Honestly i forgot this was a wow classic post 
thats my bad dood.
But yes judging by your post about not caring to do mythic after killing on n/h, I’m gonna assume youve never cleared more than half of a mythic raid. And buying doesnt count
Didn’t we ask for this?
I never said I dont care to do mythic, I’m just saying it dampers the excitment when you’re doing the same content on 3-4 difficulties.
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This 100%. A lot of people like myself play the game for the content. Ie, seeing a brand new zone, watching a brand new quest/story, and fighting a brand new boss that you’ve never seen before. I remember back in the “vanilla” days, the idea of fighting KT, Illidan and Arthas for the first time, was a huge draw for me. Then I took a long break, came back for the end of MOP, facerolled Garrosh in LFR, and quit the game immediately after. Killing Garrosh 3 different times in different difficulty levels, just wasn’t as motivating as killing him for the first time.
I know others feel differently. If you enjoy achievement-collecting, iLvl min-maxing, speed-running, or anything like that… more power to you. But there are lots of people who feel differently. Who lose motivation once they have seen and killed the end-boss. When you look at WoW subscription numbers, it peaked in the TBC/WotLK days when raiding wasn’t a right, it was a privilege you had to earn. Player counts fell off a cliff, once easy-mode raiding became a thing. A large fraction of players will always take the path of least resistance towards killing the end-boss, and then lose interest in the game quickly after.
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…how?
Kill a Mythic end-boss, acquire unique title, unique mount, unique gear, and all while doing a fight that is often wholly different than the non-Mythic versions, plus usually an entirely new final phase.
Whether we’re talking about Lich King’s complete change to his Frostmourne-realm ability (Normal mode pulled one person in to survive, Heroic pulled the entire raid in), Ragnaros’ “leg” phase, Thunder King’s reversal of how his pylons charged, etc, the Mythic (and past Heroic) fights are worlds apart in challenge and the better loot and unique perks are worth the challenge.
I get you dislike the recolored gear and feel that it is diminished, but that’s only a fraction of the drive to complete the tier. Look at the Classic PvP gear, where some classes don’t even get a recolor between their blue and epic sets. The Rank 14 grind isn’t sought for the look of the gear, despite Alliance cloth, leather, and plate users all looking rather indistinguishable between their various rankings.
Plus, Mythic often got their own unique spin on the gear anyway. All of WoD’s Mythic sets were jazzed up compared to their Normal/Heroic counter parts, and the LFR gear didn’t match anything, but was more thematic and generic looking. A Warrior wearing the Mythic set from Foundry stood out compared to any of the other sets, not only because it looked awesome all on its own, but because it took the look and feel of the set and ramped it up to eleven. Hellfire Citadel made the Mythic pieces look like fel-corrupted versions of the other sets, given the demon theme.
Sure… if the boss is like Gunship or the Butcher where the mechanics are virtually the same and the fight is just more health/damage. I don’t see how anyone can be ho-hum about how different the BWD Nef fight felt on Heroic compared to its otherwise very easy Normal mode, or any of the others I mentioned above.
I assume you have limited Heroic/Mythic raiding experience if you don’t see the differences between the difficulty modes.
LFR Garrosh was nothing like Normal Garrosh which was absolutely in no way shape or form like Heroic Garrosh.
The requirements and the fight itself are so different they barely register as the same content, plus Heroic Garrosh had the nasty final phase that didn’t exist elsewhere. No one who actually killed Heroic Garrosh when he was relevant actually treats them the same.
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Well you’d assume wrong. Sure there’s bosses that are totally different on mythic, especially when you add in mythic only phases, which does bring back that sense of exclusivity. But doing the same content on multiple difficulties just isn’t the same.
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My point still stands and I don’t really believe you if you’re so disgruntled about exclusivity and include the likes of LFR versions of bosses that aren’t even the same as their Normal modes, let alone Heroic/Mythic. Especially when LFR trims trash, outright excludes special named trash, and a host of other things…
LFR Dark Animus vs Heroic Dark Animus aren’t even the same ballpark, and no one treated someone with an LFR Thunderking clear the same as a Cutting Edge: Lei Shen title holder. The plebs get to see the inside of the instance, big deal, they don’t get gear worth mentioning and they don’t see a fraction of the actual content.
A Disc Priest could Smite-heal mindlessly in LFR during MoP, never engage a mechanic, and basically treat every boss like a reskinned Garr.
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Everquest was harder AND more hardcore.
Why do WoW players keep forgetting that this game was the CASUAL option?
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I’m not talking about LFR, I don’t care about LFR. If you don’t like it don’t do it. It’s essentially a tourist mode. I’m talking about the 3 “real” difficulties. The removal of Titanforging will probably help, but I really didn’t enjoy farming raids on normal and heroic while you’re doing mythic because you need titanforges. The guild I was in at the end of legion always extended mythic lockouts. There’s was some theorycrafting out there that suggested reclearing mythic was less efficient than fishing for titanforges in normal and heroic, so we farmed normal and heroic, and never recleared mythic.
Ideally if you’re a mythic raider there’s no need to farm lower difficulties, and you can stay in mythic. Same with heroic, or normal. Farming the same raid 3-4 times a week is pretty terrible, and my enjoyment of mythic raids doesn’t change that.
This was only true for folks really hard stuck on early bosses of the Mythic clearing process, in which Titanforged RNG could net you some significant upgrades on weapons/trinkets, but was also entirely unnecessary
I remember extending lockouts for Mythic Archimonde so we could just focus on getting him down with heavy iteration, knowing full well we could probably power up our team more with more Mythic loot, but also knowing full well that we didn’t even remotely need those items to win, we just needed people to tighten up their reactions and responses, which they did, and we killed him. After that it was full clear week after week and that was that, nice and simple.
