In 10m, I got 11/12H the first lockout and got deep into phase 3 of heroic LK in the 3rd lockout. Since then, I haven’t been able to even attempt it. 10m groups were content to clear 11/12H because H LK 10m meant committing to a 4th raid night. Now, with ICC 25m heroic sucked dry of 277 gear, most 10m groups are 4/12 trinket runs. Yes, the first 4 LFR difficulty bosses drop better loot than the Lich King.
10m H LK difficulty to reward ratio might actually be the worst in the entirety of WoW pre-Legion (when you get a mythic raid item once per week from easy dungeons). This is a 13-15 minute fight + RP. There’s almost no flexibility for classes at 0-10%. Yet, his rewards are Molten Core level mediocre.
His weapons are only 271 item level. Most aren’t even 3rd BiS. The tier gear is still 264 for some reason, even though you can get that in VoA and ICC 25m normal.
25m heroic LK is in a similar boat. Many aren’t going to attempt it until 30%. He isn’t worth a 7 item level increase + gem sockets, but BiS is BiS, no matter how small of an upgrade.
It should’ve had the Ulduar treatment. 10m H LK drops 284 weapons and 277 tier, while 25m H LK should’ve had the weapons buffed to a point where they wouldn’t be replaced until Cata 5 man heroics.
Most players wont attempt H LK until cata pre patch. I would have to find something but i think LK got a nerf in the first cata pe patch because blizzard was unhappy with his kill count.
Every classic player since the beginning has been casual. It’s quite literally no surprise that classic/tbc/wrath have been the absolute most popular when the content is the easiest.
In TBC population decreased with Tempest Keep and SSC, Population decreases slightly and continues to decrease throughout BT/MH/And MOSTLY Sunwell.
And then in WOTLK you have an extremely large surge of players coming back and raiding naxx. And then out comes Ulduar with it’s new hard modes with adjusted gear. And the player count continues to dwindle. And to quote asmongold “It’s no surprise that hardcore started to pop off once Ulduar was released”.
Hard content in WoW is a mistake and locking rewards that aren’t cosmetic behind hard content is a huge mistake.
I’ve played at the highest level in PvP and some PvE content and have drifted away from it mostly because it genuinly takes too much effort. I mean tune into quite literally any high end PvP or PvE player on retail nowadays. They have space ship UI’s. A new player will never understand that and even current players won’t. Ofc I do but i’ve played the game for 15+ years. Someone with 2-3 years of experience isn’t going to understand that and harder content pushes said players away.
I’m fine with hard content being in the game but it should only reward cosmetics and not have BiS loot behind it. The game is infinitely healthier and also has a much better community in my opinion when the game is easy.
I find that the vast majority of players lack the grit needed to actually do difficult content. Most would rather guild hop to one that already finds it easy than to push through something challenging.
Hard content in WoW with BiS gear just kills guilds, it’s not a motivating factor for most, which makes it incredibly awkward when your personal gearing is more dependent on your group’s average skill level than your own.
I’m so glad that my guild managed to down pre-nerf Vashj and managed to kill H LK with only 5% (which likely would’ve been 0% if we didn’t have the roster boss).
BT and Hyjal were quite easy ngl and SWP was honestly one of the most enjoyable raids in Classic so far.
But it’s true though. Casual players do not like hard content. And the vast majority of players really do fall under casual bracket.
T5 sucked. Big drop off. I never liked Tier 5 content myself. Nor tier 8. Was a lame raid with lame bosses. A few were good. But most really sucked.
Fun wise, T7>T10>T9>T8.
For TBC, T4>T6>T6.5>T5
For Cata, T12>T11>T13.
Though, arguably, Tier 13 is more entertaining that Tier 8.
T4 and T7 were a blast though. It was easy. It was fun. People did dumb stuff and still cleared all raids in 1 night with a good laugh. Ulduar HM came, and guild discords were filled with frustration and occasional finger pointing, which drove even more players away.
Retail has this issue too. It’s hard. Anyone here who says, “Retail is easy” never got past leveling or some low +5 keys, nor LFR. Heck, even in LFR people wipe, as it’s not always tank’n’spank.
I love Cataclysm, and I’m excited for it, but it will be a big test for a lot players - whether or not they will be capable of clearing Heroic content.
An average Retail player is MUCH BETTER than an average Classic player who hasn’t played retail since like MoP.
Pretty much to beat hard bosses back then from LK was to stack classes. Lot of people beat LK early by having tons of warlocks and just hoping for them to get picked for LK. Some right now stack warriors because their cleave on valkyrs is like 30% stronger than most classes. Good luck also to attempt this boss without a disc priest.
10m is way worse toward that as you have less players also to fill the different requirements, which is why realistically 10m mostly only works when the difficulty is way lower compared to 25m.
LK loot for 10m is probably not appropriate for the difficulty but at the same time it does make sense that 10m is below 25m when it comes to rewards. Scaling hard mode loot from Ulduar 10m over 25m Ulduar imo was a mistake.
I tend to agree that HLK10 is a big trap, we killed HLK25 in the first week and we ran about 10x 10 man groups each lockout and only 1 group attempted HLK10 at all, the comp requirements were very rigid at 0%, it wasn’t worth stacking the people who could kill it into 1 raid so we just never did and a group randomly killed it like 3 or 4 weeks in
doing 11/12 heroic and just ending the raid after sindra is the most effective use of time basically
Honestly. It is just tragic that wrath classic as a permanent option isn’t being implemented currently. That is the most tragic thing about wrath classic in my op.
