nailbat.us

So apparently there are four achievements in the first part of Ulduar we were in yesterday, with respect to whether towers are activated and then left in tact. If you talk to the dude at the beginning, and then depending on how many of the four towers you left alone, you can get four different degrees of hard mode.

According to Wowhead, if you activate the towers by talking to the dude, then kill all four towers before engaging Flame Leviathan, is the same easy mode as not talking to the dude because the towers are not active.
http://www.wowhead.com/?achievement=3057#comments

Thanks! There was a lot of confusion yesterday because all of our usual sources were saying different things, but this should clear it all up for our Thursday night retry (now with 100% more people in the instance!)