I agree, farming the same content 3-4 times a week can be pretty terrible, which is why a lot of people don’t like doing multiple raiding alts, but that has nothing to do with Mythic being too similar to Heroic or Normal. The RNG nature of loot in MoP and onward, especially in WoD and Legion, made being hyper efficient with gearing onerous, but that is a guild decision.
Some of my guildies were deadset on getting reclears of one boss or another for this trinket or that weapon so they were very pissed about our Archimonde focus, but that’s just how guild raid calls are made.
As much as we’d all like a challenge, do you really want to push 150 wipes to earn your first kill on a Vanilla boss knowing the cost of consumables?
I agree, and we weren’t stuck in early bosses. Our officers just thought it was a waste of time reclearing mythic.
Again I’m not saying the difficulties are all too similar, though heroic and normal are the most similar. I just wish they designed the reward structure to keep you in your chosen difficulty. If you’re a mythic raider just raid mythic, there’s no reason to farm normal and heroic. If youre a heroic guild there’s no reason to farm normal, but if you want to challange yourself you can take the step to mythic raiding.
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They’ve never managed to get that right.
- Vanilla - Naxx raiders still doing MC for bindings, BWL for trinkets, AQ40, etc.
- TBC - T4 trinkets remain relevant way too long, with PvP gear looming for some classes
- Wrath - Different loot for 10 and 25 means different trinket types, so stuck doing 10 or 25 for the relevant synergistic trinket
And onward. Cata probably had the least amount of “go back again” happening, save for Firelands legendary farming.
They never really got the balancing right on set bonuses and trinkets to prevent people from seeking out “outdated” or “outleveled” content. Lei Shen trinkets were just too damn good to pass up on.
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Inb4 op “omg thats TOO hard for my video game!”
Wait, someone said its harder to level in retail than classic? Who? What people? Ive only ever heard the opposite for a year. I honestly doubt thwre are more people saying retail leveling is harder than classic. Most say the opposite like I said. Maybe one single dude said that. The only thing more difficult on retail than classic are the raids. Classic raids are faceroll easy but retail raids have much more mechanics and arent just tank and spank. But leveling classic is more difficult and time consuming
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I haven’t raid much yet but as for questings/dungeoneerings, I think the difficulty is fine. Granted, easier than previous patches but still, you need to hit a few times to kill a target of same lvl as yours. Elites require team-mates. Great quest rewards require time and focus…etc. Classic “difficulty” is just fine (although mobs could be a tiny more stronger).
It’s person preference really when it comes to differentiation. How i like to think about it is the “time vs feeling of accomplishment ratio”.
In my opinion, if you don’t put in the time, you don’t get cool looking gear. Period. In fact, you should have gear so crappy, everyone can see that from a mile away and you shouldn’t be able to hide it. No transmog, nothing.
And really that’s the crux of it all. For me, it’s all gear. It’s the single most visible sign of how much time you put in. Visibility is everything. And that’s why LFR gear looking cool is such a huge problem to me.
You don’t get to look cool, if you don’t put in the time. And that’s why transmog doesn’t sit well with me. You get to hide your gear. Titles can be toggled on and off.
At the end of the day, the difference between the one who put in the work, and the one who didn’t isn’t wide enough. In Vanilla, you KNEW who did and who didn’t. It was clear as night and day. Differentiation was huge.
Heck, in Vanilla if you didn’t have the time or whatever, you didn’t get to see content period. But in Retail, everyone gets to do most of everything and when you don’t get certain things, there are ways to hide it or are minimalized. There is far less differentiation here.
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But as I already mentioned, Vanilla-era PvP gear breaks this rule of yours. A Paladin in Rank 10 vs Rank 14 gear looks almost identical. An Alliance Rogue is literally identical. The most prominent difference people notice is Alliance Hunter, bronze green for Rank 10 vs bright gold for Rank 14. The cloth wearers are… just recolors of each other and are just a random assortment of colors. I couldn’t tell you which is Rank 14 Mage or Rank 10 Priest, for either faction.
Then there’s the off-tier items in every single raid instance. Look at my Druid, wearing fantastic shoulders that are identical to random-ugly-greens. My chest piece looks like a recolor of 5 man loot. My Nef boots are just a bland brown. Bloodvine gear makes you look like a hobo.
In Vanilla, if you have an iconic set equipped, we just recognize you as being bad rather than not for more classes.
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Dunno about pally, but the mage shoulders were similar yes, bit the r13 ones were glowing and awesome looking.
R14 staff? Glowing and awesome. I didn’t do it for the stats, i did it for the looks and my epeen.
You have to remember that progression raiders had tier gear because the game changed dynamically. When bloodvine came out, i pooped my pants. But did i have the time? Nope. I tried my best to try though. Maybe i got it maybe i didn’t
I don’t remember. Things just weren’t that simple. Stat allocation wasnt as simple.
I know that T1 underwent several changes but T2 largely stayed locked in. My point though is that the “cool” gear was still just the tier gear, and even back then folks didn’t shun things like Wild Growth Spaulders, despite looking like generic leather. Even in Vanilla in Patches 1.6, 1.7, and so on, folks had smatterings of gear and sure the full T2 Paladin looked good, but was a far cry from what a Paladin should wear in PvE. The good Paladin had ugly green shoulders, a blue robe, and looked like an odd Priest.
Looking “cool” has always been subjective in this game, but I can say without hesitation that aside from T5, Druids have never “looked cool” if they were Feral because our gear has never matched anything. Bark and flower shoulders with a chest piece with skulls and leather straps makes quite the fashion statement, but nothing I ever enjoyed showing off.