Vanilla wasn't hard, it was annoying

[God Save The King]

Reminds me of the post I made there :

No, it's more the moving goalpost of the anti-Vanilla crowd which redefines what "difficulty" means on the fly so to exclude whatever was in Vanilla. You can sum up 90 % of their argument with "X isn't making the game more difficult, just more tedious". Replace "X" with whatever the guy wants to discard. And so we often reach comically stupid argument like "having a mob with higher damage and HP doesn't make the game harder". Sure, mate, sure.

Ah, but I am pro-vanilla. So unfortunately, it does not apply!

[Yassy]

I mean Dark Souls is considered hard because the game punishes you with progression loss for failing. Vanilla was the same way. C'thun run backs were literally a half an hour long.

Is that more mechanically difficult? No. it was difficult in a different way.

[Rupenbritz]

I believe we already established you didn't actually play in Classic?

Who?

You didnt raid in Vanilla, so your opinion on raiding nowdays vs vanilla doesnt really count mate. I don't understand your arguing logic at all, seems nobody does.

[God Save The King]

Who?

You didnt raid in Vanilla, so your opinion on raiding nowdays vs vanilla doesnt really count mate. I don't understand your arguing logic at all, seems nobody does.

It was a joke based on the other thread, in case you missed it!

Also, most people get what I am saying. Seems you and Akka miss it though :/

[Deleted]

I need to send a DM to someone so I post ... things, I guess.

[Infracted]

[Teri]

Cannot compare some 1.12 server vs 1.1 launch.

Gear from quests/dungeons and raids got tuned/updated multiple times, classes got updated multiple times.

2005 Molten Core was vastly different from 2006 Molten Core. Even if the raid itself barely changed. Big difference in power levels and alternative ways of gearing up.

[Rupenbritz]

It was a joke based on the other thread, in case you missed it!

Also, most people get what I am saying. Seems you and Akka miss it though :/

http://mmo4ever.com/ravencrest/character/Rupenbritz/

actually found myself back in the day :P #proof
Didnt raid much on Ravencrest tho, not until I transferred to Ahn'Qiraj server that I started seriously.

[RapBreon]

Who?

You didnt raid in Vanilla, so your opinion on raiding nowdays vs vanilla doesnt really count mate. I don't understand your arguing logic at all, seems nobody does.

His point is even that far removed from this point:

I agree, like what makes the game harder if not being more unforgiving?
Adds (target swapping), movement (from spells/bombs) only apply to boss fights. Not the game overall.

Grinding was much harder in vanilla. This alone meant;
1. Slower levelling
2. Slower rep farming
2. Slower gold farming
3a. Dungeons took longer
3b. Gearing takes longer

He's literally just stating is requires a different set of skills to succeed in Vanilla as opposed to Legion. That these skills:

Adds (target swapping), movement (from spells/bombs) only apply to boss fights. Not the game overall.

Are more important now as opposed to these skills:

Grinding was much harder in vanilla. This alone meant;
1. Slower levelling
2. Slower rep farming
2. Slower gold farming
3a. Dungeons took longer
3b. Gearing takes longer

You guys aren't even disagreeing much. It's just a difference of values.

[God Save The King]

http://mmo4ever.com/ravencrest/character/Rupenbritz/

actually found myself back in the day :P #proof
Didnt raid much on Ravencrest tho, not until I transferred to Silvermoon that I started seriously.

Impressive. I never cared for pvp, didn't even get a rank :/

[Deleted]

Only thing that was better with classic was the community, guilds, (social responsibility), and world PvP.

^this, I highly doubt it will ever come back, ... sadly

[God Save The King]

His point is even that far removed from this point:

He's literally just stating is requires a different set of skills to succeed in Vanilla as opposed to Legion. That these skills:

Are more important now as opposed to these skills:
You guys aren't even disagreeing much.

Thank you for summarizing what I was trying to convey. Different skillset is a good phrase!

