Has the game become harder than TBC?

[Deleted]

Mechanics are A LOT harder than they were in TBC. Yes, game is harder, but players are a lot better as well. Today's average raider is a far better player than those who cleared Classic/TBC World Firsts back then.

[Deleted]

Gathering different items, sometimes and entire different set of gear to use on just one or two bosses per tier, and reworking all of your rotation based on the lose or increase of certain stats is not time consuming?

There was no reforging, so it was replacing 2-3 gems at most. And there was no mastery and haste, which are the only stats who have any impact on gameplay nowadays.

Even for a healer getting fully shadow resist and socketing full spririt/int depending on class isn't difficult. I don't think you remember TBC correctly. You remember resistance gear and are throwing in other aspects of the game that weren't even around in that time to make it sound harder than it is.

If you call 1 evening of farming mats to help your guild progress time consuming, well then you have a different idea of time consuming than me.

[Fayth]

I think the we could see the difference better if epics would be as hard to obtain as they were back in TBC. Or even better, in Vanilla.

[Deleted]

With such a username i'm sure your opinion is incredibly balanced and not bias at all.

The point people are making in this thread is that back then lots of bosses were more reliant on getting gear to beat them.

Except they were not. Only 1 boss each raid were a gear check, and there were so by intented design...and the reason they were there if I remember correctly was so you wouldn't just skip previous raids and ignore them for the rest.

[wych]

I think the we could see the difference better if epics would be as hard to obtain as they were back in TBC. Or even better, in Vanilla.

Epics weren't hard to obtain in TBC this is a myth, the term welfare epics became popular in TBC

[Hyve]

If you call 1 evening of farming mats to help your guild progress time consuming, well then you have a different idea of time consuming than me.

It wasn't one evening, and yes I do consider having to spend several hours of gringing, to complete one or two bosses time consuming. I've been there and done that, and I am so glad we're at the new model we're on now.

[worsthitmanNa]

There was no reforging, so it was replacing 2-3 gems at most. And there was no mastery and haste, which are the only stats who have any impact on gameplay nowadays.

Even for a healer getting fully shadow resist and socketing full spririt/int depending on class isn't difficult. I don't think you remember TBC correctly. You remember resistance gear and are throwing in other aspects of the game that weren't even around in that time to make it sound harder than it is.

If you call 1 evening of farming mats to help your guild progress time consuming, well then you have a different idea of time consuming than me.

Illidan, hydross, and black mother mother sahraz required resistance gear. Mastery, haste, and crit are the primary stats now. Resistance gear gating is lazy btw rather than design a unique encounter they put an artificial wall in front of you.

[wych]

Except they were not. Only 1 boss each raid were a gear check, and there were so by intented design...and the reason they were there if I remember correctly was so you wouldn't just skip previous raids and ignore them for the rest.

In Black Temple alone I remember first boss (DPS check), Akama (DPS check), Bloodboil (DPS check), RoS (healer check) and Mother Shahraz (resistance check). None of those bosses required much past having the required amount of gear to beat them.

The thing stopping you skipping previous tiers were attunements

[Deleted]

The Hardcore people have become better, the rest have become worse.

99% of the MoP players wouldn't even be able to get attuned for TBC raiding.

If your worldranking has gone down since TBC thats most likely because there are simply more raiding guilds now, especially after the 10man separation.

[Joey Ray III]

mechanics are 'harder' (although i'd call them bloated and unituitive) because we have twice as many addons, twice as many skills and 1080p videos all over the place to tell you exactly what to do. they had to offset for that.

considering the tools we had available back then, the mechanics were just as hard as they are now. on top of that we had gear checks, attunements, res gear and what not.

so no, game is definitely not harder now.

[Dakara]

No. Not at the top end anyway.

For the Casual player, yes, as with varying difficulty levels and easier 5 mans, the game has become more accessible, and people confuse this with the game being "easier". However, the challenge is still there, just many don't pursue it, and claim the entire game is "easier".

I will admit to not raiding "Hardcore" since the end of Wrath, and not having raided at the Heroic level at all since Cata. But, Heroic raiding (pre nerf, pre "buffs") has become a lot more complex since the old days, as has min/maxing due to the introduction of gems and re-forging.

There wasn't much (if any) open beta testing in the old days, so the top guilds weren't able to practice the content prior to it being released on live. Nor was there such a wealth of resources available online for guilds to study up on.

Bottom line, the game has been divided. One sides easier, the others harder.

[Daffan]

Epics weren't hard to obtain in TBC this is a myth, the term welfare epics became popular in TBC

Very late i'd say......

[worsthitmanNa]

mechanics are 'harder' (although i'd call them bloated and unituitive) because we have twice as many addons, twice as many skills and 1080p videos all over the place to tell you exactly what to do. they had to offset for that.

considering the tools we had available back then, the mechanics were just as hard as they are now. on top of that we had gear checks, attunements, res gear and what not.

so no, game is definitely not harder now.

