Project Lore

I'd like to take a moment on the one year anniversary of Project Lore to address the fans in order to let you all know what's up with the us and what you can expect in the future from Project Lore. We're going through some changes here, which you may have already noticed. Over the next few months, you'll see the site and video content evolve, and in the end we will be an even better resource for you to find your favorite WoW content. We've heard your concerns about Project Lore and understand that you love the show for the same reasons we love it - embracing WoW culture and the interactions between players that make the game what it is.  Over the summer you can tell we've taken a little break from the bigger scale videos but rest assured that we want to give you a Project Lore Ulduar run just as soon as we can. In the mean time, be sure to check out the live streams of Ulduar runs that will be happening during the week and will start being featured here on Project Lore. They're going to be improving and becoming more interactive as time moves on, so watch our Twitter feed and check the site to see when they'll be happening. On one final note, we want to thank you all for your support over the last year. Without the fans, there would be no Project Lore, and we would never have made it for one year. Here's to the second year being even better!

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It's amazing how time flies! With a new dungeon on the horizon and boss testing already underway, I figured I better get my ass in gear on these second looks! It's been a few weeks since the first article, which covered the Siege area of the dungeon, and I feel like I've gotten a lot more experience with the three fights that make up the Antechamber: Iron Council, Kologarn, and Auriaya. Though the Algalon encounter is technically in this area, it cannot be accessed until after Yogg-Saron, so it will be included in a later second look. Let's move right along, shall we? The Iron Council - I won't lie. I wasn't exactly happy when we made a detour from Kologarn in a raid earlier this week to go pick a fight with the Iron Council first. It's not that it's an especially tough encounter, at least not if you follow the prescribed sequence of Steelbreaker -> Molgeim -> Brundir, but there are just so many easy ways for it to spin out of control. Tanks get their face smashed in by a Fusion Punch, or forget to move Steelbreaker out of the Rune of Power quick enough. People forget to remove the debuff from the tank. Or, maybe, the group in the back lacks the means or forgets to interrupt Brundir's Lightning Whirl. The Iron Council - Steelbreaker, Molgeim, and Brundir A second's misjudgement on the part of the tank, or those that are directly supporting him, can lead to sudden and plentiful wipes, quickly wearing down the raid's morale. And so it is, that whenever we attempt this fight, we almost always get through it, but not before racking up a few losses. One-shots of the Iron Council have been rare for my guild, no matter how experienced with the encounter the players involved may be. As a rogue, there's damage to avoid, but not a whole lot to contribute until interrupts are needed for Brundir in the final phase. Typically, at that point, the fight is already won. The hardest part of the Iron Council is the first third, when resources are spread thin and you have to account for all three generals at once. So how does this fight measure up to my expectations? Honestly, they were pretty spot on. Adds are one thing, but any encounter where you have to control several boss characters at once is going to have consistent challenges to meet (see: High King Maulgar or Fathom-Lord Karathress, both from Burning Crusade). Just as well, it seems that very few guilds have completed this encounter on the hardest difficulty (by killing Steelbreaker last). Why don't we move on to something a little more palatable? Kologarn - Oh, man. Kologarn looked so imposing when we first saw him. He's even the guy that Brann Bronzebeard is running away from the Ulduar preview video. A colossal golem, and a gatekeeper mob at that. He's got to be a pain in the rear, right? Nope. Kologarn in all of his massive glory. This. Guy. Is. A. Pushover. He gets points for looking cool, and he can push some heavy, periodic damage with his Shockwave ability, but other than that, Kologarn is a total piece of cake. Especially on 10-man, where you don't really have to rotate tanks, just keep one on the sidelines to pick up the rubble that spawns when you kill his arm. It's been quite awhile since my guild has wiped on Kologarn and its rare that anyone dies during the fight (only when they idle in the eye beams too long or accidentally fall into the gap). It's not really an issue for ranged attackers, but the only problem I've encountered as a melee dps is that the Rubble that spawns from a smashed arm can dish out a really nasty AoE. Avoid the beams, kill the right arm (four times should be enough), keep your healing steady, and this fight is a piece of cake. Auriaya - We've nicknamed her the Crazy Cat Lady. This fight is painfully simple, perhaps even more so than Kologarn, if (and this is a big if) you can handle the pull. It's dependent on having some really skilled tanks, and even though my guild does, we've still had trouble with engagement. The most typical strategy I've seen is to have most of your raid sit around the corner (down the stairs from Kologarn), and let the tanks stand just out of the line of sight until she gets into melee range. It may be prudent to have a Shaman drop a totem further up to actually pull Auriaya and give your meat shields a little bit more time to react. Her panther adds will immediately pounce the closest aggro targets, which (if we do it wrong) seem to be healers most of the time. The Crazy Cat Lady! To reduce this, I've found it a good idea to have the tanks time their damage reduction cooldowns just right so that they can survive the initial assault presumably without the help of healers. If you get past that point, the encounter is terribly facile. Train everyone to stand in front of her (as opposed to far away or behind her) and dish out the damage. If you're doing this fight on 10-man, you may not even kill the Feral Defender that she summons. Should that happen, simply avoid the large (and very obvious) void zone it leaves behind. AoEs are handy for the smaller adds, but they are not a primary concern. Conclusion - The Antechamber is heavy on quick tank kills, but if your guild has the chops to survive those, it's arguably the easiest section of Ulduar. What may slow you down is exhaustion more than anything. By the time we get to Auriaya, it's usually the end of our first night in the dungeon, people are tired and not nearly as focused as they were in the beginning. This makes managing the pull even tougher than normal because people aren't on their "A-game." It makes a good stopping point, though, because even if you have the energy after killing the Cat Lady, this is where things get real. Ulduar up until this point, believe it or not, has been a cakewalk. The four Guardians, and what lay beyond them, require deeper, more pointed strategies, so its better to tackle them after a good night's rest! I'll be covering the Guardians (Hodir, Thorim, Freya, and Mimiron) in the next edition of the Second Look, and I have to admit that it's my favorite part of the dungeon. There's some good eye candy and dynamic fights to look forward to, not to mention it's the most lore-centric section of Ulduar. All four of these bosses you've met or been involved with while leveling up in Northrend! Meanwhile, I want to hear what the rest of you thought about these fights and the Antechamber in general. Too easy, too hard? Has your guild also been thwarted by the tough pulls or is it smooth sailing all the way through? If Ulduar was an epic trilogy, would this be your Empire Strikes Back? Please let me know in the comments section!

