That's not actually what happened. Blizzard was faced with two choices:
1. Stop putting so much resources into making raids, since so few people ended up seeing them.
2. Change the design.
They chose 2. This was blizzard's decision, not a reaction to some vocal minority whining. Blizzard could not justify pouring resources into content 1% of players would see. That's just reality.
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Quote one.
"stop puting you idiotic liberal words into my mouth"
-ynnady
If that was the case, why do bosses in Mythic raids do more damage, if only the mechanics matter? Why do so many mythic raiders spend so much time preparing for a new raid so they can have the best possible gear and consumables?
Something that requires a considerable effort and/or skill to achieve can be considered hard. That's the definition. You don't get to make up new definitions simply because that's your perception of what a word should mean in this specific case. If you want to refer to the gameplay difficulty of the mechanics specifically, you should just mention "mechanics difficulty".
Not in particular, no. Yes, you get a lot of gear in retail, but that makes high level M+ keys easier (or let's you attempt a higher level key) or makes a certain mythic boss less of a hassle. It doesn't make it trivial.
In vanilla, when you're decked up, it makes almost everything trivial, especially content outside of raids, provided you have a solid group of people who know how to play. Sure, you can still wipe like you mentioned, but previous content gets obsolete as well. By time we were in BWL, there were 0 reasons to do 5 men dungeons because there wasn't a lot to do in them.
However, I would take Dire maul timed run over M+ on any given day.
But you're also comparing different things by making blanket statements that time = difficulty.
Of course if you're doing exactly the same things it's more difficult to do it for longer, but that isn't the case when you compare retail to classic. Classic has you not even using skills at least 50% of the time because you either run out of mana or you just have no abilities to use, whereas in retail you're basically always using abilities and very rarely just auto attacking for more than a couple seconds. If you play retail WoW and only use auto attacks with one ability thrown in every 5 seconds I'm very confident that retail is going to be more difficult.
Driving across the country isn't hard at all, it's just tedious and boring. Kinda like classic. Something taking a long time does not make it hard, like it's genuinely insane to me that people think that way. Graduating high school must be the hardest thing ever because it takes a full 18 years before you're able to do so... Except I think damn near everyone would agree graduating high school is insanely easy because you basically just have to show up.
So you play with your eyes closed...? It's insanely easy to pull one mob at a time in classic, and mobs respawn very slowly. Occasionally there might be a group of 3 on top of each other but you can ignore those mobs and just do single pulls like 90% of the time, and the other 10% you might have to actually cast a couple skills in order to survive.
I know what Blizzard did bro, the problem is the players that never understood the changes was for them and cry about it.
And its exactly what happened, Ghostcrawler literally said this and it is being quoted since then.
The majority, to disgusting % levels, quits the game rather than trying to improve, so they stopped trying to make them improve and they added the lower difficulties.
Did you not think this one out...? Bosses in mythic have to deal more damage because you have better gear. If your tank has 450k HP in Heroic but 600k HP in Mythic and the two raids deal the same amount of damage it's going to really make Mythic pretty trivial because you could just straight soak most of the mechanics. As for why they spend time preparing it's because the content is actually challenging, which is the same reason why in classic people immediately went to MC despite being in green gear and not even level 60, because it doesn't require preparation because it isn't difficult.
I think some aspects like leveling are harder, because classes are super barebones in Vanilla in reality.
You sure get a ton of abilities, but only a small amount there is actually effective and efficient to justify using with the little mana puddle you have. It's not really that mobs are all that stronger, it's just that you mostly don't have the tools to deal with them effectively until after level 30, if at all.
Compared to that in retail you are literally given nuclear warheads on sticks and an array of abilities that wreck your typical random ass mobs you deal with. This makes leveling much easier, but on the other hand dungeons and raids harder, because bosses and trash are made to take into account the fact that every guy in party/raid is a frikkin' David Copperfield with 500 hat tricks.
Groups and raid content in Vanilla is easier for sure because everything is so damn basic.
Because the content before was overly time consuming so even if you had amazing skills (mind you, in vanilla I picked up amazing players for guild, simply by leveling and doing dungeons with them) but you were slow - you'd get shafted. That was the main reason why with TBC changes were made to make end game more approachable and when a bit more difficulty was added to 5 man dungeons.
