Bigger time sink, BC or Retail?

[schwarzkopf]

Vanilla by far - you spend heaps of time just doing nothing waiting for things to turn up (mobs, groups etc)

Retail has far less wasted time - and you only have to do the stuff you want.

[Bloodyleech]

So the amount of upgrade you get from one thing is worth doing but not the other because its a smaller ugprade and right there in between is the magical gap that you decided? :P

Cmon dude.

Duh. You do heroics anyways, so you get gear that gives higher upgrades than conduits or sockets would do. For those you'd need to do content you are not doing for other reasons.
I asked you for what you compare, I just simply listed both and compared those (even though both things technically aren't comparable) complete different gameplay activities.
Basic knowledge, blahblah, I don't expect more than just basic knowledge.

[ClassicPeon]

Duh. You do heroics anyways, so you get gear that gives higher upgrades than conduits or sockets would do. For those you'd need to do content you are not doing for other reasons.
I asked you for what you compare, I just simply listed both and compared those (even though both things technically aren't comparable) complete different gameplay activities.
Basic knowledge, blahblah, I don't expect more than just basic knowledge.

If your English was more coherent your logic would be easier to follow.

I'm genuinely not sure what point your post is trying to make

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Its less about which one is bigger but more where each one is loaded.

Retail = VERY fast up front leveling and opening gearing process. But end game is extremely time gated and slow mostly by RNG and system checks.

Classic(s) = Pretty slow leveling and opening gearing process. But end game is pretty much there for the taking if you aren't socially inept.

(and when I say slow its more a time invested. Both can be over powered if you put in 20+ hours a day to just slam fuck them and you have a little luck)

[Aggressive]

Really? Gearing is pretty fast and easy in retail, there's no need to farm anything daily, etc. OP mentioned AOTC progression and there isn't really much needed to put a lot of time in to do that. Gearing in TBC can be fairly easy (unless you're unlucky with that tank sword from Mechanar, I remember I was!), gotta get rep's up for heroics, atunements, professions can matter, etc.

I'd say it's pretty similar.

The hell it is. This and among other reasons is why I left the game about 2 weeks ago. Retail is nothing but a farm orgy. the Anima grind is real and especially since Blizzard can't balance covenants even if their lives depended on it. And believe it or not a lot of people switch covenants more then once, and for some more then twice.

[Nalam the Venom]

Retail has the biggest sinks due to the weekly and daily checklists.

One of the nicest things about Classic has been that i spent a lot of time playing because i WANTED to, not because i HAD to. I can take breaks and not feel like i missed out on some weekly reward chest.

Did we play the same game?

Because you had to grind a 150-300g/week for raid consumes during classic, i’d consider that a pretty big part of a weekly ”Checklist” and also not something i wanted to do, But something that was required.

[Malania]

I don't follow why people think TBC had less gear replacement. There was still arena seasons and tiers of raid content along with badge gear replacements. Everything you do in retail you'll be doing in TBC, the difference was there's no world quests. Your rep farming is running dungeons over and over.

[ClassicPeon]

I don't follow why people think TBC had less gear replacement. There was still arena seasons and tiers of raid content along with badge gear replacements. Everything you do in retail you'll be doing in TBC, the difference was there's no world quests. Your rep farming is running dungeons over and over.

Its actually not as bad as people say. The rep farming.

Not even aldor&scryer rep is bad compared to todays grinds

[orney]

Obviously it's subjective. But if we define time sink as the time you waste without getting any bit of enjoyment out of it - then retail is in a bad spot. All systems of SL are forcing you to login and do chores on a daily and weekly basis. At a certain period you start asking youself if you are actually treating game as a second job. To be more specific:

- For any high-end pve or pvp content you need to craft a legendary. To craft a legendary you need to farm soulash in Torghast - two runs each week for 4 weeks for one legendary. Plot twist: 90% of the classes have 2-3 bis legendaries for different activities.
- You wanna do dungeons for gear and valor? While getting needed drop is exciting, good luck finding a group for a +5 key without bloated rio score on your main. I am 2k rio pug guy who barely geared up his melee dps alt-DH to 220 ilvl in 3 weeks. So expect to spend 1/3 of your active time doing Oribos laps while searching for group.
- You want to pvp? GL being oneshot by boosters and 220+ ilvl people at 0 rating. Gear inflation and oneshot meta alongside dead lfg have been a big issue for the last 2 months yet zero fixes from blizz so far.
- Furthermore. If you want to have sockets and 226 conduits, you also need to do Maw dailies, which are even worse than Torghast.
- Apart from that you have a daily chore in form of emissaries, which reward you with gold. Most of my guildies have alrdy stopped doing those 3 months ago.
- Oh right, on top of that you have anima. A currency to buy overpriced reskins of same 6 mounts and same 4 sets! You can also donate a shitton of it to take part in various engaging activities including reskinned MoP farm, WoD garrison, Legion class hall buildings and BfA ship mission table.

