When I was a teen playng WoW I was in awe of that location, it reminded me the Mount Doom of the LOTR. The whole atmosphere made you await danger there behind every corner.
BRD isn't the only place with a raid portal in it. If you go up instead of down, you know LBRS and UBRS are connected, but you can actually enter Black Wing Lair from UBRS. The entirety of Blackrock Mountain is effectively a mega-dungeon.
It was concepted as it's own "zone" with eyes on being the end of the game zone hence why BRD is a legit city. They really felt once you entered there would be no reason to leave
Not to mention the entrance to Naxx was originally meant to be in... I forget what the name was for the time, but the Stratholm with Baron & the Ziggarauts. I came to the comments to see if anyone had pointed out what you did; plus this Naxx point. The only 40man raid that didn't have a portal inside another instance was AQ40. I imagine they could've linked it to AQ20 if they really wanted to, as well.
The Flame Keeper room is peak rogue class fantasy. The correct way to do it is to let the rogue go to the flame keepers, kill them, loot the torches, then vanish away, while the rest of the group just focuses on getting to the braziers.
BRD is a massive pleb filter. When I had time, I loved doing it. It was an actual dwarven city, gigantic just like my fantasy books, easy to get lost in, making ironforge seem comically puny in comparison.
Originally all raids were entered via their respective dungeons and dungeons did not have a player cap. As you say, Molten Core was in BRD. BWL was entered via Upper Blackrock Spire. By the time AQ was released this idea had been scrapped with attunements added along with shortcuts and dungeon player caps. However this was still planned for Naxx which has a raid portal to the left of Baron Rivendares lair at the end of the undead side of Strat. It is gated off behind where the undead swarm from.
honestly I think AQ was a test to see if players preferred that style, and the portal inside Strat was there just in case it didnt go over well and they could fall back to the raid inside dungeon formula.
@Shiirow if you glitch outside naxx you can find a beta version of Strathholme that has the naxx ship thing floating above it but it's just a single Grey texture so I think it makes sense that strat would lead to naxx
BRD is an epic masterpiece of design. Not only the dungeon itself, but I've always been a big fan of the dark iron dwarves and their history. Before the dwarven civil war, also know as the War of the Three Hammers all the dwarf clans were united in one kingdom, led buy one royal family, the Anvilmars. However society were still somewhat devided. The Wildhammers who lived the closest to the surface or even on the surface provided food and supply to society. They were farmers and animal handlers. The Bronzebeards (who later won the civil war and became the playable race of WoW), who lived mostly in the middle levels of the depths of the mountain, were soldiers. They gave the majority of the dwarven military. And the Dark Irons who lived in the deepest parts of the mountain and hardly see sunlight in their lives, were master builders and craftsmen. It is confirmed that the Dark Irons have build the Stonewrought Dam so no wonder Shadowforge City is another such masterpiece of architecture. It is not confirmed, but I think it is probable, that most of Ironforge was built by Dark Iron dwarves as well back in the times when the clans were united before the civil war.
0:20 I like to correct you, I spend 9 hours in there once. We did basically every quest that was in there, including(and that's where most of the time comes from, since you have to leave the dungeon two or so times) the Marshall Windsor quest chain to open Onyxia.
Another reason people ran this dungeon a lot was for the Dark Coffer, hoping to get a Burning Essence that you use with the Libram of Resilience to create a fire resistance enchant for the head/legs slots which was an important part of your fire resist set for raiding MC and BWL.
I loved BRD when I was a young WoW player. It's still pretty fun in WoW Classic and the truncated version you get if you queue for it (the whole dungeon is there, but you target only certain bosses for completion credit).
BRD remains my favorite dungeon. It's old and ugly and clumsy and the bosses are basic, but thematically it hit the nail on the head like nothing else. What I like best about BRD is that it feels less like a dungeon (as we understand them from modern WoW) and more like an instanced questing zone. Nobody goes there to spend five hours "clearing the dungeon." You go in with a group for specific reasons, hoping to accomplish specific goals. Sometimes, different group members had different goals, and you would have to compromise with each other to get the party together, hoping they wouldn't betray you and dip out after they got what they wanted done (I got burned so many times!). It felt like a heist movie, getting the team together, getting done what you needed done, and getting out. It absolutely does not fit into the modern dungeon paradigm, but I feel like it could be made to work. Blizzard has already put together dungeons out of instanced versions of overworld areas (Siege of Boralus, Nokhud Offensive, Dazar'Alor, others). I could imagine them doing some kind of instanced version of a normal area, with lots of various reasons to go in it (like the Brackenhide Cauldron or BRD's Black Anvil for instance), lots of quests that lead into it, maybe even daily quests or daily rares inside the instanced zone. If they wanted they could then break up and edit these instanced areas for the more normal Mythic+ focused dungeon experiences. One big "Exploration Dungeon" could be broken up into two or even three "normal" dungeons, and be made diverse enough internally that all the pieces felt very different from each other.
