The biggest issue with naxx is coordinating 40 people and all 40 people not standing in bad it isnt dps.
I would say 10 is the max a good min/max guild could carry but realistically 5 would probably be the norm
The avearage dps requirement to clear naxx is only 5 or 600ish dps. If you have 30 geared and skilled players in a min/max guild that are raid aware the everage dps should be around 900+ish dps, i need to double check but it is more than what is required to clear, sone warriors and rogues that min
/max in naxx gear can crank out 1100 dps.
My guild did up to Maexxna, Thaddius, and I know we did Raz, Gothik, but after that, I think we started to lose people. So overall we did about 60% of Naxx before things fell apart. We were raiding 6 days a week, and not just Naxx, but AQ, Ony, world bosses. People were just getting burned out.
But we did have some bosses on farm after a while. It’s not impossible. Guilds WILL have that ability.
After ~2 years I’d predict most realms will have a few guilds per faction which sell Naxx raid gear. They’ll likely make a boatload of gold too. Seeing as gear in Naxx is BiS they could probably sell gear for 2k-10k gold depending on the item.
So figure maybe a ~200 gold raid spot cost and each player spends an average of ~3k gold on items that’s 16k gold per run. Divide that amongst 35 raid members and you’re looking at 457 gold per raid member. That’s some pretty decent cash.
Naxx was an uphill battle from the start for most guilds at the time because of its timing relative to TBC’s release.
Many guilds (mine included) tried, realized the amount of work it took outside the raid to even get anywhere–not the least of it getting the raid to be able to zone in. We gave up after clearing the Spider Wing.
We didn’t have 14 years-worth of knowledge of the metagame to have almost half the server population be warriors. Most people played rogues, mages, and hunters back then. So even if a guild got over all the other hurdles of attunement, gear, consumables, and getting 40 people to dance correctly with 2006 hardware and latency, you still had to class stack for some fights. This led to poaching on the larger servers, and on the smaller servers led to eventual solid walls on progression. Many of us, with TBC on the horizon and PVP gear becoming welfare gear, decided it wasn’t worth it.
Naxx was mostly a logistical challenge. Sure, some of the fights are pretty difficult. However, things are going to be different this time around, given the release timeline and how much better players are, both in skill and preparation.
I don’t expect every guild that brings 40 Average Joes to be clearing Naxx in a few months. But I do think the mythos of how hard Naxx is has a lot to do with the time it was released, and not the instance itself.
I don’t think it’s about private servers. I think it’s about the state of Modern for a very long time now. People had Icecrown Citadel on farm quickly. People had Deathwing on farm quickly. People had Siege of Orgrimmar on farm quickly. And many Modern players are eager to assure anyone who listens that “vanilla” was far easier than the game is now! So how could Naxxramas be anything but a cakewalk?
Then there’s the bizarre perennial idea, which Fisticuffred just posted, that players somehow learned playing skills sometime between BC and BFA, and Classic was only ever hard because everyone was mashing the keyboard randomly.
I mean, I don’t think it’s anecdotal or opinion to state gamers, on average, are better than they were 14 years ago. Especially when the game itself has been out that long. You can claim if someone is starting Classic, having never touched WoW or another MMO before, that Classic would be hard. But those people are going to be the fringe exception. Most people playing Classic will either be retail or private server veterans. This is different than it was in Vanilla, because back then being a veteran of another, more difficult MMO was the fringe exception.
And to clarify, I’m not saying that just because Naxx, or the game in general, can be considered “easier” now, it means it will be any less enjoyable. All I’m saying is that Naxx’s legendary super difficulty was mostly due to the circumstances of the times, and not as much its mechanical difficulty.
Look at it this way: is any serious raider not going to start farming rep/materials for Naxx progression from the start of the game, in preparation for its release? What made the farming so exhausting at the time was the limited time in which we had to push.
But it is. Not only that, it’s a bizarre opinion. “The average human has better twitch skills than they did 14 years ago by some kind of hyper-fast evolution”–how can you not see how absurd that is?
The other, less overt versions–“More is known about Classic mechanics than was known 12 years ago”–are less goofy but no less wrong. Raiders used spreadsheets and calculated formulas then, as much as at any time since then–much more than in recent expansions, where Blizzard has taken pains to make that approach far less beneficial.
The one valid point you have here, is that raiders will have more time to focus on Naxxramas rather than quickly losing interest and moving to BC. How much of a difference that will make, we’ll see. How many people will go in ridiculously thinking “I am HomoSapiens 2018 and will thus have an easier time than HomoSapiens 2006 could dream of!” and get disillusioned quickly when it turns out Heigan doesn’t respect your fourteen years of genetic improvement and you just got blasted, we’ll also see.
Hyperbole aside, WoW PvE is not, and never has been, about twitch skills. It’s always been about logistical and mechanical preparation and execution. Trust me, if it took FPS-level reaction skills to clear Naxxramas, I would have never been able to do it. I was a keyboard turner and clicker, and even I was able to contribute pretty well to kills.
http(s)://i.imgur.com/c9xb84B.jpg (apparently I’m not loved enough to post full links)
^ permanent 5-10 FPS (as seen in the TitanBar), horrid UI and keybinds, and decent HPS despite being a dispel bot for Faerlina.
The raiders back then also didn’t have the benefit of 14 years of private server players combing over and improving on those spreadsheets, and that knowledge becoming pretty available to the average player. I will grant you that private server numbers are very likely to be off, since they’re educated guesses most of the time. However, the general principle stands that players are just more educated in general about the game now. Most people had no concept of an MMO before WoW, and most of its playerbase came months, if not years, after it was launched.
