Logistical Difficulty is the Challenge of Classic

[darkfire979]

There will always be guilds filled with people liek yourself whose hours pervent evening raiding and will start earlier... and/or raid weekends

But how many of those people would be willing to lead a raid? I notice most raid times are usually based around the raid leaders free hours, if the raid lead is not around, the raid won't start anyway. And I notice there are more people that willing to raid lead at later hours of the day rather than earlier, which make sense i guess since they would like be in similar leadership type positions in RL and would likely be busy during the peak hours of the day and would get home for raids later part of the day.

[Relapses]

Holy shit, an actual interesting discussion on this sub-forum that isn't, "HAHA RETAIL SUX DAE MEMBER WHEN..."

I agree with the idea behind the OP but I counter that with the raids generally being more forgiving to offset the logistical nightmare that was organizing the raid. But this is something that is echoed every time people bring up how much "longer" bosses in Classic stayed alive. It wasn't because they were mechanically more complex (save maybe 4H), but because you had to factor in the amount of time it took just to get 40 individual players far enough in the game's linear progression system just to be able to zone into the fucking instance and clear trash.

[garicasha]

Especially in casual guilds, loot assignment becomes much more of a chore. In 20-man raids with modern itemization it's not too hard to remember when one of the 3-4 mail wearers got the last upgrade.

But with a roster of 60...who can remember when rogue #9 got a chance at a decent ring?

[Echocho]

True, the difficulty of the raid doesn't have anything to do with the raid, it's creating a raid setup and recruiting to fill that setup. My guild is in the process of doing that right now so all the difficulty of the game will be overcome by the time it launches.

[deenman]

40 man raids sucked. Getting 40 people to show up was a pain and the raids them self were boring with boss fights that were hard then but are super easy now. They got it right with the 20 mans.

lol,wow vanila figths werent hard by any standards at the time,wow was THE casual mmo whne it launched

[Duronos]

lol,wow vanila figths werent hard by any standards at the time,wow was THE casual mmo whne it launched

Heigan still wipes people a lot. Naxx 40 has some bosses with mechanics that just straight up wipe the raid not to include the gargoyle's at the beginning of the plague wing. You have to tryhard on preparation so your dps can down the gargoyle's fast enough etc. If you don't then raid wipes pretty fast. KT actually requires quite a lot of coordination, my guild has a literal infograph of where each individual is positioned inside of KT's room (we have more for like C'thun and Sapph as well). With great logistics really makes for easy fights.

Honestly, a lot of the trash is harder than the bosses.

[klaps_05]

Given how little loot actually drops, I wouldnt be surprised if more guilds prefer to run not more than 25 man rosters. Much easier to gear up ppl when you dont need so many and can prepare alts easier for later progress than having to deal with 50-60 man rosters like in classic.

[tratra]

40 man raids sucked. Getting 40 people to show up was a pain and the raids them self were boring with boss fights that were hard then but are super easy now. They got it right with the 20 mans.

you clearly didn't play that game... getting 40 people wasn't hard. Raids and bosses were fun, fun enough for us to be farming the previous raids after clearing Naxx.

making fights mechanically hard doesn't constitute fun at all for many people out there.

[erifwodahs]

"Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics."
- Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC (Commandant of the Marine Corps) noted in 1980

Many people misunderstand what exactly comprises the challenge of Classic compared with Retail. Sure, the latter has placed much more emphasis over the years on tactical difficulty, yet Classic has reigned supreme when it comes to logistical considerations.

A summary of logistics, "the detailed coordination of a complex operation involving many people, facilities, or supplies." Classic manages to incorporate all three aspects with its 40 man raids involving heavy preparation. It makes for a satisfying conclusion when all these elements are put to work in executing the run.

So far we have already seen that there are many who appreciate this element even if they do not know the words to describe it. Personally, it helps with my immersion as the raids and the world outside feel far more intertwined.