[RapBreon]

Thank you for summarizing what I was trying to convey. Different skillset is a good phrase!

No problem! I think they've 'tagged' you as an enemy, once that happens well, it gets harder.

[Akka]

Well I wasn't giving an all-encompassing list, leveling wise? Sure Vanilla required more awareness as pulling extra was a mistake harder to recover from. 'Difficult content wise' (Raiding, M+)? Pft, no. Legion checked awareness way more. Same for decision making.

Again though, convincing me that Vanilla is harder in terms of player skill (in the holistic sense, rather than sub-concepts) as a whole game, you're not going to get far without using that expacs 'most challenging content'. That is to say raiding or PvP. I've already argued that leveling is harder due to the decreased margin for error, but not the 'hard stuff' is definitely 'easier' for me than Legion.

Depends.

For Mythic raiding, yeah, probably ; we didn't went far enough during Vanilla to be actually able to make relevant comparisons (comparing MC to Mythic is pointless, it's Naxx40 and maybe the second part of AQ40 which would be relevant), but I'm ready to accept that mythic raiding is harder than Vanilla raids.

For leveling ? Vanilla is harder by a mile. Not "hard", but "harder". I need to pay attention in Vanilla, I can actually die, and I often have to actually use my skills (both as a player and with my character) to survive some encounters. I don't remember anything like that in current WoW.

For dungeons ? Comparisons are difficult to do, because Legion is more about rushing (timer) while Vanilla is more about simply completing the dungeon. Also, what would be the adequate comparison ? Normal ? Heroic ? Mythic ? Mythic +2 ? Mythic +5 ? Mythic +10 ? Add to that the extreme power difference due to gear (in Vanilla, your power in full T2 compared to your power in full blue is maybe +20 to +30 % ; in Legion, your power in full blues compared to Nighthold is what, +400 to +500 % ? More ?), it makes any comparison even less significant.

PvP, I don't really know and I simply don't care. I hate PvP

What's the easiest way to describe Legion vs. Classic? Oh! I know! Legion: The easier stuff is easier and the harder stuff is harder!

Which come to think of it, was most likely their intended goal.

It's somewhat true, but I think it misses very important stuff.
Like "the easy stuff" in Legion is EVERYTHING but Heroic/Mythic raiding and high-end Mythic dungeons. That's more like "everything in Vanilla is harder, save for the fringe top 5-10 % of content".
Also, the TYPE of difficulty is different. Legion is all about "do your rotation and move". Vanilla is more about "manage the fight". Legion is very "self-centered" (you're focused on what YOU do and don't really give a shit about what others do, and nearly every change to the game since WotLK has been about removing other's effect on your performance and concentrating everything in each player's hands), while Vanilla is very "group-centered" (you depend on others for a lot more, and managing a big fight involves depending on what others do, like typically threat).

Legion general gameplay is also nearly entirely focused on "output" ("how much healing do you do", "how much damage do you do", "how much damage can you take") while Vanilla is more about situational awareness/skills and, again, "management". There is little gameplay maximizing your damage ("rotations" are very simplistic) but a lot of gameplay to mitigate shit hitting the fan (crowd control, slowing down foes, managing threat and mana, etc.).

[Bodakane]

I really feel like people are going to be in for a rude awakening.

Touting vanilla has become a "thing". When the reality of it hits them, they will leave in droves.

[crazyman2]

That argument about vanilla being "harder" because you can only pull one mob at a time is missing a major point - this is about gear, and if you go to Argus with a 750 ilvl you're still going to be in for a bad time. Likewise, you could probably faceroll everything if you had high end raid gear in vanilla (I admit that I can't verify that for vanilla, but you certainly could in TBC, I played a warlock had got into sunwell, as affliction you could pull just as much as you can today, although dual spec wasn't a thing and I was usually destruction unless I was doing pvp.

