In today's State of Azeroth stream, Blizzard announced some important new details on raiding in World of Warcraft Midnight and we're all for it; We can expect the return of one-boss raids.
A History of 1 Boss Raids in World of Warcraft
Single boss raids got their start in the original, vanilla version of World of Warcraft. Onyxia's Lair, home to the Broodmother of the Black Dragonflight herself, Onyxia, was the first-ever raid to feature a single boss. Onyxia released alongside Molten Core at the launch of World of Warcraft, so although she was not a middle-of-patch style boss, she was interesting in that she dropped Tier 2 helms despite T2 gear not being obtainable yet; That required the launch of Blackwing Lair. Looking back at it, this was a very unusual design for progression, but that's only because WoW was a brand new game at that point and everything was a test.
Moving into The Burning Crusade, which also featured a single, solo boss raid, Magtheridon's Lair, Magtheridon too was available at launch in Tier 4 content alongside the 10 player raid Karazhan and the 25 player raid Gruul's Lair (which featured 2 bosses). Magheridon was a challenge opponent before he was nerfed into the ground, but the raid was a nice, short and sweet stop each week to have a chance at getting some loot. The only downside was the guildies who refused to fly over to the raid and demanded to be summoned.
Wrath of the Lich King's launch also saw single boss raids, yes plural this time, in Tier 7 content. Naxxramas, which was a clone from the vanilla game, was put beside the Eye of Eternity raid which features the blue dragon Malygos, and the Black Dragonflight's Sartharion inside of The Obsidian Sanctum. The Eye of Eternity featured the highest item level gear at the time, 226, which was also the same as items that dropped off the final boss of Naxxramas, Kel'Thuzad, and oh boy, it was worth the fight for it because Malygos was not a very friendly fight at first. There were quite a few phases going on and players especially had a difficult time understanding the vehicle combat in the final phase, sometimes being unable to participate because of interface errors.
But, Wrath of the Lich King didn't stop there with its two single-boss locations that had their own themes. Many moons after Icecrown Citadel had released and The Lich King was defeated, The Ruby Sanctum opened its portal and featured Halion, a Twilight Dragon, that rewarded higher item level gear and served a bit as a more difficult piece of content. The fight was punishing on the Heroic difficulty, and anecdotally, many pugs even had trouble on Normal difficulty. Halion, like Sartharion, did have a few mini bosses around the sanctum, but they were quite easy to defeat for some badges.
Halion was World of Warcraft's first, and last mid-patch boss to ever release in World of Warcraft because after Wrath of the Lich King, it never happened again with the closest time being back in Battle for Azeroth, where the Crucible of Storms released in Patch 8.1.5 making it true mid-patch raiding content, but it was two bosses instead of one.
Did anyone else notice that most of the solo bosses are dragons? We need more variety!
How Midnight is Making Use of Single Boss Raids
Releasing raiding content in the middle of a patch cycle is not a foreign concept, but it has clearly been some time since we've seen it. The first patch that we'll see a new raid get added is in Patch 12.0.7 which adds "Sporefall" a 1 boss raid. Blizzard is excited to get away from the idea that raids are only massive twice a year updates. They want more flexibility to tell stories in the narrative that are different shapes and sizes, which, a 1 boss raid can certainly pull that off.
Patch 12.1.5 will also be introducing another new mid-cycle raid which will also feature a single boss, but instead of being a standalone raid, it will be a direct continuation of the Midnight story which sets the stage for the next major update.
We know nothing about how difficult they will be, if we'll see smaller item level jumps when compared to the "main" raid for that tier, or really any core details, but it will be very cool to have some new PVE content between raid tiers.
Are you excited to see more raiding content get added in World of Warcraft Midnight?
Comments
Huge props to Blizzard for finally bringing back single-boss raids. I've been telling people forever that it would be the easiest way for them to solve the content drought between raid tiers, not that I'm doing anything other than stating the obvious, so it's great to see Blizzard finally agrees.
Honestly, with how fast WoW moves these days on the most recent expansion, I find it so difficult to keep up with unless you are playing it as your main game. Not really a big problem, it just slightly discourages me from playing when I can't keep up with everything because I want to but there just ain't enough time for all that.