If Naxx40 released in today's modern raiding enviroment, how long would it last?

[Deleted]

Power creep is now bigger than in classic. Talents/passives/skills that classes currently have are a lot better than they were before. Heirloomed lvl 35-40 char does more dps than rare/epic geared 60 in MC did for example.

[Akka]

Anyone who didn't do it in vanilla just has no idea what they're talking about. That's all there is to it. You can't make an argument if you haven't experienced the content, no matter how much you've read or think you know.

There's also the problem of arguing what's more difficult when there are far more add-ons, macros, and spells to handle every situation you could ever dream up today. There is no threat now, not every class had burst potential in vanilla to handle certain mechanics, the fights you mentioned required a fair bit of attention... the list goes on.

Then there's the issue of having 40 people being required to do mechanics. That means finding a fair bit more people (in all fairness... most of Naxx, if not all, could carry at least a handful of average to poor skilled people -- just a little less than late AQ40) to fill your ranks. That's no simple feat, and surely part of why there was less overall complexity for mechanics.

Then there's the stupidity that people are simply "better at the game" today. Does any reasonable person actually believe that the top players in Legion are that much better than the top players of vanilla? It's a fucking video game; you reach for the skill ceiling as hard as you can. This isn't the first MMO, or game, that requires a modicum of skill. It's not a hard game. People have been reaching for the skill ceiling since the game was released. Give players in vanilla the tools of today and I guarantee, with certainty, that they'd be as good or better as the players today (spells/abilities, warcraftlogs, add-ons, etc.). I'd hazard to guess that the majority of truly hardcore WoW players quit long ago. Our brains haven't evolved in the last decade and it's beyond stupid to think that we're somehow more capable of playing video games well today.

Great post, 100 % agree.

[Echocho]

It would probably take just as long. Bosses would drop 1 piece of gear per 20 players, gear which would be needed to kill the bosses in the instance in order to beat the gear checks. The mechanics could probably be erased entirely since the real cock block was the tight gear checks.

[Nuckels]

Anyone who didn't do it in vanilla just has no idea what they're talking about. That's all there is to it. You can't make an argument if you haven't experienced the content, no matter how much you've read or think you know.

There's also the problem of arguing what's more difficult when there are far more add-ons, macros, and spells to handle every situation you could ever dream up today. There is no threat now, not every class had burst potential in vanilla to handle certain mechanics, the fights you mentioned required a fair bit of attention... the list goes on.

Then there's the issue of having 40 people being required to do mechanics. That means finding a fair bit more people (in all fairness... most of Naxx, if not all, could carry at least a handful of average to poor skilled people -- just a little less than late AQ40) to fill your ranks. That's no simple feat, and surely part of why there was less overall complexity for mechanics.

Then there's the stupidity that people are simply "better at the game" today. Does any reasonable person actually believe that the top players in Legion are that much better than the top players of vanilla? It's a fucking video game; you reach for the skill ceiling as hard as you can. This isn't the first MMO, or game, that requires a modicum of skill. It's not a hard game. People have been reaching for the skill ceiling since the game was released. Give players in vanilla the tools of today and I guarantee, with certainty, that they'd be as good or better as the players today (spells/abilities, warcraftlogs, add-ons, etc.). I'd hazard to guess that the majority of truly hardcore WoW players quit long ago. Our brains haven't evolved in the last decade and it's beyond stupid to think that we're somehow more capable of playing video games well today.

What addon bar weakauras (which you don't need.) wasn't available in some form during naxx40 that helps individual performance within PvE?

Yes but we are talking about pure difficulty of the raid and not about the difficulty of running a pve guild.

People are better at the game, there are KT40 video's on youtube of people clicking and being horrible at the game. You can't say that isn't the case, people did not theorycraft to the extend they do today and most people did not play their class to the optimal potential while still being able to clear. Anyway this discussion is pointless and will never find out.

[Gilgameshh]

What addon bar weakauras (which you don't need.) wasn't available in some form during naxx40 that helps individual performance within PvE?

Yes but we are talking about pure difficulty of the raid and not about the difficulty of running a pve guild.

People are better at the game, there are KT40 video's on youtube of people clicking and being horrible at the game. You can't say that isn't the case, people did not theorycraft to the extend they do today and most people did not play their class to the optimal potential while still being able to clear. Anyway this discussion is pointless and will never find out.

