The real issue with modern WoW

[TheRevenantHero]

Take your favorite single player game, doesn't matter what it is, and replay it with cheat codes activated (god mode, infinite ammo/resources, idk whatever there is for the game) and see how much fun it is. Chances are not very fun for long. That's what BFA feels like compared to Classic.

This is a false equivalency and you know it. It's more try to compare your experience with Super Mario Bros. when you were a child with playing that same game TODAY with all your experience. It's not going to be as difficult anymore because you know what to do now. You know how to play games now. So that super easy game that you fumbled through is a breeze now. Which is what Classic will be. It was never difficult. People just had no idea what they were doing back then so it made everything more difficult.

[SirCowdog]

I don't get it, there's literally no serious discussion whether or not modern WoW bosses have more mechanics, because that's an objective fact.
Modern WoW raiding is more about execution than being mostly about having the raw numbers necessary to kill the boss before healers run out of mana or whatever, who even contests this?

This is the biggest problem with the difficulty topic, people can't agree on what difficulty is or what area of the game is relevant when it comes to difficulty to begin with. WoW's current difficulty problem certainly isn't related to mythic raiding, because no one worth listening to would seriously claim that mythic raiding today isn't hard to execute. You can however have a very lengthy discussion about how much less time it takes overall to get a character ready to do mythic raiding, since focus has shifted so much away from logistics and how long it took to even get ready to step inside the instance, and more about learning the fight itself. Raiding Naxxramas was probably 90% preparations, attunements and having enough of x class in t2.5 gear, than actually doing the bosses. I mean what was the most advanced raid mechanic in original Naxx...?

But when people talk about how modern WoW is too easy they aren't talking about mythic raids or top-level m+, they are talking about everything else. New zones and storylines you bulldoze through without a thought, new dungeons (normal/heroic) you don't even bother reading what the boss does because it's dead in 30 seconds regardless, world bosses being zerged down without any effort at all, IEs and Warfronts that are literally designed so that you win. It's the top- and bottomheavy problem that is WoWs issue with keeping people interested. You're either doing content that is designed so that you win, or you're running high-end, premade content. Everything inbetween making a level 1 character, up until going into a heroic raid or high level m+, is guaranteed-win. That is a godawful way of making people feel immersed and feel like they want to invest in their characters.

Level up being a demigod with or without heirlooms, zerg through every dungeon, zerg through IEs, auto-win Warfronts, zerg down world bosses, solo most, if not all, WQs. And then, finally, there's difficult content... assuming you have a spot in a raiding guild or a stable 5man group you're comfortable with.
Just because there is difficult content at the very top-end, should you go out of your way to do it, does not excuse the fact that the entire rest of the game feels like a joke.

And that is WoWs issue today.
It's boring because you can't lose.
You are facerolling until you hit heroic raids.

I know we tend to disagree on a lot of topics, but I'm right there with you about this post. Well said!

[Doffen]

Do you REALLY believe they'd stay quiet if the subs broke 10 million again? Honest question. Personally I don't believe they would have. Nor would they have shut down that interview so quickly and decisively.

Not sure, WoD made it, so Legion could have made it. I see they are hands on saying positive things about it when it's actually good as in time spent, like there was a increase in a couple of quarters compared to WoD Quarter during Legion, and they hyped that, but it is kind of vague, yes. Like now in the last MAU they hardly mentioned it, when it is obviously not going that well.

I would make a strong guess on 8-10 million players that tried it during the first 3-6 months of Legion, 10 million at the same time at launch, maybe not. That Legion did well at start and further on I don't doubt, and the first reports could have been fronted as a positive hype and it was 10 million people that tried. It is strange that it got translated from that interview with the polish(?) magazine that Chilton said around 10.1 million. I wouldn't ruled that out as a positive hype as said, but I would be inclined to think that any company would confirm it's going really good when it actually does. But they might have learned from WoD that they lost half the playerbase from launch to the last sub-report they did, and if Legion went in that direction, they would get the negative feedback again for losing half their playerbase and people would see that as another failure.

[Elias01]

he is right.
tell me the mechanics for garr.
tell me the mechanics for baron geddon
tell me the mechanics for literally every boss in molten core for example.

lets see how many of those bosses are "dps, but X"

lets compare that to the very first boss of dazar alor which is the most simple fight in there.

dps boss
avoid wave of light (At this point its on par with a vanilla raid boss)
when boss changes blessing switch to adds
intterupt heals
intterupt all the mega heals, including those of the dead mobs
dodge hammers
turn away from blind
kill healing adds first, then dps add
stay out of concencration
tanks need to move mobs out of wave of light
tanks need to move mobs out of concencration

alright thats i think all of em.

You dont have to do any of that in LFR. And no mythic isnt relevant, becouse game difficulty is always determined lowest difficulty possible not highest.

