Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[RickJamesLich]

How many attempts did those kills take not counting bugs? What types of tools did they have helping to help them during those kills? Your example just references time, not the actual difficulties of the raids.

People's thoughts on vanilla WOW:
2004 - God this game is so easy. It's for scrubs who are afraid of hard games.
2016 - Vanilla WOW was when the game was truly hard, not like this bull crap today.

People's thoughts on Wrath of the Lich King:
2008 - This is the worst expansion ever, the death of the game, and the game will never survive.
2016 - Wrath was the pinnacle of the game and it will never reach that height again.

After looking back through all the things that the playerbase has said and asked for over the last decade or so I can see why they don't trust us. I don't trust us either. We love to ask for things then claim we didn't. We complain stuff then when changes are made we argue that is was better the old way.

To be honest I don't think raiding has only gotten slightly more difficult over time. I can't tell you how many fights I've seen on retail where you can stand in the fire and not die.... even on simple stuff in MC like Gehennas rain of fire.... you would die if you didn't move. Plus the players today have cooldowns to survive that kind of stuff. The only cooldowns back then were Bubbles for pallies, Iceblock for mages (which required you to spec frost), and Shield Wall which was on a 30 min CD. Compare that to retail where each class has tons of survival cooldowns, not only that but some classes can give other classes their survival CD's, and there are AoE related survival cooldowns too lol.

I was a heroic raider back in MOP, had 12 Ra-den kills and I can honestly say, most of the bosses were pretty easy, especially once you had gear. The same held true for vanilla, while you are progressing in a place like AQ40 though, you can still easily die to shit even once you are close to getting that BIS set tho. That being said, a few of the fights were legit difficult (heroic Lei Shen for example) but if you are in a good guild, know your class well, and work on your gear, you can see mythic raids easy. Ditto with stuff like vanilla and BC. But just because Molten Core was easy, doesn't mean the rest of the raids were simple too.

Plus you had to do stuff to increase your chances of success outside of the raid, mainly farming consumables and getting buffs ahead of time. Nowadays you just show up to the raid and that's it lol.

As for people loving Wotlk yes, there are some out there, similarly there are many like myself that thought it stunk. Nobody has asked for Cata servers though, so your point about people "hating expansions and loving them later" is moot. People like vanilla and BC because they are more fun then what retail has to offer. Nobody is under the pretense of them being perfect, but they are 10 times better than WoD.

[lordbaldric]

And all of these things sounds like time i could put in playing at maxlvl with friends doing real shit instead of drinking water i got from a friendly mage while questing in Arathi Highlands.

Just sayin

Well in due time you'll be dead. So your whole life was just a big waste of time. Might as well slit your throat now and get to the "end game".

Infracted {MoanaLisa}

[RickJamesLich]

You never experienced the joy of frost mage AoE grinding? Gather group, cone of cold, frost nova, blink, blizzard, repeat.

A few things with frost mage AoE grinding:

1. You had to pick a spec and take talents that would normally be inefficient, like skipping the faster cast time on frost bolt, no shatter combos, etc. Essentially you were a sitting duck in world pvp and in pve you'd be going a lot slower in the cases in which you weren't actually aoe grinding.

2. There were only so many spots in the world where you could effectively aoe grind. In particular you had to find spots where the mobs only had melee attacks (no ranged enemies) and enemies that weren't capable of self healing. Not always an easy thing to find, on top of that, if you accidentally pulled another mob that wasn't in the aoe group you'd be boned. Also, if you got resists on your frost nova that could lead to big trouble.

3. The zones that were good for frost mages were generally good for other classes that were grinding. And if someone else is hitting up the spot you are aoe frost grinding, that typically threw a big wrench into what you were doing. Besides cutting xp, it opened up the possibility of units respawning next to you while you are trying to aoe stuff down.