I don't honestly remember what add-ons weren't available in vanilla; it's been a long time. I'm not sure how one could make an argument for WeakAuras being anything but game breaking. It's a wonder they've allowed it to exist.

Getting 40 people to handle mechanics is part of the difficulty. If this was a single player game, how many people raiding mythic would by 7/7 already in EN? On the first night, even. Most of the difficulty in raiding comes from organizing a big group to handle mechanics. Forty is twice as many as twenty; there's an inherent amount of extra difficulty when you add more people.

I agree that we will never truly know whether or not people are better at the game now, but can't cherry pick players and guilds and say, "Oh look, these vanilla players are bad." I can do the same for every expansion. Not to mention, you don't need to play your class optimally to clear mythic nowadays, so that argument doesn't hold much water. I grant you (as I said myself) that you could carry people in 40-man, but Naxx and late AQ40 were not nearly as forgiving as the rest of vanilla by my recollection. It's not the walk in the park you're describing. Out of curiosity, did you play in Naxx40? If so, how deep did you get? For the record, I cleared it; I wouldn't be making these claims otherwise.

This is meant to be a fun discussion. We're not meant to know the answer either way; it's just a fun debate. If you feel like it's pointless, you're not obligated to join in.

[Nuckels]

I don't honestly remember what add-ons weren't available in vanilla; it's been a long time. I'm not sure how one could make an argument for WeakAuras being anything but game breaking. It's a wonder they've allowed it to exist.

Getting 40 people to handle mechanics is part of the difficulty. If this was a single player game, how many people raiding mythic would by 7/7 already in EN? On the first night, even. Most of the difficulty in raiding comes from organizing a big group to handle mechanics. Forty is twice as many as twenty; there's an inherent amount of extra difficulty when you add more people.

I agree that we will never truly know whether or not people are better at the game now, but can't cherry pick players and guilds and say, "Oh look, these vanilla players are bad." I can do the same for every expansion. Not to mention, you don't need to play your class optimally to clear mythic nowadays, so that argument doesn't hold much water. I grant you (as I said myself) that you could carry people in 40-man, but Naxx and late AQ40 were not nearly as forgiving as the rest of vanilla by my recollection. It's not the walk in the park you're describing. Out of curiosity, did you play in Naxx40? If so, how deep did you get? For the record, I cleared it; I wouldn't be making these claims otherwise.

This is meant to be a fun discussion. We're not meant to know the answer either way; it's just a fun debate. If you feel like it's pointless, you're not obligated to join in.

Weakauras don't do anything other addons can't if you know how to write lua, especially now radars are broken. You had all your addons back then, raidframes, debuff trackers, bossmods, threatmeters etc.

Yes but from a individual performance aspect the game is easier, only reason people believe 40 was harder is because they don't realise how bad some of their raidmembers actually were. Eitherway, it was difficult in its own way, just not the way people are argueing here mainly, which is mechanicly.

I feel like its pointless because even tho the debate is interesting its sort of ran its course.

[Echocho]

Weakauras don't do anything other addons can't if you know how to write lua, especially now radars are broken. You had all your addons back then, raidframes, debuff trackers, bossmods, threatmeters etc.

Yes but from a individual performance aspect the game is easier, only reason people believe 40 was harder is because they don't realise how bad some of their raidmembers actually were. Eitherway, it was difficult in its own way, just not the way people are argueing here mainly, which is mechanicly.

I feel like its pointless because even tho the debate is interesting its sort of ran its course.

I play with the same people today as I did back then. Sure we've gotten better but not much better. The reason Naxx and all the raids back in vanilla took as long as they did is because it took really long to gear up your raid enough to beat the encounter. What took 3 months back then takes 3 weeks today which means that if you're skilled you'll clear the raids much faster and as a consequence get bored of them much faster. Killing the last boss on day one on <insert difficulty here> takes away a lot from the whole experience.

[Nuckels]

I play with the same people today as I did back then. Sure we've gotten better but not much better. The reason Naxx and all the raids back in vanilla took as long as they did is because it took really long to gear up your raid enough to beat the encounter. What took 3 months back then takes 3 weeks today which means that if you're skilled you'll clear the raids much faster and as a consequence get bored of them much faster. Killing the last boss on day one on <insert difficulty here> takes away a lot from the whole experience.

