Classic must be tuned higher than it was in 2004

[Daevied]

I see your argument and I raise you this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ba7rg0gdc

Say what you will, but this is the best players available at the time, and just to name a few things:
being frost while progressing AQ - really? The mana inefficiency is real, the lack of counterspells on eyes is real, "misuse" of blink is also very apparent.

Compare the general playstyle of this player to say world first Gul'dan, there's a royal gap.

there is something wrong with that video, the mage is just spamming one spell o.o, no procs, no cds, no movement and no mechanics other than kill adds singletarget¿?¿?

[Deleted]

this hyperbolic circle jerk is funny and all that but as a healer i can fully say that the difficulty of the mechanics in the encounters has only grown over the years, its harder to heal a raid, today, than it was during classic.

theres no over inflating anything really, the classic game was a massive time sink, as soon as you get 40 ppl together willing to raid the game will again hand out epics with little skill involved, that is going to be the same. this whole shit flinging thing is boring.

reading these classic praising comments and crapping on retail and the ppl who still enjoy the game as if there was much more to it than just a much deeper time investment requirement. its not like you don't reach a point today where progress starts to wane or even stop for long periods of time, just because you might get one epic from molten core one week then not see another one until 3 weeks later doesn't exactly mean the game was way more challenging. you'll just have to put up with a much slower natural progress. with lots of days with no progress at all.

if you can put up with the time sink, if you don't mind dkp systems, waiting for loots, passing loot/bids to other lesser geared players in you class group, taking your time to gear up, I feel that you've pretty much overcome The Challenge.

I think the game is more geared toward the idea that ppl will eventually play more than 1 class, or that its balanced in a way that its possible to change class on a whim and not be 6 months or a year or whatever behind. on a comparison of progress, sure you fly through the gear if your actively farming mythic + and raiding. if your trying to level and play/raid with multiple alts then you start moving into an equal time sink as what classic was if not much worst considering there are more alts you can make these days.

as much as i agree that gearing is fast, it also makes sense in a game where there is 12 classes and only 1 life time. heck even if you wanted to i doubt its possible to maintain 1 of each alt, theres a lot of game to experience playing different classes and roles, and yet not much time to really be able to do that successfully or effectively.

Maybe you didn't noticed but it's Vanilla forum. Of course people will crap on Retail here. You know why? because every second post here is about how Retail is better and vanilla needs to have this and that feature from Retail.
As for difficulty level and challange. There is that thing called "effort". People laugh at retail because getting fully geared character on retail takes no effort. Welfare epix for everyone. People complained it as soon as you could get epic item from TBC heroics or buy them with badges, Now it's even worse. Vanilla wasn't difficult, but it required effort and patience.
Now you claim Retail is more difficult. I'll say that it isn't. Raid being difficult is a mix of various things: preparation, player skill, raid coordination, boss mechanics, skill set of every class. To be honest in modern raids boss mechanics are more complicated than in vanilla. But everything else was made easier. It is easier to end up with whole set of flasks/elixirs and all other buffs for raid. It is easier to manage raid, it is easier to gear up, every class has more tools at its disposal to deal with random situations.
Vanilla was easy when it comes to mechanics (don't stand in the fire!), but difficult in every other aspect. You had to be certain spec, flasks were only for tanks and sometimes healers, getting full tier could take months, killing C'Thun was close to impossible for a long time. And first of all you had to be patient and commited. Something that most of modern gamers aren't. Farming R14 was a thing 13 years ago. You simply can't do something like this in modern game, because people would get (and already did!) butthurt, that it's unfair and so on...
Retail raid = 10-15 minute of boss fight
Vanilla raid = few hours of farming gold/mats for elixirs, repair bills and only after that 10-15 boss fight.

And you can see it on all rankings. Back in vanilla or even TBC only truly commited and hardcore guild cleared entire content. Now those numbers go in hundreds for each region. Simply because it is so easy to be 100% prepared for raid.

Problem is that all the 1.12 changes, combined with poor tuning on the pirate servers,
makes all raidcontent so much easier there so people expect classic to be similar.

THIS! So much THIS!

