WoW WotLK Classic: Sarthe, Crix and Joardee spoke to Blizzard about Ulduar

When new Classic Raid content is ready for testing on the World of Warcraft PTR, it’s not just the various progress guilds that want to prepare as best they can for the upcoming race, but also various content creators who want to test their runs stream live on Twitch or later produce videos of their impressions. Three Youtubers who have been particularly active during recent testing got a chance to chat with Blizzard developers about their experiences in Ulduar.

So look forward to a round of talks with Sarthe, Joardee, Crix, and WotLK Classic leaders Tim Jones, Josh Greenfield, and Kris Zierhut that got pretty nerdy. If you don’t want to give yourself the almost 90 minutes, you will find a summary under the video.

Ulduar Deep Dive – key insights

• The testers could expect the original version of Ulduar on the PTR, in which hotfixes that were implemented shortly after the launch (and some of which are not visible in the old patch notes) have also been withdrawn.
• Tester feedback so far indicates that this version of Ulduar already feels like a satisfying challenge, with a nice increase in difficulty from boss to boss.
• However, there are a few areas where it might make sense to make changes (thus deviating a bit from the original version). As an example, Tim Jones mentions the hard mode of XT. He apparently has the video by WillE seen, in which the Youtuber works out how absurdly high the DpS requirements of this challenge are currently. In fact, this raw version of XT has never been mastered by players on the live servers. It just doesn’t feel good when the second mandatory boss has a hardmode that’s on par with Algalon or Yogg-0 (or even higher).
• Basically, Blizzard wants to do without nerfs for Ulduar for as long as possible. One reason for this is that in Ulduar you can earn an enormous number of item upgrades without being able to tackle the toughest challenges of the raid. Just master the normal fights first. Then try the hardmodes of the 10-player version, which in many cases are easier than their 25-player counterparts. After that you can still dare to try the 25 hardmodes.

• There will be two World First races: Who the Success The Realm’s First Harbinger of Death! must defeat all Titan Guardians in Hardmode and master the hardmode variant of the Gathering of Iron in one ID before Yogg-Saron takes on the hardest version. Other guilds, in turn, will focus on Algalon.
• Until Ulduar comes out, the developers want to remove all possible current exploit options from the game. one Death Knight Exploit it was, for example, last night at the collar.
• Unlike when Ulduar was launched, the strength of the vehicles used in the fight against the Flame Leviathan will scale with your item level. The developers think it’s important that you have the feeling of “getting stronger” even in a boss fight like this. The downside: Currently, many players are collecting all of the Malygos wearable loot pieces in order to have a Flame Leviathan set with the launch of Ulduar.