I play classic because it’s more fun and rewarding than any other game I have ever played, but please stop acting like you need to be a rocket scientist to play the game and clear the content.
i like you
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LOL You can’t seriously think classic raids are anything close in difficulty to M+ or Mythic raids? Classic dungeons and raids are the equivalent to LFR and normal dungeons in retail wow.
If you enjoy classic and grinding for days out on leveling for anything, that’s great for you, but please stop this nonsense about it being harder then retail. Classic is a joke in comparison. The leveling is only harder because you have like 1 button to press and have to wait to press it again.
It’s harder in the sense that the expected number of pulls until success for an arbitrary guild going in there at the time of its release is very high. There is a higher probability of failure. Vanilla COULD be harder due to the 40 player count if there were bosses with more pass/fail mechanics and they were so tightly tuned that a single death would wipe you. But that doesn’t exist in vanilla.
I also never said it was “hard”. I said it has gotten harder. What I said, if “harder” is defined in the sense described above, is a fairly objective and testable statement. Saying it is “hard” is an opinion.
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But classic is 100x easier than retail. It’s just more tedious.
Exactly. I’ve said before that which is harder is a matter of opinion and subjective.
Certain people are challenged differently by different things. I’ve met people who laugh at high keys while others struggle.
It’s not a contest between the two games. They’re just different games.
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No. That’s not what I am saying. That which is “harder” in the sense I described is objective. The notion of “hard” itself is subjective since you can put your reference value of hardness anywhere you want.
The point is the hardest content offered in BFA has no equal in vanilla. As I said, some of the more challenging fights, such as 4H and Cthun are roughly on par with mid level mythic raid fights. None of the dungeons compare to +20 keys.
It’s not necessarily mechanically challenging, but classic WoW presents things that retail does not. These things make an MMO feel more like an MMO. Grouping up is actually beneficial, not detrimental. There is a required social aspect. Trade for example, people actually sell things/services and look for stuff or ask for help. They don’t talk about Trump all day, at least on my server.
-Actual leveling being a little difficult. If you pull an extra mob or two you might die, unlike retail where you can cleave through 5 mobs at a time nearly effortlessly on just about any class with no downtime. You can only do big pulls with a healer or if you are in a group (or if you’re a good mage).
-Quests requiring groups. Areas being difficult for certain classes. It was nice to group up with my hunter in Westfall for harvest reapers because they’re immune to my serpent sting AND pet’s taunt. Barring that, there are whole elite AREAS that aren’t in dungeons that require groups. People actually walk up to you and say “Hey, I need some help with this area, invite?” I have not seen that in years on retail.
-Dungeons actually being dungeons. In retail, none of the dungeons are relevant save for most recent content. People can either solo them or put on heirlooms and none of the drops matter and the mobs are a joke. It’s great to see dungeon drops be NEEDED.
-The combat is totally different. For me personally, I’m happy to see classic warrior again. Stances for example are barely a thing on retail. You will not find the vanilla warrior anywhere else but classic, and good knowledge of your stances and when to use what makes you a good warrior. You cannot just tank by spamming Thunderclap to hold threat.
-Most classes have weaknesses or nuances that have to be overcome by good players. Rogues don’t just get free gap closers and openers, they can be pulled out of stealth and there are many detection abilities that don’t exist on retail. They are slower in stealth. Hunters have a dead zone. Cloth wearers actually have low armor. There is a CLEAR gap between hunter and huntard. AoE leveling solo as a mage requires you to know how to kite. Lots of other things.
But basically the game was made to be a GAME, specifically an MMO, not what retail is now, supervised by the finance teams and the company psychologist to get people to pay and play for as long as possible far, far after there is no more content to enjoy.
I’m not going to say it’s harder per se, but it sure is more fun than I remember retail ever being. That’s why I’ve enjoyed classic thus far. Will it last into 60? Who knows, but even if I get a bit of fun out of reliving the old days it was worth it.
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And I can run out of mana in Classic, as opposed to never being focus-starved in Retail. Need health pots in Classic, hardly ever use them in Retail. Because Retail is soooooooooo much more difficult.
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Retail offers content that is much more difficult. It also offers content that is much easier as well.
You contradict yourself. Hard and harder are not two completely separate entities. One basically mans difficult and the other means more difficult.
You can compare encounters all you want but there are no metrics to equate them too. It’s all opinion. You’re very much welcome to yours.
