40 man vanilla raids = LFR difficulty?

[calinass]

Some people in general discussion said that 40 man vanilla raids had the same difficulty as LFR. Is this true?!

I believe it was a PITA to get attuned, but were the raids/mechanics on a LFR level or were those people full of it?

[Kickbuttmario]

No it didn't. In the other hand, very happy to see 40 mans returning in that kind of format though.

[mistahwilshire]

In the very beginning it wasn't but once people figured out how to play the game Molten Core was a joke. It wasn't uncommon for several people to be doing even less than the bottom dwellers do in LFR today and still down all the bosses.

[Ogait]

Raids back then wasn't that hard in terms of mechanics but it was hard to find and coordinate 39 other guys simultaneously.

If we had Resistance Gear (I wish they still had this) to be able to finish some raids, LFR would be a lot awesome.

Don't worry because LFR will be harder on WoD... These days we wait 1 hour to get a dumb tank without any clue of what he is doing, so now imagine how many hours you'll have to wait in order to find a dumb tank without any clue of what he'll be doing but has done Proving Grounds.

Anyway, Attunements, Resistance Gear, insane gear farming is the characteristics I miss from Vanilla these days.

[kamuimac]

Some people in general discussion said that 40 man vanilla raids had the same difficulty as LFR. Is this true?!

I believe it was a PITA to get attuned, but were the raids/mechanics on a LFR level or were those people full of it?

well depends - they were similiar diffiuclt to current lfr/flex but mainly cause how little mechanics those bosses had and how shitty playerbase was back then - most people (exept maybe for ultra hardcores) who were raididng had only very vague idea what they were doing so bosses simply couldng be too complicated mechanic wise.

[Immitis]

not all of them but molten core was pretty damn easy

[Soisoisoi]

Vanilla mechanic wise was a shit-ton easier than even LFR. Only "hard" part of Vanilla was that it took longer to get everything - attunements, resistance gear, farming crap, even levelling.

With that said, the knowledge base back then was worse, and we didn't have any of the guides or AddOns like DBM/VEM (CT Raid Assist, hooooo!) up to the standard we do now where it basically tells us everything we'd want to know so we can prepare.

[Eranthe]

just playing your class was way harder back then. you didn't have all the quality of life improvements we do today. examples: taunt was melee range, could be resisted and cost rage. think of how many raid deaths we would have today if even that tiny change didn't happen. then multiply it by hundreds of small changes that have been forgotten over time.

in combat cc, lack of class utility, lack of class abilities to keep yourself alive, etc etc.

the encounters themselves weren't difficult mechanically (for the most part), but doing what you had to do to do good damage/healing/tanking was pretty hard.

[Chuckadoodle]

It is like comparing apples and oranges, going back to Vanilla raiding you have to remember that what half the class/spec combos were not viable for anything more than questing and dungeons. Mechanics were very limited as add-ons and a great majority of the player base were in their infancy.

[Gliff]

Yes. MC and Ony were at the level of current LFR. Anyone who says "Vanilla raiding was REAL raiding" either didnt raid back then or is blinded by nostalgia glasses. Look at the mechanics. They were easy and boring outside of a few bosses in Naxx.

What made the game amazing back then was just the epic feel of it all. Something that cannot be replicated to someone who has been playing for 10 years, no matter how much better the content is they put out now. 95% of players were terrible back then by today's standards. Even in the best guilds.

[potis]

Eh, most of LFR heroes and players couldnt even get past Razorgore back in Vanilla, not gonna talk about MC but i doubt they could kill Ragnaros too and i really doubt they even raided back then.

Most abilities were designed around 1-2 ticks and you are dead.. not multiple as it is today..

There are more abilities now, but they also deal less damage and require a literal disconnect to DIE from them.

Of course there were joke abilities on certain bosses that were easy to counter etc etc, but most bosses after a point had a sort of mechanic that "Oh you werent 100%? Sorry.." "Oh you didnt move in 2 seconds? Sorry! "Oh, did it enrage and 1 shot your tank cause you didnt focus it or stunned it ?Sorry!"

Anyone raiding back then can understand the last sentence i wrote ;3

Generally the room for mistakes was smaller in some cases which resulted in wipez.

Back then it was like 3-5 mechanics and an enrage timer, most of those mechanics was some sort of 1 shot/agro reset aka 1 shot for someone else other than the tank etc.

Now its more mechanics but they rarely 1 shot, so you really need to massively fail nowadays.

Problem is, most people only experienced half-Zg and half-MC so their opinion is how "easy it was", they didnt wipe in Naxx/AQ40 cause they never saw it so they cant really compare.

And we definitely didnt have addons telling us what to do until later into the year

[madmanx]

They certainly were easier than most raids today but keep in mind that we did not have any addons to rely on really. I never did Naxx back in the day but I assume that would have been on par with today's heroic raids. MC was really easy but still not quite as easy as LFR. AQ40 was probably about as hard as todays reg once they figured out all the kinks, it just felt harder due to no raid timers.

We did have Gnome Haters Whisper Cast though! Best addon ever!

[mistahwilshire]

just playing your class was way harder back then. you didn't have all the quality of life improvements we do today. examples: taunt was melee range, could be resisted and cost rage. think of how many raid deaths we would have today if even that tiny change didn't happen. then multiply it by hundreds of small changes that have been forgotten over time.

in combat cc, lack of class utility, lack of class abilities to keep yourself alive, etc etc.

the encounters themselves weren't difficult mechanically (for the most part), but doing what you had to do to do good damage/healing/tanking was pretty hard.

