Modern WoW is too hardcore

[Dominikas]

I think the main reason retail World of Warcraft fails to replicate the success of vanilla is because it's too hardcore. Or rather, because it's developers are too hardcore.

The current game director of World of Warcraft, Ion Hazzikostas, used to be the GM of Elitist Jerks. In other words, he was the guild master of what used to one of the best guilds in the game, one that successfully cleared Naxxramas 40-man back in the day.

Temporarily going off the topic of Ion, the major difference between classic and current Warcraft is this: classic was simple but time-consuming, retail is mostly simple and quick with some very hard components (raiding).

In modern Warcraft once players reach something they can't progress past, in this case heroic/mythic raiding, they quit. They either aren't good enough or don't feel like they're making as much progress as they would like. In vanilla Warcraft players could continue as far as they liked. The gameplay was simple enough for anyone to go through, but the content was drawn out enough that people wouldn't run out of it.

The conclusion you can take from these two scenarios is important. If a game makes a player feel inadequately skilled, they will be offended and quit. If it makes them feel like they need to spend more time in order to be the best, they will spend more time. Our ego protects us from the truth of a lack of mastery/skill in raiding by reacting like this, despite how both options involve time investment.

But can you really say this thought process is true for Ion himself? As stated above, he was one of the most hardcore players back in the day, and continues to aid in the development of incredibly hard mythic content today. Such a person would be likely to consider challenging yourself and defeating the most difficult of encounters a great accomplishment. Consequentially, they would likely find it internally satisfying to do so. This is the problem with retail's design.

If the game director derives accomplishment from skillful play/difficult content, then will he understand how players who don't do so feel? Players who derive accomplishment near exclusively from external factors are foreign to him.

tl;dr - game director derives accomplishment from more internal sources, and as such doesn't understand classic, which is diametrically opposed to that idea of how to give the player accomplishment when in comparison to current wow.

[Teri]

In modern Warcraft once players reach something they can't progress past, in this case heroic/mythic raiding, they quit. They either aren't good enough or don't feel like they're making as much progress as they would like. In vanilla Warcraft players could continue as far as they liked. The gameplay was simple enough for anyone to go through, but the content was drawn out enough that people wouldn't run out of it.

Plenty of people quit raiding during or even before C'thun or Naxxramas, the only difference that there was no LFR/Normal/Heroic easier version of them.

[Greyvax]

It's hard to compare the state of the game in 2019 to that in 2005. The MMORPG mentality has evolved since then.

[Lochton]

Plenty of people quit raiding during or even before C'thun or Naxxramas, the only difference that there was no LFR/Normal/Heroic easier version of them.

Oh yeah, C'thun and Naxx cost a lot of raiders to leave - luckily some came back.

[crono14]

You can't compare retail to class at all. Bosses in Vanilla sometimes took guild a week or two to even clear the first boss and sometimes even longer. In Vanilla specifically, there were many guilds that by the time they get to C'thun, Naxx was already released so they simply skipped C'thun and maybe came back later if they did at all. Nowadays most of the time not killing bosses is due to numbers and not having enough dps to kill things, and not so much skill. In vanilla, it was skill based off the entire raid as a whole. In vanilla, no one person could really wipe you on a fight barring special circumstances. Raid design nowadays is completely different and I wouldn't say hardcore at all. Hardcore to me means competing for say Top 20 US or even among the leaderboards and that is all a combination of good preparation, skill, time, and consistency. You are going to waste a lot of time if your raid can't consistently progress further on bosses to kill them, and if you are not knowledgeable of the fights going on, you will also waste a lot of time.
Vanilla didn't have a dungeon journal and crap like that, you had to pull the boss and figure stuff out and formulate your own strategies. You didn't get to pull the boss on heroic, or normal and see what he does. You get one difficulty. Yes I will agree modern WoW is much more hardcore in the racing aspect and the preparation aspect, but that by no means Vanilla is a cakewalk, it's just a different type of difficulty.

[satella]

This is absolutely right. They've constructed the content of retail not on how much time you're willing to invest, but your innate skill level. The last boss in a mythic is tuned such that only a certain percentage of players have the skill required. They're segregating people based on WoW IQ basically.

