With todays player knowledge, skill and tech, will raids and dungeons be roflstomped?

[Oakshana]

We have better tools for measuring items' worth and better understanding of itemisation.

Many things were overlooked back in the day, but now we have software that allows going through all items for 40-60 lvl chars w/o any major issues. We can sim millions of variations.

Something w/ shitty stats, but weird equip effect may end up being OP af if played correctly, whereas back in the no one would even look at that item.

You really didn't play WoW back then... did you? People had TWO years to figure all this stuff out. We had plenty of tools and addons. DBM was a thing, stat weights and theory crafters were a thing... all of this stuff existed. No one is going to find some magical rosetta stone that suddenly shows us the secret door to OP play in Classic.

Bosses had three distinct variables: 1. Did the tank have enough health, 2. Could the healers keep everyone up, 3. Did the DPS do enough damage fast enough for 1 & 2 to matter.

There is no OP gear that is suddenly going to spike your DPS up, or give the tank a massive health pool or give healers this endless pool of mana.

People will have to learn how to downrank spells to conserve mana, dps is going to have to ACTIVELY watch their threat because you could easily pull off a tank... that's just how it was. Look, I'm not trying to be mean or snarky here... I am saying that your view on this is very wrong IF Classic is released truly as it was.

- - - Updated - - -

Also, lest I forget... this is FORTY person raids. Not 10 or 25... 40. It's like herding cats to be a raid leader back then. You've seen the "MOAR DOTS" video with the raid leader screaming -50 DKP? That's very exaggerated... but that's kind of how it was.

And then you have TWO pieces of gear on average from bosses. And you use that to gear your raid of forty people.

It's going to take time and will NOT be piss easy

[Einsz]

The top % of WoW players won't bother with classic servers and focus on live version instead so nope.

[Wiedzemir]

Players today have a ton of more experience, knowledge, skill, tech and awareness compared to players in 2004. Do you think the dungeons and raid will be piss easy now?

No, raids in vanilla were easy. It was hard to prepare to them. You had to get the right gear with right stats\resistances. Almost all of the raid boss encounters in vanilla were gear checks, mechanics were either non existent at all (patchwerk) or very primitive. It was never that hard to raid in the original WoW, you just had to have the right gear.

[ls-]

You really didn't play WoW back then... did you? People had TWO years to figure all this stuff out. We had plenty of tools and addons. DBM was a thing, stat weights and theory crafters were a thing... all of this stuff existed. No one is going to find some magical rosetta stone that suddenly shows us the secret door to OP play in Classic.

Wow, you're really naive, if you believe that nothing will change gear-wise... >_>

And yeah, I did play, I raided BWL/MC and was in a relatively good guild that's good enough to sell BWL boosts regularly, but I played Vanilla only till 1.9 or so.

I also noticed that my Vanilla experience when it comes to community, ninjalooting and reputation is quite different from many people here

[shaunika123]

The top % of WoW players won't bother with classic servers and focus on live version instead so nope.

if blizzard has any sense they'll try to release content in vanilla at times where there's a content lull on live, so I dont think that would become a problem

[Oftenwrongsoong]

No, the grind of obtaining gear to progress and get through instances with ease will still take a very long time.

Most people forget, but it usually was not until level 30 that you had a piece of gear in every slot--and 25% of them were still probably grey items and another 25% probably had secondary stats unhelpful to your class. Think about that for a second. And when you get to raid, only 2 tier tokens drop... for 40 people. And if you're Alliance, yes, the Shaman tier piece can and will drop.

Once enough people are geared up, then yes, it will be run through with ease like it was when WoW Classic was live.

[epLe]

Class complexity peaked somewhere in Cata/MoP. It most certainly wasn't during vanilla.

Never said it was most complex in vanilla. But Cataclysm introduced the talent butchering, which screwed most of it. MoP gave the ability prune.

So it actually peaked in Wrath, and plummeted in Cata/MoP.

[SilenceRedo]

Aww, the delussive minds of vanilla smogs saying raids back then weren't harder mechanic-wise. Good thing some people have memory.

[Oakshana]

Wow, you're really naive, if you believe that nothing will change gear-wise... >_>

And thanks, I raided BWL/MC and was in a relatively good guild that's good enough to sell BWL boosts regularly, but I played Vanilla only till 1.9 or so.

That's the point I am making. If they are releasing WoW... as a classic experience... as it WAS back in the day... WHY would anything change?

