World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

Onyxia’s return in patch 3.2 heralded the beginning of a soon to be common trend in the World of Warcraft, a recycling of older content and bosses from the games infancy. It was announced at Blizzcon 09 that two bosses that occupied many a raiders evenings for the first year of the game will be returning in the upcoming Cataclysm expansion. Nefarian, the self proclaimed Lord of Blackrock and all around Black Dragonflight badass and everybody’s favorite spouting pillar of magma – Ragnaros, are both set to make a return appearance in upgraded form. While this isn’t a completely new trend, Naxxaramas was redone for the launch of Wrath, it is the first time it has been for reasons other than not having enough of the player base able to experience the content.  

With the launch of the new expansion nostalgia mode should be going in full force as players are unleashed back upon the original lands, and while most of them will be completely redone it should prove to be at least partially flash back inducing.

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away.

While it has been said before that you can never really go home again, and MMOGs are always the best reminder of this adage, there are some events and content that I think would be interesting and fun to see again in a level 80 version before the land is sundered and villages are razed by the impending cataclysm. 

We all had our favorite zones, dungeons and events from dated content, it is one of the more common and fun conversation pieces that many older players have with each other. While dwelling on the “good old days” is a sure sign that you are officially over the hill, WoW has an abundance of content that could easily be reworked or appended to make it relevant again and allow players to relive some of the early glory days.
 

World Dragons 

Azuregos, member of the Blue Dragonflight

The four world dragons that inhabit Azeroth were once regularly hunted as they held both epic loot as well as much soft after quest items. WoW in general is in need of contested world bosses to spice it up and these four would be a great place to start. In addition to the added bonus of creating additional world skirmishes on PvP servers (which the game is in dire need of… but that’s another article) it would introduce a whole host of players who started in the post-vanilla WoW era to some of the more interesting zones in the game. 

Dire Maul 

This Ogre stronghold was a late addition to WoW 1.X but was one of the first five player dungeons that really showed what the folks at Blizzard were capable of. Featuring multiple areas in the style of Scarlet Monastery, Dire Maul was complex and longer than a typical dungeon, but it never felt like it. A retooled DM or a new wing for level capped players to explore would be another excellent bridge to the past in preparation for the upcoming content push.

 

 

World Boss Epic Events 

Final encouter for a Legendary weapon

In addition to Lord Kazzak and the world dragons, vanilla WoW featured several world epic bosses that were triggered by quests. These events ran the spectrum from solo to group to full raid parties and added a huge level of immersion to the game that has been, in my opinion, lacking from the current build of the game. With the reintroduction of Onyxia both the priest and hunter epics could get a revamp as well as finding a way to bring back something akin to Thunderfury. The Hunter epic in particular was an amazing experience and a well scripted event that taught players some of the more intricate details of the class and ultimately made better players of everyone who completed it. Many players hoped that Blizzard would eventually include a quest like this for all classes, but sadly it seems to have fallen to the wayside as legendary weapons are relegated only to ultra rare drops or quests completed inside 25 player raid zones.

Demon slaying in Winterspring

Many players were at one time hopeful that their class would be the next to get an epic quest; however that seems to have fallen by the wayside. It is a shame that involved and moderately difficult quests for gear have been replaced by epic vendors.

 
With so much content currently in the game and more being added with each patch, perhaps there is no need to wax nostalgic and revisit the glory days. What do you think? What is your favorite event or zone from past content and would you like to see it revisited? When another game I used to play rolled out special events to allow you to engage old NPC’s for a new challenge and fabled loot, it was a wild success and so far the Onyxia revamp has proved popular with players. Hopefully with each anniversary the team at Blizzard will continue to reintroduce us to more of our past conquests. Until next week, stay safe and have fun in Azeroth.