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It's the first obvious MMO boss fight influence I've seen. I think there is strategy, having to utilize the environment, knowing what he does in each phase of the attack. Certainly more than anything the first game ever required, other than the Archdemon fight. Every fight in that game was exactly the same - tank with your tank, DPS with your DPS, heal with your healer (or if potions if you don't have one). You never had to worry about the fights changing in any way. With the Ancient Rock Wraith, you have to know that he teleports and hits a long wide frontal aoe , that he rolls and hits a long wide frontal aoe and a ranged small area aoe in his second phase, that he rolls, explodes and does the other two attacks in his third, combined with a gravity wave that can pull everything in. You need to know that Profanes spawn in between phases and that they hit really hard but have low health. It's certainly not a tank and spank fight.
So the strategy is there, he just has ridiculously high hitpoints on Nightmare. It's a wearing fight, to say the least. But I would say by traditional RPG standards, that may be more strategy than I've seen in a while, and I've played all kinds of them. Mass Effect 2 is the only other game that I can think of that really required this kind of micromanagement to get it done. I certainly never had to think about this much in Oblivion or Fallout 3 or The Witcher (or DA:O). This reminds me a lot more of playing WoW or LotRO on a single player scale.
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