Has the game become harder than TBC?

[Memory]

Everyone that thinks that heroics are oh-so-easy now and weren't oh-so-easy in BC didn't have raid gear in BC. If you're smashing through heroics in 8 minutes with your 4 ilvl 550 buddies, you would have been smashing through heroics in 8 minutes with your sunwell-geared buddies back then. The simple difference is that there are a lot more people who have better gear now, and gear trivializes content. If you actually went with a group that needed gear from heroics, they weren't trivial.

Although I did not try MoP heroic 5 mans on release because I had no interest on buying MoP to being with, this is the same argument I read about WotLK and Cataclysm heroic. It was wrong for both expansions: WotLK and Cataclysm heroics were absolutely trivial compared to BC heroics, at any level of comparable gear. So are you telling me that they erased WotLK and Cataclysm design and went back to BC model of heroics for MoP? Because, from the little I saw by tanking late MoP heroics with pre-raid gear and not-so-good groups, I believe your saying huge bullshit.

In MoP, if you remember to a year ago, people occasionally died in some heroic dungeons before they quickly outgeared them.

Wow, should we be impressed?

[jamesx]

Can't remember exactly how much HP protection warriors had at that point but should be roughly 24k top, raid buffed and including the Tauren racial.

Parry hasting was a bitch but your healing strat should have compensated. Trick for Brutallus was weaving different speeds of heals and lifebloom. Once a tank had Inspiration, damage was a lot more stable - mitigation counted double - with BiS BT gear and debuffs, damage was high but a formality. 6 healers - 2 paladins spamming Holy Light (~1.8s), 1 priest spamming Flash Heal (I had 1.2s cast time), 1 resto shaman spamming the tank with CH, 1 druid HOTing wherever, lifebloom tank, healing Burn and 1 resto shaman partially assisting on raid and helping on later stages of Burn.



TL;DR. It was a formality - especially with a bear tank. By 4th kill, it was easy.

[Memory]

I have that and some other data from parses because they're taken from a discussion that I saved, on how to improve our healing strategy prior to our first kill And of course it was a particularly unlucky string that I highlighted.
I agree Brutallus became a formality, but I was mostly referring to the kind of things that you don't see from youtube videos.

[Deleted]

Everyone that thinks that heroics are oh-so-easy now and weren't oh-so-easy in BC didn't have raid gear in BC. If you're smashing through heroics in 8 minutes with your 4 ilvl 550 buddies, you would have been smashing through heroics in 8 minutes with your sunwell-geared buddies back then.

Except in TBC there was no reason for Sunwell geared people to do 5 mans, so they weren't contributing to the problem of faceroll heroics.
Also, Cataclysm heroics were noticeably harder than Wrath heroics at launch, and stayed harder for longer. TBC heroics were possibly even a bit overtuned, I got gear from Kara before I did most of the 5 mans.

[Deleted]

Except in TBC there was no reason for Sunwell geared people to do 5 mans, so they weren't contributing to the problem of faceroll heroics.
Also, Cataclysm heroics were noticeably harder than Wrath heroics at launch, and stayed harder for longer. TBC heroics were possibly even a bit overtuned, I got gear from Kara before I did most of the 5 mans.

Well i had reson wit sunwll gear still run hc dungeons for badges. Since you could buy epick gems for them and sell them. Catalcysm hc dungeonds showed us how real hc dungoned should look like. They were hard and they werent faceroll with bis gear (pre nerf) and also achivements were much much harder then this new MOP joke achivements what can be pretty much most of them done solo. But how it is majority of noobs cried on forums so blizzard dumd their desing on casual lvl again.

[Memory]

We should also say that BC heroic 5-mans had a huge nerf with patch 2.1 (15th of May 2007), same patch that nerfed Karazhan, alchemy, normal dungeons and other things. I'm not even sure how many people who talk of 5-man difficulty did actually experience those heroic 5-mans pre-2.1, but dungeons such as Shattered Halls, Shadow Lab, Old Hillsbrad, Arcatraz, Mana Tombs, Black Morass... they were quite difficult before the nerf, which was four months into the expansion already, and anyway remained between challenging and entertaining for a long while.

