Vanilla had very fast respawns as well. It was a change fairly early on to enable dynamic respawning based on how many mobs were being killed in an area.
I know, because I remember the day they made that change and it made it so much easier to get quests done, but also a lot more dangerous.
Caves would often respawn by the time you got to the end of them and you’d have to fight your way out.
Mechanically leveling dungeons were simpler. Bosses didn’t really have any mechanics you had to dodge or overcome except for just doing damage or spawning adds. And the trash were simple.
But they were a lot harder because you had to actually make sure to pull only one pack at a time. You might even had to use CC, kill runners, LoS pull, etc.
All things that you don’t really have to do in leveling dungeons in retail.
You’re trying to tell me that retail, where a level 12 monk can literally run full speed through an entire dungeon, killing literally everything by spamming their spin attack the whole way until they reach the last boss, is harder than vanilla/classic?
Retail, where threat is a complete non-issue and dps have infinite resource, is harder than vanilla/classic where threat is a very real thing all 3 roles need to manage and caster dps needs to watch their mana?
Matters most, to whom?
What percentage of total active WoW players participate in high end mythic+ keys or mythic raids?
I’ve been playing WoW since 2004 (with a break between S1 of cata until end of MoP) and I’ve never done a mythic dungeon or mythic raid. It’s not important to me.
And since neither of those things even exists in classic, I would say it’s not important to anyone actually playing classic either (well, unless they do enjoy both).
So if we’re talking about the leveling process then yes classic is harder through time consumption. But i’m talking about where the game matters at end game. But yes retail leveling is so easy i can get on a druid or paladin, put on full heirlooms, not even need a party and solo entire dungeons meant for my level. Your post is absolutely right on that. But i’m talking about where the game matters. Leveling has no meaning in retail its a barrier you have to overcome to get to cap lvl.
But if i wanna compare end game where thats the only thing in retail that matters compared to classic in end game which matters a lot (But not as much) classic will always be easier.
But thanks for reminding me about what i hate about retail leveling, was considering on doing a comparison play through and the memory’s of mage arcane explosion and monks spinning kick one shotting everything kinda of makes me not want to now D:
And that’s my point though, leveling is a big part of the classic experience. It’s much more about the journey, whereas in retail it’s about the destination (get level 70 ASAP so you can get into mythics/raids/pvp).
We’re still leveling in SoD, we’re just on a temporary pause at level 25 until next phase. We’re going to have mana issues. Though maybe some runes will be added to help with that for next phase.
yeah, i agree at this point, like for retail leveling is so invalidated that they might as well have a infinite free lvl 60 (or 70) button right beside character creation cause leveling honestly doesn’t matter in retail at all. If anything I truly wish we could take wow’s sod leveling and put it in retail or at least even an option
Hopefully what you say is true it will get better as i have said before i prefer spamming abilities non stop and seeing those cool animations fly off infinitely. But i’m also ok with a compromise of having small cool downs of just auto attacking (which i hope the runes will bring).
The problem is we’re always going to have mana issues. Part of the classic experience is the traditional RPG experience, which means limited resources.
I don’t agree with changing classic. It should stay the way it is because that’s what makes it appealing to its fanbase.
I just personally dont think it’s fun staring at my character auto attacking. I want to interact with my character when I’m fighting at all times.
If I had to choose, I’d want a few more abilities to press and rotations to figure out, while still having the slower pace and resource management of classic.
it seems like some of these runes are intended to help do just that, but some of them are not quite hitting the mark just yet.
eh agree / disagree, more buttons yes, maybe slightly slower then super spam like retail, but at the same time i hate phases of inactivity. But also i will agree how fast things die in retail even in heroic dungeons is just to fast. Like i can’t even put out multiple aoe rotations because heroic dungeon mobs die so fast, its frustrating not being able to play the game because things die so fast. So yes slower combat in that regards but not slow as in waiting 10 seconds for your next button push or even 5 seconds.
Yeah man I HATE having to manage mana, always have. I’m sure people will tell me to go to retail because classic is a perfect game and how dare anyone criticize it.
But yeah hate it, it’s a major deciding factor in what classes I play.
Leveling isn’t “the game” in retail. It’s essentially a 3-20 hour tutorial on your character, depending on how you go about it. Not at all comparable.
AKA the actual game. And don’t forget that PvP is also more difficult to excel at.
Classic is objectively far, far, far easier than retail. The only way you can even pretend otherwise is to do what you’re doing right now and make disingenuous comparisons. pEt BAtlEs aRE EaSy THoUGh.
Leveling in classic IS a major part of the game though. It’s a significant portion of most player’s playtime, potentially taking up hundreds of hours.
It’s not disingenuous to compare leveling in classic with doing dungeons and raids at level 70 in retail. Or to compare leveling in classic to outdoor content in retail.
Going into a cave in classic is harder than doing any of the outdoor content in retail.
And this is assuming you’re correct that the only meaningful content in retail is heroic and mythic raiding and mythic+ dungeons, because it’s not. Dragonflight added an absolute enormous amount of world content, but that content is all much easier than classic.
I personally prefer it this way I like the RP elements of the game. Sounds like OP and others need to play retail.
I like needing arrows, I like how professions actually help, I like managing resources, I like traveling everywhere.
The only thing I would change in any version of classic is a LFD that shows you people teaming up for dungeons. Where you have to manually click on a group to join and still have to travel. Just easier than spending time in chat saying xxx LF xxxx. So pointless
Sure, we can run with that, but that doesn’t make it less disingenuous to compare it to retail leveling when it serves an entirely different role in the overall game. In every case where you look at something which both iterations have as part of their core gameplay loop – “the game” – the retail version requires more skill. Not saying Classic is tic-tac-toe, but there just isn’t any comparing in this regard.
Meanwhile, melee just sits there and zugs and doesn’t have to worry about mana or pushback and is outdoing every caster on the logs in dps at 25. We’re not even near 60 yet. Not looking good…
i dont like this… automatically resorting to the but its classic argument is so weak when we’re literally playing a game that has retail spells in it. SoD could have taken more chances instead it was released extremely safe and casters aren’t happy. As they should be. If i wanted to be stuck wanding after 1 minute of combat i’d go back to classic era.
