Seeing the raid was the reward

[Deleted]

Do you miss the feeling of one of the rewards of your initial progression through a challenging raid being the simple ability to see more stuff?

At the end of the day this is a minor complaint and I do still enjoy progressing through Heroic for a bit and then onto Mythic but I sorely miss when you couldn't blast past and see the entire raid in lower difficulties. A sense of progression seems lost, to me, when you can clear normal in a night and you've seen it all, leaving only pure mechanics left for hc and mythic and no sense of 'we're working on this challenging raid to get to the end and to see it all'.

Simply put getting to G'huun and seeing the entire raid on the lower difficulties just can't compare with working your way through Kara, for example. In a way it's like completing a single player game on easy mode and then going back to play on the normal mode just for the challenge. Surely most would agree it's better to just play the game for the first time on the normal mode because it means more to progress through when it's hard.

LFR and Normal has been around for ages now so I'm aware of the reasons why they do exist but while I don't think Normal should be removed it does takes away that sense of unlocking a new area because of your efforts as a guild on the 'real' difficulties.

Update

I'm not saying that raiding should only be for the 1% again.

Heroic raids, for the purposes of this thread, is the REAL raiding for the vast majority of people. But it's ridiculous to expect everyone to gimp themselves by saying, 'well don't go into normal' when Blizzard gives you that choice.

The point is that most people want gear and so they'll go do LFR and Normal. The downside of that, the tradeoff of having everyone blast through the content on afk difficulty, (I'm NOT saying that only Mythic raiders should be able to see content) is that when they come to heroic they've already seen the entire raid. G'huun isn't as special because you've killed him on the lesser difficulty.

[zlygork]

Tbh lfr being cut into wings makes it so that you miss some interesting in game cutscenes/ method of transportation between wings. I still consider that you need to do at least normal to truly witness the raid's events

[Natylyaz]

I do agree progressing through Karazhan at the time was epic, and very satisfying to discover the latest bosses.

But nowadays, I can't play 10 hours a day like before, and even then I couldn't see the 25-man raids because my guild was too small.

I'm not sure what the best solution is, but playing an expansion like Wrath and not seeing Arthas feels really bad for the story and the immersion.
No matter how skilled you are, if you don't have 9/24 buddies with you, you're stuffed.

[Nextron]

Times change I miss the past but I wont see it again till its rereleased. Those who spoke of " casuals" as nothing to worry about were wrong.

[Pandragon]

Nope. For me raiding has always been to make myself stronger. Especially when I mained a tank. I had so much fun going into dungeons and out dpsing the entire group, and then just get to the point to where I could pull the entire dungeon in one go.

This is just a "I hate lfr" thread disguised as trying to be something more. If you hate lower difficulties, then don't do them....oh, then you won't be able to do higher difficulties.

"Seeing it all" would be working to mythic to see all the different mechanics and phases that aren't in lower difficulty. You have never had to do a raid to "see it all" as you could always go to youtube and look at videos of the raid and see it.

It's about progression, not about busting your hump just to see what the next room looks like.

[Bane-Thunder-God]

No I don't miss spending hours and hours in Molten Core to try down one boss as a guild.

I have a lot more going on in my life now then 12/13 years ago so no. I'm absolutely happy with WoW in its more casual state as Blizzard understands their true fans from vanilla are a lot older now and most likely have kids (I got a daughter) and more responsibilities.

At the end of the day, there's higher difficulties for those who want that experience of hours trying to tackle a single boss. Have fun with that...

[Deleted]

Nope. For me raiding has always been to make myself stronger. Especially when I mained a tank. I had so much fun going into dungeons and out dpsing the entire group, and then just get to the point to where I could pull the entire dungeon in one go.

This is just a "I hate lfr" thread disguised as trying to be something more. If you hate lower difficulties, then don't do them....oh, then you won't be able to do higher difficulties.

"Seeing it all" would be working to mythic to see all the different mechanics and phases that aren't in lower difficulty. You have never had to do a raid to "see it all" as you could always go to youtube and look at videos of the raid and see it.

It's about progression, not about busting your hump just to see what the next room looks like.