WotLK heroic 5-mans were dumb, plain and simple, and I was doing the meta-achievement on release, even got Gotta go! pre-nerf (2 minutes), started running them within one week of release (time to be 80), so I wasn't exactly ICC geared. I hold that BC level 70 normals were harder than WotLK heroics.
Blizzard acknowledged the mistake and Cataclysm heroic 5-mans were less of a joke, indeed, even entertaining on some degree, although not on BC level, and didn't last as long (been running Cataclysm heroic within two days of Cataclysm release, so once again I know what I am talking about).

I am actually curious, if anybody without broken or biased memory could tell me something about the difficulty level of MoP heroic 5-mans upon release, since I wasn't playing then.

[Veiled Shadow]

By itself, the game is harder. Wayyyy harder.

Comparatively to the skill level of the players, it's mostly a joke, aside from a handful of encounters per tier than end up actually challenging for a week or two (until you overgear them basically). I don't feel challenged in the slightest compared to how encounters felt in the past. The class mechanics play a lot in that, as even the simplest of mechanics could be difficult to handle given the limits of the classes back then.

Basically, my point is that, in the past, encounter difficulty was probably a 4/10, but the top players were something like 2/10. Nowadays, the encounter difficulty might be 10/10, but the top players are a solid 8 or 9/10, so the encounters feel way easier as a result despite being theorically harder.

It's nice to hear an opinion on this from someone in a top guild who's actually qualified to answer.

[xixixviixiiii]

TBC was harder in just about every conceivable way. Leveling was harder, grinding professions was harder, (heroic) dungeons were significantly harder and raids were harder. Mind you, many heroic level raid bosses now are certainly more complex now but in TBC there were a lot of logistic hurdles you needed to pass and you really needed specific group comps and stuff like resistance gear, sharpening stones and whatever. Now, as long as you have decent raiders, you can expect to do reasonably well on most bosses. That was not the case back in TBC.

My guild managed to clear heroic ToT (13/13) prior to 5.4 and we're 13/14 normal SoO atm in 10-man for whatever that is worth. I'd largely agree your average raider has become a lot better. That doesn't take away from the difficulty of TBC content when it was relevant imo however.

I also wanted to state... I don't necessarily feel it is fair to compare heroic level raid bosses to TBC raid bosses. Back then, you only had normal raids and either you did it or you didn't. Raiding now consists of LFR, Flex, Normal & Heroic. TBC raid bosses were definitely more difficult than LFR, Flex and (largely) normal if we were to make per boss comparisons. Heroic bosses are probably largely more difficult (on a per boss comparison) but saying that "the game has become harder than TBC" because of one (sub) aspect of the game that didn't even exist in TBC for fair comparisons to be made seems like a terrible way of deciding if the game is harder. It's not. Not even close.

[Dangg]

Basically, my point is that, in the past, encounter difficulty was probably a 4/10, but the top players were something like 2/10. Nowadays, the encounter difficulty might be 10/10, but the top players are a solid 8 or 9/10, so the encounters feel way easier as a result despite being theorically harder.

Agreed, today's players would easily pull 30% dps more out of the 1-2 button rotations from back then and use their personal/raid CDs more often.

The only reason players from BC look less skilled on video is because their characters have less skills that are used frequently, less mobility making them look 'slow', less glowing stuff.

[Xegor]

I am actually curious, if anybody without broken or biased memory could tell me something about the difficulty level of MoP heroic 5-mans upon release, since I wasn't playing then.

I dinged 90 rather quickly and got to do heroics before the reset, found some decent guys and just destroyed the HCs. Had most of the achievments within a week of release. It was a huge let down actually, not that I think 5man HCs is where you should look for a challenge, but still a tiny wall to push through would be nice every now and then.

[Dangg]

I don't think you got my point across correctly. I'm not talking about the skill level of the players (although the more you play the better you get, but that's irrelevant here) - I'm talking about what they can do.

My point isn't that the top players were bad - no, they were as good as they could be. But that wasn't very good since the limits weren't exactly hard to reach

Ok, I'm sorry.
That was exactly my point too.

[Skulli]

Legendary cloak is harder and takes more skill to get than atiesh in classic.

Legendary cloak takes like 4 months of errands but any idiot can just kill bosses in naxx40 and usually finish his staff in less than 4 months.

