Great question kilsin!
To this day, I don't think I have ever been more excited than the first time I got to raid Naggy in Sol B EQ1.
I still have the screen shot of her killing me after she said: "You will not evade me Zacknafeinn!"
My 2nd favorite was Trak. Can't remember where this mob was, but it took FOREVER. Havenlight on Xegony.
For me the one that still stands out the most is one that strokes my ego... I'm selfless like that.
PoTime B phase 4 had the rock guys (Supernatural Guardian and Avatar of the Elements) and typically our monks would run around trying to hang one up on part of the arena and keep the other one moving, fd, pull the delayed one, bla bla bla. My moment was when I had figured out a way to split off 1 mob from any sized pack (pending chained agro of course) and I kept trying to get the RL (monk) to let me just pull. Monks spent ~15min failing. RL got pissed and said fine for me to try it and I got it first try without snagging one on the area etc, just looked like one ran to me and the other gave up.
Non-me centric - Different game, but I loved the ship battle in ICC in WoW. It had normal aspects of smacking the crap out of a boss and a secondary boss that screwed you up too, but having your ship and theirs shoot cannons back and forth was new to me and great fun.
edit: The first time the guild I was in cleared PoAir. That place was so god damn annoying that it felt amazing regardless of what loot we did or didn't get. I wish we had a leaf blower just because that sounded like fun and it looked badass.
For me is was a toss up between Rallos Zek and The Rathe Council.
My guild STRUGGLED with RZ for a long time. It was torture to try and try and try and fail and fail and fail night after night. We were undergeared but when we eventually killed him it was THE turning point for our guild. We learned so much in those wipes about became a much more cohesive team. All those failures made the victory so much sweeter.
I think if I had to pick one though, I'd pick The Rathe Council. That whole encounter just felt so epic to me. Unlike RZ I had a significant role in this fight so for me it was just that much more satisfying. Oh that sweet Eartspined Staff!
EQ is the only game I can talk about and tell stories with friends who also played for hours and hours. No other game has had that effect on me, or them for that matter. My memories of EQ are just as real and vivid as any memories I have had in my life. I hope Pantheon can fill that void.
P.S. Trakanon lives in Sebilis.
My first "boss" mob fight aka The Alchemist in Misty Thicket (for anyone who might not know: a nasty, fairly rarely spawning goblin in a newbie zone of EQ). I'm being serious! No, really. There were a few of us there fighting him and some were casting like crazy. The colours of the mass of baby spells were mezmerising to me. Had I known back then what a raid would look like, I probaly would have hugged my computer for a week.
Revenge killing D'Vinn in Crushbone (need I say it? Yes, EQ), when I was high enough level. As a pally, it meant lvl 50. (No, just kidding!)
After that, my first dragon raid (EQ again). No, not Lord Nagafen, but Lady Vox. Yeah, we wiped.
My first Fear raid. "It begins to rain blood" or whatever it said. And all the rest of it. And the bonus: Valorium greaves for my pally. Ahh yes. Those were the days.
Hmm, maybe I should just change my forum name to EQ and get it over with?
I remember really enjoying the Fear plane raids. Truly scaring and you had to take your time and be tactical and careful.
I have to say I'm not sure what the answer is, but in P99 EQ I found raiding boring. It seems to be just a massive pain-in-the-rear logistics effort, not an actual tactical challenge. A simple race to get more warm bodies than the other guilds into the right place. Sometimes you have to go before you're ready and it's hard, but not really fun. Sometimes you have more than enough people and the massive scary dragon is dead in seconds.
If you can somehow keep raids and bosses difficult and challenging for the encounter and not for the logistics of beating other guilds to the punch then we might be back in business with fun like those early EQ days.
Always preferred raids that actually took a dungeon crawl to even get to the boss(es).
Not really a raid mob, but Velkator the sorceror stands out in my mind. I think we had three groups? I was asking favors because I wanted his book for something. What made it stand out was just getting there. the sliding, the invis, the kobolds, the stunning beauty of the area, the circular stairs- peeking eyes just over the edge. contantly wondering if "this" was a good spot to med for a bit. Very much on edge the whole way. We failed the first time, but got him the second.
FFXI my Linkshell Against the Grain attempted Pandemonium Warden after losing 4 grueling battles of over 2 hours each. PW is the monster that made headlines when a group fought him for nearly 13 hours straight without identifying his weaknesses quick enough. Several of the members were hospitalized and one died of exhaustion. What I liked about PW was that he took at minimum 1 week to attempt each time. The fight was hours long for 18 people and you were never guaranteed a win. He also spawned mini versions of all of the hard monster gods in the game before him which was extra cool because to beat him you needed to know the fight strategy for 5 other random mini gods that he might choose.
The rewards were fantastic. Specifically a great katana without the ability to miss.
I am choosing PW because he was insanely hard and we beat him. Absolute Virtue holds a place in many people's hearts because they may have fought him 20 times and never got him below 70%...much like us.
The true epicness for me is that even to this day there were only 5 counts of legit AV kills in the first 3 years of his release. About 15 for PW in the first year. It took people an insane amount of time to figure our Odin and he could only be accessed once every 3 weeks. It doesn't get better than this for me and I truly believe that FFXI has all the gold medals for epic boss battles when your PR team has to release apologetic statements for the difficulty of their monsters. The 13 hour PW fight lead to things like 2 hour fight limits on all FFXI monsters. If you didn't killl it in 2 hours he would super saiyan and kill everyone. These are things that made the game so amazing and so mysterious. The type of fights that you can't even see again because it would be irresponsible for a dev team to have that expectation of their audience.
