Tomb of Sargeras Progression Thread

[Seramore]

Then imagine if at the start of NH all the top 200 guilds had disappeared. Then the world first M Guldan would have been 3 months after the raid release (more than any boss in Vanilla). You would have called the raid super hard then?

That would be the definition of a hard raid, so yes.

[Dangg]

Still it tooks Months for player back then to clear those raids and now on private server it take barely a day??? Same for the leveling, i have heard so much about people saying "leveling was hard and long", but here it tooks barely a week for the top player of the server, without ANY XP modifier.

One major difficulty was figuring what bosses even did and tactics.

After 11 years later, hundred of videos, guides etc. and probably rerolling on a vanilla server for the tenth time, people already know what the fuck to do.

Shocking...

So because people back then were bad and struggled to clear the raid, it means that the raids were hard? What kind of logic is that?

You are the one with the flawed logic here. Retrospectively "adjusting" the difficulty of a task makes no sense.

[Deleted]

That would be the definition of a hard raid, so yes.

Well i guess we simply don't have the same definition of the sentence "a raid is hard". Fair enough.

[harruin]

Still it tooks Months for player back then to clear those raids and now on private server it take barely a day??? Same for the leveling, i have heard so much about people saying "leveling was hard and long", but here it tooks barely a week for the top player of the server, without ANY XP modifier.

Because there wasn't 10 years worth of cumulative knowledge across the playerbase/internet at the time. That and internet connections were far slower back then. I remember posts talking about how to download the patches. I think LK was the first expansion that you could download. It was simply a different environment.

[Seramore]

Well i guess we simply don't have the same definition of the sentence "a raid is hard". Fair enough.

If taking 3 months to clear a raid isn't hard then I don't know what to tell you.

[Onikaroshi]

One major difficulty was figuring what bosses even did and tactics.

After 11 years later, hundred of videos, guides etc. and probably rerolling on a vanilla server for the tenth time, people already know what the fuck to do.

Shocking...

There were guides in vanilla, weren't as prevalent as today sure, but we walked into BWL/AQ40/Naxx knowing exactly what we needed and what to do.

[Deleted]

One major difficulty was figuring what bosses even did and tactics.

After 11 years later, hundred of videos, guides etc. and probably rerolling on a vanilla server for the tenth time, people already know what the fuck to do.

Shocking...

Quoting myself "So yes, i agree people on those server now all the tricks/tactics and it plays a part on how fast they are clearing the content. But this is clearly not the only reason why they clear content within HOURS of its release, when it was MONTHS back then.

People were just worse at the game, even the TOP guilds like Nihilium (and it's understandable), in Vanilla than they are now."

And do you think that if we put Method old roster (the one from WOD) in front of Mythic HFC with the exact same gear that they had, it would take them under 3 hours to clear it? I doubt it.

[Onikaroshi]

If taking 3 months to clear a raid isn't hard then I don't know what to tell you.

Between bugged bosses, truely impossible bosses (hello c'thun) and the insane gear requirements (nature resist for AQ, Frost resist for Naxx, hell, all the Ony kills to just get enough cloaks to cover your raid for Nef...) it's not surprising it took so long, and that had nothing to do with difficulty. Go farm maraudon at 60 is not difficult, go spend X gold on the AH is not difficult, hell, kill this boss OVER and OVER and OVER is not difficult.

Raiding in vanilla was fun, but it was not the same as today, we were stupid and the game was new, it wasn't hard, we were "Bad"

[Deleted]

If taking 3 months to clear a raid isn't hard then I don't know what to tell you.

Well if only 5 years old were playing Wow, then LFR Emerald Nigthmare would be consider a hard raid. Which it is not.
I'm talking about the absolute difficulty of a raid, not the relative one.

[Seramore]

Quoting my self "So yes, i agree people on those server now all the tricks/tactics and it plays a part on how fast they are clearing the content. But this is clearly not the only reason why they clear content within HOURS of its release, when it was MONTHS back then.

People were just worse at the game, even the TOP guilds like Nihilium (and it's understandable), in Vanilla than they are now."

