spending that time on the actual hard mode encounters themselves. Given finite time, spending that time brainstorming, implementing and tuning 8-14 unique methods of unlocking hardmode encounters seems like a poor use of developer time vs. Ultimately, the biggest reason in my view not to repeat the Ulduar style of hardmodes is actually the seed of a bigger lesson about game development: time is always finite and every decision to spend time somewhere is a decision to not spend time somewhere else. Just making sure to clarify the difference between the unlock method on hard modes and the hard modes themselves. Between the hard-mode unlocks that had icky side-effects, and the unlock methods that weren’t very interesting, I’d argue that the batting average for the unlock methods in Ulduar was not very good.Īgain - this is not to say that the hardmode encounters themselves were not good! Ulduar’s hardmode encounters were quite good for the most part, and we’ve done plenty of encounters that are similar mechanically to the actual in-encounter mechanics of Ulduar hardmodes. I think the ones that worked better were Iron Council (which we repeated on Protectors in MoP) and Yogg. Which worked thematically and comedically for Mimiron but was hardly thrilling gameplay :) A couple of them had icky side effects (”accidentally” triggering hard mode on XT as you geared up, needing to just intentionally wipe if you missed Hodir’s, or getting locked after missing it by a second), and many of them weren’t particularly interesting in and of themselves - Flame Leviathan and Freya’s unlocks were basically “don’t pull some trash”, Hodir was just “do the fight but fast!”, Mimiron was literally pushing a button. Even something like Hardmode Hodir can be elegantly handled with a tighter zerk timer in Mythic - arguably more elegantly than the actual Hodir hardmode.Īnyways, as far as the unlocks, first I’d question how much of the fond memories of the methods of unlocking Ulduar hardmodes are the product of rose-colored glasses. There’s nothing we did inside the Ulduar hardmode encounters that we couldn’t or wouldn’t do today in a Mythic encounter.
I can’t speak for anyone else on the team and this shouldn’t be taken as any kind of official policy :) Different people might have different answers.īut I think there are a few things at play here that make this an issue for me as a designer.įirst, I think we should clarify that we’re really talking about the method of unlocking hardmodes, not the hardmode encounters themselves. First, a disclaimer: these are my personal opinions.
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