I'd have to go with Naggy as well. Because it was my first ever.
Level cap was still 50, I was 41 at the time and just made the cut. It was our guilds first major raid, and my first venture into SolA. We were all essentially newbs still as far as this kind of thing went.
I think that is what made it so great, we only knew what we had heard and read. No one had real experience in this yet, and whiel there was a basic strategy for him at the time, it was not fool proof by any means with 40 inexperienced players.
My second was Lady Vox, for similar reasons, although the guild had done her a few times, this one I would participate in. Being a casual, family type guild we did NBG and rndm, and I got super lucky and rolled a 99 on the RBB that dropped. I logged into EQ not long ago, and the first thing I did was open up my character screen and checked that my RBB still existed. :P
Now adays, raids are more like big PUGs. Everyone knows what to expect, how to act, what to do. The mystery is mostly gone.
I remember trying to do Plane of Fear trash mobs for Planar Armor, and failing the break in. At the time I was more casual, in a casual guild, so we weren't experienced raiders by any means. It was really my first experience with a larger scale event. Even though we failed the break in, it was still a lot of fun!
I also remember finally achieving one of my dreams that I thought would never happen - Clearing NToV and my first Vulak kill, then WINNING Palladius' Axe of Slaughter! I carried that thing around with me for the next 15 years... In fact if I logged back in, it would probably STILL be in one of my bags.
Kilsin said:What was the most epic boss or raid mob you can remember fighting in an MMORPG and why was it special to you?
Aten Ha Ra, Vex Thal.
That zone was a grinder. Mob HPs, even on trash mobs were sky high. Clearings took hours upon hours upon hours of work. To get to Aten Ha Ra you had to kill hundreds of yard trash and (if memory serves, 6 sub-bosses each one needing their own strategy. You wipe anywhere and it's pretty much game over for that night. You won't have the time to get back in, get up and buffed and get going.
But..then..when you least expect it..it all falls together. Everyone clicks on the yard trash clearing strat. 'Well oiled machine' doesn't begin to describe how it all comes together and for the first time you have that near flawless run from beginning to end, from zone-in to Aten Ha Ra herself. It was then that everyone understood why we worked so long and so hard..the payoff was incredible both in terms of loot but that sense of accomplishment. Aten Ha Ra was officially put on 'farm' status.
Arugal in Shadow Fang Keep, World of Warcraft
He had unique gear drops, and a unique fight style where he would teleport around and nuke the nearest players, and even his own voice acting, but that's not all that special.
So why is he the one I remember best?
Arugal had unique features at lvl 20 in a game that takes you to lvl 60+.
Oh, and he a cool little tune would play when you entered his room.
One of my favorite Dungeon runs was in WotLK in WoW. We didn’t even fight the Litch King but he was slowly walking behind us casting spells and if you fell behind you got caught up in the spells and died. You had to keep fighting forward as waves of mobs came from the forward position you can to fight towards a flying ship to get away from the Litch King. Was epic and awesome.
I think this could be used with one of the Epic Dragons in Pantheon. Fight your way down into a dragon cave and fight some boss or steal a chest (dose not open till you escape) You wake the dragon and slowly lumbers awake and blowing AE flames and chasing your team. As you run to the exit dragon kin could be trying to stop you. If you don’t fight your way out fast enough you get caught up in the dragon flames and your team dies. Chest is removed from your inventory and you have to start over again.
I think the most remarkable raid was RZ soon after Pop released. My guild had realy had problems with him for months with the insane amount of adds and the death touching. We eventually dropped him after countless wipes 2 a night sometimes. It was the most coordination in a game I have ever experienced.
Definitely Lucifron because that was my first raid boss and I was leading; I was shaking. First time we downed him I was the last one left alive, resto druid, with 160HP left. Amid all the screaming with delight one Pally typing simply "There has to be an easier way" lol. I think I'll remember that moment for the rest of my life! And of course Raggy. Nothing is ever like your first time.
And for some reason Titan hard mode first time in FFXIV. millionth raid boss but hard fight, epic music, epic effects, tons going on all the time balancing heals between dodging and running, really intense full on conentration required 100%. And of course getting AF in the loot.
And the final storyline encounter in FFXIV. Wasn't particularly hard but that whole storyline was particularly epic - Just a completely different league to any other MMO I've ever played.
I wish I could simply explain what I've been through lol, EQ took me through a lot of good and bad experiences. Such as Nagafen, and Lady Vox... Then when PoP came out raids only got worse, ESPECIALLY with Xegony. Like jeez that fight took so long lol. I remember once, im not sure what happened, xegony was down to like 10%HP, and either someone missed their add, or something I'm not 100% sure, but something had gotten to the tank he dropped, second tank couldn't pick her up and it was a wipe, like an hour worth of work right down the drain lol. Probably longer actually...
Then in my stupidity, i accident shot an arrow at tunare on my ranger while my guild was killing her... Like, jeez lol...
Then we had the Sleeper's Tomb of course. That was always a fun raid.