It doesn't matter, I'm just trying to have a civilized discussion and hear other opinions. I firmly believe that difficulty of vanilla is overstated by some, that's all. I could be wrong.
That's M+/Mythic gear compared with M+/Mythic content.
[quote]In vanilla, when you're decked up, it makes almost everything trivial, especially content outside of raids, provided you have a solid group of people who know how to play. Sure, you can still wipe like you mentioned, but previous content gets obsolete as well. By time we were in BWL, there were 0 reasons to do 5 men dungeons because there wasn't a lot to do in them.[q/quote]
That's raid gear compared with outdoor/5-man content.
Don't you see the problem in your comparison right there ? Seems it kinda support my argument, modern WoW power inflation is so ridiculous you don't even think about comparing M+ gear to outdoor/normal 5-man content (in fact, what was the last time you even thought about normal difficulty 5-man content in BfA ?).
Because you were in your first post, compairing Classic and BFA, plus you posted on a topic that has, you know... "harder" in the title?
But sure, let's pretend that you're not trying to save your face now... Classic indeed is not a hard MMORPG for any player who played what existed before. That said, that doesn't change the fact that if you compare to anything we had in the past years GW2, Swtor, FFXIV, ESO, Lotro, etc... well, it is in fact harder for the majority of the content. There are only raids that managed to offer more challenges since then.
As for your last resort taunt, I'm not even sure what you're trying to say but I doubt it's worth more than what you had to say before.
They should have chosen the first. Just steer the game toward something like BRD with occassional raid here and there. I always think 40man is too much. 10-20 should be enough for raid.That's not actually what happened. Blizzard was faced with two choices:
1. Stop putting so much resources into making raids, since so few people ended up seeing them.
2. Change the design.
They chose 2. This was blizzard's decision, not a reaction to some vocal minority whining. Blizzard could not justify pouring resources into content 1% of players would see. That's just reality.
Last edited by Wildmoon; 2019-09-11 at 10:04 AM.
No, it simply fits your narrative and shows your complete lack of knowledge about the game.
Classic and "Retail" are two completely different games.
Retail becomes difficult at the higher end of content, M+16-18 and up, Mythic raiding progression the first month or two before the scaling and nerfbats, and even then in its majority Mythic raiding isnt hard, its hard for the others in the raid to not fuck up, a different person each time.
And thats "difficult" on what - I consider- will actually require extra effort for me, other than slump in the chair and play as i always do.
For others, M0 dungeons are "Hard" and "WTF how do i do them".
Classic is literally neither, there is nothing, anywhere, unless as i said above, you are missing both hands, and your head.
Dont try comparing games when you cant obviously play both at any appropriate level to be allowed to have an opinion about them.
Last edited by potis; 2019-09-11 at 10:05 AM.
No, I'm not. I never made that statement. I'm saying that required time, or better said effort, is part of what influences difficulty. Another big part is skill required, but not just that.
Well, that's exactly the point. You are literally saying that people are basically handicapped compared to Live, how is it not harder to accomplish the same thing in Classic then?
Is it incredibly complex? No. Does it require good reflexes? No. But the fact your character is much less powerful, and the enemies more powerful, means it does require much more care and basic strategy to avoid getting killed.
Just because you have more APM in Live doesn't mean it's harder. The fact that you can basically spam all those buttons without care for management of any resource, and with little thought, and still be successful in the majority of the game, is exactly why apart from the endgame optional difficulty settings, I'd say Vanilla was harder.
You just have a wrong/narrow conception of what hard and difficult means. And you are also ignoring that it's very relative. For instance, sure, most people wouldn't say graduating high school is hard despite it taking "18 years", but that's because it's basically a part of growing up, and the time taken is basically a fixed necessity and not really a variable.
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So then explain why they do "hit harder" in Mythic, if it's irrelevant.
Last edited by Kolvarg; 2019-09-11 at 10:22 AM.
Nobody who had any idea about Vanilla expected MC with single mechanic bosses to be hard.