Is Classic too easy?

[d00mh4cker]

Believe it or not, some people do activities for the fun of hanging out and not because the activity itself is that enjoyable.

And some people do stuff they don't enjoy just for the rewards, which is pretty much what LFR and Warfronts are on retail.

LFR and Warfronts are not rewarding.

[Mayia]

Classic has extremely little content if you're not a raider or a serious PvP:er, however I'm beginning to feel that the content it does have is way too easy. Raids are cleared the first reset by most guilds and then you're back to raid logging for farm raids that are almost as easy as LFR is in retail.
It doesn't give you a sense of accomplishment and the character progression is extremely slow, with new gear upgrades coming at you about once a month.
It's starting to feel like, what's the point if there's no challenge?

in TBC you'll get abit more challenge in the heroic mode and the raids will be harder, but classic was new a lot of the harder parts came from it being everyones first time, nobody knowing what to do.. the struggle to herd 40 cats into one place at one time.

Its fine i'm loving classic, in future might some people want a classic + hardmode toggle for some content? wouldn't be too bad, bosses having 20% more hp/dealing 10% more damage toggle like a heroic mode but def not from the start lets just replay the classic we missed out on first.. or not.. its entirely your choice.

[Depakote]

Anyone saying that Classic isn't hard clearly hasn't played it as i'm stuck right now trying to get the key for Scholomance and I can't find any group to help kill Araj the Summoner.

[Echocho]

Its fine i'm loving classic, in future might some people want a classic + hardmode toggle for some content? wouldn't be too bad, bosses having 20% more hp/dealing 10% more damage toggle like a heroic mode but def not from the start lets just replay the classic we missed out on first.. or not.. its entirely your choice.

It would have to be a lot more than more hp/dmg for it to become challenging, they'd have to introduce entire unique hardmode mechanics and tinker with the classes to make them a bit more complicated to play.

[Anufis]

Anyone saying that Classic isn't hard clearly hasn't played it as i'm stuck right now trying to get the key for Scholomance and I can't find any group to help kill Araj the Summoner.

Well, yes, because no one goes to low level dungeons anymore. Until blizzard introduced lfg in wotlk, it was extremely hard to get into vanilla dungeons in wotlk being new and not having friends in wow.

[Depakote]

Well, yes, because no one goes to low level dungeons anymore. Until blizzard introduced lfg in wotlk, it was extremely hard to get into vanilla dungeons in wotlk being new and not having friends in wow.

lol Scholomance is not a low level dungeon. Gtfo with that nonsense.

[Diatribe]

No, we're just smarter this time around.

[trapmaster]

15 years of wow knowledge and prepareness+practices in private server. OF course it was expected to be plow like a joke. What do you expect??

[d00mh4cker]

ZG speedrunning in under 25 min on PTR by top guilds.

Our guild only managed to clear in 45 min but we are casuals who usually only logs for raids but some friends wanted to test the PTR.
If we can fine tune the run we will be able to run MC, BWL and ZG in under 2 hours on sundays leaving the rest of the week open for the real world and things that actually matter.

[Wermys]

Starting to see some differentiation in BWL. Some guild are struggling with some bosses to the point where they aren't able to clear it. While others are just steamrolling it the first week. I think the main difference in BWL comes down to the competence of the healers dps and tanks to just not be dumb. If you do dumb stuff you will die. If you are patient know how to read a threat meter, and aren't a moron and can watch debuffs and timers its easy mode.

[arkanon]

15 years of wow knowledge and prepareness+practices in private server. OF course it was expected to be plow like a joke. What do you expect??

My guild had a few that had played in vanilla but no PS, and about 3 who played PS. Mostly if not all retail players. Smashed our way through every boss on like, day 2? Took a few hours. Now clearing in about an hour and are SUPER casual raid loggers.

Your reasoning explains the handful who cleared in under 1 hour on day 1, but doesnt really explain the 1500+ guilds who cleared it day 1, with countless players / guilds having little to no experience.

edit: Just to be clear, i have said this countless times, but i do NOT consider this a problem, issue, or negative at all - in fact its the reason myself, and a shitload of other people enjoy classic - its stupidly easy and always was, and although many of us committed to or dabbled in genuinely challenging content over the years, vanillas / classics brain-dead raids still hold some appeal.

[Will]

I've been telling people before classic came out vanilla was ALWAYS easy-sauce. People on private servers say it's rock solid but that's because private servers almost always got dungeon and raid numbers dead wrong (over-tuned) either by accident or on purpose.

I had a massive argument on the official forums where a bunch of die-hards swore I was talking rubbish and classic is the pinnacle of difficulty and how I should "go back to retail". They didn't seem to accept the argument that we just sucked as players back in 2004-2005. If you watch even the top guilds videos from back in those days they play worse than a 50th percentile modern player.

[deniter]

I've been telling people before classic came out vanilla was ALWAYS easy-sauce. People on private servers say it's rock solid but that's because private servers almost always got dungeon and raid numbers dead wrong (over-tuned) either by accident or on purpose.