I'm not saying aoe frost grinding was impossible, it was definitely do-able and some people did it all the way to 60, but it took a pretty big committment and there were risks involved. It was an interesting game play style though, very unique, we don't see that type of stuff on retail anymore. What I mean is, on retail you can just rally up a bunch of mobs and aoe them down, without fear of dying. With frost mages, it actually required skill and patience to pull off.

Beyond that, in almost every other case with the different classes, handling more than one mob was a pretty huge deal. You had to have CD's and pots on deck and there was always a big chance you could die.

[Pann]

Probably because of the tone of your post it's safe to assume you are upset, also as posted, whether it does or not, so there's always that. And as I've said on your arguement trying to prove I'm a hypocrite, both of my statements are true. A legacy server will cost money and take time and manpower from retail, and it IS Blizzard's money and they can do with it what they want. I don't see what you're really trying to prove other than you can briefly read a post, not understand what someone is saying, and then try to use it against them while doing nothing but showing ignorance of what's actually being said.

Why would you say that? A legacy server, like any business venture, will cost money and manpower however there is no evidence that this will be at the expense of retail WoW there is also tangible evidence that there is demand for their implementation meaning that they are potentially beneficial.

You are correct that it is their money and they are free to spend it as and how they please yet you seem to against them spending it meeting their customers' needs but do not seem to have a problem with it being spent on things that have little or no benefit to us. If their previous exploits which cost money and the time of some of Blizzard's more senior employees did not negatively affect WoW then why will legacy servers?

[kary]

A few things with frost mage AoE grinding:

1. You had to pick a spec and take talents that would normally be inefficient, like skipping the faster cast time on frost bolt, no shatter combos, etc. Essentially you were a sitting duck in world pvp and in pve you'd be going a lot slower in the cases in which you weren't actually aoe grinding.

2. There were only so many spots in the world where you could effectively aoe grind. In particular you had to find spots where the mobs only had melee attacks (no ranged enemies) and enemies that weren't capable of self healing. Not always an easy thing to find, on top of that, if you accidentally pulled another mob that wasn't in the aoe group you'd be boned. Also, if you got resists on your frost nova that could lead to big trouble.

3. The zones that were good for frost mages were generally good for other classes that were grinding. And if someone else is hitting up the spot you are aoe frost grinding, that typically threw a big wrench into what you were doing. Besides cutting xp, it opened up the possibility of units respawning next to you while you are trying to aoe stuff down.

I'm not saying aoe frost grinding was impossible, it was definitely do-able and some people did it all the way to 60, but it took a pretty big committment and there were risks involved. It was an interesting game play style though, very unique, we don't see that type of stuff on retail anymore. What I mean is, on retail you can just rally up a bunch of mobs and aoe them down, without fear of dying. With frost mages, it actually required skill and patience to pull off.

Beyond that, in almost every other case with the different classes, handling more than one mob was a pretty huge deal. You had to have CD's and pots on deck and there was always a big chance you could die.

You could go affliction with some shadow damage gear and have almost the same effect. Hunters just had to go BM. Paladins prot. Shadow priests, were insane for leveling with spirit tap.
The only classes that were "bad" at leveling were rogues and warriors, lol.

In vanilla, you had to make a conscious choice to take leveling talents, now your talents are good for every scenario. Remember having to spec imp sap or never getting a rgoup at all? It's a good change. Next thing you'll say that not having to travel to capital cities to buy new ranks of spells ruined your immersion, or something like that.

[RickJamesLich]

You could go affliction with some shadow damage gear and have almost the same effect. Hunters just had to go BM. Paladins prot. Shadow priests, were insane for leveling with spirit tap.
The only classes that were "bad" at leveling were rogues and warriors, lol.

Shadow priests have no aoe lol. They can dot stuff with shadow world pain.... that's far different from aoe grinding. Dot and fear only works if you have good gear, but again that's not aoe grinding. That's regular grinding lo. Hunters, same thing. I really can't remember any times where hunters would pull massive amount of mobs and aoe them down. Prot pallies are pretty much the other exception.

