Is WoW harder/easier than tBC?

[Emiraly]

I quit WoW just after farming everything upto Eredar Twins and Muru Phase 1, but not really much farther and quit after the 4 week lolfest Kil'Jaeden became in preparation for WotLK. I've been wondering all day especially when someone told me about the Lich King update.

Precisely how much harder/easier has WoW become since its peak before WotLK? Like is Normal just a slap keyboard and win and the hard mode is similar or harder than tBC? I honestly have no idea and would like to hear from a Vet.

Bonus points if you can tell me whether Vanilla WoW endgame was harder than tBC/WotLK? I only truly started playing after Hyjal started and all people mentioned to me was that it was a painful grind (lol Cthun trash) and that it was harder simply because coordinating 40 people was a nightmare.

[Hakto]

Level 60 raids were harder, patchwerk took 80% of a tank's hp with a hateful at 60.

C'thun trash was not that bad - we 25 manned it once to see if we could.

Hard modes now are hard, harder than most of the fights in BC but then how gear scales better than it did in bc as well.

Tbh for a definitive answer - come and find out.

[Vitamens]

For me... Yes.. the only part that made Vanilla worse, was getting all 40 to actually do something and get half of them off of /follow.... ;D

TBC imo was harder content wise then Wotlk (if you talking normal modes)...

Well just say this it took longer (for me) to get to KJ (and down him) then any of the Wotlk endgame bosses

but at the same time Black Temple became pretty face roll @ the same time... But if it was a poll you had going

here i would def still go with TBC content over Wotlk (as being harder).. Then after that I would think that

Vanilla Naxx imo (again) was then hardest content for me (period)... But yes to stop rambling TBC over Wotlk..

[Daez]

The truth is, the answer is both. Easy modes are definitely easier than what was in TBC. Hard modes are harder than the vast majority of TBC content in all tiers. People just like to whine about how easy it is because they can clear the easy modes. The same people don't even try the hardest of the hard modes.

[Daez]

Level 60 raids were harder, patchwerk took 80% of a tank's hp with a hateful at 60.

Where your logic FAILS is that 1) tanks had less health in general than they do now which meant heals were stronger and 2) that tank had 5 healers assigned to him as compared to only having one healer on that tank today. I'm not trying to say that level 60 raids were not harder than Naxxaramas at 80, but honestly this was just a bad example.

[DruidFTW]

People say fights have easier mechanics nowdays, but thats because theyve seen all the fight mechanics before. The fights are just as hard/easy as they were before. Do X when required, dont do Y when required, and keep your dps/threat/heals on tank (pick one depending on your class) up.

Lich King certainly makes it a trillion times easier to gear up then it was in vanilla, so now it really only comes down to player skill.

Sadly, player skill as a whole seems to decreased a lot since vanilla, as has the general sense of community on servers.

[Hexus]

The normal modes generally aren't harder than tBC content, but Hard Modes are. There are challenges there for those so inclined.

[Deleted]

In vanilla getting the 40man together was sometimes a bit of a challenge In some cases it had to combine the forces of two guilds to get a raid going. Also nowdays the community is far bigger and all kinds of tactic pages and videos are found easier and they are in the web before the pathces go live so ppl can get familiar with the bosses/tacts before even getting in the raid itself.

Ofc the world firsts practice their way through the fights but most of the guilds nowdays just watch vids of how to do it and they don't even try to generate their own tactics. Addons are more efficient than before and warn about all boss abilities and practically tell what to do and when.

The normal mode bosses ain't as hard in WotLK as they were in TBC but there wasn't normal/hard modes in TBC so it's hard to compare this. The hard modes still gives challenge to the majority of guilds out there.

I'd say it would take much much longer for most guilds to down anything without all the info material available in the web nowdays as if they would need to practice the encounters and study the abilities of the bosses by themselves.

[pinkduck]

Some of the most challenging encounters in the game to date are available in wow-present. But at the same time, since blizzard started opening the game up to everyone with the hardmode/normal mode stuff, a lot of things have gotten easier. It depends which encounters you're doing. There's something for everyone. But at the least, people aren't as easily able to hold farming certain content (like BT) over anyone anymore because the normal modes are easy enough that almost anyone can do them and almost everyone's seen them.

As for coordination, it depends on the fight. Some fights require less coordination than others, but there are some that require a lot of it. We have very specific movement patterns for all 25 members of our raid in Anub'arak TOGC25 for example, and everything we do in that fight is scripted by us beforehand.

