I remember grim batol from vanilla times (yes, it had a name on the map back then). Me, a dwarf warrior wandering around and imagining what is (or will be) inside. When I first got in during Cata and that music kicked in… man
After hearing this in the time-walking event, I had to come here to hear it again. It’s just too beautiful. I wished I played WoW during Cataclysm. It makes me so nostalgic for something I wasn’t even around for.
You should have seen Grim Batol on Cata launch. Or any dungeon at all from Cataclysm. They were bone-hard and needed CC among other things. Well, before Blizzard nerfed them into the ground that is. For a brief, shining few months Cataclysm was very challenging and I actually loved it. But Grim Batol was NOTORIOUSLY difficult, even the Normal Mode was near-heroic levels of hard. Even funnier: There was a bug when you rode the dragons after the firts boss where any enemy hit by the fireball would instantly aggro your party if they didn't die, AND the damage was reset if you didn't outright kill the mob. So it was rather funny when you had all these elementals, ogres and cultists come running at you from the catwalk on the other side. Less so when they finally caught up to you.
@@FiendMatadorSlayerOfNoobs hell yes it was. People cried for BC heroic mode dungeons and Blizzard turned that shit up to 11. It was like trash on Sunwell, and, like you said, this one was the worst (or best) for it. It hurt, but it was a good hurt. Then it got nerfed. I played 4.0 and 4.3, sat out for reasons for the troll patch and firelands.
I can barely even concentrate in this dungeon because of this music. It's beautiful. I know that it's not a popular opinion, but I honestly love that Blizzard repurposes a great deal of their work - in this case, the stellar soundtrack from Ulduar. It's been reimagined in this score, and incredibly well to boot.
I agree about atmosphere, along with MoP But the gameplay went down dramatically... Still I enjoyed the overall atmosphere, especially around the Twilight Hammer's cultists !
@@cognitivedisability9864 Sure, but it was still less easier than MoP and afterwards. Atleast, the usual questing content. It was easier than wotlk, and wotlk was already easy, sorry to say this, but yeah. Cata had good lore and good content.
Cataclysm had 3overall problems for me. 1. The systems overhauls, removal of all the old rpg aesthetics, fantasys, and tropes. Removal of ammo, removal certain level restrictions, like needing to be lvl 20 to dual wield for example, or needing to be lvl 40 on a shaman to dual wield. The whole systems revamp in this expansion was rediculous to me, and they carried this forward in pandaria, with the removal of the ability to have bows and spears, and dual 1 handed swords and spears on a hunter, for example at the same time. Rogues also lost their poisons being carried around in their bags. I could not stand these changes. You no longer needed to visit class trainers anymore in pandaria. Blizzard added an essentially pay to win at progression by adding paid leveling boosts to the blizzard store, which is also stupid to me. Homogenation of all the classes, no longer having the ability to hybrid spec anymore, like going as a frost and fire mage for example. Cataclysm is the expansion that started that only max lvl matters non sense. All the levels should matter in a rpg progression based game. Blizzard also added optional/bonus boss counts to the dungeon finder system, making it so most bosses just get skipped. 2. The revamp itself. I liked the revamp, do not get me wrong there. What i did not like, is not having the ability to do the old vanilla overworld if i wanted to. The old vanilla overworld, including old shadowfang keep and old deadmines, should have co-existed with the revamp. Plain and simple. Retail wow would be so much better if we at least had the option to level up in these old vanilla areas, instead of just being streamlined into the new stuff being the only option. This is the big one for me personnaly though. I could live through most of the problems the game had in cataclysm but this is so stupid to me. I should be able to run old sfk with the worgens and such in retail wow if i so choose to. The fact that i can't makes wow not be as cool as it could be to this day, and i miss the class quests. 3. Indecision on blizzards part in terms of whether the heroics were hard or not. I mean, i get it, the heroics were challenging, but they were not to hard. Unfortunately for todays society, everyone is based on participation ribbons. The heroics were not that hard in fact, and they just required some cc here and there, and not stading in stuff, and avoiding certain boss mechanics. Like it was not hard at all, but a majority of players felt like it was to hard. Add to all this the lfr system and dragon soul itself, even now is the worst raid ever added to wow. Blizzard has made a ton of decisions over years, that have been good and bad, but the pinnacle of when most of the decisions were good was in wrath of the lich king. Cataclysm had an amazing start, and as mentioned, a good atmosphere, but all of these things i mentioned have just made it less fun in the long run for me. Wow is an amazing game, and i still enjoy playing, but it could be so, so much better. I mean we have homogenized stats now, and there isn't even such a thing as bis gear, or bis guides anymore because gear is just all over the place. heck, blizz took out tier sets for a raid tier and it's like, why? That is the pinnacle of raiding for some people. To get gear. Wow is an amazing game, but the game just runs circles around players like myself now. It amazes me that wow is still around actually. That is an achievement in and of itself. Hopefully the classic overworld comes back to retail wow some day, as that is one of the biggest gripes for me. It sucked in 2010, and it still sucks now in 2020. I miss vanilla overworld being apart of the retail experience. Here is to hoping it comes back.
in spite of all thats happened those fond memories hold true. hell of journey for a time. I feel like this song best captures that feeling. a bittersweet longing for a moment lost to time.