I instantly had Feenix in front of my eyes. Fun server and all, but PUGs cleared BWL and went to Naxx due to fucked up economy and broken raid mechanics.

[Heathy]

and you don't think that because the preparation is the same, you need very similar prep to start raiding, you need to farm dungeon gear, and having consumables helps, but the difference is that ppl know these things because its been the same all the way through.

ok so naxx had strict requirements, on buff stacking, in the end though, t3 was good for what exactly? breaking pvp and leveling to 70, GG. the requirement in reaction time increased substantially in tbc, I got to 70 very quickly, i tried those untuned heroics, it required a level of healing that i'd not done in classic or in the non-heroic versions of the tbc dungeons. the difficulty went up by quite a large margin the first time i had to try to heal each heroic. there was nothing even remotely close to that in classic in terms of what it required from you to keep a group alive. ffs dps warriors could pull aggro take a blow from a boss without getting one shotted, one shot mechanics in general were something i didn't see until tbc. you had spells effects that could one shot someone, but one shot melee swings weren't really a thing that i noticed. not until heroics where ppl could pull aggro and just instantly melt. the mechanics in the classic encounters were quite tame from a healing perspective damage wasn't as spikey at all really it was quite forgiving in terms of reaction time for a good portion of the raid encounters.

everyone always jumps right to naxx when there is a discussion on difficulty, the truth is i think when you have a server that doesn't move into tbc, more ppl will eventually have the time to actually do the place, farm enough gear and items to make progress. so it won't be a matter of a race against time before the next expansion but rather a long drawn out gear and consumables grind until the point that you can make the gear checks without needing to stack world buffs. in fact i'm almost certain a legacy museum server will even eventually have paid carry groups practically inevitable.

the only difficulty i remember was that unless you were raiding every day, making progress every day, maximizing loot drops every week, you weren't getting to see naxx anyway, problem was not everyone was raiding every single day so there is no comparison, if you don't have to raid every day, and there is no time limit on the content then a lot more ppl are going to eventually be able to see it. whole thing is moot. when the timesink vs the lifespan of the content is irrelevant, the difficulty of the time sink itself is irrelevant.

one example is wanding for mana, in classic I could spend a good 10 maybe 15-20 second standing there wanding a boss and regen like half if not my whole mana bar without really putting the tank at risk, in tbc the time you had to stand there wanding before the tank died was way way less. the healing game shifted pretty drastically toward reaction time.

the game throws gear around but not all of that gear is the best gear or even that good at all, a lot of gear is temporary until you get something that lasts. the main difference there is it took way longer to replace or even see certain gear drop at all through bad luck rng in the end your just waiting for the stars to align so you can finally get those t2 legs that haven't dropped for over 6 months.. I know what patience is but in some ways i don't miss the old pace of progression mainly because i don't have that much time to just wait on rngesus anymore. the steady progression curve is fine with me, what matters is having fun in challenging encounters and getting better at playing your class. loot isn't the be all end all, but progress is nice to see happen in the short term aswell as the long term.

[Deleted]

I understand your point but it probably will not be. From what I have heard people want classic to be as true to vanilla as possible. More changes can lead to more potential complaints, whereas if you release pure vanilla how can they complain?

[unbound]

With 13 years of advancement, knowledge, tactics and expertise, the Vanilla of 2004 would be far too easy for the playerbase today. Therefore to recreate that experience, world, dungeon and raid enemies must be tuned much higher to account for these factors. Otherwise all the content will be steamrolled very quickly and it'd defeat the purpose of the project.

rofl

Sorry, it isn't that current players are more knowledgeable, more tactical, or have more expertise. The game is *much* easier today than it was back then.

[mich4el]

Really? So if you've been flipping burgers for 14 years, you don't think you've gotten better?

Not if u get an electronic flipper! with a new all modern kitchen equipment + very comfortable chair so you can focus more on flipping and forget about the rest of the kitchen which is fully automated now to help you in fact i think you will get worse with all those new QOL tools
kind of like people today cant get by without GPS

[Kralljin]

there was a dagger that had a frost proc in razorfen downs or razorfen kraul

http://www.wowhead.com/item=10761/coldrage-dagger

May I remind you of the anniversay MC timewalking raid? WoD players wiped non-stop o ntrash despite massively overgearing the content.