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Being someone who likes to keep tabs on what the major raiding guilds are doing, I must say the last several weeks have been among the most interesting I have seen in a long time. If you are not familiar with the recent news I am talking about the whole ordeal surrounding the "Heroic: Alone In The Darkness" achievement, which is the hardest of the Yogg-Saron hard modes. Killing Yogg with the help of zero keepers means giving up a lot of help. There is no one to save you should you nearly die, the tentacles are much nastier than usual, there are no sanity wells, and most importantly you cannot kill the immortal guardians in phase three. Winning this encounter is considered the peak of the current raiding content; it is more difficult than taking down Algalon himself. What is interesting to me is when people first started trying this encounter not only did they think it was hard, many thought it was impossible. That's right many theorycrafters at sites like Elitist Jerks thought it was literally and mathematically impossible. This belief was so commonly held that many top guilds, including guilds like Ensidia, seemed to give up on it, waiting for a nerf before they continued working on this encounter. It is this belief that made so many people cry foul when Exodus first got the achievement by exploiting the encounter. The point I am getting to is just how utterly impressed I am that despite all this; a few guilds, most notably Stars, continued to grind away at this night after night until they came up with a strategy that was able to beat what they are calling the most difficult encounter in the history of WoW. Being the raid leader of a guild who has spent nights wiping on much tamer hard modes, I can imagine the type of dedication and endurance that doing something like this would take. Since Stars' world first we have seen two other guilds, one EU the other US, win this fight. It is impressive all around, but I think special recognition needs to go to those that strived to do something that was deemed unobtainable. I have to hand it to Blizzard for not caving in and nerfing this before guilds like Stars could prove everyone wrong. For the rest of us, maybe it proves that nothing is impossible after all.

