Bigger time sink, BC or Retail?

[Thage]

Unless of course you go in late and then the "To-Do" list becomes increasingly daunting and difficult to do depending on of course your goals.

Sort of. Getting caught up late in BC is much easier than, say, 1.13, thanks in large part to how easy it is to assemble a kit of Season gear for honor starting with Season 2 onwards. While Resilience eats up a lot of the stat budget, you can reliably use Season 1 gear onward to skip Heroic gearing and focus on attunements for Karazhan, and depending on your spec (most notably Bear druids), Season gear has strong performers in some slots on equal footing with their analogous tier set. So from Phase 2 on, catchup is probably going to be very easy from at least a gear perspective since you can just get HK-farmed in battlegrounds until you have what you need to get over that initial hump.

Catchups in BC are more problematic from an attunement front, especially if guilds recreate the rampant poaching that went on in BC, as people are going to get sick fast of running the same dungeons to attune new recruits over and over.

[Alvito]

BC has a lot more to do on the front side of things. Once you get past attunements and are able to zone in your effort required drops significantly. If you have the gold you can just raid log if you'd like once you get to the point of raiding. At most you might monkey with badge run heroics.

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does it last the entire expansion? don't attunements for t4/t5 get removed later on effectively causing the same hamster wheel reset?

retail is definitely play the patch. but anyone who thinks classic/TBC isn't play the phase is delusional.

TBC will just be like classic, every couple of months a new phase comes out, people play intensively for a bit, then go back to raidlogging.

difference is raidlogging in TBC is 1 day a week and in retail its 2-3 days a week.

classic at least had the rank14 grind to use as an argument.

It depends on which version of BC they are going with. It was all or nothing for the raid attunements. When they added in the titles they removed the need for the entire raid to need attunement and than you just needed 1 person to be able to open the door for places like Kara that needed a key.

[kail]

BC has a far larger list of things to do compared to current. Everything in tBC from gathering to running a 5 man takes more time than retail. Retail is simply the living version of WoW with updates that keeps the list refreshed.

[Crysis]

Leveling and setting up your character on retail is super fast and easy these days. Not so much on Classic / TBC, its not even a question, older WoW was definitely much bigger time sink if you want to play it properly.

[GreenJesus]

TBC time sync had meaning. it opened up other dungeons and then eventually raids and you progressed that way. retail is just time sink to waste the players time.

Whats the difference between time sink rep grinds in TBC and now? If that happened in retail I bet you $100 youd be on here screaming bloody murder that you need to rep grind to be able to do a dungeon.

[Djuntas]

I say retail because Im also a collector...Mounts, achivements, gold and so on.

In TBC im just gonna ding 70, which sucks, even with boosted 58, and then I just...what grind rep to exalted in 5 mans, do some questing, heroic 5 mans and maybe bother with attune to raid...Idk. Maybe level profession.

On my warrior on classic I think I had like...20 days played total if you include everything like...making gold on my bank alt etc. Also AFK time. And I did clear all raids but AQ40 and naxx, got some OK gear, and had some fun...

[rogoth]

Pretty simple straight forward question, between the two games which do you feel would take more time to keep up with progression? Let's a say a player wanted to be able to keep up with AOTC progression and equivalent in BC, which game would require more time from the player?

in TBC, the only things you needed to 'keep up with' are your consumables, gold for repairs/rerolls and maybe some of the gems you frequently use as sometimes when you get a new item of gear you need to adjust your gems around to get optimal stats (min/max etc), other than that most of it is just voluntary farming for materials to make gold etc.

on retail there are so many stupid systems in place to keep players on the treadmill it's ridiculous, you have weekly quotas you have to hit for points, weekly goals you need to hit for best rewards etc, you're never actually 'done' with anything so in terms of time investment retail is by far the most time consuming of the 2 versions no competition.