The few wipes i remember from that was due overly zealous (or bored) tanks pulling multiple trash packs and then getting pounded into dust.

Really, the whole thing was just a question of adjusting your mindset, if you didn't try to pull 5 trash packs at once you went through there decently, altough it still took ages due the high health pool.

Aside from that, the anniversary took place during the first month of WoD, raids were not out yet and almost anyone was wearing blues, you hardly "outgeared" it.

[Deficineiron]

The game will not be released so that only players who play 15 hours a day will clear content. Get real...

bingo. I expect classic to incorporate today's blizzard core values. These were discussed by Pardo in a 2014 MIT presentation, on youtube can be seen...

Make it (the player) Overpowered - quite evident in retail and quite absent in classic.
Make the Player the Hero - we know all about this one.

he didn't mention this one but it is quite clear it is there also -
Everyone should be able to see all of the content - only way to do this realistically is raid difficulty levels and faceroll dungeons with harder or challenge settings.

i know there are blues stating or implying differently. I just don't think that is particularly relevant to what they end up releasing, and is more of the character of 'managing the expectations/buzz in classic community,' a necessary business issue.

Activision-Blizzard exists for a single reason, and that is to increase shareholder value. They are damned good at it, based on performance post-Viviendi. None of this is a secret or surprise. They are also carrying 4 billion in debt from the King purchase - who thinks they will pass up a few hundred million in order to make an authentic classic game for sentimental reasons?

I think the best bet for pro-classic groups is to just assume without rancor that blizz will need to make their classic game substantially more accessible, and instead ask for 'pristine/hardcore' classic game servers, which in effect will be actual classic tuning and pacing and less? QoL stuff. This way everyone can win. Blizzard gets their more accessible game, and the folks who want a more persistent challenge level get something tuned for them.

[evogsr]

Guilds of players who were there and familiar will end up clearing these fights in a much faster fashion than they did originally. I don't doubt that current day mechanically sound players who didn't experience Vanilla will adapt and learn very quickly to this content.

Mark my words, there will be people who will progress through the original 40mans months ahead of the original raid schedule from '05 & '06. I don't believe the difficulty of the content should be changed however. It's sufficient, and the hardest part of any raid was fielding the numbers to even do it.

[Deleted]

With 13 years of advancement, knowledge, tactics and expertise, the Vanilla of 2004 would be far too easy for the playerbase today. Therefore to recreate that experience, world, dungeon and raid enemies must be tuned much higher to account for these factors. Otherwise all the content will be steamrolled very quickly and it'd defeat the purpose of the project.

Please come back once you've completed vanilla content again. If anything I expect it would be harder because everybody must have forgotten how to run a large scale raid in 2017. Back in the day a lot of the most successful guilds were ran by people who raided on EQI or EQII.

[Noxina]

With 13 years of advancement, knowledge, tactics and expertise, the Vanilla of 2004 would be far too easy for the playerbase today. Therefore to recreate that experience, world, dungeon and raid enemies must be tuned much higher to account for these factors. Otherwise all the content will be steamrolled very quickly and it'd defeat the purpose of the project.

It wont, at all. There is one HUGE factor in Classic - gear.

I tested out on a private server, spent 4 hours to reach level 10. I got 13 years of WoW experience, and all that can be tossed out the window. I remember where to go for every quest, but I still can only kill one mob at the time, two if I get lucky and get a good weapon. Sure I am only level 12 at, and dying everytime I pull more than two targets, and usually if I pull two as well.
This will however continue all the way to level 60. And at level 60 it will continue, gear is needed for everything - want to raid? Go farm resistance gear or piss off.

Classic isn't about "difficulties", it is about the grind. The long tedious grind that never ends. Then in Naxxramas some fights actually demands people to know exactly what they are doing.

*edit* need to add - and I love it!

[Eapoe]

not really, any frost damage sources counted.

There was for example a blue lvl20 dagger that melees could farm in razorfen kraul or something

Killed Viscidus server first back then.