And do you think that if we put Method old roster (the one from WOD) in front of Mythic HFC with the exact same gear that they had, it would take them under 3 hours to clear it? I doubt it.

Content is cleared within hours due to serious PTR testing and dungeon journal studying, as well as overall growth of player skill. Not to mention that there are now three difficulties of the same raid, compared to one.

Why do you not think that a raid being tuned to the level of the playerbase at the time was not hard? The mechanics were simple, but so were the players. The tuning for damage requirements and damage being done was high, as well as the requirements to even step into the raid such as attunements and resistance gear; something which made a good amount of fights nearly impossible to do without, as well as something people completely forget about when thinking about raiding now compared to back then.

[Dangg]

And do you think that if we put Method old roster (the one from WOD) in front of Mythic HFC with the exact same gear that they had, it would take them under 3 hours to clear it? I doubt it.

You doubt that it would take the best guild in the world an evening to clear a raid they farmed for over a year?

- - - Updated - - -

I'm talking about the absolute difficulty of a raid, not the relative one.

Using this logic every human feat/invention made in the past was actual not hard.

You can't judge the absolute difficulty of the raid, because different circumstances and the foundation laid inbetween are not accounted for.

[Deleted]

You doubt that it would take the best guild in the world an evening to clear a raid they farmed for over a year?

Well if they had the exact same gear than at the strat of progression, yes. There is still a lot of execution, muscle memory etc.. required.
And i probably should have said 20 minutes to clear the instance, to be more proportional with Vanilla raids. I mean we went from multiple months to clean BWL to 1h30?

- - - Updated - - -

Using this logic every human feat/invention made in the past was actual not hard.

You can't judge the absolute difficulty of the raid, because different circumstances and the foundation laid inbetween are not accounted for.

Fair enough, my logic definitely has some flaws. Though, i still think that if we put any top 100 guilds of today that has NEVER done or seen any Vanilla bosses, in front of said Vanilla bosses, they would roll over them without much issue.

[Jimson]

RE: complexity of old raids. I remember my shit guild wiping for hours on Loot Reaver and Lurker. Pretty sure I've killed random Legion elites in the world with more abilities than those bosses.

[Dangg]

Though, i still think that if we put any top 100 guilds of today that has NEVER done or seen any Vanilla bosses, in front of said Vanilla bosses, they would roll over them without much issue.

If they retained all their WoW knowledge other than that specific raid and played on stable servers/PC of course they would.

[Seramore]

The point is, the raids were considered hard for different reasons. Of course they would be easier if people went in with todays knowledge because there's 13 years worth of game experience and class knowledge to go off of.

It was hard back then because nobody knew how to play. It was hard back then because the raids were tuned to that level of play, as well as tuned around fourty players with that level of play. They were hard because of the level of investment you had to put in due to requiring a full set of resistance gear, as well as getting the attunements done. Let's not forget that many specs were considered to be unviable and multiple hybrid classes were restricted to healing or tanking. If raids back then had the mechanics today, I would argue that they would be the hardest raids this game has ever seen simply due to the fact that you have 40 people worrying about rough mechanics. People struggle with Mythic raids with 20 people, imagine having 40 people.

[Meiffert]

If taking 3 months to clear a raid isn't hard then I don't know what to tell you.

When people talk about raid difficulty today, they mean the difficulty of the encounters.

Yes, raiding back then was difficult as well, but for completely different reasons.

Guilds weren't pulling the bosses for 3 months and wiping all day long. They just weren't pulling the bosses at all for a variety of annoyances such as impossibility to recruit from other realms/factions, farming different gear sets for different bosses (some of those farms were on a lockout as well), attunements, bugs etc.

Saying that bosses in vanilla took 3 months is like saying that 7.2 Broken Shore with the Tomb of Sargeras instance came out in March and it's July and LFR Kil'jaeden hasn't even been killed yet!
Technically true, but obviously very misleading.

[Xandrigity]

When people talk about raid difficulty today, they mean the difficulty of the encounters.

Yes, raiding back then was difficult as well, but for completely different reasons.

Guilds weren't pulling the bosses for 3 months and wiping all day long. They just weren't pulling the bosses at all for a variety of annoyances such as impossibility to recruit from other realms/factions, farming different gear sets for different bosses (some of those farms were on a lockout as well), attunements, bugs etc.