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As we enter the end of the 3rd 'set' of raid instances in the current expansion, I think it is a good time to take a look at Blizzard's new raid philosophy which made another dramatic change in WotLK, not unlike the change from 40 man raids to 25 man raids in Burning Crusade. With the release of this expansion Blizzard essentially made a promise to the entire WoW community that the raid content would be opened up to everyone (in theory). They changed all raids in Wrath to have two separate versions, a 10 man and a 25 man. Within those raids they had even more lines drawn with heroic and standard versions of many of the fights. For better or for worse though, six months into this expansion we can see that they are well on the way to their goal to opening this content up to nearly everyone. On my home server of Cenarius you can find PuGs for any range of content that fits your need without too many problems. Did your side just capture Wintergrasp? It's very easy to find a group for Vault of Archavon which drops some of the best armor pieces in the game (for both PvPers and PvEers). Naxxramas, Eye of Eternity, Obsidian Sanctum, and even Ulduar are all PuG options for both versions. Granted you most likely will not be hitting up the hard modes with these kinds of groups, but you're seeing the content, which is esentially what Blizzard wants. This is why they brought Naxxramas back (which I missed the first time around, so I am a huge fan of the decision) and why they have expanded the types of groups that can attend these raids, and brought around the philosophy of “bring the player, not the class” (which was a problem in TBC, especially with Sunwell). As positive as these changes are there are naysayers, mostly in the hardcore raiding community. They do have a point as they continually clear through normal modes like nothing. Blizzard really changed the raid designs with Ulduar though. There was only one fight with the release of WotLK that gave those who went “the extra mile” incentive and better gear for doing the fight in a more challenging way (Sartharion with three drakes up). With Ulduar though, most fights have a hard mode, better loot and a greater sense of accomplishment. To even clear the whole instance though players must clear hard modes to unlock the extra boss Algalon. Now that Ulduar has been fully cleared (all hard modes completed) we can shift our focus to the future once again with 3.2. The raid philosophy gets a slight shift again, this time with the separation of 10 man and 25 man raids into regular and heroic, all with separate lockout timers, so essentially you'll be able to run Trial of the Crusader four times a week, all on the same character. In the coming weeks though, we will get a lot more information about this raid zone as we will see the zone live on the PTR for testing. Blizzard seems to be opening things more and more for players to experience the raids. With the change to badges helping players gear up fairly quickly to be able to have proper gear for the new content shows a shift in design philosophy. Previously you absolutely had to have cleared old content (within that expansion) to really gear up for the newest, or next tier, of content. The lines have been blurred now and there is no “one” way to gear up properly anymore. Once patch 3.2 drops we will most likely see an emergence of heroics being run once again, and quick clears of Naxxramas (my guild doesn't even have anything besides Ulduar and Wintergrasp on our raid schedule). It seems as if Blizzard is attempting to please everyone with this patch, the hardcore raiders will have their 25 man heroic and regular 25 man to gear up quickly and easily. While tighter knit guilds still have the opportunity to do regular or heroic modes. Blizzard is also introducing a feature that I think every guild will be able to appreciate, with the ability to extend a lockout period an additional week. This will allow guilds to get additional work on a particularly challenging boss, but will require them to give up loot on the “easier” bosses for one week. I think this will be another level of strategy for raid leaders and guild leaders to use their time more effectively for their guild. Possibly the biggest surprise throughout all of this is that there will be absolutely no trash in this instance, purely bosses! I am a huge fan of this and I think more people will be happy over this than just me, no more complaining that mages pad the meters on trash! Will this be how it is in Icecrown Citadel though? I would be very surprised if they did, as I think this is a special case scenario and I think they want the Colosseum feel to feel authentic and not similar to how it was in Hyjal. If we take a look at our preview of Crusader's Coliseum then it appears that it will be just one area that we fight in (this may or not be the case and we should know very soon). Do you like the way Blizzard is pushing their raid content now? There are a lot more options for people (three separate versions of the Tier 9 gear) do you think this will spread the player base out a bit too much? And one more thing, what will you be doing with your guild, just one tier of the new raid or multiple ones?

