Is mists of pandaria the greatest raiding expansion ever released?

[Pua]

A joke on 25man, hard on 10man. Was pugged easily in 3.2 and beyond.

Hard, and not pugged while current.

The only hard part was 1hr timer.

So, hard.

Facerolled by most guilds (assuming they bothered about that) in ICC gear. Hell, there were even PUGs going for the mount.

So, not done while current.

A joke in 10man, not so hard on 25man if you raided with proper people.

You're one of the very few claiming Anub'arak was easy.

The only real hard stuff, yeah.

So, hard.

Look, I'm not trying to say "you found this content hard"; that'd be unbelievably arrogant of me, and it's not where I want to go. Only you know how hard you found something. That said, your experience doesn't account for everyone's, not even within your own raid group; the difference in role difficulty alone makes this a given. I don't know what you did back then, but if you were a Protection paladin you had close to the easiest job in a raid.

What I'm saying is that those who say WotLK was easy, 99% of the time, didn't do any of the hardest content - they avoided it. As an expansion, it was as difficult as it ever needed to be because we didn't see hardcore players leave the game because it was too easy.

Further to that, I'd also argue that raiding activity among the top guilds was far healthier then, rather than the ludicrous levels its gotten to now (when some guild masters promote the use of narcotics).

World of Warcraft doesn't need to have the content as hard as it does now. It really doesn't. WotLK was the perfect setting, IMHO, because it catered to pretty much everyone without omission or patronisation, and built server PuG communities that didn't require an ugly queuing system. It also encouraged casual raiding which got people on the way up to better guilds, a tap that has literally been turned off since Cataclysm and guilds are now eating each other as a result.

That's why WotLK commonly comes out on top in most polls.

[hoofy]

Im sorry but TBC was the hardest expansion raid wise it took a lot of time, effort and common sense.

[Celista]

Im sorry but TBC was the hardest expansion raid wise it took a lot of time, effort and common sense.

Hardest doesn't necessarily make it the best...

But I agree esp for heals due to regular use of downranked spells and just general healing mechanics versus healing mechanics today.

[Bakis]

TBC was best by far but for fewer players. Casuals had no place back then just like it should be.
I enjoyed it way more and other than that Ulduar has to be mentioned. Up there on pair with Sunwell in terms of scenary, encounters and atmopshere.

[Lethora]

World of Warcraft doesn't need to have the content as hard as it does now. It really doesn't.

Why not? Challenge is always good. I mean, it's fun to watch the world-first race and then it's fun to wipe on challenging stuff. Normal mode is well-tuned in my opinion, since most guilds still haven't finished it.
Content is there to make you busy until next bunch of content arrives. Like, people who cleared T14 normal just before T15 arrived are progressing at the pace that Blizzard planned for "normal" raiding guilds. People who cleared heroic T14 did the content that was suited for their skill. My guild, for example, was 10/16H on T14 before T15 arrived, now we are 7/13H and hopefully will be at least 11/13H before 5.4 comes.
People who find normals too hard and LFR too easy (well, it is literally afk + tank-n-spank fest) will have Flex difficulty added for some challenge. Once they are done with Flex, they can start progressing on normals. Same thing as WotLK literally: you clear 10mans with your guild, and then you tried finding 25man pugs to try and get the better gear. Or you cleared 25mans with guild and then pugged 10man with alts. Flex raiding will be new "wotlk 10man mode". This feature alone might make MoP the best raiding expansion ever. People just need to give it some time.
You are right about the fact that people tend to rate WotLK as the best expansion because even less-skilled people managed to see "proper raid content" (LFR is by no means proper raiding) and that made them feel good about themselves.

[Deleted]

A joke on 25man, hard on 10man. Was pugged easily in 3.2 and beyond.

The only hard part was 1hr timer.

Facerolled by most guilds (assuming they bothered about that) in ICC gear. Hell, there were even PUGs going for the mount.

A joke in 10man, not so hard on 25man if you raided with proper people.

