Bigger time sink, BC or Retail?

[TEHPALLYTANK]

TBC/WotLK because of Arenas which increase the longevity of the game. Specially if they capitalise on it (but they're not smart).

PvP is a fairly unlimited time sink regardless of expansion though, which is probably why the OP used PvE as an example instead of PvP.

[Krakan]

That's not grind. That's playing the game. The only grind is for anima and it's optional.

I'm not sure globaling mobs in the maw is very compelling gameplay it strikes me as a grind...

I will be honest I miss pre legion before this whole grind trivial content to progress took hold.

[Asrialol]

Funny you say cause that is why I left 2 weeks ago. Time for other games. Not WoW. No matter what kind they are bringing out. Maybe some where down the line but sure as hell not now.

Edit...I was anima grinding for the shit like level 3 mission table. The necessities. NOT cosmetics. But with 2 toons that is a time sink that is not worth it.

Fair enough.

Why do you need rank 3 mission table? Do people even do these missions?

[Tronski]

But if the gear you get from the first raid tier in classic is the best, why bother raiding the later tiers?

But you don't get the best gear from the first raid tier, you got a few pieces that would last to the end of the expansion from each tier. And I'm very happy each phase didn't make you do "insert raid" Mythic +27 Ultra Savage, as opposed running the difficulty you knew 20 times in a chill environment.

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I was thinking of playing Moonkin in TBC for a change since I used to main Feral back in the original one, and after checking how many bajillion Primal Fires/Manas/Mights it takes to craft the Spellfire/Spellstrike set and get proper enchants for your gear it made me feel nauseous. I can still remember competing for elemental spawns in Blade's Edge/HFP/Nagrand back then and I just know it will be much worse now when everyone is trying to minmax and knows what gear to get + there are more players now than back then.

Flasks, potions, foodbuffs, drums and enchants are going to be MUCH more expensive than in retail relative to the amount of gold an average player has. Like you actually have to devote time to gold farming in TBC which is something I personally don't really enjoy.

I say screw that. Don't min/max if you aren't a tryhard. If you raid with a guild you'll clear raids opening nights anyway.

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grind what? anima for cosmetics? lmfao

Torghast, anima, legendary recipes, gold/mats to craft legendaries, Mythic R.IO score each major patch, Valor, Stygia? You being done with it does not make it a non-grind. And that's not even beginning the raid/boss grind. Spending hours attempting getting bosses down just to get even better gear so you can spend more hours trying to kill them at a higher difficulty. No thanks. It's fun killing bosses, not wiping because bob overhealed once or couldn't keep up with unavoidable damage.

[Revamp Man]

torghast is 1 hour a week
M+ is 30-45 mins/dungeon
maw is 20 min/day

oh wow you have to play a mandatory 2 hours a week. wow.

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its not random, you're just bad.

The legendary powers from dungeons are random or are you just sperging over something??

You can clear that dungeon 30 times and still not get the power but yeah it’s because players are bad

[Senderos]

TBC is slower paced, more work involved with farming and grinding stuff IMO. Also, they don't have the "teleport to dungeon BS" that retail has while leveling. In retail, I log in, do a Mythic + in 30 minutes and log off, don't care about anima grind and other World Quests, because for me they are pointless. In BC you have the badge system.. or will have which is far more motivating for me to do raids and dungeons, hence I spend more time in BC.
OVerall, I remember when I played BC I spent much more time per day to do what I had to do, in retail it's like 1 hour per day and I`m "done", don't see any point of farming stuff.. in BC it mattered.

[Revamp Man]

Fair enough.

Why do you need rank 3 mission table? Do people even do these missions?

I do
So many materials

[Kehego]

The legendary powers from dungeons are random or are you just sperging over something??

You can clear that dungeon 30 times and still not get the power but yeah it’s because players are bad

i mean if you only do heroic and normal sure.

Do it on a 10 and its guaranteed. hell, even a +5 guarantees the drop.
so yes, if you gotta clear 30 times its 100% because you're a fucking lfr andy and are bad.

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But you don't get the best gear from the first raid tier, you got a few pieces that would last to the end of the expansion from each tier. And I'm very happy each phase didn't make you do "insert raid" Mythic +27 Ultra Savage, as opposed running the difficulty you knew 20 times in a chill environment.

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I say screw that. Don't min/max if you aren't a tryhard. If you raid with a guild you'll clear raids opening nights anyway.

