Is WoW getting easier or players are getting better?

[Daffan]

95% of the game is 10x easier and complete garbage with no feeling of progress/reward.

last 5% of the game is much harder.

[Deleted]

So we're talking about difficulty of a raid and equating 10 man to 25? The deduction I would make and somehow you haven't is that they're vastly different fights and different difficulties so they shouldn't be compared. Also Blood Legion killed it prior to Paragon, so your point?

While we´re at it, let´s stop comparing different encounters from different expansions then. The same logic applies. You cannot remove the encounters from their context, rotational complexity, addons and gear inflation level.

[Lartok]

While we´re at it, let´s stop comparing different encounters from different expansions then. The same logic applies. You cannot remove the encounters from their context, rotational complexity, addons and gear inflation level.

I didn't disagree with any of that, what you said was just factually incorrect.

[Deleted]

WoW isn't easier, assuming you don't talk about LFR/Normal/Heroic which are meant to be easy. Talking about mythic.
Truth is there are only so many new mechanics that they can come up with and most bosses have mechanics borrowed from older bosses and slightly modified. For example, Boss 1 mechanics consist of mechanics of 4 different bosses from the previous expansions and one new mechanic. An experienced player will have and easy time reacting to the re-used mechanics. Combine that with the information and alerts provided by addons and you get quick kills.

They take a long time when the mechanics are brutal so you fail without perfect execution, when mechanics are completely new and complex and effective strategy hasn't yet been found and when they require a lot of coordination and communication.

I agree with you. There have not been many new mechanics in WoW. There is only that much they can come up with nowadays. Most of the difficulty lies in attendance and staying focused (especially now with dumbed down rotations)

[Vorkreist]

Those 3 are probably more difficult than anything you saw in Vanilla and TBC.

So you didn't see shit in TBC if you can write something this stupid

[Deleted]

I didn't disagree with any of that, what you said was just factually incorrect.

Not really, the reset thing was in parenthesis anyway. What I meant was that if you kill a boss 7 days later it clearly must have been not about gear but about tactical issues. And my post was meant to show how one guild was clearly above the rest back in the days. Bosses were more about tactics than they were about gear which is not to say some kind of gear was not necessary to advance. This is exemplified on how Paragon killed Ascendant Council and Ragnaros 7 days before the others. Lich King 15 days before the others and Nefarian 20 days before the others. Such a feat has not, and probably never will be, replicated.

[Deleted]

95% of the game is 10x easier and complete garbage with no feeling of progress/reward.

last 5% of the game is much harder.

This. WoW isnt about mythic raiding. You cant just pick hardest mod and think yeeah game is more diffiulty. IT is so stupid that only way that game is more difficulty is by picking specific mod and specific boss fight. Holy *** look at rest of the game. It is **** faceroll garbage. Who gives *** about mythic. Rest of the game is boring faceroll. And it is anyway same content as mythic. We can finish game in easy mods yes game is **** easy.

[gushDH]

There are way better and more detailed guides, and yes players are getting better by time.

Just like doing anything else in life, doing it makes you better at it.

[Deleted]

This. WoW isnt about mythic raiding. You cant just pick hardest mod and think yeeah game is more diffiulty. IT is so stupid that only way that game is more difficulty is by picking specific mod and specific boss fight. Holy *** look at rest of the game. It is **** faceroll garbage. Who gives *** about mythic. Rest of the game is boring faceroll. And it is anyway same content as mythic. We can finish game in easy mods yes game is **** easy.

I agree. The overall facerollness of the game brings the overall quality of the expansion down a lot. But it is like that to make it more accessible to everyone. And that is exactly the reason Titanforged still exists. So guys who would never get the gear can get it without doing anything extra.

Inb4 "where is your Mythic Avatar kill?"
Why should a good player be relegated to just finding fun in one or two aspects of the game while world content continues to be tailored to casuals and slack players first and foremost?
Maybe it´s time to apply difficulty (and corresponding rewards) not just to raiding, but to the game in general?
After all, this is what I expect to happen. Diablofying is happening. Rifts are next. Game world difficulties after that?

[Noxina]

Bosses are a lot harder now than what they were back in the day. But we have so many tools to help us, top guilds make WA to track everything they need to know, and they get to test it all on PTR before it is even released.

That combined with 10+ years of experience, a lot of the stuff becomes trivial.

[Deleted]

I feel that blizz reached a cap in mop with how complicated (amount of relevant boss mechanics) fights got. However it's absolutely true that players keep getting better on an individual level and while class mechanics were also harder than before, in its barebones pve is a reactive memory game.

I think medium level players today blow the water out of the best players 12yrs ago, it's not really comparable with the amount of time put into raiding now versus then.

More time = better proficiency = better skill.

But I don't think you can compare the two, consider that when Nihilum got wf kt40, they were actually typing in raid chat during the encoumter, that would never föy in modern hardcore raiding.

Lack/bad voice coms were forgivable, poor internet connection etc. Nowadays you wouldnt even be permitted top world first guilds without a mic/ ability to communicate.

[Charge me Doctor]

Players have access to better instruments to deal with PvE encounters. Throw in how fast information spreads out now - gg, someone came up with a strategy, next day we have WA strings all over wago.io and players on discord sharing these strings for their guilds and communities, mostly that's why bosses die that fast.

[Mendzia]

Bosses are probably much harder but:
- players are better
- we are getting mods that make most encouters very simple
- lots of stuff can be learned before entering raid (from PTRs or dungeon journal)
- less buttons to click
- you do not have to care about raid synergy
- no more resistances or hit/defense/expertise caps etc
- only 2 tanks are required for most encounters
- alot of normal/heroic strategies = use all your cds and burn the boss asap
- there are nice tools like DPS simulations that will tell you everything about optimising your gear
- tanks (and some healers too) are doing nice dps

and much more...