[Blaugrana1899]

Level 60 raids were harder, patchwerk took 80% of a tank's hp with a hateful at 60.

i hate how people keep saying this...

no, level 60 raids were not harder. in level 60 raids, 50% of the raiders could repeatedly press the same button over and over again in some kind of semi-afk trance. tank 'n' spank was everything it was really. in fact, i think lvl 60 raiding was pretty boring and blizz has truly improved this aspect of the game over the years.

so what was different then? why do people keep saying that everything's too easy nowadays and that BWL rocked so much!? i'll tell you why...

1. there weren't any PTR servers. you didn't have full walkthrough guides of every instance weeks before it was released. no one was datamining every little detail of the next patch, like the spells a boss has etc.
2. there were much less addons and some people refused to use those that were available (hell, i remember a time where raids using threat meters were called cheaters on the realmforums).
3. the general nerdyness was on a much lower level... you didn't have elitistjerks and other people calculating BiS gear and whatnot. people didn't care so much about optimizing everything.
4. getting the items you needed was ridiculously frustrating. walking through some poorly designed caves for months, without seeing that one sword you and a gazillion others in your raid need... that's not "hard", that's a stupid waste of time.
5. people had less experience. let's face it... if you've been raiding since vanilla, you've seen many, many bossfights. you're just harder to impress and of course, the mechanics repeat themselves. after all, WoW is just a game, not a magic jukebox of neverending surprises and joy.
6. people like to be nostalgic and think of the old times as the really good times. our brain tends to forget bad things in the past, so we don't get all depressed... i guess it's unevitable.

[Emiraly]

General opinion is that the Hard mode is where its at.

I loved WoW's raiding and it was the only exciting and properly functioning aspect of the game, but everything else was awful: leveling was a meaningless waste of time, I quit Arenas after I found a Warrior and Pally and facerolled upto 1950 with 38-0 in raiding gear, not being able to daily grind in peace - by myself - without paying for re-speccing Shadow, and re-speccing Shadow ;D (also why I quit Arenas).

If they made the Hard mode harder than tBC, I'd probably start up again, but I'm working as a an intern Prop Artist for a game company and I can barely waste time between Dragon Age/L4D2.

[Rellekk]

Wotlk is 150% EASIER then TBC...and TBC was about 75% easier then Vanilla.

The "hardmodes" of todays gaming was the standard difficulty of TBC

[Notdev]

Wotlk is 150% EASIER then TBC...and TBC was about 75% easier then Vanilla.

The "hardmodes" of todays gaming was the standard difficulty of TBC

But there weren't really any hard modes back in TBC.

Yogg 0 pre nerf was called the toughest encounter in the history of wow.

The normal modes are obviously easier, but the hard modes can still be challenging.

[playersup]

Wotlk is 150% EASIER then TBC...and TBC was about 75% easier then Vanilla.

The "hardmodes" of todays gaming was the standard difficulty of TBC

With the exception of prenerfed alpha Yogg + 0 and prenerfed alpha version of heroic firefighter.
Not many player will have seen these in their mind numbingly hardest form, only the ensidias and top 30-40 guilds at the time.
These 2 fights were definalty on par with prenerfed Muru. (Yogg + 0 being somewhat harder imo)
Rest of content is cake mode on normal, and the other hard modes are standard TBC prenerfed fights yea.

The normal modes generally aren't harder than tBC content, but Hard Modes are. There are challenges there for those so inclined.

No. Apart from a few fights, hard mode WotLK content is the same or easier than standard prenerfed TBC fights. Vashj and Kael are 2 prime example of being harder than any WotLK hard modes, with the exception of what i have already mentioned.

Nerfed TBC bosses (which is what most people would have seen) were probably easier than prenerfed WotLK hard modes, but are about the same difficulty as the nerfed hard modes you see now.


Quick mention of Dungeons aswell -

TBC Heroic Dungeons = very hard when released
WotLK Heroic Dungeons = Faceroll easy

[Daez]

Wotlk is 150% EASIER then TBC...and TBC was about 75% easier then Vanilla.

The "hardmodes" of todays gaming was the standard difficulty of TBC

I'm lazy, so I'm not going to check your profile, but why is it that I can assume that if I bothered to do so I would learn one of two things. Either 1) You never cleared most content in TBC (and if you did you did so after 3.0) or 2) You have no hard mode achievements.