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there was a dagger that had a frost proc in razorfen downs or razorfen kraul

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as far as I remeber the treshhold for freezing was the number of attacks, not the damage.



I played in for the horde during classic (top5 - top 10 world guild) for our EU #2 or so Loatheb kill and the 2nd kill we coordinated Onyxia Buff, Dire Maul Buff and all Buff Foods stuff you could get.

Of course we practiced the fight and the rotations before to make sure we 1-shot it.

But the notion that it has to be tuned harder is ridiculous. Classic Raids were gear checks and raid composition checks. Required coordinating 40 people.

Anyone who thinks that people will just steamroll it - lol.

May I remind you of the anniversay MC timewalking raid? WoD players wiped non-stop o ntrash despite massively overgearing the content.

Yeah, it was number of attacks to freeze him, but then you had to do a certain amount of damage in that window to kill him (if I remember correctly).

[Molvonos]

Yeah, it was number of attacks to freeze him, but then you had to do a certain amount of damage in that window to kill him (if I remember correctly).

To shatter, not kill. Then it split into a bunch of smaller adds that headed back towards where the boss was shattered. You had a limited time to kill all the adds, to kill the boss, before it reformed.

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rofl

Sorry, it isn't that current players are more knowledgeable, more tactical, or have more expertise. The game is *much* easier today than it was back then.

Most bosses back then had 2, maybe 3 mechanics, until you got to C'thun. It -was- easier, mechanically, than it is now. You can argue till you're blue in the face just to try and spite retail players, but you're wrong.

It's ok though. Not everyone can be right.

What made it difficult, was the fact it took longer to gear, it wasn't optimized, classes were pigeonholed and there was resist gear, which was stated for survival, not damage.

[Echocho]

Nope. Nope. Nope. No.

Balance, mechanics and lore must remain true to the original.

So early encounters should be tuned with 16 debuff slots and 1.12 talents and class balancing so it stays true to the original?

[Hitei]

Yeah, I mean we're in full epic with legendary gear while those vanilla scrubs had blues, and we're killing heroic raid bosses and blasting through raids in no time, while those vanilla simpletons wiped endlessly on their normal raid bosses! Clearly we are far superior players of great intellect and skill./s

Nah, it'll be fine. The playerbase today has a hugely inflated and delusional view of their own abilities, thanks to Blizzard handing out rewards with no skill or effort required.

[epLe]

Guilds of players who were there and familiar will end up clearing these fights in a much faster fashion than they did originally. I don't doubt that current day mechanically sound players who didn't experience Vanilla will adapt and learn very quickly to this content.

Mark my words, there will be people who will progress through the original 40mans months ahead of the original raid schedule from '05 & '06. I don't believe the difficulty of the content should be changed however. It's sufficient, and the hardest part of any raid was fielding the numbers to even do it.

The gearing process alone makes this impossible. (Unless classic gets as silly tuned as pirate servers)

To gear up a raidgroup for BWL, the group need to be decked out in T1, 17 items each x 40 people = 680 items dropped.
Divide that on 3 items for each boss, and you need 226 boss kills in MC.

That is with the perfect loot dropping for your group every time, an a raidgroup with no overhead at all.
So since u dont really need 100% gearing there, half a year farming is a proper estimate any way.

Then you need the same half year in BWL to gear up for AQ, and repeat it again for Naxx.

[evogsr]

The gearing process alone makes this impossible. (Unless classic gets as silly tuned as pirate servers)

To gear up a raidgroup for BWL, the group need to be decked out in T1, 17 items each x 40 people = 680 items dropped.
Divide that on 3 items for each boss, and you need 226 boss kills in MC.

That is with the perfect loot dropping for your group every time, an a raidgroup with no overhead at all.
So since u dont really need 100% gearing there, half a year farming is a proper estimate any way.

Then you need the same half year in BWL to gear up for AQ, and repeat it again for Naxx.

You do remember that raid lockouts were completely different back then yeah?

The raid group I was a part had BWL on farm a month or two before gates of AQ event began - with a good portion of our raid showing up partial MC gear & ZG gear. Sub optimal specs, and I'd say at least 5-10 of our raiders were completely autistic wrecks. The rest of us weren't pro status players. Just required paying attention and practice.

