The toughest raid boss of Vanilla: Frame rate and Internet connections. I played on such a potato that I had to point my camera at my feet while tanking.
Yeah, WoW may run smooth now on its outdated architecture but back in 2005, it was arguably the most poorly optimized game for PC for at least a decade.
Clearing Serpentshrine Cavern, Hyjal, Tempest Keep, and Illidan while rocking 4 FPS was a nerve wracking yet magical experience. I even managed to outdamage most of my fellow Warlocks even when I did a crazy Felguard build based off a TK drop! Edit: meant to say Serpentshrine Cavern and not Coilfang Reservoir
@@professionalhater3929 This video is ~30 minutes long and you posted your original comment 20 minutes ago - just a minute after this video was posted
Honestly, meta fight design like that limiting certain skills is very cool. Imagine a fight where the boss randomly rotates targets and taunts are limited. You need to throw out your original strat and get creative, kite, CC, Slow, bring more tanks 😵💫
In general, I don't think it can be stressed enough the difficulty of simply coordinating 40 people, each with their own specific tasks and abilities in a relatively tight room, during a time when WoW was the antithesis of optimized for the average PC and when dial-up was still widely used and at best, broadband was around 15Kbps, to say nothing of having 40 people on Ventrillo at the same time. Some raid encounters were downright slideshows of a framerate. It's amazing we managed to successfully clear some of these raids, tbh. It also sucked that a lot of guilds that were even working AQ40 and Naxx had a very small window before The Burning Crusade dropped and did away with 40-mans altogether.
Counting down the top 10 hardest bosses in Vanilla World of Warcraft! ✅Become a channel member for perks, such as early access to most of my videos(and ad-free): ruclips.net/channel/UCOvz3kkYZtCTeXKdiuMG8egjoin ✅Follow next video progress on Twitter: twitter.com/madseason_ ✅Watch me stream at twitch.tv/madseasonshow
Weirdest glitch that I remember was getting dc'd after accidentally clipping through the undercity elevator; when I relogged, I was in the lake in Stonetalon Mountains, with the Undercity Guardians floating next to me.
Yeah, we tried him a few times but the clock was ticking and we didn't have much time before TBC dropped so we gave up on him. We did managed to kill Ouro though.
He was so insanely much harder as alliance than Horde. If you weren't a guild full of engineers, you couldn't one-phase him, and the poison mechanic kept draining the mana of every healer. Most non-hardcore guilds tended to clear him with the LBRS poison sacs.
@@madseasonshow Your videos like these and the Pandora's series are wonderful and have been the primary inspiration for me to make my own channel, focusing on MMO/gaming oddities, history, etc. (starting my first script in a few weeks) -- so thank you for what you do!
Being a long time player, basically when the game came out, I marvel at how much Madseason remembers and how much footage he has of the early days. Well done sir.
I never played vanilla in its day, I only started with TBC. I was maybe 12-13 when I started with my friends, and we had no idea what we were doing. Me and my best buddy made night elf hunters (duh) and probably spent a month in Teldrassil. At one point along the harrowing journey to level 10, one of us made a dwarf, and found out that you could get guns!! Game changer. But we learned quickly that you needed to travel to Ironforge to train guns. I don’t know how we managed to figure out how to get there, but we had a quest of our own now… obtain guns. So we leveled up to maybe 11-12, found the boat to Menethil harbor, and began the infamous run through the Wetlands. After hours of sprinting past angry crocolisks, we finally made it Ironforge, trained the guns skill with the meager silver we had, and finally equipped our blunderbusses. We took the tram to Stormwind, and proudly drew our new weapons to inspire wonder in the other players. “How did these Nightelves manage to get guns? They must be total badasses” or some variation must have going through everyone’s minds. I miss those days so dearly, when everything was new and exciting. When I had no idea there were optimal talents and gear. I never made it to the max level while we played. Wrath came out when I was in the 50s and we were laser focused on 55 for the Deathknight. We plowed through to 68 as fast as possible (very trivial even for us with how insane the DK was then) and then bounced on and off with the game only getting to 79. I leveled to 85 in Cata but never did a single end game dungeon, and when I came back to give things a look in WoD everything was so different with microtransactions I didn’t want to play anymore. I had an absolute blast with Classic, but unfortunately it came at a very bad time in my life and I didn’t get to experience the ladder with everyone. I would love to be able to go back in time and play as a kid once again, but such is the way of life. Your videos bring me back to those days even though I never even got to do any of these things, I doubt I even know raids existed at the time.
Another video idea: vanilla zone transitions. I remember back then one of the most immersive things about WoW was that I could walk whole continents with no loading screens, and they did some unique things with transitions between zones. Some only had one or two set paths in and out, like Dun Morogh to Loch Modan, but I remember vividly that I could cross from Elywnn to Duskwood at any point over that river, those two areas were fully connected, not just a single tunnel or road,
There were some iconic transitions. The Dwarf tunnel into the Searing Gorge, crossing the river into Darkshire like you mentioned, Un'Goro Crater was incredible. (Such a great vanilla zone). Anything in the Arathi Highlands.
