LAGWAR | GAMING'S BEST IN TOP NOTCH MEDIOCRITY

WoW is all about killing bosses.  It’s true.  Where do all the storylines in the game converge?  Where does the best gear drop?  And where is the most challenging gameplay found?  It’s not a world quest, it’s certainly not PvP, it’s all at the biggest baddie in the instance.  It doesn’t matter if you’re talking Deadmines or Icecrown Citadel.  In the end, WoW is only as good as the boss fights that Blizzard gives us.   If every boss was the same fight, no one would play – thankfully for us; Blizzard has given us some variety in boss fight mechanics.  Below I will go through some common fight mechanics…but do we need more?

The Tank and Spank:

Patchwerk - the stereotypical tank and spank

The most common and unarguably most simple boss fight mechanic.  This is the developer equivalent of falling asleep at the wheel.  No real surprises here.  Have the guy in the heaviest armor stand in front of the boss, have everyone else stand away from the boss, roll face over keyboard, repeat until loot appears.

“Just don’t stand in the ­­­_______”:

Generally speaking standing in any kind of glowing area effect on the floor is bad for your health.  Whether its fire, gaseous clouds, lava, or a creepy looking black ring – when in doubt, don’t stand in it.  “Just don’t stand in the” fights are great for finding players who get tunnel vision when fighting a boss, they are the ones face down when the fight ends.

“Aaaahhhhhh, your gonna blow!”:

A favorite of mine.  Boss aggros group, boss casts debuff, player ignores debuff, player blows up group, boss relaxes with a Martini thinking about how easy that was, raid leader screams over vent at player.  These have been around for awhile, Baron Geddon was the first famous one, but you can still find them all the way up to Naxx.  Nothing says “I was a valuable member of this raid” like exploding your fellow raid members because you didn’t watch for a debuff.

Standard dragon rules apply.:

Front of dragon = bad

Does it have four legs and two wings?  Does it breathe fire?  It’s probably a dragon then, and standard dragon rules apply.  1-Don’t stand close to its head, fire comes from there, fire is bad for you.  2-Generally you don’t want to stand near its butt either.  There is a tail there, it whips around.  Until Blizzard implements a dragon that shoots fire out of its spleen, the side of the beast is the best place to be to avoid getting whipped around or potentially incinerated.  If you are a tank, well have fun at the barbeque.

The DPS race:

When you really, really need it dead, and fast, it’s probably a DPS race.  Whether the boss stacks some sort of nasty incurable debuff (the herpes of the raiding world) or has a hard enrage timer DPS races are all about getting it done and fast.   On these fights DPS goes all out like a fat guy on cake in hopes that they can end the boss before he ends your raid.

“I didn’t really like my class anyway…”:

Oh, you wanted to be a paladin? Well guess what?  This time you have to be a red drake/siege demolisher/weird little skeleton guy – because Blizzard says so.  These are the gimmicky fights where you wind up in a vehicle or transformed into another character with a totally different set of abilities than you are used to.  Better learn on the fly because that boss isn’t going to sit around and wait for you to read your tooltips.

“I hope you brought a snack this might take awhile”:

The last common fight mechanic – the unusual fight mechanic.  These are the oddball baddies that generally require a lot of explanation before the engagement and a lot of rezzing after the engagement.  There are a lot of things to look at, take in, and get comfortable with here.   C’thun was one such baddie, Yogg Saron is another – seems like the Old Gods like to be difficult.  These guys require knowledge of complex fight mechanics and generally aren’t like other fights.  Prepare to dig in, you might be here awhile.

Randomness makes everything more interesting

All these common fight mechanics are just that…common.  We have all seen them many times while playing.  But could Blizzard do better?  All these mechanics are scripted.  Every time we fight boss X, the same sequence of abilities play out.  Sure, maybe this time the healers get hit more by random ability X than they did last week, but overall the encounter is the same.  What if instead of these scripted encounters Blizzard dug a little deeper in the creativity bag for a few fights?  Maybe a little more randomness?  In Tournament of the Crusader, Blizzard implemented a random boss encounter.  But how hard would be to go a step further?  How hard would it be to implement a boss that had a long list of abilities that were selected at random for each fight?  This would create a boss encounter that players would have to adapt to each encounter, not one that they could watch a video for and memorize.  Maybe this is the next step in boss fight mechanics?