[D3athsting]

You could go affliction with some shadow damage gear and have almost the same effect. Hunters just had to go BM. Paladins prot. Shadow priests, were insane for leveling with spirit tap.
The only classes that were "bad" at leveling were rogues and warriors, lol.

With rogue you could avoid unnecessary pulls, also cheapshot-backstab-gouge/kidney shot-backstab was super fun

[kary]

Shadow priests have no aoe lol. They can dot stuff with shadow world pain.... that's far different from aoe grinding. Dot and fear only works if you have good gear, but again that's not aoe grinding. That's regular grinding lo. Hunters, same thing. I really can't remember any times where hunters would pull massive amount of mobs and aoe them down. Prot pallies are pretty much the other exception.

Point is you could kill fairly large numbers of mobs with very good efficiency as these classes. You could kill an entire pirate camp, for example, with a shadow priest/aff lock and be at full health/mana at the end of it.

[Eapoe]

Actually, no sound arguments on people against it.

A sound argument = "An argument form is valid if and only if whenever the premises are all true, then conclusion is true. An argument is valid if its argument form is valid. For a sound argument, An argument is sound if and only if it is valid and all its premises are true."

The people against legacy servers have not provided this at all. "BUT BLIZZARD SAYS NOT AT THIS TIME 4 MONTHS AGO!" Is not sound.

I have never once used this arguement. Again I will direct to post #19829 in which I show various ways it does affect the "retail" version of the game. Apparently the pro-Legacy crowd is unable to accept valid arguements against them or come up with effective ways to counter those points. I'm not actually for or against Legacy servers really, if it ever happens then cool, I might try it out, I might not ever do anything with it. I have no interest one way or the other if it happens honestly. I just look at people posting things and bring up points of interest that they may not have considered, such as resource usage or how it will effect current xpacs; or when they post about legalities of things and just mindlessly post whether right or wrong with nothing other than "because I said so."
Again, my posts are about things people need to consider, not whether I want it to happen or not, which always makes it the more fun to reply later when someone tries to call me out for being a white knight or an evil villain just for stating simple things that should occur to everyone.

[RickJamesLich]

Point is you could kill fairly large numbers of mobs with very good efficiency as these classes. You could kill an entire pirate camp, for example, with a shadow priest/aff lock and be at full health/mana at the end of it.

That was part of the idea though, if you play as a group you can get a lot more accomplished by doing stuff by yourself. And I'm not saying that grinding mobs was this impossible thing (nor is anyone else in this thread) but that there were clearly more challenging (and I think interesting) aspects to it then there are now. Shadow priests had to manage their 5 second rule by wanding for example, to make sure that they were regaining enough mana so they wouldn't need to drink after every pull. Locks on the flip side had to juggle between dots and siphon life, while making sure not to pull aggro from the void walker too early (and keeping that succubbus up instead if they were worried about being ganked).

[kary]

That was part of the idea though, if you play as a group you can get a lot more accomplished by doing stuff by yourself. And I'm not saying that grinding mobs was this impossible thing (nor is anyone else in this thread) but that there were clearly more challenging (and I think interesting) aspects to it then there are now. Shadow priests had to manage their 5 second rule by wanding for example, to make sure that they were regaining enough mana so they wouldn't need to drink after every pull. Locks on the flip side had to juggle between dots and siphon life, while making sure not to pull aggro from the void walker too early (and keeping that succubbus up instead if they were worried about being ganked).

Uh, you wouldn't wand as shadow with spirit tap and the right gear. Killing blows would increase your mana regen from spirit by 100% or more iirc. Hell, shadow priests actually were worse in a group, since you couldn't guarantee killing blows.
I leveled my lock with a phase shifted imp and full affliction. with siphon life+drain mobs, you could tank basically unending waves of non elites and do limited elite pulls quite handily.
The game wasn't harder. People were just tons worse. Sure, you had to spare 3 minutes to look up a "leveling build" and think ahead which talents you selected beforehand, but that's it.

