Modern WoW is too hardcore

[Jellybear14]

I unsubbed back in November and recently resubbed at the end of April.

I only log in once or twice a week on average, with probably 2-3 hour play time intervals, and I still managed to get 403 ilvl in relatively no time at all. (which isnt mythic level by any means, but it's heroic level raid gear)

I managed to get most of my gear just from doing world quests, with maybe attending raid nights like 3 times total in which I obtained a few pieces of heroic gear, and no gear was funneled to me by guild mates.

It's honestly ridiculous how easy it is to get raid level gear. You are showered in epics so much that getting a new piece of gear isnt even interesting anymore. Since there are no tier sets I feel no obligation to raid except for the hell of it, and what fun is raiding if you hardly get any upgrades from it at all.


I feel like the only distinction in gear now is either you have full mythic gear or you dont, as that is the only real difference in item level from literally everyone else playing the game. It's genuinely boring,

You've hit the nail on the head, the game is to easy and moved to a single player game outside of raiding. Epics are no longer epics in the meaning of what they were, there effectively the new Common equivalent. There is no immersive game play, there is no sense of achievement anymore.

World quests are repetitive, boring and easy. The fact that the rewards you get are equal or better than normal level raiding gear kind of negates the normal difficulty raids to the point "why is there a normal level difficulty?" ...... I haven't played retail for a while because its lost its way, the fact they taken out the tier sets just goes to show the direction of the game is heading....

Blizzard have pandered to the special snowflakes that want everything in game for very little effort, with the exception of Mythic Raiding and Mythic Dungeons.

I used to raid in top 500 raiding guild back before mythic came out, back when wow felt like it had a community. That's since long gone....

I can't raid on a regular basis now as Real Life is more important but when I do play I still like to feel like I've achieved something when I go into a raid and defeat the bosses. You don't get that any more from anything below mythic.

Been playing Classic Beta for a while and love it, even at low level, pull more than 2 mobs and you die. The fact you have to have a plan to cc mobs in dungeons just makes the game so immersive. More community interaction as people are nice, join groups for quests and makes it feel like a community can exist in WoW. The best bit, there is no LFD or LFR

Once Classic is released I don't think I'll touch retail until the next expansion, if there is one!!!

[Elias01]

To each their own. To be fair, I do not see many people 'farming' lower difficulty settings of a raid to get gear for the next level up. Most I know just have a difficulty they aim for, HC in my case, and just progress that. We have a tradition of starting each new raid with a 'blind run', no youtube, guides etc. allowed before opening night, so we can have the fun of discovering our own strat (if you peeked anyway you can not speak or hint), and that is done on N first night . N i run later also, but mostly for social, drunk runs and alt.
I don't think raid difficulties were ever intended to be cleared in sequence (LFR->N->HC->M), but rather offered as alternatives to different player types (Solo, Family and Friends, Social Guilds and Performance oriented guilds). Some people undoubtedly do see it a a ladder, but they are doing it wrong IMHO .
M+ is another story and that is build specifically on incremental difficulty clearing. I realy like it, but again, it is not for all and that is fine.

Saying things like people are doing progresison wrong is nonsense. It is game desing flaw. It is not players reposibility to work around their mede up rules to have fun. Diffiuclty levels were never alternatives. Most people will always choose path of least resistancem, finish content and quit. Thats why making game acessible thos such extend that high end content can be cleared by anyone was huge mistake. People never consider new difficulty as new content it is same stuff they alredy saw and beat just harder. Even if you do higher difficulty for lulz it isnt actualy that exciting. Yeah you beat heroic boss or mythic boss but you are mostly like ,,thank god it is over" than be actualy excited that you have killed Sargeras or Azashara. You alredy killed them in LFR or normal another kill in higher difficulty level simply isnt exciting.

And i am not even talking about how imerssion breaking this kind of systems are. Classic feel more like living breathing fantasy world while modern wow is just game and it reminds you about it so often you cant simply get invested in that world.

[Specialka]

Saying things like people are doing progresison wrong is nonsense. It is game desing flaw. It is not players reposibility to work around their mede up rules to have fun. Diffiuclty levels were never alternatives. Most people will always choose path of least resistancem, finish content and quit. Thats why making game acessible thos such extend that high end content can be cleared by anyone was huge mistake. People never consider new difficulty as new content it is same stuff they alredy saw and beat just harder. Even if you do higher difficulty for lulz it isnt actualy that exciting. Yeah you beat heroic boss or mythic boss but you are mostly like ,,thank god it is over" than be actualy excited that you have killed Sargeras or Azashara. You alredy killed them in LFR or normal another kill in higher difficulty level simply isnt exciting.