Seriously, you can not honestly think that hard mode =/= normal mode in TBC. TBC had a crap load of gimic fights. They weren't hard they were just full of gimics. I've yet to see a mage or warlock have to tank in WotLK. Sure, you could argue priests have to tank in Naxxarams, but most priest figure out how to do that in about 10 seconds and aren't forced to respec and regear every single time they do it.

[playersup]

They weren't hard they were just full of gimics.

See my above post.

In terms of the use of this particular sentence youve just said, it can be applied to WotLK aswell.

"Fights arent hard, they are just gimicky."

Its stupid to make this sentence try to be applied to either WotLK or TBC, since every fight is gimicky and not hard if you want it to be

[Daez]

No. Apart from a few fights, hard mode WotLK content is the same or easier than standard prenerfed TBC fights. Vashj and Kael are 2 prime example of being harder than any WotLK hard modes, with the exception of what i have already mentioned.

Seriously...

What you fail to mention is that Vashj and Kael were END OF THE INSTANCE FIGHTS. What that means is the only thing you can realistically compare them to is Yogg (in hard mode seeing there were no easy modes in TBC), Anub'arak (in hard mode) and Arthas (in hard mode). The content was designed to be hard. They should actually most directly be compared to Yogg +0 though, and i just thought you said that was the hardest content in the game. You can't take Vashj and Kael and compare it to say +2 drakes and say that Vashj and Kael were harder because the content is by no means equivalent.

TBC Heroic Dungeons = very hard when released
WotLK Heroic Dungeons = Faceroll easy

Even when released, the vast majority of TBC heroics were face roll easy. You just had to have a little better gear but you could easily get there with crafted gear. If you had a paladin tank they were lol faceroll easy, but very few people played paladin tanks and even fewer people managed to gear their tanks well (poor itemization for the TBC mechanics of the paladin tank are to blame for much of that).

[Varalai]

I'm lazy, so I'm not going to check your profile, but why is it that I can assume that if I bothered to do so I would learn one of two things. Either 1) You never cleared most content in TBC (and if you did you did so after 3.0) or 2) You have no hard mode achievements.

I did, both are correct, he hasnt even cleared Ulduar 25 man.

My pov is that Pre-nerf Kael/Vashj were as tough as Hardmodes nowadays, our guild is still working on not dieing from Frost Bombs on Mimiron, but I -did- try FF pre nerf a while back just for the lulz, the horror.. wow..

Still, the best sollution for this kind of problem is to check it out yourself, but be ready to /facedesk when you see how easy some normal modes are. Hell; even some HMs in 10 mans are easy.

It's a pro if you start a toon or level an alt, you get geared fast, very fast, but as an old school raider I've lost the "epicness" of the epics in WOTLK.

[Daez]

Its stupid to make this sentence try to be applied to either WotLK or TBC, since every fight is gimicky and not hard if you want it to be

Actually, if you bothered to read past that sentence you would see that I explained what I meant by gimicy. How many resistance fights have we had that actually required resistance in WotLK? 1 or 2 maybe? Of those, they have required easily craftable gear. TBC resistance fights were very common and required gear you had to farm for weeks to get. Not to mention, how many times have warlocks and mages had to tank in WotLK? None? TBC required a warlock to tank hateful bolts in arcane resistance gear when Karazhan first came out and it also required warlocks to tank in SSC. It also required mages to tank in Grull's Lair. In order for those warlocks and mages to tank they didn't just have to have a completely different set of gear but often a completely different spec (and those were the days when respecs cost 50 gold each). Not to mention, before season 2 came out the only way the mages could gear for Grull's lair was to either have every green of stamina they could possibly get their hands on (which took a month to farm for yourself or thousands of gold on the AH) or to be arena junkies and get a full set of PvP gear.

[playersup]

Even when released, the vast majority of TBC heroics were face roll easy.

Negative.

Trash respawned every 15 minutes, 1 wipe meant clearing the whole place again.

This is such a moot point to argue, anyone who played TBC heroics at launch can tell you exaclty how hard they were compared to WotLK instances.

I played both, you are talking to somone who has been there, done it.

Some bosses in Vanilla Heroics couldnt even be beaten on launch. The void boss in that Arcatraz for example. PLaces required shadow resistance sets, fire resistance sets (mechanar) and a whole host of other things that made them impossibly difficult for the average player.

Its not even a close contest.

Most likely you played TBC after they all got nerfed, in which case you WOULD think they was easy