In Vanilla, it was mostly how much time you were willing to invest for consumables and preparation that determined your success in a raid environment. Lots of people that would be considered way below average now could go very far in Naxxramas just because they were willing to devote a greater portion of their time to the game.

[Castration]

no, it's not...

next complaint?

[Sim]

You got it twisted. Classic is more hardcore than Retail.

How many people do you expect who whine about Retail being to "grindy" to make it past 40 in Classic?

[Tomana]

But can you really say this thought process is true for Ion himself? As stated above, he was one of the most hardcore players back in the day, and continues to aid in the development of incredibly hard mythic content today. Such a person would be likely to consider challenging yourself and defeating the most difficult of encounters a great accomplishment. Consequentially, they would likely find it internally satisfying to do so. This is the problem with retail's design.

Not quite. The problem is, as you pointed out, that Ion is a neckbeard that has absolutely no consideration for non-raiders. And despite everything, he continues to push retail WoW into a "raid or die" direction, measuring everything (class balance, gear, story and so on) in terms of raiding.

[TrollHunter3000]

It's hard to compare the state of the game in 2019 to that in 2005. The MMORPG mentality has evolved since then.

I don't even think current WoW is much of an MMO anymore. The only real MMO aspects are raiding and large pvp BGs. It's more of a dungeon crawling hack and slash diablo 3 style game now.

- - - Updated - - -

You got it twisted. Classic is more hardcore than Retail.

How many people do you expect who whine about Retail being to "grindy" to make it past 40 in Classic?

being tedious isn't being hardcore.

[Sim]

being tedious is being hardcore.

I could list the differences between Classic and Retail which make it more hardcore (Attunements, Multiple Raid Gear Progression Requirements, Travel Times, Constant Reagent management). But the amount of QoL changes speak for themselves. Retail is a lot less hardcore than what Classic demanded out of its player base.

[Sithalos]

Too hardcore at the top end, yet your effort is pointless because you can get 425s in LFR.

The worst of both worlds.

[Sim]

Too hardcore at the top end, yet your effort is pointless because you can get 425s in LFR.

To this date nobody has ever fully geared a toon with Mythic level gear or higher with LFR Titanforges.

[gd8]

skill > time

[facefist]

You can't compare retail to class at all. Bosses in Vanilla sometimes took guild a week or two to even clear the first boss and sometimes even longer. In Vanilla specifically, there were many guilds that by the time they get to C'thun, Naxx was already released so they simply skipped C'thun and maybe came back later if they did at all. Nowadays most of the time not killing bosses is due to numbers and not having enough dps to kill things, and not so much skill. In vanilla, it was skill based off the entire raid as a whole.

Did you even play during Vanilla and have you done mythic raids? Vanilla was way more gear-gated than modern wow ever was. Also if you would be familiar with raiding in both you would never say such nonsense that current wow requires more skill, you are in for a surprise if you start raiding in Vanilla. No, Vanilla never required the same amount of teamplay current raids need. Seriously, just wait for the release and then come back.

In Vanilla everything is harder EXCEPT raids in todays standards. They possibly were harder back then when compared to today (quite impossible to measure because of gear-gating etc.), But to say they require more skills or teamwork than current raids is just nonsense...

All that being said, vanilla is way more fun game than current wow for me. Difficult raids don't make a game fun.

[Sorcereria]

You cant PLEASE everyone regarding raids but you people shall stop complaining since you have now so many choices with LFR normal heroic and mythic.

If you make mythic too easy broad range of raiders will leave becouse it would pose NO CHALLANGE to many players.
The challange is a HUGE appealing factor in MANY games that keeps the community going.

IMO if this happened the game would have died some time ago.

PS. Stop thinkin you are entintled for mythic raiding if you arent good enough. You arent. You are as much entintled as everyone else, thinkin otherwise is ignorance and jealousy on pair with a mentality of a "im drowing, so I'll try to take as many other people with me to drown too".