Btw, you know there was loading, only cleverly hidden, right? I honestly never understood this obsession of "no loading screens" :) But that's just me, it never bothered me.
@@PetrSojnek No loading screens is an immersion element. The ability to seamlessly transition between zones emulates real life that keeps the player engaged with the zone and the environment. The loading screen is a stark reminder that the player is in a game.
@@PetrSojnek It's a big deal.. among with open world. I remember playing Star Wars the Old Republic MMO and all those loading screens and very small areas in the planets were somewhat limiting immersion.. though I understand that the technology back then wasn't up for a whole galaxy wide open world :) But yeah I wanted some more roaming space there I guess.
While I wouldn't say he's as mechanically complex as the bosses on this list, Vael was tough to execute, back in the day. I distinctly recall spending many more hours/weeks on getting Vael down than Razorgore. In fact, the first boss I had ever heard referred to as a raid, or guild, killer was Vael. The precise tank swaps and threat control required by the raid made it quite difficult, not to mention the time limit and people just blowing up all over the place.
Same.. we had some troubles with Razorgore until we figured out a guy who knew how to do the mindcontrol part great and hunters (me included) did a huge job at kiting the dragonkins. After that we faced another block and much bigger one. Vael. That was a fight where your whole raid had to put some decent dps numbers. I have a video of our guilds first kill of Vael back in the days in my channel ;) I think one of our main issues were attendance related. Our Vael first kill was only 36-37 people in the raid and when you are already struggling, missing a few players makes a big deal. After the Vael kill we got our act together and managed to get realm first kills on all remaining bosses in BWL including Nefarian.
My memory of 2005 was that Vael was unbeatable by 95% of guilds, and then all of a sudden, after like 2-3 weeks, everyone started beating him, and rarely failed, implying he was secretly nerfed. But nobody else I've talked to seems to remember it that way.
In the days pre-BC. I used to make a killing blacksmithing dark iron gear for MC raids. I worked on my thorium brotherhood rep for months and months, I was a rogue so it was easy to get to the grim guzzler to the quartermaster for all the plans and to the black anvil to craft all the dark iron gear people needed for Fire resistance, I even made a sulfuron hammer for a guy who had an "eye of sulfuras" drop for him. Those days crafting felt important. That's when molten core felt like the peak in raid difficulty. But was at the same time, so incredibly rewarding.
My guild wiped night one for 3 hours on razorgore. We were stuck on this boss for 2 weeks only to be stuck again for 2 more weeks on the next boss, vael, idk how we didn't implode.
@@Reac2 Well you learned a lot of gameplay and working together while clearing BWL up to Nefarian.. so it wasn't that hard anymore :) Also the gear updates were pretty good compared to MC gear.
Honorable mention goes to *Ossirian the Unscarred* , also known as the 'Pugbreaker' who is way more difficult than any other 20 men raid boss (if you consider Hakkar in the 0 priest way which is how most raids do it). Just like the 4HM it was a sensitive boss at which even minor mistake could lead to wipe. - Not kiting the boss properly: WIPE - Clicking the crystal too early or too late: WIPE - Tank gets sucked into the tornado: WIPE - Caster dd overaggros due to magic school vulnerability: WIPE - Curse of tongues not decursed, therefore, not enough healing to the tank: WIPE. Obviously for guilds it isn't a difficult boss, but pug groups often have to leave the raid with the shame of only 5/6 bosses killed.
One thing that never gets mentioned in these videos is the ultimate boss - servers. When we played back in 2005 on the opening of BWL, guilds had to communicate via icq or ventrillo to let each other know when they were pulling, because if two guilds pulled Nefarian at the same time, the servers would crash and everyone would fucking die.
@@carsoncoley1 I never said we were. You had to coordinate pulls on Razorgore for the same reason. AQ wasn’t that bad because a lot of guilds were still struggling through long BWLs, but Anub in Naxx was a fucking slideshow.
Great video and the nostalgia is real!! Man, almost 20 years…coming from EQ we were just happy to not have brutal XP death penalties, corpse retrieval, or raid bosses on week long respawn timers in the open world. All things considered, for a small guild, I think we did ok at the time and had fun with it. Good times.
Haven't played WoW since classic became retail again, but like the obsessive addict I am I click on this video within seconds and watch every minute of it. Your soothing voice keeps me coming back, time and time again
Same.. I started in TBC and now regret I didn't clone my main and missed the opporturnity when they removed it.. I quit TBC before I managed to get 70.. didn't want the hamsterwheel again.
I started playing WoW too late to see vanilla raids in all their glory. I used to love hearing the stories from the seasoned raiders who used to tackle these bosses.
I thought Vaelastrasz (2nd boss BWL) was even more of a guild killer than Razorgore. I guess if your guild disbands because of Razorgore you don't event see Vaelastrasz in the first place :D
Aside from it always having been nuts that they actually recruited Furor someone I remember from my EverQuest days, it's kind of nutty that he kept his job after his response to being told that the raid was impossible was to call players... that.
