Should blizzard be rehashing old content again?

NOTE: Apologies to Pyros, he sent this to me three weeks ago. All I had to do was sign in, copy and paste, and publish, and it still took me this long. It's a bit dated, but still relevant.

With Onyxia’s lair released this week, there has been a lot of mixed feelings about Blizzard’s rehashing of old content. Using Naxx as the entry level raid for WOTLK kind of flew under the radar because most of the player base never saw much of the initial Naxx. I was in a pretty competent raiding guild at the time, but we only made a couple of forays into 40 man Naxx before BC was released and we all had more important things to do. Those brief glimpses were still more than most of the playerbase saw. Sure there were some who bashed Blizz for re-tooling Naxx for Wrath, (and making it much easier as well) But for the most part it was new content for players, so there was very little weight to those complaints. Complaints that it was ez mode were more prevalent and probably more justified. Everyone may not have taken it down in the first week, but there were probably not many raiding guilds who did not roll the place in pretty short order.

Wrath did see a couple of other launch raids that were brand new. They were single boss raids, but there was enough variety in early Wrath raiding to keep most folks happy. Even if you did not care for EoE or OS, they were new. New dynamics, new foes, and the new 10/25 man settings certainly gave us all something to do when we hit 80. True to form, Blizzard released another couple of raids in fairly quick order with Ulduar and TotC. Within 9 months of the expansion release, Blizzard provided us with 2 more high end raids. That is not bad for any MMO. It is not the same pace they kept back in the day, but still not bad at all.

Now Blizzard has given us a novelty raid for the 5th anniversary. Welcome back Onyxia! With that announcement and subsequent release there has been a fair amount of criticism on the forums and the regular wow haunts about Blizzard reusing old content. I understand the sentiment, but I don’t think it really applies in this case.

The new Onyxia raid does not really factor into guild progression. To my knowledge, there is no “must have” loot drops for any classes. It does not open up any additional raids down the line. It really is nothing more than a fluff raid for a bit of nostalgia. Further, Blizzard did a fine job enticing raiders to go back to that zone, even players like myself who swore never to visit Onyxia’s lair again. I could care less about getting an upgraded dragonstalker helm. I never cared for that model all that much anyway. However, I will run that zone any chance I get for a shot at the Onyxia mount!

I am not a mount or vanity pet collector. I have the green proto drake, a couple of dragons from factions, and I still use my boring old wolf for my ground mount. The Onyxia mount is the first mount they have released that I really want. And I really want it. Having been in a raiding guild that re-built a number of times during vanilla wow, I ran Onyxia many more times than any player should. Same with the quest chains to open up her lair. It seemed that every week we would get a few new people in the raiding ranks who needed Ony drops to fill out tier sets. We always needed scales from her for more BWL cloaks. And being a hunter, I was always sympathetic to the newer hunters who were searching for her black sinew for their epic bow quests. I plan on riding Onyxia as payback for most of 05-06.

No matter how good you were at raiding, Old Onyxia remains one of a handful of encounters where 1 or 2 people can wipe the entire raid. It was quite possible for a well seasoned group who had killed Onyxia dozens of times to find themselves taking that long ghost run from the ogre camp on the other side of the map. All it took was one person to pull agro, or for someone to get too close to the whelps and a cakewalk encounter could instantly turn into a nightmare. For those reasons alone, I swore off the place. For me, Killing Onyxia went from being the ultimate achievement in the game, to something I never wanted to see again.

But you know what? I went back as soon as it was released. I went back for a shot at the mount, but I have to admit that I enjoyed the encounter quite a bit. We no longer used pet pulls to bring the warders in one at a time, and the fight has changed a little, but in no time I found my self at that old sweet spot on the wall where fears still kept you out of the lava bursts on phase 3. As an extra bit of nostalgia, one of my long time in-game friends and fellow hunter was right there in the sweet spot with me. The rest of the ranged dps hasn’t found it yet and knowing us hunters, I doubt we will tell them about it 

I did not get my mount yet. I don’t really care too much about the bag, but I will take one if the chance shows itself. The quest item and the helm I will probably pick up if no one else wants them. Still, the really nice surprise was to find that I enjoyed seeing (and slaying) the old girl again.

So, be critical of Blizzard if you wish. Some say the raid is too easy. Some say reusing content is lazy. In my opinion adding Onyxia back into the game was a lot less about lazy development and much more about throwing the player base a bone to celebrate 5 years of WoW. All in all, job well done.