You misunderstand the point of the thread.

[Raelbo]

Do you miss the feeling of one of the rewards of your initial progression through a challenging raid being the simple ability to see more stuff?

At the end of the day this is a minor complaint and I do still enjoy progressing through Heroic for a bit and then onto Mythic but I sorely miss when you couldn't blast past and see the entire raid in lower difficulties. A sense of progression seems lost, to me, when you can clear normal in a night and you've seen it all, leaving only pure mechanics left for hc and mythic and no sense of 'we're working on this challenging raid to get to the end and to see it all'.

Simply put getting to G'huun and seeing the entire raid on the lower difficulties just can't compare with working your way through Kara, for example. In a way it's like completing a single player game on easy mode and then going back to play on the normal mode just for the challenge. Surely most would agree it's better to just play the game for the first time on the normal mode because it means more to progress through when it's hard.

LFR and Normal has been around for ages now so I'm aware of the reasons why they do exist but while I don't think Normal should be removed it does takes away that sense of unlocking a new area because of your efforts as a guild on the 'real' difficulties.

For a lot of guilds the experience of progressing through Normal is still a thing.

I would totally agree with your assertion that it's a much better experience to rather just play through the raids at your proper difficulty rather than blasting through the lower difficulty first. But to blunt this is something totally within our ability to control, we simply choose not to.

This focus on trying to maximise gear from everywhere else so that we can progress through the challenging modes as fast as possible is entirely player driven. I would suggest it's something worth having a discussion about in your guild to find out what people actually want from raiding. Of course for a lot of folks the idea of seeing how quickly they can clear the content is more important than the sense of discovery/exploration, I am certain that a lot of players are quite happy to take the more scenic route and allow progression to happen at a more natural pace.

The important thing is to realise that you can't have your cake and eat it. If you want to be part of the race then you're going to have to sacrifice the sense of discovery and vice versa.

[Charge me Doctor]

just skip LFR and normal, go to heroic/mythic instead and get your dose of "seeing the raid is the reward". No one forces you into low difficulty raids

[Coffer]

You still get that just fine on the higher difficulties through the mechanics, as you yourself said. It's just that now people can experience the story without having to spend time that they might otherwise not have on the game. It lets them enjoy the game at their own pace without taking anything away from you. It's a change, but I'd call it a straight-up evolution. What value is there in a handful of people feeling that supposed sense of progression when they only made up a tiny proportion of those playing the game in the first place?

In a way it's like completing a single player game on easy mode and then going back to play on the normal mode just for the challenge. Surely most would agree it's better to just play the game for the first time on the normal mode because it means more to progress through when it's hard.

The tendency for people to try normal mode first is a leftover from the old days when there was more pressure to prove yourself in the eyes of others, which also ties in with the days of the arcades when games were often hard just to squeeze more money out of you, and to make up for the technology being in its infancy and games being simplistic as a result.

By and large, games have changed in modern times, and so have gamers themselves. The days of needing to prove oneself like that are long gone for most people, but you still have plenty of options if you want to experience that, because the variety of games out there is greater than ever before. It's just that WoW is no longer one of them because designers rightly figured out that MMOs are not a good genre for that. Even Vanilla WoW itself was already an example of that evolution when compared to prior MMOs, and was slammed for it until people realized that it really was the way to go for the genre.

The existence of places like Wowhead and MMOC certainly doesn't help matters. It was inevitable, as it always is with any game where min-maxing and numbers in general are of vital importance, but their rise was a major driving factor behind WoW becoming what it is today.

You misunderstand the point of the thread.

You don't have much of a point to begin with. You can choose to ignore the likes of MMOC and LFR and get that sensation from the first time you do Uldir on Normal or Heroic with your guild. It's just that, unlike most people who played back in the day, your mentality with regards to WoW has not changed, which only means one thing: you've fallen behind.

[XDurionX]

You seem oblivious to the fact that this meant that 95% NEVER got to get this reward. Even today, less than 10% of people are raiding normal or higher. By making it more accessible, they can guarantee that creating new raids still makes sense.

