Do you think blizzard will react to the massive wish for a return to tbc style?

[Skizo]

I bet you're trolling me.

I just thought of a really tough challenge.
Tie one hand behind your back, jump up and down on your left foot, put on a blindfold, take off all of your character's clothes, and solo heroic lich king while I continually stab you with a pitchfork
See, the game still has plenty of challenges
*sarcasm*

[Nos]

Massive time sink =/= challenge
Players want challenging content that they get rewarded from, instead of beating their heads against a wall and having nothing to show for it.

Then you must have hated vanilla and TBC

[Lilija]

Massive time sink =/= challenge
Players want challenging content that they get rewarded from, instead of beating their heads against a wall and having nothing to show for it.

Vanilla and TBC? :P

[Skizo]

Is he saying that?
People are afk'ing in Orgrimmar and doing nothing but LFR and then alt-tab to complain there's no challenge.

Actually, yes. He was saying that players should impose arbitrary constrictions on themselves to create difficulty where there is none. He pointed out goals that serve in no way to make your character stronger, but instead make you waste a ton of time to get an arbitrary amount of gold or useless vanity pets. That may be "fun" and "interesting" to some people, but not the players who are asking for TBC and Vanilla flavored content, which pairs increasing difficulty with increasing character strength.

That completely contradicts the OP, because the Classic/TBC-version of a challenge WAS a massive time sink.

Correction, the Classic/TBC version of a challenge was both difficult and time consuming. Getting a lot of gold, or pets, or old legendaries, is not difficult. It is a massive time sink, devoid of difficulty; a mind-numbing experience.

Vanilla and TBC? :P

In Vanilla and TBC you got gear to show that you defeated content of higher difficulty. You had something to show for it.

[voidillusion]

Is he saying that?
People are afk'ing in Orgrimmar and doing nothing but LFR and then alt-tab to complain there's no challenge.



That completely contradicts the OP, because the Classic/TBC-version of a challenge WAS a massive time sink.

Don't read it to your convinience, yes ofc Vanilla and to a lesser degree TBC had huge time sinks, but so LK and Cata had them, although more opcional.

Challenge was in leveling where you actually took more than 2 secs to kill a equal lvl mob, exploring where you had some really dangerous zones, special quests that besides also being a huge time sink had the challenge included and couldn't be soloed at all, also in the form of more challenging dungeons etc.

You guys are twisting this i don't understand with what purpose, most of you seem smarter than that. Doing a random achiev that requires you to brainlessly do several activitys = time sink, leveling a char and overcoming the dificultys and fighting hard foes in a dungeons that will basicly pawn your ass unless you step up your game = challenge, what's the dificulty in grasping this concept?

[Lilija]

Outside of some heroic modes, tell me what.

Mastering (not chosing) your class/spec in order to be the best contribution for your raid group.
Progress thru new content as fast as possible.
Doing achievements (the earlier, the better)

Those may seem few but in fact they are major thing to do that requires much more personal skill, knowledge and organization than anything pre achievement times.

---------- Post added 2012-08-10 at 04:08 PM ----------

Correction, the Classic/TBC version of a challenge was both difficult and time consuming. Getting a lot of gold, or pets, or old legendaries, is not difficult. It is a massive time sink, devoid of difficulty; a mind-numbing experience.

There was hardly anything requiring skill in Vanilla/TBC. There was mostly time sink.

In Vanilla and TBC you got gear to show that you defeated content of higher difficulty. You had something to show for it.

Gear being both means and goal was a wrong design. Gear is finally what it's supposed to be - a tool to achieve something. You have achievements to show off.

[Nos]

In Vanilla and TBC you got gear to show that you defeated content of higher difficulty. You had something to show for it.

You get that now, too You'd know that if you got some of it.

[Deficineiron]

There was hardly anything requiring skill in Vanilla/TBC. There was mostly time sink.

Fair to say an average-to-middling group would clear BC heroics and kara easily in ilvl 115 during 2.0 - 2.2.x? If not, why not? What would be missing?

[Skizo]

Mastering (not chosing) your class/spec in order to be the best contribution for your raid group.
Progress thru new content as fast as possible.
Doing achievements (the earlier, the better)

These things are all fun, but in fact, are all comparative achievements for which Blizzard does not give you any additional character-progression related rewards, and are thus completely arbitrary.

[Lilija]

Don't read it to your convinience, yes ofc Vanilla and to a lesser degree TBC had huge time sinks, but so LK and Cata had them, although more opcional.

And this is the key. Time sink has to be optional. If it's a part of normal progression it's a flawed design.

