I joined wow late in vanilla, and only got into a couple of runs. I’m wondering how many attempts or hours would it typically take to down a new boss.
Depends on the group and the boss.
This varied a lot. Consider many guilds were stuck on the early raids and never progressed.
As others have stated the commitment level of the guild is a huge factor. It is hard to regularly organize 40 players. Typically you want to have more than 40 so that you can sub in as needed. That fact alone can lead to drama and hurt feelings with some individuals.
Obviously everyone has to reach 60 first. Then you need people to be properly attuned for MC. You also need people that have done the quest chain to extinguish runes. Everyone will be asked to farm/buy/craft fire resist gear and consumables will also be required in plentiful amounts.
After all that is said in done, it might take weeks or even months for the first full clear. Then it may take many more months for someone to collect a complete set of T1 gear.
Generally speaking the same goes for the rest of the raids. ZG20 and AQ20 (imo) being the easier ones to take down. BWL and AQ40 (imo) are both generally harder than MC.
I doubt I have the willpower to do all of that again, but I may drop into those sort of raids to fill spots from time to time. My goal is going to be collecting the dungeon set. Since that is something I can take on with much smaller groups. Dungeon set mileage really varies though. For some classes its nearly as good as T1 and for other classes its simply not itemized properly.
Good luck in whatever you decide to do.
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There is actually a website that has a timeline for the world firsts of all Vanilla raid bosses.
www.method.gg/raid-history
Onyxia: 69 days
MC: 154 days
BWL: 77 days
AQ40: 113 days
Naxxramas: 90 days
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Longer than you might think. Not to mention the fact that this new generation wants instant gratification and most will rage quit one guild after another because they all want everything instantly on farm.
To have 40 regular raiders you need a guild of at least 60 to 80, with 20 to 40 of those willing to be second class guild members always on standby in case of no shows.
Good luck with that in 2019.
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Keep in mind that only ~20 guilds ever beat Naxxramas in all of WoW.
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The raid leader is largely what dictates success.
Kicking AFKers, directing the raid and assigning healers/DPS/tanks, etc…
I’ve been in MC pugs that wiped on trash endlessly, and pugs that downed a few bosses. The boss killing raids were a weekly event made on the forums by a female human character (can’t remember class) and seemed to have a few experienced people in it.
For guild raids? That’s a good question as well…
Vanilla had different types of raids. If you were unable to kill MC bosses, you could take the non-AFK players and go clear ZG.
If you could kill 1 boss, you can probably kill 1-2 more in MC.
Just my experience, anyway…my very hazy experience.
Edit: to actually answer your question: it all depends on your guild’s ability and gear.
Early on, MC will be super hard for pretty much everyone. Lack of gear will make progression super slow.
Once you get rolling though, it’s not strange to get a couple back-to-back kills. How long does it take to get rolling? I didn’t start at vanilla launch, so I’m not 100% sure…but new guilds with bad gear could sometimes take weeks before they had the gear to kill a boss in MC.
Once a guild is established and attempting beyond the start bosses, it can take over a week to get one more boss. I only remember progressing through BWL/MC/ZG/AQ20, unfortunately…even though I did get to step inside naxx and kill some AQ40 bosses.
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The fact that BC was announced not long after Naxx came out contributed to that.
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Not to spam this thread but I think this is fascinating. To be fair in recent expansions those guilds are doing a couple hundred attempts, but wipe’athon raiding was the norm in Vanilla/BC top end progression as well.
Vanilla:
Onyxia: 69 days
Molten Core: 154 days
Blackwing Lair: 77 days
Temple of Ahn’qiraj: 113 days
Naxxramas: 90 days
Burning Crusade:
Gruul’s Lair: 19 days
Magtheridon’s Lair: 40 days
Serpentshrine Caverns: 73 days
Tempest Keep: 130 days
Battle for Mount Hyjal: 26 days
Black Temple: 21 days
Sunwell Plateau: 62 days
Wrath of the Lich King:
Naxxramas: 0 days
Sartharion + 3 Drakes: 6 days
Eye of Eternity: 0 days
Ulduar: 85 days
Trial of the Crusader: 7 days
Icecrown Citadel (gated wings): 46 days
Ruby Sanctum: 0 days
Cataclysm:
Blackwing Descent: 27 days
Bastion of Twilight: 38 days
Throne of Four Winds: 42 days
Firelands: 14 days
Dragon Soul: 14 days
Mists of Pandaria:
Mogu’shan Vaults: 3 days
Heart of Fear: 5 days
Terrace of Endless Spring: 5 days
Throne of Thunder: 14 days
Siege of Orgrimmar: 14 days
Warlords of Draenor:
Highmaul: 4 days
Blackrock Foundry: 10 days
Hellfire Citadel: 16 days
Legion:
Emerald Nightmare: 0 days
Trial of Valor: 3 days
The Nighthold: 11 days
Tomb of Sargeras: 19 days
Antorus, the Burning Throne: 8 days
Battle for Azeroth:
Uldir: 8 days
Battle for Dazar’alor: 7 days
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Back in Classic, guilds did not raid literally 18 hours a day every single day until the final boss dies like the super hardcore guilds have been doing for years now.