I fully agree that gearing now compared to back then is a huge joke, as I said it was difficult in its own way, this was a huge part of that.

[ohlins]

I fully agree that gearing now compared to back then is a huge joke, as I said it was difficult in its own way, this was a huge part of that.

The whole game was just different. It was a way bigger timesink to even get to the point where you could start pulling then it is now. then start figuring things out on how to do it. (no PTR or youtube vids if you where raiding end-game patch 1.11, timers on addons where off by a mile, shit mechanics diddn't work as they where supposed to be....) If you'd put the vanilla model in to todays raids then only the ones with the most time to spare coupled with the right ammount of skill would get past it (just like it used to be). At the same time if you'd put todays model in the naxx days then things would die a lot quicker to.

I like todays model more. It just doesn't feel that rewarding anymore to loot a piece of gear. (more frustrating because it's another shit roll on stats ) Yes i enjoyed classic and TBC more, but im carefull with what I wish for.

[Echocho]

I like todays model more. It just doesn't feel that rewarding anymore to loot a piece of gear. (more frustrating because it's another shit roll on stats ) Yes i enjoyed classic and TBC more, but im carefull with what I wish for.

I feel the same way. With the commitment required outside of raiding in vanilla I doubt I'd be able to play the game today since I have a job and stuff. It's more accessible even for the ones that raid at a very high level. That being said I miss feeling excited about receiving loot. I can still remember certain items I received prior to cataclysm and how it made me feel but after the reward structure got saturated every item is bland, short lived and boring. I've even stopped making BiS lists because why bother, I won't be able to follow it anyway due to this titanforging bullshit, God forbid we get to plan anything, everything must be RNG to the max.
Sorry, got a bit heated there in the end. I really hate RNG and being showered in gear. RNG should be part of the acquisition of the item, not the quality of it.

[Zandalariprelate]

Would be hard to get 40 persons to log in the according raid schedule also some bosses were much more gear checks than the current we have like butcher in highmaul in wod and cenarius in nightmare

[Kryos]

It would be cleared very fast with our new spells and ways characters replenish their resources. If we also had the slow, clunky, ressource starving, low hp characters and bosses with crushing blows (something you can call a soft crit the boss deal) we would struggle like we did in the past. It wasn't about skill and reaction time, it was about character stats and the simple mathematics behind it back then. Healers and Ranges just went OOM and tanks got unavoidable dmg spikes with crushing blows or they had so much defensive stats that they didn't create enough rage to generate enough aggro. It was very very different from today.

[BiggestNoob]

A few days at most.

I've played games where you have an in-raid gear progression, where final bosses are tuned such that it's nearly impossible to do them without farming gear from that instance or farming full resist sets, which were time gated (capped max progress per week). Even in those, you could kill bosses long before intended by playing well. Bosses that devs have claimed are "unkillable" go down before everyone's even in full BiS, or people beat "impossible" enrage timers before they reach full BiS after content nerfs (after only being given < 100 wipes before devs nerfed it because "too hard" or something).

You had a handful of guilds even trying then, nobody raiding much at all, and they still demolished the content faster than most guilds can today. You put a modern mindset behind it, modern preparation and comp stacking, and a group of good players (none of these kids who are standing around with < 80% uptime like you see in kill videos, or clickers) and the content would evaporate.

[Teri]

Datamining/dungeon journal changed the game so much so the whole basic learning curve is gone forever.

If they released some secret unannounced raid suddenly, with randomized AI and bosses/abilities it could last a bit longer.

If they overtuned it for let's say 895 itemlevel average before nighthold it would last longer too.

Artificial extension curves like naxx warrior bonus for 4 horseman worked in a similar way.

If they did something really stupid like "you have to equip 2 legendary" specific for your class/role to enter, it would also artificially extend the time and in a very bad design way

If it's known ahead of time via PTR and dungeon journals it will take all the surprise away instantly.


Anyhow, so far this is only tier 1, so itemlevels haven't been that far apart, they showed a ilevel 950 example relic on blizzcon so I wonder how big the jump between actual tiers will be as they will redesign 5 mans as well.