The Great Classic Raid Lie

[Asrialol]

i clear mythic with my retail guild, and raids on cxlassic.

raids on classic are more forgiving.

but!!!!!!!!!

you wont see a tank lose threat on retail and the raid wipe,
you wont see someone doing 10% the damage of a tank and shrug it off in retail,
in retail you wont wait 6+ months for an item to drop as there are litterally hundreds of ways to get gear in retail,
in retail you dont have bosses hard locked behind a resistance check.

what im saying is, classic raiding is different and you need 40 peple on the same page, and need specific gear like frost weapons for viscudus, or Nature resist gear for Huhuran, or you need all your warriors to have the stun mace for trash in AQ.

Classic is harder, as you need to stack certain things that have extremely low drop chances, and all your raid more or less needs them.

Retail has none of that now.

that is why some Fights in Classic are harder than mythic bosses.

I've been trying to get 475 haste/mastery leather gloves since 8.3 launched. I thought the only way to get those gloves were from the m+ chest, but it seems there are "litterally hundreds" more ways for me to get them?

Could you perhaps share one way that isn't such a RNG fiesta? Would greatly appreciate it.

[Trinkie]

I'm not claiming that Vanilla raids were ever hard, however the modern healing addons, boss mods certainly help a ton. Back then you had to beg ppl to install addons, with mixed success.

Ehm. Back in vanilla you had shit like Smartheal or similiar and stuff like Bossmods already existed back then.

You could literally have an addon autorank heals according to their HP and it would heal for you, it was practically braindead.

[heheszek]

I love seeing them add leveling to their arguments. Though the fact that they seem to think any aspect of classic is "hard" is more amusing. Tedious isn't the same as hard.

leveling in cata - mop - wod - legion - bfa is just joke - you push everything with eyes closed with no interest and focus

in vanilla-tbc-wotlk (especially in vanilla with elite mobs around) you have to focus and actually think what you are doing in order to do quests, to get to certain locations(mob camps etc), manage your mana, and gold to distribute it to important spells, if u play poorly ull die often in opposite to than in newer expansions ull not die you just yolo play with no effort. No idea what is ur definition of sth being hard but this means its just harder to accomplish. In contrast of modern expansions wow classic leveling is harder. Its tedious only at lvls 1-10 when u have no spells and items,talents . I guess ppl who say leveling in vanilla is not hard but tedious have never gone past lvl 10.

I remember reading a opinion/review on some popular gaming site that wow is boring because there is no challenge in it. Then persuade those guys that "wow starts at max lvl" when they already wasted dozens of hours leveling 1-120or probably stopped in the middle of that because they found no challenge in "the best mmorpg"

p.s I dont like vanilla, because of lack of pvp. I prefer newer stuff like tbc-wotlk-cata because game was improved and not over flooded with sh1t cookieclicker content like legion/bfa or boring as wod

[Asrialol]

leveling in cata - mop - wod - legion - bfa is just joke - you push everything with eyes closed with no interest and focus

in vanilla-tbc-wotlk (especially in vanilla with elite mobs around) you have to focus and actually think what you are doing in order to do quests, to get to certain locations(mob camps etc), manage your mana, and gold to distribute it to important spells, if u play poorly ull die often in opposite to than in newer expansions ull not die you just yolo play with no effort. No idea what is ur definition of sth being hard but this means its just harder to accomplish. In contrast of modern expansions wow classic leveling is harder. Its tedious only at lvls 1-10 when u have no spells and items,talents . I guess ppl who say leveling in vanilla is not hard but tedious have never gone past lvl 10.

I remember reading a opinion/review on some popular gaming site that wow is boring because there is no challenge in it. Then persuade those guys that "wow starts at max lvl" when they already wasted dozens of hours leveling 1-120or probably stopped in the middle of that because they found no challenge in "the best mmorpg"

p.s I dont like vanilla, because of lack of pvp. I prefer newer stuff like tbc-wotlk-cata because game was improved and not over flooded with sh1t cookieclicker content like legion/bfa or boring as wod

Leveling in wow has always been a joke. Either in terms of little effort (retail or more recent expansions) or tedious (but still little effort) like in the earlier days.

Leveling was never hard. Ever. You didn't play the game then if you claim it was.

Reviews of vanilla also claimed that the game started at max level by the way.

[Dalinos]

Saying that classic is hard because there are random raids that struggle to clear stuff like BWL easily is like saying elementary school math is hard because there arew adult people that are unable to solve it.