I have yet to experience TBC to actually compare, but I've been leveling a draenei shaman for the last 5 days and am having a blast.

[Malania]

Its actually not as bad as people say. The rep farming.

Not even aldor&scryer rep is bad compared to todays grinds

I didn't mind them, I completed exalted with every TBC faction back then. Just in comparison you can knock out 1500-3000 rep in a single world quest these days. People need to expect dungeon farming heroics instead for gear and patterns available at exalted. If you're expecting TBC to be less of a time sink it still has everything you do today (minus WQ's) just without the shortcuts the WQ's offer.

[Kralljin]

TBC itemization is not as shit as Classic. You won’t be running around with dungeon or early raid stuff when the next raid opens up

The same can also applied to raids.

Feel free to replace "Savage Gladiator chain" with "Onslaught Belt" or "Quick Strike Ring" and "BRD" with "MC", doesn't change jackshit.

Edit: and going back into the same dungeon and getting the item again is better than never going into the dungeon again because dungeon gear is fucking trash

Whatever floats your boat, but it's not my cup of tea to do the same dungeon at adjusted difficulty for a literally the same reward at a higher Itemlvl every ~6 months, i personally prefer it when i can put some activities behind me instead of doing virtually the same grinds 4x over the course of an expansion.

Not even aldor&scryer rep is bad compared to todays grinds

On top of that:
1. You can buy all items off the AH (meaning any sort of Goldfarm can be substituted for it)
2. The only lasting rewards are the superior shoulder enchants, which are only a slight upgrade over the cheap ones in the grand scheme of things

Heck, if one wanted to bypass farming Scryer / Aldor farm, one could've also banked some Sapphiron Shoulder enchants, which are equivalent / slightly superior to the Aldor / Scryer ones.

[ClassicPeon]

I didn't mind them, I completed exalted with every TBC faction back then. Just in comparison you can knock out 1500-3000 rep in a single world quest these days. People need to expect dungeon farming heroics instead for gear and patterns available at exalted. If you're expecting TBC to be less of a time sink it still has everything you do today (minus WQ's) just without the shortcuts the WQ's offer.

I'm expecting my server to be hard to farm aldor/scryer rep on in the start as most people will probably be going to the major farm locations. I play on one of the bigger pvp servers and as alliance.

[Mamushi]

Obviously it's subjective. But if we define time sink as the time you waste without getting any bit of enjoyment out of it - then retail is in a bad spot. All systems of SL are forcing you to login and do chores on a daily and weekly basis. At a certain period you start asking youself if you are actually treating game as a second job. To be more specific:

- For any high-end pve or pvp content you need to craft a legendary. To craft a legendary you need to farm soulash in Torghast - two runs each week for 4 weeks for one legendary. Plot twist: 90% of the classes have 2-3 bis legendaries for different activities.
- You wanna do dungeons for gear and valor? While getting needed drop is exciting, good luck finding a group for a +5 key without bloated rio score on your main. I am 2k rio pug guy who barely geared up his melee dps alt-DH to 220 ilvl in 3 weeks. So expect to spend 1/3 of your active time doing Oribos laps while searching for group.
- You want to pvp? GL being oneshot by boosters and 220+ ilvl people at 0 rating. Gear inflation and oneshot meta alongside dead lfg have been a big issue for the last 2 months yet zero fixes from blizz so far.
- Furthermore. If you want to have sockets and 226 conduits, you also need to do Maw dailies, which are even worse than Torghast.
- Apart from that you have a daily chore in form of emissaries, which reward you with gold. Most of my guildies have alrdy stopped doing those 3 months ago.
- Oh right, on top of that you have anima. A currency to buy overpriced reskins of same 6 mounts and same 4 sets! You can also donate a shitton of it to take part in various engaging activities including reskinned MoP farm, WoD garrison, Legion class hall buildings and BfA ship mission table.

I have yet to experience TBC to actually compare, but I've been leveling a draenei shaman for the last 5 days and am having a blast.