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This is a false equivalency and you know it. It's more try to compare your experience with Super Mario Bros. when you were a child with playing that same game TODAY with all your experience. It's not going to be as difficult anymore because you know what to do now. You know how to play games now. So that super easy game that you fumbled through is a breeze now. Which is what Classic will be. It was never difficult. People just had no idea what they were doing back then so it made everything more difficult.

Mythic isnt difficult people just sont know what they are doing. Same logic and absolute nonsense. And guy is completly right. Retail wont be ever harder becouse of existence of easy mods like lfg and lfr (cheat codes). This is what makes retail easy. Fact people can finish game in easy mods.

[TheRevenantHero]

You dont have to do any of that in LFR. And no mythic isnt relevant, becouse game difficulty is always determined lowest difficulty possible not highest.

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Mythic isnt difficult people just sont know what they are doing. Same logic and absolute nonsense. And guy is completly right. Retail wont be ever harder becouse of existence of easy mods like lfg and lfr (cheat codes). This is what makes retail easy. Fact people can finish game in easy mods.

I've been seeing streamers in the Classic beta who literally have to create challenges in order to make Classic challenging. Because otherwise it's INCREDIBLY easy. Classic is 100% not harder than retail. It's just more time-consuming to get to max level. Once people get to raid level, they will faceroll all the raids because Vanilla raids were simple as fuck. People just had no idea what they were doing back then and had utterly unviable specs.

[Tomana]

You know...it's almost like you had to progress and gear up over the entire course of the expansion instead of just jumping straight to the final patch... :/

Except that a lot of those attunements were lifted in the later TBC, because even Blizzard realized the level of retardation required.
The Vashj attunement part in particular was so much of a pain in the ass I can't even measure it.

Take away all the attunements and keys, and you'd still have to gear up. Or do you think you could jump straight from a fresh level 70 ding and run Black Temple and Sunwell? Good luck with that.

We literally did that in TBC days when we had to gear another resto shammie. BT/MH runs several weeks in a row.

[SirCowdog]

Except that a lot of those attunements were lifted in the later TBC, because even Blizzard realized the level of retardation required.
The Vashj attunement part in particular was so much of a pain in the ass I can't even measure it.

We literally did that in TBC days when we had to gear another resto shammie. BT/MH runs several weeks in a row.

I meant your entire raid first time through. There's no way an entire raid team could skip ahead like that. Sorry I didn't word it better.

Anyway, I think attunements would still be fine as an account-wide unlock rather than a character specific one. If you(the player) have already done the attunement, then I see nothing wrong with alts not having to repeat it. You(the player, not the character) did the work already. And if you've got a raid or a guild willing to carry an alt to gear, then more power to you.

Having said that, I do think the original TBC attunements were a little overboard. Too many steps, when the only real barrier should be if you're good enough to pass the fights or not. Things like having to do the reputation grind just to get the key to be able to enter heroics seemed excessive. But it did also keep people in each phase of progression longer, which was good for finding groups. But we also didn't have LFD back then either, so I'm not sure if those same TBC tasks would be as tedious or onerous if you could just queue up for them.

[FelPlague]

You dont have to do any of that in LFR. And no mythic isnt relevant, becouse game difficulty is always determined lowest difficulty possible not highest.

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Mythic isnt difficult people just sont know what they are doing. Same logic and absolute nonsense. And guy is completly right. Retail wont be ever harder becouse of existence of easy mods like lfg and lfr (cheat codes). This is what makes retail easy. Fact people can finish game in easy mods.

LFR is not raiding.

"You don't have to do any mechanics if you just watch a group kill the boss"
is the same equivalent to what you are saying.

i can watch someone play darksouls and see the exact same stuff someone playing it does, does that mean the game is easy?
no, only if i actuallty beat it, and on the harder difficulties

[Fred Skinner]

Oh so op wants to pretend linear progression and no accessibility for returners actually solves all problems.

Well, no, it does not.

[Tomana]

Having said that, I do think the original TBC attunements were a little overboard. Too many steps, when the only real barrier should be if you're good enough to pass the fights or not. Things like having to do the reputation grind just to get the key to be able to enter heroics seemed excessive. But it did also keep people in each phase of progression longer, which was good for finding groups. But we also didn't have LFD back then either, so I'm not sure if those same TBC tasks would be as tedious or onerous if you could just queue up for them.

I'm actually all for adding non-raid steps and/or reputations as raid attunements. IMHO, the problem starts when you start adding old raid content as prerequisites for new raid content. It pisses everybody off, forces to divert raid nights from progressions to attune new members, and is a recipe for disasters because attuned raiders forgot half the mechanics of the fight at this point. And IMHO, even LFR would not be a solution. In MOP, they tried to do that (you had to do LFR mogu'shan palace to go to Heart of fear and then to Terrace), but it didn't end well.

