Classic was easy, TBC will be easy, but what about ICC 25m heroic?

[Prag]

Apply this logic to any other art form:

"How can you paint a good painting without using analytics to figure out what kind of paintings people like?!?!?"
"How can you make a good tv show without using analytics to figure out what kind of tv shows people like?!?!?"

We all know what it looks like when companies crassly try to emulate good art in order to make a buck. It looks like shit.

The problem here is fundamental. It is that good art, and game design is absolutely an art, is based on delivering people something they couldn't dream of. That's what impresses and grabs people.

Analytics are good for figuring out what features people want in their cars, or how crunchy a potato chip should be. Using it to design something as complex as a piece of art is absurd on its face.

That makes sense for art, and I'm personally a fan of some of the aesthetics in WoW (although it's definitely not 'awe-inspiring'), but it seems like most of the complaints about Blizzard's "design" are more just bad user experiences. Not to be too focused on the definition of art, and I see your point about companies outgrowing the more organic design choices (be it art, user experience, etc).

Thanks for clarifying your position.

[NineSpine]

That makes sense for art, and I'm personally a fan of some of the aesthetics in WoW (although it's definitely not 'awe-inspiring'), but it seems like most of the complaints about Blizzard's "design" are more just bad user experiences. Not to be too focused on the definition of art, and I see your point about companies outgrowing the more organic design choices (be it art, user experience, etc).

Thanks for clarifying your position.

No problem.

To further clarify: The design itself is art, not just the aesthetics. Creating the systems that govern a game is an art form unto itself. Other artists come in and color that design in with assets such as models, music, sound effects, etc., but that's a separate issue.

My complaints about the design are bad user experience, but that is what the art of design largely is. WoW is not a player-experience focused game anymore at all. It is a game that feels designed by analytics, which results in something hyper-focused on the least interesting elements of the game. Watch any Q&A. What's the focus? Progression systems, numbers, blah blah blah. Almost no talk of player experience. Never talk about how a player should *feel* when doing things, aside from "It feels bad for the numbers to be this way."

Basically, they completely fail to factor in things that are intangible, and that results in silly shit like Ion saying that they assume that if people do something a lot then it must be fun.

[Qstall]

People only remember the absolutely nerfed version of ICC with 30% more hp, damage and healing.
Even with that buff only ~1100 guilds were able to kill the boss in 25m size, after obtaining more or less BiS gear.
The world first kill was done with the first buff available (and yes there were limited attempts!).

It's not about hardcore guild crushing ICC very fast. That will happen as it happens with todays raids.
It's about the casual player that crushes todays classic and soon-coming tbc raids.
Will that also happen to ICC 25m heroic?

Remember, during WotLK, 10m raiding never had the prestige of 25m, so just ignore that.

Holy crap, I entirely forgot about that buff

[Prag]

My complaints about the design are bad user experience, but that is what the art of design largely is. WoW is not a player-experience focused game anymore at all. It is a game that feels designed by analytics

Now, that I agree with. I don’t blame them for doing it - design with the sole focus of growth is just “safe”. I don’t doubt the shift in reporting of subs to MAUs was because retention is a surly convo with investors. “We have fewer people playing for twice as long!” - I don’t want to be the one crafting that communication.

[NineSpine]

Now, that I agree with. I don’t blame them for doing it - design with the sole focus of growth is just “safe”. I don’t doubt the shift in reporting of subs to MAUs was because retention is a surly convo with investors. “We have fewer people playing for twice as long!” - I don’t want to be the one crafting that communication.

This is a problem that often arises with top down management structures, especially these days where management thinks analytics can replace.... actual management.

I think that a good way to think of this is that there is a word for the stories that audiences think they want to see. That word is fanfiction and it has a bad reputation for a reason. People aren't happy with what they want. You have to give them something unexpected, and that doesn't mean plot twists or anything, it just means avoiding obvious, tired directions for things.

Bad management focused on analytics will essentially command tv writers to write fanfiction, and then everyone will act shocked when the audience finds it boring. I think that this is doubly true for game design.

[Makabreska]

Just stack Saronite Bombs for LK and you are gucci. :v

[Akka]

I don't know and have no opinion whether Classic has lost a bigger percentage of players compared to its launch than Retail has, but my argument is that we don't have any data that allows us to draw any conclusions in that regard.

We have it, we gave it to you, you just play dumb by actively doing a lot of effort to miss it. Not going to waste more time with you on this, you can't show something to someone who doesn't want to see.

[kenn9530]

I distinctly remember steamrolling through Black Temple with a PuG I knocked together from trade chat and a bunch of fresh 70 alts.

