For Everyone Saying Speed Clear Raids Are Evidence of Classic's Lack of Difficulty...

[Thorcall]

Thats not a fair comparision. We have 1.11 patch power in classic. What you should be comparing to is mythic Uldir done with essences and corruptions! Or for AQ, Eternal palace done with corruptions xD

Mmm... I wonder what the excuse gonna be when naxx will be also cleared under an hour.

[xGLxAnubis]

(and by modern I mean MoP which is the first time Mythic has been introduced)

Mythic Difficulty is equivalent to WotLK and Cata Heroic. So your definition of modern is a bit off.

[Bisso]

Dude at least pretend that you've read what OP wrote.

On topic, 15 years from now when we'll be doing Classic BfA,mythic Nyalotha will be cleared on the first day, for sure

Not true. Mythic Nyalotha doesn't only need the right strategy on day 1. It requires 2 full reset worth of gear and the stars to align to get the kill (bascially all 20 players making 0 mistakes and playing perfectly). In today's reality, having the right strategy alone to get a boss down would make for a very short and boring world first race.

Limit was livestreaming their attempts while calling every strategy they were doing. So everyone else in the world could simply copy them, yet it took Method 2 more days to land the kill and took even more time after that for pieces to get theirs. Again, it's all the know-how was on video.

[Itori]

Classic content has had private servers ever since the game was fresh some even had 1 kill lvl 60 and vendors that sold every peice of raid gear that dropped, so of course the top raiders and elitists will burn through the hardest content in hours, hell if they didnt id be disappointed.

[Wavebossa]

That is nonsense. There is no gear delta that puts Molten Core (or any other raid from vanilla) on level ground with Mythic Ny'alotha. There's no 'similarly flavored' apples to be had here.

And frankly the way some people obsess over this - Classic's difficulty, both in and of itself and relative to retail - is useless. Vanilla's difficulty stemmed from lack of intimate understanding of game mechanics from the vast majority of players, and from arbitrary things like resistance checks.

Retail is not only vastly more difficult, but also difficult in different ways. People need to get over it and stop grasping for straws like 'but but classic was harder in this way!' or whatever. No, it wasn't. Vanilla was never Dark Souls, it was always the casual MMO - WoW was a Disney movie compared to MMOs like Everquest.

I don't think you read any of my posts in this thread if your takeaway is that I'm not trying to convince you guys that Classic is difficult compared to any expansion that followed.

[Bigbazz]

I cant think of any recent mythic raid-tier in retail where it has been cleared within hours of its release, as compared to Classic.

Classic wasn't cleared within hours, if you wanna compare it to retail it'd be like considering this weeks reset of Nylotha as a fresh progression and then being surprised when Limit clears it in 2 hours. Classic is ancient content that people have played to death on private servers, if they didn't clear it like it was nothing that'd be pretty dumb, setting aside the fact it's easy.

[Wavebossa]

Dude at least pretend that you've read what OP wrote.

On topic, 15 years from now when we'll be doing Classic BfA,mythic Nyalotha will be cleared on the first day, for sure

Exactly, and it will be cleared with blazing fast times with everyone laughing at how easy it is. That's just how things go. Does that mean its as easy as classic? No, its many times more difficult. But speedclearing isn't the metric to use.

I'm glad you understand what i'm saying

[Loosecannon]

The reasonable comparison would be:

15 years from now. BFA 'Classic' is released, with corruption available on gear.

The 'retail' at the time is proportionately harder than BFA, as BFA is to Vanilla/classic.

I think you'd see some pretty damn quick clears of G'huun under those circumstances?

[Argorwal]

I don’t think looking at top guilds clearing the content quickly is the issue.

With classic, any guild with a pulse is murdering the content. Guilds full of people that have never touched a private server in their life.

Per WCL 96% of guilds with at least 1 boss kill in BWL has gone on to full clear the raid.

[antelope591]

Classic wasn't cleared within hours, if you wanna compare it to retail it'd be like considering this weeks reset of Nylotha as a fresh progression and then being surprised when Limit clears it in 2 hours. Classic is ancient content that people have played to death on private servers, if they didn't clear it like it was nothing that'd be pretty dumb, setting aside the fact it's easy.

Well if 8.3 and mythic Nyalotha were released today it wouldn't be cleared in a few hours because its not possible to hit the DPS needed with 445 gear and zero corruptions. If you gave them a week of prep time, Limit may be able to clear it on the first day if they spent billions of gold on appropriate corruption BOES and farmed dozens of split raids (which they did for actual progression) . But 99.9% of other guilds would still have to farm up the necessary gear first.

[StillMcfuu]

Why is this even discussed anymore?
The multitude of differences from Vanilla to Classic are almost too much mention but here are the main ones that aren't "the player base is just better now."

Pre-BiS and BiS: There's been 15 years of theorycrafting in the game, a character is raid ready, even for the opening raid, usually at or before they reach 60. Hit caps are reached with a clear gear path, secondary stats are known way ahead of time, etc... During Vanilla, people had no fucking idea and there were zero online resources to find the info, just a lot of forum theorycrafting that would often be wrong and send players down a bad gear path.

Talents/Builds: People know optimal builds for their characters, for each piece of gear they have, for their current secondary stats, etc... Vanilla, not so much.

Resource management: The big part of the meta that has massively changed over the intervening 15 years is the game being more a resource spending meta. We know the rough kill time, even before the first pull, healers and casters know exactly how much mana to burn through to be OOM at the Boss death. It's the same Meta that allows Ele shaman and ruin warlocks the chance to top meters, which just didn't happen in Vanilla. Raids tailor their buffs and strats around kill times and burning resources down to 0; in Vanilla it was more about surviving and keeping damage going.

