Legend of Vanilla and the Paradox of Difficulties

[Akka]

I don't understand the fetishisation of rotations people have these days.

I don't like that rotation has been the sole focus of WoW and devolved the gameplay into tunnel-vision wank-spamming, but I understand the point of having an interesting rotation : it's to keep the baseline activity somewhat engaging. Vanilla raid gameplay IS somewhat boring, because the in-fight damaging abilities aren't very numerous and lacks a bit of synergy. TBC was much more balanced on this one (the pinnacle of WoW gameplay I'd say, a good balance between group-based gameplay and solo-based gameplay ; WotLK and later tend to focus only on what your own character do and only on doing damage, Vanilla is a bit too barebone).

Lots of abilities in Vanilla were utilities, situational and fluff. Which is great and a large part of what made Vanilla superior to current WoW. But raids, especially MC and BWL, made a lot of these irrelevant (all the CC are pointless in MC due to basically every mob being immune, for example), so raid gameplay WAS somewhat dull.

Exactly. This circle-jerk around Vanilla is fucking hilarious.

People posting on a Vanilla forum tend to like Vanilla ? Shocking. Though I guess, from someone who seems to do the opposite and comes to a forum because he doesn't like the target of the forum and just posts to shit up, the concept might in fact be somewhat surprising.

It took longer to level-up in Vanilla, but this isn't a reflection of Vanilla's beauty, it's a reflection of the amount of content we have today and how much one actually has to play before they reach max level.

Yes actually it's a reflection of Vanilla's beauty. It means you had to take your time, that the content lasted instead of being facerolled in five minutes and letting your character overleveled after doing one third of the quests, and as such the content was much more meaningful.

Also do not forget that during MC most raids had two shamans out of combat to resurrect people.

The pulse putting everyone in the instance in combat during a boss fight was implemented long before TBC. The out-of-combat rezzers didn't last long.

[Cairhiin]

The pulse putting everyone in the instance in combat during a boss fight was implemented long before TBC. The out-of-combat rezzers didn't last long.

Yes, this was only MC if I remember correctly. I am not entirely certain when it got implemented, and I doubt it will be possible on the incoming classic server but when we raided MC we had two Shamans OOC to rez.

Fun job to just stand there at Magmadar and resurrect people while trying to stay out of combat!

[Wikiy]

People posting on a Vanilla forum tend to like Vanilla ? Shocking. Though I guess, from someone who seems to do the opposite and comes to a forum because he doesn't like the target of the forum and just posts to shit up, the concept might in fact be somewhat surprising.

Sorry, I didn't see that this is in the Vanilla subforum (came from the main page). I meant mostly the overall attitude towards Vanilla for years now, and the inability to just let it go as a thing of the past (where it belongs, as a fond, distorted memory).

Yes actually it's a reflection of Vanilla's beauty. It means you had to take your time, that the content lasted instead of being facerolled in five minutes and letting your character overleveled after doing one third of the quests, and as such the content was much more meaningful.

Most people today don't play MMO's to have a nice questing experience. Heck, people today QQ about how slow and boring the questing experience of modern WoW is, when it's actually several times quicker than Vanilla. And I actually agree with you, that's not very enjoyable. However, asking for Vanilla in order to remedy this is a silly solution, imo. A better one would be to fix the overall questing experience, and they're apparently doing some of that in/before BfA.

[Darkbless]

If they make it exactly as it was back then, it is going to be easy for top raid groups and cleared pretty quickly.

As soon as release date is announced ( or sooner) people with similar interests will start grouping up. Making full hardcore raiding guilds with people that have alot of time, dedication and knowledge.
That alone is worth more then a few ilvl on gear.

[Deleted]

I don't understand the fetishisation of rotations people have these days. In order to be effective at group content, you will have to internalize your rotation until it becomes an autonomous action—if you're consciously running your rotation, you're going to suck at anything except tank-and-spank. More complex rotation just means it takes longer to internalize the rotation. The true challenge of WoW (and also most competitive sports) is at the tactical and strategic level, not in how you run your rotation (or kick/hit the ball or whatever).