Madseason becoming more unhinged over the years with the ads and cursing more and owning me by doing a "your mom" joke 30 sec in....im so here for it 😂
At the launch of patch 1.10 Onyxia had some issues with her deep breaths in phase 2. The video 'bugged onyxia is serious' was quite legendary at the time😂
The touch of using Sign of Evil for the Twin Emperors showcase is so insane. I was thinking about the video when I finished watching, and when the realization of what you did hit, I made some audible noises irl
Great video, only note I have is that on my server at least it was Vael rather than Razorgore that was the guildbreaker. There were multiple top MC guilds that spent 2 months wiping on Vael and disbanded. That was the one that was notorious back in 2005 as your threshhold into BWL
I still remember there was no RUclips when Razorgore came out. You basically had to come up with your own strategies or scour other guild forums to see their strategies. Our guild somehow came up with the idea of getting our 4 hunters to just kite the dragonkins until the eggs were dead. It was incredibly hectic and we actually replaced like 3 hunters through progression because of how annoying that fight was.
Prophet Skeram was a guild breaker too. Great video though! Last good vanilla server was Elysium until you could buy everything. Raid day and raid prep was epic. DM tribute buffs, Hakkar heart, Darkmoon fair, all the consumables on planet earth, etc. Fun times.
I did enjoy your video Mad, and i have seen lists of hardest wow bosses, and some of these i don't remember seeing before, like the Loatheb and Ouro, really cool stuff, and i always enjoy the details.
I did not expect to hear Doom soundtrack in a MadSeason vid. I started WoW not long before BC came out so I never really knew the pain of the top-end vanilla raid bosses, so this is quiet interesting!
I only got into raid during WOLTK, playing casual through Vanilla and BC. As you mentioned, no addons, no guides… leveling was hard and time consuming enough. I was “poor” in the game, never spending gold other than training skills and mounts - didn’t know how to use AH. When I learned all these skills, it became much easier to understand and play the mechanics. We did some guild raiding on the older content, and as you mentioned, even at higher levels we would wipe if not paying attention to the mechanics. I can only imagine how frustrating it should have been for the guilds raiding
Ascent on Rag, man the good old days. I was in Vindication on Medivh, and we got the #2 horde kill on Rag while racing the #3 guild. Talk about drama, it was wild. I still have so many screenshots from that, unfortunately no video though.
I had a guild in 2023 that also used a warrior spamming battle shout on twin emps. We didn't always do this, I think we were just lacking a warlock with good enough gear or the right spec to tank at the time, but we did it for a few resets and it worked fine.
It took my guild months to down Ragnoros. I remember the fun we had in raids, good memories! Needless to say, we never got too far in Blackwing Lair 🤣 The excitement of exploration was one of the things that kept me hooked. Oh, I forgot about the trash mobs respawning in AQ! That run sucked! I had a great time playing for 4 years though, good memories!
I dont know if Madseason adequately brought this up, but difficulty is always talked about without mentioning the tools the players had at the time. A warrior did not have a means of healing back then, cloak of shadows didnt exist, several classes and all the utilitythey provide didnt exist, hunters had no healing, a ret paladin would be oom and completely valueless if he healed similar story for dps shamans. Bandages were considered a keybound core ability for all classes in classic. People have metagamed the fights to death and know every mechanic down to the point of tedium now, but thats not the game being easy, thats the world being extremely experienced with said fights. The toolkit you have to work with back then is so small, it makes simple challenges more difficult. Its actually one of the best ways to design a game. Give the player simple tools to make a simple problem satisfying to solve. Its possible to make things complex, but you have to do it in exact pairity and thats a difficult balancing act. The game wasnt 'easy' back then. Anyone who thinks Razorgore the Untame is a trivial fight is just talking out of their ass. I remember the first time I did that fight and it took a few wipes for everyone to figure out the pattern of kiting and who to target. Even if you had the simplest role in the entire raid you still had to be careful not to screw up the CC. Simple tools, simple solutions, simply satisfying.
I got world's first on 5 priests Hakkar on my druid (tanking) in 2019, you can find the fight on my channel, Kavou being the name of my druid. 5P Hakkar to this day is the most intense, stressful yet fun fight that I can remember.
Viscidus for alliance was pretty high up too. Not many of the high end guilds back in 2006 killed him on Ally side, unless bringing 12 cheese druid alts.
Around the 21 minute mark you mention these guilds are “high raiding guilds” but I would have sworn on the Bible that you said “hydrating guilds” and was very confused for a sec.
One thing I've wondered since Classic first launched is if un-nerfed C'thun is now possible. I mean, folks are better at the game now, playing on more powerful machines with internet connections that don't use the phone, and I believe the first clear of MC in Classic was done with fewer than 40 players and most of them between levels 55 and 59. Resources and addons are better too. Unless it's been done on private servers, though, I think it's purely theoretical.
