Classic Raiding: Then and Now

[Nmb1ez]

ZG, ZA and Ulduar were brilliantly designed and wonderfully introduced to the game.

Seems to me as if they introduce one good raid per expansion (of course this is an opinion).

[Morhaz]

Well, I'm not gonna say wether or not the old days where better or worse than today, but i do remember I personaly had a more "epic" feeling after getting down new bosses in both MC, BWL, AQ40 and a few tries in old Naxx. Nothing have even come close to the screaming on TS when we downed Ragnaros for the first time. But I don't raid "hardcore" today, and the feeling might stil be there for some.

I remember a guild member outting on follow to go to soccer practise during a MC run, and then return an hour and a half later without anyone noticing anything. It was a lot easier to slack during a 40 man raid.

I like the 10 man raids today, as it feels a lot more like each person is a essencial pice of the pusse, and I like that it only takes about a week to gear up an alt so that he is ready for raiding. And I don't mind that all the atunment quests where removed.

If any of the old gang from QT (the carebear realm) read this, hope you are all doing great, and my best wishes from Morhaz

Movie of a Ragnaros kill:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...5388271513953#

And an old movie that I made, might bring back memories for some:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...8&hl=no&emb=1#

[vlad43210]

My fondest memories of Vanilla are leveling and questing, since I got to raid like, twice (once was MC and I saw Lucifron and Magmadar die!).

Leveling was rough. I started smart, x hours each day to level... then it stretched to "x experience each day." By the high 50s, I was pulling 10 hour days.

Most quests were easy, some quests were painfully tough. I am still immensely proud of the fact that I got Ony attuned (Alliance) in Vanilla. WITHOUT help from my guild, which had about 5 lvl 60s (maybe 3 were on any given time). The Marshal escort quest was pretty much pulling teeth. People failed it left and right, and only half the failures were actually due to the Marshal dying. He got stuck, people moved out of range and failed, everything that could go wrong, went wrong. This on top of a gigantic quest chain. When I finally got to the event part (which was also bugged, 2 or 3 times) I was incredibly proud of myself.

Quick shout-out to no mounts until level 40, and no "real" mounts until level 60. The level 60 mount (the warlock one) was probably the biggest Vanilla achievement I had. It definitely felt bigger than many of the achievements today, which are gotten accidentally. What was it, 600G in mats? Plus several insane quests? Plus that great survival battle in DM?

Thottbot was actually not too bad, I don't know why people hated it so. Progress at 60, however, was painfully slow. I got 1 D0 piece and then realized that the sheer difficulty of getting it upgraded made even my leveling marathons pale in comparison.

Dungeons were insane. Pugs were incompetent, to a fault. Guild runs fell apart as people got lost. I believe I got to see the end of every 5-man level 80 dungeon, plus both UBRS and LBRS, but it took many, many failed runs. People had a lot of patience, however. Pugs were happy to wipe dozens of times even as people got aggravated, few people up and left after first wipe (simply because they knew they had *no* chance of getting into another run until the next day, at best).

Ok, enough reminiscing out of me.

[Gunwolf]

This is just an example of some good and bad of vanilla...

Good:

One thing I liked was the 5 mans were carefully planned, and certain classed were needed for certain dungeons, like locks in DM or Pallys in scholo/strat. I remember the baron in scholo was a tough ass fight unless you had a paladin to turn evil on his guards so you could take him on....lol. Certain classes could CC in only certain dungeons, and some like druids would shine in stuff with dragonkin ect.


Bad:

Having to get a whole guild effort just to ugprade tier gear. Not only did it cost alot, but a variety of mats, and lots of dungeon crawling and rep gaining to upgrade tier. Not to mention most guilds barely got into BWL.

[bahumut5]

I didn't read everything in this Thread, but I'd though I'd mention you might want to add "Add-ons" to the OP (Original Post).

Add-Ons have improved over the years, and are taking away a lot of "Difficult Decisions" and everything else of the kind. They are truly one of the reasons that raiding has changed so drastically.