Is Classic too easy?

[Ielenia]

Call it whatever you may, no one considers only the hardest setting when considering how hard a game is.

So, if my normal, basic walk is faster than Usain Bolt's normal, basic walk, does that mean I'm faster than him?

[quote]As for possibility of being carried, how hard can Mythic raiding be if you can AFK while people you payed carry you through it?
Except you can't, in most cases. And only very good Mythic raiding guilds have the skill to do a raid so finely-tuned to 20 people, with only 19. Where as in classic WoW, basically any guild can carry a dead AFK'er through the fights.

Nope. You can make that case for Normal mode raids, but not for HC and Mythic, and not for dungeons and pvp. You have to actively use the UI to activate the harder difficulties.

Are we talking leveling, or raiding?

Those are all patch zones:

Irrelevant. I bolded out the part I was replying to, about your claim that "WoW's design has shifted in the last ten years" as if implying that Nazjatar and WoD's Uldum/Vale are outliers.

And I'm saying I doubt that example is accurate or truly comparable to Classic group quests. And if I'm wrong, and it is, it's a mistake, not an intended challenge.

You're more than welcome to pay a sub for WoW and go check them out, then. Otherwise, you saying the example is not accurate is meaningless. And no, it's not a mistake. It is an intended challenge. It has been since when Wrath was current content.

Also: can you be any more arrogant? "You are wrong. And in case I'm wrong, it's a mistake on their part, not mine."

[Nnyco]

*Checks list of consumables that are used during speedkills*
*Checks setup (10+ Warriors)*

People that love to min/max are having a field day in classic and speedruns like this are the result of that.

Goin into a raid with potions, oh boy so hardcore!

[Akibaboy]

Classic has extremely little content if you're not a raider or a serious PvP:er, however I'm beginning to feel that the content it does have is way too easy. Raids are cleared the first reset by most guilds and then you're back to raid logging for farm raids that are almost as easy as LFR is in retail.
It doesn't give you a sense of accomplishment and the character progression is extremely slow, with new gear upgrades coming at you about once a month.
It's starting to feel like, what's the point if there's no challenge?

Regardless of whether it's "easy" or "hard", it doesn't matter. Classic exists to be (as much of) the game that WoW was in 2004-2007, nothing more. Whether Ocarina of Time, Megaman X, or Metal Gear Solid are easy or hard games for the people that know every single inch of the game inside an out is equally irrelevant - they should all continue to exist and be playable in their original states for the sake of history and the ability to give those authentic experiences to those who didn't have the opportunity to play them in their prime.

[Kralljin]

Goin into a raid with potions, oh boy so hardcore!

I didn't claim it was difficult, but using every consumable at your disposal as Warrior is like a ~30% dps increase.
If you then add in the fact that a properly itemized Warrior does like 20% more dps than other dps, you can see why people stack Warriors for these speedkills and how they clear it so fast.

And that leaves out World buffs, which also bring in another 40%

If you use speedkills as an argument, you should at very least recognize how these actually come into existance, because the impact of consumables and / or world buffs has no equivalent on retail.

[Monster Hunter]

As someone who's only heard the term connected to WoW, I've always thought it just meant optimizing your character's output to be as good as mathematically possible. It may very well be that a lot of people have that misconception as well.

Wow is an mmorpg, it's designed from rpgs that came from the old muds that came from pen and paper systems like dnd. 90% of terms come from those systems. I lernt the term playing warhammer where min/maxing was very serious and messing it up would see your army picked to pieces so the risk was very much apparant.

But if you hae only heared the term used in a casual sense in games like wow where the drawback some one is min maxing isn't as apparant or they them selves are using the term wrong it's understandable.

Min-maxing is also often a dirty term on the table top as it's "not in the spirit of the game" it's often seen as making competitive what isn't designed to be competitive in the first place

Alot of wows design stems from them old dnd designs, especial classic, the whole of classic was never intended to be min-maxed or taken conpetetivly, it's a shit DM that makes a dongeons the party can't complete, those items don't exhist so that some group can scrub a whole place in half an hour there enteded to give under performers a free boost in power. But there's enough threads on how the whole mentality to classic is at odds with its old design that I don't need to go into that.