They didn't have to offset. Blizzard just make the fights they don't tune for addons and other things. Their is a demand for those videos because the game is that hard at the higher end. Gear checks, resistance gear, and attunements are just gating they didn't take skill just time. Watch old school world first videos dps weren't even using they defensive cool downs to help healers. That is required now.

[miffy23]

Very late i'd say......

Actually early on, when 40 man raiders from Classic were outraged that 10 people could "hop" into Kara and get "free" epics without the effort and time they had invested to get their in Vanilla. Every expansion has it's entitlement issues.

This thread is full of people that either haven't played back then and are basing their opinions on hearsay, or quit long ago and have no clue what the game actually feels like today. Watching youtube videos and judging the difficulty of a tier based on when the hardcore guilds that betatested the fight for weeks previously clear the content, without playing it yourself. That is the problem of this community, way too many hearsay opinions.

[Deleted]

In Black Temple alone I remember first boss (DPS check), Akama (DPS check), Bloodboil (DPS check), RoS (healer check) and Mother Shahraz (resistance check). None of those bosses required much past having the required amount of gear to beat them.

The thing stopping you skipping previous tiers were attunements

No, a difficult boss doesn't mean gear check. By that logic all current hc bosses are gearchecks.

- - - Updated - - -

Illidan, hydross, and black mother mother sahraz required resistance gear. Mastery, haste, and crit are the primary stats now. Resistance gear gating is lazy btw rather than design a unique encounter they put an artificial wall in front of you.

As I said before, I like the design of the entire guild getting resist gear. I hate the idea of individuals having to do it. Entire guild = group project, individuals = punishing 1-2 players with extra gold and work costs to help the guild.

[Xires]

gearing up for heroics in TBC was crappy, not much info was out... and ppl did not ever EVER look up boss fights for heroics they would go in thinking they could just figure it out, some heroics would just end up leaving before the first boss, the guilds that took the time to do everything right were the few that got to see illidan and kil jaeden, which not many guilds got to down during there pre nerf phase, my guild were in karazhan the majority of TBC because we had people not willing to pull in the time and effort to gear correctly and learn the fights, we had Karazhan on farm status mined you, but we kept having to rotate people in and out because tanks would not show and what not, the only difficult thing about TBC was having badies pull you down because they don't know how to gear correctly or play there class correctly

So you never experienced any of the raiding in TBC past Kara (the first raid and a 10 man raid) and you say the ONLY thing difficult about it was not being able to progress past the first raid? Contradict yourself much?

- - - Updated - - -

Mechanics are A LOT harder than they were in TBC. Yes, game is harder, but players are a lot better as well. Today's average raider is a far better player than those who cleared Classic/TBC World Firsts back then.

Not true. There were lvl80's in wrath that were getting there asses HANDED to them in sunwell...a sunwell with a 30% nerf from the closing on TBC xpac....

The trash in sunwell would DESTROY average raiding guilds of today....there were less boss mechanics back in the day...but there were also a LOT less ways for a individual player to stay alive aswell and a lot less powerful abilities.

- - - Updated - - -

Illidan, hydross, and black mother mother sahraz required resistance gear. Mastery, haste, and crit are the primary stats now. Resistance gear gating is lazy btw rather than design a unique encounter they put an artificial wall in front of you.

Don't forget Leo from SSC...needed 1 or 2 peeps with fire resist gear to tank him.

[Joey Ray III]

They didn't have to offset. BLizzard just make the fights they don't tune for addons and other things.

what other things? you mean they just ignore all the skills we got in wrath, cata and mop and design fights for lvl 70 skill set?

Their is a demand for those videos because the game is that hard at the higher end.

there was always demand, just no supply. these days everyone and their hamster can fraps shit. it wasn't always that easy you know?

Gear checks, resistance gear, and attunements are just gating they didn't take skill just time.

well duh? that was the point, too slow things down. made things more satisfying in the end.

[koimagheul]

In Black Temple alone I remember first boss (DPS check), Akama (DPS check), Bloodboil (DPS check), RoS (healer check) and Mother Shahraz (resistance check). None of those bosses required much past having the required amount of gear to beat them.

actually Naj'entus was more a "beware of impalling spine" check and akama a "focus spiritbinders ffs" check.

The thing stopping you skipping previous tiers were attunements

they were removed over time. though some people call wotlk "the beginning of the end", the increased accessibility actually began in tbc, when they removed attunements and started to hand over epics at every corner.

[NatePsy]

I think the game now being harder than TBC is definitely not true, I remember the days of Heroics and the attunements, there was so much you needed to do before accessing the raid/dungeon itself. But the word "complex" is probably what you're looking for, the encounters of today are more "complex" than BC encounters and I say this because there's so much more abilities and phases you need to be weary of in today's encounters.

And yes I know there were a small number of encounters in BC that had complex encounters, but those were so few compared to today's encounters where there is many things to remember with almost every fight, excluding a few.

[wych]

Very late i'd say......

As far as I remember the "welfare epics" became widespread when arena gear was added which was at the start of TBC and then became part of every sentence on the forums once they added badge gear and nerfed the shit out of every raid in 2.4