Challenge was in leveling where you actually took more than 2 secs to kill a equal lvl mob

Well, taking into consideratio that most of the classes and spec were broken :P

lso in the form of more challenging dungeons etc.

Once again, annoying and tedious is not challenging.

You guys are twisting this i don't understand with what purpose, most of you seem smarter than that. Doing a random achiev that requires you to brainlessly do several activitys = time sink, leveling a char and overcoming the dificultys and fighting hard foes in a dungeons that will basicly pawn your ass unless you step up your game = challenge, what's the dificulty in grasping this concept?

Stuff being hard in Vanilla/TBC was an illusion. Why? People were new and mostly much worse players with less knowledge so the game could not expect that from players - I could assure you that for 7 years WoW players there would nothing challenging if they played those expantions once again from scratch. There were ways to make things brainless to do.

[Nos]

I think the real issue here, is the time sink. So called "hardcores," people who like to call themselves that because they raided in BC and Vanilla, essentially bragging just because they found a game first, complain that there's no challenge now. Not citing anything to do with the difficulty of the dungeons, but citing that it takes less time, because casuals can get the same gear they do, taking away their precious prestige. Now, I usually assume they're just being retarded, because there's differences visibly, and statistically, in the gear. But I think they're being serious. Back in the day, the determining factor for whether or not you could raid was based on time. They had plenty of time, so they could raid. It wasn't based on skill, like they'd like for you to believe. Now skilled players are putting in less time than them, and getting the same rewards, because they're good/better players, and "hardcores" don't like it. Are there bads in the game? Is LFR faceroll easy? Sure. But if that's all you can seem to muster up the determination to finish before declaring "I'VE SEEN ALL THE CONTENT!" then you're more of a bad than the people you're pugging with.

[Lilija]

Fair to say an average-to-middling group would clear BC heroics and kara easily in ilvl 115 during 2.0 - 2.2.x? If not, why not? What would be missing?

Back then? Know how.

---------- Post added 2012-08-10 at 04:17 PM ----------

These things are all fun, but in fact, are all comparative achievements for which Blizzard does not give you any additional character-progression related rewards, and are thus completely arbitrary.

Place of wowprogress is arbitrary? ^^

[Skizo]

And this is the key. Time sink has to be optional. If it's a part of normal progression it's a flawed design.

Leveling is a time sink. Leveling is a part of normal progression. Flawed design?

Well, taking into consideration that most of the classes and spec were broken :P

Whether or not all speccs were used is irrelevant, even if you brought all speccs that worked very well, the content was still very challenging

Once again, annoying and tedious is not challenging.

I suppose what is annoying is too subjective, because I'm sure a lot of people think not standing in lava is just annoying an tedious.

Stuff being hard in Vanilla/TBC was an illusion. Why? People were new and mostly much worse players with less knowledge so the game could not expect that from players - I could assure you that for 7 years WoW players there would nothing challenging if they played those expantions once again from scratch. There were ways to make things brainless to do.

Newton's flaming laser sword. This point is entirely moot.

You get that now, too You'd know that if you got some of it.

Ad hominems do everything but strengthen your point.

Place of wowprogress is arbitrary? ^^

In a game based around progression, a ranking website is a completely arbitrary way to challenge yourself. In a game like SF or a MOBA, that is a form of substance.

[madethisfor1post]

I dunno about you but I remember facerolling heroics in TBC early on. If you cleared it once, the challenge was gone. You knew what to do and what to expect. There was no surprise around the next corner. The only thing keeping you back was the arguably really bad player (guild main tanks GF who played a shadow priest that couldn't not stand in bad things or LoS big AoE's if her life depended on it).

[DisposableHero]

Leveling is a time sink. Leveling is a part of normal progression. Flawed design?

To an extent yes, its also a Trope of the genre you can't do away with entirely. This is one of several reasons expansions now span 5 levels instead of 10.

Whether or not all speccs were used is irrelevant, even if you brought all speccs that worked very well, the content was still very challenging

There is a difference between fighting your class mechanics and fighting the instance mechanics. Basic operation and optimization of a raid on a tank and spank encounter required significantly more knowledge and effort in 2.X than it does now. If you were to buy a set of accounts and get the base game and TBC and level them to 70 and form a raid group (mind you without making use of say death knights, gear from wrath or beyond that can be used sub level 70) you would find it significantly easier to clear the content than it was back when it was relevant and class design, design philosophy, evolving classes and so on have a lot to do with that. To ignore that is absurd.

I suppose what is annoying is too subjective, because I'm sure a lot of people think not standing in lava is just annoying an tedious.