The only real hard stuff, yeah.

I think someone is viewing the Wrath raiding through their own rose-tinted glasses...

All of these raids were not as easy as u make out and the pugging community that was capable of pugging this content were the top raiders. It certainly wasnt puggable by average raiders.

The point being that the tough Wrath raiding was still tough even by comparison to any other raiding expansion.

NOTE: the only reason that the difficult Wrath raiding content might appear to be easier to pug than other expansions difficult raiding content, was simply because there were ALOT more raiders around during that time. Therefore ALOT more players who actually knew what they were doing, with experience.

[kappa]

I think someone is viewing the Wrath raiding through their own rose-tinted glasses...

All of these raids were not as easy as u make out and the pugging community that was capable of pugging this content were the top raiders. It certainly wasnt puggable by average raiders.

The point being that the tough Wrath raiding was still tough even by comparison to any other raiding expansion.

I disagree. Wrath was extremely easy compared to any other expansion. Just to give an example, Tier 11 and its subsequent tiers in Cata were so hard that it completely annihilated 99% of pugging community formed during Wrath. Matter of fact, the pugging community is still in shambles to this day, mostly due to LFR though but you get my point. No other expansion was so easily puggable than Wrath, and they weren't just top guild pugs either.

[Deleted]

I disagree. Wrath was extremely easy compared to any other expansion. Just to give an example, Tier 11 and its subsequent tiers in Cata were so hard that it completely annihilated 99% of pugging community formed during Wrath. Matter of fact, the pugging community is still in shambles to this day, mostly due to LFR though but you get my point. No other expansion was so easily puggable than Wrath, and they weren't just top guild pugs either.

He was talking about hardmode fights.

I agree the overall pugging was easier in Wrath... but hes saying that stuff like Yogg+0 and TOGC insanity were all piss easy to pug... thats simply not the case at all.

Was Firefighter really easy to pug?

ofc not lol

[Deleted]

MoP has been the most consistently good raiding expansion so far. Sure there have been some dud bosses, but nothing on the order of magniture of Naxx-25 or Trial of the Crusader ruining an entire tier. Sure Ulduar was amazing, but Wrath was only 2 great raiding tiers out of 4. I guess we'll have to see how Siege measures up, but I'm cautiously optimistic based on T14 and T15.

[Bakis]

Mm Mimiron HC pre nerf, enjoyed it more than my LC HK25 world#13. <3

---------- Post added 2013-06-21 at 09:38 AM ----------

He was talking about hardmode fights.

I agree the overall pugging was easier in Wrath... but hes saying that stuff like Yogg+0 and TOGC insanity were all piss easy to pug... thats simply not the case at all.

Was Firefighter really easy to pug?

ofc not lol

He is obivously speaking of the normal verion after nerfs, being overgeared. As you say they were not easy and noone no matter how much noob would claim yog 0 was pugable or even remotely easy at hardmode during current content.

So leave him be and just acknowledge he is one of those players that do old content after nerfs, when overgeared on the easiest setting and complain it is too easy.
I think the name is Casual Player

[Lethora]

stuff like Yogg+0 and TOGC insanity were all piss easy to pug... thats simply not the case at all.

Except I never said they were piss easy to pug.
I never mentioned pugging ToGC at all.
Regarding Yogg+0, I said that "there were even PUGs going for the mount". Obviously, all of that was done in ICC hc gear, and there were couple of PUG groups (which were alts/mains of raiders from different guilds) on my realm that went there and cleared it for the mount. I didn't say that anyone could just waltz in and kill it.

I think that some reading comprehension would help you a lot.

[Deleted]

He is obivously speaking of the normal verion after nerfs, being overgeared. As you say they were not easy and noone no matter how much noob would claim yog 0 was pugable or even remotely easy at hardmode during current content.