[Kolvarg]

So, if my normal, basic walk is faster than Usain Bolt's normal, basic walk, does that mean I'm faster than him?

It means you walk faster than Usain Bolt and aren't very good at making analogies.

Except you can't, in most cases. And only very good Mythic raiding guilds have the skill to do a raid so finely-tuned to 20 people, with only 19. Where as in classic WoW, basically any guild can carry a dead AFK'er through the fights.

That's way more specific than initially. So what about Heroic raids? And Normal raids? The fact that you "can" get carried is meaningless to the discussion.

Are we talking leveling, or raiding?

I don't understand the question.

Irrelevant. I bolded out the part I was replying to, about your claim that "WoW's design has shifted in the last ten years" as if implying that Nazjatar and WoD's Uldum/Vale are outliers.

They aren't outliers because they aren't hard unless you are undergeared which is the specific example you gave. For the intended gear they were designed they are vastly as unchallenging as the rest of the modern world content.

You're more than welcome to pay a sub for WoW and go check them out, then. Otherwise, you saying the example is not accurate is meaningless. And no, it's not a mistake. It is an intended challenge. It has been since when Wrath was current content.

Like I said, people were soloing it even when it was current. Plus it was your claim, if you want it to come down to "evidence" you have the burden of proof, not me.

Also: can you be any more arrogant? "You are wrong. And in case I'm wrong, it's a mistake on their part, not mine."

Of course. I could just say I wasn't wrong. I could say I can't be wrong. But it's not really arrogance if it's a fact

But of course, even that could just be my misconception, but it is my conviction. Such arrogance.

[Akka]

Why do you care?

Hating Classic has been the only thing this guy have lived for the past year. Don't deprive him of his self-worth !

[Ielenia]

That's way more specific than initially. So what about Heroic raids? And Normal raids? The fact that you "can" get carried is meaningless to the discussion.

You're the one who brought the "carried through mythic raids" as an argument:

how hard can Mythic raiding be if you can AFK while people you payed carry you through it?

Which misses the point entirely since you narrowed the meaning of "difficult to complete" to simply "see the content". In this case, simply being carried means you "saw the content". Besides, in modern WoW, you have to pay quite the enormous amount of gold to be carried through current mythic raids. Whereas in classic WoW, the raid sizes being 40 man means a lot of people are expendable. Hell, MC was completed without everyone in the raid even being max level.

They aren't outliers because they aren't hard unless you are undergeared which is the specific example you gave. For the intended gear they were designed they are vastly as unchallenging as the rest of the modern world content.

And what does it say about raids that were beaten full of people below the intended gear level and character level?

Like I said, people were soloing it even when it was current. Plus it was your claim, if you want it to come down to "evidence" you have the burden of proof, not me.

Funny how you accuse me of having to show proof, but earlier in that same paragraph you make a claim without evidence.

Of course. I could just say I wasn't wrong. I could say I can't be wrong. But it's not really arrogance if it's a fact

But of course, even that could just be my misconception, but it is my conviction. Such arrogance.

Dude. You basically said "I'm always right, regardless of outcome."

[Kolvarg]

You're the one who brought the "carried through mythic raids" as an argument:

As an argument that the fact that you "can" be carried doesn't say that much about the difficulty of the raids. Considering it is possible to carry in Mythic raids, despite them being very hard.

Which misses the point entirely since you narrowed the meaning of "difficult to complete" to simply "see the content". In this case, simply being carried means you "saw the content".

Nope. While I did use the word "see", I also very clearly stated "which one is the hardest to complete at a base setting". No one would ever consider being carried while afk completing content, at least when discussing the difficulty of a game. Otherwise you can also just "see" any game being played on youtube and therefore no game would have any difficulty at all.