Cataclysm was one of the last great expansion. Say whatever you want about Wow (and I have plenty of my own gripes too), but they never shirked on the scores. The composition has always been excellent. Grim Batol was one of my all-time favorites. It's so regal and haunting. It reminds me quite a bit of Haydn's Sarabande in D Minor or even Beethoven's 7th Symphony (2nd movement). So lovely.
People can say whatever the fuck they want about Cata, but the heroic dungeons, especially at launch, were cool as fuck. They were actually challengeing, bosses and packs required strategy and planning, and since noone was geared at first, you needed to execute those strategies properly.
This piece reaks of Basil Poledouris (Conan soundtrack). Its nowhere as powerful as Basil's but still has that feel, taking you to the lands of Hyboria.
This instance became 20 times better when i heard the ulduar remixed music in it and tbh thats saying something when you have an instance looking that good. Whenever this pops up in lfd, all the sound options go to 0% but the music
I may be looking too much into it, but the ending bit of the first and last parts gives me an image of a completely evil entity finally revealling itself, and all hope slowly fading in the face of it.
I was lucky enough to hear the part that starts from 2:31and ends 3:11 to during the part of the Deathwing vs Alexstrasza fight that both are at each others throats and rolling down the mountain. it made the moment even more epic
@Firavandrell I actually think it's meant to be a Dwarven/Titan theme. Reason it's so dark in Grim Batol is to show you how twisted and warped the dwarven kingdom has become. It really gives me a sense of Old Gods vs. Titans since the Dwarves feel like the last protectors of that.
Loved the first few patches aswell. The first tier of raids along with the pre-nerfed Firelands were really fun and challenging. Wish they had continued in that fashion.
most likely my favorite tune, tho I'm so lucky im on e ralm where you need the best gear to do HC so I havent really heard all of it yet, but yeah, my favorite this far
I absolutely loved this song while watching the Alexstraza vs. Deathwing cutscene. Sure the animations were a bit shabby, but the music made up for it. I just wonder if we'll get to see a raid in Grim Batol...there seems to be more to this city than what you see in the five man.
ye they copied it from Ulduar antechamber, and u know what??? THANXX BLIZZ :D now i can still enjoy this masterpiece almost every day(getting awfull lots of random grim batol runs w00t), and not hoping tpo get in Ulduar antechamber maybe once a month if lucky, since there are no usefull drops in there -.-, i'd run Ulduar each week just for the fun and music. Ulduar, im gonna miss ya
@aarn321 not quite! ulduar is a technologically brilliant and massive construct of the titans, while grim batol is a glorified cramped cave made by smelly black dwarves. except grim batol is still pretty cool
I agree. I remember in TBC heroics I found it very challenging, but then I'd only just started playing the game. By the time I got to Wotlk and then cata, most heroics were pretty faceroll. Though there were a couple painful bosses in Grim batol if the dps weren't good
really a good boss, you can check who is a noob - not killing adds in HC mode, and also the end boss is good :P i used to be the only one in the guild who loved this dungeon :D
Ofc I wasn't there, but anyone in their right mind can see that that has happened. More variety maybe, but look at the talents, and by mechanics I meant the abilities, bosses, interface even, everything is so simplified and that I considered child/noob friendly, not the lore or content. And don't say that I'm overwhelmed by nostalgia for vanilla or tbc, I never played them in the past, but I tried them recently on private server and I have to say they are much harder and better.
Erudax gave me PTSD, and made me rage quit the game for six months, but I love this soundtrack to pieces. How can the dungeon that made me quit the game be my absolute favorite part of Cata? It doesn't make any sense. I DID love Vortex Pinnacle as well, and it was the first Cata dungeon that I soloed. But still, it's weird.
If Blizzard brought out vanilla servers right now, there would be a massive immigration to those servers, just because of the nostalgia, but this is besides the point. Yes, modern raid mechanics are more complicated but this does not make the raid hard, we're not discussing that here, but the overal damage output of each individual boss, which was higher compared to now, which in turn made raids more difficult for their level.
I didn't know you were at Blizzard HQ when they said they're going to delibirately cut quality. /end sarcasm. quality and quantity are not mutualy exclusive, I found MoP to be a much better expansion then flippin Cataclysm, also the game mechanics did not change whatsoever it is still the same as Cataclysm and previous expansions, if anything they added more variety. Also this is very important: MoP is not child friendly, it features: Hatred, genocide, mass murder, et cetera.
@yevonator88 I don't think they will add more to it... but this dungeon is just so damn epic that it feels like a raid when you're in there... especially HC with this music and all... just impossible if your 5 man doesn't really know what it's doing.. lol
It's not Ulduar... This is in fact a Dwarf theme... If we heard it in Ulduar it's because the whole thing was a Dwarf mission to uncover the secrets of the place... remember Brann took us there! You hear this music in Ironforge now too... This is the Dwarf anthem to me :)