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It pains me to say it, but after several months of dutifully raiding Ulduar, one of the coolest aspects of the dungeon just isn't the bee's knees anymore. I'm talking about the Iron Concourse, that long stretch of dark iron dwarf-infested land that sits between your raid and Flame Leviathan each and every time you start a new lockout period. In the previews leading up to the dungeon's release, nothing could've sounded more epic: you and your buddies jump into some high-powered engines of destruction as your tear across the map, laying waste to the gate-keepers of Ulduar and anything else that might be unlucky enough to sit in your path. And it was fun... the first few times. The scale was huge, the concept above and beyond what you'd normally find in a dungeon, and the on-going narration from Brann Bronzebeard was a real atmospheric treat. Blizzard could do with fixing the ramp bugs while they're at it! But now, just as soon as I first jump into a vehicle at the start of the event, I can't help but count down the time until the whole affair is over. Once the majesty fades, the Iron Concourse is nothing more than a terribly easy, drawn-out trash-clearing exercise of the worst kind. Ten to fifteen minutes of demolishing towers is enough to kill my raiding buzz. I've rallied against nerfs to Ulduar in the past, but now I'm putting out the call: nerf the Iron Concourse! Despite the negative connotations the word has come to be associated with over the years, it's not always such a bad thing. The way I see it, there are two ways to "nerf" something: to make it easier or to make it more convenient. Blizzard's been doing a lot of both lately, and while I'm not a fan of the changes they've made to a lot of the bosses in Ulduar, I would welcome just about any remedy to ease the pain of having to clear this area. What can they do? They can't very well make the vehicles any stronger or faster without having to retune the Flame Leviathan encounter, and it may just make clearing more of an ordeal to make it any more difficult. Likely, the easiest thing to do is simply make the enemies weaker (and get rid of those damnable helicopters!). As it is right now, the iron dwarf gnats that stream out of the storm towers right now can be easily dealt with, but the bigger mobs act as nothing more than huge damage sponges. Unless you're running into the dungeon with a bunch of people who have sub-200 item level gear, the Iron Concourse just doesn't pose much of a challenge. And if you're doing that, you probably just shouldn't be in Ulduar anyway. What do you think, guys and gals? Has the Iron Concourse event become as rote and annoying for you as it has for me? I'm always hesitant to suggest things that make the game too convenient for players (let's face it, you've got to put some effort in), but when you're forced to engage in an encounter like this with no tangible rewards for doing so, maybe it would be better to just get it over with as soon as possible. Hey, we've all dealt with worse trash, but at least you might get some gold or the occasional drop out of it. Are there any other parts of Ulduar you feel the same way about?

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As more and more information comes out of the PTR, its pretty hard to not pay attention to it. I am personally getting pumped for all the great new content Blizzard is getting ready for us. As I'm pretty sure most of you have noticed, the new loot we will be able to earn is amazing. Tons of great drops, crafted gear, and most importantly the new tier pieces. While it all exciting, with 3.2 seeming near it makes me wonder if it all is coming a bit soon. I know this may sound a bit odd coming from the guy who complained about how long we were stuck in Naxx, but I don't think we have had enough time in Ulduar. Most of my shiny new T8 epics still have that new car smell, and there is plenty of hard-mode loot I haven't even had a chance to farm. Perhaps I am just concerned that the new loot showing up on the PTR is a bit too good. With all of this new stuff available I will see little reason to go back to Ulduar. This would be a shame because I think Ulduar is an amazing instance! Blizzard managed to create a challenging instance that is full of story and has tons of replayability with the hard modes. I am not ready to leave! While I'm sure people will still be running it, finding motivated groups will be difficult with all of the best stuff somewhere else. At the very least it would be nice to still make the hard mode loot relevant. Yes, I know there will still be best-in-slot items sprinkled around in old content, but by and large we are progressing past it. While I feel most people have had a fair shot at Ulduar itself, I know many people want time to go deeper and try those hard modes. Of course you can never make everyone happy, people progress at different paces, so while some are farming Algalon, many are still in Naxx. None the less for me, this seems fast. How do you guys feel about it? Want more time, or are you ready for something new already?