What is also lost is that Naxx was also hard due to guilds staying together. Even getting to Naxx - grinding through MC, BWL, AQ40, etc took a ton of time and commitment. Guilds didn’t hit Naxx “fresh”. lol.
But, no. Naxx isn’t this mythical god like tier of instances. Punishing yes. Small margin for error yes. Near impossible? Not even close. Vanilla is and was a very easy game. Because you have a couple feral’s in your guild and not doing optimal DPS won’t be the reason why you won’t clear it.
If TBC wasn’t around the corner, you’d see a lot more guilds clearing it.
I imagine for most people the draw of Classic servers is either playing a version of the game they never played or the more sandbox feel of the world and the slower pace.
As far as the raiding given the staggered schedule I would fully expect Naxx to be farmed within a couple weeks of release. It’s not a difficult raid, it’s not tuned particularly tight for a 40m and mechanically the bosses have nothing challenging by todays standards. Naxx was hard in it’s time but not today and certainly not now that everyone knows what the fights need and the strategy before it will even be open on the servers.
There is ONE thing I’ve always wanted to do in Vanilla WoW, but it requires I roll a class that I hate.
I’ve always wanted to lead or be in a 10+ man rogue exclusive gank squad.
We go to a major city, or any where that a “high value” target is, and assign 3 rogues to 1 target, and kill them all at the same time, and then vanish.
It’s super cheap. Super dirty. But it would be so fun.
It would be cool if we were all alts, so we log on (already near enemy city) and kill targets that are flagged, then log off and disappear for a few days.
Nobody would know when we’re going to strike next, and people would actually be kind of afraid if they’re flagged in town.
Could possibly take contract payments to harass people as well.
I think if, within 48 hours of Classic launch, some guild has downed even the first boss in MC, something went wrong. I thought there was a whole bunch of rep-gating and attunement and whatnot that kept most of these things from being entered into that quickly, let alone cleared…
Also I thought you needed to have a portion of NoF (not a full clear) just to get the gear to clear the rest of it – the resistance gear, IIRC.
TBH, even the thought of a guild full of people leveling 40 people to 60 in the first 48 hours tells me that either these pservers are horribly undertuned or I have the wrong ideas regarding what is possible.
I hope so. I’d hate for the only thing standing between these god-tier guilds and NoF within 48 hours is the time gating of Naxx!
ODIN! Since you’re not familiar with pure vanilla then I HIGHLY suggest you start out on a pvp server. The madness of wPvP is one of the most IMPORTANT aspects of this entire game. I mean you do you. But if you really want to see the game for what it is, then you’ll start on a PvP server. Sure people there are nastier but there’s also a side of them all who know how difficult the grind can be and they’ll be extra generous and kind as well.
Every time I try PvP I find I suck at it and I stop, lol. Classic, however, makes me think I could try again and experience the game in the old-school wpvp structure.
As it is, I haven’t even turned on warmode once since BfA hit. I’m sure it’s a poor substitute.
Who knows? I’ll definitely try it at some point. Not sure I’ll start there, though, as I have a wife who plays WoW and absolutely hates PvP and would have nothing to do with it, I’m guessing.
Yikes well if your lady won’t endure it then you’re probably stuck in PVE mate LOL. Tell her to step her game up! Remember though, Vanilla fighting is much different from the crap out right now where you can press a button and instantly hit a target with insane damage. In vanilla, heroic strike could only be cast on your next swing- it wasn’t instant- and the stronger the spell, the longer the cast time. I think it’s easier to predict the plays of your enemies and if you have your wife questing with you, things will be much easier. She just needs to step her game up. This is just a suggestion. I’m not insisting you do away with what’s fun for you both
Try an alt on pvp server, you would probably never have a ton of time for that toon (time with the wife is top priority ) , but you could experience the world of warcraft that is pvp leveling. maybe the wife could watch over your shoulder sometimes, she might get intrigued and join you in battle.
People who are afraid naxx will be on farm by more than a handful guilds within 5 years are the ones who have never have played classic. The kids proposing titanforging are clueless. They’ll find out very soon when it takes them months to get to 60.
Raid gear will never become vendor trash with the exception of .0001% of the playerbase. You have to remember, during retail classic literally less than 1% of the player population stepped foot into naxx. If you didnt play classic and are talking about naxx being on farm, you’re in for a rude awakening.
Private servers do exactly what blizz is planning with classic. They release raid content over a period of time. And from what I can tell, very few ps survive once the content has all been released and been out for awhile. At least that’s what I’ve seen online. So I’m not sure where you are getting the maintain interest for a decade or more. In doing some research it looks like Dalaran WOTLK even though they provided some incentives to keep doing content already released, is already suffering in population. Many private TBC servers were out several years ago since it was so popular. Many have shut down since.
People want to experience the old content but judging by what the private servers did and what blizz is doing, people also want some semblance of “progression”. As always in this game, some will not gaf and some will. Either is fine.
What blizz decides to do once all content has been released on classic servers and has been “farmed” is an interesting question. I would imagine they would do what the PS community does: you release a fresh server where you have to start at level 1.
They could also release TBC servers as an option.
They could then merge or offer free transfers from low pop classic servers if people choose to.
It does screw with the community though by doing this. So you have touched on a tough problem.
![:wink:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/wink.png?v=6" ":wink:")
) , but you could experience the world of warcraft that is pvp leveling. maybe the wife could watch over your shoulder sometimes, she might get intrigued and join you in battle.