Is Classic too easy?

[Dazmalak]

Yes and no, easy and difficult are different things to different people. That said, why does it matter? I don't personally believe difficulty and fun are related. Plenty of fun games are easy. Plenty of difficult games aren't fun. And plenty of games are both fun and difficult. Personally I think the dev team has gone down the absolute wrong path in terms of catering to the very vocal, but tiny minority of players who seem to think the world needs to revolve around the most cutting edge, difficult content (mythic raiding and mythic dungeons). Sorry if the game didn't challenge you or that you think a 15 year old game with mechanics that a majority of raiders already know would be more difficult?

[hlud]

You realize even even the world first race guilds try radically different strats right? You brought it up, so i assumed you would have been aware of the HUGE differences guilds used to down the bosses. You are aware of these, right?

Please enlighten me. I haven't played since Cataclysm, and while i am aware of radical strats, especially in Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard also banned those radical strats.

[Ssateneth]

Imagine putting all this time and effort into gearing up and consumables when you don't even need it with these easy raids.

15 years ago was a different time, i'll never understand classic players now.

problem is someone made a performance metric on sites for wow logs. just clearing it isn't good enough for e-peen. you need to do it fast, and not take damage or die, so guilds will expect, or worse, make mandatory, 5-15 different consumables to make some imaginary number on a 3rd party website higher.

[arkanon]

Please enlighten me. I haven't played since Cataclysm, and while i am aware of radical strats, especially in Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard also banned those radical strats.

You brought the world first race up as evidence to support your argument, but have zero knowledge of it? Yeah, you are done. Its over.

I never said the strats where "radical" i said they were radically different from each other.

[Uoyredrum]

Some stats from yesterday, another 500 guilds have cleared BWL from yesteday to today.
Classic

4180 guilds have so far made progress in BWL.
Out of 4180 guilds 1646 have cleared it.


167 200 players total.
65 840 players have killed Nefarian.

= ~ 40% of players/guilds entering BWL have cleared it in a couple of days. Over 500 guilds cleared it first day.

Retail

Mythic Ny'Alotha

2302 guilds have made progress on mythic. 4 guilds have cleared it. Less then 1%.

Heroic Ny'Alotha

8627 guilds have made progress on heroic since january 21.
2706 guilds have cleared it. About 30% have cleared heroic after 3 weeks.


Yes classic is very hard.
Before MC groups farmed dungeons without tank running with 4 mages and 1 priest etc.
MC was cleared without having everyone at 60, not closed to geared.


Classic is LFR/Normal mode difficult compared to retail.
Retail is a shit game for many reasons but what it has that Classic lacks is a challange for those who want it.


Edit: Only 15% of the guilds entering Eternal Palace (previous raid, released 7 months ago) have cleared it.


You actually compare the hardest content available in classic to the easiest available content in retail. You do this yourself when you say you dont need to use CC, watch your surroundings, pulling too many mobs etc. Thats the easiest available content in retail.

Or do you mean that the most difficult content in classic is leveling? Sounds awesome.

Yup I was talking about leveling specifically, I said so in my original post. Raiding in classic is easy, if it were as hard then as it is now, nobody would have been able to clear it. People's computers sucked, they were inexperienced, and the devs were new at making encounters still. Nobody should be comparing a game from year 1-2 to year 15, that's just silly. I was just referring to how they've turned leveling into a completely mindless theme park ride. Not that I don't have any complaints about classic leveling but at least it requires you to pay attention.

[Aggrophobic]

Why is this even a discussion?
We all knew it was easy as heck.

Every part of classic is easy, it just takes time.

[Akka]

I wouldn't bother responding to that one, he's just moving goal posts.

Maybe learn to read, because my goalpost has been exactly the same, and in fact the entire point of the post was to make it explicit.

[Tumile]

Let's not kid ourselves, LFR is way harder than any of the Classic raids and that's a hilarious feat in itself.

no it really isnt, which is a hilarious feat in itself. classic is a fucking joke, same as Heroic difficulty.

let's not kid out selves, Mythic has literally become 100000x more difficult than heroic, if it isnt mythic, then you might as well have cheated and put on God mode, it is not possible to wipe.

[apples]

no it really isnt, which is a hilarious feat in itself. classic is a fucking joke, same as Heroic difficulty.

let's not kid out selves, Mythic has literally become 100000x more difficult than heroic, if it isnt mythic, then you might as well have cheated and put on God mode, it is not possible to wipe.

mythic is just as easy. mythic is easily 10 mannable as guilds carry 10, 15 even 20 people at a time for 1 week mythic nzoth kills.

[Tumile]

I know its cute to say 'lol u can finish LFR in a coma with no brain activity' but LFR has had mechanics that matter for a while now. As a recent example Wrathion's Scorching Blister explosions absolutely still kill if you fail at it in LFR. Even as far back as Throne of Thunder, Durumu had to be done correctly in LFR or you wiped.

So yeah, Classic is in fact easier than LFR and people wiping the floor with BWL in 42 minutes is proof in the pudding. Sorry/not sorry.

did u clear it in 42 minutes yet? cuz it sure sounds like u have no clue what you are on about

[hlud]

There’s a lot of coordination and thought that goes into retail raid strategies, it is definitely not the same thing every time.