And what I think the biggest difference is:

Momentum: It's a snow ball gaining speed and size rolling down the hill. Pre-bis was rolled into MC being rolled which means more loot per lock out, more PH1 BiS geared toons roll into the next raid and down that raid, which leads to more loot drops... People get their BiS, people get lateral gear that may be situational but goes into their bags so they can use because everyone else is BiS, etc...
Gearing was a struggle in vanilla, getting competent people, downing bosses consistently, this was harder.

Classic, gearing is a matter of when, not if.

[Tronski]

Is there a specific raid tier in your minds (from TBC to BFA) that, given 15 years of practice and knowledge, could not be speed cleared in the same way?

Don't get me wrong, Classic is muuuch easier than anything current, and you can point to a 100 different reasons why. But the fact that guilds are killing the final boss in under an hour really isn't one of them in my opinion.

Mythic Nyalotha hasn't been out for much longer than half a year, and there are already sub 80minute Runs. Probably even faster ones that we don't know about. I promise with an ample of time of research, every single raid tier would look like how AQ40 is looking now for the top Classic guilds.



There really isn't much point to this thread as, at the end of the day, Classic is still easier than the expansions. But I just think we often focus on less relevant factors when discussing its difficulty and overall experience.

Thanks for reading my rant

As with retail, tuning is really the only difference. Classic raiding have been comparable to Normal raiding, but it is expected that the requirements of AQ and Naxx are more akin to Heroic.

The difficulty lies in the hassle of preparation to avoid wipes, rather than the hassle of wiping until you get the boss. The problem in Classic is that the whole castle crumbles if you wipe once and lose all them world buffs.

Could have been interesting to see a mythic tuned version of Molten Core with world buffs disabled, though, but it would have defeated the purpose of Classic.

[BananaHandsB]

The ridiculous speeds guilds can clear are one piece of "evidence" of classic's lack of difficulty, yes. There's a lot more "evidence" as well, but that is indeed one piece...

[Nnyco]

The more apparent problem i see is day1 speed clears.

[Mirishka]

I don't think you read any of my posts in this thread if your takeaway is that I'm not trying to convince you guys that Classic is difficult compared to any expansion that followed.

The last couple bits of my post were more of a general comment. Whether you personally went there or not, there are a lot of people who push that narrative. That vanilla/BC were 'hardcore' (lmao) and the current game is braindead lolafkeasymode. And the fact that we constantly see these topics, about classic and how hard it is or isn't, is a testament to that.

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The more apparent problem i see is day1 speed clears.

And why, exactly, is this a problem? If a group can go in and blitz these old raids, why shouldn't they?

[Nitros14]

Well if you look at retail, people still wipe and disband over Spine of deathwing or Mythic KJ for mog/mount runs because it's the few fights you have to do the mechanics instead of one shotting them.

Reminded me of this.

[Aphrel]

Mmm... I wonder what the excuse gonna be when naxx will be also cleared under an hour.

the op's point was that all raids (even the hard ones) would be cleared fast if re-released. Because we know the fights already, we know the mechanics. and as a bonus we also know exactly which classes or specs make the hardest parts easier.

If nyalotha came out today. Method and limit would most likely clear it on day one (althou i doubt in 1 hour :P but then classic content isnt nearly as hard as mythic raiding.)

[arkanon]

Not this again. Some of you classic players are just obsessed with Retail and its difficulty - so strange.

The main difference is, 15 years on, current tier mythics would still require very high input accuracy and near perfect execution. That was NEVER the case in vanilla, and as such, it isnt the case in classic. The gap in difficulty is so vast i doubt many understand, because i doubt many have done both - some for sure, but not many. Classic appeals to a much more casual player-base, and classic raiding in particular is very appealing to those who find retail raiding too challenging.

What i cant understand, is why some pockets of the classic community take this so personally? Who cares, classic is enjoyable for its own reasons, and so is retail. It doesnt mean classic is bad because its so easy - it just means it appeals to slightly different group of people.

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the op's point was that all raids (even the hard ones) would be cleared fast if re-released. Because we know the fights already, we know the mechanics. and as a bonus we also know exactly which classes or specs make the hardest parts easier.

If nyalotha came out today. Method and limit would most likely clear it on day one (althou i doubt in 1 hour :P but then classic content isnt nearly as hard as mythic raiding.)

Yes, but many still continue to ignore the fact that sure, the first few through might be PS heros, but, just minutes behind them is an endless train of casuals, first timers, dudes in greens, semi afk stoners and drunks all smashing the same content on day one. It is NOT only the 'speed runners' doing it day one, it is anyone who enters.

[Aphrel]

Yes, but many still continue to ignore the fact that sure, the first few through might be PS heros, but, just minutes behind them is an endless train of casuals, first timers, dudes in greens, semi afk stoners and drunks all smashing the same content on day one. It is NOT only the 'speed runners' doing it day one, it is anyone who enters.

The ppl clearing it arent that bad imo, and they most certanly know what few mechanics there are be4 going in. Id say its roughly on the level of hc raids on retail. Takes a little effort and knowing mechanics, but are very lenient in dps/hps tuning.

Naxx might be slightly harder, we will see. either way its not the end of the world for me. Just a fun trip back memory lane.

[Laqweeta]

People tend to forget that it was all done with 1.12.1 talents/gear/items. Why Blizzard did this is a testament to how terrible of a company they have gotten, plain and simple. Nostalrius did this with pre-nerf values in place, pre item adjustments in place - you name it. It was so much of a better experience it's hard to say.