I was new to wow in TBC and I was lucky enough to find a small but active guild that loved running these older dungeons on a weekend..such good times and great memories from this dungeon. They always made sure any of us that had quest would all run and make sure all quest were completed no matter how long it took..it was a lot of the times an all day run due to quest turn ins and of course corpse runs.
I used to play on a private server during BC set entirely inside Blackrock mountain, it was a very odd non blizz-like, but just going back to explore Blackrock depths and that again was awesome fun.
Didn't even get into Raiding at all but remember BRD and running it as much as I could for Ironfoe but never got lucky on it, then eventually stopped playing WoW altogether - was a fun game though thanks to the friends I played with.
Yes!! Getting to lvl 50 and starting to run parts of BRD is peak WoW. Blackrock Mountain is a massive source of coolness for late game including the wpvp that goes on.
lets start a To-Do list. Kill Fineous Darkvire for the Master Builder Shirt Run thru the suspended rock as a ghost and talk to the ghost npc for that quest i cant remember ( the key? ) Pickpocket the barman for the key after everyone sold their junk, the whole room turns hostile the second after. ( funny little event, him yelling someone robbed him etc ) Every 3 houres the band will play in the bar? at 3.00 -6.00-9.00-12.00 ? After the Braziers are lit the packs stop respawning? at doomrel , before you piss him off, he sells blacksmith recipes or gives a blacksmith Quest or something?
doomrel gave you a mining recipe to smelt dark iron bars. you needed to have the proper level of mining and talk to him before engaging the boss fight. he was momentarily friendly until then. which could only be smelted inside BRD in the forge where the giant fire elemental boss was located.
currently don't have a sub so i made a twink (level 20 demon hunter) with purple gear to fool around and do old quest zones without flying (it's actually unexpectedly enjoyable.) Scaling rn also means I can solo dungeons. This one sure gave me a run for my money.
Just curious what you mean by two different loot tables? Sparing Moira is tied to a quest, and in doing so you will not receive her loot. Not sparing Moira grants access to both her loot and the Thaurassians. In both cases you will be killing the emp, so I guess my question is does Ironfoe or Hand of Justice receive a higher drop chance when sparing Moira? If so that's a huge piece of information.
Back then I had to literally plan my day around being able to run this dungeon from beginning to end. No other dungeon, barring raid instances, required this in order to be completed.
BRD is just so much fun. It also appears to be the sorta model for LOTR/Hobbit movies. If you have time, you can spend the whole day in there. Fun times.
There will never be WoW like this anymore. SoD is a race and YT Fodder, retail is just becoming Genshin Impact and I think I’m done with it. High time in my case. Been playing since TBC and there won’t be any better moment to quit for good. I have loads of games to play because I was too busy playing wow to try them out when they premiered.
I think we will always love vanilla 2004 and classic 2019. That about does it for me having gotten all the sets on my warrior in vanilla and all the sets and best sword from final naxx boss in classic on my rogue + top trinkets. Did the pvp grind on my warrior as well- not on my rogue but I have beaten what I consider the best edition of the game twice over and feel fulfilled.
thanks for the video, my favourite digital place to be. loved taking new guildies thru brd in evening filling runs for upgrades, blacksmithstuff and mc attunements.
When I first played WoW, I hated this place. I only did it like once or twice. Flash forward to Classic - and I fell in love with it. I ran it pretty constantly during off time just cause I loved it so much.
The only thing I didn’t like is it was dang near impossible to get parties to go do the optional ogre boss as we raced to finish before mob respawn, and I never finished my elements set (he drops the boots) 😂
Maybe in wow: the last titan they'll make a new version of ulduar as a mega dungeon with atleast 8 bosses hopefully more like... as many bosses as the raid instance itself has.
Said it once, I'll say it again, Zygor is just a scam, PLEANTY of free guides on the internet...(Which is where that scam addon gets it's guides from...)
