Almost all of these were to static values which are still static values. The problem with Warrior threat has always been that it doesn’t scale at all with damage, but in Vanilla getting a Warrior to use a dagger was just entirely crapped on. In the parse I linked, the Tank Warrior is using Thrash Blade as well and pulled 212 DPS using Leather and Mail pieces. Folks in the MC days geared like they needed endless amounts of Armor and Defense and then wondered why they couldn’t hold threat.
Spell Damage items were slightly buffed in Patch 1.4 (during MC’s lifetime) because people were simply opting out of getting the items. Things like Black Mageweave Gloves, with their one and only stat being SP, were shunned because Vanilla taught people to go for well-rounded stats and prefer base stats to secondaries.
I have, and the thing is almost all of what we’re seeing, save for perhaps the top 1% parses, was possible back then. I’ve gone through changes to MC itself and most of the changes are either exploit fixes (like Rag’s knockback), bug fixes (like Sons not despawning after wiping), or neutral changes (respawn timers). For classes, outside of Warriors getting Bloodthirst in their rework, no other class received even close that kind of bump in DPS potential. Itemization wasn’t nearly as big as people are making it out to be because they see one item get a big change and assume all of them were that way.
Walking through any class and their talent options and gear, everyone got small bumps here and there, but none amount to the jaw-dropping optimizations we’re seeing. We really were just that clueless about the game even by the time TBC rolled out. Look at the 22 second kill on Shaz.
That poor boss got off FIVE Arcane Explosions. That’s it. Poor sod only has 350k health. Why bother with spreading wide and having any sort of strategy when you know you can steam roll the boss super fast? Why bother with longevity talents or gear when you don’t need them? We made horrid decisions back then based upon bad assumptions.
I suppose that would work but in 5 days they couldnt have leveled to 55-60 get attuned (keep in mind they also onyxia attuned) and get the hit gear required.
That all seems like such a tall order to accomplish… I mean I know they were glitching to level fast but still
I don’t know your father, I don’t know this 13 year old.
I do know the video game industry, how games compare now and then, and the different challenges that players needed to face. I know that when they released Mega Man 9 that they added various things to make it easier because they felt newer players wouldn’t be able to handle the difficulty.
I also know that video game makers actually go out of their way to implement and insert things that make the game easier for people to play.
The cringe here is thinking your anecdotes supplement all the research and press that has occurred in the four decades of the video game industry.
Blizz made some pretty broad statements in some of those patch notes.
“Stat changes to mobs in all dungeons.” Maybe not those exact words but there are statements like that to be found. Yet people still refuse to allow themselves to believe 1.12 was nerfed into the ground.
Then list them. By all means do the homework and back your own claim.
Hint: None of that really matters when sub-400k health bosses do one or two mechanics that most of the raid can ignore and the BiS equipment of MC isn’t actually found in MC or even in the highest dungeons for many classes.
so you say “I do know the video game industry, how games compare now and then, and the different challenges that players needed to face.” so you agree that games and challenges changed? what are you arguing again? my argument was wow was different in 04 and comparing Rag kills to 2019 classic is silly. so you agree with me but say you dont?
People can theorycraft all they want but that’s all it is, theory. The actual experience shows that there was a tremendous change in difficulty from launch to patch 1.12, one that reading the patch notes alone doesn’t reflect adequately.
Of course, all personal experience is dismissed if you don’t have a bit of text from 15 years ago backing it up. But, whatever, many of us were there and experienced the changes. I really don’t care if some people don’t believe that it is true.
Oh please… there aren’t parameters we aren’t aware of anymore, which is how we find bugs and inconsistent behavior. We have logs galore now to confirm all of it.
Most of your personal experience is filtered through 15yrs of memory and understanding of the game at that time when people would have scoffed at a Warrior going DPS in Molten Core using a Thrash Blade MH and Mirah’s Song OH, and advocated kicking them out of the raid.
A Druid spam shifting with a Wolfshead Helm and using a mace from Gnomer would have likewise been shunned, and mocked for not using all of their bleeds.
No, actually people making those choices were allowed in raids as long as they could hold their own. There was plenty of measuring and evaluating different builds and specs, most of what people are coming up with these days has already been tried and tested 15 years ago. Nothing magical has occurred over the last 15 years.
And a lot of it was bad, and not just a little bad, but REALLY bad. Look at any of the Elitist Jerk posts from Vanilla and see some of the absurd gut check assumptions people just… ran with… because someone in a more progressed guild noted something interesting.
Nothing magical happened other than learning a lot of our base assumptions were flatly wrong, things we didn’t even think to question or tweak in Vanilla. There was a huge disincentive to experiment in raiding environments because thirty-nine other people were part of your experimentation, logs weren’t really syncronized or used, and guild politics dominated PvE decisions more than any other factor.
but to level to 55-60 get attuned get exalted and down rag in 6 days… not even 6 days played… 6 days from release, thats insane even with the leveling exploit grinding elementals to exalted would have taken forever
You said people back then struggled with Super Mario 3.
That is false.
We even had a whole movie telling us about the warp whistle and where to go.
You said people playing fornight today are better players than those who played when the first Nintendo games were released, that is also false because games in general have become easier rather than more difficult. The current resurgence of the so-called more challenging games like dark sould or cup head are a reflection of this - older players are used to greater challenges than currently being provided by mainstream video games being released.