I feel actually bad for the people struggling with that. But at least they found something they might enjoy. If you say you play Classic and Retail you know that there are people struggling with extremely low keys for example. And there are enough LFR raids that struggle with certain bosses. And by also playing both I know that LFR is harder than the CLassic raids so far.

But that's the thing mate. Not everyone is good at video games. Just like not everyone is good at maths. I mean, I have an M.Sc in Economics. I've done research projects that dealt with advanced statistics and with sample sizes of 3,000,000 observations (that I then had to convert into a single index between 0 and 2). For me, basic high-school calculus is piss easy. Just like tanking on retail. I've tanked everything from TBC till Legion as a Druid (was healing in vanilla). I logged in after a 2 year break and the muscle memory just kicked right in. But what I've learnt in my 16yr old long wow-career is that not everyone plays at the same level.


And that's fine. It melts my heart when I see complete and utter newbies, that have 0 clue what they're doing, that click their abilities and don't even have hotkeys, that find it difficult to move with the WASD keys and turn their camera simultaneously by holding down right click and moving the mouse, having the fun of their lives. Case in point, my old Uni-classmate Cornelia. She used to play some WoW on her brother's account when she was younger, but that's it. I let her play on my account for a while - she made a Blood Elf Demon Hunter and started playing through the intro story. Guess what happened when I told her "Yo, try pressing the Space bar 3 times in rapid succession". The girl was ECSTATIC when she saw the double jump + wings.

I don't feel sorry for these people. I ENVY these people. The downright innocent and naive fun they have is something I, as a rugged veteran gamer who started gaming at the age of 3 on the original Gameboy, will never experience again. These people aren't meant to be pitied, because the type of fun they have is something me, you and every other experienced gamer will never feel again.

Also, what you're failing to address is that you can join LFR at the click of a button (literally). Can't say the same for joining a raid in Classic. You can join a PUG, but those have varying measures of success. To join a guild, pass your trial phase, become a member and claim your guaranteed raid spot is a whole different story. But that's what's needed to have clean, fair and successful raids in Classic. LFR, Normal and HC can be pugged, even parts of Mythic. The only place you need full guild cooperation is progressing in Mythic, going for Cutting Edge basicly. And that's it.

[parasight]

As someone who's been playing classic, who came from modern day retail progression raiding, I can say that the only truly hard part is for people with anti-social personality disorders who try to obtain top ranks in pvp. This can only be done by coordinating with the community. So, the hard part of classic isn't really the timely pushing of buttons, but a different facet entirely.

Also, there's plenty of pvp on classic pvp servers. You just have to be numb to griefing. Not being bothered when you get completely ganked is a huge benefit to your sanity.

[Dalinos]

So, the hard part of classic isn't really the timely pushing of buttons, but a different facet entirely.

What this guy said, basicly. The difficulty of Classic is not game-skill related. It's personality related. Trolls, idiots, retards, toxic people don't get to go far in Classic. Relationships and alliances between guilds are another thing which is fully personality related.

When Drakefang Talisman or Neltharion's Tear drops, the loot council decides who the item goes to, they give it to the person they chose, and all you see in raidchat and on disc is "Grats man, well deserved" "Gz dude" "Lol now you'll miss less, maybe you can reach me on the meters" and stuff like that, instead of drama, you know something somewhere is working properly. And it has 0 things to do with how well you push your 1-3 buttons. It has to do with how you are as a person. And that's what keeps the Roleplaying aspect of the MMORPG tag WoW has attached to it alive. The fact that in Classic, the players create their own content. Like guild alliances for alt-runs, guild-wide lotteries every week to generate money for the Gbank etc.

[kranur]

So we're back on this?

It was already said that there were many factors that made the original WoW seem hard, although it never really was.

People had crappy PC's, crappy internet, 0 knowledge of anything in the game (specs, bosses, gear, quests etc.)

Of course it would take you double or triple or even more to level to max when you don't know where to go, you don't know where instances are and you're generally just enjoying yourself. And later on, not knowing which instances to farm (and more modernly reserve the shit out them so you get out asap), not knowing any strats and very likely having sub-optimal specs / gear. All of that while you disconnect and wipe the raid.

[Dalinos]

So we're back on this?

It was already said that there were many factors that made the original WoW seem hard, although it never really was.