Heck, I think that Blizzard should pull a second AQ opening on a raid at some point. But that will never happen, because raiders will cry so much about their server being too shit (obviously) that their tears will form a megatsunami.

[Otaka]

I've been seeing streamers in the Classic beta who literally have to create challenges in order to make Classic challenging. Because otherwise it's INCREDIBLY easy. Classic is 100% not harder than retail. It's just more time-consuming to get to max level. Once people get to raid level, they will faceroll all the raids because Vanilla raids were simple as fuck. People just had no idea what they were doing back then and had utterly unviable specs.

Wrong... challenges like what?
You are mistaking challenges for lack of content.

What kind of challenges do people do on retail to make it more difficult? Ironman, literally handicap yourself to make the game harder.
What kind of challenges do streamers do on beta? as far as ive seen they have simply tried to stretch their content which is RESTRICTED at level 30, they are trying to see how far they can go and so far weve seen them clear the entire scarlet monastery even tho they are underleveled for 2/3 wings.
They arent deliberately handicapping themselves in character power... they are simply trying to push it to its limits.

Thats not them creating challenges... those are already in the game.

Complexity doesnt equal to more difficult content, it only makes the content harder to get into. If you compare a single boss from current raid content to an older one it sure as hell looks scarier than it is... and nobody in current day and age would be able to kill a raid boss without reading what the abilities to. Its just not plausible to learn them on the fly... and that takes away from the experience itself.

You are supposed to kill some seriously big and bad evil monster who noone has killed before... but SOMEHOW you know what abilities it does, makes absolutely no sense. Gone are the days of exploration... and if bosses dont have a 1000 different abilities then it would be easier to go in blind and learn it the hard way, and that hard way is way more enjoyable since you begin from nothing... you know nothing of the boss, then you go and do one pull and another and at some point you get the kill... looking back after youve done that will feel significantly more rewarding.

Sure people would read guides... but ask yourself how many would bother?
Less complexity makes raids more accessible, it doesnt necessarily make them easier... If people died in 40 man raids in progression, it did just as easily lead into a wipe as it does today.
Would you really need to read a guide on a boss like Magmadar? dont stand in or near fire. Thats pretty much it for most, how much do you need to read into it to understand what to do?

Almost everyone here also forgets that boss mechanics arent the only thing which determines difficulty... its also the class-design. Everyone didnt have selfheals in vanilla, everyone didnt have defensive cooldowns in vanilla and everyone didnt have mobility in vanilla.
Today? everyone has everything in one way or another, some have more and some have less.

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We literally did that in TBC days when we had to gear another resto shammie. BT/MH runs several weeks in a row.

Carrying one person doesnt mean anything, the rest of you overgeared the raids.
Try it again but this time EVERYONE in the raid group are fresh 70's, not just one.

[Tomana]

Carrying one person doesnt mean anything, the rest of you overgeared the raids.
Try it again but this time EVERYONE in the raid group are fresh 70's, not just one.

That was not the issue addressed in the original quote. Also, on one of the servers I played on, a guild changed their faction and regeared themselves during the BT>SWP lull and still got server first on KJ. I don't want to know how much they had to play for that

[Elias01]

LFR is not raiding.

"You don't have to do any mechanics if you just watch a group kill the boss"
is the same equivalent to what you are saying.

i can watch someone play darksouls and see the exact same stuff someone playing it does, does that mean the game is easy?
no, only if i actuallty beat it, and on the harder difficulties

You can say LFR isnt raiding as you want. No matter if its truth or not. Majority of players sees it as raiding.

[unbound]

Blizzard has to spend tremendous amounts of work hours, talent and money to create content patches, but because of the low difficulty of all this content the playerbase consumes it almost immediately and is left wanting more.

Here's the thing. This statement is not true.

Blizz doesn't spend anything like "tremendous amounts of work hours, talent, and money" to create content patches.

While I don't necessarily disagree with the ease, the bigger problem is that they are doing the opposite of investing "tremendous amounts of work hours, talent, and money" anymore.

If there was anything like that happening, you wouldn't have 16 dungeons each for BC and Wrath with only 10 dungeons in BfA. Or 8 and 10 raids for BC and Wrath, respectively, with only 4 raids for BfA.

BC and Wrath added completely new things (flying, arenas, new races, new class). BfA added nothing that wasn't added in earlier expansions.

You are running out of content mostly because they are literally putting in 1/2 or less of the work hours, talent, and money into this game that they used to.

[FelPlague]

You can say LFR isnt raiding as you want. No matter if its truth or not. Majority of players sees it as raiding.

ok, and you can say "cuphead is easy, i just watched someone play it, didnt even break a sweat"
does not make it true.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Everyone's a critic, only a select few are developers.

Gee, I wonder why.

[FelPlague]

Here's the thing. This statement is not true.