I would agree, if this involved at least several hundred people. 40? That's not that many. It's enough to be inconvenient, but not hard logistically. I am not denying it took some effort and in 2004 it was way worse (crappy networks/pc's), but I don't see how getting 20, 30 or 40 man are much different. Unless you are in a casual guild, where people don't commit and RL has to rely on their mood to play for them to show up/have consumables. A raiding guild of todays standards does not have such problems, because you are either there, prepared or you get benched, I would imagine people's expectations for raiders you be the same for classic as it is in retail, which would make the hardest part of raiding in Classic - recruitment, which is harder than retail (potentially, but you arguably don't require mechanically skilled players and can get away with more commited players).We will certainly see how hard it was, when it comes out tho. It will be easy verifiable.

[Leonora]

One thing about private servers is that they are able to consistently acquire world buffs. This won't be the case in Classic since the buff will only activate (as intended) when the head is mounted, not whenever someone hands in the quest.

This will be one damper in progression, among other things (like armor reducing debuffs stacking on private servers).

I never played on private servers. The article I mentioned referred to Wow Vanilla. So this damper only exists for people playing on private servers, I guess.

[erifwodahs]

Heigan still wipes people a lot. Naxx 40 has some bosses with mechanics that just straight up wipe the raid not to include the gargoyle's at the beginning of the plague wing. You have to tryhard on preparation so your dps can down the gargoyle's fast enough etc. If you don't then raid wipes pretty fast. KT actually requires quite a lot of coordination, my guild has a literal infograph of where each individual is positioned inside of KT's room (we have more for like C'thun and Sapph as well). With great logistics really makes for easy fights.

Honestly, a lot of the trash is harder than the bosses.

Assigning positions and tasks for the fights are tactics, not logistics.

[Dergiab]

Captain Obvious reporting the news at 11.

[Leonora]

Consumables aren't just "extras".

Getting various world buffs, flasking, using a ton of elixirs and other consumables can more than double your damage.

It's not like retail where a flask increases your damage by 3%. In Molten Core flasking will basically double your damage as a mage. In Ahn'qiraj a flask is still a 50% damage boost.

People who actually make the effort to get consumables and buffs are going to crush these raids.

They just aren't designed for this. There's basically two bosses in the entire game designed around flasking the raid (Loatheb, Kel'Thuzad) and even then if you get world buffs on top of consumables those bosses get crushed.

So, basically, consumables were only not an extra in the later raids, and mostly so in Naxxramas.

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lol,wow vanila figths werent hard by any standards at the time,wow was THE casual mmo whne it launched

You look through the wrong glasses. At that time, raids were hard because most players had to learn it. Just like Blizzard then started with learning how to design good raid encounters.

With the skill level of having played expansion packs, now even an LFR player might manage MC bosses ok-ish. Buit that is a totally different situation than when we started with wow.

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I would agree, if this involved at least several hundred people. 40? That's not that many. It's enough to be inconvenient, but not hard logistically. I am not denying it took some effort and in 2004 it was way worse (crappy networks/pc's), but I don't see how getting 20, 30 or 40 man are much different. Unless you are in a casual guild, where people don't commit and RL has to rely on their mood to play for them to show up/have consumables. A raiding guild of todays standards does not have such problems, because you are either there, prepared or you get benched, I would imagine people's expectations for raiders you be the same for classic as it is in retail, which would make the hardest part of raiding in Classic - recruitment, which is harder than retail (potentially, but you arguably don't require mechanically skilled players and can get away with more commited players).We will certainly see how hard it was, when it comes out tho. It will be easy verifiable.

Back in the days a lot of players were very immature, game-group-discipline was unheard of. It was a major task filtering out (and/or educating) solid players. With wow classic returning and appealing (maybe) mostly to mature players, chances are that this all changes a bit.

[Akka]

It's not like retail where a flask increases your damage by 3%. In Molten Core flasking will basically double your damage as a mage. In Ahn'qiraj a flask is still a 50% damage boost.