People had crappy PC's, crappy internet, 0 knowledge of anything in the game (specs, bosses, gear, quests etc.)

Of course it would take you double or triple or even more to level to max when you don't know where to go, you don't know where instances are and you're generally just enjoying yourself. And later on, not knowing which instances to farm (and more modernly reserve the shit out them so you get out asap), not knowing any strats and very likely having sub-optimal specs / gear. All of that while you disconnect and wipe the raid.

Ah yes...hardware concerns. I dare anyone who's playing retail right now to do the following.

Get a PC with the following characteristics: Pentium 3 at 700 MHZ, 128 MBs of RAM, no SSD harddrive, 15 inch monitor, 800x640 resolution, 64 MB graphics card. Also, no router, on the contrary, you get to use a dial-up 56k modem that disconnects you every single fucking time your mother picks up the phone. Now, increase the number of people in your raid from 20 to 40.

Oh what? Excuse me? That's unheard of? No, gentlemen. This was the raiding situation in OG vanilla when I was 14 years old in 2005. Camera facing down so I don't burn my machine in Molten Core while trying to play whack-a-mole with the raid frames with 2,000 MS.

[Gorsameth]

I'm not claiming that Vanilla raids were ever hard, however the modern healing addons, boss mods certainly help a ton. Back then you had to beg ppl to install addons, with mixed success.

back in the days of vanilla you literally had mods that selected a heal rank based on the missing hp of the player at the top of a list and then healed that person. You didn't even need to look at your raid frames to heal, just press the 1 button tied to 'heal most injured person'.

But sure... blame modern addons for making the game easy when vanilla allowed you to completely delegate all decision making to addons.

[heheszek]

Leveling in wow has always been a joke. Either in terms of little effort (retail or more recent expansions) or tedious (but still little effort) like in the earlier days.

Leveling was never hard. Ever. You didn't play the game then if you claim it was.

Reviews of vanilla also claimed that the game started at max level by the way.

It was harder in comparison to nowadays wow, in cata they revamped power level of characters and at lvl 10 with spec ability(like mortal strike for warriors, or even more funny tanks main ability dmg for example avenger's shield oneshoting elites in instances) it was just click->kill with no effort/stress A LOT of game content became boring and people dont wanna play boring games, thats why there were no new players willing to play wow for years(to be specific after wotlk ending)

yes everyone knew that "wow starts at max lvl" but in earlier expansions(vanilla-wotlk) u felt the game even at low lvl with cool char development, power gains(rare items, every 5 talent point strong passive/active) Now it doenst matter if u have epics at lvl 40 or heirlooms, u just bang mobs with no effort.

Why are you trying to input me that i hadnt been playing back then if I can just log in classic to do it and compare. I can also say u didnt play the game back then if u think its was not harder than now xd and and going forward - subliminal message - ur wrong and what u say cant be true by definition ;] who are you to judge?

btw fyi I ve played in every expansion and leveled dozens of chars. Old ones were more enjoyable and fun but frustrating at the same time, then in cata/mop it became retard friendly, then in wod, legion, bfa it was only decent at current content level range(90+wod, 100+ legion, bfa 110+) just because they rid off all systems they implemented in those expansions. In shadowlands it will repeat again, all bfa systems will get pushed away, and leveling will be fun at 50+. The difference was in classic expansions(up to wotlk) the whole systems were in game(talent system, spells, overall char power development). Then they started to shuffle it over and over again.

I also dont know your definition of being "hard" because as far as I see, in ur eyes "chess" would be easy just because its slow and there are not so many movement possibilities for each piece.

[hulkgor]

Really scraping the bottom of the barrel here man.

Also, what an interesting and fresh topic to discuss, even after a year of classic. /s

[Gaidax]

Ah yes...hardware concerns. I dare anyone who's playing retail right now to do the following.

Get a PC with the following characteristics: Pentium 3 at 700 MHZ, 128 MBs of RAM, no SSD harddrive, 15 inch monitor, 800x640 resolution, 64 MB graphics card. Also, no router, on the contrary, you get to use a dial-up 56k modem that disconnects you every single fucking time your mother picks up the phone. Now, increase the number of people in your raid from 20 to 40.

Oh what? Excuse me? That's unheard of? No, gentlemen. This was the raiding situation in OG vanilla when I was 14 years old in 2005. Camera facing down so I don't burn my machine in Molten Core while trying to play whack-a-mole with the raid frames with 2,000 MS.

