This little anecdote is down the same alley Tyrian, but still not the same time. The Undying is much easier than the Immortal. There is no doubt about it whatsoever. I got my title about ten weeks ago while "pugging" it with several in real life friends from other high end guilds on my server. I myself is much more casual than they are when it comes to raiding, so my guild is mostly their alts + some of our mutual friends that aren't into endgaming that much. However, case in point, with the addition of the Undying title to my character, as "early" as the second week of January, I was promptly approached by several of the fairly good guilds (but naturally not the best) on the server.

Long story short; While not as prestigious as Immortal, Undying has some power behind it when it comes to being recruited, rather than recruiting. I'm sure a person who for any reason leaves his or her guild and can point back to a pre-3.1 attained "Immortal" title carry a lot more weight than someone who cannot.

I am glad that they changed Immortal only because of the debate over "Hard Mode aka Loot versus Going for Achievement." My guild has Immortal, but if it meant not doing the Hard Mode versions of the bosses for a whole week to simply attempt Immortal, there was probably a 0.0001% chance I could convince my guild to try.


On another note, I like Immortal. Not because I have it. It's because it seems like a plausible achievement. Yes it is very rare. Individually I suppose it is not very hard to obtain, but the same is true of all PVE encounters. The challenge is organizing a group of 25 players to do it successfully. It's true that Immortal was impossible on many servers for the first month or so after WotLK release unless you wanted to play at very odd hours, but since they fixed their servers I really don't understand the gripes about how it's so "impossible."

9 times out of 10 having better planning and a more robust strategy to accommodate for disconnects would have prevented you from losing the achievement. It's like "that guy" who kept getting Ground Ruptured into Dark Glare. "It was totally random, I got completely gibbed, it wasn't my fault, not this attempt or the 6 attempts before it where I was also killed by Dark Glare!" Do you really think all of the people complaining about RNG would have Immortal if not for some disconnect? A disconnect is all that is separating you from having the title ... wow 12 weeks in a row now. Really? And disconnects don't prevent you from getting the title. We had two disconnects on Heigan during P2. Couple guardian spirits and a lot of spam heals later, no deaths. We had another disconnect on Thaddius - thankfully we modified our strategy to a 4 camp strategy so the disconnected players don't automatically die. Yes it's dumb that Decimate can still instant kill you but instead of complaining just don't use Blood Pact or Commanding Shout. More careful positioning and superior tank play can prevent an OT Mind Control from causing loose Guardians of Icecrown killing people.

I think what frustrates people is the difficulty level. "Wow, these bosses are so easy ... It feels dumb not having this title" almost as if it reflects poorly on yourself. If your guilds really wanted to have this achievement, they would have it. Even if it meant replacing players with less stable internet connections and handing out severe penalties for failures and modifying your strategies to much slower and more cautious techniques. Does this type of mentality damage guild relationships and morale? Most certainly yes, it does. It's quite stressful for some (I personally had fun doing it but hey to each his own). But this is exactly why this achievement is there in the first place. It was considered in beta the achievement that "defines serious guilds from more casual guilds." Maybe this makes a lot of people get the "sour grapes" syndrome.





On a completely different note - it doesn't look like Algalon is on the Meta in this latest build, but there is still the Realm First! feat of strength associated with it. Perhaps this boss will be something of a Sunwell difficulty encounter?

Your comments elegantly sum up what many can't express as articulately. The discussion on Immortal randomness really takes me back to Archimonde. There was a fairly strong divide between people who hated Archimonde 'because it was so random' and people who never really considered the fight random at all. It was all highly subjective, personal for each guild and quite controversial for a while in TBC.

It has already been announced by Blizzard that Algalon will be the Pinnacle of Hard Modes in Ulduar, moreover Algalon is already a kind of meta-achievement by itself because of the Keepers to be defeated in Hard Mode.
For these reasons Algalon will never be part of the Ulduar Meta-Achievement, this boss is totally optionnal and will probably be a kind of preview of next tier Hard Mode (speaking of encounter with iLevel, a Lvl 252 encounter )

Note that the Yogg-Saron achievement changed on the Meta-Achievement, it now require to do it in Level 3 Hard Mode (1 Keeper).

By the way, I found only 4 Achievements for Yogg Saron but I believe there should be 5 :
3 Lights in the Darkness
2 Lights in the Darkness
1 Light in the Darkness
Alone in the Darkness

Considering that each of the lights is a Keeper helping, where is the fourth one and who is missing ?

That's pretty interesting. I was under the assumption that Yogg-Saron was "Hard Mode Only." (as ridiculous as that sounds) So it actually is separated into varying degrees of difficulty probably with varying degrees of loot as well. I like that.

