The Great Classic Raid Lie

[NineSpine]

I keep seeing people endlessly repeat the same lie over and over again about wow classic raids. They keep saying that others argued that classic raids would take months to clear because of mechanical difficulty.

Nobody ever made that argument. Sure, maybe one person did somewhere, but that was never the conversation. The contention was that classic raids would take a long time to clear because of how long it takes to level, gear, and access the content. That’s it. It never had anything to do with mechanical difficulty.

Obviously, they were still wrong. I think for three reasons:

1. It’s faster to level and gear than people assumed, although still way longer than retail.
2. They underestimated how much more powerful 1.12 characters are.
3. They underestimated the knowledge held by people playing on private servers.

Bottom line: this never had anything to do with mechanical complexity. It was always about time investment, low drop rates, etc.. Can we please put this lie to bed? Nobody thought wow classic raids were mechanically difficult. Get over it. Move on.

[Count Zero]

This topic is new and exciting

[Mrbleedinggums]

Yet I've had more than my fair share of people in multiple guilds make the claim that Classic raids are more difficult than Retail raids, so your claim that nobody ever made that argument is a lie and decredits your post.

[NineSpine]

This topic is new and exciting

Thank you.

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Yet I've had more than my fair share of people in multiple guilds make the claim that Classic raids are more difficult than Retail raids, so your claim that nobody ever made that argument is a lie and decredits your post.

“More difficult” and “more mechanically complex” aren’t the same thing.

[Saltysquidoon]

Why make a thread about a topic and tell people to move on? Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Anyway so far as my 2 cents (as someone who played in vanilla) it was never people specifically saying it was mechanically hard. The argument was always just people saying how 'hardcore' vanilla was for one of two reasons: 1. They were operating on 110% nostalgia* or 2. They had never actually played vanilla and wanted to fake nostalgia post for imaginary e-points.

*Nb here is this is people remembering playing a level 35 dwarf hunter on their brothers account for two weeks with no idea how or why to do anything. Obviously it makes sense they would believe the raids resultantly must be incredibly hard if their questing was 'hard'.

[Mrbleedinggums]

Thank you.

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“More difficult” and “more mechanically complex” aren’t the same thing.

And yet Classic is neither. I'd wager a long boi that anyone claiming that Classic is in any form more difficult or challenging than Retail when it comes to clearing raids hasn't done more than LFR if they've even played in the last 5 years.

[TriHard]

I reached 60 before almost every single private server player out there, private server players were largely irrelevant during this whole period.
There was one European private server guild that was good and that's it.

[Mendzia]

Thanks for explaining this mystery for me. Literally nobody knew that.

[NineSpine]

And yet Classic is neither. I'd wager a long boi that anyone claiming that Classic is in any form more difficult or challenging than Retail when it comes to clearing raids hasn't done more than LFR if they've even played in the last 5 years.

It depends what you mean by “difficult”. Retail is more mechanically complex for sure, but it also requires far less time investment, forethought, etc..

- - - Updated - - -

Why make a thread about a topic and tell people to move on? Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Anyway so far as my 2 cents (as someone who played in vanilla) it was never people specifically saying it was mechanically hard. The argument was always just people saying how 'hardcore' vanilla was for one of two reasons: 1. They were operating on 110% nostalgia* or 2. They had never actually played vanilla and wanted to fake nostalgia post for imaginary e-points.

*Nb here is this is people remembering playing a level 35 dwarf hunter on their brothers account for two weeks with no idea how or why to do anything. Obviously it makes sense they would believe the raids resultantly must be incredibly hard if their questing was 'hard'.

I played from beta through vanilla and I play classic now. It’s harder than retail in the ways I care about, which are the more RPG centered elements of time investment and character building.

Retail is much more mechanically difficult, but I don’t care because that doesn’t interest me.

[RickJamesLich]

And yet Classic is neither. I'd wager a long boi that anyone claiming that Classic is in any form more difficult or challenging than Retail when it comes to clearing raids hasn't done more than LFR if they've even played in the last 5 years.

It's funny I stopped playing in WoD but did LFR actually become challenging? I remember being able to tank stuff as a clothy and live, completely disobey raid mechanics, even afk on the fights and still come out victorious.

[Azerate]

It's funny I stopped playing in WoD but did LFR actually become challenging? I remember being able to tank stuff as a clothy and live, completely disobey raid mechanics, even afk on the fights and still come out victorious.