Partially true, but don't forget that damage in Vanilla doesn't scale as much as on current WoW. Spellpower is only a part of the damage, and is only partially applied depending on the spells.

Haha, love it! Colten More will be waaay to easy in Classic.

MC was already piss easy in Vanilla, though, that's nothing new.
When we were doing our first forays in it, we were only 25 guys new at it and still managed to kill 3 bosses. Organized guilds were able to faceroll the entire raid in one hour, one hour and a half.

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Holy shit, an actual interesting discussion on this sub-forum that isn't, "HAHA RETAIL SUX DAE MEMBER WHEN..."

Yeah, unlike all these guys who come on the CLASSIC forum only to shit on Classic

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Given how little loot actually drops, I wouldnt be surprised if more guilds prefer to run not more than 25 man rosters. Much easier to gear up ppl when you dont need so many and can prepare alts easier for later progress than having to deal with 50-60 man rosters like in classic.

25 people will be easily able to clear MC, but that won't work as well in BWL, and it would probably be pointlessly harder in AQ and Naxx.

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I would agree, if this involved at least several hundred people. 40? That's not that many. It's enough to be inconvenient, but not hard logistically. I am not denying it took some effort and in 2004 it was way worse (crappy networks/pc's), but I don't see how getting 20, 30 or 40 man are much different.

Something tells me you never managed a roster.
Trust me, it IS different. A lot.

[erifwodahs]

Something tells me you never managed a roster.
Trust me, it IS different. A lot.

I have experience in managing a roster of around 30 people from EN to end of NH in Legion, recruitment officer in WotLK too. What I meant it is that if you do your recruitment correctly, managing 25 people and 50 is the same, you just post calendar events and wait for sign ups, then with your healer/dps officers you discus what you actually need for upcoming encounter and set up a roster, post it on discord and there you go! That being said, I also have experienced the hard part of it with people not signing up, and yes, if you have 25 people roster and need to chase 4 people for sign ups and cater for their attendance issues, 40 man might have 8 such people which is hard and annoying and I can see where you are coming from. I prefer motivated raiders rather then, "I will play when I play" players because that means your motivated players suffer for others not looking up for tactics, being late, not showing up. I would suspect that raiding in Classic will be a more privileged for motivated players, as it is not accessible as much therefore if should not be so problematic manage the roster.

[Akka]

I have experience in managing a roster of around 30 people from EN to end of NH in Legion, recruitment officer in WotLK too. What I meant it is that if you do your recruitment correctly, managing 25 people and 50 is the same

Well, no. In theory it is, in practice it isn't.

That being said, I also have experienced the hard part of it with people not signing up, and yes, if you have 25 people roster and need to chase 4 people for sign ups and cater for their attendance issues, 40 man might have 8 such people which is hard and annoying and I can see where you are coming from.

It's not just mathematical scaling, it's deeper, into human nature, just like having a small party with close friends can never be simply replicated with having a large party with close friends, because you just can't be "close friend" with lots of people.

There is the fact that the smaller a group is, the more tight-knit it can be while the bigger it is, the more faceless people become. There is also the fact that the more people you have, the more chances there is that "something happened", and the more people there is, the more each one can feel that someone else can fill up for them.
The more people are, the more there is chances of some not getting along with others, and conflict management can be a pretty heavy burden (I'm not talking about just about drama queens, but about all the low-key disagreements which can accumulate and spoil the fun). Also, there is always subgroups of people according to affinity, which tend to be typically about 5-10 in size, and the more people there is, the more these subgroups takes over the interest of people instead of the larger one.

Logistic is hard because we're managing humans, not merchandise, and humans are not scalable. We are a diverse lot, so each one has a different treshold, but overall groups of 20 work much better than groups of 40. Downsizing raids is actually one of the few changes from Classic that I see as entirely better for the game.

[erifwodahs]

Well, no. In theory it is, in practice it isn't.