Well the 4th one is probably just a successful kill achievement. Just how the 0 drake doesn't have its own "Kill Sarth with 0 drakes up" achievement, it just has "Kill Sarth".

E: Or in this case it is just the wing clear achievement as obviously Sarth has to have just his own kill ach:
Heroic: The Descent into Madness
Defeat the bosses of The Descent into Madness area of Ulduar on Heroic Difficulty.

Easy
|
| 4 watchers helping -------> Yogg Saron part of the meta achievement Descent into Madness
| 3 watchers helping -------> 3 Lights in the Darkness
| 2 watchers helping -------> 2 Lights in the Darkness
| 1 watcher helping -------> 1 Lights in the Darkness
| 0 watcher helping -------> Alone in the Darkness
|
V
Hard

As for leaving them alive, I believe you have to "kill" them normally to open his door anyway. After that I suspect there will be some sort of pre-fight interface (or possibly between phases) where you can request/deny each one of their help.

So you assume that one does not have to say "No folks, we do not kill Thorim tonight, because we try the achievement with only 3 watchers helping" ? Because this would exclude loot and possible other achievements of the respective watchers (here: Thorim). I mean it is very much possible that it will be implemented in this way, but it somehow "feels" strange to explicitly not kill certain bosses.

Edit: typos

Well maybe the keepers who are still alive are coming to you after the death of Yogg Saron and give you their loot as a gift for releasing them from the control of evil Yogg Saron.

Well in Sarth3D you have to kill the drakes as part of the encounter (and their badges go on Sarth).

There is nothing saying that Thorim won't still be active to go 'wake up' after Yogg Saron is down with only 3 watchers.

This is probably the case, i think you are right here. But still, this feels a little "wrong" to me. Killing the designated endboss before a boss which normally should be killed earlier but due to not killing him, making the endboss harder...? I don't know how you see that, but it feels clumsy for some reason i can't tell. Im curious how Blizzard will do this though.

Has this been explicitly stated anywhere? I have read that it would require a couple of quests involving the keepers, but I can't recall that getting to Algalon actually involves defeating the keepers on hard mode.

Also, is any information out on whether the hard modes will be "inter linked", as in in order to attempt Hodir on hardmode it would be necessary to kill all previous bosses (Flame Leviathan etc) on hard mode first, or will one be able to independently choose which boss to attempt on hardmode?

An easy enough solution is that each boss drops or has an orb in close proximity. The number of "used" orbs determines how hard mode the encounter is.

I think that

Freya's Sigil - Quest - World of Warcraft
Hodir's Sigil - Quest - World of Warcraft
Thorim's Sigil - Quest - World of Warcraft
Mimiron's Sigil - Quest - World of Warcraft

Are quite obvious that Algalon is Hard Mode only.

Didn`t Hakkar work just like that ? There was no extra loot but it was the same principle.

Correct, i totally forgot Hakkar. From this point of view the "let XY alive" method seems reasonable, but we should not forget that ZG was released 3 years ago. A lot of things have changed since, especially philosophy-wise.

And we also had Dire Maul North, where you skipped bosses that dropped loot to kill the endboss only. Then you would get a tribute as a result.

The Dragon Orbs in the Kil'Jaeden fight come to mind in regards to selecting who you want to help you during the fight. Call them in for their "Heroism" style buffs when they're needed most, or be hardcore and go without them completely.

The difference with Sarth is that all you need to shift around are the Emblems. 4 bosses worth of loot on a single corpse is a bit more complicated, to say the least.

That being said, I'm sure there's a mechanic in place to circumvent this - the bosses could stay up after YS regardless, or some other external trigger such as an orb could determine Watcher participation, or the Watchers could all drop chests for their own loot, etc.

Thing is, if you did skip them you'd be getting what, 20-22 loots from one boss? Even if its spread round chests be pretty funny to see.

I'm sticking with the kill/redeem them first then choose which you want to request aid from.

"Thank you for saving me mortal champion. I am still weak from Yoggs corruption but may be able to provide some small amount of help in the fight if you think it is absolutely necessary."

Two options:
"Yes Thorim, stop bitching and get your ass in there"
"Not sharing our epics with you, piss off!"

Confirmed.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Will there be realm first 10man ulduar?

Good news, less drama overall. Especially the possibility of internal guild drama.

Good, assuming you do 25s/your guild does 25s. If you/they don't, it's a bit of "Aw, cute, now let the big kids do the REAL raid..." I think. If I was in a guild that was "seriously" approaching the 10man stuff, I'd be kind of upset that a theoretically equal path of progression suddenly wasn't. It'd be a bit like Sarth+3 only giving you the title, mount, etc on Heroic, despite degree of difficulty.