Oh no wait, your statement is utter nonsense. I'm not saying TBC was harder, but to specifically say "WotLK's easiest raid was harder than TBC's hardest" is just plain wrong, by any metric.

What your saying is complete nonsense, if you done the raids appropriately for both TBC and WotlK then you would know it as fact that even the normal WotlK raids were harder as long as you judge them by doing them at the level they were intended not using BiS gear from the end raid and doing a run from the opening raid tier.

On some of the fights in ICC HC one mistake means a wipe, and with 50 attempts on the last boss you can easily burn through those attempts, i cant remember but i think it was the 2nd or 3rd buff in ICC where we killed HC LK for the first time with around 250 ish attempts, casual players are still casual and if your doing the content at the correct level it was intended then you still need to do those tactics as best possible.

[KYH]

alone in the darkness is where its at no?

[Fitsu]

I would say WotLK was the first expansion to bring hard raids (not including Naxx, Lol). 3D Sartharion was hard, hard mode Ulduar was insane, TotGC was alright but getting Tribute was pretty crazy. ICC was a mixed bag but had it's share of challenging encounters and LK was difficult.

I feel like they learnt a lot from Sunwell and WotLK was the start of challenging PvE content. Say what you want about the expansions from then on but this was IMO the starting point of actual raiding. WotLK was the expansion that made be go "Oh... So I actually have to learn how to play my class to do the content? Well. This is new."

[ihate2beapessimist]

Anyone comparing when it first came out to now after all the years of documentation and research, is a moron.

It will be easily cleared day one, everyone knows the meta game now.

[Tojara]

People thinking that it will take awhile to clear for organized guilds are absolutely silly. ICC is still going to be cleared the first week, even without the stacking buff.

A lot of you are vastly underestimating what years of knowledge does to a game. We went from a time where people never released strategies at all, to discussion forums, to an unofficial agreement to only release videos after 'x' amount of kills, better log analysis, an actual dungeon journal, to a time where progression is actually live streamed. In WoTLK shit was still super secretive amongst top guilds, and the level of organization is still dwarfed by random nobody guilds who practice doing old content on private servers.

Every expansions raiding game gets progressively harder, but the top of the top is going to clear stuff incredibly quickly. Progression times for those outside that group is going to get longer and longer, which is probably healthy for the classic community TBH. I think the only failing of classic is that it was 'too easy', even for dad guilds, and people were conditioned to be okay very relaxed schedules. Naxxaramas hit and you suddenly have a raid that these guilds were actually challenged by. Some of it's certainly because it's a step up from every other raid, but a lot of it has to do with the size of the raid.

Again, playing a game a second time (any game) just has enormous advantages. Looking back there was nothing particularly difficult about the Lich King aside from the second phase in it's entirety. The only major healing mechanic on the fight can be cheesed by having a lot of disc priests in the fight (forget the name of the ability, but the AoE he casts requires you to be healed above 90% health), where a single power word shield would basically block the debuff from even occuring. Weak auras and marking addons will make snaring/stunning assignments easier for Valkyrs, and for everything else, there's literally cheesing the encounter by bringing classes that don't need to be broken out from Valkyrs. Nothing about the third phase is difficult, and while annoying, the first phase is very easy as well.

Wrath has some hard fights, but it's still pretty tame compared to what comes after it in further expansions. WoTLK was actually designed to be 'easy' which is why we got face roll dungeons and a super easier Naxxaramas. Thankfully they pivoted when Ulduar was released though.

[kenn9530]

Just stack Saronite Bombs for LK and you are gucci. :v

The hardest part of the fight was dealing with the valkyrs combined with the defile debuff, a usable only makes the valks die maybe a second or 2 faster but if the defile guy is too slow its a wipe.

snip

To clear LK HC in its first clear would require perfect play, your still going to have to learn the fight again since its been 10 years but gear will be the factor in it being killed, guilds have 46 days to gear up before the first kill, it wont be impossible to clear the first week but it will be a challenge unless you have a perfect team.

Knowing the fight and executing it are 2 different things.

[Electric Lighter]

I wouldn't say icc 25 wasn't really that hard. You just had limited attempts and the LK wasn't able to without killed without the weapons he dropped making the buff mandatory for first kills.

The LK was a hard fight for its day but it wasn't even the hardest in the expansion it was in. It simply couldn't be done with the gear in the instance without those key weapons or a bug like bombs.

Alone in the dark I would argue is the hardest fight in that expansion.

[Uvania]

I mean maybe, this won't be relevant for many people though. It's like inventing the internal combustion engine, it's a lot easier to make one after all the design and process has been figured out. But even then, most players haven't had the benefit of raiding that content in the last 10 years and it will still be challenging.