And i am not even talking about how imerssion breaking this kind of systems are. Classic feel more like living breathing fantasy world while modern wow is just game and it reminds you about it so often you cant simply get invested in that world.

I do not mind ppl like you or them leaving. I do not want to play with ppl that are content with the path of least resistance.

[Greengrim]

I completely disagree with OP. Naxx, C'thun, Kael'thas and Yogg-Saron were all great guild killers and they happened long time ago. In fact, the game was times more challenging before, than it is now. And the further back you go, the harder the game actually was. All the simplifications and class homogenization is what ruined the game, just so the challenged players can feel comfortable playing it. Personally I stopped raiding somewhere during WoD, as I was sick and tired of the same mechanics being brought upon us over and over and over again. Every bigger (5+ bosses) raid is the same: one tank killer boss; one dps check boss; one retard check boss; and one boss fight with duration of ~15 min. Mechanics of these boses are same too, just randomized or slightly twisted, but same nonetheless. I don't know why Blizz is so lazy to just sit down and bring something innovative, like they did in Ulduar back in the day.

[Specialka]

Yeah, Vanilla was more challenging as in tedious hell and challenging to not die by boreedom.

[ManiaCCC]

Yeah, Vanilla was more challenging as in tedious hell and challenging to not die by boreedom.

Boredom is actually quite good name for current WoW expansion. You have creative mind my friend.

World of Warcraft: Boredom - yep, quite fitting.

[crono14]

So? Comparing these no lifers still show the difficulty as we compare how many tries they had on the boss and comparing like M Uu'nat pulls to someone like C'thun from best players of the world look how much trouble did it bring also we can soon do fairer compare look the guilds from classic how many pulls the world first Ragnaros takes and compare it to world first m G'huun pulls.

No it really doesn't. World first guilds are attempting Mythic fights vastly under geared than what they are tuned for. Blizzard does not tune bosses around the world first guilds and if you think that you are ignorant. Your average guild is not trying most of the bosses in an average raid the first week. If a new 10 boss raid comes out, average guild X might kill 2-3 bosses first week, re clear 2nd week and maybe kill 4-5 bosses next week, and probably 2 bosses depending on difficulty every week after. This means they are likely attempting the end boss 5 or so weeks after Mythic releases. That is 5 weeks of heroic clears, and 5 weeks of gearing up from re-clearing Mythic.

Your world first guild is likely going to be on boss 8-10 after first few days and probably on last boss by end of first week depending on difficulty. Whatever character they do decide to play will only have 1 clear of heroic, and potentially one clear of mythic with again let's say they get 4-5 pieces of gear total. They are still going to be a much lower ilvl as a guild when trying that last boss. So they have to make up that difference with their strategy they devise, consumables 100% of the time, and player skill. They also have the ability to class stack since they run so many heroics and have so many characters thus allowing them to sometimes 'cheese' fights.

That's it, simple.

[Terongor]

No it really doesn't. World first guilds are attempting Mythic fights vastly under geared than what they are tuned for. Blizzard does not tune bosses around the world first guilds and if you think that you are ignorant. Your average guild is not trying most of the bosses in an average raid the first week. If a new 10 boss raid comes out, average guild X might kill 2-3 bosses first week, re clear 2nd week and maybe kill 4-5 bosses next week, and probably 2 bosses depending on difficulty every week after. This means they are likely attempting the end boss 5 or so weeks after Mythic releases. That is 5 weeks of heroic clears, and 5 weeks of gearing up from re-clearing Mythic.

Your world first guild is likely going to be on boss 8-10 after first few days and probably on last boss by end of first week depending on difficulty. Whatever character they do decide to play will only have 1 clear of heroic, and potentially one clear of mythic with again let's say they get 4-5 pieces of gear total. They are still going to be a much lower ilvl as a guild when trying that last boss. So they have to make up that difference with their strategy they devise, consumables 100% of the time, and player skill. They also have the ability to class stack since they run so many heroics and have so many characters thus allowing them to sometimes 'cheese' fights.

That's it, simple.

So? Even if they don't tune it to them it still says alot about the difficulty as nearly any boss becomes much easier with more gear .As such the true difficulty can be compared by how many pulls and time it took from the top players of both as an average raid group might still have problems with simple mechanics.

Though we can compare when BLW comes how maby guilds have beaten it after a month and then for example how many guilds had beaten m battle of dazar'alor after a month of the mythics release. So if you don't wanna compare world first we can compare how many guilds beats them as MC cannot be compared because of the farm for hydraxxian waterlords rep needed to summon ragnaros.

