Difficulty in questing has decreased each expansion why..?

[cparle87]

Ah, so they were changed during BC. I did not level any characters much in BC, as I was too busy trying to get epic flying and raiding .

Yeah. I have fond, fond memories of Razorfen Downs in those days. There was a substantially hard labyrinth area complete with several quest targets to get through before you even got to the instance portal. Nearly all the dungeons could be tough to even get into with elites crawling all over the place outside. Also places like Jintha'alor, the "if dungeons were open world" ur-example. Tyr's Hand. The Tainted Scar. Darkwhisper Gorge. All mini-dungeons unto themselves.

[MasterHamster]

The "leveling was never hard, just tedious" argument is hilarious. Not only is it a cop-out argument, it can essentially be used to say that anything outside of mythic raids can't be hard, because the mechanics aren't necessarily complex. But guess what, a melee mob taking 3~% of your total healthbar every hit, and accidentally pulling another mob, can actually pose damage, compared to the Diablo 3 style of AoEing down mobs we play nowadays.

Once, you could easily get killed if you accidentally pulled 1-2 more adds, maybe you could handle 2 mobs at once as a melee, 3-4 with CDs.
Other than that, you very much were rewarded by learning how to pull single mobs (melee, using ranged weapons, or CCing one mob as a caster close to the other)
You were relatively weak compared to a regular, equal-level mob, you simply COULDN'T mindlessly charge in, press whirlwind a few times and collect 3/4 of the quest rewards you needed.

Yes, classic was mechanically easy. And yet you could easily die if you played recklessly and didn't know what to do, ignored patrols, didn't keep an eye on the few self-heals or whatever CDs you had. If you want to pretend leveling today is equal to classic you either have garbage memory or you didn't play at all.

Guess what, a mob whose spells hit for 10% of your health on a 1.5 sec cast, is actually harder than that annoying mob that may be using a couple different abilities yet ultimately deal close to no damage.
The fact that somehow, mobs dealing proper damage to you (back then) somehow doesn't even get mentioned in these arguments. Look, I know you forget you even have a healthbar when leveling nowadays in full heirlooms, but things did actually hurt quite a lot back then. You could NOT treat classic leveling like the braindead ARPG buttonmasher it is now.

I won't say classic leveling was mechanically hard because it wasn't. Things dealt damage and that changes the dynamic a lot even if it's simple. Now mobs tend to have a trick or two up their sleeve, yet nothing they do hurt you anyway.

[sopeonaroap]

Vanilla was NEVER "hard", this game has never been "hard" I don't even know where that meme started. If you consider having to drink after every mob, not because the you had to do anything skillful to prevent dmg and dint, but just because that was how the was made, "hard" then IDK what to tell you.

Vanilla was tedious, not hard.

don't be that guy. lack of margin of error is hard and the game has without a doubt given you more and more margin for error as it's gotten older

in naxx, 1 mistake by a healer could murder a whole raid, that's why 99.x% of people never cleared naxx in vanilla

that IS what hard means

[Noomz]

My prediction is to bring “new” players into the game. Is it worth losing a 12 month sub
Most of the player base subs for a month or 2 for the leveling and raid then unsub.

Lets look at mage tower that was somewhat fun bc it was difficult.
Doesn’t it make sense to have multiple events like that are challenging to keep players entertained?

I look forward to vanilla not bcof the grind but because it is hard!!!

Wow now looks great (except resto shaman chain heal thats poopy) but its too easy!
I want more difficult solo content! I don’t want to depend on others to play a game.

What is your view towards the difficulty of the game (now)
what can be changed to fix it?

It's a matter of choice between keeping your playerbase refreshed, or keeping a hardcore base. The balance between the two is understandably very difficult for any MMO-maker.

Vanilla was never hard. As others pointed out, it was tedious. The difficulty there was, existed because of poor design, especially in raids. Not to mention how horrible it was to organise raids with 40 people.
It's something you'll notice when they release the classic servers. I think it's gonna open the eyes of a lot of people.

[Barnabas]

Leveling didn't become easier, the players got better.

People got better at killing boars guys.

[Noomz]

don't be that guy. lack of margin of error is hard and the game has without a doubt given you more and more margin for error as it's gotten older

in naxx, 1 mistake by a healer could murder a whole raid, that's why 99.x% of people never cleared naxx in vanilla

that IS what hard means

No, that's what bad design means.
You'll find your difficulty in the game still, as I doubt you're racing for world first yourself.

A huge difference today is that we have all the information about all the content, long before we even get to play the content. There is no discovery, there's no ignorance, we know EVERYTHING. This means it gets easier to accomplish things and why content has to be time-gated nowadays, or we'd be done with it within a week.