Your sport analogy is very poor. At low level sport technical ability will get you everywhere, its why at low level pro sports and at a more pronounced level youth and school sports having one technically fantastic star player can carry you through games alone.

The reason why tactics and strategy matter at the top level is because techinically everyone is already at such a high level that it is unlikely to impossible for any one player to stand out without having some co-ordinated plan on how to win.

To transfer this back to wow, if you are a low to mid tier raider getting your rotation right is going to do far more to benefit you than coming up with mad strategies. If you are the very top end (like maybe 50 guilds) then you can count on all your raid being able to di their rotation perfectly no matter what other stuff is going on so, if you cant beat the boss still, you are going to have to come up with some strategy to get around that.

[Deleted]

But raids, especially MC and BWL, made a lot of these irrelevant (all the CC are pointless in MC due to basically every mob being immune, for example)

how much would you want CC to be in raids? Garr is very hard to do with no cc, same with majordomo, would you want all of the bosses to have a bunch of adds that need to be CCd?

[Aggrophobic]

so, one weird thing I've seen people complain about since WoW classic was announced is the perceived difficulty of vanilla.

people say that since we're no longer noobs we'll steamroll through all the content, thanks to better strats, better addons and better communication everything will be extremely easy

people have also rightly pointed out that a ton of the content has been nerfed after vanilla, elite quests became regular ones, bosses were nerfed etc.

people also claim that raiding will suck because too many speccs are just not optimal, why take a shadow priest over a warlock? why take a boomkin over a mage? etc.

also worth noting that only about 1% of original players even entered naxxramas, let alone beat it


so, in the end, if this time around 4% of players end up beating naxxramas, and one of your 6 tanks is a bear (slightly sub-optimal) and one of your 6 tanks is a pala (quite suboptimal), is that really so bad?

Players won't beat Naxx becuase the gind to get there is too long and too repetative. It's not difficult, it's just time consuming and boring.
There are just more fun games to play these days.

Vanilla was fun for its time but it has nothing over the games we have today.

Oh, and the balance was horrible and I do mean horrible. We're talking like some classes doing double the damage of others if not more. No way around that. Balancing every spec to have a spot in raiding was not something Blizzard was really working towards in vanilla. It started way later.

[Akka]

how much would you want CC to be in raids? Garr is very hard to do with no cc, same with majordomo, would you want all of the bosses to have a bunch of adds that need to be CCd?

I was just stating facts, not making a request. The fact is that a large part of the classes gameplay was about open world and regular monsters, and this aspect was much less present in larger raids, which made raid gameplay more barebone. Hence the increasing focus on "rotation", to the point (in current WoW) of making the gameplay ALL about raid one (and as such pretty boring too, but in a different way).

[Ophenia]

Wait wait, people really believe Classic servers will be real Vanilla versions ?

Blizzard will comply with complaints, that's obvious, otherwise it won't work, so :
- There won't be 2 loots for 40 people, more like 6-8
- Some classes won't be undertuned, they will attune everything
- They'll reduce the "leveling difficulty"
...

Vanilla would never fit the 2017 era in terms of gameplay, they'll have to balance everything. And that's why anti-Vanilla people didn't want it to happen : a lot of Blizzard resources will be busy working on Vanilla instead of BfA/future xpacs.

[Flurryfang]

A vocal minority have been crying for Vanilla servers for a while. It's only fair that they get the Full vanilla feeling warts and all.

It is pretty dumb if Blizzard designs a whole version of the game for a small minority. They pretty much set it up to fail, if they only try to make this small playerbase happy and then just hope, that everybody else will accept the end product.

[Akka]

Sorry, I didn't see that this is in the Vanilla subforum (came from the main page). I meant mostly the overall attitude towards Vanilla for years now, and the inability to just let it go as a thing of the past (where it belongs, as a fond, distorted memory).

