Has raiding become too overcomplicated/convoluted for it's own good?

[Toxigen]

Just out of curiosity, do you believe gamers back in the mid 00s would have a hard time picking up modern day rotations?

This is laughable.

The average gamer...say from '95 to '05, was of a much higher caliber.

Why? WoW opened up the floodgates to the mouthbreathing masses. Before, especially in the MMO community, players were a rather tight-knit group that were not endowed with this entitlement bullshit. If something was hard, ridiculously time-consuming, or "unfair"...we didn't hop on forums to bitch about it. We did what was necessary to "beat the content."

Those that couldn't hack it had two options: seek help from others and be willing to put in the effort to improve, or quit/wait for something else to do. That's the way the genre used to work, and it was better (those that disagree simply didn't experience it).

Strong players in EQ, Asheron's Call, DAOC, etc etc would have had NO problem learning today's playstyle/requirements to complete heroic content.

I miss the golden decade of MMOs.

[Felarion]

killed paragons yesterday on normal for the 1st time, it was one shoot (for me, my guild kill them for second time), and tbh we don't fuckin know what's happend. Just kill this, next this...bloods inc slow them dont let em rich the boss. Spread away with beam, stand on shoot line. rest of abilities don't matter really.

Now if i bring back memories from brutallus...omg that fuckin positioning,run away with burn spread it accidentally....Brutallus was way harder imo, and dat ninja pulls. I remeber we actually use some kind of graphic addon to let raid leader set up people (we used this for portal groups on kalec and brutallus), can't remeber the exact addon name.

[Kingradio]

Interesting thread...as far as Vashj and Kael are concerned, I think some people are forgetting (that is, if they actually did those bosses when they were current in the first place) how easy it was to die on those fights. People didn't have massive health pools, and there weren't the abundance of absorbs that exist for many classes today. As in many fights in Vanilla, the mechanics look a little simpler, but there was a small tolerance for errors.

As others have noted, most classes have many more ways of handling problems now than they did in Vanilla and BC. My guild did Vashj and Kael when they were still required for attunement to BT. I remember it took us about three weeks of serious attempts on Vashj, and we actually teamed with a more hardcore raid guild on our server to get Kael the first time. Both of those fights required a fair amount of organization -- for Vashj, we had to set up group positions and roles on the forum before the raid, and it became manageable.

As someone who did mostly MC, AQ20, ZG, and some BWL in Vanilla, and who has cleared pretty much everything hard mode/ Heroic from BC on, my viewpoint is that bosses in Vanilla and BC were just less forgiving, although generally less complex. And that is partly because gear and talents were crappy compared to now.

[Deleted]

@Kingradio

I think thats a pretty good way to put it. Not as complex fights back in the day, but less forgiving.
I do think that you can compare Kael'Thas with todays fights in terms of complexity. There was alot going on in that fight.

[mellowconundrum]

Honestly I find reading the encounter descriptions to be daunting and horrifying and I wonder into these raids thinking I am going to absolutely not know what to do, what this ability looks like, and what not.

But during the actual encounters? It's a lot less scary/complex. I really thought leading my guild through Sha of Pride was going to be a nightmare, but in reality it was easy.

Raids in Vanilla/BC mainly had few mechanics but those mechanics HURT. Nowadays it's more the combination of things that build up to kill you. Obviously we still see some moves that really put the hurt on but seem to be balanced around a raid not doing it's job.

I wouldn't say it's too complex yet but it's definitely more involved!

[Hulkovius]

Imo, from the hardcore perspective the fights have become more complex and blizzard is always trying to tune it perfectly for the hardcore raiders. Last man standing when boss dies and u know that your group has used every single cd, to get there. Overall its more complex with more elements than before and more "hard" stages during a boss fight.

Overall most raiding have become more complex to suit the general players, imo most players is decent and with the certain amount of knowledgement about your race and group dynamic the game is pretty simple.

But yeah as some ppl mentioned, checking the Dungeon Journal is sometimes missleading, there is hundreds of mechanics in there but rarely more than 5-10 rly important ones to keep in mind during an encounter. Some fights, perhaps even less than 5.

[Musta Kyy]

In vanilla and BC the hard part was getting enough gear for 40/25 people (especially resistance gear).
Now that is the easy part, get even half LFR and Flex gear and you are ready for Normal.
It's a lot better this way, I prefer skill over grinding.

[Deleted]

imagine if they would make something like onyxia scale cloak a requirement for some bosses.. would be interesting to see the reaction :P

[TEHPALLYTANK]

imagine if they would make something like onyxia scale cloak a requirement for some bosses.. would be interesting to see the reaction :P

They did add a boss like that. His name is Ordos.

[Inthislzon]

They did add a boss like that. His name is Ordos.

Yup, because legendary chain started on 5.4 right?

ACtually that same analogy could hold if ordos was the first boss on SoO heroic and legendary chain started on 5.4

[Brakthir]

This is laughable.

The average gamer...say from '95 to '05, was of a much higher caliber.

