Is Classic too easy?

[arkanon]

I mean difficulty directly correlates with the skill of the players.

To use dark souls as an example (since that's the game where people can't shut up about difficulty),when Dark Souls 1 came out (or even Demon Souls),it was really hard for a lot of players. Now it's considered to be a piss easy game. Yes,players were worse then,but that did mean that the game was hard for that period of time

No - its not. It is still considered a hard game, although some of the newer iterations are considered "harder", but some are considered easier, like Nioh and Bloodborne.

[Specialka]

No it wasn't. Players were just worse. The game wasn't any harder.

Check vanilla boss mecanics and class rotations. Now, check retail boss mecanis and class rotations (and not in the LFR version of course). Now dare repeat what you said.

[xalenthas]

Maybe the original question should be expanded to:

Is Classic too easy AND does it matter?

Because seriously, if so many people are still playing t then obviously it matters not a jot ...

[Kaneiac]

No it wasn't. Players were just worse. The game wasn't any harder.

This is kind of a perspective thing though. To a 400lb guy pull-ups are hard but to a gym rat they're easy. It can be both or either.

[Daymanmb]

The irony here is palpable.

But yeah, sure, all you have to do is get to max level, start unlocking the cloak and farming mats to increase that, farm some mats for essences and corruptions, farm the right gear, run some M+ to get your ilvl up to snuff, and hope like hell your heroic group is a mythic geared farm group. So long as all of those obviously easy tasks are completed, and everyone carries you through, you'll be fine! I mean its not like anyone will ask for achievements or look at your raider.io, which you will obviously have automatically when you hit max level.

Lol you do think heroic is hard Not one thing you mentioned makes heroic raiding hard. Youve only listed the gatekeeping and none of that is hard, just time consuming.

Is AQ suddenly hard because of everything you need to do to open the gates? Easy answer, nope.

[Super Kami Dende]

Check vanilla boss mecanics and class rotations. Now, check retail boss mecanis and class rotations (and not in the LFR version of course). Now dare repeat what you said.

Dare me to repeat it? Vanilla rotations and boss mechanics are a fucking joke. Classic is a joke. It's difficulty is a joke. People that think Vanilla are hard must do some mighty mental gymnastics.

[Specialka]

Dare me to repeat it? Vanilla rotations and boss mechanics are a fucking joke. Classic is a joke. It's difficulty is a joke. People that think Vanilla are hard must do some mighty mental gymnastics.

So we are in agreement and I misunderstood your post. Or quoted the wrong person.

[kamuimac]

20+ years of gaming experience in 2004? how does any of the video games from 1984 correlate to skill in World of Warcraft? it's not a difficult topic to understand, other than that you seem incapable of reading, read the whole post and stop straw maning. at no point did I claim classic was hard, but claiming that stuff like that doesnt factor in to how easy it is, would be delusional.

well he is not wrong - at least not completly

for most people WoW was not their first mmorpg - for me vanilla was always "easy " mmorpg :

a)no xp loss upon death
b)no equip dropping from you when you die
c)mobs drops were not shared with whole world - most people dont even know what ninjaing meant - pre wow ninjaing meant bunch of people runing around you and desperately trying to click on mob body / loot that felt out of dead mob around you , to steal your loot.
d)being able to change your talents for gold - some games didnt let you - so 1 wrong pick and you could have as well start from level 1
e)having frames that tracked health of party members instead having to indivicualy click each person to check

ye vanilla when came out was very easy mmorpg compared to others of that time

[Tsyplenk]

Hey guys, I just one shot all of AQ40 with my guild and we were all naked. We didn't use any strats or comms and even went in with 10 people lmao. We just walked in and the boss died. Just don't ask me for proof. Dude, trust me is enough.

No, Classic is not hard, anyone that thinks that is living in a fantasy world. All these exaggerate claims are hilarious, though. With no proof as well, as per.

I'll just claim I one shot all retail bosses and then say anyone that asks for logs is a try hard.

[Nite92]

No it wasn't. Players were just worse. The game wasn't any harder.

That is just not true. Difficulty is subjective.

[facefist]

No it wasn't. Players were just worse. The game wasn't any harder.

Getting to moon wasn't hard. Engineers were just worse. Building an airplane wasn't hard. Finding a cure for diseases that are joke nowadays wasn't hard.

With your logic most things in the past weren't hard, people were just worse at doing them. Gladly most people understand that difficulty is subjective.

And yes, classic is a joke nowadays.