There is a reason in vanilla back in the day this and Upper and specially lower black rock spire wasnt a favorite... because they both sucked and took way too long to do, besides are all the 40 year olds today still PLAYING VANILLA ? how many times are you going to raid MC, or do this dungeon youre entire life... lol im so glad i gave up wow after cataclysm, i came back for panderia leveld and quit... played BFA leveld and quit... the game has no appeal anymore cept grind.. Now i will admit.. im thinking of trying the new expansion.. but if its another BFA i sware to god ill never play wow again
the reason no one ran it the loot was better in the other dungeons LBR and UBRs and strat scholo Maura and then diremaul also their tier sets were elsewhere ..also nothing there for hunters the quiver was cool but most got the harpy hide from AV
Use code vaulty to get 20% off Zygor Guides at bit.ly/discountzygor
Did you like your own plug on your own video?
When I was a teen playng WoW I was in awe of that location, it reminded me the Mount Doom of the LOTR. The whole atmosphere made you await danger there behind every corner.
BRD isn't the only place with a raid portal in it. If you go up instead of down, you know LBRS and UBRS are connected, but you can actually enter Black Wing Lair from UBRS.
The entirety of Blackrock Mountain is effectively a mega-dungeon.
It was concepted as it's own "zone" with eyes on being the end of the game zone hence why BRD is a legit city. They really felt once you entered there would be no reason to leave
Not to mention the entrance to Naxx was originally meant to be in... I forget what the name was for the time, but the Stratholm with Baron & the Ziggarauts.
I came to the comments to see if anyone had pointed out what you did; plus this Naxx point.
The only 40man raid that didn't have a portal inside another instance was AQ40. I imagine they could've linked it to AQ20 if they really wanted to, as well.
The Flame Keeper room is peak rogue class fantasy. The correct way to do it is to let the rogue go to the flame keepers, kill them, loot the torches, then vanish away, while the rest of the group just focuses on getting to the braziers.
BRD, Deadmines & Scarlet Monastery as a whole will always hold a special place in my heart, just fantastic design and themes.
But fuck Sunken Temple heh.
BRD is a massive pleb filter. When I had time, I loved doing it. It was an actual dwarven city, gigantic just like my fantasy books, easy to get lost in, making ironforge seem comically puny in comparison.
Originally all raids were entered via their respective dungeons and dungeons did not have a player cap. As you say, Molten Core was in BRD. BWL was entered via Upper Blackrock Spire. By the time AQ was released this idea had been scrapped with attunements added along with shortcuts and dungeon player caps. However this was still planned for Naxx which has a raid portal to the left of Baron Rivendares lair at the end of the undead side of Strat. It is gated off behind where the undead swarm from.
honestly I think AQ was a test to see if players preferred that style, and the portal inside Strat was there just in case it didnt go over well and they could fall back to the raid inside dungeon formula.
@Shiirow if you glitch outside naxx you can find a beta version of Strathholme that has the naxx ship thing floating above it but it's just a single Grey texture so I think it makes sense that strat would lead to naxx
BRD is an epic masterpiece of design. Not only the dungeon itself, but I've always been a big fan of the dark iron dwarves and their history. Before the dwarven civil war, also know as the War of the Three Hammers all the dwarf clans were united in one kingdom, led buy one royal family, the Anvilmars. However society were still somewhat devided. The Wildhammers who lived the closest to the surface or even on the surface provided food and supply to society. They were farmers and animal handlers. The Bronzebeards (who later won the civil war and became the playable race of WoW), who lived mostly in the middle levels of the depths of the mountain, were soldiers. They gave the majority of the dwarven military. And the Dark Irons who lived in the deepest parts of the mountain and hardly see sunlight in their lives, were master builders and craftsmen. It is confirmed that the Dark Irons have build the Stonewrought Dam so no wonder Shadowforge City is another such masterpiece of architecture. It is not confirmed, but I think it is probable, that most of Ironforge was built by Dark Iron dwarves as well back in the times when the clans were united before the civil war.
0:20 I like to correct you, I spend 9 hours in there once. We did basically every quest that was in there, including(and that's where most of the time comes from, since you have to leave the dungeon two or so times) the Marshall Windsor quest chain to open Onyxia.
I love BRD. Super huge, tons of bosses, quests, routes, and mini events. When I hear classic, I think of BRD.
Another reason people ran this dungeon a lot was for the Dark Coffer, hoping to get a Burning Essence that you use with the Libram of Resilience to create a fire resistance enchant for the head/legs slots which was an important part of your fire resist set for raiding MC and BWL.