I have stopped raiding mid MoP and my guess is since than you can be 'just raid login' in top 15-50 world guilds.
While it could have been true in vanila, you needed much more farming, preparation in general and due to gear gating you needed to run previous content to catch up.

On paper this could be applied to top 15 guilds as they are much more efficient even if you must have 2-3 alts geared for progress to have them available but the issues is progress content which poses huge time restrains to have that time available.
Most people working 40h/week won't be able to cope with huge hours req to be put on progress raids.

[TrollHunter3000]

I could list the differences between Classic and Retail which make it more hardcore (Attunements, Multiple Raid Gear Progression Requirements, Travel Times, Constant Reagent management). But the amount of QoL changes speak for themselves. Retail is a lot less hardcore than what Classic demanded out of its player base.

Again, being tedious isn't being hardcore.

[Apexis]

The retail version of the game simply abandoned the whole initial points and concepts of what WoW was and should still be about the journey through said content. Blizzard over the years turned the game into a foot race in every respect from leveling, professions, dungeon and raid content. Everything about WoW over the years has been about how fast one can burn through the content to level cap so they could gear up and raid. One could argue, once Wrath of the Lich King was released, the game went from being a journey to world first raid winners. Heirloom, xp boost, potions, elixirs, and whatever else was used to simply bypass any and all content, get to level cap and gear up and raid, then either sit and wait for new content to be released or complain endless about not having anything to do once the raiding experience was completed.

Course the community itself made the game what it largely is today with some endlessly complaining the leveling and everything else was far to slow. What is funny about this is the very people that complained the game was to slow are about to throw themselves back into a version of WoW was all about slow and all about the journey and the grind through the world of WoW. When Blizzard gave the community the ability to burn through content or completely bypass it all entirely. Blizzard made the game about the end game content and not about all the content from the leveling experience through and up to the end game content.

Blizzard seeing the error of the ways instituted the Pathfinder Achievement to slow the pace down a bit. Though the community has pushed back on this achievement to no avail. Blizzard simply caved long ago and gave the people complaining about the pace of the game the keys to make whatever content irrelevant beyond the most casual of players. These are the people that take to the forums with speed to complain about content droughts. Blizzard has literally helped in conditioning the player into the need for new content. So the Pathfinder Achievement really has failed to achieve remotely what it also was intended to achieve and that was trying to slow the game down to a point that it once was.

Yet today, Blizzard has many that can't wait to get into Classic WoW, where the pace of the game is slow as molasses. Had the player base or at least the portion that seems to always complain about the pace of the game and content droughts put their own selves in check, they literally would not have run out of things to do and Blizzard would have never put mechanics and features in the game to turn the journey into a horse race to the end where there is actually very little in the way of content, so that content has to be continuously fed to the waiting arms of all who choose to complain about drought and nothing to do.

Can't have your cake and eat it too. At some point in the process of this Classic version being released it to will be turned into the current toilet of its retail version. Addon's of every stripe are going to be used to burn through content that was made not to be burned through in the first place. If one needs or planes to use a leveling guild, then you already have broken the game as it was intended to be played in the first place. The point of walking the world as it was then was for the journey. Part of that journey was to find the quests, not have you be pointed to a location and burn through whatever was in that area and move on. The speed racers of this game really ruined the entire initial concepts of what made WoW great in the first place. WoW was about the journey and both Blizzard and a good portion of the player base simply abandoned that concept going forward to where the game fines itself today.

Odd that the people wanting the horse race, now want to go back to when the game was nothing about a slow journey through the world of the portion of the game they said they loved.

[Lothaeryn]

It's hard to compare the state of the game in 2019 to that in 2005. The MMORPG mentality has evolved since then.

this, oldschool MMO gamers no longer play for the most part; many have moved on, have kids and careers to take care of. Its a completely different generation with a completely different mindset that plays.

[Wildmoon]

Modern WoW made certain part super hard and relevant but also made the rest super easy and irrelevant. Levelling used to be a part of the game. Now it's just an obstacle. As a casual I would enjoy vanilla's way more because back then you did not really feel like you were pushed toward one true content at the end game. I used to stop levelling and dicked around for like a month before I started levelling again.