Has there ever been a stated reason why this is now seemingly the standard? Every raid since 10.0 and Vault of the Incarnates has only had 8 bosses. Only 8 bosses limits the size and scope of the raid (both literally in terms of square footage, less bosses will mandate a physically smaller raid dungeon which piggy backs into figuratively smaller raids because they feel less impressive when they are physically smaller), particularly the final tier when it’s the biggest and baddest threat of the expansion, not to mention it puts a harder cap on the amount of gear that the raid can get in a week. Compare 8 bosses worth of drops to older raids providing 11, 12, or 13 bosses worth of drops.
Just about every fan favorite raid from the past has been between 10 and 13 bosses. Icecrown Citadel, Throne of Thunder, Siege of Orgrimmar, Blackrock Foundry, Nighthold, all off the top of my head.
I hope it’s not connected to world first races, because I really don’t need another reason to hate the RWF even more than I already do with how much it’s damaged raid design.
There’s an argument for the final raid to be longer, but I always use SoO as an argument against long raids for the sake of being long. That place takes forever to run even when you’re one-shotting everything on your transmog farm. Imagine actually trying to progress it again.
This was brought up by Blizzard at some point since Shadowlands, since Sepulcher was the last one to have more than 9 bosses.
Essentially, they feel 8-9 boss raids are better for progression guilds. They’re less of a slog each week to reclear. I don’t think they’re taking 10+ boss raids off the table completely, but will only do them where it makes sense.
Look at most bosses in all raids in the last few expansions. Most of them are introduced and killed off in the raid, we don’t get an any interaction with them throughout that patch’s story. Fewer bosses to pull out of thin air.
Even the new Scarlet Enclave raid only has 8 bosses.
I guess on one hand 8 bosses means less filler bosses and also means in theory- IN THEORY - you can get more raids faster, but the reality seems to be we are just getting less stuff.
8 bosses I think is about right for a raid. Too many bosses and the raid will feel long and clunky, too few and it will not really feel worthwhile. The exception is Trial of Valor which only had 3, because each boss felt good.
If you get too many bosses interesting boss design gets set off to the side as you have to accommodate for the increase in bosses you have to design for. Think Uldar as an example, the Cat Lady and the boss on the Walk-way felt more like mini-bosses then something well designed.
9 bosses I feel should be the maximum number we should see. For some raids, maybe the end of expansion one
Ehh, debatable. Mechanics haven’t majorly innovated since maybe BFA, arguably even going back to Legion or WoD.
Except it doesn’t really mean less filler. Just using Undermine as an example, literally the only character seen before the raid itself is Gallywix. Every other boss isn’t anywhere in the campaign.
Agreed on getting less stuff. The faster patch cadence is good on paper but it hasn’t really amounted to much in reality. The game has had on average 1 new expansion every 18-24 months, since 2010 with Cataclysm. Even the expacs with the really long droughts don’t actually tend to break this trend, and even if they do it’s only by 1 or 2 months at most.
Entirely a self-inflicted problem since Blizzard hasn’t written a halfway decent villain since 2008.
Id guess after seplucher feeling like a normal raid to anduin, including its own week 1 lock and dread, ryg and the jailer feeling like their own mini raid they figured mid length ones statistics showed mid length raids with other side progress, like mega dungeons or content refreshes had more engagement.
Blackrocks refresh for the anniversary took the place of a mini mid-patch raid this time. And we havent gotten mega dungeon but we did get a normal one this season which is the first time since legion i think.
Didn’t they also basically say that they aren’t opposed to making 10+ boss raids on the whole, but 8-9 seems to be the sweet spot?
Like, if they felt making a 12 boss raid with shorter fights was something they’d like to do for a patch, it’s not like they’re solidly stuck on 8. They just feel like 8 is the balance between quality on their end and progressing/reclearing on the player end.
Minor sidenote can we mention how much flak warlords got for being “half an expansion” because it only had 2 tiers of raids but it had 31 bosses between those tiers compared to Dragonflights 26 bosses in 3 tiers? All of its bosses managed to be interesting too.
In that case it’s a skill issue on the part of the design team. Doing mog runs of old raids semi-regularly for the last several years, there haven’t really been all that many filler bosses since the start of WoD.
No matter what reasoning they’ve given, I think it’s likely the truth is that the game has more things to develop now and raids aren’t as important as they used to be.
We keep getting features that used to be on the “it will cost a raid tier wish list”. Even with a bigger team, the truth is it probably cost us some bosses, at the very least (not to mention that expansions seem to consistently be only 3 raid tiers now).
I wish bosses were playable toons, I would love to stand in a giant circle all day waiting to be attacked, and when I level up I could earn powerful spells that force attackers to stand in small pools of fire or slime or jump around in different colored circles.
And I would pick what loot everyone gets if I get killed.
“Hmm that druid didn’t rez the healer who died and had low dps, I’m gonna give him the helm he already has”
That’s just not true, at all. Aberrus was 9, Amirdrassil was 9.
Icecrown literally had two bosses that were exact copies of one another. Throne of Thunder had some of the most bland bosses in the game as filler. Those didn’t make the raid better, they just made it longer. Siege was basically two raids tied together, the others you listed were 10 bosses. That’s one more than Aberrus or Amirdrassil.
Every raid you listed was also under different loot systems with different items/player drop rates. Those rates were last updated in SL I believe.
I highly doubt this. Undermine is one of the biggest raids in the game, compared to something like Emerald Nightmare or Throne of Thunder which was basically all narrow corridors.