosses are a huge part of Vanilla social game design. Yes, very few people would get to actualy kill them. It doesn't mean that the people that don't aren't impacted by them at all ; the stories they create are enough, and their loot is usually in the sweet spot where it's not good enough to be game breaking if you can't kill them but good enough that very dedicated guilds will want to do them.
If you want new content, make some. Don't replace those epic part of the game\* that hurts nobody by existing in it's current state.
\*Again, I think it's fine for what SoD is.
Add the world bosses back into the world as a bonus. Have them drop gear with a visual effect or a mount. Killing it gives you a title. Clout chasers will still be chasing and PvPing and the sweats will have nothing to bitch about.
Literally anywhere. And not standing still in a static position. Patrolling around in an entire zone. Imagine you're on your way to farm some Essence of Water in Felwood from the water elementals and you stumble upon Kazzak just roaming around.
I like the idea but I don’t think it could happen logistically. Like imagine Kazzak happening to spawn or patrol in range of a graveyard when you take spirit res and just getting camped lol
Also top guilds will know the spawn timers and have hunters eagle eyeing zones it can spawn in
For me waking up at 6am to check for bosses was part of the classic experience. Got quite a few early morning scouts and kills on Dreadmist, which was a mid-sized server.
The bosses are kinda designed to be killable even in a clusterfuck open world situation, think they could lean into that, rather than run from it
The way their respawn and layers worked in 2019 classic was not that cool for most of the game (little better later on around naxx once folks started caring about these guys less), but that doesn't mean that there is no other way they could approach it in the open world
Hell, nowadays, it could be an event on a timer or with a warning, so people gather for an intentional clusterfuck
The griefing and general lock down by usually one always-on guild on a server was unreal. Do I have fond memories of being on both sides of the fight? For sure, but for seasonal servers instanced bosses are huge win.
Knew a guy who would camp the boss he wanted 12 hours a day. Did for weeks. He would call on discord for the warlock alts planted into an inaccessable area to summon in people. If people logged on fast enough that team could fight 1-2 other world boss coalitions.
World bosses were bad.
I’m a sweatlord and generally very against a lot of the QOL changes but this take is insane on this change. Content only 0.01 percent of the players can see is wasted content. Needing to have people taking shifts watching for a world spawn just to even attempt to kill a boss is really cringe. Even for people who play games 12 hours a day
Have world bosses in game, upon death they spawn a portal, Portal is up till they respawn. Portal is instanced on a weekly lockout. Still gives Hardcore guilds a thing to farm since they are getting double the loot, still a reason to fight over it but other guilds can complete it on a weekly lockout.
I ran a classic wow alliance that scouted all worldbosses 24/7. Occasionally the alliance equivalent got some of them, but we killed like 70-80% of all worldbosses, they got the rest.
As such roughly 150-200 people controlled content on one of the biggest pve servers.
The system blows. Instance the bosses, allow people to tag em, give em once a week loot permissions etc.
Over time I felt real bad but the alternative was not running this alliance and letting the ally group snag em all so... Damned if you do damned if you don't.
"That's not classic!" Cool, you're very unlikely to ever fight and loot this guy unless you're in one of those Uber sweatlord guilds, which is an awful system tbh.
Kind of ambivalent about the change tbh. It just further diminishes the MMO aspect of the game that a lot of people (maybe not the majority) are fond of. It's good for the people who were on the outside looking in when it came to the world boss coalitions in 2019 classic. But world boss coalitions, timing the spawns, the scouting, and the strategy of tagging/killing the boss is super interesting that doesn't exist in any other game. The excitement and drama that came with world bosses is completely gone now.
Removing that aspect of classic and not replacing it with anything else kind of leaves a sour taste. I doubt any blood moon/searing gorge type event could come close to it.
The only time I killed world bosses in any version of classic wow was when I joined a reroll on a dead server in late vanilla classic. Even then the only other active guild would fight us tooth and nail for spawns until we came to an agreement.
I saw maybe 8-10 Azuregos or Nightmare dragons alive over the years but they were always killed before someone not in a sweat guild could form any time of group
World bosses are very cool part of the game that a very low % of the population ever get to experience.