[RickJamesLich]

Uh, you wouldn't wand as shadow with spirit tap and the right gear. Killing blows would increase your mana regen from spirit by 100% or more iirc. Hell, shadow priests actually were worse in a group, since you couldn't guarantee killing blows.
I leveled my lock with a phase shifted imp and full affliction. with siphon life+drain mobs, you could tank basically unending waves of non elites and do limited elite pulls quite handily.
The game wasn't harder. People were just tons worse. Sure, you had to spare 3 minutes to look up a "leveling build" and think ahead which talents you selected beforehand, but that's it.

That 100% spirit gain doesn't give as much of a benefit if you are still in the 5 second rule (hence why you'd be using the wand). As for it not being harder, you played one of the 2 easiest leveling classes... that's not a very good argument lol. But yes, leveling a lock was much easier in comparison to leveling say a rogue or a warrior. I'm really amazed we are having this conversation though, you honestly think leveling is just as hard now? You can get from 1 to 60 in the span of a day... probably 8 hours if you know what you are doing lol. Mobs hit significantly less now and gear gives far stronger advantages now. This is just a common sense issue.

If you want more proof look at dungeons. How fast could you clear a 5 man back then compared to how fast can you clear it now? In fact a lot of the classes can essentially solo 5 mans at the appropriate level now. Your memory is pretty selective here lol.

[Jewsco]

EDIT: D'oh did just see its the 22nd now. So its 16 days of 30. So woo, lets make that what, 54%.

Same principle Not many areas will accept 54% as close to 100%

While we're dickering.

So you can round down in your world or go back days?

- - - Updated - - -

Blizzard have proved that they are able to develop, run and maintain multiple titles without affecting WoW. I don't see how D3 or SC2, two of their bigger titles in terms of development, would have any impact on the (lack of) content in WoD what with being developed years before an' all. You supported the claim that legacy servers would effect retail you prove that instead of expecting others to disprove you.

Those weren't always in production during wow and they took years inbetween them. But hots, hearthstone and overwatch did all get developed or come out in that time frame. Conviently the expansion of wow that came out then wod also had the least content ever. Not a hard line to draw

[Deleted]

I have a question for those against it:

Why do you hate it so much? You really don't have to play on the server and most people seem to argue about how bad it was, how people only think they want it etc.
But really, if we had both, why would it matter?

Sure I'd get the argument that it might cost money and not enough players would play on them, but let's rule out that for the sake of just getting to whats bugging people about it.

[kary]

That 100% spirit gain doesn't give as much of a benefit if you are still in the 5 second rule (hence why you'd be using the wand). As for it not being harder, you played one of the 2 easiest leveling classes... that's not a very good argument lol. But yes, leveling a lock was much easier in comparison to leveling say a rogue or a warrior. I'm really amazed we are having this conversation though, you honestly think leveling is just as hard now? You can get from 1 to 60 in the span of a day... probably 8 hours if you know what you are doing lol. Mobs hit significantly less now and gear gives far stronger advantages now. This is just a common sense issue.

If you want more proof look at dungeons. How fast could you clear a 5 man back then compared to how fast can you clear it now? In fact a lot of the classes can essentially solo 5 mans at the appropriate level now. Your memory is pretty selective here lol.

See where we said time and difficulty isn't the same thing.

Remember what your gear was like the first time you did deadmines or wailing caverns in vanilla. Quest gear is vastly better, class mechanics are vastly better, people are vastly better. It's not that old content was hard, we were just shitty back then.

Look at the video of 2 mages duo-ing scholomance back in vanilla. Look at the quality of their play back then. So much keyboard turning, backpedalling, missed gcds.

[RickJamesLich]

See where we said time and difficulty isn't the same thing.

Remember what your gear was like the first time you did deadmines or wailing caverns in vanilla. Quest gear is vastly better, class mechanics are vastly better, people are vastly better. It's not that old content was hard, we were just shitty back then.