Well, if you thought it was in the current WoW forum I guess I can somewhat forgive you.

I like chess, it's thousands of years old. I like many old games from the 90s. I like many games from the 2000s. I like many games from the 2010s. A game is fun if it's fun, there is no "progressive evolution" in time except for technology, a recent game can be shitty, an old game can be great. I MUCH prefer Vanilla design philosophy than current WoW one, and I'm bored in current WoW while I have fun in Vanilla.
The problem with your reasoning is that it's pretty nonsensical : there is not expiration date in fun.

Most people today don't play MMO's to have a nice questing experience.

And how exactly what most people do has any bearing on what I like ?

And I actually agree with you, that's not very enjoyable. However, asking for Vanilla in order to remedy this is a silly solution, imo. A better one would be to fix the overall questing experience, and they're apparently doing some of that in/before BfA.

I've spent basically all the latest part of TBC and all WotLK asking Blizzard to bring back Vanilla design. It's been four additional expansions since then. Obviously Blizzard isn't going to bring back said design in current WoW, so I'll settle for the next best thing, with the game when it was how I liked it with Classic.

[thrillhoose]

on a PvP front, back in Vanilla some hunter pets kept the NPC's ability. I remember Takk The Leaper running down players on mounts

[Nheme]

The hardest part of classic raiding was getting 15-20 people who weren't fucking mouth breathers to compliment the people carrying them.

Your skill in making random people on the Internet laugh out loud has increased to 2.

[MMKing]

Wait wait, people really believe Classic servers will be real Vanilla versions ?

Blizzard will comply with complaints, that's obvious, otherwise it won't work, so :
- There won't be 2 loots for 40 people, more like 6-8
- Some classes won't be undertuned, they will attune everything
- They'll reduce the "leveling difficulty"
...

Vanilla would never fit the 2017 era in terms of gameplay, they'll have to balance everything. And that's why anti-Vanilla people didn't want it to happen : a lot of Blizzard resources will be busy working on Vanilla instead of BfA/future xpacs.

They can do what you say and open the floodgates to criticism from every conceivable direction. From people who think the changes are too much, and from the people who think the changes are not enough. No matter what Blizzard comes up with, they will never ever managed to please everyone, or even the majority.

Alternatively, they can create the purist experience, with minimal changes but the ones strictly necessary from a technical standpoint. In which case the players have no right to complain, as what Blizzard delivered was exactly what the players asked for.

[Deleted]

Your sport analogy is very poor. At low level sport technical ability will get you everywhere, its why at low level pro sports and at a more pronounced level youth and school sports having one technically fantastic star player can carry you through games alone.

Seems to me the analogy applies perfectly well. I don't get your point at all.

To transfer this back to wow, if you are a low to mid tier raider getting your rotation right is going to do far more to benefit you than coming up with mad strategies.

I completely disagree. If you haven't committed some form of the rotation to autonomous action and spend your time thinking about your rotation, you're going to suck. It's a necessary, but not sufficient condition to being a successful raider. As long as you have committed a good-enough rotation to autonomous action, marginally improving it to get it "right" or perfect is not going to make a difference between killing a boss or not killing a boss—that comes down to tactics and strategy.

So if you are focused on your rotation during fights, it means you haven't committed it to autonomous action, you will get most benefit by drilling a good-enough rotation into your brain and then focusing on the tactics and strategies of the fight. There is very little marginal benefit in trying to run the perfect rotation compared to trying to optimize your tactics. It's the old "dead player does zero dps" saying, and the reason why the highest dps talent for melee is typically increased movement speed.

[Deleted]

then playing retri pala or shadow priest will work fine?

I will personally raid, but I'm much more hyped for an actually rewarding leveling experience and more fun pvp, stuff like summoning elemental lords in AV is great

Shadow priest? Ret pala? In a raid. There are unconfirmed reports of the odd ret paladin in raids in late vanilla but in my experience you went holy or you got kicked and that was that.