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One thing I love about raiding is comparing the different raids to each other and seeing how boss fights and dungeons evolve from patch to patch. While leading raids I often catch myself comparing boss strategies to other bosses we have defeated in the past. When explaining Thaddius in Naxx the comparison is always made to Mechano-Lord Capacitus in the Mechanar, and when talking about Elder Ironbranch's root ability Illhoof's demon chain ability comes to mind. With all these similarities going on it is always refreshing to see new abilities we are not used to. It seems like as you progress through raid content each dungeon has a few key lessons that the raiders must master, and when they do they will be stronger players for the rest of their WoW career. In BC I always had the impression that Magtheridon was designed to teach us how to coordinate raid members and get everyone clicking at the same time, Tempest Keep was there to teach us how to CC trash and deal with adds during boss fights, and Hyjal seemed to teach us how to deal with trash and bosses when you couldn't control the pace. In more modern times Sartherion (with drakes especially) seemed to teach us how to avoid standing in things that would kill us, Malygos taught us how to use vehicles to defeat a boss, and Naxx taught us how to mindlessly AOE trash and zerg bosses (JK!). So this all brings us to the question. What is Ulduar trying to teach us? Besides being a bit of an introduction back into the world of real raiding, it seems to me the key lesson from Blizzard is this: DPS control. This means not only high DPS, but know when and where to apply it, and more importantly when to stop. We see it as early as fights like Razorscale and Deconstructor. For Razor you only have a short window in which to DPS the boss, and you need to make sure you hit her hard when you can. Deconstructor takes it up a notch with controlled DPS on his heart. Too little and the boss doesn't die fast enough, too much and you are looking at a double heart phase and too many adds. Down the road we see bosses like Mimiron and Freya when killing things at the same time are essential to winning the fight, so it is really important to not kill the head or that stormlasher too early. This entire lesson culminates with the big man himself, with controlled DPS needed in all phases of Yogg Saron. Making sure the guardians all die in the pool, and not when they are ferried over, then killing the right tentacles at the right times, while saving lots of burst DPS for the brain just seems to drive the lesson home. DPS is not about pure numbers but applying the right amount of damage to the right targets at the right time. Understanding this is what will separate the best raiders from the rest. With Ulduar Blizzard is making sure we are learning our lesson. How do you guys feel, what lessons have you learned in Uldaur, or even other raids?

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It's only been about two months since Ulduar's arrival, but with many top-flight guilds on the warpath to world firsts (several of which have already been achieved), I don't think it's too soon to start looking back on the dungeon and compare our pre-release expectations with the final product. From a game design perspective, it's always a good idea to take snapshots of encounters over time to figure out what worked and what didn't or what sound cool at first, but now serves only as an annoyance. I plan to break this down into a series of articles focused on each "region" of the instance, starting with The Siege area, which encompasses everything up through XT-002 Deconstructor.