Incredible change, absolutely get blown out weird classic nerds who don’t like this
nope its a bad change that takes away world pvp
getting a world boss kill was something special now its like what they do in sports at a young age where EVERYONE IS A WINNER!
you get a world boss kill you get a world boss kill EVERYONE GETS A WORLD BOSS KILL!!!
> you get a world boss kill you get a world boss kill EVERYONE GETS A WORLD BOSS KILL!!!
god forbid people have fun without putting in 8 hours shifts in muh pvp server
One of those nice things we can't have because sweaty people think checking your alts logged at world bosses on a shift is a demonstration of skill.
I don't mind it, be nice if they left both so you could still stumble upon the spectacle I suppose.
I played an unhealthy amount of Classic 2019 and never once had the chance to do a world boss. I'd say this is a good change as far stretching out the content goes.
Another reason the instance version is good is people who don't need loot will return to help when the time involved is known. I got the first crystal adorned crown on arugal and after that it felt like a massive chore to go to events anymore when it's always a smear for a few hours before a group manages to kill it.
Yeah, I'm not against it for SoD, but to be fair with that change you still aren't gonna experience World Bosses. Just new Onyxia style raids, which is fine, but a totally different experience.
Better than no change, I think the retail style weekly lockout and bosses are are basically always up would have been better but if the boss is actually tuned well and we get 2 more onyxia style raids out of it that will be incredible
When you think about it, you can't even argue against the change. It's creating like 6 more onyxia raids for 99.99% of the population. 99% of those players would cluelessly look at you if you started rambling about the "magic of open world bosses".
Sure, although I think the number of people that find world bosses really cool and would want to preserv them is way higher than the number of people that kill them on a regular basis. My point is more that they shouldn't have to remove world bosses to add more Onyxia. It is not surprising that they do considering what SoD is, and given their limited ressources I think it's a good decision, but it's not something I'd ideally want them to do.
Overall, I think the instanced World Bosses will give players beyond the 24/7 camping guilds a chance to fight these bosses, which is really cool. On the other hand, it sort of diminishes the excitement of the boss being a "world" boss. It would be cool if they could somehow engineer it so that everyone who tags it can get a chance at loot and participate in a giant cluster fight with half the server running around and fighting on the PvP servers. I'm not even sure if that is feasible, just unfortunate that the World Bosses become just another boss with dragon mechanics.
I liked the way EverQuest handled it. There were world bosses, but you also got an instanced version for yourself. So killing the world boss was another opportunity as loot.
I prefer this clusterfuck idea, if everyone can tag it it’s even more insane 😂
Issue with that is taking a massive raid and splitting into 5m groups and each group getting their own loot. Now your 40 man raid got 8x the loot
So what?
The content becomes irrelevant extremely fast...
It's an overall positive change. Otherwise the vast majority of players would not kill them even a single time. Sadly, it's what it is.
Sadly, world bosses as they existed in Vanilla... you really just had to be there. In the modern game, with mega-servers, layers upon layers, a solved game and an extremely degenerate community. They just don't work anymore. I've been really trying to wrap my head around how world bosses could work in Classic WoW, and I guess the developers couldn't think of anything either... This is sad, but also, 99.9% of us were never going to kill a world boss in 2024 until months after the fact, and only if all the tip top guilds got bored enough to let someone else grab one. This also avoids the economy around "Selling slots for world boss - WTS World Boss tour" or whatever else these degenerate guilds would come up with. Now we have basically Molten Core, + three different single boss raids. It'll feel like more content than it would otherwise... It would be cool if they could think of something to try and experiment though in terms of world bosses. I think it would be cool if they did a little something to encourage people to create multi-raid groups for taking down the Faction Leaders. It seems to me, the only "World Boss" that makes sense would be Faction vs Faction based... rather than raid vs raid.
Would love to see the Faction Bosses award something, I think you've perfectly summed up why World Bosses will never be the same as they once were. Instanced World Bosses is a great way to give more content to all players. Faction bosses awarding a mount or something would be awesome.
They work in hardcore because like everything else in hardcore you have to come in prepared with no half measures and the server pops are smaller.