I remember Hakkar, though not actually fighting him. I more remember the infamous incident where some more... free spirited players realized that you could carry Hakkar's corrupted blood debuff outside of the raid through various means. They'd mainly troll entire cities by going to where the most people were in places like Ironforge or Stormwind, and releasing the debuff so that it infected a bunch of players, many of which would be almost immediately killed by it, but enough would survive just long enough to spread it to others. Entire cities were depopulated by it, and for a time the players organically quarantined themselves out of those places so that they wouldn't get hit by it... at least until the mods realized what was happening and removed the exploit that allowed the corrupted blood to be carried outside the raid. Apparently the incident was studied by infectious disease specialists, in order to better understand behavior of those who undergo just such a situation. ...not that we had a contemporary example of just how bad such a thing can get...
@@RUclipsDictatorship2024 Yes, and just like in WoW, the response was far worse than the disease, which is what I was referring to, but you have to keep certain topics on the down-low these days.
C'thun prenerf, triple little eyebeams ware crazy, ah good old days, best fight ever in vanilla, managed to kill it world 5th, Europe 3th, so close to world 1st, wiped on 0.8%, 2 hours before Nihilum killed it...Colesta-Mage (LootFTW-Twillight Hammer server).
While not the toughest boss mechanically the most mentally stressful and infuriating boss for me as a guild officer and occasional raid leader was Razorgore hands down. The individual responsibility needed on Razorgore was a huge jump up from Molten Core and some people just couldn’t handle it.
The toughest raid boss of Vanilla: Frame rate and Internet connections. I played on such a potato that I had to point my camera at my feet while tanking.
Yeah, WoW may run smooth now on its outdated architecture but back in 2005, it was arguably the most poorly optimized game for PC for at least a decade.
Lmao i remember doing that bacl in the tbc days
Clearing Serpentshrine Cavern, Hyjal, Tempest Keep, and Illidan while rocking 4 FPS was a nerve wracking yet magical experience. I even managed to outdamage most of my fellow Warlocks even when I did a crazy Felguard build based off a TK drop!
Edit: meant to say Serpentshrine Cavern and not Coilfang Reservoir
@@cobalt968 by coilfang reservoir do you mean serpentshrine cavern?
@@joshea7861 yeah, that’s what I meant. It’s been a long while since I played TBC!
A classic mad season video
You haven't watched it
@@drdynaniteI did
@@professionalhater3929 This video is ~30 minutes long and you posted your original comment 20 minutes ago - just a minute after this video was posted
@@drdynaniteHe watched it at 2x speed… duh!
ClassicSeason when
How have I never known that Loatheb is an anagram for healbot omg
Me neither! I was a healer in vanilla, but didn't use Healbot. Now it all makes sense...
SAme, I was today years old when I learned this. Tbf I wasn't playing WoW back then but still
Never knew that. Started using Healbot back then also.
Honestly, meta fight design like that limiting certain skills is very cool. Imagine a fight where the boss randomly rotates targets and taunts are limited. You need to throw out your original strat and get creative, kite, CC, Slow, bring more tanks 😵💫
As an anagram game enjoyer, and former healing officer during that time for our guild, I have failed my people for not knowing this
Hardest boss was mom telling me to go to bed :/
But Madseason just said your mom was easy
Did you try heroic difficulty by sneaking back out to play 😆
She had a very short enrage timer too! Started almost instantly and could wipe you very quickly.
@@mrmacguffin6886for me I just took her down from the dot effects that triggered with her type 2 diabetes
In general, I don't think it can be stressed enough the difficulty of simply coordinating 40 people, each with their own specific tasks and abilities in a relatively tight room, during a time when WoW was the antithesis of optimized for the average PC and when dial-up was still widely used and at best, broadband was around 15Kbps, to say nothing of having 40 people on Ventrillo at the same time. Some raid encounters were downright slideshows of a framerate. It's amazing we managed to successfully clear some of these raids, tbh.
It also sucked that a lot of guilds that were even working AQ40 and Naxx had a very small window before The Burning Crusade dropped and did away with 40-mans altogether.
Plus when your guild leader is getting divorced with guild healer wife as everyone is running to zone in
I played in the beginning b4 battlegrounds.. with Netzero.. 😮
@@scienz0220
@@soummyeah8271 did you use the hack to remove the bar that took up like 1/3 of your screen? hahah
No way was internet only 15kbps back then. I had 56kbps at least five years before that and it wasn’t unreasonable in cost.
Counting down the top 10 hardest bosses in Vanilla World of Warcraft!
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Love the video, are you still streaming...? Checked twitch and it says "MadSeasonShow last streamed 4 months ago"!
Think you forgot to pin this mads
Why didn't you include Retail bosses aswell? Because none of them are actually hard. Kil'jaeden from tomb of sargeras would be an interesting topic.
You forgot about Undercity elevator Boss😂😂
😂
Lmao
Haha yep the most devastating evil, I can visually see the pile of skeleton bones of players in it right now 😆
And phase 2 Black Wing Decent elevator
Weirdest glitch that I remember was getting dc'd after accidentally clipping through the undercity elevator; when I relogged, I was in the lake in Stonetalon Mountains, with the Undercity Guardians floating next to me.