Yeah, and that's basically a bit like Classic, but on LFR you actually wipe a lot as opposed to classic raids, because you have lots of random people who have no idea about how to play

[RickJamesLich]

I played from beta through vanilla and I play classic now. It’s harder than retail in the ways I care about, which are the more RPG centered elements of time investment and character building.

Retail is much more mechanically difficult, but I don’t care because that doesn’t interest me.

I too feel that classic had a much more interesting challenge. In retail, when I was doing heroic/mythic raids, it was really just about doing your rotation, knowing when to pop survival CD's, and staying out of the bad stuff. Like if Ony breathed on the raid, people would for sure be dying. But on retail, you could pop a survival CD in this type of position and be fine.

[Ragingheadache]

It's funny I stopped playing in WoD but did LFR actually become challenging? I remember being able to tank stuff as a clothy and live, completely disobey raid mechanics, even afk on the fights and still come out victorious.

The issue with comparisons between the mechanics of LFR and other (classic) raids is that with the former the group is very likely being boosted by several players in mythic-level gear and so rendering some mechanics trivial. Probably why you were able to tank in cloth is because you were being over-healed by several orders of magnitude.

[WintersLegion]

The issue with comparisons between the mechanics of LFR and other (classic) raids is that with the former the group is very likely being boosted by several players in mythic-level gear and so rendering some mechanics trivial. Probably why you were able to tank in cloth is because you were being over-healed by several orders of magnitude.

That or he himself was already really overgeared for LFR.

[RickJamesLich]

Yeah, and that's basically a bit like Classic, but on LFR you actually wipe a lot as opposed to classic raids, because you have lots of random people who have no idea about how to play

I would actually disagree here, with Ony for example, people who know the fight well can still wipe on it. Pull aggro on the dragon at the wrong time, the raid eats a breath and it's probably a wipe. Like you can't actually ignore many of the mechanics and come out victorious. On LFR for example, I can't remember many instances where the mechanics were like that.

[Saltysquidoon]

I played from beta through vanilla and I play classic now. It’s harder than retail in the ways I care about, which are the more RPG centered elements of time investment and character building.

Retail is much more mechanically difficult, but I don’t care because that doesn’t interest me.

I mean that's cool, you do you, I'm not here to tell you how to live your life.

But you posted your opinion on a new thread in a message board. That's an invitation for people to comment on your opinion.

[RickJamesLich]

That or he himself was already really overgeared for LFR.

Actually neither lol. I'd go in there with blues and a few entry level purples, like I mentioned this was back in the MoP and WoD days. I remember having to go balls to the wall to try to pull aggro, sometimes I could get it and I wouldn't even need to use a survival CD.

[Beet]

Yeah OP you’re right. The only ones who argued classic was going to be difficult were people who didn’t know shit about private servers.

Plus we’re not playing vanilla. This is a bastardized version. If we had true classic we would have had phase one be Molten Core with patch 1.1 talents and such. Phase 2 would be 1.4 talents since that’s when BWL came out. It would have been hilarious because warriors damage was so shitty in 1.1 so you wouldn’t be seeing them dominating meters thus carrying raids.

Don’t get me wrong that wouldn’t change mechanics so it wouldn’t make molten core all of a sudden hard but it would have been more akin to how it was in January 2005

[Nitros14]

Everyone also goes and stacks up tons of world buffs that give your character twice as much extra power as full Naxxramas gear would.

The moment people actually started to stack world buffs for raids in 2007 Blizzard fixed it right away.

[Mirishka]

I keep seeing people endlessly repeat the same lie over and over again about wow classic raids. They keep saying that others argued that classic raids would take months to clear because of mechanical difficulty.

Nobody ever made that argument. Sure, maybe one person did somewhere, but that was never the conversation. The contention was that classic raids would take a long time to clear because of how long it takes to level, gear, and access the content. That’s it. It never had anything to do with mechanical difficulty.

Obviously, they were still wrong. I think for three reasons:

1. It’s faster to level and gear than people assumed, although still way longer than retail.
2. They underestimated how much more powerful 1.12 characters are.
3. They underestimated the knowledge held by people playing on private servers.

Bottom line: this never had anything to do with mechanical complexity. It was always about time investment, low drop rates, etc.. Can we please put this lie to bed? Nobody thought wow classic raids were mechanically difficult. Get over it. Move on.

So you made a topic to declare what most of us already knew and many of us have already said?

'No shit, Sherlock' feels like an understatement.