So we have to for classic to see as players current skill and current addons to old raids and if it still stays around same wipe amount as current live bosses or time used then I agree vanilla isn't easier but if we have double to guilds beating Blackwing in same time they used on Jaina(a month in this case) vanilla raiding is then easier.

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I completely disagree with OP. Naxx, C'thun, Kael'thas and Yogg-Saron were all great guild killers and they happened long time ago. In fact, the game was times more challenging before, than it is now. And the further back you go, the harder the game actually was. All the simplifications and class homogenization is what ruined the game, just so the challenged players can feel comfortable playing it. Personally I stopped raiding somewhere during WoD, as I was sick and tired of the same mechanics being brought upon us over and over and over again. Every bigger (5+ bosses) raid is the same: one tank killer boss; one dps check boss; one retard check boss; and one boss fight with duration of ~15 min. Mechanics of these boses are same too, just randomized or slightly twisted, but same nonetheless. I don't know why Blizz is so lazy to just sit down and bring something innovative, like they did in Ulduar back in the day.

Oh you mean the best dps of vanilla with fire and frost mages casting one spell or in tbc warlock shadow bolt spam so much simpler classes now as its 4 buttons on average combat.

It was so hard spamming sunder armor the classes were so complex.

[Ekis]

Oh you mean the best dps of vanilla with fire and frost mages casting one spell or in tbc warlock shadow bolt spam so much simpler classes now as its 4 buttons on average combat.

It was so hard spamming sunder armor the classes were so complex.

I think it's the fact that every class has a CC/interrupt spell and that classes really aren't separated (Warlocks got pruned of spells that were unique and haven't really gotten anything new since MoP for "simplicity's sake").

Remember when you needed certain classes for rotating interrupts? Remember when some classes COULDN'T interrupt?

Classes aren't really that hard today either. Most rotations are 2-3 buttons with sporadic burst buttons in between. Not all that different from back then, just more of "do rotation, move out of fire, continue rotation". If anything, DBM wasn't made mainstream back then so I think it's just trade-offs.

[Terongor]

I think it's the fact that every class has a CC/interrupt spell and that classes really aren't separated (Warlocks got pruned of spells that were unique and haven't really gotten anything new since MoP for "simplicity's sake").

Remember when you needed certain classes for rotating interrupts? Remember when some classes COULDN'T interrupt?

Classes aren't really that hard today either. Most rotations are 2-3 buttons with sporadic burst buttons in between. Not all that different from back then, just more of "do rotation, move out of fire, continue rotation". If anything, DBM wasn't made mainstream back then so I think it's just trade-offs.

Well they removed alot things which weren't needed or you used maybe once a year or once month and just having a button that unique but not useful at all is just spells for sake of having them and doesn't serve any other point.

Also not all classes have interupts even now for example druids they have silence beams and stuns which doesn't work on every interrupt possibility.

well lets compare best wlock build from tbc for example current destro. tbc shadow bolt, shadow bolt and shadow bolt etc. St bfa Immolate, incinerate, conflacrate if 5 soul shards use chaos bolt and then use double conflacrate and the rest of chaos bolts and if talented channel demonfire thats already 5.

or prot warrior from vanilla and current prot warrior. vanilla spam sunder armor as it does most aggro and current prot warrior shield slam, thunder clap, revenge if its only free and devastate thats already 4 to vanillas one. Using useless abilities/spells in vanilla makes you bad player like the rest of those over which were taken away.

[ManiaCCC]

Well they removed alot things which weren't needed or you used maybe once a year or once month and just having a button that unique but not useful at all is just spells for sake of having them and doesn't serve any other point.

This is not true, not even close, but whatever.

But are we really pretending that current wow offers some super deep rotation compared to retail? It's all same shit. Vanilla aff lock was like Corruption, assigned curse, spam shadowbolt until dot refresh and press dark pact if needed/speced into it. "Oh look, 4 buttons, that's actually one more I was using in Legion with my char, Vanilla was deeeeeep"

[Specialka]

No wonder you can't do harder content if you used only 3 buttons in legion as an aff lock.

[ManiaCCC]

No wonder you can't do harder content if you used only 3 buttons in legion as an aff lock.

I didn't play aff lock in legion , but you are right, there was artifact power, so I was using 4 buttons. Vanilla complexity = Legion complexity confirmed..

[Specialka]

I just checked the basic rotation for bfa aff lock. And we hear all the time how classes have been pruned between legion and bfa. I count between 4 or 5 spells to spam. You can add cd and trinket to use + all the mecanics of boss (which are far more numerous than Vanilla). Get real

[Protocoaxke]

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.