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Torghast, anima, legendary recipes, gold/mats to craft legendaries, Mythic R.IO score each major patch, Valor, Stygia? You being done with it does not make it a non-grind. And that's not even beginning the raid/boss grind. Spending hours attempting getting bosses down just to get even better gear so you can spend more hours trying to kill them at a higher difficulty. No thanks. It's fun killing bosses, not wiping because bob overhealed once or couldn't keep up with unavoidable damage.

anima is cosmetic
rio is community

the rest is just playing the game.

[ryjkur]

It depends. World first raider? Retail is definitely bigger time sink since in TBC if you are world first raider you just go to raid while skipping all HC dungeons and clear them at launch.

[mmocfd1b0ab5a3]

Depends on what you consider a time-sink.

Personally when I think of having to regrind all the TBC dungeons 20-30 times over just to get reputation to be able to unlock access to raids, I'm sorta repulsed from playing it already.

This isn't the grind though. Running content to get gear is comparable and not grindier in TBC. Farming rep for attunements is the grind, long ass attunement quest lines is the grind.

You don't need to grind same instance 20-30 times to get into raids. Karazhan only requires few normal dungeons and short quest chain while Gruul/Maggy won't require any attunement. You don't also need HC gear to clear Karazhan or any T4 bosses.

T5 attunements will need HC dungeons but you'll have plenty of time to unlock HC dungeons with normal play in T4 phase.

Really? Gearing is pretty fast and easy in retail, there's no need to farm anything daily, etc. OP mentioned AOTC progression and there isn't really much needed to put a lot of time in to do that. Gearing in TBC can be fairly easy (unless you're unlucky with that tank sword from Mechanar, I remember I was!), gotta get rep's up for heroics, atunements, professions can matter, etc.

I'd say it's pretty similar.

Bold statement. Gearing wasn't fast in SL at launch (they even buffed droprates). It really depends WHEN you want to clear AOTC or T4 content.
If you wanted to clear AOTC week 1 then you either were good and cleared it with ~190ilvl or grinded m+ non stop until you had the gear to beat Denathrius. If you wanted to clear AOTC week 10+ then you just cleared the raids normally and got geared eventually.

You can take the same approach in T4, if you want to clear it week 1 and you are good you just clear it with T3 or normal dungeon gear. If you don't have the gear you'll grind dungeon nonstop until you are geared. If you want to clear T4 in week 10 you can skip nonstop grinding and get geared eventually.

[Malania]

retail since a lot of bullshit cosmetics around, gearing-wise still classic since retail they nerfed drop rate because they can't accept not forcing ppl to bullshit raid weekly for gear

TBC introduced tokens, and u can get best gear outside of sunwell from tokens alone, except of course the twinblads legendary drop

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i didn't count for SL since i stopped caring, but during Legion (an expansion i actually like btw) in order to get best in slot for paladin in nighthold u had to average raid for 4 years to get best gear due to TF procs, mind that many items didn't proc
in SL they removed TF but reduced drop rate to fuck players so no idea if rate to get best gear is still in years or not
TBC is still horrible but u can average best gear in less than year per tier of raiding at least, something i did achieve in wrath myself in almost every raid set minus a piece or two (tbc i never raided sunwell to call it, but i got full tokens gear if that counts)

Token gear were not equivalent to raid gear for ilvl and itemization and it was not full sets. It was off pieces to fill in something you were missing and they didn't outperform the tier set bonus'. I think the only upgrade I ever got from them was the crossbow on 2.4 to replace the rifle I had from Karazhan. As I never got any upgrade drops from BT or MH until the end of TBC.

[hulkgor]

I asked him what else he got, not "duh tbc way more time investment needed than retail pog". Tbc HAS more mandatory stuff to do, while retail has more optional stuff you could do. As the OP asked for curve, you pretty much only do 1 M+ per week + the newest raid as soon as you got renown 34ish and your legendary (which only takes 2x30min/week). In tbc you do more than that. Heroic dungeons on CD for badges and all available raids, each and every week. Only counting dungeon + raidcontent, tbc has more mandatory stuff to do than retail, that's a simple fact.

What does TBC have that is mandatory? The attunement? Wow, huge sink.

Dude, don't use the word 'fact' if you have no clue on what it means.

[Malania]

What does TBC have that is mandatory? The attunement? Wow, huge sink.

Dude, don't use the word 'fact' if you have no clue on what it means.

Mandatory can be anything if you want to accomplish something. A guild I was in considered the Aldor/Scryer shoulder enchants mandatory.

[scelero]

I would argue coming back to this website and posting about a game we're not playing currently and instead posting about it.... is the bigger time sink.

[Bloodyleech]

What does TBC have that is mandatory? The attunement? Wow, huge sink.

Dude, don't use the word 'fact' if you have no clue on what it means.