I would like to see more dungeons like BRD. I really like multilayered complex dungeons. Nowadays all the dungeons are designed for M+
I loved BRD when I was a young WoW player. It's still pretty fun in WoW Classic and the truncated version you get if you queue for it (the whole dungeon is there, but you target only certain bosses for completion credit).
BRD remains my favorite dungeon. It's old and ugly and clumsy and the bosses are basic, but thematically it hit the nail on the head like nothing else. What I like best about BRD is that it feels less like a dungeon (as we understand them from modern WoW) and more like an instanced questing zone. Nobody goes there to spend five hours "clearing the dungeon." You go in with a group for specific reasons, hoping to accomplish specific goals. Sometimes, different group members had different goals, and you would have to compromise with each other to get the party together, hoping they wouldn't betray you and dip out after they got what they wanted done (I got burned so many times!). It felt like a heist movie, getting the team together, getting done what you needed done, and getting out.
It absolutely does not fit into the modern dungeon paradigm, but I feel like it could be made to work. Blizzard has already put together dungeons out of instanced versions of overworld areas (Siege of Boralus, Nokhud Offensive, Dazar'Alor, others). I could imagine them doing some kind of instanced version of a normal area, with lots of various reasons to go in it (like the Brackenhide Cauldron or BRD's Black Anvil for instance), lots of quests that lead into it, maybe even daily quests or daily rares inside the instanced zone. If they wanted they could then break up and edit these instanced areas for the more normal Mythic+ focused dungeon experiences. One big "Exploration Dungeon" could be broken up into two or even three "normal" dungeons, and be made diverse enough internally that all the pieces felt very different from each other.
I was new to wow in TBC and I was lucky enough to find a small but active guild that loved running these older dungeons on a weekend..such good times and great memories from this dungeon.
They always made sure any of us that had quest would all run and make sure all quest were completed no matter how long it took..it was a lot of the times an all day run due to quest turn ins and of course corpse runs.
I spent so much time here pickpocket farming on my rogue in Classic Vanilla in 2019, and being in awe of how huge it was. Great video.
I used to play on a private server during BC set entirely inside Blackrock mountain, it was a very odd non blizz-like, but just going back to explore Blackrock depths and that again was awesome fun.
This dungeon is why I play every fresh version of classic vanilla
Didn't even get into Raiding at all but remember BRD and running it as much as I could for Ironfoe but never got lucky on it, then eventually stopped playing WoW altogether - was a fun game though thanks to the friends I played with.
You can also get to BRD right from the Molten Core entrance. Just climb the first lava waterfall to the left.
Stratholme was also massive and Dire maul 2.
Vanilla dungeons was the best.
Yes!! Getting to lvl 50 and starting to run parts of BRD is peak WoW. Blackrock Mountain is a massive source of coolness for late game including the wpvp that goes on.
lets start a To-Do list.
Kill Fineous Darkvire for the Master Builder Shirt
Run thru the suspended rock as a ghost and talk to the ghost npc for that quest i cant remember ( the key? )
Pickpocket the barman for the key after everyone sold their junk, the whole room turns hostile the second after. ( funny little event, him yelling someone robbed him etc )
Every 3 houres the band will play in the bar? at 3.00 -6.00-9.00-12.00 ?
After the Braziers are lit the packs stop respawning?
at doomrel , before you piss him off, he sells blacksmith recipes or gives a blacksmith Quest or something?
doomrel gave you a mining recipe to smelt dark iron bars. you needed to have the proper level of mining and talk to him before engaging the boss fight. he was momentarily friendly until then. which could only be smelted inside BRD in the forge where the giant fire elemental boss was located.
currently don't have a sub so i made a twink (level 20 demon hunter) with purple gear to fool around and do old quest zones without flying (it's actually unexpectedly enjoyable.) Scaling rn also means I can solo dungeons. This one sure gave me a run for my money.
Really loved this dungeon, wish wow made more of these massive dungeons where you could wander around for hours discovering stuff
Just curious what you mean by two different loot tables? Sparing Moira is tied to a quest, and in doing so you will not receive her loot. Not sparing Moira grants access to both her loot and the Thaurassians. In both cases you will be killing the emp, so I guess my question is does Ironfoe or Hand of Justice receive a higher drop chance when sparing Moira? If so that's a huge piece of information.
Back then I had to literally plan my day around being able to run this dungeon from beginning to end. No other dungeon, barring raid instances, required this in order to be completed.