I would throw in Viscidus, even in Classic WoW that was a very tricky boss, for regular guilds.
True
Yeah, we tried him a few times but the clock was ticking and we didn't have much time before TBC dropped so we gave up on him. We did managed to kill Ouro though.
He was so insanely much harder as alliance than Horde. If you weren't a guild full of engineers, you couldn't one-phase him, and the poison mechanic kept draining the mana of every healer. Most non-hardcore guilds tended to clear him with the LBRS poison sacs.
viscidus is harder than ouro, c'thun and some naxx bosses on this list but hey
@@Paal2005 Then the door strat was figured out and he became a joke.
10/10 old school madseason video
I'm kind of in a top 10 mood lately, so expect more :D they're fun
@@madseasonshow Your videos like these and the Pandora's series are wonderful and have been the primary inspiration for me to make my own channel, focusing on MMO/gaming oddities, history, etc. (starting my first script in a few weeks) -- so thank you for what you do!
God damn I've never been burnt so many times less than 60 seconds into a video 😂
that's what your mom also said
I haven't felt a burn like that since the first time I peed after a night with your mom
ikr lmfao
Being a long time player, basically when the game came out, I marvel at how much Madseason remembers and how much footage he has of the early days. Well done sir.
I never played vanilla in its day, I only started with TBC. I was maybe 12-13 when I started with my friends, and we had no idea what we were doing. Me and my best buddy made night elf hunters (duh) and probably spent a month in Teldrassil.
At one point along the harrowing journey to level 10, one of us made a dwarf, and found out that you could get guns!! Game changer. But we learned quickly that you needed to travel to Ironforge to train guns. I don’t know how we managed to figure out how to get there, but we had a quest of our own now… obtain guns. So we leveled up to maybe 11-12, found the boat to Menethil harbor, and began the infamous run through the Wetlands. After hours of sprinting past angry crocolisks, we finally made it Ironforge, trained the guns skill with the meager silver we had, and finally equipped our blunderbusses. We took the tram to Stormwind, and proudly drew our new weapons to inspire wonder in the other players. “How did these Nightelves manage to get guns? They must be total badasses” or some variation must have going through everyone’s minds.
I miss those days so dearly, when everything was new and exciting. When I had no idea there were optimal talents and gear. I never made it to the max level while we played. Wrath came out when I was in the 50s and we were laser focused on 55 for the Deathknight. We plowed through to 68 as fast as possible (very trivial even for us with how insane the DK was then) and then bounced on and off with the game only getting to 79. I leveled to 85 in Cata but never did a single end game dungeon, and when I came back to give things a look in WoD everything was so different with microtransactions I didn’t want to play anymore.
I had an absolute blast with Classic, but unfortunately it came at a very bad time in my life and I didn’t get to experience the ladder with everyone. I would love to be able to go back in time and play as a kid once again, but such is the way of life. Your videos bring me back to those days even though I never even got to do any of these things, I doubt I even know raids existed at the time.
Have you tried any version of wow recently?
@@markjackson5333thanks
Love the Silvermoon music addition to this video. My favorite music in the game.
Another video idea: vanilla zone transitions. I remember back then one of the most immersive things about WoW was that I could walk whole continents with no loading screens, and they did some unique things with transitions between zones. Some only had one or two set paths in and out, like Dun Morogh to Loch Modan, but I remember vividly that I could cross from Elywnn to Duskwood at any point over that river, those two areas were fully connected, not just a single tunnel or road,
There were some iconic transitions. The Dwarf tunnel into the Searing Gorge, crossing the river into Darkshire like you mentioned, Un'Goro Crater was incredible. (Such a great vanilla zone). Anything in the Arathi Highlands.
Btw, you know there was loading, only cleverly hidden, right? I honestly never understood this obsession of "no loading screens" :) But that's just me, it never bothered me.
@@PetrSojnek No loading screens is an immersion element. The ability to seamlessly transition between zones emulates real life that keeps the player engaged with the zone and the environment. The loading screen is a stark reminder that the player is in a game.
@@PetrSojnek It's a big deal.. among with open world.
I remember playing Star Wars the Old Republic MMO and all those loading screens and very small areas in the planets were somewhat limiting immersion.. though I understand that the technology back then wasn't up for a whole galaxy wide open world :) But yeah I wanted some more roaming space there I guess.
While I wouldn't say he's as mechanically complex as the bosses on this list, Vael was tough to execute, back in the day. I distinctly recall spending many more hours/weeks on getting Vael down than Razorgore. In fact, the first boss I had ever heard referred to as a raid, or guild, killer was Vael. The precise tank swaps and threat control required by the raid made it quite difficult, not to mention the time limit and people just blowing up all over the place.
Same.. we had some troubles with Razorgore until we figured out a guy who knew how to do the mindcontrol part great and hunters (me included) did a huge job at kiting the dragonkins.