[Rusken]

TBC is very front-loaded in its time commitment. Rep grinds and Kara attunement are long grinds that the unprepared will take a couple weeks to get through. Once you're done with those though there's not a lot of "mandatory" activities to stay up to date. You have dailies for rep/gold if you so choose and a Heroic dungeon daily and that's about it. Your gear comes from raids and the later raids attune through the early ones so providing you don't quit mid phase-1 you'll have no issue staying on top of your character's progression.

Or you PvP which is a bigger timesink than Retail since the brackets will be a ton more competitive.

[Kralljin]

retail is definitely play the patch. but anyone who thinks classic/TBC isn't play the phase is delusional.

People were still doing ZG / AQ 20 /Ony / MC / BWL / AQ40 with the pre patch looming , if that's not the opposite of "Play the Patch", then i don't know what is.

[Hellobolis]

People were still doing ZG / AQ 20 /Ony / MC / BWL / AQ40 with the pre patch looming , if that's not the opposite of "Play the Patch", then i don't know what is.

there are always people doing old content in both retail and classic. it's more about the amount of them.

people always say a thing that was great about original TBC is that you had T4, T5 and T6 guilds existing simultaneously. i would be extremely surprised if that happens this time around. all the players will arrive on day1 this time, whereas in original TBC you still had a constant stream of new players that could feed those t4 guilds.

at best you might see legion levels of doing old content in TBC i think. where specific old raids are pugged a lot for that one specific item or to fill up a rep bar or some such. (but just as easily that can turn into boosting or gdkp runs instead. attunement boost definitely going to become a thing)

[Glorious Leader]

Retail.

Older expansions actually allowed you to accomplish everything you needed to and have no reason to be online, giving you opportunities to play other games or spend time with friends and family. Shocking concept.

Current retail offers me no reason to be online as well to a much greater degree actually.

[Kralljin]

there are always people doing old content in both retail and classic. it's more about the amount of them.

A massive misconstruction of the state of affairs.

When people do "old content" on Retail, they're doing it for Mounts, Transmog or Achievements, when people are doing "old" content on Classic / TBC, they're doing it for gear.
There was practically no reason to do Uldir after 8.1 came out, because the assaults / M+ provided equivalent / superior gear, same goes for BoD after 8.2 release.

The catchup provided with each patch simply makes the previous tier unattractive to gear up, not to mention that the itemization itselfs tries to replace every item on each slots with each new tier.

As Ele, i'll still be wearing about 5 Items from T4 in T5, so if i'm missing any of those items once T5 releases, i will still do T4 to actually progress my character until i get those items.

people always say a thing that was great about original TBC is that you had T4, T5 and T6 guilds existing simultaneously. i would be extremely surprised if that happens this time around. all the players will arrive on day1 this time, whereas in original TBC you still had a constant stream of new players that could feed those t4 guilds.

I doubt there will be a massive throng of people progressing through these raids when the next one releases, but that doesn't mean people aren't going to do those raids, simply because they might still need an Item or do it on Alts.

[Hellobolis]

A massive misconstruction of the state of affairs.

When people do "old content" on Retail, they're doing it for Mounts, Transmog or Achievements, when people are doing "old" content on Classic / TBC, they're doing it for gear.
There was practically no reason to do Uldir after 8.1 came out, because the assaults / M+ provided equivalent / superior gear, same goes for BoD after 8.2 release.

The catchup provided with each patch simply makes the previous tier unattractive to gear up, not to mention that the itemization itselfs tries to replace every item on each slots with each new tier.

As Ele, i'll still be wearing about 5 Items from T4 in T5, so if i'm missing any of those items once T5 releases, i will still do T4 to actually progress my character until i get those items.

I doubt there will be a massive throng of people progressing through these raids when the next one releases, but that doesn't mean people aren't going to do those raids, simply because they might still need an Item or do it on Alts.

i like how you accuse me of misconstruing things and then conveniently leave out the comparison to legion, where there was a peak in doing old content for gear.

[loras]

Pretty simple straight forward question, between the two games which do you feel would take more time to keep up with progression? Let's a say a player wanted to be able to keep up with AOTC progression and equivalent in BC, which game would require more time from the player?