And what does it say about raids that were beaten full of people below the intended gear level and character level?

It says there are dedicated people, in many cases people who have done those raids ad-nauseum in private servers which had harsher tuning than Classic does, who are able to do that. And that level numbers were not as drastically impactful in Classic's gameplay, compared to today. (Although it's not like we can even know, since it's not even possible to enter a raid below the required level now).

Funny how you accuse me of having to show proof, but earlier in that same paragraph you make a claim without evidence.

Oh I made plenty of them. But I never asked you to go find proof that my claims are wrong. You claimed one can go right now to modern WoW and find hard group quests, so show it.

Dude. You basically said "I'm always right, regardless of outcome."

What I actually said was: "I doubt you are right. If you are right, it still doesn't invalidate my overall opinion because it's an outlier". The alleged statement that there are a few group quests in Icecrown that actually require a group does not confirm that the majority of group quests in modern WoW are harder or equivalent to the ones in Classic.

[Leonton]

I just resubbed to WoW and I've been streaming my adventures for a few days now! I'm a level 120 Demon Hunter on Thrall (Horde Side) and I'm currently working on Pathfinder, as well as the war campaign.

[Ielenia]

As an argument that the fact that you "can" be carried doesn't say that much about the difficulty of the raids. Considering it is possible to carry in Mythic raids, despite them being very hard.

Which, again, misses the point. In classic, you can carry one, two, three or maybe even more people in your raid group while progressing through the raids, because the loss of a player affects the raid fight much less than it does in modern during progression, even on normal mode, to the point of those losses being nigh-negligible in classic.

Nope. While I did use the word "see", I also very clearly stated "which one is the hardest to complete at a base setting". No one would ever consider being carried while afk completing content, at least when discussing the difficulty of a game. Otherwise you can also just "see" any game being played on youtube and therefore no game would have any difficulty at all.

And I stand by the claim that normal mode raids in WoW are harder than classic raids.

It says there are dedicated people, in many cases people who have done those raids ad-nauseum in private servers which had harsher tuning than Classic does, who are able to do that. And that level numbers were not as drastically impactful in Classic's gameplay, compared to today. (Although it's not like we can even know, since it's not even possible to enter a raid below the required level now).

Really? And can you prove that all the raiders in those 3.5k guilds that cleared BWL so far are "all dedicated people who did those raids ad-nauseum in pirate servers which had harsher tuning that classic does"?

Oh I made plenty of them. But I never asked you to go find proof that my claims are wrong. You claimed one can go right now to modern WoW and find hard group quests, so show it.

The burden of proof is on you, though, since you made the claim I disputed.

What I actually said was: "I doubt you are right. If you are right, it still doesn't invalidate my overall opinion because it's an outlier". The alleged statement that there are a few group quests in Icecrown that actually require a group does not confirm that the majority of group quests in modern WoW are harder or equivalent to the ones in Classic.

So you're fine with dismissing my disputes with just another claim... but have a problem with me disputing your claim with another claim?

[Kolvarg]

Which, again, misses the point. In classic, you can carry one, two, three or maybe even more people in your raid group while progressing through the raids, because the loss of a player affects the raid fight much less than it does in modern during progression, even on normal mode, to the point of those losses being nigh-negligible in classic.

Bullshit. Normal and even Heroic perfectly allow players to be carried during progression. In fact I would say in the majority of Normal and Heroic "casual" progression groups, there are at least a few players being carried that generally don't play well enough for that difficulty (ie: people who have much inferior dps and/or consistently fail mechanics). I've done plenty of Normal and Heroic progression, and have had my fair share of progression kills where people disconnected in the beginning of the fight. LFR is a whole new level of that.

Yes, the fact that these are 40-man raids mean each death is less "harmful" to the whole group, since it's a smaller percentage of the group that becames inactive. But that also brings increased difficulty in gathering and coordinating those very 40 people, for instance. And it still doesn't make the content easier than LFR by default, because deaths and afk people are very frequently negligible in LFR.