Flame Leviathan - Watching videos of PTR Flame Leviathan fights on the internet sent shivers down my spine. It actually looked really cool, but it was giving me nightmares of Malygos' third phase, which our guild had a lot of trouble with. Vehicles, you could say, were not our specialty. Pondering it further, I realized that the problem with Malygos could be pinned on two key things: three-dimensional movement with no environmental reference points and the lack of visual feedback based on the damage that your drake was dealing. The encounter is hectic enough without having to figure out which DoT under the boss' nameplate is yours. Thankfully, Flame Leviathan addressed both of these issues. By giving players only ground vehicles toplay with, as well as a clear amount of space to run around in, the problem of keeping your group together was non-existent. On top of that, the fight is just fundamentally different. There is no healing to worry about beyond the people you send up to destroy the turrets, and the "chase" mechanic eliminates any desire to stay grouped up anyway. In my guild, the only trouble we ever really encountered was confusion when picking up the people who had been launched off the back after destroying Leviathan's turrets. In the end, it seems that Flame Leviathan was a quick, easy, and rewarding victory for most people out there. I've always thought of the encounter (and the tower-thrashing leading up to it) as Ulduar's version of Karazhan's Chess event: it's fun, and incorporates some really cool mechanics, but can be facerolled with minimal effort. However, through up a couple of towers, and you've got a real fight on your hands. Leviathan may be great for farming a few quick epics/badges, but it's good to know that the challenge of his Hard Mode scales so well. Razorscale - Razorscale's fight seemed terribly chaotic at first. With adds spawning all over the place and fireballs raining down upon our heads, our tanks had quite a problem keeping up. Damage seemed to be coming from anywhere and everywhere, with aggro being stolen by the DPS, and Dark Rune Sentinels ripping holes in our raid using their Whirlwind ability. Not to mention all the people having picnics in the fire. However, it didn't take us too long to figure out how to keep things under control. The Sentinels needed to be picked up by a single tank and taken somewhere far away from the core of the raid where ranged dps could pelt them with their spells and arrows. It also helped to learn where they would spawn - we realized that every time a drill popped up on the Eastern edge of the brown circle, we were going to have to deal with one. As confidence improved, we realized that the damage the other adds did was rather inconsequential and that they simply needed to be brought together and demolished with AoE spells, a la the trash waves in Mount Hyjal. If some of them still happened to be up while Razorscale was down, the tanks would bring them in front to be obliterated by the eventual Flame Breath. Once the dragon's on the ground for good, it's a real tank and spank. This is one of those encounters whose difficulty totally plummets once you know how to deal with the adds. No doubt that the nerfs, which eliminated some of the randomness associated with drill spawns, helped, but I can't remember a time after the first couple of weeks that we haven't gone in and one-shotted Razorscale. XT-002 - Like Razorscale, XT-002 was an absolute nightmare at first. Fights incorporating lots of adds tend to be that way, as not only do you have to learn the boss' patterns and abilities, but those of their helpers, as well. We honestly thought for awhile that we simply lacked the DPS to do it. Another surprise we encountered was the absolute wackiness of the fight! Unlike the cold, unfeeling techno-babble of Void Reaver (aka "The Wobot"), XT features a whiny, high-pitched voice and treats your raid like its own personal toybox. It's not exactly the way this mechanical monstrosity was portrayed in the previews for Ulduar. though it is explained that the Deconstructor's childish attitude results from considering its creator, Mimiron, to be something of a "father figure." Laughs quickly turned to frustration though as we continually wiped on Ulduar's true gatekeeper (both Razorscale and Ignis are optional), once again mostly due to the gobs of adds that the boss summons at every quarter of his health. The scrapbots (which heal XT when they reach him) come in gigantic waves, which the ranged dps struggled to keep in check by themselves. The explosive bomb bots often slipped through our defenses, as well. Oddly enough, I don't think that we ever had any serious trouble with the Pummelers. We came to the quick realization, though, that the melee who normally stayed on the boss (and damaged the heart between phases) would need to help with the adds whenever it was necessary. This strategy became even more important on 10-man as we would often DPS the heart down so fast that we'd end up with two waves of adds at the same time. Looking back, I'd have to say that XT-002 is one of my favorite fights in Ulduar. We can blow through it with no problems (especially using a new technique -- sure to be nerfed -- which involves tanking the boss near the left wall, so that it will not spawn adds from that area), but it's a lot of fun. There's just something so satisfying about watching Deconstructor's health plummet as we demolish the heart. And really, who can't love a robot that does calisthenics before the fight? Ignis - I list this fight last, because it was the last of the initial four that our guild actually completed. In fact, we went deeper in and took down both Iron Council and Kologarn before finally downing Ignis. Part of the problem is the trash you have to clear before getting to him. There's quite a bit of it, and all of them feature super-annoying abilities from the Magma Ragers' flaming tornadoes to the Molten Colossus' Unquenchable Flames, a debuff that served no other purpose than to annoy (flames would continually jump from one raid member to another, damaging them -- but not fatally -- until you could access one of the water pools near Ignis). Thankfully, the latter has been hotfixed out. Clearing the trash is not nearly as bad as it used to be, but considering that Ignis is an optional encounter, it was policy early on to simply skip it and come back later if we had the time. The boss, himself, is not push-over, either. As a melee damage-dealer, I'm admittedly not as familiar with the complexities of the fight as I should be. After all, the only thing I have to do is run around behind him and attack, while staying out of the gigantic flame pits Ignis occasionally leaves on the ground. As Iunderstand it, tanks have quite a bit of maneuvering to do, especially those covering the Constructs, which need to be pulled into said flame pits until they are molten and then into the water to make them brittle and susceptible to ranged DPS. And healers, well, they just get the short end of the stick in this fight. There's a crazy amount of raid damage being thrown around at all times, and on top of that, there are periods in which they can't actually cast anything. While we have succesfully taken "The Furnace Master" down several times, the beating he dishes out is still sometimes too much for us to handle. Out of all of the bosses in The Siege area of Ulduar, this is the only one I can confidently say that we do not have "on farm" yet.

When all is said and done, The Siege serves as a good introduction to the sorts of things you'll encounter later in the dungeon, such as add-intensive fights (Freya and Thorim), technical movement fights (Hodir and Mimiron), and even facerolls (Kologarn). Most of the rest of the dungeon poses a greater challenge, but all of these encounters (with the possible exception of Ignis) are easy enough to allow just about any guild (or PuG) to come in, whoop some ass, and earn a little bit of gear in the first place. Next up, I'll be covering The Antechamber, which encompasses Iron Council, Kologarn, and Auriaya. Dear readers, did you find these fights to your expectations, as well? Too easy? Too hard? Were the nerfs hotfixed in post-release worth it? Anything you were totally surprised by? Please let us know what you think in the comment section below.