You should not use the word "mandatory" if you don't know what it means, bud.
Not even understanding a simplified post.. /shrug
There is more mandatory dungeon and raiding in BC than in retail. This is undeniable. 30 min/week dungeons vs 'whatever doing all hc's takes' each day. Coupled with an ever growing raid-content to do with each phase, while retail only the new raid is played for character power. Those are facts, you can read everything up. I did not even say anything about attunement btw.

[mmocfd1b0ab5a3]

You should not use the word "mandatory" if you don't know what it means, bud.
Not even understanding a simplified post.. /shrug
There is more mandatory dungeon and raiding in BC than in retail. This is undeniable. 30 min/week dungeons vs 'whatever doing all hc's takes' each day. Coupled with an ever growing raid-content to do with each phase, while retail only the new raid is played for character power. Those are facts, you can read everything up. I did not even say anything about attunement btw.

Thats the hardcore approach top players did in SL, grind M+ all day everyday to get geared prior to mythic launch. You can think HC dungeon in TBC phase 1 like M+, not mandatory (only Shattered Halls and Sethekk Halls HC are required if you want to summon Nightbane and only 1 person needs to do it) and if you do few dungeons/week you'll get revered way before T5 releases.

The same people who say SL wasn't time consuming didn't farm M+ all day everyday but are now farming reputation in TBC non stop. No wonder they say SL wasn't time consuming because they didn't choose to make it to be but instead chooses the time consuming option in TBC.

[Krakan]

You should not use the word "mandatory" if you don't know what it means, bud.
Not even understanding a simplified post.. /shrug
There is more mandatory dungeon and raiding in BC than in retail. This is undeniable. 30 min/week dungeons vs 'whatever doing all hc's takes' each day. Coupled with an ever growing raid-content to do with each phase, while retail only the new raid is played for character power. Those are facts, you can read everything up. I did not even say anything about attunement btw.

Weird facts... moreso when a lot of the best in slots dont come from raiding but it's rare an opinionated wow player who simply watches what others do offers reliable insight.

[Sevyvia]

You should not use the word "mandatory" if you don't know what it means, bud.
Not even understanding a simplified post.. /shrug
There is more mandatory dungeon and raiding in BC than in retail. This is undeniable. 30 min/week dungeons vs 'whatever doing all hc's takes' each day. Coupled with an ever growing raid-content to do with each phase, while retail only the new raid is played for character power. Those are facts, you can read everything up. I did not even say anything about attunement btw.

You're being extremely disingenuous in your comparison, especially in calling what you're saying "facts." Or you just didn't play in back in TBC, and your opinions are informed by guides and content creators blowing things absurdly out of proportion. That seems more likely.

You don't do all heroics every day in TBC. You do them for a limited time, until you have the gear you need. Realistically, you just do 1-3 a day for a while. Much like how people did all the M0s around Shadowlands launch. As for "ever growing raid-content," again, you're coming at this from a completely different perspective than what you're representing retail to be.

Torghast, one M+ and then raid-logging in retail is about as simple as you can make it. Heroics and multiple different raids is not as simple as you can make it in TBC. Rather, once out of the initial phase of attunements and badges for gear you actually need, what you do in TBC is raidlog. Since you didn't mention taking care of consumables in your retail version, I'll leave it out of TBC as well, but for reference, I spent 15-20 minutes before each raid to handle it myself, back then. The dailies aren't mandatory in TBC, it's literally just gold, and old raids aren't even mandatory. I ran and raid lead a group that did everything from Karazhan up to and including Sunwell, and we had around a 1-month period of time in that long stretch where we did more than the current set of raids. That was in Sunwell, where I organized an optional extra Gruul raid for a while so one of our rogues could get his Dragonspine Trophy. A time investment of around 4 hours over the course of a month. The equivalent of doing 2x layer 8 Torghast, except people have been doing Torghast for way longer than a month.

[bledgor]

TBC, and its not even close IMO.

Especially now that you have the catch up mechanic for renown, I have gotten alts from 50->60 and geared to 190 in a 20 hour span (including the leveling).

TBC you had to grind so many reps to get everything, including unlocking heroic dungeons, and until you are basically full clearing the next tier of raids you are doing the full preivous tier (mag + kara + gruuls into SSC + Eye into MH + BT + Sunwell). I don't remember even not raiding at least 3 nights a week (4 in most cases as we would do a friday night kara), while in retail most weeks its just a 1 night clear of Nathria, 1 night of M+, and thats it (you can add torghast if you still need on a main or want to work on alts, but at this point you should have farmed enough to have all the legendaries you want).

I will say that retail has more scaling as far as time investment if you are say going for mythic donnie, as you have A LOT more avenues to get gear.