If you make everything easy like it is now; leveling, gearing, gold, etc etc etc... if you change the talents or the stats on gear and it's not like it was back in the day... HOW IS THAT CLASSIC WOW? It's not. it's just retail with old world content. Which is not the same.

[Deleted]

Aww, the delussive minds of vanilla smogs saying raids back then weren't harder mechanic-wise. Good thing some people have memory.

WTF?

Bosses had 3-4 mechanics(most of the time, do X amount of DPS/Healing before he blows up).

Trash mobs today in raids are more complex and harder.

The challenge in Vanilla comes from gearing thou. Once geared you can ROFLSTOMP(but not before and most likely not before many weeks).

[Wiedzemir]

Aww, the delussive minds of vanilla smogs saying raids back then weren't harder mechanic-wise. Good thing some people have memory.

I think the problem stems from the fact that when people say "Vanilla was harder and slower", they mean leveling and the overall experience, not raids in particular. Even Naxx wasn't farmed by most people simply because there wasn't enough time between it and TBC. However, when today's player hears "Vanilla was harder and slower" he thinks about raids because raids became all there is in WoW for many years, raiding is the pinnacle and the endgame of WoW nowadays. That was not the case in vanilla.

[Teri]

If it starts in a 1.12 like patch, MC/Onyxia/BWL will be cleared much faster.

Combine that with better computers/connections and in-depth knowledge of the same fights.

Basic Dungeon gear was much worse before multiple updates, and tuning of item stats, additional crafted gear, 20 mans etc.

People can likely get away with less fire resistance & such in better blues for MC, but onyxia scale cloaks should still be required to survive Nef.

Half the part of raiding was preparation, fire resist/nature resist/frost resist etc.

[Direpenguin]

I love all the "things are so much harder now, because we are so much more awesome at playing with pixels" nonsense. Yeah, mechanics are as complicated as they are because you have DBM and Bigwigs warning you when things are happening. Trying playing the game without your 20+ hand-holding mods and then see how awesome you are.

[Oakshana]

Never said it was most complex in vanilla. But Cataclysm introduced the talent butchering, which screwed most of it. MoP gave the ability prune.

So it actually peaked in Wrath, and plummeted in Cata/MoP.

I disagree.

From Vanilla to Wrath, if you wanted to be a competent player, you took SPECIFIC talents with little to no variation. Period. There were cookie cutter builds that any raider with a brain would use if they wanted to have a spot in raid. Sure, you could take different talents cause you wanted, or put ALL your points into one tree, but you werent serious about raiding. And the bulk of all those talents were just ranks of increasing damage on some abilities, or mitigation of others, or increasing crit, etc etc etc.

When they redid the way talents were in Cata, they simply baked all those ability increases in, since everyone took them anyway. All that was taken away was you getting that 1,2,3,4,5% increase to ability X over 10 levels and the ability to check a box every other level. You STILL got those talent increases.

And the other talents that would simply be mandatory for you to take for a specific tree? Shadowform for Spriest, Moonkin form for a Boomkin, Mortal Strike for an Arms Warrior, Mutilate for an assassination rogue? They made those base line. And then they started giving you more diverse abilities to choose from that you wouldnt have had otherwise. Being able to choose, as a rogue, between Shadowstep and Killing Spree REGARDLESS of spec, was far far far more interesting than adding yet another 1% damage to backstab.

I get that people loved the old talent trees. But I do no understand why they fool themselves into thinking the new trees butchered everything when all they did was give you what you already took anyway and gave you more viable choices between activated abilities, cooldowns and passives.

[ls-]

That's the point I am making. If they are releasing WoW... as a classic experience... as it WAS back in the day... WHY would anything change?

If you make everything easy like it is now; leveling, gearing, gold, etc etc etc... if you change the talents or the stats on gear and it's not like it was back in the day... HOW IS THAT CLASSIC WOW? It's not. it's just retail with old world content. Which is not the same.

Blizz don't need to change anything. We (well, theorecrafters mostly ) will streamline and optimise the whole thing quite significantly. We now see and know much more than we knew back in 2005. Inevitably, there'll be shortcuts in gearing, better and more options when it comes to what you can and should equip.

Like they say, hindsight is 20/20.

The most important part is that it'll be available to everyone because it's 2017 and there's guides, class discords and other shit for every single aspect of the game.

And don't get me started on the addons.

