That’s not what we have now?
I didn’t do much raiding in BC; the last organized raiding I did was in Vanilla. I thought the range between the first core hound and Ragnaros was fine, though. It actually felt like one was progressing through the raid.
My recollection is that 10 man content destroyed 25 man guilds when the 10 man content was the only cutting edge content. 20 man ZG and AQ20 didn’t destroy 40 man guilds, because it never eclipsed the 40 man content. Filling in 10 man content that’s only on the level of current 20 man content, half a patch later, is not going to destroy the 20 man guilds; it will just give the most progressed guilds something to do to stave off boredom until the next tier of cutting edge 20 man content is released.
Not nearly to the same extent of what it used to be like, no. It’s generally only the first 2 or 3 bosses that are a degree of difficulty lower than the rest now, at least in larger raids. Difficulty in the typical 9-man raid usually ramps up substantially from boss 4 onwards. And the reason that they can afford to do that is that there are multiple difficulty levels. If there weren’t, you’d have to make more of the bosses easier so that lesser skilled players still had some sense of progression.
As far as I know this was never the case. During WOTLK all the major raids were selectable as either 10 or 25 man mode. And this is what killed off guilds - people overwhelmingly preferred 10 man mode and guilds fractured when their best 10 players quit to form a 10 man team etc.
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That didn’t seem to be a problem in Vanilla.
Your memory on this is probably better than mine. Either way, I agree that Blizzard hasn’t found a way to balance the top difficulty if the size is selectable. I’m saying that 10 mans that are along the lines of ZG and AQ20 back when would provide a path for the more successful of present 10 man Heroic guilds to progress into Mythic difficulty toward the end of the patch.
There really aren’t any 10 man heroic guilds any more. Like I said, most fights are much easier with more players. Typically if a guild only has 10 people online they’ll pug at least another 5-6 for their heroic runs. You see these groups all the time in LFG.
If you started putting 10 man mythic raids back in, then mythic guilds would either have to sit out half their raid, or run 2 groups. Neither of which are particularly desirable to most guilds.
Vanilla was 15 years ago, and raids were loleasy then. You could have half your raid AFK or only have 25 people in a raid with room for 40, and still kill the boss. Hardly any Vanilla bosses would prove challenging for current raiders. Like I said, rose-coloured glasses.
I think you’re the one with the rose colored glasses here. Anyone remembering Vanilla raids as trivial is remembering them after they were outgeared - kind of like Uldir would be easy now.
I’m not complaining or advocating for the removal of any of these things. Just sharing thoughts and opinions on the topic based on my experience through vanilla/TBC and BFA.
I will retort your point about Blizzard not being fine with most paying subscribers not being able to enjoy raids, because… vanilla and TBC. There was no Mythic plus. Raids were the only end game content. And most players didn’t get to raid. Yet, it was still the most popular successful and thriving MMO at the time in spite of this. Blizzard seemed okay with it then. And with classic launching, I’m guessing a lot of folks liked that old model.
As for the difficulty of old raids compared to now? Tough call. I raided in vanilla and TBC, and I do kinda feel like stuff is harder now. Most old raids as a rogue was me just standing still and doing as much DPS as possible for most of the fights. I think I maybe used an interrupt once. Now, there’s way more stuff to interrupt, avoid, throw, move, collect, etc., so i definitely have to pay attention more.
You can retort it, but Blizzard has flat out said that was the reason for LFR.
There were a lot of factors at the time of Classic/BC/WotLK that made it such a huge success, correlation != causation as they say.
As someone who also took a similar break (early cata to BFA) I would agree the raids in general seem much more challenging from a game play perspective, though many things are also much more uniform now in terms of visuals, making handling those mechanics easier, so it’s hard to say to some degree I suppose.
No one asked you. Keep your incorrect opinions to yourself.
That’s fine I suppose. Like the rest of us, Blizzard changed too. But let’s not forget that for years this game was hugely successful and popular despite raiding being something most of its players could not do. And the release of Classic suggests to me that a lot of people miss that.
You’re spot on with those visual cues. Coming back for BFA, that was a big shocker to this old raider. Mechanics didn’t used to have so many of those. Perhaps that’s why things feel equally difficult to me. There was less to do mechnically in old raids, but also no visual cues or handholds for them.
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And yet they obviously weren’t ok with it since they changed literally all those things in WOTLK - which btw was the most successful iteration of WOW.
- multiple difficulty raids
- removed attunements
- made all specs viable for raiding
These all happened in WOTLK because they were identified as problems in TBC. And the game was much better for it.
As for the difficulty of old raids compared to now? Tough call. I raided in vanilla and TBC, and I do kinda feel like stuff is harder now.
Mythic raids now are undeniably more difficult than anything that appeared before multiple difficulties came about with very few exceptions (mu’ru etc).
Most raids in TBC and Vanilla were more on par with current Heroic raids than Mythic. Generally only the final boss of any raid in Vanilla/TBC approached what would be considered mythic difficulty level now. And the difficulty jump between mythic and heroic now is pretty large.