I think that retail takes more time, purely due to the gribding of repeatedly running various difgiculties of raids and dungeons. TBC does provide plenty of options of wasting time in a fun way though.

[Kralljin]

i like how you accuse me of misconstruing things and then conveniently leave out the comparison to legion, where there was a peak in doing old content for gear.

I don't exactly see AP or Legendaries as the thing, because those items / currencies could be acquired from virtually any piece of content.
You're not getting Onslaught belt or TF by raiding AQ20, ZG or any raid for that matter, you gotta go MC.

The difference should frankly be obvious for anyone that knows what i'm talking about, putting aside that those were merely symptons of the extremely broken Legendary / AP system at the start of Legion.

People didn't do Nighthold / EN anymore once Antorus was out, because the system was redesigned that such actions were no longer necessary to acquire additional AP / Legendaries.

[Utrrabbit]

Retail makes you do your daily chores and homework before the vague, ephemeral concept of "fun" even theoretically introduces itself. TBC, on the other hand, is consistently fun throughout.

So, which do you think is a bigger time sink?

Fun is subjective. Personally TBC was the expac I had the least fun in as it was boring. It was the only xpac I unsubbed for.

[Crimson Spears]

I think it comes down to playstyle to be honest. If you want to clear all of tbc but only do normal/heroic on live then tbc is the bigger time sink as your going to have to do harder content or gear longer then your used to.

If you do mythic on live tbc is far.far less of a time sink as you quickly grow out of content till your simply doing raids.

[Hellobolis]

I don't exactly see AP or Legendaries as the thing, because those items / currencies could be acquired from virtually any piece of content.
You're not getting Onslaught belt or TF by raiding AQ20, ZG or any raid for that matter, you gotta go MC.

The difference should frankly be obvious for anyone that knows what i'm talking about, putting aside that those were merely symptons of the extremely broken Legendary / AP system at the start of Legion.

People didn't do Nighthold / EN anymore once Antorus was out, because the system was redesigned that such actions were no longer necessary to acquire additional AP / Legendaries.

people did ursoc at least half the expansion to get that trinket. and that jim boss at least as long.

but my point remains: there wont be t4 and t5 guilds doing t4 and t5 as their primary content then t6 is out. most people will get these super good items while t4 and t5 is current content, which it will be for months. only the relatively small amount that didn't get it while it was current content will do the old raids, largely outside their guilds in pugs/boost/gdkp runs.

now there is no denying that TBC has many more of such good old content items, but between the time you have to farm when its current content and the get it and forget it nature of the items, i'd wager the eternal hunt for titanforges in legion wouldn't make the % of players doing it all that different.

and if you count the people doing it for the artifact quests and the like (which a lot of people here seem to think "doesn't count" for playtime :S), legion probably just wins.

i know i spend A LOT of time in late legion on getting a lot of artifact skins/mage towers done. at that point in the TBC lifecycle people will just be twiddling their thumbs waiting for WotLK/new servers.

[Mojo03]

They’re both a huge waste of time lol

So many better things to spend your time on.

[Kralljin]

people did ursoc at least half the expansion to get that trinket. and that jim boss at least as long.

Solely due to Titanforging, remove that and those trinkets would've been useless far more quickly.

If you want to argue that Titanforging is equalivant to the Classic / TBC itemization, i'm going to end the discussion right here.

but my point remains: there wont be t4 and t5 guilds doing t4 and t5 as their primary content then t6 is out. most people will get these super good items while t4 and t5 is current content, which it will be for months. only the relatively small amount that didn't get it while it was current content will do the old raids, largely outside their guilds in pugs/boost/gdkp runs.

I think there will still be guilds that do SSC / TK once T6 is out, similiar to how guilds did MC / BWL after AQ release.

They phase them out eventually, but the cutoff is far from clean as it in retail where basically everybody drops a raid after the next one launches.

i'd wager the eternal hunt for titanforges in legion wouldn't make the % of players doing it all that different.

Wrote the paragraph above before i read that, now i'll stick to that.

Have a nice day.