This is not necessarily a good thing. A lot of times they ran into balance issues simply due to this. As an example, they made Lightning Bolt a centerpiece for both Enhancement and Elemental Shaman back in the day. It severely limited what they were able to do with Elemental because they couldn’t buff Lightning Bolt without also buffing Enhancement.
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It’s a property you could apply to your gear that gives you a strong affix but in return you get a “corruption” stat that can stack a debuffs on you. It’s a really awful system, one of the worst I’ve ever seen in WoW.
Well, I don’t need anyone to tell me how I should or should not enjoy my videogames but roleplaying with my friends in FFXIV and enjoying the really, REALLY good story ( one of the best of the franchise as a whole) has been my primary source of enjoyment and reason to dump dollars into a subscription of that game. So all I say is, to each their own.
To be fair, my way of thinking comes more from a roleplayer’s point of view. It’s just natural that certain basic core skills of a class would be something you know regardless of what specialization you follow. I’m not a fan of specializations as a whole (the way they currently work in wow, with each spec being basically a different class), so anything that breaks away from that system, I’m happy to see. I actually think this obcession with class balance is one of my turnoffs with retail wow, which made me consider going back to Classic, if I wasn’t already invested in FFXIV
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Yes, almost everything, including but not limited to raiding, was made far more accessible. Yes it made everything that was special about the game not so special anymore. As for raiding specifically. Normal 10 man wasn’t the only easy raid. I pugged 25man and HC in Wotlk, clearing raidbosses for the first time ever with complete randoms and that’s when I understood how all the magic in potentially slaying those dragons was gone. Luckily the subs speak for themselves so I don’t have to waste my time explaining basic psychology to you anymore than I already have.
It’s not even close to perfect honestly. But SL has one redeeming feature going for it which is the unpruning. WoW cannot survive another garbage expansion like BFA. If it wasn’t for Classic WoW arriving and literally doubleing the subs of WoW then it would’ve been in a very very dire state.
Class balance really only mattered at the Heroic (and now Mythic) raiding levels… but the more tools they have the easier it is to balance, and if you start giving back those spells and skills that cross over and making them important… well, you risk going backward.
Classic wasn’t any less obsessed with balance, anyway.
I wish I could get into FFXIV. I tried, because I really love the Dragoon and the Red Mage… but it’s too much of a time investment to catch up. It’s a damn shame the original release was so bad because if it hadn’t been I would never have stopped playing it.
If they ever do a 3rd Final Fantasy MMO, I’ll be playing that one though.
Right now I’m hoping New World is good…
You may wanna consider trying again now then, because they completely reworked the leveling experience in A Realm Reborn (not to mention it’s completely free to play up to Heavensward now too). It’s much more streamlined now and I was done with that part in like 15 hours.
The thing about classic that I miss is that every class had it’s place. People would actually ask for specific classes because they needed something only that class could do. Made me feel pretty good about my warlock since everyone needed me to summon. It wasn’t a spec thing, it was a warlock thing. I feel like modern wow lost that.
For me it is the speed of the game play. I also like the cooperative mode in D3, where different classes play distinct roles to beat the game. I also didn’t like how in multiplayer game it was shared loot, which was very frustrating as I was at the end of a slow modem and didn’t have any cheats to pick up gear. The limited stash was annoying. The imbalance between the classes was annoying as it is in D3. The PvP sniping was frustrating in HC. There isn’t other modes like Rifts, Bounties, Great Rifts and so forth, the game was a very shallow grind.
Some valid points, such as the stash being too small. As for the cooperation, I feel Diablo III had less than Diablo II, so I am not sure what you mean. Diablo 3 felt very much like every class can do anything and do it very similarly, rather than Diablo II where they felt unique and really took on the fantasy of the classes.
Shared loot drops in terms of visibility when they first drop from the enemy, has its charm, but I agree, it is probably not what I would want now either. I also didn’t think it was any more imbalanced than most other games, and all classes were viable for end-game if built right. With that said, yes it could use some work.
Those “modes” you refer to are very boring very fast to me. I think Adventure was the closest they got with bounties and such, but even that is too repetitive and shallow.
In the end, Diablo III’s terrible loot system make it impossible to care about the rifting anyway.
Agree to disagree I guess!
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4 man meta groups in D3. You know a RGK, Zmonk, Zbarb, TK and so on. That wasn’t present in D2 and wasn’t in the early days of D3 either, it was every player for themselves.