And I stand by the claim that normal mode raids in WoW are harder than classic raids.

And I never disagreed with that. But you can very much go through the same raid in LFR which are easier.

Really? And can you prove that all the raiders in those 3.5k guilds that cleared BWL so far are "all dedicated people who did those raids ad-nauseum in pirate servers which had harsher tuning that classic does"?

Of course not. Just like you can't prove they're not. Regardless, I didn't even make that claim Especially since initially you were referring to MC clears (undergeared characters below 60) but now you changed it to BWL.
But I said "in many cases", and not all. Like I've said before, I'm not arguing that Classic raids are hard. Any modern Heroic+ raider will have an easy time with probably any Classic raids. The people who have been playing in private servers even more. What I am arguing is that they're harder than LFR overall, and that that fact is part of why I consider Classic harder than modern WoW.

The burden of proof is on you, though, since you made the claim I disputed.

So you're fine with dismissing my disputes with just another claim... but have a problem with me disputing your claim with another claim?

But I never said I can prove my claims. You on the other hand very clearly stated a specific observable case, so I asked you to go ahead and do it.

I'm not dismissing your dispute with another claim, I'm dismissing it with a fact. Proving your claim (that Icecrown group quests require groups) in no way disproves my claim (that in general group quests are harder in Classic than in modern WoW). That's all. To actually prove or disprove my claim one would have to analyze a vast number of quests in both versions of the game, ideally trying each of them with all the available classes.

What I do know is that I have played modern retail WoW fairly consistently since mid-MoP until mid-BfA. Before and between those sessions I also played in WotLK and Vanilla private servers. And now I have played Classic as well. I know how it feels to play both versions. Neither is hard, but Classic is simply less forgiving. Can I prove it? I guess not, or at least I'm not willing to go through the trouble. Just like you can't prove the reverse. But to me it's pretty straightforward and obvious that Classic overall has a higher base difficulty level, while modern WoW offers niche optional very high difficulty to those who seek it, and I have given plenty of reasons why I hold that opinion on top of simply how it feels to play both versions.

[Echocho]

I'm sure the typical LFR raid would be able to clear Classic BWL in 32 min

Do they have to? The feat is clearing the instance, not speed running it.

[dzd]

Do they have to? The feat is clearing the instance, not speed running it.

Who decided that?

[arkanon]

Who decided that?

Blizzard. Its really that simple.

[Kolvarg]

Do they have to? The feat is clearing the instance, not speed running it.

Not to some people, apparently

[Kilee25]

Classic has extremely little content if you're not a raider or a serious PvP:er, however I'm beginning to feel that the content it does have is way too easy. Raids are cleared the first reset by most guilds and then you're back to raid logging for farm raids that are almost as easy as LFR is in retail.
It doesn't give you a sense of accomplishment and the character progression is extremely slow, with new gear upgrades coming at you about once a month.
It's starting to feel like, what's the point if there's no challenge?

I feel like everyone is saying this already, but you have to remember a few things:

1) For many guilds in Vanilla, very little was known. We didn't have the extensive tools that we have today that allow us to analyse class behavior and figure out the perfect stats allocation for gear. We didn't have simcraft-like tools that allowed us to test different raid simulations or boss fights. Boss mods existed but were crude by today's standards. Boss strategies were equally crude, often just a few diagrams with a lot of text description, and very few videos showing what to do and how to do it.

2) The skill of the average player was very low. In a guild of 40 players it was extremely common to only have 10-15 players who were particularly good at their class. Herding the other 25-30 players and trying to get them to contribute something to the fight was a god-like gift that only a few guild leaders could do well without losing their minds.