I never saw a shadow priest in vanilla. I think shadow was still kinda trying to be a healing spec back then

- - - Updated - - -

They can do what you say and open the floodgates to criticism from every conceivable direction. From people who think the changes are too much, and from the people who think the changes are not enough. No matter what Blizzard comes up with, they will never ever managed to please everyone, or even the majority.

Alternatively, they can create the purist experience, with minimal changes but the ones strictly necessary from a technical standpoint. In which case the players have no right to complain, as what Blizzard delivered was exactly what the players asked for.

And also from those who think there wasting there time on classic servers and should make us another live raid instead.

[Vaelorian]

Retri paladins, tankadins, Moonkins Shadowpriests cats/bears - were basically a no go in Vanilla.
Honestly I was a paladin back then too. I could spec whatever I wanted and had excellent dps gear, still could not match any warrior/mage/warlock/rogue in dps unless that player was subpar. Seal of Casino was just too unreliable, nice bursts but that was it.

I was the first paladin on our server to tank Onyxia. Decked out with as much protection/defense gear etc as possible... still high mp5, I did it.
Chucked mana pots like an addict to just keep my mana high enough. Though my agro was insane vs any warriors. A tankadin was just spikey with incoming damage and not sustainable for a long fight. Mana just becomes an issue.

So holy (without holy shock as a healing ability - vanilla's holy shock was damage) was the spec everyone had in raiding.

[Scrysis]

It will never be the "vanilla" experience that people remember, and right now, it's being looked at through rose-colored goggles. Vanilla was easier, just more tedious, and it excluded a lot more specializations from being active.

I spent enough time farming mats for raid, and after having my guild wipe on Garr for 6 months straight because we lacked the requisite number of warriors (yeah, paladins and druids weren't tanks) and warlocks, I really wouldn't want to go back to that.

I have good memories and bad memories of WoW, but they're just that -- memories. Nothing will be able to recreate that time. So I'm content to keep going forward.

[Leih]

Comparing difficulty on Retail vs. Vanilla is a more or less pointless endeavor because both are difficult in their own ways, but the type of difficulty is completely differently.

Granted, if we're talking about purely leveling content and solo stuff like that, Vanilla wins hands down but that's obvious - the game has constantly been updated to make it more user friendly and accessible and easier to get into. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's important to keep new players coming into the game when it's as old as WoW is. The gaming community has changed and expectations for user friendliness and tedium and time investment have changed over the years. Go back to the Everquest days if you want to see how casual Vanilla WoW was relative to its predecessors. WoW has always tried to appeal to this market.

In terms of high end play, talking about max level raiding and dungeons, then both games have the difficulty level. But while retail is about complexity of mechanics, reaction times and the handling of complex classes and rotations, Vanilla difficulty came from patience and planning, and the unforgiving nature of it.

Juggling your rotation to do 1M+ DPS while target switching and soaking randomly placed swirlies while simultaneously using your defensive cooldowns to survive that random raid damage burst that's going out at the same time takes a LOT more personal skill and coordination than most Vanilla players were used to (those videos of a mage standing there pressing frostbolt, frostbolt, frostbolt while never moving in the fight aren't a massive exaggeration with most Vanilla raid bosses). But in Vanilla everything was 100x more unforgiving - if you were a mage and you get melee'd by a loose add on a boss fight you were instantly one shot. Oh and picking up threat on that add was much harder for the tank, and you didn't have any ranged attacks and taunt was melee range only (chances are, if it was a raid, the add was immune to all taunts and CC anyway).

It's just a different world and a different game. Both were hard when talking about the actual high level difficult content.

[Belisaurio]

The words you're searching for that is time consuming.

Is there anything that's not time consuming?
I mean, if some Bosses are "hard", you play more focused on them, repeat the same mechanics alot of times, study thems to see their weakness, etc...