[Kaver]

Short answer: Yes

Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssss

[arkanon]

well he is not wrong - at least not completly

for most people WoW was not their first mmorpg - for me vanilla was always "easy " mmorpg :

a)no xp loss upon death
b)no equip dropping from you when you die
c)mobs drops were not shared with whole world - most people dont even know what ninjaing meant - pre wow ninjaing meant bunch of people runing around you and desperately trying to click on mob body / loot that felt out of dead mob around you , to steal your loot.
d)being able to change your talents for gold - some games didnt let you - so 1 wrong pick and you could have as well start from level 1
e)having frames that tracked health of party members instead having to indivicualy click each person to check

ye vanilla when came out was very easy mmorpg compared to others of that time

This is entirely accurate. It was always the easy MMO, when compared to its competition. This isnt a bad thing. As wows success grew, it started to attract larger portions of the mmo playerbase, and they obviously wanted harder content. Although the difficulty did increase over TBC and Wrath, it really started to jump ahead from Cata onward, with the introduction of Mythic allowing them to go full into the "difficult" content.

WoW maintained most of the things that you mentioned that allowed it to appeal to the crowd hoping for an easier game, but obviously those who wanted classic difficulty raiding didnt really have an avenue, until LFR was introduced. Classic allows for those LFR difficulty players to partake in raiding without the "stigma" attached to being an "LFR" raider. And it really shows - i see the same apologists and excuses from those saying classic raiding is hard, as those saying LFR is "real" raiding.

[Tsyplenk]

Getting to moon wasn't hard. Engineers were just worse. Building an airplane wasn't hard. Finding a cure for diseases that are joke nowadays wasn't hard.

With your logic most things in the past weren't hard, people were just worse at doing them. Gladly most people understand that difficulty is subjective.

And yes, classic is a joke nowadays.

A more accurate example from your list would be if we went back in time to the first moon landing, how hard and time consuming would it be in comparison? I'd say most of the things they were worrying about and extensively testing would be trivial nowadays.

Same applies to Classic, it's always been easy. It was just new and everyone was inexperienced with other problems which don't exist today (fps/internet/addon problems). People have learned the MMO and done fights 100 times harder than Rag/Nef/C'Thun etc. They're a cakewalk in comparison.

[facefist]

A more accurate example from your list would be if we went back in time to the first moon landing, how hard and time consuming would it be in comparison? I'd say most of the things they were worrying about and extensively testing would be trivial nowadays.

Same applies to Classic, it's always been easy. It was just new and everyone was inexperienced with other problems which don't exist today (fps/internet/addon problems). People have learned the MMO and done fights 100 times harder than Rag/Nef/C'Thun etc. They're a cakewalk in comparison.

Most of the things achieved by human kind would be easy to replicate with the collective knowledge we have gathered. If that is how we define difficulty then there are very few things that are difficult, because the experience will make those things trivial in a few years. Same applies (to a lesser extent) to classic raids.

By your logic nothing is hard, we are just inexperienced. Which is true if that is your definition of difficulty.

[Chrno]

Classic raiding is super duper easy when you look at encounter design. No question about that...

however, i actually enjoy and maybe even prefer the way classic has played out for me and the guild im in. No need to bench people because of a spec or because you know he's not such a great player. Everyone can join and for a friends and family guild that's really a big bonus. Sure it was fun chasing mythic server first kills when i was still playing retail back in legion but i have found out being able to play with 39 friends is equally as rewarding if not more.

also, being able to clear content feels rewarding. There is no heroic / mythic or any other superficial difficulty to clear when you finished the content. You are done, when you are done. Being able to do different raids every week keeps things fresh

[Tsyplenk]

Most of the things achieved by human kind would be easy to replicate with the collective knowledge we have gathered. If that is how we define difficulty then there are very few things that are difficult, because the experience will make those things trivial in a few years. Same applies (to a lesser extent) to classic raids.

By your logic nothing is hard, we are just inexperienced. Which is true if that is your definition of difficulty.

Mmm no, you're missing the point. Vanilla was "challenging" because of the reasons I mentioned and because people were new at the game and video games in general weren't as mainstream, it was not a difficult game, it was a learning curve. As it was so easy and people have improved, even very casual and bad players can clear content with the aid of time.

If I was saying nothing was hard and we are inexperienced, then it would apply to every fight in the game, given the same amount of time. Yet, if people were to go back and try faceroll Heroic Lich King or Ragnaros in the same manner as Classic, they wouldn't even get 1 minute into the fight.

