Can we all now agree that Vanilla wasn't harder?

[Wildmoon]

Right so, but you don't need a lot of skill to beat Molten core. And you can already get decked in full Tier 1, some parts of Tier 2, Anathema staff and if you're lucky Thunderfury. After that, everything outside raids presents 0 challenge.

Nostalgia tinted glasses make people think vanilla was hard. When you put everything in same basket (first mmo for many, lack of skills, bad computers, bad connection, bugs, no wowhead but thottbot/allakhazam, addons that were so-so) you understand that difficulty was a bit fabricated by your own distant memories. Not the actual game.

You are getting at a moot point. The fact that people obtained those gears and felt good about it is what really matters in creating a good game. Whether they used something percieved as "skill" or not does not matter at all. You guys are arguing pointlessly over "difficulty" when it's just a tool that has to be used appropriately.

This is not StarCraft. Blizzard should approach it by trying to create a world a lot of people will enjoy taking part in. They should not approach it like a lobby game creating 15+ specific challenges in isolation for every different skill level. They are turning this into almost an arcade game.

[Elias01]

Mechanics is the only thing that defines difficulty in a game, unless you are missing 11 fingers, and 90% of your brain.

Even then i am pretty sure you could play with your toes, if auto-attacks are somehow "difficulty".

No it doesnt time + effort and needes skill is what determintes it.

[NineSpine]

Well, let's put raids in perspective. Whole Molten core is like 1 mechanic/phase per boss. How is that hard? Dungeons are the same. You could brute force raid encounters in vanilla with more than half raid dead. Can you do that in Mythic? Not really. Even Jaina Heroic was quite hard for a lot of the players, until she got nerfed.

Not only that, but you could stay outside of boss range and simply ress people who die. We had a guy who was crap at game - but he was one of the best 'OOC ressers' back in the days.

The difficulty is the time and persistence required to level, gear, and ultimately organize enough people for the raid. That's all. Nobody has ever argued that it is mechanically complex.

[tikcol]

If this thread proves anything is that people have different definitions of what hard is. For me it was hard back in 2005, now it's a cakewalk but definitely a very enjoyable experience as a whole

[Rucati]

The more time-consuming something is, the more effort it takes.

You can't possibly think this, right? I mean driving across America takes around 35 hours or more, but surely it takes less effort than driving in a Formula 1 race that only takes a couple hours. Investing time in something doesn't require effort, it just requires time. And classic doesn't require effort because you literally auto attack/wand like 80% of the time so you don't even need to be looking at your screen. Hell, I've been learning Japanese while I play and it's going quite well because classic requires such a little amount of effort I can easily focus on something totally unrelated.

All else being equal, if mobs hit you for 20% of your health, they are harder than if they hit you for 1% of your health. The fact that you maniacs are finding ways to argue against basic logic like this is insane.

This is only true if there's a risk of dying. In WoW classic if you pull one mob you might lose 50% of your life but you won't die, then you can drink/eat and pull the next mob. In retail if you pull one mob you might lose 5% of your health and then you can self heal and instantly pull the next mob.

Neither of those are difficult because there's no real threat in either case. Unless you rush or make a mistake you won't die in classic and you won't die in retail. The only real difference is in classic you're killing one mob and then waiting like 20 seconds before you start the next one, but that isn't because it's a challenge, it's just because that's your only option.

[Kolvarg]

Mechanics is the only thing that defines difficulty in a game, unless you are missing 11 fingers, and 90% of your brain.

Considering in the majority of games the difficulty setting only changes multipliers applied to damage taken and damage done, and changes basically nothing mechanics-wise, I'd say your made up definition of "difficulty in a game" is not very realistic.

[Elias01]

Well, let's put raids in perspective. Whole Molten core is like 1 mechanic/phase per boss. How is that hard? Dungeons are the same. You could brute force raid encounters in vanilla with more than half raid dead. Can you do that in Mythic? Not really. Even Jaina Heroic was quite hard for a lot of the players, until she got nerfed.

Not only that, but you could stay outside of boss range and simply ress people who die. We had a guy who was crap at game - but he was one of the best 'OOC ressers' back in the days.

And im retail tou just pressing buttons in interface and get free kills. How is that hard?

[potis]

More insults and still no argument brought to the table.

Here are some facts:

Classic : You have 500 hp and hit for 100 damage, mob X has 500 hp and hits you for 50 damage.
Retail : You have 1000 hp and hit for 200 damage, mob X has 300 hp and hits you for 10 damage.

Does it make Classic ridiculously hard? No. Does it make it harder? Yes. You guys just sound absolutely retarded yelling everywhere "it's not harder, it's not harder". It is enough to make it impossible for any of those "professional" streamers coming from retail to reach level 30 without dying less than 50 times, but you keep trying.

And you know what, if you'd say stuff like "It's a little harder, but actually not that hard. Compared with Everquest, it's quite easy", then you'd have a point. But by keeping ignoring facts absolutely everyone knows about, especially those who play the two versions, you sure as hell is the one that sounds like a flat eather here.

Why are you even mentioning retail? I dont remember mentioning it.

We are talking about Classic as a game, why are you comparing two different games?

Retails difficulty moved to be scalable years ago, since the majority of you that cant even deal with auto-attacks kept crying about how you "dont get to see things".

[Kolvarg]

You can't possibly think this, right? I mean driving across America takes around 35 hours or more, but surely it takes less effort than driving in a Formula 1 race that only takes a couple hours. Investing time in something doesn't require effort, it just requires time.