For plain heroic however it isn't that much of a time investment, not to mention with the daily calling (which you can/should stack every 3 days to potentially save time/double dip) and adventure table you can earn enough gold to never have to farm pots/flasks/chants for raids, compared to BC you had to.

Torghast, one M+ and then raid-logging in retail is about as simple as you can make it. Heroics and multiple different raids is not as simple as you can make it in TBC. Rather, once out of the initial phase of attunements and badges for gear you actually need, what you do in TBC is raidlog. Since you didn't mention taking care of consumables in your retail version, I'll leave it out of TBC as well, but for reference, I spent 15-20 minutes before each raid to handle it myself, back then.

I seriously doubt you only spent 15-20 minutes to get consumables in BC, I remembering dedicating an hour after school before raid to getting it done, while for SL i literally just buy it with money I earn from adventure table.

The dailies aren't mandatory in TBC, it's literally just gold, and old raids aren't even mandatory.

Same with SL? No dailies are mandatory once you get the renown to 35, and if you are trying to include maw, they arent even in the slightest required or needed for heroic, and barely so for mythic.

I ran and raid lead a group that did everything from Karazhan up to and including Sunwell, and we had around a 1-month period of time in that long stretch where we did more than the current set of raids. That was in Sunwell, where I organized an optional extra Gruul raid for a while so one of our rogues could get his Dragonspine Trophy. A time investment of around 4 hours over the course of a month. The equivalent of doing 2x layer 8 Torghast, except people have been doing Torghast for way longer than a month.

x2 layer 8 torghast taking 4 hours? in what fucking universe is that? I can do a layer 8 run in 20-30 minutes, so that 4 hours you said is actually 4 weeks/1 month of torghast runs, which is enough for you to get a max legendary, aka your dragonspine in this example. Also people are doing torghast for longer to get multiple legendaries for different areas of the game (raid, M+, pvp, etc). If you just want to do heroic nathria you only need 1 legendary.

[Bloodyleech]

Thats the hardcore approach top players did in SL, grind M+ all day everyday to get geared prior to mythic launch. You can think HC dungeon in TBC phase 1 like M+, not mandatory (only Shattered Halls and Sethekk Halls HC are required if you want to summon Nightbane and only 1 person needs to do it) and if you do few dungeons/week you'll get revered way before T5 releases.

The same people who say SL wasn't time consuming didn't farm M+ all day everyday but are now farming reputation in TBC non stop. No wonder they say SL wasn't time consuming because they didn't choose to make it to be but instead chooses the time consuming option in TBC.

Difference is, that more people go completely ham in classic (and will in tbc too) with requirements. If you are not in a guild that is going smooth, you pretty much have to do it.

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Weird facts... moreso when a lot of the best in slots dont come from raiding but it's rare an opinionated wow player who simply watches what others do offers reliable insight.

I did not include other gearing options, because I wanted to compare dungeons and raids from both game versions.
I know about the BiS items you get outside of raids, don't you worry.

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Snap

First: I did play in TBC, but, like for everyone, it's ~15 years in the past.
When comparing dungeons and raids from both versions.. yeah, in tbc you have to invest more time into those than in retail (just looking at heroic raiding, as the op asked - mythic requires more time than tbc).

Well, in tbc you need older raid items, not just the newest. Ofc, when your whole guild got their items, there is no need to go back into gruul for his trinket. In retail, you simply do not go into the older raid anymore for any item, since we do not have WF/TF anymore.
I can be wrong, ofc, but I call that going heroics will be mandatory for the average and upper groups, as was going for worldbuffs in classic.

It's what you need for raiding heroic, which the thread is about.
Yeah, I left out stuff like consums, because they are, in my opinion, very easy and fast to get + both game versions need them, which should be equalish (depends on realm and/or character profession).
Old raids: hello gruul and whatever other trinkets that are bis for certain classes or specs - I do not know all of them, but atleast elemental and some other casters got something like gruul's.
Dailies aren't mandatory, as in retail, agreed.
Just that you do Torghast 4 weeks and you are done, while going gruul and other raids for BiS stuff is going for way longer than just a month.

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x2 layer 8 torghast taking 4 hours? in what fucking universe is that? I can do a layer 8 run in 20-30 minutes, so that 4 hours you said is actually 4 weeks/1 month of torghast runs, which is enough for you to get a max legendary, aka your dragonspine in this example. Also people are doing torghast for longer to get multiple legendaries for different areas of the game (raid, M+, pvp, etc). If you just want to do heroic nathria you only need 1 legendary.

He actually meant the same as you. 2x layer 8 per week equals 4 hours a month going for gruul.