It is subjective but only to a point. There is difficulty in playing in the NBA and there is difficulty in peeling 1000 potatoes. One feels tedious and unrewarding the other is a lauded and celebrated accomplishment. What people really miss from TBC is the lauding and celebration of their raiding accomplishments. It is ego, and absolutely nothing else. A segment of the wow player base, and a smaller one than they would have you believe needs recognition to feel appropriately rewarded, and the community is not giving it to them anymore so they have blamed blizzard for letting all of those people they thought to be beneath them accomplish the same things.

That isn't the fundamental reason why they are losing subscribers however, though it may have contributed to it. The reality is that BC has 51 raid bosses, Wrath had 54 raid bosses, and Cataclysm had just over 30. As a function of volume blizzard produced less high end PvE content this expansion than in either of the previous two by a huge margin, so it really isn't a wonder that they lost so many subscribers. We are in the middle of the longest drought in new raid content in the game's history, so it is no wonder they are losing subscribers at record numbers. If you look at the pattern you can see the tide of subscriber loss slows or stops each time they release new raid content and then picks up again as that content becomes old.

This is why their only real response on this subject is "we're going to try and release content much faster in the future". They know that the crux of maintaining and growing their subscribers is ensure everyone has more stuff left to do, because they know they dropped the ball by developing so little content over the course of cata, and they are hopefully going to learn from that mistake.

[Benomatic]

wotlk was for me the best expansion in terms of everything. sorry but pve questing meant the most to me and i got my money worth tenfold

[The High Druid]

Burning Crusade was not harder, it was longer and more tedious.

Attunements were a giant pain in the ass. I got mine done for Kara early. A month later we were still doing dungeons to get other people through them. 6 months after that we were still doing them for people that swapped characters, or to start gearing up a new member for raids. Of course eventually only one person needed the key for Karazhan, so that was okay I didn't have to run dungeons for attunements again after that.

Except.

Well you couldn't really progress in Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine unless most of your group had a reasonable amount of Tier4-level gear. So we ran Karazhan, and Gruul and Magtheridon. A lot. Everytime we lost a geared up tank or healer to a Hyjal-level guild we had to do it again. But eventually we got to Hyjal ourselves.

Except.

Well to get to Hyjal you had to have the vials from Vash and Kael, a quest that started in a heroic dungeon. Okay we're back to running attunements in the heroic dungeon again, because we still need to replace people or we can't keep running Hyjal and we're stuck doing T5 over and over, but we have to do T5 again anyway to get the vials for the people that missed them. And plenty of people are getting bored of that and looking to apply to the black Temple guilds.

Is it any wonder less than 1% of players got to see the Sunwell?

Yeah, Burning Crusade was really awesome. Just so long as your definition of awesome includes a raiding progression system that seemed actively designed to pull guilds apart.

Edit: Bleah, got magmaw and magtheridon mixed up.

[Deficineiron]

Back then? Know how.

exactly. skill was required to progress in the content. and some of those heroics were hard enough in ilvl 115 that I suspect the completion rate was abysmal before later nerfs.

[Cows For Life]

I agree with that to a certain extent. Although it is my experience that you could clear every TBC heroic with pretty much any setup (even mgt without classic CCers worked), I do believe that it was a lot more important to make friends in the game than it is now, as it was a lot easier to get into a group if you were playing an exotic spec.

Even H-MgT without mages and hunters? If you mean with barely any CC or no CC, you would be stretching the truth yet again.

BTW it's 42 pages now and several days later and the OP hasn't posted a single reply. Hook, line...

[Goretex]

I think the real issue here, is the time sink. So called "hardcores," people who like to call themselves that because they raided in BC and Vanilla, essentially bragging just because they found a game first, complain that there's no challenge now. Not citing anything to do with the difficulty of the dungeons, but citing that it takes less time, because casuals can get the same gear they do, taking away their precious prestige. Now, I usually assume they're just being retarded, because there's differences visibly, and statistically, in the gear. But I think they're being serious. Back in the day, the determining factor for whether or not you could raid was based on time. They had plenty of time, so they could raid. It wasn't based on skill, like they'd like for you to believe. Now skilled players are putting in less time than them, and getting the same rewards, because they're good/better players, and "hardcores" don't like it. Are there bads in the game? Is LFR faceroll easy? Sure. But if that's all you can seem to muster up the determination to finish before declaring "I'VE SEEN ALL THE CONTENT!" then you're more of a bad than the people you're pugging with.

I couldn't agree more, well said very well said. I also played and raided in vanilla and TBC, and I can honestly say I'm enjoying the game better now than I ever had. Yea vanilla and BC were fun but only because it was new at the time, I think alot of ppl are clinging to nostalgical reasons and forget the downsides we had back then.