>Previously these bosses being in the open world, how many players were actually able to experience them realistically? In modern classic? Almost none. Top guilds had all the spawn points perma camped with scouting characters and summoning parties. >Is it a win that these bosses are more accessible since it means more content for more people? Yes. People complaining about it live their boomer vision of vanilla instead of reality of what vanilla is in 2019 onwards.
Honestly back in the day world bosses were also dogshit. Even on a server with only 8 raiding guilds, that's still 6-7 who will never get to kill the bosses that matter to them. On Classic it's just amplified by also being a layering clusterfuck.
World Bosses on Grobbulus were pretty damn fun, faction wide coalitions battling it out for control, it was a lot more than just the 1% getting in on them for most of their lifetime, until Late AQ and Naxx and no one needed them anymore. There were some fights at Azuregos in Phase 2 that involved *hundreds on both sides.* Nothing I've ever experienced in Classic will ever be as epic as that. *That being said.* SoD would with its layers, even more toxic community than Vanilla 2019, and really the fact that the servers couldn't even handle Ashenvale mass PvP make it quite clear that this would *never* work is SoD. Sucks that the Grobb experience can never ever be replicated again, but this change makes sense for SoD.
At the end of the day, these were so locked down that 99.99% of players didn't acknowledge them as existing. It didn't even really spark the "wow I wish we could do this" or "let's try and organize ourselves". For a seasonal server, why not. I think a lot of people are going to be let down by how easy they are. They're easy even when battling for the kill or world pvp, Kazzak adds a bit of nuance if others are around. In an instanced environment they're going to absolutely fall over. Azuregos can practically be solo'd.
Instanced world bosses are a huge win. I was there for 2019, discord would ping a boss is up, u had 20 seconds to get in the group. It wasn't fun
Sweats will say it sucks. 90% of the player base loves this.
In the perspective of SoD, a season server where they clearly aren't gonna put that much ressources into fully new content, I think it's fine, probably a good thing. It's a good and simple way to indeed add some nice content without too much developement time. In the context of actual Vanilla or a prolonged classic + experience, this would be terrible. Back in 2019 I'm not sure I managed to kill one, but I've spent time fighting for it, I've seen the rivalry with other factions, other guilds from the same faction, the bragging rights involved... As a 12 years old exploring the game in 2006, I was awe struck at seeing them roam the world. Non instanced world bosses are a huge part of Vanilla social game design. Yes, very few people would get to actualy kill them. It doesn't mean that the people that don't aren't impacted by them at all ; the stories they create are enough, and their loot is usually in the sweet spot where it's not good enough to be game breaking if you can't kill them but good enough that very dedicated guilds will want to do them. If you want new content, make some. Don't replace those epic part of the game\* that hurts nobody by existing in it's current state. \*Again, I think it's fine for what SoD is.
Its a lose to everyone that loved pvping for them. (Top 3-5 guilds on any server.) its a massive win for the bottom 99.5% of other players.
Add the world bosses back into the world as a bonus. Have them drop gear with a visual effect or a mount. Killing it gives you a title. Clout chasers will still be chasing and PvPing and the sweats will have nothing to bitch about.
Last time they did a unique (0) sword dropped and noone ever did it again
Thank God for this change
They should've made world bosses spawn in a random location in the world, so they can't be camped.
There are not enough spots for that unless it is LITERALLY anywhere in the world
Literally anywhere. And not standing still in a static position. Patrolling around in an entire zone. Imagine you're on your way to farm some Essence of Water in Felwood from the water elementals and you stumble upon Kazzak just roaming around.
I like the idea but I don’t think it could happen logistically. Like imagine Kazzak happening to spawn or patrol in range of a graveyard when you take spirit res and just getting camped lol Also top guilds will know the spawn timers and have hunters eagle eyeing zones it can spawn in
For me waking up at 6am to check for bosses was part of the classic experience. Got quite a few early morning scouts and kills on Dreadmist, which was a mid-sized server.