[d00mh4cker]

Why do i see people thinking only 34% have cleared AQ40 so far?

More like 75%.
10718 guilds out of 14276 have cleared AQ40 so far.
https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zon...ogress&boss=-1

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I mean difficulty directly correlates with the skill of the players.

To use dark souls as an example (since that's the game where people can't shut up about difficulty),when Dark Souls 1 came out (or even Demon Souls),it was really hard for a lot of players. Now it's considered to be a piss easy game. Yes,players were worse then,but that did mean that the game was hard for that period of time

Nah. I was struggling with Dark Souls 3 when i played it, it was quite hard. Only played it a couple of hours and dropped it. No one is struggling with wow.

But I have friends who havent played any MMO at all except some vanilla during the beta in 2005. They went on to consol gaming and now came back for classic wow. Game is super easy for them, they have cleared all raids so far first evening they entered it. They still enjoy the game but the difficulty is a joke.

Majority of wow players back in the day were really bad, just look up old videos of top guilds. They sucked.
All games blizzard have released since wow 2005 has been super casual. They cater to the big mass. It was never hard.

- - - Updated - - -

If they re-release Ny'Alotha 3 years from now and give all of the players most of the end of expansion gear, skills, itemizations, and talents then yea... it will be cleared by a thousand guilds pretty quickly.

I dont think so. the raid has been nerfed to the ground for many weeks now and still guilds struggle. Before the nerfs only like 1% of the guilds cleared it.
All the tactics is out there even before it releases due to testing.

[OrcsRLame]

Most of the things achieved by human kind would be easy to replicate with the collective knowledge we have gathered. If that is how we define difficulty then there are very few things that are difficult, because the experience will make those things trivial in a few years. Same applies (to a lesser extent) to classic raids.

By your logic nothing is hard, we are just inexperienced. Which is true if that is your definition of difficulty.

Difficulty in raids can be measured objectively. What's the expected fight duration if everyone plays well? How long do healers have to react to damage spikes? How many mechanics are there? What is the reaction time necessary to execute said mechanics? What is the penalty for failing to execute the mechanics? How many people can be dead while meeting the numbers checks?

Sure, there may be some level of subjectivity. An individual raider can struggle more or less with certain mechanics, but you can approach objectivity by aggregating the failure rate for individual mechanics.

In literally all of those aspects, retail bosses are light years ahead of classic.

[arkanon]

Difficulty in raids can be measured objectively. What's the expected fight duration if everyone plays well? How long do healers have to react to damage spikes? How many mechanics are there? What is the reaction time necessary to execute said mechanics? What is the penalty for failing to execute the mechanics? How many people can be dead while meeting the numbers checks?

Sure, there may be some level of subjectivity. An individual raider can struggle more or less with certain mechanics, but you can approach objectivity by aggregating the failure rate for individual mechanics.

In literally all of those aspects, retail bosses are light years ahead of classic.

Agree with this - its very much objective, but does incorporate a lot of different factors, even for each individual mechanic:

- How dangerous is the mechanic
- How easy is it to avoid
- How frequently does the mechanic occur
- How many other mechanics are happening at the same time / either side
- How tight is the enrage / tuning? This is important in the situation where you do lose a player.
- How long is the fight in general
- What tools do classes have to deal with the mechanic - this is one situation where retail offers many classes high mitigation defensives that can sometimes avoid the damage.

Im sure we could break it down even more, but thats what i think is important when looking at difficulty. Two bosses exist - both have a one shot frontal cone. In both situations, if caught in the fire, you will instantly die.

Boss one:
- This is the only mechanic the boss has - other than that it is straight up tank n spank.
- It has a 4 second cast time
- It always casts on the active tank, and the boss locks into place at the start of the cast, giving the tank 4 seconds to move to the side.
- The ability is cast once/minute
- The encounter is typically downed in 90-120 seconds.
- The enrage occurs at 8 minutes

Boss two:
- Boss has 6 core mechanics - 4 need to be dealt with by everyone, 2 are tank only, and 2 are healer only.
- Cast time is 2.5 second
- The boss targets a random player, and reacts to their movement, never locking in place. This player must find a pillar that was dropped by another player (one of the other 5 mechanics) and use it to break LOS for the breath.
- The ability is cast once every 30 seconds
- The encounter typically lasts 8-10 minutes
- The enrage is 11 minutes.

Both encounters could be described as having "a 1 shot dragon breath mechanic", but when you look at the full picture, it is extremely clear which one is objectively more difficult.