Save for a few resist gear check fights later on in AQ, no bosses prior required all 40 players to be perfectly and optimally geared. Let alone mindfully present.

[Shiny212]

Nope. Nope. Nope. No.

Balance, mechanics and lore must remain true to the original.

Only possible updates are (outside of normal play) bugs/exploits, optional graphics update and (possibly) Battle.net integration.

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Incorrect, there is a huge wealth of resources dedicated to min/maxing almost every aspect of Classic.

Raid guides, gold farming strategies, PvP team synergies. Every aspect of the game has been theorycrafted to the nth degree.

Didn't you read what I said? People aren't "better". People like to think they've become more "skilled" at the game, but they really haven't. If you were shit in vanilla and still play, sure, but if you were good in vanilla, you're still the same level of "good" now, and it won't be easier for you now than it was then because of addons or whatever. Knowledge of the game wow classic, has not increased since the end of vanilla classic, not sure what you're getting at there.

Really? So if you've been flipping burgers for 14 years, you don't think you've gotten better?

thx for proving my point for me. You can only get so fucking good at flipping burgers.

[Tholl]

With 13 years of advancement, knowledge, tactics and expertise, the Vanilla of 2004 would be far too easy for the playerbase today. Therefore to recreate that experience, world, dungeon and raid enemies must be tuned much higher to account for these factors. Otherwise all the content will be steamrolled very quickly and it'd defeat the purpose of the project.

Players that have never played Vanilla (Or very little of it) are going to be in for a very rude awakening.

I honestly can't wait to see how many DPS'ers stand at the front of mobs and bosses in dungeons, how many don't use CC correctly (Or break CC that someone else set up), or try to take multiple non elite mobs on while leveling up.

I promise that a lot of people who never played vanilla but decide to try out the classic servers are going to /ragequit by level 40. (Not having enough gold for a mount will most likely be that deciding factor). All the knowledge of the interwebs and all the available guides are going to mean jack when faced with the grind that is leveling up and getting enough blue gear to enter your first raid.

Retail is streamlined. That is why you are fed epics before you even hit level cap. They WANT you to get into raids to see content and lore. You can level to 110 today in a matter of hours, and beef your I-level up to start raiding in no time. Vanilla was about time spent. Literally.

With vanilla, you are going to be holding onto blue gear for a very long time. (Even some greens). Players now do not have to worry about hit/expertise soft cap, nor do they have to worry about resist gear. Want to go in MC? Not without grinding out that resist gear. (And you better make sure it doesn't drop your hit/exp ratings too low). And to get that gear, or the plans/mats for it? Better be ready to run BRD/LBRS/UBRS over and over again. You can't even MAKE the resist plate (Or smelt the mats for it) unless you go into BRD, so good luck finding people that are willing to spend hours helping you do that. I suggest a good guild asap.

So like I said, retail is streamlined. It is a totally different beast today than it was then. I honestly do not think that the Classic servers will be for everyone. (Especially players who never touched vanilla).

It will be cool for them at first, but then reality will sink in, and they will move on to see the new retail stuff (And to catch up with current guild mates and friends who are not on Classic).

To put it this way...

Retail players who have been playing for the past few years are the equivalent to say, a soldier who is just out of basic training. They have all the modern day tools, intel, etc to get the job done. Nobody is denying that.

The Vanilla players though, are the ones who have been on multiple tours from past wars. They have seen the advancement of modern military technology, and while they respect the new soldiers, they still look at them as green pups who have zero idea what they are doing.

[Deleted]

Didn't you read what I said? People aren't "better". People like to think they've become more "skilled" at the game, but they really haven't. If you were shit in vanilla and still play, sure, but if you were good in vanilla, you're still the same level of "good" now, and it won't be easier for you now than it was then because of addons or whatever. Knowledge of the game wow classic, has not increased since the end of vanilla classic, not sure what you're getting at there.



thx for proving my point for me. You can only get so fucking good at flipping burgers.

You're actually retarded if you don't think you get better at something after 14 years of doing the same.