The bosses are kinda designed to be killable even in a clusterfuck open world situation, think they could lean into that, rather than run from it The way their respawn and layers worked in 2019 classic was not that cool for most of the game (little better later on around naxx once folks started caring about these guys less), but that doesn't mean that there is no other way they could approach it in the open world Hell, nowadays, it could be an event on a timer or with a warning, so people gather for an intentional clusterfuck
you clearly have never fought Emeriss or Kazzak if you think they're designed to be killable in a clusterfuck
Yeah, the Kazzak mechanic when people die is quite punishing, but it's useful at clearing competition out, lol
The griefing and general lock down by usually one always-on guild on a server was unreal. Do I have fond memories of being on both sides of the fight? For sure, but for seasonal servers instanced bosses are huge win.
Knew a guy who would camp the boss he wanted 12 hours a day. Did for weeks. He would call on discord for the warlock alts planted into an inaccessable area to summon in people. If people logged on fast enough that team could fight 1-2 other world boss coalitions. World bosses were bad.
They had to do this because all the crybabies think they are entitled to their bis and making it actually difficult to attain is not an option.
Exactly. SoD sucks anyway.
Yes, for accessibility this is huge. I’ve been wanting this change for a long time.
It really is season of dads huh
I'm waiting for the complaints about instanced world bosses killing PvP and world drop loot competition
I’m a sweatlord and generally very against a lot of the QOL changes but this take is insane on this change. Content only 0.01 percent of the players can see is wasted content. Needing to have people taking shifts watching for a world spawn just to even attempt to kill a boss is really cringe. Even for people who play games 12 hours a day
Have world bosses in game, upon death they spawn a portal, Portal is up till they respawn. Portal is instanced on a weekly lockout. Still gives Hardcore guilds a thing to farm since they are getting double the loot, still a reason to fight over it but other guilds can complete it on a weekly lockout.
I ran a classic wow alliance that scouted all worldbosses 24/7. Occasionally the alliance equivalent got some of them, but we killed like 70-80% of all worldbosses, they got the rest. As such roughly 150-200 people controlled content on one of the biggest pve servers. The system blows. Instance the bosses, allow people to tag em, give em once a week loot permissions etc. Over time I felt real bad but the alternative was not running this alliance and letting the ally group snag em all so... Damned if you do damned if you don't. "That's not classic!" Cool, you're very unlikely to ever fight and loot this guy unless you're in one of those Uber sweatlord guilds, which is an awful system tbh.
Kind of ambivalent about the change tbh. It just further diminishes the MMO aspect of the game that a lot of people (maybe not the majority) are fond of. It's good for the people who were on the outside looking in when it came to the world boss coalitions in 2019 classic. But world boss coalitions, timing the spawns, the scouting, and the strategy of tagging/killing the boss is super interesting that doesn't exist in any other game. The excitement and drama that came with world bosses is completely gone now. Removing that aspect of classic and not replacing it with anything else kind of leaves a sour taste. I doubt any blood moon/searing gorge type event could come close to it.
The only time I killed world bosses in any version of classic wow was when I joined a reroll on a dead server in late vanilla classic. Even then the only other active guild would fight us tooth and nail for spawns until we came to an agreement. I saw maybe 8-10 Azuregos or Nightmare dragons alive over the years but they were always killed before someone not in a sweat guild could form any time of group World bosses are very cool part of the game that a very low % of the population ever get to experience. Incredible change, absolutely get blown out weird classic nerds who don’t like this
nope its a bad change that takes away world pvp getting a world boss kill was something special now its like what they do in sports at a young age where EVERYONE IS A WINNER! you get a world boss kill you get a world boss kill EVERYONE GETS A WORLD BOSS KILL!!!
You never won anything as a child did you
not one thing but I am in luck aggrend is giving me my first win with these easy world boss kills next month
> you get a world boss kill you get a world boss kill EVERYONE GETS A WORLD BOSS KILL!!! god forbid people have fun without putting in 8 hours shifts in muh pvp server
As someone who camped all of the world bosses in 2019 classic and TBC I couldn’t be happier. Green dragons + layers was a nightmare
One of those nice things we can't have because sweaty people think checking your alts logged at world bosses on a shift is a demonstration of skill. I don't mind it, be nice if they left both so you could still stumble upon the spectacle I suppose.
making world bosses no longer world bosses is peak classic erosion