After that we faced another block and much bigger one. Vael. That was a fight where your whole raid had to put some decent dps numbers. I have a video of our guilds first kill of Vael back in the days in my channel ;)
I think one of our main issues were attendance related. Our Vael first kill was only 36-37 people in the raid and when you are already struggling, missing a few players makes a big deal.
After the Vael kill we got our act together and managed to get realm first kills on all remaining bosses in BWL including Nefarian.
Vael wasn't an issue for us... loved that boss though as a fury warrior!! the damage 😅😅
@@DavidWBeck Yeah Vael was quite nice as fury, if you didn't over agro.. heheh
Vael was the number 1 player killer for all of vanilla. He was a gearcheck but gear is part of it too. Id say he broke more guilds than any other
My memory of 2005 was that Vael was unbeatable by 95% of guilds, and then all of a sudden, after like 2-3 weeks, everyone started beating him, and rarely failed, implying he was secretly nerfed. But nobody else I've talked to seems to remember it that way.
Damn I wasnt expecting so much burn before it even started! Never change ChadSeason
In the days pre-BC. I used to make a killing blacksmithing dark iron gear for MC raids. I worked on my thorium brotherhood rep for months and months, I was a rogue so it was easy to get to the grim guzzler to the quartermaster for all the plans and to the black anvil to craft all the dark iron gear people needed for Fire resistance, I even made a sulfuron hammer for a guy who had an "eye of sulfuras" drop for him. Those days crafting felt important. That's when molten core felt like the peak in raid difficulty. But was at the same time, so incredibly rewarding.
My guild wiped night one for 3 hours on razorgore. We were stuck on this boss for 2 weeks only to be stuck again for 2 more weeks on the next boss, vael, idk how we didn't implode.
They really learned their lesson not making the first 2 bosses the hardest in the raid, bar maybe the last boss himself
@@Reac2 Well you learned a lot of gameplay and working together while clearing BWL up to Nefarian.. so it wasn't that hard anymore :)
Also the gear updates were pretty good compared to MC gear.
I’m in bed after a 14-hour night shift, with a plate of food, and this video to watch - thank you so much for your content, I love it.
Honorable mention goes to *Ossirian the Unscarred* , also known as the 'Pugbreaker' who is way more difficult than any other 20 men raid boss (if you consider Hakkar in the 0 priest way which is how most raids do it).
Just like the 4HM it was a sensitive boss at which even minor mistake could lead to wipe.
- Not kiting the boss properly: WIPE
- Clicking the crystal too early or too late: WIPE
- Tank gets sucked into the tornado: WIPE
- Caster dd overaggros due to magic school vulnerability: WIPE
- Curse of tongues not decursed, therefore, not enough healing to the tank: WIPE.
Obviously for guilds it isn't a difficult boss, but pug groups often have to leave the raid with the shame of only 5/6 bosses killed.
Loatheb = Healbot how did I never notice that before! 🤯
I'm glad Madseasonzzard decided to release this Classic Madseasonshow content.
It's just like being there day one.
One thing that never gets mentioned in these videos is the ultimate boss - servers. When we played back in 2005 on the opening of BWL, guilds had to communicate via icq or ventrillo to let each other know when they were pulling, because if two guilds pulled Nefarian at the same time, the servers would crash and everyone would fucking die.
No one was on nefarion day 1.
@@carsoncoley1 I never said we were. You had to coordinate pulls on Razorgore for the same reason.
AQ wasn’t that bad because a lot of guilds were still struggling through long BWLs, but Anub in Naxx was a fucking slideshow.
2 mom jokes in less then 1 minute in to the video this is a classic video ❤
I must say I quite enjoy the little touch of your background music selection and casual Horde distain. Keep up the excellent work friend!
Great video and the nostalgia is real!!
Man, almost 20 years…coming from EQ we were just happy to not have brutal XP death penalties, corpse retrieval, or raid bosses on week long respawn timers in the open world.
All things considered, for a small guild, I think we did ok at the time and had fun with it. Good times.
Smaller guilds tend to foster stronger bonds I feel
Haven't played WoW since classic became retail again, but like the obsessive addict I am I click on this video within seconds and watch every minute of it. Your soothing voice keeps me coming back, time and time again
Same.. I started in TBC and now regret I didn't clone my main and missed the opporturnity when they removed it.. I quit TBC before I managed to get 70.. didn't want the hamsterwheel again.
I started playing WoW too late to see vanilla raids in all their glory. I used to love hearing the stories from the seasoned raiders who used to tackle these bosses.
I thought Vaelastrasz (2nd boss BWL) was even more of a guild killer than Razorgore. I guess if your guild disbands because of Razorgore you don't event see Vaelastrasz in the first place :D
I Love the music choice for the Twin Brothers
Yeah, props for using the old school music from the Doom games
Aside from it always having been nuts that they actually recruited Furor someone I remember from my EverQuest days, it's kind of nutty that he kept his job after his response to being told that the raid was impossible was to call players... that.