Why? WoW opened up the floodgates to the mouthbreathing masses. Before, especially in the MMO community, players were a rather tight-knit group that were not endowed with this entitlement bullshit. If something was hard, ridiculously time-consuming, or "unfair"...we didn't hop on forums to bitch about it. We did what was necessary to "beat the content."

Those that couldn't hack it had two options: seek help from others and be willing to put in the effort to improve, or quit/wait for something else to do. That's the way the genre used to work, and it was better (those that disagree simply didn't experience it).

Strong players in EQ, Asheron's Call, DAOC, etc etc would have had NO problem learning today's playstyle/requirements to complete heroic content.

I miss the golden decade of MMOs.

I like how you state your opinion like it's a fact. I also like how wrong your opinion is.

[Txiv]

I like how you state your opinion like it's a fact. I also like how wrong your opinion is.

I don't know if I could agree either, i know eq players who have said wow is to complex to get into. A lot of it could just be " you know what you know" but I don't think people were particularly better then. In general video games are much faster paced than old games, go back and play the original golden eye if your a fan of fps. You will laugh how slow the world moves.

[Akylios]

I don't know if I could agree either, i know eq players who have said wow is to complex to get into. A lot of it could just be " you know what you know" but I don't think people were particularly better then.

Well, Dark Age of Camelot was probably a better example than Everquest. You had a large amount of skills to use in DAOC, and your opponents were groups of humans. Most group fights were over in just a few seconds, yet in those few seconds you had to make an insane amount of split second decisions to not only bring down the enemy group, but to make sure your own group survived. You'd be keeping an eye out for dispels, damage spells, crowd control effects, heals, big cooldowns, priority targets and so on and so forth. You'd even have to keep an eye out for random stealthers who'd pop up out of nowhere, and make damn sure you weren't engaging in a group fight near an enemy zerg.

Dark Age of Camelot was a very, very high skill PvP MMORPG, and a very good one at that. Sadly Mythic slowly destroyed the game, in their attempt to make it more and more like Everquest.

In general video games are much faster paced than old games, go back and play the original golden eye if your a fan of fps. You will laugh how slow the world moves.

As far as faster paced FPS games goes, I recommend you check out Quake, Quake 3 or even Painkiller. They're much faster paced than anything I've found these days. I consider myself an FPS player above anything else (as far as gaming goes), yet every decent FPS game I've tried since Quake 3 makes me feel like my characters are walking around with lead weights tied to their boots.

[Deleted]

Brutallus was a dps test Boss not complicated not even back then ;-) you could compare patchy with brutallus.
Just compare it to the freeloot first boss in soo that boss is the easiest boss ever in wow history with the lootship, no its easier than lootship.

[Fluttershy]

No boss is easier than lucifron.

[Redpanda]

my take on it. It has to get more complex or it gets boring. HAving the same mechanics on more than one fight will make things getting old really fast got to mix it up. Right now for the fights I have done they are nice departures and its only going to bet better.

[iggie]

No boss is easier than lucifron.

Rage winterchill.


The problem with raiding is hardmodes. Three difficulties: LFR FLEX and Normal, normal being tuned a bit harder than normal but easier than heroic. Great so when you kill a boss for the first time, it's now on farm. There is no harder mode to learn, that's the only incarnation you will kill. Loved it like that in Vanilla/BC/Early WLK.

[Marsc92]

This is laughable.

The average gamer...say from '95 to '05, was of a much higher caliber.

Not at all true. If E-Sports has given any indication, the quality of players consistently improves as time goes on. Old SC, Dota, Lol pros are no longer considered world class for example after only a few years ago being considered the best in the world.

Why? WoW opened up the floodgates to the mouthbreathing masses.

This is just a needless insult. All wow did was make a more accessible MMO that was marketed well and in particular to a younger generation. Wow wouldn't be the game it was/is if not for that. Where is Asheron's Call now? or Dark Age? 50k subs 5 years ago, I'm sure its since declined.

Before, especially in the MMO community, players were a rather tight-knit group that were not endowed with this entitlement bullshit. If something was hard, ridiculously time-consuming, or "unfair"...we didn't hop on forums to bitch about it. We did what was necessary to "beat the content."

This is in every way untrue. It's human nature to expect a sense of entitlement from doing things. The only exceptions were when we did thing for novelty purposes or for a sense of achievement (such as kerafyrm). Just like now. Some members of younger generations definitely seem to have a greater sense of entitlement, its not to say we never had it ourselves.

And we did complain/bitch when things weren't fun. Hell, we had every right to do it then and every right to do it now. Opening the Gates to AQ was fun and gave a sense of achievement. But its not something Id EVER participate in again. If something doesn't feel fun, then game designers aren't doing their job because after all we have a choice regarding what MMOs we wish to play and if I feel bored or like I'm not having fun, then I may very well pick up final fantasy or EQ:Next when its released.

Those that couldn't hack it had two options: seek help from others and be willing to put in the effort to improve, or quit/wait for something else to do. That's the way the genre used to work, and it was better (those that disagree simply didn't experience it).