[Wries]

It's a change for the worse for sure. I'd like to see a return of a mythic-only boss or two. The non-mythic playerbase will see it a tier later perhaps but it's not getting lost by anyone.

[Archibalde]

I honestly don't miss miss it. Being able to do the full raid at a decent pace in a lower difficulty the first time makes it easier for me to enjoy the whole atmosphere and story, and then I can focus on mechanics once we start the real progression in mythic.

If anything I feel like I was missing out on a lot more of the lore during those initial clears in early expansions because everyone was cheering in the voice chat, trying to distribute look, trying to hurry to the next boss because we spent an hour trying to beat the last one and there was only an hour left...

[Coffer]

You seem oblivious to the fact that this meant that 95% NEVER got to get this reward. Even today, less than 10% of people are raiding normal or higher. By making it more accessible, they can guarantee that creating new raids still makes sense.

I wouldn't call it oblivious, he seems very much aware of it. The OP's just selfish and unwilling to let go of the fact that the game, the genre, even gaming as a whole, have all evolved past him.

[Deleted]

You still get that just fine on the higher difficulties through the mechanics, as you yourself said. It's just that now people can experience the story without having to spend time that they might otherwise not have on the game. It lets them enjoy the game at their own pace without taking anything away from you. It's a change, but I'd call it a straight-up evolution. What value is there in a handful of people feeling that supposed sense of progression when they only made up a tiny proportion of those playing the game in the first place?


The tendency for people to try normal mode first is a leftover from the old days when there was more pressure to prove yourself in the eyes of others, which also ties in with the days of the arcades when games were often hard just to squeeze more money out of you, and to make up for the technology being in its infancy and games being simplistic as a result.

By and large, games have changed in modern times, and so have gamers themselves. The days of needing to prove oneself like that are long gone for most people, but you still have plenty of options if you want to experience that, because the variety of games out there is greater than ever before. It's just that WoW is no longer one of them because designers rightly figured out that MMOs are not a good genre for that. Even Vanilla WoW itself was already an example of that evolution when compared to prior MMOs, and was slammed for it until people realized that it really was the way to go for the genre.

The existence of places like Wowhead and MMOC certainly doesn't help matters. It was inevitable, as it always is with any game where min-maxing and numbers in general are of vital importance, but their rise was a major driving factor behind WoW becoming what it is today.


You don't have much of a point to begin with. You can choose to ignore the likes of MMOC and LFR and get that sensation from the first time you do Uldir on Normal or Heroic with your guild. It's just that, unlike most people who played back in the day, your mentality with regards to WoW has not changed, which only means one thing: you've fallen behind.

I was totally on board with your post until you veered off into trying to imply that people that play games on the standard difficulty, not even the hard or extra hard difficulty, are just trying to prove to themselves and show off. That is not the reason behind my thread. I simply miss when seeing the end of the raid was a reward in itself because you've battled through. This has nothing to do with ego.

- - - Updated - - -

You seem oblivious to the fact that this meant that 95% NEVER got to get this reward. Even today, less than 10% of people are raiding normal or higher. By making it more accessible, they can guarantee that creating new raids still makes sense.

'LFR and Normal has been around for ages now so I'm aware of the reasons why they do exist'

[Coffer]

I was totally on board with your post until you veered off into trying to imply that people that play games on the standard difficulty, not even the hard or extra hard difficulty, are just trying to prove to yourself and show off. That is not the reason behind my thread.

Thanks for highlighting my earlier point. You really are refusing to accept reality.

I simply miss when seeing the end of the raid was a reward in itself because you've battled through. This has nothing to do with ego.

And yes, it has everything to do with ego. Remember how only 1% of people experienced Naxx40? Your input, and what you miss, are meaningful. It's just that, on a relative level, they are meaningless compared to the input and experience of those who are happy with the way the game has evolved, because they vastly outnumber you. It's not even just about money. It's about sacrificing the likes of you to give those who are not as dedicated and do not have as much time on their hands that same experience, which is a change for the better. You're still being catered to via raiding and especially hardcore raiding, which you already said you're still happy with. The only difference is that now, instead of you being catered to almost fully while the majority of people missed out massively, you're being catered to less while the average person is happier and gets to see more, all while you're still given plenty of options in and out of the game.