[Rotted]

It won't be as hard

1) Players, even 'casual' know things have mechanics
2) Most players who are going to play will have seen these mechanics in past (LFR for MC), or solo'd them
3) People want to be there as a choice, its not current so it makes a big difference if you get me.
4) Peoples computers have significantly improved. I was speaking to a raider last night who cleared vanilla content. He said the problem with 40 man raids and the era of wow was a lot of raiders were running toasters, lagging through out entire encounters etc.

[Oakshana]

I love all the "things are so much harder now, because we are so much more awesome at playing with pixels" nonsense. Yeah, mechanics are as complicated as they are because you have DBM and Bigwigs warning you when things are happening. Trying playing the game without your 20+ hand-holding mods and then see how awesome you are.

Ummmmm... we had Deadly Boss Mods in vanilla. In fact, it was required in most guilds. We also had to have threat meters because it was insanely easy to do enough damage to pull off the tank. So.. yeah, we had tools to monitor all that shit.

I dont disagree with your idea that fights were hard back then. They were. But we had a lot of he mainstream tools we have now to alert us to stuff. >.>

[Wiedzemir]

Blizz don't need to change anything. We (well, theorecrafters mostly ) will streamline and optimise the whole thing quite significantly.

You forgot to add "in theory". In reality your theories are useless even in the current WoW.

We now see and know much more than we knew back in 2005. Inevitably, there'll be shortcuts in gearing, better and more options when it comes to what you can and should equip.

Like they say, hindsight is 20/20.

And it'll be available to everyone because it's 2017 and there's guides, class discords and other shit for every single aspect of the game.

And this is pointless. Sure there will be a bunch of strange people who try to play Classic like it's something relevant. Majority won't care about competitive raid progression. That train is long gone, crashed and is rusting on a scrapyard.

Classic isn't something new and shiny to conquer, it's an old game which you play for the same reason people play 10-20 years old RPG today. Nostalgia, different type of gameplay, completely different philosophy of gaming in general.

[SilenceRedo]

WTF?

Bosses had 3-4 mechanics(most of the time, do X amount of DPS/Healing before he blows up).

Trash mobs today in raids are more complex and harder.

The challenge in Vanilla comes from gearing thou. Once geared you can ROFLSTOMP(but not before and most likely not before many weeks).

That's what I'm saying. Vanilla bosses are a joke, were a joke backthen and any mythic raider from today who played vanilla can say that. It's some people installing the myth that raiding has harder in vanilla.

However, when today's player hears "Vanilla was harder and slower" he thinks about raids because raids became all there is in WoW for many years, raiding is the pinnacle and the endgame of WoW nowadays. That was not the case in vanilla.

That I agree, but for me raiding always has been the pinacle of the game. I do not like (never did) pvp, and never gave a shit about other things in the game like colecting, exploring, role playing. I was a teen back then (29 as of this year), so the moment I could raid no longer I quit the game. I get there's a ton of people who loved vanilla and don't care about raiding, to me world of warcraft is just that, raiding, and was since vanilla.

[Heathy]

If it starts in a 1.12 like patch, MC/Onyxia/BWL will be cleared much faster.

Combine that with better computers/connections and in-depth knowledge of the same fights.

Basic Dungeon gear was much worse before multiple updates, and tuning of item stats, additional crafted gear, 20 mans etc.

People can likely get away with less fire resistance & such in better blues for MC, but onyxia scale cloaks should still be required to survive Nef.

Half the part of raiding was preparation, fire resist/nature resist/frost resist etc.

when ppl started getting some tier 1, i don't think fire resistance was super important at least, you could use like the drakefire amulet, cape if you had it + pala aura would put you over 100-110 which for me was enough fire resist for raggy once ppl started getting gear. at the start first few kills it probably helped to stack resists as high as possible over damage gear and everyone using fire protection potions but once you've cleared molten core 5 or so times raggy starts dying faster and faster so the resists aren't such a big deal eventually you'll just kill him before your healers go oom or before he submerges.

its the amount of time it takes to farm for legendaries and leafs/eyes. ppl want their bows and staffs, hands of rag and bindings so you end up clearing the place a shit ton of times anyway. for example i remember clearly we got to the point where noone wanted the leaf any more but we did want more eyes and ofc leaf leaf leaf in a row. its just time consuming in the end needing to farm the raids for gear, hoping the gear ppl need drops.