Everyone in the beta reporting that dungeons are REALLY easy :(

[Jastall]

They were easy. I remember my first dungeon ever, clearing up to the second boss in Deadmines with the three people we scrounged up: warrior tank, rogue DPS, Priest healer. We had absolutely no clue what we were doing and yet still made progress. Got two other people and finished the place after two hours learning the ropes. But overall it was -maybe- as hard as a Heroic dungeon is week 1 in Legion or BFA, it's just that we know the game inside and out now.

Sure, if you overpull in Stratholme you're dead, but the same can very easily be said for M+. No vanilla dungeon is harder than a M+5 or something, they just take a lot longer and you have fewer tools to handle threat or CC. And that's fine, because Classic is less about player skill than current WoW is.

[chazus]

dungeons themselves didn't really change

The player characters got a lot stronger

Yeah, that too. Either way, Some people remember "Classic" as like 2004 classic, vs 2006 classic.

[hardtofin]

Right so if they were all so piss easy, why are the ppl in classic reporting the levelling to be much harder?

[Tech614]

In other news classic WoW was actually easy and it was just the players that where bad at the time.

Friendly reminder that when WoW originally launched it was actually the most casual and easy MMO on the market and that's how it gained mass appeal and separated itself from the pack in the first place.

It's almost like people have been telling you for years there was nothing hard about it, it just lacked QoL features that would be added later. Classic was easier then retail currently is(and probably every xpac for that matter), it just didn't respect your time at all.

[Willias]

What do you guys think about this?

I played vanilla and definitely remember them being as hard if not harder than the levelling. The guys in the beta are reporting levelling being MUCH hard than private servers but dungeons being WAY easier. They are talking about the possibility there was a stealth nerf to dungeons in 1.12

I hope this wasn't the case as easy dungeons will really suck in classic imo, what do you guys reckon?

What dungeons are we talking about? Most leveling dungeons you could just grab mobs and AoE them down. CC really wasn't really needed until close to level cap, and even then it wasn't always needed.

And it depended on how well characters were geared. Early WoW, people were diving into dungeons with gear for characters 20 levels lower than they were. Dungeons don't really get difficult until the Plaguelands and Blackrock dungeons.

CC becoming a major thing needed on every pull didn't exist until the Burning Crusade.

[Zendhal The Black]

that happens when whole dungeon have as many mechanics as 1 mob today

[Cempa]

What do you guys think about this?

I played vanilla and definitely remember them being as hard if not harder than the levelling. The guys in the beta are reporting levelling being MUCH hard than private servers but dungeons being WAY easier. They are talking about the possibility there was a stealth nerf to dungeons in 1.12

I hope this wasn't the case as easy dungeons will really suck in classic imo, what do you guys reckon?

Beta cap is 30 .. those instances are done with no need to CC or even have a tank/healer spec.

[munkeyinorbit]

So we all agree. Dungeons are easier than people remember because players are better now. The only thing holding us back will be the gratify me now mentality.

[Willias]

Right so if they were all so piss easy, why are the ppl in classic reporting the levelling to be much harder?

People need to get this idea that classic WoW leveling was hard out of their heads. Killing 1 mob at a time is usually pretty safe, 2 is risky, 3 is bad if you don't have help.

That's the difference. In current retail WoW you just AoE giant groups of mobs down with no problem or risk to your character. You can't do this in classic WoW, so you have to pay a bit more attention to what's going on around you. Respawns are dangerous for example. This does not mean that leveling is hard, it means that there is some challenge and risk that does not exist in modern WoW, and the challenge, more often than not, is "don't be dumb and overdo it".

[Fascinate]

One thing id like to note, staysafe has been playing private servers for many years and he is 100% sure that the leveling mobs are harder to kill on classic than PS'ers, and thats with 1.12 itemization that many ps'ers dont have. The dungeons being seemingly easier is kind of odd, going to reserve judgement til we get a blue post. And yes dungeons were never really that hard, at least not until you got to strat/scholo/dm etc.

[angrys13]

I tanked 5 mans as fury, always. Yep. Super hard back then.

[bloomy]

most of the people in beta atm are long time players who know their shit... when you have 5 people like that who all know the dungeons and exactly what they're doing and they are low level... no shit it's easy. that being said i've seen a lot of groups with top pve players and r1 pvpers etc. that wipe and have deaths and healers running oom, and again, these are good players who know the game and they are struggling at times. your average 5 players just grouping to get it done while leveling will have a harder time, and the dungeons will also be harder as they get higher level. you can try to claim it's an easy game all you want, but that doesn't explain the multiple times i've seen "top" players doing corpse runs these past few days... i can't remember ever seeing anyone corpse run in the past few years because dying doesn't happen anymore in retail wow outside of raid wipes or high end m+ wipes.

all that being said, the game isn't a hard game in that way, it's a fun game with many challenges along the way and then for the final 2 raids it actually does get hard.

