So, I started playing TBC Classic, and I noticed something.
Aggro radius from an equal-level mob seems to be really, really, REALLY tiny compared to retail and that got me to thinking.
Why did they do this? In retail, I am so sick and tired of everything from a 100 mile radius constantly bothering me when I just wanna quest and stuff, and while walking around on Azuremyst Isle, I found that I could almost get close enough to kiss something before it noticed me and attacked me.
Here’s a screenshot I took of just how tiny the radius is in TBC Classic:
This blood elf did not attack me, after I stood there for more than 5 seconds, until I turned towards him, and tapped the forward key enough to make my character take one step forward, and then he aggro’d.
I wish the aggro radius was like this in Retail. It gets old constantly having to kill dozens and dozens of enemies to get anywhere.
EDIT: I pulled a derp, the enemy is actually Lv3 and I’m Lv5, but I have noticed this on equal level enemies too.
I noticed it almost immediately upon going to an area with aggressive enemies (like that owlbeast ridge next to the crash site). I was like “WOW, that didn’t attack me!? I was right beside it!”
I did also notice that Judgment is only 10 yards instead of 40 yards (?) on Retail, and I was like “whatdya mean I’m not close enough?” when I was trying to do the owlbeast quests in that aforementioned area. I was like “man I’m gonna get all 3 of those guys on me… wait, what? they’re not attacking?” and then I proceeded to pull them one by one.
Or heck, sneaking through that blood elf camp with blood elves that are apparently blind and can’t see me from 5 yards away lol.
I suppose in retail they think you should just kill everything around you and so they increased the range of your abilities and aggro range to boot.
But yet I’m liking this so far. Not a huge fan of auto-attacking being 90% of what I’m doing but eh. I’m hoping that’ll get better. I never played a paladin in TBC before, though. so we’ll see.
Not only 10 yards but needs seal to cast and is removed on judgement. That felt weird.
Edit : I’ll have to do test but maybe body aggro is lower because we don’t have that much range in classic. Anyway, feels like conspiracy theory to declare that it’s like that to waste time.
Yeah, that much I remembered. My very first character in Vanilla was a paladin, and I quit playing at various points and kept leveling alts to lv10ish and getting bored, etc until a friend of mine pulled me back in right before TBC came out and I finally settled on a warrior.
I didn’t touch that Paladin (which I stopped on Lv41) until Wrath, so I never did a paladin during TBC. I think I did nearly everything else, but not a paladin. But still, I remembered vanilla enough to know about the seals thing.
Thats not exactly realistic.
What Id prefer is an ESO like ‘stealth’ where anyone can sneak around as long as theyre actively trying to sneak.
Having a couple classes only be able to do try to actively hide is kinda…well…stupid. lol.
ESO does it a lot better than WoW does. The ES series is much better with this sort of thing.
Sometimes you gotta separate realism from fun. Realistic does not always equal fun, and fun does not always equal realistic.
I mean, when’s the last time you had to take a dump in WoW? Would that be fun? How about starvation or dehydration mechanics? Would you find those fun in WoW too?
Some of us don’t enjoy having to kill 50+ pointless mobs that drop almost nothing on our way to our objectives.
Aggro radius has largely been reduced over the years, not increased. You’re in a low level starting zone, and those mobs specifically have lower radii because it’s very much a learning section of the game. You will not find an aggro radius that small at say level 20. Certain mobs had aggro radii larger than Warriors could charge throughout Classic.
It’s why I stopped doing anything in the maw. The mobs there have a stupid high aggro range and with so many pats, you might stop to kill one mob and end up killing 5. Terrible design and seriously unfun. Then on top of that, mob density is higher as well. So it’s a compounding.
dev 1: “Let’s make the zones smaller!”
dev 2: “Sounds great!”
dev 1: “Let’s add more mobs!”
dev 2: “Well, sure… okay.”
dev 1: “Let’s add more patrols!”
dev 2: “Um, i don’t think we shou…”
dev 1: “Let’s make the mob aggro radius larger!!”
dev 2: “Relax satan!”
Aggro radius is something that varies significantly depending on the mob in question, and is dependent on two hidden variables, Stealth Level and Stealth Detection Level.
Stealth Level is something your character has regardless of whether or not your character can actually enter Stealth, and affects the distance at which a mob will detect your presence. The ability Stealth merely increases this level dramatically, in addition to the effect of hiding you from other players not in your party. Rogues used to have a talent in the Subtlety tree that raised this level, allowing them to get even closer to a mob whether they are in Stealth or not.
Stealth Detection Level is the opposite of this. Most mobs have a standardized value, but some have the Truesight passive which ignores the penalties to detection associated with Stealth, and others just flat out have better detection, causing them to aggro from a greater distance – Defias Wizards, for example. Players can also increase this in a variety of ways, from item effects, to potions, to the old human active racial, Perception.
FWIW, the term “aggro radius” is misleading because it’s less of a circle and more like a lopsided hexagon with the larger portion depending on which direction the mob is facing. Even mobs with Truesight can be sapped or ambushed while facing the other way, if the player is quick enough.