KEKW...

The shit you're talking about? What you are listing is below minimum system requirements for WoW at launch, so cut the crap - it was 2005, not frikkin' 1999.

I played Vanilla and back then my computer was nothing to write home about, but it was already enough for 1280×1024 resolution which was standard for CRT monitors back then, this is also resolution people ran game at or at least 1024x768 if one had some ancient hardware. The only thing that was FPS nightmare for me back then was specific spot or two in AV, like the hill in the middle.

Now, I am sure there were people with absolute atrocious potato PCs with something like Voodoo 3s and Pentium 3s in 2005 in some weird ass 3rd world countries that did not have broadband in 2005, but at that point they were simply not at minimum system requirements, so /shrug

[korijenkins]

If Blizzard did a cease and desist on every single WoW guide site, MMO-Champ, Wowhead, etc. then yeah, Classic raids would've taken a lot longer for most people to clear.

They didn't do that though. Part of the reason the raids are an utter joke is how laughably easy it is to find information about the content with a simple google search. It was a lot harder to do that back in 2004.

Same applies to leveling. EVERYONE was new in 2004. The only way to create the authentic Classic experience everyone who played it years ago wanted would've been to erase all of their existing knowledge.

[Dalinos]

KEKW...

The shit you're talking about? What you are listing is below minimum system requirements for WoW at launch, so cut the crap - it was 2005, not frikkin' 1999.

I played Vanilla and back then my computer was nothing to write home about, but it was already enough for 1280×1024 resolution which was standard for CRT monitors back then, this is also resolution people ran game at or at least 1024x768 if one had some ancient hardware. The only thing that was FPS nightmare for me back then was specific spot or two in AV, like the hill in the middle.

Now, I am sure there were people with absolute atrocious potato PCs with something like Voodoo 3s and Pentium 3s in 2005 in some weird ass 3rd world countries that did not have broadband in 2005, but at that point they were simply not at minimum system requirements, so /shrug

Your reality and my reality were quite different, then. We got broadband in around 2007 (commercially available for middle-income families I mean, not generally available for the government/companies/banks etc, that was 2003-2004) where I'm from. The specs I gave you are what I remember from 15 years ago. The one thing I'm 100% certain is correct is the Pentium 3 at 700 MHZ. It was on a bright blue-silver sticker on the PC box. The 56k modem is also 100% true, I remember to this day the screeching sounds it made. I relied on my neighbourhood's internet cafe to raid properly. Along with the rest of my classmates. I'm from Greece btw. Where might you be from mate?

[Gaidax]

Your reality and my reality were quite different, then. We got broadband in around 2007 (commercially available for middle-income families I mean, not generally available for the government/companies/banks etc, that was 2003-2004) where I'm from. The specs I gave you are what I remember from 15 years ago. The one thing I'm 100% certain is correct is the Pentium 3 at 700 MHZ. It was on a bright blue-silver sticker on the PC box. The 56k modem is also 100% true, I remember to this day the screeching sounds it made. I relied on my neighbourhood's internet cafe to raid properly. Along with the rest of my classmates. I'm from Greece btw. Where might you be from mate?

Broadband in 2007? Didn't it launch in 2003 in Greece?... Israel here, I think I had broadband already in 2001, 2002 for sure - was mass downloading movies and shit already back then. And it was already available for everyone for small price.

I think you are exception not a rule, I mean, sure there are some countries that legit did not have broadband in 2005, but holy hell that was some late bloomers there and I am shocked to hear a country in Europe did not have that widely available back then. Vanilla practically had "broadband connection" as minimum requirement.

Same goes for Pentium III, that's CPU from 1999. My PC was definitely not the bleeding edge back then with single core Athlon 64 and Radeon 9500 PRO, both which were 3 years old stuff when WoW launched, but they were certainly more than enough almost everywhere back then, except for AV - it was somewhere between minimum and recommended specs.

But no, certainly not 800x600 gaming in 2005... I mean... that's liek 1998 resolution.

- - - Updated - - -

Its always funny to see 2020 players compare themselves to 2004 players. We didn't have your shitloads of addons and wowhead and even youtube videos and guides and past experience and endless lists of resources to go kill Cthun. Hell we didn't even have discord we had to rely on some crappy ventrillo and some players were on fucking dial up connections.

We already had basic bossmods in AQ and some of them were extremely powerful, such as Decursive because API allowed actual gameplay automation.