[Elias01]

How to put it. Sure modern dungeons are harder. Buuuut only if we talk about mythic+ same for raids. How you compare game with 1 set difficulty and game with multiple difficulty levels? I say classic dungeons are harder becouse moder wow dungeons on normal difficulty arw purw facroll and you can ignore 100% mechanics. But what about harder difficulty levels? Well thats the point. New difficulty is not new content. So only thing we compare is actualy how hard is to finish classic dungeon vs moder wow dungeons and yes we have to ignore difficulty levels becouse they do not add new content.

[Drutt]

I tanked 5 mans as fury, always. Yep. Super hard back then.

Same here, except I was Arms because I didn't have the gold to continually respec out of my PVP spec and back.

I had no trouble finishing vanilla dungeons, and I had no trouble finishing BC heroics as Arms either.

Theorycrafting was simply really bad back then and most people didn't know have a clue how to play even halfway optimally.

[MatadorMedia]

Pfft I remember tanking Deadmines at level 18 on my Arms Warrior with a 2 hander and without having learned Defensive stance. That's how bad I was and we still never wiped. They just took forever but were not necessarily difficult, except for the ones that ramped up the level of the enemies throughout like BRD.

[deceptacon1]

Just to put this into perspective, I played vanilla from day 1 and was in deadmines probably within a few days of classic being released. Back then, as a paladin, I was both the main tank and the main healer of our full deadmines group. We were definitely higher (20+ as I recall), but it was certainly doable and things only really got hazy a few times. I don't remember how many times we wiped but I definitely remember people dying here and there.

Dungeons in vanilla were what I would describe as less forgiving but certainly not super hard. You could throw together a group of whatever as long as you had a tank and a healer and you would eventually get through the dungeon. If you optimize your group and you all know how to play then you will get through it even faster.

Better groups = fewer wipes and more leniency with large pulls and what not but even scrub groups will finish dungeons, it will just take a while.

*Also, worth pointing out, we tried the paladin tank/healer thing again in stockades and got owned, so that strat so no longer viable beyond the first dungeon.

[Fascinate]

most of the people in beta atm are long time players who know their shit... when you have 5 people like that who all know the dungeons and exactly what they're doing and they are low level... no shit it's easy. that being said i've seen a lot of groups with top pve players and r1 pvpers etc. that wipe and have deaths and healers running oom, and again, these are good players who know the game and they are struggling at times. your average 5 players just grouping to get it done while leveling will have a harder time, and the dungeons will also be harder as they get higher level. you can try to claim it's an easy game all you want, but that doesn't explain the multiple times i've seen "top" players doing corpse runs these past few days... i can't remember ever seeing anyone corpse run in the past few years because dying doesn't happen anymore in retail wow outside of raid wipes or high end m+ wipes.

all that being said, the game isn't a hard game in that way, it's a fun game with many challenges along the way and then for the final 2 raids it actually does get hard.

Sure but at the same time you need to keep in mind every private server player has noted that leveling is slower on classic, the disconnect between the dungeons and leveling mobs is what is curious about this topic.

I am sure blizz is looking into this and will keep us updated.

[traevyn]

The only hard part about dungeons was making sure everyone was ready and on the same page before you pulled stuff. You can't just grab 8 mobs at level 15 and expect to live, but they were also the casually accessible content.

[LedZeppelin]

oh yeah look it me im clearing deadmines too ez

[StrawberryZebra]

What dungeons are we talking about? Most leveling dungeons you could just grab mobs and AoE them down. CC really wasn't really needed until close to level cap, and even then it wasn't always needed.

Not exactly. The big roadblock to AoE pulling was tanks not being able to hold threat on everything at the time. You could potentially tank any elites in a pack while the none-elites were beating on your Mage, which was a common enough stratergy in lower level dungeons, but for the most part Tanks just didn't have the scaling nor the tools to really AoE tank mobs.

Which is where CC came in. You'd usually CC mobs down to the number your Tank could reasonably hold threat on. It was usually in the 2-3 ballpark for most tanks, I expect that number has gone up simply because players have much more experience to draw on now - In 2004 we were just making things up as we went along.

So we all agree. Dungeons are easier than people remember because players are better now. The only thing holding us back will be the gratify me now mentality.

Not only are players better, we also have better tools now. Addons have come a long way since 2004 and there are tools, build optimisers and guides available. More experienced and better informed players are going to breeze through content that complete newbies struggled with.