The "your mom" jokes at the beginning undercut what I presume will be many comments haha
Havent played in years. Still watch every video u release!
bro's so hard up for content he's re-hashing topics that have been done to death
Madseason becoming more unhinged over the years with the ads and cursing more and owning me by doing a "your mom" joke 30 sec in....im so here for it 😂
At the launch of patch 1.10 Onyxia had some issues with her deep breaths in phase 2. The video 'bugged onyxia is serious' was quite legendary at the time😂
Epic mario music at Saphiron and Kelthuzad gave me goosebumps.
Dude, I haven’t seen one of your vids in so long. Glad you’re still around. Love your content
Man, our moms were really busy back in 2000s.
For Horde Saphiron was WAYYY more difficult than Kel'Thuzad because Shamans suddenly had to press other spells than Chain Heal.
I dnt remember that well , why is that? Is it because they had to use individual heals more often than CH?
The touch of using Sign of Evil for the Twin Emperors showcase is so insane. I was thinking about the video when I finished watching, and when the realization of what you did hit, I made some audible noises irl
Great video, only note I have is that on my server at least it was Vael rather than Razorgore that was the guildbreaker. There were multiple top MC guilds that spent 2 months wiping on Vael and disbanded. That was the one that was notorious back in 2005 as your threshhold into BWL
The best thing to listen to while trying to fall asleep . Great relaxing voice , Thank you ! 👍☺
I still remember there was no RUclips when Razorgore came out. You basically had to come up with your own strategies or scour other guild forums to see their strategies. Our guild somehow came up with the idea of getting our 4 hunters to just kite the dragonkins until the eggs were dead. It was incredibly hectic and we actually replaced like 3 hunters through progression because of how annoying that fight was.
Good to see you still making videos. I stumbled upon your channel and you gave me that wow itch again. I subbed a few weeks ago
Prophet Skeram was a guild breaker too. Great video though! Last good vanilla server was Elysium until you could buy everything. Raid day and raid prep was epic. DM tribute buffs, Hakkar heart, Darkmoon fair, all the consumables on planet earth, etc. Fun times.
New madseason and it’s 30 mins?? The gods have blessed us today
This whole video is a great walk down memory lane.
Almost makes me miss my vanilla guild, lol.
We love you MadSeason!❤❤❤
The back to back your mom jokes was great.
Never knew that Loatheb was an anogram on Healbot. Amazing video as always!
I did enjoy your video Mad, and i have seen lists of hardest wow bosses, and some of these i don't remember seeing before, like the Loatheb and Ouro, really cool stuff, and i always enjoy the details.
Great video. Ideas for more: hardest dungeon bosses, easiest raid bosses, easiest dungeon bosses.
I did not expect to hear Doom soundtrack in a MadSeason vid.
I started WoW not long before BC came out so I never really knew the pain of the top-end vanilla raid bosses, so this is quiet interesting!
Mad season getting raw on it in the first minute, that's why he is the king!
Hardest part was finding 40 competent players
Great vid.
That Force Your Way remix was pretty rockin' by the way.
I only got into raid during WOLTK, playing casual through Vanilla and BC. As you mentioned, no addons, no guides… leveling was hard and time consuming enough. I was “poor” in the game, never spending gold other than training skills and mounts - didn’t know how to use AH. When I learned all these skills, it became much easier to understand and play the mechanics. We did some guild raiding on the older content, and as you mentioned, even at higher levels we would wipe if not paying attention to the mechanics. I can only imagine how frustrating it should have been for the guilds raiding
I didn't know that little tidbit about loatheb -> healbot, that's pretty cool. Also, I like the doom music.
The only one I killed was Ragnaros. 😂
Great video, thanks a lot!
Sanca
TBC next please! I haven't played WoW since Wrath but have always loved watching your videos
the song during the twin empires is pretty dope. lots of despair
Surprised at no Vael or Viscidus, I remember those being some of the toughest for their time.
bug trio killing kri last was also quite tough back in the day
Ascent on Rag, man the good old days. I was in Vindication on Medivh, and we got the #2 horde kill on Rag while racing the #3 guild. Talk about drama, it was wild. I still have so many screenshots from that, unfortunately no video though.
I had a guild in 2023 that also used a warrior spamming battle shout on twin emps. We didn't always do this, I think we were just lacking a warlock with good enough gear or the right spec to tank at the time, but we did it for a few resets and it worked fine.
I'm pretty sure the add-on architecture was changed well before Naxx to disallow healbot and the healing auto cancel add-on.
Missed you madseason
It took my guild months to down Ragnoros. I remember the fun we had in raids, good memories! Needless to say, we never got too far in Blackwing Lair 🤣 The excitement of exploration was one of the things that kept me hooked. Oh, I forgot about the trash mobs respawning in AQ! That run sucked! I had a great time playing for 4 years though, good memories!
Seeing DAoC, maybe not mentioned ... But atleast shown makes me smile, so many games owe so much to that game, and many don't know it.
This video is great. Now i'm going to watch it
Good ole' fashon MadSeason Video. Love it dude!