Instead of "grinding" torghast until you have your best 225 legendaries and doing some emissary quests that take less than an hour to do in total once every 3 days (and at least in my guild you can pretty much always find guildies to boost alts through high M+ and the runs take like 30min tops) you will be grinding gold to be even able to afford your enchants and consumables for raids. Sure, if you mained a mage in classic or had an alt mage to sell boosts like crazy it will be easy to gear up at the beginning and even purchase your epic flying skill/mount, but if you played a hybrid/healer spec and didn't have time for alts you are in for some serious grinding for highly contested resources be it herbs/ore/skins or specific mobs.

[Tyris Flare]

usually the opposite. tbc had its fair share of quick gear, and catch up mechanics.

the difference is it doesn't have the seasonal nature of retail so the progression ladder remains relevant and permanent. You don't reset every patch and need to repeat the entire process essentially.

one and done content will always be easier by nature than never ending seasonal grinds

I don't understand this at all, unless you consider badge gear "being done." Every raid has better gear than the last and you will still throw everything else out when the next BC raid tier hits.

WoW has literally been like this from the beginning, unless you are content being far behind. And if you are, it doesn't matter anyway

The only "permanent progress" in any version of this game is achievements/unlocks, which don't even exist in vanilla/tbc

[ClassicPeon]

I don't understand this at all, unless you consider badge gear "being done." Every raid has better gear than the last and you will still throw everything else out when the next BC raid tier hits.

WoW has literally been like this from the beginning, unless you are content being far behind. And if you are, it doesn't matter anyway

The only "permanent progress" in any version of this game is achievements/unlocks, which don't even exist in vanilla/tbc

Not strictly true. Casters have crafted gear that lasts through kara and most of tier 5.

As a hunter my dungeon set literally last through the entire expansion.

[Tyris Flare]

Not strictly true. Casters have crafted gear that lasts through kara and most of tier 5.

As a hunter my dungeon set literally last through the entire expansion.

Random poor itemization aside, the vast majority of players will get significant power gains when a new tier comes out.

No one in arena is going to be wearing the previous season's gear, for example. You need to grind out a new set over and over

[Bloodyleech]

If your English was more coherent your logic would be easier to follow.

I'm genuinely not sure what point your post is trying to make

You still do not tell me what you compared your message to.
Well, if your english would be better you'd understand what I'm saying, as I'm really going easy on it so that anyone could understand it.
Anyways, this isn't the point of the thread. You said something that's completely stupid, just for trolling purpose, so... yeah. No, you can't compare unnecessary stygia farming with heroic gear. Doesn't make sense. Easy enough for you now?

[Vampyrr]

400 wipes was the times when nobody had good tactics. It recieved so much nerf that nobody should wipe 400 times today.

Its still buggy they fixed a lot yea but the core is still broken

- - - Updated - - -

Easily TBC. People saying you have to regrind stuff in retail are deluding themselves. To get AOTC you don't need grind anything once. You just turn up the first week. Also, with each phase better gear is released with bosses which require better gear to down. How is this different from retail? Your gear doesn't stay "relevant" the whole expansion. A few over-tuned items here or there which you keep using is no different to retail, which frequently has items which are used in later tiers because of how powerful they are.

For those who want to spend a lot of time in either, both have ways to do that. In TBC those grinds are mandatory, in retail they are optional.

Some of the gear especially trinkets and certain weapons DO stay relevant the entirety of TBC. You do not typically need to replace every piece of gear from 1 tier to the next and with sets sometimes it is better to keep old sets for the bonus. None of that is true for retail you constantly need to upgrade every piece for ilvl from 1 tier to the next for the highest level of raiding content. The "grinds" of TBC are much faster so I will have to hard disagree that perhaps you misremember. The most annoying grind that I remember of TBC was for the netherdrakes tbh.

[LordVargK]

Dunno. I pretty much raidlog in SL after I've leveled my characters. So I guess BC would be the bigger timesink?

Realistically though, you can choose for yourself. You can farm the maw 24/7, do Torghast and run m+. Or you don't. TBC gives you less options to sink you time, but the total amount is pretty much up to you.

[hulkgor]

Retail. There isn't even a doubt.

After leveling and gearing up from heroics, you strictly raid or do arenas on TBC. Even if leveling takes longer, the rest surpasses it on retail, with multiple consistent grinds throughout its patch course. Legendaries, Sockets, Conduits, Anima, bla bla bla. Raid progression is also vastly longer, and usually mid tier mythic guilds progress through months, where TBC raids will be cleared in the first day.

It's not even close.