5 hours? My mate and I were stuck in there in 2006 for 9 hours once. Granted we were 14 years old and retarded but still
BRD is just so much fun. It also appears to be the sorta model for LOTR/Hobbit movies. If you have time, you can spend the whole day in there. Fun times.
Wow, BRD looks so much better than in classic than in retail 😂
There will never be WoW like this anymore. SoD is a race and YT Fodder, retail is just becoming Genshin Impact and I think I’m done with it. High time in my case. Been playing since TBC and there won’t be any better moment to quit for good. I have loads of games to play because I was too busy playing wow to try them out when they premiered.
I think we will always love vanilla 2004 and classic 2019. That about does it for me having gotten all the sets on my warrior in vanilla and all the sets and best sword from final naxx boss in classic on my rogue + top trinkets. Did the pvp grind on my warrior as well- not on my rogue but I have beaten what I consider the best edition of the game twice over and feel fulfilled.
thanks for the video, my favourite digital place to be. loved taking new guildies thru brd in evening filling runs for upgrades, blacksmithstuff and mc attunements.
five hours? talk about a full DAY
Took like 30 mins just for the whole group to get back to where we wiped. The place was so confusing back in 2004/05.
There's still a group in there now
Coolest part of Ironfoe was the secret proc that let you speak & understand Dwarven for a few seconds.
i dont think you get different loot at the end - you just either do get moira's loot (in addition to emperor's) or you dont
8:24, first run, casualy drops hands of justice :D
Happy to see you posting again
You'd have liked the flame keeper room if you played a rogue in classic. :^)
When I first played WoW, I hated this place. I only did it like once or twice. Flash forward to Classic - and I fell in love with it. I ran it pretty constantly during off time just cause I loved it so much.
It would have been a nice sight to see the whole finished city,without the orcs and Nefarian destroying the upper part of it. :]
Doing it once was fun, but nobody wanted to farm a dungeon that long.
The only thing I didn’t like is it was dang near impossible to get parties to go do the optional ogre boss as we raced to finish before mob respawn, and I never finished my elements set (he drops the boots) 😂
Great video. This dungeon is amazing.
Maybe in wow: the last titan they'll make a new version of ulduar as a mega dungeon with atleast 8 bosses hopefully more like... as many bosses as the raid instance itself has.
Great time had a lot of fun and great memories.
Such an iconic place.
at 4:48 vaulty talks about vaults
Hand of justice in the first run
These were good times, nowadays I feels like we are always rushing through the dungeons and not really enjoying it as we used to.
was awesome!!!
LBRS,UBRS and BWL are also 1 long dungeon.
Of course you'd get a HoJ on your Emperor kill for the video😂
Casually looting hand of justice.
Been in many times. Fond memories
The vanilla dungeons were nearly all labyrinthine.
Loved BRD even if it was stupidly long.
2015 Never ever did this dungeon in full
Chaos dwarfs
Why didn't you bring a party?
best dungeon ever.
I 100% disagree , best dungeon was slave pens.
You actually stole this video from hirumaduex
Again?! LMAO
You have to "buy" an ingame addon guide? That's against the ToS.
8:00 the princess is his captive not his wife
she was his captive but ultimately got stockholme syndrome and became his wife, bearing him a child.
@@Shiirow hmm interesting lore did the child grew up to be a boss anywhere or somebody we might know?
Great video, But you did BRD a GREAT dishonor by recording this all on retail. Shame on you.
i love you
oof
Said it once, I'll say it again, Zygor is just a scam, PLEANTY of free guides on the internet...(Which is where that scam addon gets it's guides from...)
Never liked it.
Frist
There is a reason in vanilla back in the day this and Upper and specially lower black rock spire wasnt a favorite... because they both sucked and took way too long to do, besides are all the 40 year olds today still PLAYING VANILLA ? how many times are you going to raid MC, or do this dungeon youre entire life... lol im so glad i gave up wow after cataclysm, i came back for panderia leveld and quit... played BFA leveld and quit... the game has no appeal anymore cept grind.. Now i will admit.. im thinking of trying the new expansion.. but if its another BFA i sware to god ill never play wow again
the reason no one ran it the loot was better in the other dungeons LBR and UBRs and strat scholo Maura and then diremaul also their tier sets were elsewhere ..also nothing there for hunters the quiver was cool but most got the harpy hide from AV
@@kyeema-of-the-shadows true i do remember this now. I was a paladin though. Plenty in there for me hah
Why you still trying?
Huh?
BD is my favorite dungeon in the game