[chase_the_mofo]

Game is simplified as fyck.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

So you didn't see shit in TBC if you can write something this stupid

I started playing wow at the end of tbc, so i didnt experience raiding myself. There's that one thing called youtube though, its awesome.

[KaPe]

The part about addons always amuses me in discussion like these. Do people remember the degree of automation we had in vanilla? Healing addons with automated target selection, rank choice and cancelling to avoid overheal. (it's what you often see in other MMORPG forums when they talk about WoW addons being borderline bots, while conveniently forgetting such functionality was broken over ten years ago.) One click dispeling with automated target selection. Boss mods already existed back in vanilla (a bit later, though). Crude as they might have been, the amount of options offered by addons had to be limited by Blizzard or they'd eventually break the game.

As for the difficulty itself - plenty of times, it was based on awkward class mechanics or strange design decisions. Waiting 15 minutes for Nefarian to respawn? Limited use items dropping from mobs, which were needed to dispel debuffs on Chromaggus? Waiting 20+ minutes for Shield Wall on spider boss? Random Mind Control breaks? Taunt misses? Targetting adds on Garr? Farming single use consumables, world buffs and hugely limited flask ingredients? There was a large amount of "complexity", which indirectly made the bosses more difficult through added tedium.

Let's also not forget bugs who could go unfixed for months. Ouro and C'thun were prime examples - except they are being lauded as "unkillable for such long time = amazing design!" instead of asking "why didn't anyone fix this faster?". Or faction balance, with Paladins offering salvation back when threat actually matter and Horde getting automated poison removal on two difficult bosses with raidwide poison damage.

That's not to say that Vanilla players were ignorant fools who didn't know how to play. Theorycrafting existed and high end raiders made use of it. Typical player did not... but it's not really different than it is now. Just look at some LFR raiders who barely know what they're doing and are still killing bosses. Some of that wouldn't really fly in vanilla progression raids and would only really happen during hugely overgeared boost runs - kinda like it does now.

[Deleted]

Bosses are probably much harder but:
- we are getting mods that make most encouters very simple
- less buttons to click

Wrong.

Addons are nothing new.

There are more buttons used in actual rotations than there were in vanilla. Sure, you had more spells back then but the vast majority of them were completely useless in encounters and you just pressed ~ two buttons during boss fights.

[Vorkreist]

I started playing wow at the end of tbc, so i didnt experience raiding myself. There's that one thing called youtube though, its awesome.

So you're basing your knowledge of difficulty based on youtube. I rest my case.

[Mendzia]

Addons are nothing new.

I did not say that addons are new.
Possibilities that you can do today with for example weak auras is ridiculous.
I will not even mention banned (in 7.2.5 if i am not wrong?) addons that could track raid member positions...

There are more buttons used in actual rotations than there were in vanilla. Sure, you had more spells back then but the vast majority of them were completely useless in encounters and you just pressed ~ two buttons during boss fights.

My vanilla paladin with...
- 2/3 ranks of Flash of Light
- 2/3 ranks of Holy Light
- Holy Shock
- endless blessings rebuffing during encounter
- dispelling and auras management
... says hi.

[Vaelorian]

Are players getting better or bosses getting easier?
The answer is simple: both are true and not exactly true either

1. players are more able to find information on how to spec/gear properly + have video's from the moment the bosses are on the PTR.
Most players in WoW are not new guys just joining. They are veterans, be it from far back expansion or people who pick the game up after each expansion, or continued players

My own experience in this is that there is still a major gap between people who actually raid on a scheduled basis vs who raid but pug vs who only do LFR vs who only do dungeons (non mythic+).
So this is in conflict. On one hand we have people who can be skilled via all the tools available. On the other hand we have people who don't give a shit and just press random buttons if any buttons are pushed or move out of the fire.

2. Bosses are far harder mechanically, period. End of discussion. Or is it?
Classes have been improved upon to allow bosses to be mechanically challenging. Did we have all that selfhealing stuff in Vanilla? Did we have raidwide cooldowns as healers to protect the entire raid or a large portion? Did we all have selfsaving abilities as classes? The answer is NO. Period.

So has the game become more difficult, the same or less difficult? And can I be objective about that myself? Because I am a veteran and played from day one and did almost every raidboss when it was current on various difficulties. (skipped mop mostly...not due pandas)

If you asked me how I feel about todays WoW and how hard it is vs how it was during Vanilla+TBC.... I'd tell you that todays raids are far less difficult and far less timeconsuming.

I remember that this one difficulty was it. You cannot compare it really to normal/heroic/mythic levels. You had one difficulty. Which meant that if you were stuck on a boss, you were going to bash your head in until either the guild collapsed or the boss would fall. You could only farm previous bosses, once. Not do normal and hope for a proc on titanforge to bring your item on heroic or mythic itemlevel and bruteforce your way past the boss.

It also meant to some extend that you had to bring a certain amount of class X. Sure not perse. But for example, we required 2 shamans to be there every raid for archimonde in Mount Hyjal. We did not have ANY shamans at that time. So we could not defeat the boss. We came close but just couldn't go for the kill it seemed. When we got 2 shamans we took him down in a few tries and marvelled at it being so easy. So classstacking was a thing. This is far less now imo.

So I hope people get this: Bosses are harder because our class abilities permit this. It becomes more FUN with more mechanics. But it does not actually make it harder because we can cope with this.