I had a massive argument on the official forums where a bunch of die-hards swore I was talking rubbish and classic is the pinnacle of difficulty and how I should "go back to retail". They didn't seem to accept the argument that we just sucked as players back in 2004-2005. If you watch even the top guilds videos from back in those days they play worse than a 50th percentile modern player.

In the beginning of vanilla WoW the game was harder than Classic. There are mob abilities and mechanics missing in Classic that definitely were in vanilla like Emperor Thaurissan's stun attack, not to mention how easy saving the princess really is in Classic compared to vanilla (she doesn't heal the emperor at all). I could go on and on but i'm just saying Classic is a retail version of vanilla WoW.

And yet, Classic is still harder than 90% of retail. Only mythic raids in retail are the thing you can take seriously. The rest of the game is just trash. Dungeons are fricking aoe fests and questing is an insult to a player's intelligence (i'm not even starting to talk about pet battles and garrisons). It's all that convenience and linearity that kills the retail for me.

Classic is definitely way too easy but it's still the best option we have got, and that's a real shame.

[Outofmana]

Classic is just about parsing / speedrunning. But, with the introduction of Batching, which ruins the entire classic gameplay, it has made parsing moot, since it's 100% RNG now with batching, as quick reflexes etc aren't rewarded whatsoever. It's a shame the private server experience was a better one in the end.

Let's hope for fresh classic servers in a year or two, without batching, then everyone else who is too blind to notice the lack of responsiveness can enjoy fluid gameplay.

For "high end" classic just compare it with like Goldeneye 007 on the N64, which is a pisseasy game but is also speedran, that's where the competition is.

[Rusken]

Yes. Classic is easy. It's a simple game that was made to cater to casual players in a world of Everquest, Maplestory, Runescape and other MMOs that required months upon months of solid grinding to reach max level, and hundreds of people required for raids or bosses.
You just have to stop comparing it to Retail, which is so overrun by addons like DBM and Weakauras which tell you exactly what to do, where to stand and when every ability goes off with perfect timing, that newly designed fights have to be so convoluted in their mechanics to pose any shred of difficulty.

There's also 15 years of knowledge/experience going into Classic which of course makes it easier, and the early raids of MC, Ony and BWL have a max of 3 mechanics per fight and nothing is remotely difficult to deal with. Later raids of AQ40 and Naxx will pose a bit more issues especially for guilds going in with MC mindsets but will be mostly facerolled by anyone who's prepared.

It is what it is, it is what we were expecting. If you were expecting Classic to be some crazy hard raiding experience then I really don't know what to tell you. People way over-blew the "difficulty" of reaching 60 in the months leading up to release, but I don't remember many at all saying the raids would be hard..

[Echocho]

Classic is just about parsing / speedrunning.

Is it though? It's laughably easy, you'd be better of parsing and speedrunning LFR. Parsing and speedrunning only means something when the content is at least a little bit challenging.

[Heathy]

the challenge is just having ppl show up to raids and hoping you don't have to keep farming gear for new players every couple of weeks. if you're able to progress through to the end with minimal back tracking or simply having the majority of the players that you started raiding with, still raiding with you in the end, then it will be a lot easier or a lot less time consuming as you won't have to regear up multiple ppl who leave after a few raids or just stop playing. this is something that is difficult to control, easy to mitigate but difficult to fully control. ultimately the game is a test of patience rather than skill. at least this is how I see it. you need to be more patient than skilled, anyone can learn to be good at any role but not everyone can stick it through to the end for one reason or another (games too slow, not enough to do, classes are too barebones etc etc etc whatever the reason is), the biggest hurdle is getting over losing geared players during the 1.5/2 years it takes to go from t1 to t3. logistical challenge was always greater than the mechanical challenge, its not like no bosses were never killed because ppl were too shit or they were too over tuned. everything was cleared by players with much crappier hardware and much less overall playtime and ofc much less obvious BiS hunting.

its still 'challenging' to stick to one mmo for a couple years and see it through to the end. through the ups and downs of raiding guilds, there was very little mitigating factors to losing geared players so everyone is fully reliant on the guild as a whole maintaining cohesion or you're back to square one. the challenge is maintaining the commitment. personally I wanted to see the game through to the end and see how far I could get. I've gotten further than I did the first time so, thats fine with me, now i'm interested to see how far we as a guild can go before we start to struggle. and then see if we can overcome that struggle. the things that make games fun to play. a game doesn't necessarily have to be challenging to me in an APM way although I was always a healer and APM mattered less than being good at triage in general.

[Kraenen]

Classic is great to just have a really simple adventure through leveling, maybe grind some mobs/quests, and hopefully once in a while group up with others and have some nice social experiences. The above is fairly easy, but I don't know why it could be considered "too" easy given it accomplishes what it intends to accomplish.

[Timewalker]

No, I think it's authentic to how it was. It's just impossible to have the game be hard when you have 15+ years of knowledge now.

[Necromantic]

No, I think it's authentic to how it was. It's just impossible to have the game be hard when you have 15+ years of knowledge now.

Some still struggle to understand this concept when trying to compare retail to classic, especially raiding. Stuff in classic isn't new, fresh, never-seen-before. It's (as you said) 15+ years old. There are dozens of videos on how to low-man or cheese content you'll find in classic. Something you won't find with new retail content.