Yea those Paladins that were brought to hit literally 2 buttons every few minutes sure had it rough.

[Joey Ray III]

just playing your class was way harder back then. you didn't have all the quality of life improvements we do today. examples: taunt was melee range, could be resisted and cost rage. think of how many raid deaths we would have today if even that tiny change didn't happen. then multiply it by hundreds of small changes that have been forgotten over time.

in combat cc, lack of class utility, lack of class abilities to keep yourself alive, etc etc.

the encounters themselves weren't difficult mechanically (for the most part), but doing what you had to do to do good damage/healing/tanking was pretty hard.

yeah, less mechanics but also less tools for the players. some of the stuff we take for granted now was a luxury or didn't exist at all back then

i'm quite sure an average LFR group would struggle there.

[Beat5beat]

I have raided since vanilla, raided in every expansion.

In their respective environments, vanilla raiding was WAAY harder than LFR, they aren't even comparable.

LFR is easymode, you can literallly smash your face on the keyboard and eventually you will down the boss. Because even if by some miracle you do fail, guess what? Here is a 5% boost to everything.

The people claiming it was easier, I don't think raided in vanilla.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes. MC and Ony were at the level of current LFR.

Onyxia has a ton of wipe mechanics. She is so far beyond LFR difficulty it's not even funny, even by todays standards she is harder than LFR. If you consider the entire environment from back then, she is not even in the same universe of difficulty. Same with Ragnaros.

[purebalance]

Yes. MC and Ony were at the level of current LFR. Anyone who says "Vanilla raiding was REAL raiding" either didnt raid back then or is blinded by nostalgia glasses. Look at the mechanics. They were easy and boring outside of a few bosses in Naxx.

What made the game amazing back then was just the epic feel of it all. Something that cannot be replicated to someone who has been playing for 10 years, no matter how much better the content is they put out now. 95% of players were terrible back then by today's standards. Even in the best guilds.

People who claim that MC and Ony were cake either raided it when they or raid members outgeared it or in BC. MC and Ony just like normal mode first tiers of any expansion, were made to be run in the highest gear you can get in max level dungeons.

[Noxina]

I honestly dont understand why anyone is saying that anything was hard in Vanilla. Raids was easy, pretty much tank'n spank, the problem was to get 40 people to not be afk while doing it, and get the resistance gear (Everything was a grind back then).
Classes wasnt harder to control, we had like two spells to use in our rotations, I was a rogue and all I had to be sure of was to stay behind my target as I prefered daggers. My friend who was a dwarf priest, had one job - fear wards (Was only dwarf priests who could do that back in the days).
Hunters most difficult task was to buy enough arrows/bullets to last a raid with autoshooting. And the list goes on..

The thing is, this is now when I look back on it, at that time, ten years ago, it was hard. Most players had never played MMO before, and it was all a new and fun experience. But compared today - what a boring game it was realy. I remeber I used about one year to level from 1-60, and then I couldnt afford my 100% movement speed mount before TBC hit and I hit lvl 64. All the gold I grinded while being lvl 60 went to all the stuff I needed, and the PvP gear I had the rank to buy - Sooooo many days spent at Tyr's Hand!

- - - Updated - - -

It was much harder then LFR, saying otherwise is a joke.

What you need to realise is that these raids were made in a time when people werent as good as we are now, what was hard back then, wont be hard now, but that doesnt diminish the difficulty of it. Otherwise everyone would have cleared naxx on a weekly basis.

For its time, yes it was hard, nowadays with finely tuned addons / expert minmaxing and just a generally better knowledge of your class? Nope, but its still nowhere near as easy as LFR, which doesnt even require you to play in order to beat.

Its the same deal as saying old games have bad graphics, you're only right because we have more to compare with now, whereas back then it was top of its class.

How many didnt afk during fights in Vanila, and just stood there auto attacking? And saying you can defeat LFR without doing anything is a lie, the only thing you do then is to get carried. As many did in Vanilla.

[Adramalech]

They're not comparable. Apples and oranges. It was a totally different game. But comparing the two in a void, then yes, Classic raids were pathetically easy even compared to LFR. That's saying a lot considering how easy LFR is.

But due to a bunch of circumstances, they were hard for their time. Class mechanics and lack of knowledge of the game compared to today, mainly.

[glowpipe]

Vanilla was easy as hell. We cleared MC and BWL with people afk and missing from raid.
We even had server first on Sapphiron with 37 people

Mechanical wise vanilla 40 man was piss easy. The issues was getting the raid going. That was the hardest part.

[Xcruiser]

Some people in general discussion said that 40 man vanilla raids had the same difficulty as LFR. Is this true?!

I believe it was a PITA to get attuned, but were the raids/mechanics on a LFR level or were those people full of it?

The difficulty existed in the lack of tools(both in-game in UI/spells) and add-ons, the poor itemization, and the general lack of familiarity players had with raiding spread across 40 people, are what made parts of Molten Core more difficult than LFR is today. The more people a raid leader must coordinate, the more difficult the encounter becomes from a logistics standpoint. While there may not have been many mechanics in each encounter, bosses like Baron Geddon, Sulfuron Harbinger, Majordomo Executus, and Ragnaros, were all capable of presenting a huge headache.

The LFR reincarnation of Molten Core is incapable of mimicking the condition of the game back then given how much WoW has evolved in each of my previously mentioned respective areas, but I'm sure people will be entertained by having to at least follow the mechanics that can currently be safely ignored in the L60 version.