So leave him be and just acknowledge he is one of those players that do old content after nerfs, when overgeared on the easiest setting and complain it is too easy.
I think the name is Casual Player

Except I never said they were piss easy to pug.
I never mentioned pugging ToGC at all.
Regarding Yogg+0, I said that "there were even PUGs going for the mount". Obviously, all of that was done in ICC hc gear, and there were couple of PUG groups (which were alts/mains of raiders from different guilds) on my realm that went there and cleared it for the mount. I didn't say that anyone could just waltz in and kill it.

I think that some reading comprehension would help you a lot.

I refer u to Lethora post #532

He clearly says TRIBUTE TO INSANITY and that is TOGC.

His general post was making the point that he thinks Wrath heroic content was so easy it was easily puggable... thats not true. Even at the end of the expansion pugging the toughest Wrath fights wasnt common and it certainly wasnt done by average raiders... it was pugged by the leets who had been doing it alot in their guilds and therefore knew the fights v well.

[Deleted]

Well I can't say anything till SoO is out.

A couple of things I can say though.

If 5.4 is out in September some time we will have had 3 unique big raid tiers including 43 bosses (excluding world bosses) in less time than T10 was out on its own (ICC).

I really liked Ulduar and ICC but ToC and Naxx 2.0 where blemishes on WotLK which was a very very long expansion.

I am very interested what Virtual Servers and Flex Raiding does for the PuG scene as well.

From my personal PoV T11 is my favorite tier of raiding though, and I really liked T14 (I actually prefer having multiple raids per Tier).

MoP is doing very very well from a raiding pov.

[Pua]

Why not? Challenge is always good. I mean, it's fun to watch the world-first race and then it's fun to wipe on challenging stuff. Normal mode is well-tuned in my opinion, since most guilds still haven't finished it.

That's a perfectly valid opinion, I'm honestly not trying to rob you of it. What you have to understand is that it's nothing more than your opinion. What I'm saying is that the world-first race was there in WotLK when the content was easier as a whole, and the top end of the PvE playerbase didn't conclude it was too easy and go somewhere else; equally, there's no reason to believe they'd depart if the toughest content was made easier with just a couple of ball-busters along the way as it was in Wrath.

In fact, there are many legitimate arguments that stipulate the raiding community would be healthier for those at the top if the game wasn't so punitive on its easier modes and the learning curve was treated properly. Recruitment and churn are two concepts any decent guild will understand explicitly, and I think the significant majority of recruiters in those guilds would admit that it's become harder. Hell, entire guilds move server in order to get better recruits and stay competitive while we're now seeing a general migration towards the Horde because that's where the top players are. These are not mere coincidences.

Saying challenge is good is fair enough, but the level of challenge in World of Warcraft today has gotten absurd. Not only do you have to commit the time to getting the best gear, use timers to maximise your output, spend time out of the game to learn the toughest encounters and use mods to help you with said encounters, you also then need to commit a ludicrous amount of time if you want to be part of the world first race, and still need to stick to a schedule if you're just trying to compete on your own server.

This behaviour is relatively unique to this genre, it's most widespread with World of Warcraft, and there's absolutely no need for it. This is a game. That's all - it's a game. Those who chime in about "entitlement" and "cry babies who want everything now" are invariably forgetting this fact entirely. The problem is not with the people who want to log on, do a bit of raiding with their chums and kill some bosses for epic loot; the problem is with those at the top who are willing to put hours upon hours into a progression boss and potentially get nothing from it.

I'm not criticizing the people that want this mega-challenge, nor do I believe people are lying when they say they enjoy wiping and working to overcome a drastically difficult encounter. But the majority of what those players describe is flat-out masochism, which means their sneering at those unwilling to put in that time is a pretty obvious psychological projection of their own insecurity. If you take a look at the posts by Koeren (a top, top raider), for example, they're always reasoned, eloquent and appreciative of "the other side of the debate" because he clearly doesn't feel a need to prove himself or justify his choices to anyone. Then take a look at the posts by nemro82, and you see the other side of this divide in the community.