The average player skill level has increased substantially over the last decade and a half. It you put a current top 100 guild into a TBC raid they would clear it in hours.
Regardless of whether they were okay with it, it was the state of the game from inception until 2008. Four years. And it was so popular, they’re literally making a separate version of WoW that rolls it back to that era. An era with single difficulty raids, attunements, and gross class/spec imbalance. If it was “best” during WotLK, someone should’ve been clamoring for “classic” WoW to have included the changes up to that expansion. Going ahead with the cost and investment of making classic happen suggests to me that they’re most okay with how things were then, and how they are now, because they’re devoting all their resources to making these two iterations of WoW the only available playable ones.
Also, can we get back on topic as to whether we need four difficulties of each raid, instead of arguing about whether Blizzard was “okay with the state of WoW” and various points throughout the game’s 14 year history?
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People already are.
Surely you realise that this is a big nostalgia trip right? It’s not really because anyone thinks that version of WoW was “better”. It’s the same reason I sometimes still play Space Invaders. Not because I think it’s a better game than modern games are. But for the nostalgia.
Classic won’t last very long. It’s simply going to be too easy for modern players. They’ll burn through the content very quickly and will start clamouring for a TBC version, then a WOTLK version etc. I’m sure Blizz will timegate it for as long as possible though.
Like I said the reason we need multiple difficulties is because there are multiple skill levels. Classic and TBC raids were fine at the time in a new genre where people hadn’t had 15 years of practice of killing raid bosses. Without multiple difficulties it will quickly become boring for modern players.
I raided in TBC and I still remember it pretty well. Raid encounters were pretty boring and rotations were mostly 2 or 3 buttons at most. I find the modern version much more challenging even at heroic raid level.
By far the biggest challenge of those days was finding people to play with, before cross-realm LFG. If you had the poor sense to roll your character on a low pop server you basically couldn’t do anything.
Yes, I agree it seems like a nostalgia trip, and will probably wear off quickly. I reactivated my account for BFA because I heard classic was going to be a thing. My intent was simply to bide my time playing until it was released, and now I have no intention of doing it. For one, I’ve already done it. For two, there’s simply so much more to do now. Mythic plus ended up being my primary type of content, and that’s not even a thing I could do in classic.
I enjoy the game now. I just think four raid difficulties is too much, and as I said originally, I really don’t like that if you push Mythic plus aggressively, you’re going to immediately invalidate the loot from the first three tiers of a new raid. I hit 400 fast this season. By the time we were on week two of heroic BoD. So all that 400 stuff from the rest of heroic was useless to me, and I basically did the raid to learn the fights for Mythic progression. (Then a bunch of the guild quit after we finished heroic, and we’re not even able to do this right now, much to my chagrin.)
I want to raid, and I want to do Mythic plus, and I want a chance at loot upgrades from both of those things. Realistically, the best solution is probably to lower the ilvl of Mythic plus gear to make it lower than raid gear, but I don’t want to advocate for that, because it would affect me negatively. And anyone else who can’t raid Mythic.
TLDR, I’m not smart enough to solve this problem. But it would be really cool if I could start a new raid and get useable upgrades from it.
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I don’t see why that matters though? If you’re pushing M+ aggressively, those 3 lowest difficulty levels are below your skill level anyway. They aren’t aimed at you. Their existence shouldn’t bother you.
TLDR, I’m not smart enough to solve this problem. But it would be really cool if I could start a new raid and get useable upgrades from it.
You can. You just have to target the raid difficulty level that suits your skill level - mythic.
I’m one of the few people in my guild pushing mythic plus aggressively. I don’t think the others are having quite the problem with it that I am.
It’s not limited to raids. Apparently the new dungeon will also have loot ilvls that more or less make it worthless to do for loot for anyone that’s been doing mythic plus and mythic raiding. I get excited for a new dungeon (dungeons being the thing I do) and find out that there’s little reason to go, because they’re only releasing it on normal and heroic difficulty initially or something.
They have a habit of making brand new content that drops loot that won’t be an upgrade for you if you’ve been doing the challenging old content. I’m not a fan of that.
I’m in the same situation as you. There weren’t many upgrades for me after 2-3 weeks of heroic BoD because of M+ gear. But that didn’t worry me at all because for me, M+ is actually the goal, not heroic raiding. If I wanted to do challenging raiding I’d be doing mythic, not heroic, because heroic is not meant for people like me and you.
That’s really all there is to it, you’re complaining about a difficulty level meant for other people. Just don’t do it. Target the difficulty level that’s challenging to you, and don’t worry so much about difficulty levels that aren’t.
The player base was also growing rapidly, so Blizzard was constantly adding new servers. This permitted players to get in on the ground floor on a new server for leveling, which even today is the most popular content in the game, and vacated spots on old servers to get into raiding if people wanted to.
In Vanilla and BC, the game was popular despite the inaccessibility of end game raiding, not because of it.
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