One of the more pleasant surprised of Wrath of the Lich King was Naxxramas. Excitement grew as players got a chance to go back into the famous raiding dungeon and retry their hands against the bosses that made up the four quarters and final chamber. When they started to run it, the raid that so many players remembered so well was no longer the same. Here is a rundown of a few of the more memorable changes between releases.
The Difficulty
A reduction in difficulty is the first and most obvious change between versions of Naxxramas. On the surface the raid was obviously a bit easier to run because it was made possible for 10 or 25 players to run it rather than 40. Additionally, players were able to enter into Naxxramas immediately at Level 80. At Level 60, it was considered a top end raid that capped the Level 60 raiding content. The difficulty was set to match the role it played there.
Redundancies and Scaling
The content really hasn’t changed all that much. Some encounters were altered slightly to make it a bit easier to run with less people and certain things like the frost armor that was previously required to complete the end of the raid is no longer required due to the cut back of resistance encounters in the game as a whole.
Creating New Rewards
This time around, the instance has a completely different role. Most players will use it as a stepping stone into level 80 raiding, and back into Heroic dungeon running. It has also become the easiest way to farm for epics, due to how easy it is to run multiple encounters in short periods of time. There are 16 different encounters in the raid and that makes it much easier to get the gear that is available to players for completing each encounter.
In the end, Naxxramas at Level 80 was a great opportunity for players who came into WoW after Naxxramas was closed down or for players who remember it nostalgically. It also reintroduces bosses familiar to players now through Death Knight story lines. It generally makes for a much more interesting, feature rich run through than the original Naxxramas, even if it is much easier.
Naxxramas used to be the biggest thing around.
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