There's more to this discussion, however, and that's where game design comes in. I'm fairly comfortable in putting forth the opinion that nothing is mechanically too difficult for the top guilds anymore. Nothing. Within a day or so, the top guilds will have learned an encounter mechanically and will only be held back by output; you could simplify this to say "gear". When you watch Method's Lei Shen heroic kill, you see them using warlock portals in phase 3 in order to make sure Thunderstruck is nowhere near the main raid (stacked on the boss) who are trying to deeps him as hard as possible - this is to account for the lower level of gear and the damage Thunderstruck would do otherwise. In short, the top guilds are actually capable of making an encounter HARDER in order to beat it prior to the gear curve catching up to it.

Blizzard simply can't design against this level of capability. They have to use gates, whether they're hard or whether they're hidden. I'm actually a fan of hard gates, but "gear" is probably the worst one out there. It's basically saying that though you've learned an encounter, you can't kill it because you just don't have the gear - sucks to be you. Progress is halted by RNG, not ability, and that's frustrating.

Who cares?

Well, everyone. Blizzard is trying to make encounters that are difficult for players that are simply too good at the game for the approach to be successful. You simply can't come up with a mechanic that's too hard for those players. This has dragged the overall difficulty of the content up, pricing out those new to the game or more casual in their approach in the process. Effectively, I'm saying that Blizzard are destroying their own raiding community by trying to provide a challenge for those who can't realistically be challenged. To me, this is just the wrong approach. A nasty side-effect of this (mentioned by my blogging friend Kadomi) is that flexi-mode is potentially going to kill normal mode as a legitimate raiding platform because it's serving as little more than a single-reset gate before guilds get started on heroic progression.

I know I've gone on a bit here, but I'm trying to give you enough information about my views so that you can see why I say "the game doesn't need to be as hard as it is". You could make the game effectively harder by simplifying encounters, but breaking things like DBM or BigWigs in order to accommodate. You could do away with an entire heroic tier, but put heroic bosses in where it makes sense to change up an encounter enough to justify it. This worked for Ulduar, which is widely considered the greatest raid the game has ever seen.

Anyway, that's enough. I hope you see my view a bit clearer now, and that you can appreciate why I say what I do. I'm not trying to cause an argument or vilify one section of the community, I just think the priorities are ass-backward and it's not doing the game, or its community, any good at all.

[Deleted]

For me its BC>Mists>wotlk>cata

[worsthitmanNa]

I refer u to Lethora post #532

He clearly says TRIBUTE TO INSANITY and that is TOGC.

His general post was making the point that he thinks Wrath heroic content was so easy it was easily puggable... thats not true. Even at the end of the expansion pugging the toughest Wrath fights wasnt common and it certainly wasnt done by average raiders... it was pugged by the leets who had been doing it alot in their guilds and therefore knew the fights v well.

I pugged togc and Icc heroics when they were current but i wasn't good enough to finish ulduar. We almost downed anub on heroic with 45 attempts remaining but this warlock kept messing up man.

[hoofy]

TBC was best by far but for fewer players. Casuals had no place back then just like it should be.
I enjoyed it way more and other than that Ulduar has to be mentioned. Up there on pair with Sunwell in terms of scenary, encounters and atmopshere.

I think it was easier to social in tbc then now, then was far more to do as everything was 10x more fun! It wasn't easy compared to now.

[Kazgrel]

Honestly, too early to tell since SoO isn't out yet, but to address the question, I would put TBC up top, followed by Wrath, then MoP. Hard for me to fit classic in, since I barely did any raiding during that time. Cata, on the other hand...ugh.

[skrump]

Being someone who played since Vanilla and without judging a raid on the difficulty of it's content I would say the best raid encounter is a 3 way tie between Bwl/Naxx/ICC, though if you threw difficulty into the equation Bwl is replaced by AQ40 and Icc is replaced with Sunwell (though other than the challenge offered both feel inferior to the original 3 I listed.