I think a big problem your post doesnt factor in is Time/= Reward.

If you were to add in the Ideology of LFR in to this mix id agree.

What i believe LFR does is "DE-CENTIVE" players to progress to harder content

Every friend i have that played this game POST LFR. says that once LFR is done they have" beat the game"...SOME of them push in to normal for the challenge, and are doing just fine..but they realize that if they just wait 3 months. Normal-Mythic will be irrelevant and they can " catch up" next patch. to Normal or Even Heroic item lvl..Do LFR..and "Feel" they have beat the game.

I myself was pushing Heroic just fine and once it was finished i felt the " whats the point of doing mythic in 3 months the gear wont matter" - NOW this is a problem i personally have and believe my mind set is incorrect. I shouldnt be RAIDING for gear.. i should be raiding for fun, But what i found fun was getting a BiS List of gear on, and then PUSHING my character . These Random stats make me feel worthless, thus my experience is worthless.

Just my opinion , im sure many will disagree and thats cool. I just enjoy the time of MMO's before the LFG and LFR QUE tools were developed ...

Yes it did suck looking for that tank, or that healer...but once you found one, and yall had a good time. BOOM friends list added.

[Terongor]

This is not true, not even close, but whatever.

But are we really pretending that current wow offers some super deep rotation compared to retail? It's all same shit. Vanilla aff lock was like Corruption, assigned curse, spam shadowbolt until dot refresh and press dark pact if needed/speced into it. "Oh look, 4 buttons, that's actually one more I was using in Legion with my char, Vanilla was deeeeeep"

well you are now counting buffs then we have dark souls and current infernals on destro which still added 3. Also the during actual vanilla the third warlock could use a damaging curse first had to use curse of elements, second had to use curse which buffed shadow damage also if talented cataclysm too is extremely useful even in st fights so dark soul, infernal, incinerate, immolate, conflacrate, chaos bolt, demonfire, uneding resolve and cataclysm all could be used in st fight currently which is 8 as you counted dark pact we can count all of them too which alot more. Also in actually vanilla raiding level most warlocks were debuffing as their true usefulness hadn't counted and we can only take rotation which is useful in end game pve or pvp not leveling rotation also tell me how many times in actually game you used ending breath, searing pain, baine of doom, eye of kilrogg, health funel in raids or enslave demon in actual content meaning raids or battlegrounds?

[ManiaCCC]

I just checked the basic rotation for bfa aff lock. And we hear all the time how classes have been pruned between legion and bfa. I count between 4 or 5 spells to spam. You can add cd and trinket to use + all the mecanics of boss (which are far more numerous than Vanilla). Get real

Okay, so we are still pretending current wow is complex, got it

Also, you really can't read, can you?

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well you are now counting buffs then we have dark souls and current infernals on destro which still added 3. Also the during actual vanilla the third warlock could use a damaging curse first had to use curse of elements, second had to use curse which buffed shadow damage also if talented cataclysm too is extremely useful even in st fights so dark soul, infernal, incinerate, immolate, conflacrate, chaos bolt, demonfire, uneding resolve and cataclysm all could be used in st fight currently which is 8 as you counted dark pact we can count all of them too which alot more. Also in actually vanilla raiding level most warlocks were debuffing as their true usefulness hadn't counted and we can only take rotation which is useful in end game pve or pvp not leveling rotation also tell me how many times in actually game you used ending breath, searing pain, baine of doom, eye of kilrogg, health funel in raids or enslave demon in actual content meaning raids or battlegrounds?

That wasn't my point at all, my point is, rotations always were super simple and still are, there is nothing complex, hard or, IMO, interesting - no matter if it's 2,3 or 5 buttons.

However my Survival hunter and Demo lock really had the most annoying rotation I ever played.

[Terongor]

Okay, so we are still pretending current wow is complex, got it

Also, you really can't read, can you?

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That wasn't my point at all, my point is, rotations always were super simple and still are, there is nothing complex, hard or, IMO, interesting - no matter if it's 2,3 or 5 buttons.

However my Survival hunter and Demo lock really had the most annoying rotation I ever played.

https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/complex complex "Consisting of many different and connected parts" taking around nine different things which are connected can be considered many meaning it is complex.

[ManiaCCC]

https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/complex complex "Consisting of many different and connected parts" taking around nine different things which are connected can be considered many meaning it is complex.

That means cooking is god damn hardcore and yet, I am doing it every day...

[Specialka]

If it was so easy, everyone would be a "grand chef".