Better? The market lacked any real competition so thats how it worked. It wasn't better. The genre is better now because I as a player have choices. If I feel like what Im doing is boring or isn't fun, i can choose to play another game or do something else. Let me tell you something. Grinding isn't fun for me. It isnt fun for a lot of people. It's a very primitive concept/mechanic that most MMOs introduced as a way of lengthening play time without introducing real content, I used to work in the industry. Whilst I was never directly involved in the production of a game itself, grinding was a way of breaking up a game's unique content, take early RPGs like Final Fantasy. You would regularly have to bring your progression of the storyline to a halt to grind up your party because they were too weak to defeat a boss or survive several random encounters.

Why has every single genre evolved to a point where grinding is integrated increasingly less? Because it's a poor way to inflate a user's playtime without real effort.

Strong players in EQ, Asheron's Call, DAOC, etc etc would have had NO problem learning today's playstyle/requirements to complete heroic content.

You couldn't be more wrong. I find it hard keeping up with heroic raiding to the point where I left my heroic raiding guild because I felt like too much of a burden.

I miss the simplicity of Vanilla raiding, not because it was better, but because I felt less pressured. Remember Thaddius?

My old guild forced us to all download BigWigs because it would tell us to go left/right. We seriously considered this fight really hard. By the time I came back during early wrath, this mechanic seemed much much easier.

The game is MUCH harder nowadays. Much. Give your opinions I doubt you raided since vanilla and still raid today because everyone Ive spoken to who I know has, agrees with this sentiment.

I miss the golden decade of MMOs.

It's just nostalgia buddy.

[Akylios]

Not at all true. If E-Sports has given any indication, the quality of players consistently improves as time goes on. Old SC, Dota, Lol pros are no longer considered world class for example after only a few years ago being considered the best in the world.

You cannot compare WoW to games such as Dota, LoL or SC in this context. To reach the top in those games you have to practice 10+ hours a day almost every day of the year. No raiding guild is even remotely close to showing such amount of dedication, and they honestly don't need to. The skill ceiling is much lower in World of Warcraft than say Starcraft. You don't need to play 10+ hours a day, every day of the year, just to stand a chance of competing with the best.

So unlike the games you mentioned, there is little to indicate raiders need years to reach their skill caps in World of Warcraft. At least not those who have already been gaming for a decade or more. The much more dynamic nature of your opponents in SC, LoL and DOTA alone makes sure of that.

You couldn't be more wrong. I find it hard keeping up with heroic raiding to the point where I left my heroic raiding guild because I felt like too much of a burden.

Everyone's different, Marsc92. Like you I started raiding back in Everquest. I'm someone who played multiple MMORPGs before I ever picked up World of Warcraft. So WoW was nothing new or special to me, it was just yet another MMORPG. I have no special feelings towards classic in general and I think it was a much worse game than WoW is today. So don't take me as some staunch defender of Classic as the best game ever.

That being said, after picking World of Warcraft up for the first time in 6 years, I made easy work of most heroic modes. My guild was made up of almost nothing but old friends from classic, who hadn't raided at all since Naxxramas, yet we killed most normal mode encounters in less than 3 tries and most heroic mode encounters in less than a night trying. Some heroic mode encounters we killed in under 5 tries.

But then again, most of us were old Quake players as well, so it's not like we used to be terrible gamers back in the day. That being said, we're all around 40 these days, so we're far from our glory days of gaming, but picking up today's raiding game came very easily to us. Most of what we had to learn, we learned right away on our first few brutal tries on normal mode Stone Guard, but as oddly as it may sound, simply bringing down normal mode Stone Guard was about all the learning curve we needed. That was only ~15 pulls worth of a learning curve. The rest of T14 normal mode we killed in 1-5 tries (with the exception of the gear check called Garalon). So yeah, we oneshot some of the bosses without even having any bossmod addons (we installed them for Heroic Modes).

So as I say, everyone is different. Thankfully my small group of old farts managed to do well in MOP, before family obligations sort of forced us to disband again back in June. At that point we were at 7/13 HC TOT on only 3-5 hours of raiding each week. Not too bad, for such old farts!

[iggie]

You couldn't be more wrong. I find it hard keeping up with heroic raiding to the point where I left my heroic raiding guild because I felt like too much of a burden.

I miss the simplicity of Vanilla raiding, not because it was better, but because I felt less pressured. Remember Thaddius?

My old guild forced us to all download BigWigs because it would tell us to go left/right. We seriously considered this fight really hard. By the time I came back during early wrath, this mechanic seemed much much easier.

The game is MUCH harder nowadays. Much. Give your opinions I doubt you raided since vanilla and still raid today because everyone Ive spoken to who I know has, agrees with this sentiment.

One could argue mods have forced the difficulty to increase (but I blame hard modes). A lot of the difficulty in Vanilla was discovering and debugging boss mechanics (twin emps stuck in my mind for this, figuring out the tele and agro and whatnot).

For thaddius I taped post it notes to my monitor, to remember which way is what polarity. Our lone aussie would sit way away using throw weapon due to latency