To answer OP’s question, as the other have stated there is no “typical time”, it depends on an incredible amount of factors, including preparation, dedication, how focused people are, the leadership, how skilled the raiders are in the first place.
That one made me laugh.
Yeah its easy to kill bosses when you have all the information before the raid even comes out. Blizzard needs to go back to releasing content without the whole world knowing what is going to happen first.
That’s not how raid testing works.
Some people, for some reason, think Mythic raid testing gives all the info before the tier officially launches. This could not be farther from the truth.
- The final boss is never tested by the public on Mythic.
- Mythic raid testing for the earlier bosses only ever lasts for an hour, maybe two, per boss, and these bosses are purposely tuned incorrectly (like having twice as much HP as they will on launch) and do a lot of things wrong. This idea that we have all the information is quite wrong, by a long shot.
- If you think it was still easy to kill Mythic Kil’jaeden just because Tomb of Sargeras was tested first, then I guess you don’t know about high end mythic progression.
Do you really think those two hours of testing on each boss makes that big of a difference? These are already guilds who make the most out of a 2 hour raid test. If there was no raid testing, it would take at most maybe one or two more days for these guilds to finish progression. Once these guilds kill the bosses and post the videos, all the semi-hardcore and casual guilds then just watch guides, which would lead to everyone within two weeks knowing what happens anyway.
As for releasing raids untested, one of the main reasons why a lot of the Vanilla and BC bosses took so long was because they were extremely buggy. C’thun was “mathmatically impossible”, Kael’thas had more bugs than any fight ever made, and it remained that way for months. It was actually unfortunate. A lot of server first C’thun kills went to the people who were in the right place at the right time after the hotfix came out (which happened at a really odd time during the day), not necessarily the best guild on the server.
Anyway, my point is that content would not suddenly live weeks longer if they stopped doing raid testing, but the fights would be significantly more buggy. The overall quality of the content would drop off significantly. There has been this long term meme that guilds like Method are Blizzard’s testers because how many many hotfixes happen when they’re progressing. This is also because Blizzard’s in-house QA raid testing team is not, shall we say, anywhere near Method’s level.
BfA also is a perfect example of why they should never rush out content without fully testing it first. It came out at least 2-3 months too early. Antorus was the shortest final tier since Sunwell, by a lot.
Please stop thinking you can imply what I think. I didn’t say a word about testing.
So what exactly were you talking about?
Information control. Not testing.
I guess it depends on why you laughed, but it is neat seeing a 4k HP tank get mauled by the molten giants while his healers go OOM within 20 seconds trying to keep him alive. 
That said, I have no idea how experienced guilds will handle it, so my ‘everyone’ comment was definitely an exaggeration.
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Sort of. There were a few other factors:
- Attunement was not fun.
- You needed to gear 40+ people with T2.5 to even consider entering.
- Even then, you needed to farm flasks, elixirs, and other consumables to stand a chance because T2.5 wasn’t actually good enough.
- You needed GOOD off-sets and resist sets.
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Meaning what, exactly? What would you suggest to actually keep information from quickly spreading? A non disclosure agreement? In what way exactly would Blizzard control the information?
Method is going to kill the final boss within two-three weeks no matter what. These days, they even stream it. Even if they didn’t stream it, they’re going to post videos of their kills. Meaning, all the info about the bosses is going to be out there in no time no matter what.
Please don’t get me wrong, I would totally prefer the days where we went into a tier clueless (provided Blizz’s QA team could actually test it correctly in house), but that just doesn’t happen today. At least, not in the circles I’ve been playing it, we prepare as much as we can. From time to time, I do envy those who have no idea whats going on it in game, because they have that epic feeling of the world being mysterious.
Agreed. But that’s not really hard for those who know what to do. It’s literally stand in place and spam one button and kill the Giant before it kills you. By today’s standards, Molten Core is very easy, so I don’t think it’s going to be a big challenge for any experienced raider.
Really interesting data, given the “Vanilla players were trash compared to now” argument I see over and over. While it’s true that modern encounters have a lot more novelty and require a lot more tap-dancing because everybody is expected to handle 3-4 mechanics each, depending on class, they’re generally tuned to be a lot more gentle, and won’t require oddball raid comps, like 8 tanks.
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