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Blizzard recently developed a new feature on their website that allows players to see maps and read background information on raid bosses: The Bosstiary. Currently only Ulduar is available, but I imagine they will add all future raids as they are released and add the missing ones that were introduced in Wrath. I really like the Bosstiary. One of the things that got me to abandon Final Fantasy XI for WoW back in the day was the feeling WoW gave me of an intentional path for my character. I felt like there was a reason I had to kill 50 raptors to level up: they stole our silver! Even with examples of terribly justified quests like the raptors stealing our precious silver for no reason, I felt like I was part of a story or at least a world. I kind of lost that feeling when I hit level 60. I didn't really know why I was killing random fire lords in Molten Core that I had never heard of, and even with the questline to get the Aqual Quintessence, I was very unmotivated. Blizzard has improved on this over the years, and I think the content patch trailers really add to the role of the raids in the world from a lore perspective. However, there is still a lot of explaining to do on why we are killing bosses that are introduced to the lore for the first time in a patch without much background (who are Emalon and Archavon anyway?). Enter The Bosstiary! While there is only a sentence or two about each boss, it does add insight that we might not otherwise have. For example, Auriaya is Ulduar's archivist. While some things are heavily implied, like Razorscale actually being Veranus, its nice to see Blizzard filling out the lore as they go. What do you think? Is the Bosstiary worthwhile?

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Yogg-Saron, just another old god. The changes (or nerfs as some of us raiders like to describe them as) for Ulduar keep rolling in. All of the changes should be live, but some may require a realm restart. The first significant change comes to the "end boss" of Ulduar, Yogg-Saron (who's lovely face you can see to your right):

The Yogg-Saron encounter has received the following changes: Death Ray no longer hits players who are under the effect of Malady of the Mind, Guardians of Yogg-Saron no longer use Dominate Mind, the spawn rate of Guardians of Yogg-Saron is more forgiving, and these Guardians will no longer spawn if a player that is protected by Hodir’s Flash Freeze hits an Ominous Cloud.

Now, my guild is working on the fight currently and to really demonstrate the impact of these changes on our first pull of the night we managed to hit phase three of the fight (which we had never done before). If that doesn't really show how tuned down this fight has become, well I don't know what else will. The spawn rate is much slower in phase one, there are no more mind controls and basically there is zero reason for anyone to die in that phase anymore. The change to guardians spawning on a player protected by a Flash Freeze is a welcome change to say the least. There are a few other changes also (which can be read on the World of WarCraft Forums):

• In the opening sequence of Ulduar you can now see Liquid Pyrite from farther away.
• The Flame Leviathan encounter has received the following changes: the bonus health Flame Leviathan receives per tower has been reduced, the ejection height from Flame Leviathan has been reduced, the snare effect of the Tower of Frost has been removed, and the cannons on Demolishers and Siege Enginers should now break Flash Frozen vehicles in 1 shot.
• The XT-002 Deconstructor encounter has received the following changes: the health of the heart has been slightly reduced in heroic difficulty and the rate at which Gravity Bomb and Searing Light are cast has been reduced.

Being able to see the liquid pyrite at a greater distance is a welcome change. The whole Flame Leviathan encounter has gotten what seems to be a massive scaling back and I imagine we will see a lot more hard mode deaths for FL. XT-002 Deconstructor also got a nerf, mostly to the hard mode (which only 350 guilds have beat) because activating it should be slightly easier (although if you couldn't activate it before, should you even be doing it?). The gravity bombs and searing light also got their rate of cast reduced which should make the fight slightly easier or considerably easier depending on the severity of the rate change. While I appreciate the changes Blizzard has made in making raiding more accessible (as has been the philosophy of this entire expansion) it is a little annoying to be working on an encounter and making progress on it, only to see it changed and made much easier. My guild isn't a top guild but we progress fairly well on our 3-day schedule and it almost seems like at this point unless you're in a 5-day a week guild trying to clear as fast as possible you won't be experiencing these fights in their original form. While my guild will soon be one of the 3000 guilds having downed Yogg-Saron, it can't be argued that this is a much easier fight now. So raiders of Project Lore, are you a fan of these changes? Are you happy that the fights have been made easier? Do you think this is the right way for Blizzard to kind of "open up" raiding to everyone?

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