by Chris Ware on Oct 28, 2009
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.
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style="font-style: italic;">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.
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style="font-style: italic;">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.
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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.
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style="font-style: italic;">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.
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style="font-style: italic;">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.