Nobody is missing anything by repeating this. You're just unhappy with it, and that's what makes it about ego - your emphasis on how you feel. That's all there is to it. And unless you change your expectations or just do something that better suits what you want, that will never change. I have no reason to believe that WoW Classic will change that either.

[XDurionX]

'LFR and Normal has been around for ages now so I'm aware of the reasons why they do exist'

Overread that part, i apologize. My mistake.

[Deleted]

I wouldn't call it oblivious, he seems very much aware of it. The OP's just selfish and unwilling to let go of the fact that the game, the genre, even gaming as a whole, have all evolved past him.

I've not evolved yet I cleared Normal last night. Interesting. The trade-off of having a reward being seeing the raid and letting everyone see the raid is fairly balanced but I err on the side of having meaningful progression through the standard mode and not the easy mode.

If you call people selfish over minor complaints on a forum I wouldn't want to be around you in real life.

- - - Updated - - -

Thanks for highlighting my earlier point. You really are refusing to accept reality.


And yes, it has everything to do with ego. Remember how only 1% of people experienced Naxx40? Your input, and what you miss, are meaningful. It's just that, on a relative level, they are meaningless compared to the input and experience of those who are happy with the way the game has evolved, because they vastly outnumber you. It's not even just about money. It's about sacrificing the likes of you to give those who are not as dedicated and do not have as much time on their hands that same experience, which is a change for the better. You're still being catered to via raiding and especially hardcore raiding, which you already said you're still happy with. The only difference is that now, instead of you being catered to almost fully while the majority of people missed out massively, you're being catered to less while the average person is happier and gets to see more, all while you're still given plenty of options in and out of the game.

Nobody is missing anything by repeating this. You're just unhappy with it, and that's what makes it about ego - your emphasis on how you feel. That's all there is to it. And unless you change your expectations or just do something that better suits what you want, that will never change. I have no reason to believe that WoW Classic will change that either.

Ah, I see what the problem is now. You've imagined from your first reading of my original post that I want only the 1% to see raids. I'm sorry you came to that conclusion.

[Exxord]

I miss it a little, yes, but I still think is better the way is now. You couldn't bring the old feeling back even if you tried: spoilers would be everywhere, you would know almost everything of a raid even without putting a foot in it. Even before release, from beta testing. Internet is not the same as 10 years ago.

[vashe9]

Do you miss the feeling of one of the rewards of your initial progression through a challenging raid being the simple ability to see more stuff?

At the end of the day this is a minor complaint and I do still enjoy progressing through Heroic for a bit and then onto Mythic but I sorely miss when you couldn't blast past and see the entire raid in lower difficulties. A sense of progression seems lost, to me, when you can clear normal in a night and you've seen it all, leaving only pure mechanics left for hc and mythic and no sense of 'we're working on this challenging raid to get to the end and to see it all'.

Simply put getting to G'huun and seeing the entire raid on the lower difficulties just can't compare with working your way through Kara, for example. In a way it's like completing a single player game on easy mode and then going back to play on the normal mode just for the challenge. Surely most would agree it's better to just play the game for the first time on the normal mode because it means more to progress through when it's hard.

LFR and Normal has been around for ages now so I'm aware of the reasons why they do exist but while I don't think Normal should be removed it does takes away that sense of unlocking a new area because of your efforts as a guild on the 'real' difficulties.

No, the real raid begins on heroic and the true real raid is mythic. That feeling only existed in Vanilla/BC because NAxx woltk was already a walk in the park, a lot easier than Uldir even if Uldir nm doesnt seem so hard (killed 5 bosses in 2h30 raid).

A guildmate was whining THE WHOLE NIGHT because normal was too easy. Nm is meant to be easy... Its the same with dungeons, clearing them in nm/hero/mm0 is nothing like cleaning them in mm+10

As said before, back in vanilla/bc internet was still using 56k in some countries, wowhead did not exist until later, simcrafts were limited to a few people (EJ forums anyone ?). Now everyone can sim its dps with a single click in raidbots.