On a per player skill base that might be true but Atiesh was more an guild achievement than a personal one like today.
Clearing whole naxx40 alone was an achievement and relative rare back then. Atiesh was like an reward for all the work done by the guild for defeating every encounter.
The amount of time and work required to clear naxx was pretty hight. It was still hard for some people when they did pugs at level 70.

[xrayEU]

The game was overall harder in TBC, but the boss mechanics are "harder" in MoP, it's harder because there are more and new mechanics in MoP.
But in TBC you had to work to get an epic, you had to work a lot harder to afford flying skill, and there was no catchup system like you have now (lootisle...)
You have to put in a lot more work to keep your alts decently geared. Create an heroic group to do dungeons could take a few hours if your friends weren't online.

[Deleted]

Short Answer : Yes.

Long answer:

Short Answer : Yes.

Obviously.

[Gheld]

It's easier in the sense that you don't have to spend days running back and forth across the world on a +60% mount in order to do ridiculous attunement quest chains to access the content.

It's harder in the sense that end game content is now more reflex based. So the game requires less "dedication" and more skill.

Most of the rose coloured glasses uproar comes from people who were very "dedicated" but aren't as good at the more modern reflex based mechanics. Gone are the days of "I get to stand in 1 spot dotting things because I'm the warlock and I get all the epics because I'm online 12 hours a day and I know one of the officers IRL"

Now nobody is special. Everybody gets a chance. (This angers some people).

[miffy23]

Ah yes. "Sure, 90% of the game is dead easy, but look at this little corner reserved for people who enjoy a challenge, its still there!"
The fact that you call most of the game "pre-raid gearing" is depressing enough as it is.

If you are a raider, and consider raiding to be the focus of the game and the main reason why you play WoW, then yes, the rest is cosmetics.
That being said, at no point has "pre-raid gearing" been as much of a term and actual state of the game as in TBC, when it was a much more significant time investment to get crafted, heroic etc gear to even be able to start raids.

Nowadays you still have all that, but simplified and more fun, I would argue. I always find it hilarious when people complain about the "rep-gating" when you compare it to past expansions and especially TBC's inane key-gating, for example.

And you are utterly deluding yourself if you think the game was harder outside of dungeons/raid in TBC. There were still group quests, but the rest of the content was just as easy as it is now, rares were a joke compared to now.

You are further deluding yourself if you believe "90%" of the game now is dead easy. All heroic raid tiers and Challenge Mode dungeons are a HUGE time investment, if you dedicate yourself to them you will spend a majority of your time with this content and it is far harder than anything you could have ever faced in TBC. The fact that you choose not to and complain about the lack of challenge is your issue, not the game's.

Or you're just another youtube raider that doesn't even play anymore but ofc knows better than all the currently playing/raiding folks ^^

[epLe]

Gearing is way easier.
Speccing is a joke. Rotations are simplified and streamlined.
Tactics are public available.
Bossencounters are spoiled before released.
Addons tell you when to press nukes and when to move out of fire.
It is really hard to find anything that would make the game harder these days.

[Priceless]

In TBC I played hunter and for quite a while I just spammed a 1 button macro as Beast Master and topped the dps meters.

[Memory]

-How was gearing hard? Every guide told you what the BiS-gear was.

I'm not sure about what guides are you talking about. In the BC I only knew maxdps and discussions on elitistjerks. While elitistjerks was a valuable source of information (but I would call it nothing like a plain 'guide'), maxdps was shit for at least a few classes/specs (it had wrong values). In fact it was some sort of a joke to say "that guy is clueless and just goes with whatever he reads on maxdps".
I'm not trying to say that the game was difficult for the supposed lack of 'gearing guides', but I'm curious to know what 'guides' are you talking about.

- - - Updated - - -

In TBC I played hunter and for quite a while I just spammed a 1 button macro as Beast Master and topped the dps meters.

A lot of hunters were like that. That's why you could clearly tell a good player from a crappy one when you asked them to kite something.
Like trapping two mobs and kiting a third.
Enjoy your memories of 'topping the DPS meters'.

[Memory]

There were even on this site
I used to read them all the time in my lurking-period on MMO-C.

Are you very very sure about that? If memory serves me well, mmo-champion started to gain popularity towards the middle of the Burning Crusade. If I try to make a quick search on the forum, I can't find forum topics earlier than around April 2007. Unless more detailedly argumented, I'll have to doubt presence and especially extent / quality of those class guides on mmo-champion during the BC.