Because you are comparing different things where time required is not the only variable.

If you say driving for 12 hours non stop is harder than driving in the same conditions for 4hours non stop, for instance, that's pretty much undeniably true.

Also, part of why a Formula 1 race that only takes a couple hours is harder is because one has to train hundreds if not thousands of hours to be able to compete in that race. Even "skill" is in big part time investment.

[Matija]

Yep it is so easy that 99% of playera are not even 50lvl yet and wont see MC for another 2 months.

Hard or time consuming due to some weird design ideas?

Long time ago, Blizzard said that very few people of player base (I think the number was 5% or something simlar) saw end game raiding. Due you honestly believe that was because it was hard?

No, the reason was that you needed a proper 40 man raiding guild (which was a logistical nightmare back then). And if you were slow with leveling ("enjoying the content") by the time you wanted to do raids, we were neck deep in the raiding instance and we had no time to wait on you. You also didn't have any sort of a catch up mechanism to get gear outside raids.

[potis]

Considering in the majority of games the difficulty setting only changes multipliers applied to damage taken and damage done, and changes basically nothing mechanics-wise, I'd say your made up definition of "difficulty in a game" is not very realistic.

Mechanics is the only thing that defines difficulty in a MMO that works with automated attacks, better?

Not every game plays the same, so you are correct about my wrong choice of words.

[Akka]

That still doesn't make content hard. The moment people get decked in T1/T2 gear, vanilla content difficulty becomes trivial. Only new raids present a challenge.

Not only is it pretty normal (that's the point of getting stronger), it's still light-years from current WoW, where the power inflation is literally orders of magnitude worse.
From each tier, you gain maybe 10-15 % more power than the previous. Even in T1, you can wipe in Strat/Scholo/BRS if you do too much shit.
In modern WoW, each tier basically double or triple your power. It's an entire expansion worth of power increase in each tier, making all previous content obsolete several times faster than what happens in Classic.

So this argument is pretty much shooting oneself in the foot.

[NineSpine]

You can't possibly think this, right? I mean driving across America takes around 35 hours or more, but surely it takes less effort than driving in a Formula 1 race that only takes a couple hours. Investing time in something doesn't require effort, it just requires time. And classic doesn't require effort because you literally auto attack/wand like 80% of the time so you don't even need to be looking at your screen. Hell, I've been learning Japanese while I play and it's going quite well because classic requires such a little amount of effort I can easily focus on something totally unrelated.

Driving across the country is difficult because of the time, persistence, and effort it requires. When I did it, it really sucked. It was HARD.
Racing Formula 1 is hard because of the high level of skill required.

I don't know why you lunatics are so obsessed with comparing these two things and trying to reductively assign value judgments to them. Some things are hard because of time and effort. Some things are hard because of skill. Most of the time they can't be compared because of how different those things are. So what?

This is only true if there's a risk of dying. In WoW classic if you pull one mob you might lose 50% of your life but you won't die, then you can drink/eat and pull the next mob. In retail if you pull one mob you might lose 5% of your health and then you can self heal and instantly pull the next mob.

Neither of those are difficult because there's no real threat in either case. Unless you rush or make a mistake you won't die in classic and you won't die in retail. The only real difference is in classic you're killing one mob and then waiting like 20 seconds before you start the next one, but that isn't because it's a challenge, it's just because that's your only option.

When I am leveling I often encounter pats, accidental multi-pulls, respawns, higher level mobs nearby, even the occasional opposing faction player, etc.. You just want to ignore all these things and pretend that leveling is always the ideal situation: one mob at a time. That's not the reality of leveling.

[Frozenbro]

And im retail tou just pressing buttons in interface and get free kills. How is that hard?

Just quoting Elias so you guys ignore him, this is the lenght of his arguments, a complete pile of missinformation.

[Matija]

And im retail tou just pressing buttons in interface and get free kills. How is that hard?

On what difiiculty? Would you be so kind to show me videos of high M+ keys and mythic raiding (heck, Jaina heroic before nerf bat falls into this) where you press buttons and get free kills.

[potis]

No it doesnt time + effort and needes skill is what determintes it.

Lol, keep repeating this till you people believe it in this thread.

Just because it fits the narrative that time= effort and fits your need.

[Frozenbeef]

to be fair i can't pull more than 1-2 mobs when leveling without dying so...technically is harder :S In live could kill 7+ mobs at once and be fine.

[NineSpine]

Hard or time consuming due to some weird design ideas?

Long time ago, Blizzard said that very few people of player base (I think the number was 5% or something simlar) saw end game raiding. Due you honestly believe that was because it was hard?

No, the reason was that you needed a proper 40 man raiding guild (which was a logistical nightmare back then). And if you were slow with leveling ("enjoying the content") by the time you wanted to do raids, we were neck deep in the raiding instance and we had no time to wait on you. You also didn't have any sort of a catch up mechanism to get gear outside raids.

Sounds like it was hard to get into the high end raids, doesn't it?

- - - Updated - - -

On what difiiculty? Would you be so kind to show me videos of high M+ keys and mythic raiding (heck, Jaina heroic before nerf bat falls into this) where you press buttons and get free kills.

Everyone that wanted and loves classic believes that current mythic raids and high end M+ dungeons are mechanically harder than classic. So what?

[Naiattavain]

vanilla was harder to play. mainly because of reading comprehension in quest dialog.

[Frozenbro]

Everyone that wanted and loves classic believes that current mythic raids and high end M+ dungeons are mechanically harder than classic. So what?

Elias doesnt, hes quoting Elias, its a special case.