Look at the video of 2 mages duo-ing scholomance back in vanilla. Look at the quality of their play back then. So much keyboard turning, backpedalling, missed gcds.

You admit that class mechanics and gear are vastly better now as opposed to back then essentially agree that is is easier for players now but then try to at the same time say "players just sucked back then" lol. You contradicted yourself.

That being said yes you could with 2 man certain places with clever usage of mechanics (such as going AP/pyro and pulling only when your CD's are up) *some* places. Compare that to retail where a 60 tank can solo much of molten core:



Now if you think 2 manning parts of scholo (a 5 man dungeon) says that vanilla was easy..... soloing the final boss of a 40 man raid can only mean that the other one is still MUCH easier lol.

Essentially though items and abilities were updated and improved, new stuff has been added in as well - mobs have not been updated accordingly and the world is considerably easier because of those changes.

[Bapestar]

See where we said time and difficulty isn't the same thing.

Remember what your gear was like the first time you did deadmines or wailing caverns in vanilla. Quest gear is vastly better, class mechanics are vastly better, people are vastly better. It's not that old content was hard, we were just shitty back then.

Look at the video of 2 mages duo-ing scholomance back in vanilla. Look at the quality of their play back then. So much keyboard turning, backpedalling, missed gcds.

Not true no matter how many times you repeat it. For those of us that actually played on nost or any vanilla server we quickly found that wasn't the case.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Not true no matter how many times you repeat it. For those of us that actually played on nost or any vanilla server we quickly found that wasn't the case.

I really don't think it's honest for people to put something down because it's old. Ocarina of Time is old, yet we still call it a master piece. Hell, Nintendo released a remastered version on 3DS and it sold a whole lot, so much in fact it's the only thing that kept the 3DS alive when it begun.

People often confuse Nostalgia and Quality. Nostalgia doesn't make a bad game good, but Nostalgia doesn't make a good game bad either. Vanilla was a masterpiece in its own right; it's also where it first began to revolutionize the MMO market. Ironically, Vanilla had more subscribers than what we have right now on live servers.

So yeah, Nostalgia? Couldn't it be because, well, I don't know, it had good points that are still good today?

[Deleted]

Not true no matter how many times you repeat it. For those of us that actually played on nost or any vanilla server we quickly found that wasn't the case.

Please post some of your incredible feats that you achieved on Nostralius that required super uber-leet Vanilla sk33lz.

[kary]

Not true no matter how many times you repeat it. For those of us that actually played on nost or any vanilla server we quickly found that wasn't the case.

do I need to pull up my vanilla toons? Lol.
Vanilla leveling was not hard. It took time, but it wasn't hard. Look at the quality of play by the 2 mages. Keyboard turning, missing casts, etc. They, by today's standards are awful. 11 years ago, we were all awful. Want more evidence? look at a vanilla pvp video and observe the amount of keyboard turning and backpedalling.

- - - Updated - - -

You admit that class mechanics and gear are vastly better now as opposed to back then essentially agree that is is easier for players now but then try to at the same time say "players just sucked back then" lol. You contradicted yourself.

That being said yes you could with 2 man certain places with clever usage of mechanics (such as going AP/pyro and pulling only when your CD's are up) *some* places. Compare that to retail where a 60 tank can solo much of molten core:



Now if you think 2 manning parts of scholo (a 5 man dungeon) says that vanilla was easy..... soloing the final boss of a 40 man raid can only mean that the other one is still MUCH easier lol.

Essentially though items and abilities were updated and improved, new stuff has been added in as well - mobs have not been updated accordingly and the world is considerably easier because of those changes.

Mobs sub max level haven't been scaled, yes.
It's not comparable. Compare end game to end game. 2 mages in MC gear solo a 5man. You're showing footage of a twink doing content 11 years old. Content with vastly nerfed damage/hp numbers due to the stat squish. Nice try though.