Blizzard mulling 5-man Molten Core

By Robert Purchese Published 8 December, 2010

Original 40-man WOW raid downsized.

When World of Warcraft began, Molten Core, a fiery dungeon deep below the surface, was game's most challenging 40-man raid. Summoning and killing Ragnaros, the 10th and final boss - a giant, screen-filling flaming hulk - was something worth shouting about.

These days Ragnaros can be soloed.

When World of Warcraft turned five, Blizzard revamped another old boss, Onyxia, turning her back into a top-level (80) encounter. Can the same be done for Molten Core?

"Yeah, it's kind of weird, I'm not sure there are a lot of players that would want to stop at level 60 and really focus on Molten Core before levelling up again," Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street told Eurogamer.

"We've talked about, are there ways to convert those down to five-player dungeons, maybe? The Upper Blackrock Spire used to be a raid, it was a 10-player dungeon, and we've changed that to be five-player content.

"But mostly," he added, "we think the old raid content is for players going back to do achievements or just wanting to see the content."

ragnaros

That little green speck next to Ragnaros is a player.

A small, fiery tear rolls down my cheek.

By today's standards, the encounters within Molten Core are drab, dreary - most of the bosses were super-sized rocks or dogs or lizards.

What's more, Ragnaros has already booked himself a ticket back to the top tiers of World of Warcraft raiding, as the boss of the Elemental Plane of Fire - a part of the Firelands raid. Apparently the version of Ragnaros in Molten Core was just a projection of him; not, as WOW lore has it, the servant of the old gods that fought against the titans themselves.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 1 year ago

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  • RedSparrows #1 1 year ago

    Downing Ragnaros for the first time is in my top gaming moments EVUR.

  • Canyarion #2 1 year ago

    When I started raiding, my guild was already farming MC. I guess that's why Blackwing Lair will always be the best raid memory for me.
    Oh and the time we killed the Twin Emperors with me warlock-tanking!! =D So epic.

  • Nephirion #3 1 year ago

    Top Tip: Elementals are easily brought down by buckets of water

  • M83J01P97 #4 1 year ago

    It's like everyone at Blizzard knows the game is being dumbed down with each passing patch/expansion, but they can't do anything about it in order to ensure the dollars keep rolling in.

    Hasn't made the game any less enjoyable mind, it's just not the beast it used to be.

  • Aretak #5 1 year ago

    I think it would be quite cool if they added 5-man versions. The revamps of some of the old 5-mans in Cataclysm are very nice.

  • ChthonicEcho #6 1 year ago

    @Nephirion

    Unless it's a water elemental.

  • drhickman1983 #7 1 year ago

    I have no strong feeling about this. Despite claims that the game is being dumbed down, boss mechanics in the best WOTLK encounters were better than all but a few of the classic WoW encounters. If Molten Core was released now, it'd be pretty lacklustre.

    I really do feel that many people view the old encounters through rose tinted glasses. With the possible exception of C'thun, Four Horseman and Twin Emperors I'd say harder and more interesting encounters have existed in WOTLK (not necessarily in ICC).

    I'd say hard mode Mimiron and Algalon, and no watchers on Yogg are harder than most of classic WoWs encounters (assuming you didn't horribly overgear them, even then they remained a decent challenge). Come to that, most hardmode bosses in ICC offered a greater challenge than most vanilla encounters.

    WOTLK raiding started off poorly, Naxx (the new version) was ridiculous. But it did improve.
    Edited by drhickman1983 at 08/12/10 @ 18:45

  • Kremlik Verified Co-Founder, Crash To Desktop #8 1 year ago

    Considering the old vanilla raids are only being used for achevement gap fillers at level cap now, it'll be a welcome change to be able to goto the older stuff without the requirement of 40 people to do.

    @M83 - With Wrath I'd agree wholeheartly that the game was just a button basher however Blizzard have made a bhuge effort to try and correct that, it's hard to balance 'interesting' with 'accessable' and yet so far with doing both the new quests and dungeons it's harder to be reckless with mass pulling and just aoe mobs in the HC modes now and even a bad pull in the normal modes in the new content takes effort to pull back.

    It'll take till the end of Cata to judge if the game is harder/easier then the original/tbc content, but so far it's a damn sight more interesting and less 'button bashy' then wrath was

  • RedSparrows #9 1 year ago

    I don't doubt that later raids have been more interesting - MC got very boring once you had the merest taste of BWL, but the experience at the time was so great. It's all subjective, of course.

    p.s. BWL = the most fun evur, despite a number of actually very simple fights.

  • GreyScale #10 1 year ago

    'Downing Ragnaros for the first time is in my top gaming moments EVUR.'

    Oh god yes, the moment my guild did it for the first time (we'd been trying for months) was pure, sweet ecstacy, the very essence of complete gaming joy. For the next half an hour we were babbling excitedly, running round, posing for group photos, spamming raid chat. Even though Molten Core is old hat now, nothing in WOW quite matched up to that for the sheer 'FUCK YES' feeling.

  • Bertie Verified Senior Staff Writer, Eurogamer.net #11 1 year ago

    Look more closely - there's what looks like a troll standing there with that green glowy sword. Think that was a Dire Maul drop? God, I can't remember.

  • SAMagic #12 1 year ago

    I think this would result in more PUG groups going into MC which can only result in stories like a 40 man PUG raid that got to Majordomo. As they were organising the strat, one of their number ran up to the boss. "What are you doing?!" "He have quest for me".

    He aggros. They wipe.

  • TitusCrow #13 1 year ago

    It was a great moment when our guild downed raggy before the submerge - was even on utube. Personally I loved all the resistance stuff etc you had to get for places like the core, though of course I understand now that this precluded many who did not have the time to do this.

    I have no idea about the new cata stuff - my fking special edition has been stuck in some depo since the 6th - I can't bare to log on and hear about all the cool stuff till I can take part too. Damn weather, fate why do you mock me?

  • LordGalvatron #14 1 year ago

    The green glowy sword in the picture is actually Quel'Serrar. I still remember doing that questline for my warrior back in the day including getting a run with one of the server's top guilds to down Ony for it. Day the book dropped my friends that I was gonna have a heart attack over TS.

    I still have may fond memories of tanking in vanilla, changed to hunter in BC and kept with it.

    As for this whole "WOTLK has harder boss mechanics" talk. Anyone saying that obviously NEVER tried Kael'Thas at 70, nor any of Sunwell, or Vashj. Let's face it only challenging content in ICC is getting 25 people on LK Hardmode to not step in shadow traps.