You had alerts, timers and mods aplenty. I been there on C'thun and back in the time it was a challenge, but now that I think about - it was mostly because of insane spirit run that really slowed down the whole progress there. I even think we had range checker already, pretty basic one, but did all we needed there.

You did not have "wowhead", but you had warcraft movies site, thottbot and forums - people who were actually progressing raids were not in the dark there, except for very first kills world.

[Fathr]

Naxx came out in patch 1.11. The gear changed in patch 1.10. AQ40 gear was never changed. So you're gonna retract everything you said when Naxx gets cleared an hour after launch, right? What's gonna be your excuse then?

Again read it and weep! https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/...elease_to_112/ For those of us who were there from the very launch in vanilla remember that there wasnt even enough quests for you to level up with so....

[ntlntl]

Its always funny to see 2020 players compare themselves to 2004 players. We didn't have your shitloads of addons and wowhead and even youtube videos and guides and past experience and endless lists of resources to go kill Cthun. Hell we didn't even have discord we had to rely on some crappy ventrillo and some players were on fucking dial up connections.

Agree

The thing with the old VAnilla is that the classes are terribly designed, itemisations, quests were so wrong and limited. Players' power is so low that makes things hard. I'm sure kids 2020 didn't know that druid did not have innervate baseline till late vanilla, fury warr wasn't a thing till 1.11. Most healing spells' casting time and mana costs were higher before 1.6 If I remember right. Raid drops were so limited. like 30 items for 40m raid, not all of them are useful.

The computer and the internet at that time were also terrible. Imaging raiding with 20 FPS at medium setting and 500-700ms... I recalled we didn't have raid markers till ZG or BWL. Tanks had to /assist the raid leader to get their targets.

I believe the source of confusion and misunderstanding is the WOW classic 1.12. New players jumped in, played the easy more classic 1.12 with modern hardware and game guides then called it a faceroll. While veteran player said vanilla was hard, they meant that at a particular time in the past, at patch 1.x, with their potato PC and slow internet, the game was hard.

IF you didn't play during that time, pls don't call old players bad. It's unfair to compare while ignoring other variables.

[Gaidax]

I believe the source of confusion and misunderstanding is the WOW classic 1.12. New players jumped in, played the easy more classic 1.12 with modern hardware and game guides then called it a faceroll. While veteran player said vanilla was hard, they meant that at a particular time in the past, at patch 1.x, with their potato PC and slow internet, the game was hard.

IF you didn't play during that time, pls don't call old players bad. It's unfair to compare while ignoring other variables.

I played at that time and it's a load of bull - Vanilla was tedious, not "hard". I mained a Paladin and 95% of what I ever did in raids is spam Flash of Light smart macro that picked lowest HP friendly and casted FoL on it - macros could do that back then. Remaining 5% you would Divine Favor Holy Light bomb a tank or do some cherry picked Holy Lights and some shit like that. Then at times you spammed Decursive and you used Pally Power to automate blessings.

My Warlock alt in raid? Spam Shadow Bolt, put your assigned curse up and use tap for what it's worth. Farm shards before raid. That's about it.

You did not need impeccable FPS and real time latency for that crap.

That's it. That was the whole "raiding". Until C'thun there were barely any real mechanics to begin with. Most bosses had 1 or 2 mechanics that were their "thing" and the rest was just fluff and the whole progression was artificially bloated with those insane spirit runs in raids.

The vast difference between back then and now IS the fact that back then players sucked balls, average skill level and preparedness, knowledge and most importantly competitiveness of your average player rose immensely over the years.

Despite said tedium, ironically it was the most noob friendly game there was back then and one of its big advantages was the concept of endgame being important instead of this endless leveling up crap that was plaguing mmos back then - I came from Lineage II, Ragnarok and some other shit MMOs of the time and basically it was "leveling - the game", WoW was refreshing in that you could get to 60 reasonably fast and actually have something there instead of some shitty "prestige" system.

[Dequanacus]

Said for years that it would be a joke and that anyone can go on a private server to check for themselves. Sure enough, it was. Anyone that chooses to get upset now after years of plugging their ears and ignoring all of the people making that same point I have zero sympathy for.
Maybe instead of making thousands of threads claiming classic will be difficult and take a long time to finish raiding, immediately having that notion argued, not making a single counter argument and having the same thread made the next day, they should have been paying attention to every single private server that has been out for the past decade before classic launched.