I was quite excited to hear about a revisited, revamped Onyxia. I’ve never liked revisiting Vanilla WoW content, since the instances were ones that either I hated (AQ20, AQ40) and would rather stick a pencil in my eye than go back there for fun, or I loved them and had good memories of them (BWL) and didn’t want to trivialize the content by walking in as a level 80.
Onyxia (at the correct level) was always a manic fight, with a random element that remained even after you had the encounter on farm. Molten Core was my first experience of raiding, but Onyxia was the one that really had my heart racing (pleasepleaseplease don’t let me fuck up, don’t let me pull all the whelps, omg…). I loved the attunement chain, and knowing that my guild was responsible for placing her head in Stormwind was always a proud moment.
There was some snarky talk in guildchat today about recycled instances – I think from people who have only experienced these encounters as an 80 – going solo to beat up old world raid bosses for achievements. And that’s sad.
Keen and Graev had a good comment about the Onyxia encounter: please don’t dumb her down. Update her, make it a challenge while keeping at least some of the tactics that we remember – but please make her the tough bitch that she used to be.
My first thought when I read the announcement, though? It was:
Coolest. Fucking. Mount. Ever.
EDIT:
Ooh…I totally hadn’t realised that this was already like on the PTR. It sounds as though they’ve made a very nice job of it, and the encounter does have a level of difficulty. And, as anticipated, the mount has a drop rate similar to the pre-nerf Baron’s Mount. Bah, I’ll probably never see one – but it is nice that everyone and his mother won’t be posing on one.
The amount of people who needed the “More Dots” references explained saddened me. In game time, generation gaps extend over periods of a couple years, which feels strange.