The difference isn't that it's so "easy" now, it's that they make an effort so that anyone can get to 110 and enter current raid content immediately, as opposed to the issue where if you hit 60 in 2006, you were never ever seeing high end content, the catchup just got worse and worse. I missed the raider bus in vanilla, managed to get on it TBC, and as much fun as I had back then, I think it was necessary for the survival of the game to get more players into current raid content.

[msdos]

I think Vanilla would be even easier now that I'm older and know how to actually play. Crap took longer because people couldn't min/max as easily (by easily I mean access to information and charts and sims etc) and didn't know what they were doing. There was no way to tell what stat increased what, you kinda had to ask in general chat. Agi gave some classes attack power, str gave others attack power, but str didn't give shamans attack power, so you saw them running around with str gear all the time, a lot of the shaman stuff has str on it.
How many people today who came into WoW during retail are going to know how to choose the proper weapon for a vanilla melee?

Looking back at AQ 40 and Naxx 40, there was just a lot more stuff to monitor. You had your abilities but then you also had to pay attention to buffs. Buff/debuff monitoring was crucial; that's basically the aspect of the game they've completely phased out. We don't even have class buffs anymore.
I remember the raid lead freaking the hell out if there was no Curse of Elements on the boss, like stupid little dumb stuff like that, but made gigantic difference in a 40 man.

Tanking and healing was definitely more difficult, looking back. Tanks and everyone actually had to monitor aggro, the game was extremely more aggro "dumpy", tanks only had thunderclap for AOE, you had to apply sunders and you had to cap a stat that did nothing for your survivability. Healing was the same-ish as today, except you had 40 lives to worry about and instead of having just your bread and butter heals on your bar, you had your bread and butter plus an entirely new bar just for down-ranked heals.

[Odintdk]

Truth in title, thread not even needed pass that.

[Deleted]

Leveld on elysium, two lvl 60s and have a 70 on tbc *server name*( just for reference to old world). The game is still a good game, but its not this glorified version of the game everyone makes it out to be.

Basically like having a second job, a major annoyance needing reagents for EVERYTHING and coordinating every single pull.

Like ive always said, Theres no real daunting mechanics in vanilla, everything just hits harder. Do a mythic raid, and then tell me which one is "harder"

/discuss

Sorry, but i am one of the first who don't want Vanilla, won't play it and always asked for Vanilla nostalgic threads to be closed.

But, since they have their dedicated forum section, leave them alone.

[barackohmama]

Encounter mechanics were easier, but game mechanics were harder. I.e rage/threat/mana/debuff management. A lot of these things were tedious, but some of them were quite fun. Soloing/questing was also much harder than it is today.

[Akka]

Ah, but I am pro-vanilla. So unfortunately, it does not apply!

And now we learn people are not entirely constrained into boxes ?
I'm pro-Vanilla and very much in the "purist" side for many reasons, I still can accept some of the changes that are suggested by the non-purist. Good thing we aren't just archetypes.

The fact that the reasoning is nonsensical doesn't depend on you being pro- or anti-Vanilla, it's nonsensical on its own merit. It's just that it's a typical (bad) argument made by anti-Vanilla people. They don't have the exclusivity on nonsense.

I really feel like people are going to be in for a rude awakening.

Touting vanilla has become a "thing". When the reality of it hits them, they will leave in droves.

You mean like the tens to hundred of thousands people who actually PLAY Vanilla and are going to be awakened to... what they are already playing ?
How does that work ?

- - - Updated - - -

That argument about vanilla being "harder" because you can only pull one mob at a time is missing a major point - this is about gear, and if you go to Argus with a 750 ilvl you're still going to be in for a bad time.

It's not just about gear, but even the gear part is also very different due to the MUCH more restricted bracket in power. In Vanilla, you just cannot outgear content by the same margine as Legion, and it's literally one or two orders of magnitude less. And just as equally, you cannot even reach this level of gear without actually progressing through the raids, while in current WoW you will get propelled to the latest gear level regardless.