Blizz doesn't spend anything like "tremendous amounts of work hours, talent, and money" to create content patches.

While I don't necessarily disagree with the ease, the bigger problem is that they are doing the opposite of investing "tremendous amounts of work hours, talent, and money" anymore.

If there was anything like that happening, you wouldn't have 16 dungeons each for BC and Wrath with only 10 dungeons in BfA. Or 8 and 10 raids for BC and Wrath, respectively, with only 4 raids for BfA.

BC and Wrath added completely new things (flying, arenas, new races, new class). BfA added nothing that wasn't added in earlier expansions.

You are running out of content mostly because they are literally putting in 1/2 or less of the work hours, talent, and money into this game that they used to.

wow so you think blizzard just... sits around doing fuck all?

do you know WHY TBC and Wotlk had so many dungeons?

lets look at how many of the dungeons could have been literally the same dungeon but larger
(as in they share all the exact same art assets)
Hellfire=3
auchidon=4
space ship=3
naga cave=3

so if there was only 1 dungeon per each of these themes, instead of 3 we would have only 7 tbc dungeons.
but they bassicly just re-used the dungeon assets and made a new dungeon.

sorta like how kharazhan was split into 2, these coulda just been 1 big dungeon, but instead they split it into 3 or 4 mini dungeons, like kharazhan was 1 big dungeon, then split into 2 small ones (talking about legions version)

wotlk had this same thing.
utgarde=2
nexus=2
titanic=2
neruvian=2
troll=2
meaning without those we would have had 11, with 3 of those being just 1 giant room you fight in for the entire dungeon. (trial, violet, and a fair bit of reflection)


so yes, they are spending tons of money and time developing, as cata and afterr they started making sure each dungeon was unique,. so it wasnt just "these coulda been the same dungeon..." its just sad to pretend that they literally sit there doing nothing all day.


also you sure? because they have a bigger dev team then any before, so what the fuck are you talking about "half as much work hours, talent, and money into the game"

do you think they hired these devs to literally sit around and do nothing?

[Queen of Hamsters]

You are running out of content mostly because they are literally putting in 1/2 or less of the work hours, talent, and money into this game that they used to.

Literally? Citation needed.

We haven't had reused raid content in quite some time. I wonder why...

[SirCowdog]

I'm actually all for adding non-raid steps and/or reputations as raid attunements. IMHO, the problem starts when you start adding old raid content as prerequisites for new raid content. It pisses everybody off, forces to divert raid nights from progressions to attune new members, and is a recipe for disasters because attuned raiders forgot half the mechanics of the fight at this point. And IMHO, even LFR would not be a solution. In MOP, they tried to do that (you had to do LFR mogu'shan palace to go to Heart of fear and then to Terrace), but it didn't end well.

Heck, I think that Blizzard should pull a second AQ opening on a raid at some point. But that will never happen, because raiders will cry so much about their server being too shit (obviously) that their tears will form a megatsunami.

Hmmm...the part about killing raid bosses before progressing, I'm not so sure about. Would you really recruit someone with zero experience with the bosses you were on, who was also not geared? I wouldn't. I'd tell that recruit to play on the B team, or to PUG his attunement then re-apply.

But then again, with modern class and spec balance, it doesn't seem like it would be hard to find competent players of any type. Not like TBC where tanks/healers were sparse, and even some DPS classes weren't raid viable.

[Queen of Hamsters]

wow so you think blizzard just... sits around doing fuck all?

do you know WHY TBC and Wotlk had so many dungeons?

lets look at how many of the dungeons could have been literally the same dungeon but larger
(as in they share all the exact same art assets)
Hellfire=3
auchidon=4
space ship=3
naga cave=3

so if there was only 1 dungeon per each of these themes, instead of 3 we would have only 7 tbc dungeons.
but they bassicly just re-used the dungeon assets and made a new dungeon.

sorta like how kharazhan was split into 2, these coulda just been 1 big dungeon, but instead they split it into 3 or 4 mini dungeons, like kharazhan was 1 big dungeon, then split into 2 small ones (talking about legions version)

wotlk had this same thing.
utgarde=2
nexus=2
titanic=2
neruvian=2
troll=2
meaning without those we would have had 11, with 3 of those being just 1 giant room you fight in for the entire dungeon. (trial, violet, and a fair bit of reflection)


so yes, they are spending tons of money and time developing, as cata and afterr they started making sure each dungeon was unique,. so it wasnt just "these coulda been the same dungeon..." its just sad to pretend that they literally sit there doing nothing all day.

Yeah, the team working on WoW is bigger than ever, with more devs planned to be added, as stated by officials.

People may feel however they like, but raid quality is not one of those things that's gone down. And dungeons? M+ pretty much guarantees that dungeons will be interesting from now on. Waycrest Manor alone is clearly a labor of love where they went above and beyond required effort in details and world building.