Why did they buff old raids?

[Jujudrood]

Anyone have any idea what this will do to timewalking?
If HP pools increase, they won't be a quick jaunt like a Legion heroic is, which could force groups to break up mid-run.
Also, what about TW Ulduar? If the raid has an HP buff present AND we scale down to a fixed gear level (back then, FL was easier the better gear you got because the vehicles scaled with your gear), that could turn into a painful night for pugs...

[Paulosio]

The same thing happened to soloing old raids when they introduced the squish for WOD... and i'm fairly sure the devs have said that the intention for 7.35 is that if you could solo old content before 7.35 you will be able to solo it just as easily (or very close to as easily) after 7.35. They quickly sorted out the problem related to the WOD squish and if there's a problem now I expect they will do the same with any old raid problems related to the 7.35 changes.

The patch has been out for 1 day... why can't people think and wait at least a week before acting like it's the end of the world.

[Raziella]

I've been running these old raids for mounts and tmog since I was able to do so. I've had monstrously bad luck with the RNG, but I do it every single week.

With stuff in WoD unsoloable in general, and stuff in MoP taking crazy amounts of time and effort now, what reason is there for me to stick around during the content drought?

Is Blizz really stupid enough to do this to cater to a tiny handful of "project" people? Or is this just another stupid way to force an increase in their "time played" metric for their shareholders meetings?

Either way, yeah, I unsubbed. There was ZERO acceptable reason to do this to irrelevant content.
If they fix it, I'll resub.

[Raelbo]

OK, but roflstomping old content IS fun for me. It’s a fun little side game, within the greater WoW. And I’m primarily treating WoW as a single player game, in many respects. Sure, I do casual PVP and 5-man heroics (things you can leave at any minute and people don’t care, unless you’re carrying the flag, etc). As someone who’s family life often requires me to log off in 5 minutes notice, and as someone who ENJOYS playing WoW ALONE, I don’t want to lose one of my favorite activities in the game.

Without taking anything away from what you find fun: The vast majority of old raids are still able to be roflstomped. Is it really a requirement that those from the most recent expansion become so immediately? Is there not space for the raids to still provide some level of challenge to solo or do in small groups before they become completely obsolete?

I’d argue that OLD raids are NOT intended to be multiplayer.

I said that raids are designed to be multiplayer content (implicitly while content is current). Their intended use case after they become obsolete is pretty much undefined although it stands to reason that Blizzard that they can continue to add value for as long as possible.

Having a raid spend an expansion as small-group content before eventually becoming solo content helps it to achieve a more useful outcome because it will appeal to a wider variety of players over its lifetime

[DeicideUH]

It's probably a side effect of retuning all mobs in the game according to their level.
I don't doubt Blizzard will give some buff in those instances as a countermeasure.
It won't matter much, as BfA will have a new stat squish and everything will be retuned again.

[Raelbo]

I am sorry, I am going to be blunt. You are wrong on both counts and I am not sure how you cannot see it.

I think I'll leave our debate there. I reckon I am right and I am not sure how others cannot (or won't) see it (my best explanation is mob mentallity). Regardless it's clear we disagree. I thank you for at least taking the effort of debating the points.

[Mhyroth]

It's probably a side effect of retuning all mobs in the game according to their level.
I don't doubt Blizzard will give some buff in those instances as a countermeasure.
It won't matter much, as BfA will have a new stat squish and everything will be retuned again.

A side effect people reported about on the PTR and forums.
I don't know what to call that, but according to work-standards it's called: incompetence and ignorance.

[Kuja]

Worst thing is that they thought players won't notice the buffs, so these aren't even mentioned in the patch notes.

[redwolfrain]

Slowing people down inflates their time played metric.

I would imagine the opposite. As someone who had to go casual due to work and family soloing old content on my characters to finish transmog sets was what I did in my spare time. If I can't continue to do that solo, I will start playing something else in my free time. That being said, with all of the outrage on mmo-champ and the wow forums I don't see this raid change lasting too long. But blizz will be blizz.

[Raelbo]

Is Blizz really stupid enough to do this to cater to a tiny handful of "project" people?