[Aggrophobic]

Vanilla was NEVER "hard", this game has never been "hard" I don't even know where that meme started. If you consider having to drink after every mob, not because the you had to do anything skillful to prevent dmg and dint, but just because that was how the was made, "hard" then IDK what to tell you.

Vanilla was tedious, not hard.

This, pretty much.

[Noomz]

The "leveling was never hard, just tedious" argument is hilarious. Not only is it a cop-out argument, it can essentially be used to say that anything outside of mythic raids can't be hard, because the mechanics aren't necessarily complex. But guess what, a melee mob taking 3~% of your total healthbar every hit, and accidentally pulling another mob, can actually pose damage, compared to the Diablo 3 style of AoEing down mobs we play nowadays.

Once, you could easily get killed if you accidentally pulled 1-2 more adds, maybe you could handle 2 mobs at once as a melee, 3-4 with CDs.
Other than that, you very much were rewarded by learning how to pull single mobs (melee, using ranged weapons, or CCing one mob as a caster close to the other)
You were relatively weak compared to a regular, equal-level mob, you simply COULDN'T mindlessly charge in, press whirlwind a few times and collect 3/4 of the quest rewards you needed.

Yes, classic was mechanically easy. And yet you could easily die if you played recklessly and didn't know what to do, ignored patrols, didn't keep an eye on the few self-heals or whatever CDs you had. If you want to pretend leveling today is equal to classic you either have garbage memory or you didn't play at all.

Guess what, a mob whose spells hit for 10% of your health on a 1.5 sec cast, is actually harder than that annoying mob that may be using a couple different abilities yet ultimately deal close to no damage.
The fact that somehow, mobs dealing proper damage to you (back then) somehow doesn't even get mentioned in these arguments. Look, I know you forget you even have a healthbar when leveling nowadays in full heirlooms, but things did actually hurt quite a lot back then. You could NOT treat classic leveling like the braindead ARPG buttonmasher it is now.

I won't say classic leveling was mechanically hard because it wasn't. Things dealt damage and that changes the dynamic a lot even if it's simple. Now mobs tend to have a trick or two up their sleeve, yet nothing they do hurt you anyway.

And that's exactly what I'd call tedious. Not because there's a challenge in it, but because you really can't do it any other way. One mob at a time is the definition of tedious. The mobs dealing a lot of damage isn't difficulty. It hits me hard, but it doesn't offer a technical challenge to me. If something is technically difficult to execute, if it requires timing, setup, preparation, execution and so on to achieve it that's what I define as difficult. If a mob just hits me really hard and that forces me to take one or very few of them at a time so I don't die, there's no challenge to it, it's not difficult. It's tedious.

KNow what I mean?

[Barnabas]

No it gets infinitely more difficult the more characters you level to 120. You start thinking like why am I doing this shit? It was the same for every release.

[Onikaroshi]

don't be that guy. lack of margin of error is hard and the game has without a doubt given you more and more margin for error as it's gotten older

in naxx, 1 mistake by a healer could murder a whole raid, that's why 99.x% of people never cleared naxx in vanilla

that IS what hard means

99.x% of people didn't clear naxx for many other reasons other then difficulty. Most people didn't raid in Vanilla, the numbers were SUPER low. Raiding also wasn't "oh naxx came out now the only raid we will do is Naxx!" There was a shit ton of logistic issues to even getting into, much less finishing it. Between needing 40 likeminded people, you need to do either a very long or very expensive attunement process, and you needed a lot of gear that took months and months to farm. None of that was hard, just time consuming. All for a raid, that if released today, would be child's play.

[Merie]

WoW is harder today than it was in Wrath. I remember doing my argent dailies and pulling a dozen same leveled cultist mobs at a time in Icecrown and mowing them down with these. Can't do that in BfA.

[sopeonaroap]

99.x% of people didn't clear naxx for many other reasons other then difficulty. Most people didn't raid in Vanilla, the numbers were SUPER low. Raiding also wasn't "oh naxx came out now the only raid we will do is Naxx!" There was a shit ton of logistic issues to even getting into, much less finishing it. Between needing 40 likeminded people, you need to do either a very long or very expensive attunement process, and you needed a lot of gear that took months and months to farm. None of that was hard, just time consuming. All for a raid, that if released today, would be child's play.

the number of people who killed a boss in MC that didn't kill a boss in naxx is still over 98% so there goes that lame ass, uneducated argument. it was hard.

the required time to get to that level of gear was hard, classic wow was hard. not the hardest game on earth, but it was hard and that's why most people never killed naxx bosses.

even at 70 naxx bosses were hard

the game was harder then, period, there is no discussion to be had. i was there.