I think LK25hc at 0% is probably harder than current day nerfed Sire Denathrius, and 25% it's still probably hard enough to give many people issues. People will need to set their expectations more at a modern raiding mindset than the roflstomping that goes on in Classic, and will go on for most of TBC.




When did you do it though, because ICC has the problem of being remembered when almost everyone who killed a boss did it with some % of Hellscream buff in place. The buff was already stacking before my guild cleared normal, it came in really early (especially considering ICC was a gated release like Sunwell).

I think pre-nerf Putricide 25 normal is harder than most of Ulduar, including some of the easier hardmodes, and we had some members in my guild (as shitty as we were) who got world top 5 on a few Ulduar bosses.

we downed icc25 hc on 25% and 10hc on 15%, i think paragon got world first at 15% ?

it was so damn easy at 30% that i as a holy paladin solo healed all bosses except valithra in icc10 hc.

[callipygoustp]

It'll be easy.

[Tojara]

To clear LK HC in its first clear would require perfect play, your still going to have to learn the fight again since its been 10 years but gear will be the factor in it being killed, guilds have 46 days to gear up before the first kill, it wont be impossible to clear the first week but it will be a challenge unless you have a perfect team.

Knowing the fight and executing it are 2 different things.

Which is what people will have?

The entirety of my post is pointing out that content is going to get progressively more difficult for 'dad' guilds, basically those that don't go above and beyond to prepare. Naxx was difficult because it was a giant raid, most guilds operated on a single day schedule, and most weren't equipped, nor bothered to farm frost resistance gear. A lot of guilds were conditioned to bring 10-11 healers, and bring the same ~40 people every single week. That mentality makes it hard to progress in a giant instance, where if you somehow get to the last two bosses, your inability to bring extra healers (until you get better quality FR gear) on a boss like Sapphiron is going to cause progression blocks.

It however won't be hard for the same guilds who cleared Naxxaramas in the first week. These are the same type of people who setup their rosters months in advance for bosses/raids, and to think people won't do the same in TBC or WoTLK is a bit silly. People trivialized encounters by having the entire raid go engineering, and they removed mechanics that existed in Vanilla by lowering clear times by abusing world buffs and the highest DPS class that's available in a short time frame. The same thing will happen on bosses with problematic mechanics by simply bringing more of that class to ignore 'difficult' parts of the encounter.

While raid encounters will progressively get more difficult as we work back through the expansions, again, people are completely underestimating how much doing something a second time trivializes something. There's no unknowns and you know exactly what classes work the best on certain encounters, and people are going to use them. The LK is a 'difficult' encounter sure, but mechanically speaking it fairly tame by even today's standards.

I feel like a lot of people simply get offended when you bring up difficulty of old raids, and a lot like to continue to move goal posts around to justify why things weren't as difficult when it comes time to see how these bosses are approached a second time. People are missing the point though, in that difficulty doesn't really matter, nor should it be the main draw of seeing this content for a second time. There are people on this forum that absolutely believed Ragnaros was going to be difficult and that there was no way you could do it without a lot of fire resistance. When he was downed it was because of 1.12 and itemization changes, despite being killed without a full raid group and people under level 60. BWL was suppose to be harder, and it really wasn't, and again, the excuse of 1.12 and itemization changes was the sole factor. AQ was launched, and despite being closer to the relative power level of the itemization and 1.12 changes, the excuse was still used. Naxxaramas came out, and most guilds took a few months to clear it, but still, a decent amount of guilds cleared in the same reset (or on the exact day of launch). The amount of guilds that cleared Naxxaramas in the same reset, likely eclipsed the amount that cleared Naxxaramas in all of Vanilla lol.

[stevenho]

i think paragon got world first at 15% ?

Dude KEKW

[Jericho21]

man, I remember ICC and Uld being guild and raid killers. Yogg +0 and you were a God if you did that as a raid group. ICC 25 HM was truly the breaking point. After that I remember a steady decline in WoW raiding and overall gamesmanship because after ICC was Cataclysm...so...yeah. ICC and Uld were the pinnacle of WoW raiding and then it all went downhill after that. Sure SoO in Mists was popular but ICC was the crown jewel. WoW never regained it's full popularity after ICC.

[Bigbazz]

we downed icc25 hc on 25% and 10hc on 15%, i think paragon got world first at 15% ?

it was so damn easy at 30% that i as a holy paladin solo healed all bosses except valithra in icc10 hc.

Paragon did it at 5% but yeah the Hellscream buff is the main reason people remember it as being easy, the majority of guilds had not even cleared normal before the buff was in place.