“The Molten Core is located beyond Blackrock Depths, in the deepest part of Blackrock Mountain. It is the home of Ragnaros the Firelord – one of the four elemental lieutenants of the Old Gods – and his elemental minions. Molten Core is a 40-man raid instance, and requires attunement to enter.

The Molten Core was created during the War of the Three Hammers, more than 300 years ago. Near the end of the war, Thaurissan, the leader of the Dark Iron Dwarves, sought to summon a powerful fire elemental to defeat the combined forces of the Bronzebeard and Wildhammer clans. He was more successful than he could have imagined, as he released Ragnaros from millenia of captivity under the Redridge Mountains.

Ragnaros destroyed the city of Thaurissan (named after the Dwarven leader) and created the volcano of Blackrock Spire. He dwells there to this day with his elemental servants and the enslaved remnants of the Dark Iron dwarf clan.” -wowhead.com

Back then, if you ever step foot into Molten Core, you know you are in a raiding guild. I was in awe the first time I was here. Going into a zone with 39 other players a huge. This is when I went from a casual player, to a “omgz I want to see more” player.

Taking 40 players about a minute just to take down two Molten Giants was a crazy concept for me. What would the bosses be like!? I raided MC for a good chunk of my Pre-BC WoW career, and it was truly fun.

All the bosses were very well design, and each were very different. These bosses set the standard for every thing you see today.

Lucifron was a decursing fight. If anyone remembers the old Decursive Mod, that mod was super cheap and made any decursing fight a joke. Blizz later changed how much Mods can do for you.

Magmadar was a tank and spank fight, but with fears and random fire spots all around the raid. This is where I discovered the importance of “Max Range” and how much the extra distance from talents really is.

Chat has been censored for the youngling readers…

Ghennas was another decursing fight, and the first fight were you have to tank the boss while off-tanking other adds. He had two buddies with him, and he did random Rain of Fire onto the raid.

Garr was a huge earth elemental boss who has 8 adds with him. The adds had to be off-tanked or banished. Luckily back then having 4-5 Warriors and Warlocks were not uncommon. The fun part was whenever you kill an add, it would blow up and send any players flying through the air.

Shazzrah was another fun fight. Everyone had to spread out in a huge circle around him with Mages spread out among the raid to decurse. Back then we still had Detect Magic which we had to keep up on him the whole time so dispelers could get rid of one of his buffs. I wonder if I could Spell Steal it now if I went back…

Baron Geddon was the first “You are the Bomb!” fight. He would randomly target a raid member, and that person must run out of the raid or he/she will blow up anyone standing close to them. Here is where I realized the importance of Ice Block in boss encounters.

What NOT to do when you are the bomb! And some pro healing by Utada!

Golemagg the Incinerator was pretty much a tank and spank fight. It was a long fight where in order to win, you must kill him before healers run out of mana and tanks start dying. I also liked this fight because he dropped a ton of caster loot

Sulfuron Harbinger was another fun fight. He had 4 healers with him, so we had to pull each healer far away from him and the other healers, and one at a time we kill the healers. This is where I learned how to interrupt healing spells with Counterspell.

Majordomo Executus I remember was a pretty difficult fight for us. He has 4 healers and 4 warriors as his bodyguards. You don’t actually get to kill Majordomo, he forfeits the battle after you kill all of his guards. Mages were assigned to each healer in this fight, and we had to keep them sheep. And I had plenty of practice with keeping my target sheeped on this fight.

If only I knew the Sheep/Focus macro back then…

Ragnaros was the final boss of the instance. When you see him spawn for the very first time, it was truly epic. When you see him just one-shot Majordomo, you see that you are in for a tough fight. He would randomly knock players back into the lava where they must learn to swim back and jump back up on the platform. This is where I learned how awesome Blink is with knock backs.

Majordomo got WtfPwnD!

When you were finally able to take down Ragnaros for the first time, you felt totally satisfied. You take pride that you have taken him down, and you will remember it for the rest of your WoW life.