Saying that bosses in vanilla took 3 months is like saying that 7.2 Broken Shore with the Tomb of Sargeras instance came out in March and it's July and LFR Kil'jaeden hasn't even been killed yet!
Technically true, but obviously very misleading.

40 man latency

[anon5123]

When people talk about raid difficulty today, they mean the difficulty of the encounters.

Yes, raiding back then was difficult as well, but for completely different reasons.

Guilds weren't pulling the bosses for 3 months and wiping all day long. They just weren't pulling the bosses at all for a variety of annoyances such as impossibility to recruit from other realms/factions, farming different gear sets for different bosses (some of those farms were on a lockout as well), attunements, bugs etc.

Saying that bosses in vanilla took 3 months is like saying that 7.2 Broken Shore with the Tomb of Sargeras instance came out in March and it's July and LFR Kil'jaeden hasn't even been killed yet!
Technically true, but obviously very misleading.

Mmhm. The difficulty of raiding in vanilla was not the encounters themselves, but coordinating 40 people to do their job and not fuck up......amidst high latency, low framerate, and random disconnects. Not to mention shitty, clunky class mechanics and people not being specced/geared properly.

And yeah, you had to farm resist gear, or farm for certain trinkets, stock up tons of consumables like potions, elixirs and other world-buff items like Demonic Rune and Winterfall Firewater, which took quite a while to farm just for a single night of raiding.

That and, lots of fights were just gear/consumable checks. The infamous 4 Horsemen in Naxx40, that "took 7 weeks to kill"...only because you needed EIGHT tanks with tier 3 set bonuses so that their taunt couldn't get resisted. Once that gear was acquired, the boss went down pretty quickly. Or how C'thun took so long to kill....because he was mathematically impossible to kill before the nerfs/bug fixes.

Raids only get cleared so quickly nowadays because all of those annoyances have been removed. You don't need to go back to a lower level instance and farm Nature resist gear, you don't have to spend hours upon hours grinding for consumables, you don't have lag and random disconnects, you don't have the boss bugging out, etc.

[Deleted]

Black Temple TW told me everything I should know about how mechanically hard raids were back then.

Gorefiend? Have one or a few guys stay in the middle of ghosts and know what buttons to press. Rest of the raid just beats up the boss. GG.

Reliquary of Souls? One raid-wide debuff per phase, and like one ability. Fixate in ph1, interrupt in ph2, and I can't be bothered to remember ph3. Such hard, much complexity.

Mother Sharaz? Remove tethers quickly, gg.

Cripes we have dungeon bosses with more mechanics than this now. And I'm discounting the easymode bosses like Supremus and Shade of Akama on purpose.

Illidan is the only one that has the complexity of a modern, relatively hard boss. Obviously he was undertuned so it didn't matter much, but in terms of actual mechanics raiding has come a very long way I feel.

So you havent raided back then but you wanna Shit on it yeah ? Doesnt work this Way. Black Temple TW told you NOTHING about how it was tuned.

Go in there on a Private Realm without Knowledge, You simply gonna Wipe on those easy Mechanics

[Deleted]

Difficulty is a feeling, you will never find a consensus. But numbers don't lie. It doenst matter what you think to know about all the old raids, it even doesnt matter how it felt for you back in the days, all what matters was how many teams were successful in the raids by trying them seriously. BWL capped usually 90% of the servers player base already: no bwl = no aq40 = no naxx. In TBC it was actually the same: recruitment for T5 or T6 content was such a mess because no one was attuned for this shit in its relevant state. If you have looked for new players to face T5 you need to attune them by yourself. If you have looked for new players to face T6 you need to attune them by yourself (gl & hf with the best encounter ever made: kael thas).

"farming took so long", "you need so much to farm" - pointless excuses. Why do you had to farm so much? Because bosses weren't free loot, you wiped a lot. Why did you wiped? Because bosses were so easy, weren't they?

Its way too much to sum up all the differences and influences what made vanilla raiding 1) completely different from raiding nowadays and 2) what made it so difficult to handle "uncomplexe" mechanics.