I think what you’re describing that you miss about vanilla was that ignorance led to the feeling of having choices that we wouldn’t have today.

An example of this phenomenon: when I started tanking Legion m+, I would just kill most mobs at first in order to make sure I got to 100%. Suboptimal, yeah, but I was playing around and figuring stuff out.

By the start of BFA, there was an addon telling you which mobs to kill for the new BFA dungeons. If you didn’t do exactly that, your group got mad.

I personally wish that people were a little less strict about optimizing. I do think Blizz could do some things on live to push the culture in that direction but that’s a topic for another post.

But, that is different than what i am talking about. In archery, you do need a lot of skill to hit the bullseye from far away. There aren't really options. You can either try to hit it (good choice) or try to miss it (bad choice). In chess, however, there could be two good choices. Sure, one would have proved to be a better choice by the end. But, you can't really know that until the end.

Vanilla, by its nature offered more choice at the beginning, than at any other time in WoW, at least that i am familiar with. For example, only one boss in Molten Core had a room it was truly leashed to. In Wrath of the Lich King, most bosses in dungeons were fixed to a certain room, even! I don't doubt some variation in strats, but clearly vanilla WoW allowed you to play around more.

Another example would be raid comps. By Wrath of the Lich King, you had three distinct roles: tank, healer, and damage dealer. The only thing that discriminated the various specs within each role where their numbers, generally. In vanilla WoW, each class basically was a separate role. Yes, they had overlap, but they were different enough from each other, especially upon the original release.

Forgive me if Wrath of the Lich King's philosophy has all but been abandoned in more recent xpacs. I have only dipped my toes in Mist of Pandaria and beyond, and felt like it hadn't.

The point i am making is that Classic WoW can be made more difficult, while not throwing a bunch of mechanics onto each boss. This can be so if and only if the philosophy of last patch/#nochanges is abandoned.

[Rafoel]

Yes and no, easy and difficult are different things to different people. That said, why does it matter? I don't personally believe difficulty and fun are related. Plenty of fun games are easy. Plenty of difficult games aren't fun. And plenty of games are both fun and difficult. Personally I think the dev team has gone down the absolute wrong path in terms of catering to the very vocal, but tiny minority of players who seem to think the world needs to revolve around the most cutting edge, difficult content (mythic raiding and mythic dungeons). Sorry if the game didn't challenge you or that you think a 15 year old game with mechanics that a majority of raiders already know would be more difficult?

This.

I consider discussing about what is easy pointless. It just seems every person I meet has completely different understanding of what the word means, while simultaneusly thinking everybody else has exactly the same understanding.

In games specifically, I encountered people who claimed getting diamond in LoL is easy, getting legend in Hearthstone is easy, or completing SC2 camapign on brutal is easy. In other words - everything I can do is easy. Funnily when pressured those people have real difficulty in expressing what they consider DIFFICULT, instead listing things that are IMPOSSIBLE (for them) to do.

Others completely ignore the coordination aspect of difficulty, perceiving it only from personal viewpoint.

Others, when they say "easy", actually mean "boring" (and, in reverse, by "difficult" mean "interesting").

Others (this one is very common) negate the existence of preparation aspect. Using this logic, Path of Exile is easiest game in the world because you can theorycraft a character that will literally afk-kill all end-game bosses.

Finally, some associate effort with difficulty, while others don't. One considers his 3 hour climb to the peak of the mountain difficult, because it made him tired and sweaty and well... took 3 hours. The other will say "what do you mean difficult, anyone thats not physically disabled can make this climb".

I'm sure most of you can connect the things I listed to discussions about Classic and retail.

[deenman]

What do you mean "back when"?
It still is lol.

how is his statement odd?yeah,back when it was released,it had zero competition among the casual mmo's,every popular mmo was very punishing and had extreme systems like full loot stealing if a player killed you,only outdoor bosses,xp loss on death etc,and yeah wow is still ''casual'',but wow made this type of casual mmo popular,all the mmo's that came out after wow followed the ''casual'' formula

[Akka]

This.

I consider discussing about what is easy pointless. It just seems every person I meet has completely different understanding of what the word means, while simultaneusly thinking everybody else has exactly the same understanding.

In games specifically, I encountered people who claimed getting diamond in LoL is easy, getting legend in Hearthstone is easy, or completing SC2 camapign on brutal is easy. In other words - everything I can do is easy. Funnily when pressured those people have real difficulty in expressing what they consider DIFFICULT, instead listing things that are IMPOSSIBLE (for them) to do.

Others completely ignore the coordination aspect of difficulty, perceiving it only from personal viewpoint.

Others, when they say "easy", actually mean "boring" (and, in reverse, by "difficult" mean "interesting").

Others (this one is very common) negate the existence of preparation aspect. Using this logic, Path of Exile is easiest game in the world because you can theorycraft a character that will literally afk-kill all end-game bosses.