More or less, there were some buddies you really wanted to have in your MP party, such as a buffing barb with BO
It was never really ever hard until Mythic, not the SoO mythic, that was easy mode, but in WoD on. But WotLK was basically a casuals dream. I don’t say that as an insult. I’m all for accessibility, and really, no point in WoW has ever been so easy as it was in WotLK.
I never, at any point, considered any of my heroic or mythic kills/clears any less special because there was a lower floor. Frankly most don’t. Being onnthenofficialnand somenfsn forums, it really only bothers those that think they are innthe mix of top players or guilds, but really aren’t.
But again, you make my point. Your original claim was LFR ruined thengsme because it made raiding too easy. But WotLK did that 4nyears before LFR was even a thought. Cata wasn’t the downfall, it was the end result if WotLK if making things easy is what caused it. But I still contend there are too many variables to even pin down a majority stake in WoWs fall from 12M.
Uhm… Vanilla is the easiest… by far. It might have seemed hard at the time, because people weren’t used to MMOs.
Now that Classic was released, it’s apparent how elementary the game was.
Many classes were unfinished, they use very few abilities. What else can I say.
Me personally, I really enjoyed TBC, WotLK and some aspects of WoD and Legion.
Also, the real challenge used to be Arenas during TBC and WotLK. Scripted fights in PvE were lame anyways. They weren’t hard in and of themselves, what was hard was to find other dedicated people, who were willing to perform.
Also, Ulduar hardmodes are considered by many the pinnacle of raiding.
In terms of character abilities and their uses, TBC and WotLK were where the characters were the most complex. Since then they’ve been systematically dumbed down throughout the expansions.
I really don’t understand in what way you believe WotLK to be the easiest iteration of WoW.
I’d say the dungeons were definitely easy, maybe that’s what you base your view on.
Few at the top of my head:
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WotLK itself is not blameless, it wasn’t perfect.
Many people didn’t like the start of WotLK in terms of raid difficulty. Nax was considered by many too easy.
On some level I agree, on another it was more of a introductory to raiding for newer players.
Arena was poorly balanced throughout the first 2 seasons of Wrath (5 and 6). -
Some people were burned out by WotLK after playing throughout Vanilla and TBC.
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Lore wise WotLK effectively put and end on the story we’ve been following since WC3. For me personally, the lore in WoW has always been disappointing.
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The start of Cata was bad in many regards. The only redeeming quality it had was, that the dungeons were harder on release.
I quit when they released ZulGurub and ZulAman as dungeons. It was super boring. Went to play WotLK PvP on private servers, it was more enjoyable.
Nothing ever, outside of some mythic encounters, has been difficult in WoW. However, logistical challenges of Vanilla cannot be ignored. Thise challenges are what most people are talking about in regards to Vanilla’s raiding difficulty.
That was relaxed a bit with 10/25 sized raids in TBC, but, as more non traditional raider flocked to 10 man raids, making the jump to 25s proved as difficult as herding 40 people in Vanilla. Coupled with attunement and guild poaching, the problem became crystal clear. The need for small size raiding
As for those hard modes, if they weren’tgimmicky, no one would have cared. Which is odd, most people love ripping in Blizzards “gimmicks”
I’m already in the current expansion, it just feels slow. Maybe if I got into the next one at the start it’d be different and I wouldn’t feel behind.
Yeah? And how many Mages have you talked to that loved summoning up water for their 40 person raid to drink?
Don’t get me wrong, WoW did go too far with the homogenization of things… but some of it did need to be done. Like spreading the buffs around so your raid could have a more varied composition.
Well, some of that has to do with the patch they released Classic under. Characters in general have a fair bit more power.
Actually, Sunwell was one of the most difficult raids ever, back when bosses could still crit your tanks and you had to class stack to get through most of them. Poor Mages. Hell if I didn’t respec from Enhancement to Restoration on a fight-to-fight basis in that damn place.
Probably because 10m normals were pushovers and the stat inflations of that expansion meant that normals were easier on the whole later on, since they usually put the OHK stuff in the Heroic versions.
UnBEARable, were they?
While it was easy even back then, classic is not the same as vanilla. We got all the post-nerf bosses, buffed/fixed classes, and buffed/improved itemization.
I wish Blizzard would have gone all in recreating vanilla, with appropriate patch changes along each raid release. The mere fact that my mage didnt fall through the ground 50% of the time I used blink, made it feel all wrong!
I mostly stopped serious raiding after Wotlk (not due to the games quality, just “real life” demanding more attention), but yeah, Ulduar was really something special. Great mix of difficulty, interesting bosses and dungeon design.