[Onikaroshi]

the number of people who killed a boss in MC that didn't kill a boss in naxx is still over 98% so there goes that lame ass, uneducated argument. it was hard.

the required time to get to that level of gear was hard, classic wow was hard. not the hardest game on earth, but it was hard and that's why most people never killed naxx bosses.

even at 70 naxx bosses were hard

the game was harder then, period, there is no discussion to be had. i was there.

We sold MC carries, and we weren't even that great of a guild. MC was easy to get through, try again. And "time required" is not difficulty, its tedium.

[qwerty123456]

You do realize WoW was designed to be for "casuals" right op? It was the most forgiving mmo at the time.

[kamuimac]

Questing has become less tedious*


Easier? Uh, no. Did people forget how steep the scaling was from L115 up to 120 ? By the time you were L119 many classes could barely survive if they accidentally pulled 2 mobs at the same time. It was so bad it almost reminded me of the leveling experiences in ESO where you had so little combat control options you just knew you were guaranteed fucked if you pulled 3 mobs.

its not that steep , plus this happened every expansion when 2ndary stats levels were dropping with each level - the only toon i noticed any "problems" was my mage due to lack of self healing and having to sit and eat to recover health faster . but even then i was still pulling not less then 3-4 mobs at any give time and most kiting them / aoe nuking .

but i do agree that most of people mistake tedious (having to eat to recover often ) with game being actually hard - aka having to dodge , interupt / use your full toolkit

and best example here would be exackly mage towers from legion - those were hard because you had to know you whole class toolkit and usit without breaks for 5-20 minutes without big mistaks to beat it

having to eat every 2nd mob is not hard - its just boring tedious waste of time - one that will kill enthusiasm in most of people who will try out classic

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You do realize WoW was designed to be for "casuals" right op? It was the most forgiving mmo at the time.

if he played it he would know.

i still remember feeling of shock and then extreme relief once i realised that the worst case scenario when dying multiple times were having to wait for ress time instead loosing like half of exp level and people being able to loot your whole/partial gear / belongings in bags when you were runing to your corpse (most of mmorpgs from that time) . or not having to worry about people runing around and not killing mobs only waiting for you to kill it to snatch you loot (ragnaros) . or only quest being "kill 600 tigers to get 15% of you experience bar for that level as reward" (anyone played silkroad ? :P )

people have no clue what "hard" leveling back then meant.

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the number of people who killed a boss in MC that didn't kill a boss in naxx is still over 98% so there goes that lame ass, uneducated argument. it was hard.

the required time to get to that level of gear was hard, classic wow was hard. not the hardest game on earth, but it was hard and that's why most people never killed naxx bosses.

even at 70 naxx bosses were hard

the game was harder then, period, there is no discussion to be had. i was there.

and again flawed resoning - you are again mistaking tedious with hard.

the only reason why so few people seen nax was not because it was hard. it was because procces of getting there was just retarded with all attunements and extreme pouching that was happening on all servers - most of guidls were eternaly stuck in having to regear people and replace people who were pouched by better progress guilds thats why they didnt go into naxx.

if it was like it is now - with 0 attunements everyone would be trying naxx.

[Akka]

Leveling didn't become easier, the players got better.

I'm sure that being able to do 5 to 10 times more damage when clicking on a button is a sign of people clicking better

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not really, killin mobs one by one is not harder, just slower

Well, if it's slower just pull the whole group. You can't because you'll die ? But I thought it wasn't harder, if it's not harder you should be able to do the same thing than today, shouldn't you ?

[unlockedz]

i started on draenor, played on a private before and the comparation i can make...vanilla is tedious as all hell. you boys will get your heart's desire with vanilla. some people enjoy questing, even i do to some degree but that was just a mess i have no desire of experiencing any time soon.
it wasn't hard, only tedious.
You can remove some of your armor and make it as tedious as you'd want to.

[Lenarific]

Ok My last post on this ridiculous Post..... I mained a warlock i could take my Big purp pull 5 mobs and just dot and keep him up and win then move onto the nxt group.... Again explain where Classic was hard.... And FYI i did all of the Out door runs as a aff lock and didn't have any problem soloing it.... so try again the game now is way harder period.

[Nightheart]

In my eyes? Questing should be fun and relaxing, not difficult and tedious. Danger is fun, but sometimes one wants to relax while playing the game. I think that's why questing is easy (And boring). Granted we've had the world revamped back in Cata, and the quests haven't been updated at all to tell NEW stories.

Also Vanilla isn't hard. It's been 15 years (Or will be next year) Players have gotten better, Vanilla wont be hard.

[Maarius]

This thread only proves one thing: that people who claim Vanilla wasn't hard have no freakin clue about Vanilla. Some people here explained perfectly why it was hard and still some others ignore that and call it tedious.

unbelievable