Madseason with another banger
Never played WOW but I laughed alot during this video due to the old-time madness in alot of games from back when.
Joe's Nerdgasm... I see what you did there Madseason (someone was gonna ask who Joe is)
I have trouble watching your videos , makes me want to play. What i would do to go back to those days!
Starting off with multiple Your Mum jokes, im all in!
The vibes in this video are *chef's kiss* The music choices, the nostalgia, MadSeason's typical oration...
Love the part using Super Mario World Ghost House background music
I remember the 4H fight. Farming that spell hit trinket as tank pissed off a lot of casters. One missed taunt was all it took to wipe though...
The hardest raid boss was getting 40 people to show up. I will fight on that.
16:34 too scary Mad 😢
Factorio background music catches me off-guard every time, lol
I dont know if Madseason adequately brought this up, but difficulty is always talked about without mentioning the tools the players had at the time.
A warrior did not have a means of healing back then, cloak of shadows didnt exist, several classes and all the utilitythey provide didnt exist, hunters had no healing, a ret paladin would be oom and completely valueless if he healed similar story for dps shamans. Bandages were considered a keybound core ability for all classes in classic.
People have metagamed the fights to death and know every mechanic down to the point of tedium now, but thats not the game being easy, thats the world being extremely experienced with said fights.
The toolkit you have to work with back then is so small, it makes simple challenges more difficult.
Its actually one of the best ways to design a game. Give the player simple tools to make a simple problem satisfying to solve.
Its possible to make things complex, but you have to do it in exact pairity and thats a difficult balancing act.
The game wasnt 'easy' back then. Anyone who thinks Razorgore the Untame is a trivial fight is just talking out of their ass. I remember the first time I did that fight and it took a few wipes for everyone to figure out the pattern of kiting and who to target. Even if you had the simplest role in the entire raid you still had to be careful not to screw up the CC.
Simple tools, simple solutions, simply satisfying.
I got world's first on 5 priests Hakkar on my druid (tanking) in 2019, you can find the fight on my channel, Kavou being the name of my druid. 5P Hakkar to this day is the most intense, stressful yet fun fight that I can remember.
Viscidus for alliance was pretty high up too. Not many of the high end guilds back in 2006 killed him on Ally side, unless bringing 12 cheese druid alts.
Didn't get to experience OG Vanilla, but in Classic my guild had more wipes on Twin Emps than any other boss. 😅
Death & Taxes, Copperfield... Shattered Hand was popping off in vanilla.
I will never forget the two months we spend with my guild to get nature gear for Huhuran
The doom music 😂 love it!!
Thanks for the feature yo!🥰
Around the 21 minute mark you mention these guilds are “high raiding guilds” but I would have sworn on the Bible that you said “hydrating guilds” and was very confused for a sec.
One thing I've wondered since Classic first launched is if un-nerfed C'thun is now possible. I mean, folks are better at the game now, playing on more powerful machines with internet connections that don't use the phone, and I believe the first clear of MC in Classic was done with fewer than 40 players and most of them between levels 55 and 59. Resources and addons are better too. Unless it's been done on private servers, though, I think it's purely theoretical.
Another video about vanilla. Bless.
I remember Hakkar, though not actually fighting him. I more remember the infamous incident where some more... free spirited players realized that you could carry Hakkar's corrupted blood debuff outside of the raid through various means. They'd mainly troll entire cities by going to where the most people were in places like Ironforge or Stormwind, and releasing the debuff so that it infected a bunch of players, many of which would be almost immediately killed by it, but enough would survive just long enough to spread it to others.
Entire cities were depopulated by it, and for a time the players organically quarantined themselves out of those places so that they wouldn't get hit by it... at least until the mods realized what was happening and removed the exploit that allowed the corrupted blood to be carried outside the raid. Apparently the incident was studied by infectious disease specialists, in order to better understand behavior of those who undergo just such a situation.
...not that we had a contemporary example of just how bad such a thing can get...
You talking about covid that had a 99% survival rate?
@@RUclipsDictatorship2024 Yes, and just like in WoW, the response was far worse than the disease, which is what I was referring to, but you have to keep certain topics on the down-low these days.
@@LabTech41 Roger wilco
C'thun prenerf, triple little eyebeams ware crazy, ah good old days, best fight ever in vanilla, managed to kill it world 5th, Europe 3th, so close to world 1st, wiped on 0.8%, 2 hours before Nihilum killed it...Colesta-Mage (LootFTW-Twillight Hammer server).
I wish I was around during the original 2004 release. Before everything was known. Getting to be a part of learning and strategizing.
When you had Cthun at #2, I was fully expecting a Hogger #1 spot
Cmon Mad, how could have you missed Vael from this list! Vaelstraz, the guild breaker!
While not the toughest boss mechanically the most mentally stressful and infuriating boss for me as a guild officer and occasional raid leader was Razorgore hands down. The individual responsibility needed on Razorgore was a huge jump up from Molten Core and some people just couldn’t handle it.