When the game was harder.

Community General Discussion
1
With the discussion of Classic being so much harder and live being for "casual plebs" I want to bring up something that most people must have forgotten. Dungeons used to be a test of your game knowledge. I started in BC and I was a massive scrub, but I still remember playing my hunter and doing Ramparts and someone explaining to me that I had to flare out the stealthed mobs.

In BC you had to know mechanics and actually use poly and freezing traps so that you wouldn't instantly wipe to trash, and if you were new someone had to teach you how to do it, but in turn you would teach someone else. All of this would lead up to when you finally ding max level and would try to do HC dungeons only to find it that much more difficult. You would join a group that took 2 hours to form, then run to the dungeon and probably fail. Someone would make fun of your trash talent choices and from there you had two options; you could stay as a scrub with your 4fun talents, or you could go look up how to play your class.

I find it strange that someone would even argue about having to look up your class. Some argue that "You should be able to play what, and however you want." This is true, but you should also be barred from the harder content if you aren't willing to play to the best of your ability. Again, dungeons and raids were a test on how much game knowledge you had, you don't take an exam without studying for it.

The leveling process is your lecture, but icy-veins/wowhead is your textbook, you have to study if you want a good grade.
2
Do mythic? If you mess up, you die. Some of the key modifiers make it so it's very difficult to do dungeons at all on those weeks, so some groups wait for other modifiers.
3
Yes, yes. And we had to walk up a hill in a blizzard, both ways.
4
I was a hardcore raider in classic, was doing naxx and on Sapph when BC came.

I look at mythic stuff now and it's like "lol wow..." it's so much more complex now.
5
It does not take the top guilds in the world hundreds of attempts
on one boss, because its easy. The difficulty is there every expansion.
But we players have to go to it. If you choose not too. well then....

If you refuse to do anything difficult. You have no right complaining
about difficulty.
6
11/11/2018 12:37 PMPosted by Nagurum
Yes, yes. And we had to walk up a hill in a blizzard, both ways.

At least the Blizzard was Entertaining.
7
I totally agree with you OP.
I tried playing a pally in classic, it's quite painful than playing one now.
8
The focus of your post seems all over the place. Are you saying BC was harder? That mechanics back then were harder? That using CC was a thing? That talent choices mattered somehow? The importance of learning your class? I'm just not sure what the focus of your post is or what message you're trying to get across....
9
It is so gosh darn difficult to target a mob that is not in combat..sitting there passively..and hitting your poly spell button.
10
11/11/2018 12:21 PMPosted by Aliandrin
Do mythic? If you mess up, you die. Some of the key modifiers make it so it's very difficult to do dungeons at all on those weeks, so some groups wait for other modifiers.


The problem with how Mythic set up, as opposed to how things were in BC, there's no "learning in the normal version". Normal (and even heroic now), where you once learned the basic mechanics of a dungeon is a "rush to keep up gogogo" fest.

BUT you're expected to know the mechanics in Mythic. Which means you can either
1) study 12 different dungeons off game, all of their bosses and all of their trash.
2) study 1 raid off game where you need to learn and memorize 1/12 of the amount of content.

You can even do LFR to see most of the mechanics in action and get a real handle on them before stepping up to real progression when it comes to raiding. Nobody in LFR is dragging trash into the raid boss just to finish faster like you'll see in dungeons under Mythic. And since dungeons are shared with people who are 120 when you're 110, you don't even have the lower levels to have slower "at level " runs before tanks in mythic gear are pulling 3 groups of trash into a boss.

In the end, getting into Mythic is much more difficult than working up to heroic in BC. Because nobody ignored the mechanics in BC normals, you had to learn them to get through. You weren't generally running a lvl 63 dungeon with a raid geared 70. It was designed to teach you the basics. So when you did get to heroic, you were at least somewhat prepared for the new challenge. BFA normals and even heroics are not designed to let you learn the basics. They're designed to be a speedfest where you completely ignore the mechanics because anything over a 10 min run is unacceptable. They aren't where you learn any kind of mechanics. How do you know which mob is doing what when tanks are consistently grabbing 3-5 packs of trash and you're all just aoeing and trying not to lag behind?

It's a major flaw of Mythics. There's no easier content that gives you a chance to learn because easier content is simply treated like a speed run and gives no chance to learn any mechanics that are important to know in mythic.
11
I believe back then mobs just hit harder so you'd try to avoid getting hit so much, it's not that the game was really any harder, they changed what the difficulty is. Now, it's more mechanic based rather than just pure numbers. Now, they are trying for the whole e-sports entertainment route

Same for people saying Vanilla was hard. It was mostly because so many specs were just so under tuned that it felt pretty bad as well as you just couldn't solo 5+ mobs at any given time. I did like being able to use my full kit that I normally only use in PVP now, in more forms of content and it feeling useful, however. Now it's much more focused on movements and keeping up your DPS rotation. on my mage and hunter, it wasn't that hard, only problem then was mana management and just sitting and drinking/eating. Also, people complained about it being a "walking simulator" because of all the death and no mounts. People complained about both of those saying "they want to play the game not spend 3/4th of their time in game, running to their corpse, eating and drinking as well as walking everywhere. it's not fun" (Sometimes I wish we weren't allowed to mount in certain areas tbh. Until we unlock an achievement)
12
11/11/2018 12:37 PMPosted by Nagurum
Yes, yes. And we had to walk up a hill in a blizzard, both ways.

I play to enjoy myself. Not take an advanced class in calculus.
When it gets annoying, I'll go find someone else to give $1000 a year to
13
Both are difficult for different reasons. Mechanics now are more intense than back then.

You had to have a broader knowledge of your class back then just due to the sheer number of abilities. One ability you might never use or forgot you had would show up on some random fight.

Main thing that made classic difficult was just getting 40 people to show up to a raid on time and not be morons.