To be fair, and no, I am not one of those "project" people, there is a certain sense in going the extra mile for people who are passionate about the content.

[Julmara]

why is there even a ptr when blizz gives zero shits to what we say ?

[Helgrim]

Well I must say that this is really bad step towards long time players as for example I am. Ok I was like the leveling will be hard again...( doesnt matter I have all classes at 110 or 100 atm so i dont care ). But making old raids which was till now soloable unsoloable ? Sorry mates but it is a bull...t

[Raziella]

To be fair, and no, I am not one of those "project" people, there is a certain sense in going the extra mile for people who are passionate about the content.

There's no point in favoring small groups of people over others when it comes to changes like this. There's no evidence that there's more project people than their are people like me, who farm tons of raids for cosmetics. In fact, it's unlikely.
And what are you basing "passionate" on? I'm passionate for the way I play the game, but it doesn't involve streaming videos of my boring grind or "famous" players, so it doesn't count?

If they want to cater to a minority group like that, why not just add a toggle for the difficulty or something?

[Zyrinx]

Its simple really:

With this change, approximately 0 people will now say, 'oh this is better lets get a group of 3 and do this content, which we didn't do before.'

With this change, approximately TONS (half the playerbase? a quarter? idk.) will now say, 'what the hell, i was able to do this content yesterday no problem but now i can't, or its no longer fun, guess im not doing it anymore'.

Am I wrong here? I seriously do not think that I am.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Perhaps it'll be rectified with BfA's number squish?

Problematic though since a lot of people were going to use the downtime between now and then for farming old raids.

[Growel]

Without taking anything away from what you find fun: The vast majority of old raids are still able to be roflstomped. Is it really a requirement that those from the most recent expansion become so immediately? Is there not space for the raids to still provide some level of challenge to solo or do in small groups before they become completely obsolete?

Aren't we talking about SoO, which is from 2 expansions ago, and roughly 4 years old?

I'll grant you that ONE expansion ago shouldn't be so easy. I can do THAT content (easily) when I'm level 120. It's not necessarily preferred, but I can wait. I shouldn't have to wait, in regards to content from nearly half a decade ago.

I said that raids are designed to be multiplayer content (implicitly while content is current). Their intended use case after they become obsolete is pretty much undefined although it stands to reason that Blizzard that they can continue to add value for as long as possible.

I agree that it stands to reason that content should remain viable for as long as possible. It's just that when old raids become soloable, they become MORE viable (i.e. they increase in value), to me. And to many others in this thread who prefer to solo old content over grouping up.

Having a raid spend an expansion as small-group content before eventually becoming solo content helps it to achieve a more useful outcome because it will appeal to a wider variety of players over its lifetime

I don't agree, especially raids from 2 expansions ago. You appear to be in the minority in this opinion.

[rda]

Perhaps it'll be rectified with BfA's number squish?

Problematic though since a lot of people were going to use the downtime between now and then for farming old raids.

They likely didn't do this with some big plan to rectify it in BFA or whatever, they simply didn't think much about it and flipped the switch together with the general scaling for low-level mobs. The issue is big and they will likely have a blue on it soon (in a day). (The blue will likely apologize and say that they will fix it.)

[Nuba]

Because Blizzard are idiots, SoO can’t be soloed anymore because of these stupid changes.

hahahaha

are you serious? people that complained about it are trying to solo it on 850 ilvl toons.
lvl 900 and you can still blow things up, 950 then? it takes a few secs to kill a boss
another thing is that bosses still do shit dmg to you, so you can only ever die to 1-shot mechanics like falling off a bridge

[Nightstalker]

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post48686312
Scaling numbers for all old (relevant raid) content with ilvl 966/969:
Wotlk: factor ~3,06
Cata: factor ~2.85
MoP: factor ~4.41
Draenor: factor ~1.922

Ilvl scaling seems to be at work, had to check on different characters. That way it would almost stay impossible even with higher ilvls/in BFA. So they basically have to revert the change no matter what.

[Dadwen]

Because Blizzard are idiots

Pretty much all that needs to be said (been kinda obvious since WOD..... )