It's not just mathematical scaling, it's deeper, into human nature, just like having a small party with close friends can never be simply replicated with having a large party with close friends, because you just can't be "close friend" with lots of people.

There is the fact that the smaller a group is, the more tight-knit it can be while the bigger it is, the more faceless people become. There is also the fact that the more people you have, the more chances there is that "something happened", and the more people there is, the more each one can feel that someone else can fill up for them.
The more people are, the more there is chances of some not getting along with others, and conflict management can be a pretty heavy burden (I'm not talking about just about drama queens, but about all the low-key disagreements which can accumulate and spoil the fun). Also, there is always subgroups of people according to affinity, which tend to be typically about 5-10 in size, and the more people there is, the more these subgroups takes over the interest of people instead of the larger one.

Logistic is hard because we're managing humans, not merchandise, and humans are not scalable. We are a diverse lot, so each one has a different treshold, but overall groups of 20 work much better than groups of 40. Downsizing raids is actually one of the few changes from Classic that I see as entirely better for the game.

Ok, I might be underestimating the usual guild of 45-50man roster, but I really couldn't enjoy raiding in something that is not "common sense" for others in the raid group. Wasting time for 19 other people is bad, wasting time for 39 people is way worse. Not even touching loot drama topic. That should never be a thing for a "progression" player. Subgroups forming is inevitable, but that is cool, you can find people who actually do the stuff you like in such groups, if you are sociable. Excluding drama of "we should make our own guild", these groups keep guilds even closer together, as people befriend others in that group, which makes it harder to quit/leave and then groups are then bonded by raiding. Tho this can backfire, when someone decides to quit, there is a chance that the group will quit/move, leaving a bigger hole in a roster.
Anyway, I can appreciate RL/Officers/Recruitment team work, as it is still hard at any scale. Finding like minded people makes it way easier, because of expectations are similar.

[Aphrel]

Weren’t raids tuned to where you didn’t actually need 40 people?

Pretty much
only really naxx needed 40 ppl.

and this time around naxx will probobly be quite doable with 30-35 ppl.
Even if we ignore the very much evolved meta of knowledge since back then the server preformance improvments alone will make up for 2 or 3 dps players.

[Rendark]

you clearly didn't play that game... getting 40 people wasn't hard. Raids and bosses were fun, fun enough for us to be farming the previous raids after clearing Naxx.

making fights mechanically hard doesn't constitute fun at all for many people out there.

I'm happy you found it fun but if i didn't put on music then there was no way i'd be doing MC. Bosses that are mechanically hard aren't necessarily fun, they are way better then a boss with 2 or 3 skills.

[Dakara]

Managing 40 players really isn't anymore difficult than 10-30 now. Larger raids just meant less guilds. The problem was gearing up replacements as people left.

From my experience in Vanilla, MC/BWL were fairly easy to keep a stable(ish) roster for. There was always turnover, but replacing them with people in dungeon blues wasn't the end of the world provided we kept the Fire Resist geared MT.

Later on in Vanilla however, especially Naxx, poaching became more prominent. There would of only been a handful of serious raiding guilds on my server and we were 2nd on Alliance IIRC so we didn't lose that many and had a stable MT. Even without poaching tho, people still leave from time to time, so we had to farm old raids to gear them up.... even some of our long standing raiders still needed gear form old raids as it was BiS.

By Naxx, we were raiding 7 nights a week. Weds/Thurs/Mon was progression and then we'd run MC/BWL/AQ20/40/ZG as required on the other nights. We only tracked attendance on progression nights, but farm nights still awarded DKP which made sure we had enough showing up to farm nights.

Once your guild is established, the logistics weren't really anymore difficult than other expansions. Most guilds still ran a DKP system of some form until forced personal loot.
Establishing a guild however, is another story entirely. Mine started as a Forum organised PUG run by a small group of IRL friends. Eventually, the regular puggers all joined under one banner and the rest was history.