No. It's not harder. The length of time something takes to complete doesn't equate to difficulty. That'd be like saying Pokemon is difficult because it takes forever to beat. When in reality, it's easy as fuck. It just takes a long long time to complete. As I said, difficulty requires challenge. There is no challenge to Classic leveling at all.
I would 100% say leveling is harder. Not by a ton. And not because classes are more complicated in classic, but because situational awareness is actually important. If you agro a couple extra mobs in classic it's more dangerous than it is in retain from my experience.
Dungeons in Vanilla are harder than normal mode dungeons and heroic perhaps in retail, but mythic and especially mythic + are harder in retail. The only thing classic dungeons have on retail really is that you needed CC more, but bosses in retail also have more going on and are less forgiving in higher difficulties.
Raids I can't comment on I didn't do any raiding until BC (Kharazhan and a couple ZA bosses) and Wrath (doing full on current content raiding.)
Untrue
Caves full of mobs that run away and call for help require SKILL from the player to not mess up
Killing high level mobs require SKILL in kiting the mob, slowing him and wait for resources
And i got owned by a pack of 2 mobs, 1 healer and 1 DPS that "nets" you and runs away to ranged attack you.
I started the fight by attacking the DPS (instead of the healer first, fail by me...SEE=? LACK OF SKILL)
The DPS nets me, and both the healer and DPS run away from me and start healing eachother and ranged attacking me.
I died
Examples of SKILL. "Decisions", "preparation" and "tactics" are skills.
Or I never purposely ran into groups of enemies. If I ever accidentally pulled more than I could handle? I popped cooldowns and ran until they leashed. It's really not that difficult lol. I used the same methods of leveling in Classic on my mage that I did on Modern when I was leveling my mage. Just because YOU can't manage it doesn't mean other people can't.
Pulling 10 mobs on retail: easy
Pulling more than 2 mobs in classic: you're fucking dead
Getting preraid gear in retail: lol, gear you get from 5mans can be better than raid gear
Getting preraid gear in classic: actually have to put time and effort farming dungeons and getting crafted gear
etc. etc.
If you are only defining "difficulty" as "how many mechanics do bosses in MC have", that's already a retardedly biased comparison to be making. MC is literally the first raid in the entire game, IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE EASY, yet everyone is acting like it is the be-all end-all of vanilla as a whole
protip: it's not
Well the thing is, when people are talking about the difficulty on retail vs vanilla, they aren't talking about the same thing.
To me, when people are talking about the difficulty of retail it seem that all they care about is mythic raiding.
Meanwhile, for vanilla it's basically everything else.
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Where do you run to when you are in a cave surrounded everywhere ?
It depends on the class and level for sure, but i remember seeing Venruki, a pro player mage, with a death counter on his screen and he had several deaths.
If you didnt die until level 44 is because you were extremely afraid to die every single time, and never once you messed up.
Very unlikely IMO.
That helps with numbers sure, doesnt change the fact that most bosses still only have 1-2 mechanics. Also there is a sub 50second kill of almost every boss in MC now on warcraftlogs with pre raid bis gear, a 1:50 ragnaros kill. Sure in extreme case maybe without 1.12 stuff it would be 2min kills instead of 50seconds but it still wouldn't be hard. People underestimate just how bad players were back then, and how badly optimized they were when it came to gear, consumables, and comp. People had ret paladins in MC back then, feral druids, etc. Now its just bunch of geared mages, warriors, and rogues. It was also not uncommon for people to just straight up afk during bosses randomly.
I'd argue Classic is harder in the wrong place and easier in the wrong place as well.
It's kind of silly that walking into a camp of Gnolls as a Mage leaves you in a constant threat of death because pulling one extra mob with low mana can be a one-way ticket to the spirit healer, but in most dungeons and (especially) raids all you need to do is stand there and press 1 with no risk to yourself at all unless the tank fucks up majorly.
The leveling is harder, no two ways about it. I also find it a lot more tedious and less fun. A happy middle between Classic's pull-two-mobs-and-drink-bitch and retail's easymode would be cool, but Classic isn't there to be a happy middle.
Doubt intensifies.
You didnt level solo in the world much then. Dungeon grinding?
First you are level 44 when most people are under that level. Which means you either played an insane amount of hours per day or you dungeon grinded.
Then, to believe you never messed up, not even once to PvE in leveling...
I doubt everything.
I admit i have no idea what im doing (no level paths, what quests to avoid, etc) and have 90 hours played...and am level 36.
Pretty awful i know, for a min maxer.
If you are not lying, im sorry....but how in the hell did you never mess up in PvE!?!! That requires a 100% focused mind and no auto pilot after sevral hours playing whatsoever.
Stop being obsessed with "difficulty" for the sake of it. I am talking about both sides. It's easy to just create a difficult game. What matters is creating a great experience. Difficulty is a just a tool to be used appropriately. If you manage to make players feel good and have a memorable run by completing a dungeon as easy as Deadmine then you have done a good job.
Last edited by Wildmoon; 2019-09-10 at 08:27 PM.
When you've been playing the same game for nearly 15 YEARS, it gets supremely easy. Strangely enough, I find myself making more mistakes and killed more often on my mage in Modern than I ever do on Classic. I think I'm at like....112 hours played in Classic so far? I'd have to check again. But getting the right addons also helps A LOT. Get Questie. It will make your Classic leveling experience much much easier.
I considered downloading "Azeroth Auto Pilot" which is what i "need" to know if im doing something incredibly bad or not.
But i refused...
I like the sense of "helplessness", "discovery" and picking my own path.
But Azeroth Autopilot would indeed be great for me if i wanted to min max time spent ingame.