I’m saying if we define how “hard” a boss is as the expected number of pulls until success for an arbitrary guild at the time of its release, this is a specific positive real number. We could then evaluate which bosses were “harder” than others. The point is someone could still claim all were easy if his reference value were 1400 pulls or something.
Obviously, players and addons have improved over time, but the idea is to evaluate the difficulty relative to the time. We can see pretty clearly based on pull counts that modern WoW has much harder bosses.
Another metric one could use is to simply look at boss abilities and count the number of fail conditions on each boss. Here, we can see modern WoW has far more.
One thing vanilla does have going for it in terms of difficulty is the 40 man raid. If ever there were a pass/fail condition that would wipe the entire raid if failed, that immediately enhances the difficulty of that fight since you’re talking about raising a fraction to the 40th power rather than the 20th. That being said, few fights in vanilla were that unforgiving, and the few that had such a condition, like perhaps C’thun still overall ended up being less difficult since modern fights have multiple similar checks, albeit with a lower player count.
Yes, modern wow may have more. But (and I hate saying this because despite being completely true, it comes off as condescending) the quality of later generation gamers and skill levels are not the greatest. Luckily, this isn’t exclusive to WoW.
A lot of people who play modern wow also have played in past versions. Players also tend to improve over time at any game with practice. So, the idea that past players were somehow more elite than modern players seems unlikely. In many games, we can directly see this effect in action. If you’ve ever watched professional counter-strike from 2001 and compared it to modern counter-strike, you can see player skill has improved tremendously – even when correcting for enhanced mouse technology. A similar phenomenon has been observed in DotA, where players have improved considerably since the early tournaments. Practice makes perfect. It’s not uncommon to find mythic raiders today who raided since vanilla.
To give you an example, my friend raided in a US top 15 Naxx guild. He has raided consistently at the cutting edge of content since vanilla. He recently cleared mythic Azshara with his guild. I’ve had this discussion with him before, and he completely believes modern WoW has far more challenging and engaging raiding than vanilla. Many of his guildmates also raided in vanilla as well.
I stand by my original assertion. BFA has a far higher difficulty ceiling, but also a much lower difficulty floor, with content that you can literally afk through.
Some people improve over time while some grow adaptive to modern conveniences (or hand-holding, as some call it).
I’ve played more games and types of games than I care to admit. One FPS game I played was very popular. People were highly skilled and then came 3rd party “scripts” as they used to call them. It got to the point where scripts would almost play the game for you. Even the “more skilled” players started using them.
A card game I played for over 20 years used to be full of skilled and determined players. People would actually think and strategize deck building. Today, people go on the internet and recreate decks someone else already built and won tournaments with instead of using their brains and doing it on their own. This included many “old school” players. These same players are now oblivious during booster drafts. They have no clue what to do anymore.
I don’t doubt your friend feels that way about vanilla to modern. I’m sure many agree with him too. I just know there are people who feel different or the opposite. It’s all opinion. I’m not saying your views of the game(s) are wrong, but they are yours. I agree with some of it. I also have my own reservations about each one. But it’s all irrelevant. The topic remains of why you play classic. I play because I personally get a greater sense of accomplishment and reward.
It isn’t entirely opinion because we can count the number of pulls required to succeed.
If that’s how you measure, of course.
My biggest reason is no cross realm, and no lfg. I never played in classic. But any version of the game without those is going to be the one i prefer playing. Lfg turned the game from a mmo into a game where you just log on, hit que and tab out till you here the que pop. Ive met more people and had more fun in the last week in classic then ive had sense wrath in retail. Its also faster to find groups, may take a few min to pull a team together, but much faster then the 45min minimum wait as a dps with the lfg.
Raiding is only 2% of the game, the rest of the entire game is just:
“pull 10 mobs”
“whirlwind”
“mount up”
“travel towards next blip on the map”
rinse and repeat.
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Switching from 40m to 10m raids was a big adjustment for many guilds. I didn’t like that at all.
Then the big nerfs came in TBC while blizz was was vomiting wow marketing.
Then you hear the devs doing little videos or discussions on trying to sell easy access for everyone.
Then after that the game developed way to much clutter. too much noise in regards to quests option and objectives.
It was clear to me that blizz incorporated big data in to their marketing and content decisions. The number of dungeons were drastically reduced. They got cheap and greedy all the while chipping away at certain fun factor elements.
So yea, it was obvious they had their own priorities and didn’t give a damn about the heart and soul of this game.