Finally, some associate effort with difficulty, while others don't. One considers his 3 hour climb to the peak of the mountain difficult, because it made him tired and sweaty and well... took 3 hours. The other will say "what do you mean difficult, anyone thats not physically disabled can make this climb".

I'm sure most of you can connect the things I listed to discussions about Classic and retail.

Good post.
Though I'd say, my (admitedly cynical) opinion is not so much that "difficult" is so different to many persons, but more simply that all these discussions about difficulty are simply filled with posturing and bad faith.
"difficult/easy" is not really talked about with honesty, but more simply as a way to either try to show off (speaking about something which is obviously difficult and pretend it's "so easy anybody not retarded can do it" as to imply "I'm sooo badass I can do something difficult while pretending I find it honestly easy") or to dismiss something one doesn't like (ergo this thread).

[Osmeric]

some sort of resistance is always key. to keep players attracted it requires an individual degree of work/reward balance. the lower the perceived resistance of the required work, the lower the perceived value of the reward.

Except that if content is difficult, most players won't be able to clear it. The resistance in that case is a negative for those players.

This is the point the difficulty fetishists always gloss over. Difficult content that defeats the player is bad for that players' engagement with the game. And for content to not defeat the average, or even slightly below average, player, it has to be very easy.

[Xykotic]

Let's not kid ourselves, LFR is way harder than any of the Classic raids and that's a hilarious feat in itself.

Well that's simple not true. Vanilla raids are easy by heroic and mythic standards, sure. But LFR? You're gonna have to make better bait in the future, friend.
Not to mention we don't have reliable knowledge on how hard Naxx and AQ40 is gonna be. 15 year old memories is not to be trusted.

[Nobleshield]

I too remember a lot of posts about how "dumbed down" retail is and how serious/hardcore vanilla was and how all these wrath/cata n00bs are going to be in for a surprise at the difficulty of Classic.

Now it's constant goalpost shifting. Oh it's because 1.12 talents (didn't most pservers also use the 1.12 client? Or did they change which talent patch they used as they went? The ones I looked at all were out for a while so were on 1.12 talents with all the raids out), Even some conspiracy bullshit that blizzard secretly nerfed everything that some morons actually believe is true and actually think pservers got things more accurate than Blizzard.

The idea it's because everything has been mathed out and optimized and now everyone is picking the best choices while in the real vanilla they didn't know half of that has largely been glossed over by the people whose grand fantasy of vanilla has been shattered.

If people geared and built classes the way they did in vanilla I suspect things would feel a bit harder; not "hard" like everyone claimed but harder than now when the mindset is BiS this and most optimal that.

[Benitora]

It's as hard as it was basically predicted it would be.
With modern addons, knowledge, better internet and general skill of the playerbase being far far better than when the game was originally released, of course Classic would be considered easy.

The only "hard" part of Classic, is the time investment. You need a lot of time to level up, you need some time to get the gear you need, you need some time to do PVP etc etc etc.
The only difficulty factor in Classic, is basically time and PVP.

Well that's simple not true. Vanilla raids are easy by heroic and mythic standards, sure. But LFR? You're gonna have to make better bait in the future, friend.
Not to mention we don't have reliable knowledge on how hard Naxx and AQ40 is gonna be. 15 year old memories is not to be trusted.

LFR is actually harder than most Vanilla raids in terms of how many mechanics the raid will need to take care of.
Wrathion as the first boss, has more mechanics than 3 vanilla bosses combined.

[Kralljin]

LFR is actually harder than most Vanilla raids in terms of how many mechanics the raid will need to take care of.
Wrathion as the first boss, has more mechanics than 3 vanilla bosses combined.

Too bad that your entire raid needs to consistently fail on every single mechanic to even wipe on that boss.
And even if you do, you get a buff until you simply overpower the boss.

The amount of mechanics isn't necessarily a good metric for difficulty.
If i design a super confusing maze that people need to navigate but the punishment for stepping out of the maze is some debuff that just tickles people, it's not a difficult mechanic.
The tuning of the respective mechanics plays a role as well and this is where LFR just falls through, you easily survive almost any mechanic in LFR despite not dodging the mechanic at all.

The punishment for not executing the mechanic properly plays a massive role as well, especially in lower difficulties.

I've made the example multiple times, stand in front of Wrathion in LFR and see what happens, then try the same thing on any Dragon Raid Boss in Vanilla.

[Millyraynge]

Except that if content is difficult, most players won't be able to clear it. The resistance in that case is a negative for those players.

This is the point the difficulty fetishists always gloss over. Difficult content that defeats the player is bad for that players' engagement with the game. And for content to not defeat the average, or even slightly below average, player, it has to be very easy.

you misunderstood something. its about work/reward balance. each individual has its own comfort zone. The comfort zone can be left in both directions too easy and too hard difficulty. I for myself left mythic progress raiding some years ago because the difficulty bar has left my comfort zone at some point and it became too stressful and the fun factor faded away. But on the other hand vanilla or classic is way too easy to keep me attracted on a long term. It's acutally quite funny that the current dps performances of the top to mid tier raid guilds would destroy naxxramas already.