3) One of the major challenges of Vanilla was logistical and had nothing to do with the difficulty of the raids. Good guilds and good guild leaders were great people managers first and foremost. Their ability to play the game came almost secondary to their ability to unite people and make the raiding experience enjoyable enough to prevent a mass exodus from the guild every few weeks. I remember my time as a guild office in Vanilla - a tremendous amount of time was spent outside of raids trying to calm people down, ask them for more patience and understanding, and trying to keep them from leaving every other week because they thought XYZ guild on the server might treat them better or progress faster. Micromanaging the happiness of over 40 people was an insane task that took multiple strong personalities. Some of the same principles apply today, but it was definitely harder in Vanilla and a heroic accomplishment if your guild lasted more than a few months and managed to collect enough people to get raids together.

I said all of that to say this - a lot of the old barriers to building a guild and doing the raids are now gone. Information and videos are easy to find now days. Everyone knows how classes work and which specs do the most DPS, and this is backed up with imperical evidence and strong data rather than shady, strong opinions. The handful of people who came back to play vanilla had years of gaming under their belts - the average age and maturity of the player is better. It's easier to organize large groups. People are more patient. People understand that you can't accomplish higher end content without a united team who works together. These things seem obvious now, but it was extremely difficult to find "good people" in Vanilla. Nice, friendly, cool people - sure. Those were all over the place. But people who would just buckle down and play the game well? That was genuinely hard to come by.

[dzd]

Blizzard. Its really that simple.

Can you link source?

[GreenJesus]

I feel like everyone is saying this already, but you have to remember a few things:

1) For many guilds in Vanilla, very little was known. We didn't have the extensive tools that we have today that allow us to analyse class behavior and figure out the perfect stats allocation for gear. We didn't have simcraft-like tools that allowed us to test different raid simulations or boss fights. Boss mods existed but were crude by today's standards. Boss strategies were equally crude, often just a few diagrams with a lot of text description, and very few videos showing what to do and how to do it.

2) The skill of the average player was very low. In a guild of 40 players it was extremely common to only have 10-15 players who were particularly good at their class. Herding the other 25-30 players and trying to get them to contribute something to the fight was a god-like gift that only a few guild leaders could do well without losing their minds.

3) One of the major challenges of Vanilla was logistical and had nothing to do with the difficulty of the raids. Good guilds and good guild leaders were great people managers first and foremost. Their ability to play the game came almost secondary to their ability to unite people and make the raiding experience enjoyable enough to prevent a mass exodus from the guild every few weeks. I remember my time as a guild office in Vanilla - a tremendous amount of time was spent outside of raids trying to calm people down, ask them for more patience and understanding, and trying to keep them from leaving every other week because they thought XYZ guild on the server might treat them better or progress faster. Micromanaging the happiness of over 40 people was an insane task that took multiple strong personalities. Some of the same principles apply today, but it was definitely harder in Vanilla and a heroic accomplishment if your guild lasted more than a few months and managed to collect enough people to get raids together.

I said all of that to say this - a lot of the old barriers to building a guild and doing the raids are now gone. Information and videos are easy to find now days. Everyone knows how classes work and which specs do the most DPS, and this is backed up with imperical evidence and strong data rather than shady, strong opinions. The handful of people who came back to play vanilla had years of gaming under their belts - the average age and maturity of the player is better. It's easier to organize large groups. People are more patient. People understand that you can't accomplish higher end content without a united team who works together. These things seem obvious now, but it was extremely difficult to find "good people" in Vanilla. Nice, friendly, cool people - sure. Those were all over the place. But people who would just buckle down and play the game well? That was genuinely hard to come by.

Yep. Just the fact that the average player is probably at least 10-15 years older than it was back then already makes the game easier. There's not many young people playing the game this time since there is fortenite and minecraft etc. The players are all probably at least 18 and played WoW for many years. In addition to that.... most people have super computers and super mega ultra internet speeds compared to old days ->Fewer instances of tanks DC'ing / lagging.

[arkanon]

Can you link source?

God i love you lot - your argument is "prove its NOT about speed running" while being completely unable to prove it is about speed running. Blizzard provide numerous achievements and FEATS of strength related to completing raids, and leader boards for who has killed what. But i cant find the official blizzard leader board for speed running raids? Was this an oversight by Blizzard?