I don’t know about that.
The way I remember it, many “PvE experts” found something like Faction Champions (the pseudo-PvP encounter from Trial of the Cruisader) extremely difficult…
And it turned out, that they are so bad, they don’t even have half of their abilities on the bar. Mages who never had sheep or counterspell…
You mean people being bad and not the raids being beaten by green gear. Come on…
Attunenements in TBC were easy. I did them before they were removed. It all came down to a friend of mine telling me “It’s really good idea to do these” and so I did them.
Some encounters can be gimmicky, but you’d have to tell me a specific one if you wanna discuss.
For me the difficulty usually came down to people with low attention span. I did what I supposed to. Some people never bothered to pay attention.
I’ve heard about that… however, it’s not just about the power. It’s about the abilities they use as well.
A lot of the PvE involves using very few skills, you can’t even call it a rotation.
I’ve heard about that, actually. I’ve never done the raid myself up to date.
I didn’t have a good guild back in TBC, also there was nothing, that I wanted from Sunwell.
I’ve heard about class stacking, but not in great detail. Something something destro warlocks. Feel free to tell me about it.
I didn’t really care about 10m versions. I did PvE in WotLK to use some pieces in PvP (slots that PvP counterparts didn’t have agility on them, like rings, cloak… also trinkets). The stuff I wanted was 25.
IMO 10m existing was a good thing though for people, who really needed the gear to have a fair chance of catching up. IMO the amount of items per boss wasn’t enough… like ~5 items per boss… for 25 people… each with like what… ~17 item slots.
:D:D:D
Yeah, I stopped playing classic the night I fell asleep casting Shadowbolt during an MC raid.
Brutalis (whatever it’s spelled like) the second boss was, well, his namesake. He had a stacking debuff that caused you to rotate tanks and an ability you had to soak with the tank… and you only had 2 tanks because he was a hardcore dps check. So if one of your tanks got hit by more than 1 crushing blow in a short period of time, it was a wipe. Or if your raid didn’t get healed up. This was the Restoration Shaman stack fight because Chain Heal was overpowered back then. You had 4-6 Resto Shaman (basically as many as possible) spamming Chain Heal through the tank and the raid… Resto Shaman were THE healer for Sunwell.
Felmyst, as I recall, was a ranged stacking fight and you absolutely wanted as many Priests as possible to dispel the debuff.
Can’t remember if the Twins needed any particular stacking, but M’uru was an execution AND dps check.
Yes, you stacked Destro Warlocks. And lots of Rogues/Warriors, preferably with Warglaives. This was during the Only-I-Have-Buffs period of the game, so you had a main caster group with like 3 Warlocks, an Oomkin and an Elemental Shaman, and a melee group stuffed with Rogues, (Fury)Warriors and an Enhancement Shaman. And if you were a Mage, your life sucked.
Neither did I other than farming 'cause I was doing 25m Heroics, but that doesn’t change the fact that Normal 10s were pretty easy going.
10s wasn’t any better. 2 per, and one of those was dedicated to the Tier slot.
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I think its a pretty easy solution. You pick the difficulty you play on permanently (or you can drop it but not raise). For diablo, you pick normal, nightmare or hell at character creation. You only play through the one time. It can be anything to make it harder- tougher enemies, lower drop rates, lose items on death if not hardcore, increased repair prices, new AI would be awesome. In diablo context, its fine for something like ubers to only be in hell difficulty… its not content that “everyone needs to see” like raids in WoW.
You’re wrong, my original point that they went too far with their accessibiltiy agenda. In fact, you’re the one making my point for me all this time, pretty much confirming the casual direction that started in WOTLK aligned with the plateauing subs (and then carried on downhill ever since). Whether it’s called LFR or normal raiding, the fact of a matter is that both made raids far more accessible which was in line with the general direction of wow. Questing, queuing bgs, regular dungeons, raids, professions etc. Almost everything was streamlined and made easier. Pretty soon you didn’t have a reason to leave the big city and could just do everything from there. You can stick your head in the sand and pretend it dropped because of other reasons, but I won’t.
Since pvp was my favourite activity though I personally didn’t mind because it was superb in Wotlk, and still going strong all the way until MoP with a few roadbumps in certain seasons. That’s when they decided my grandma didn’t have it easy enough still, and pruned half the toolkit of all classes (in WoD) and basically set their game back so far and have been trying to come back ever since.