I'm hooked on WOW O_O

[Qlix]

I don't mean to sound like an elitist but peope who talk about forming pugs and clearing content in a few hours clearly don't clear heroic content.

Yes the game is much easier than it it used to be, but I find that most people who lose interest aren't really doing competitive raiding, an by competitive I mean top 100 in the country. The percentage of players with heroic end boss kills (while content is current) proves this as well. Yes the game is geared more towards casuals, but most casuals still never get heroic clears. All they've done is make the game more viable for every type of player - casual? K here's looking for raid and some good loot. Serious? K here is content you can clear with a group of like minded pals and some better loot. Hard core? Here's your heroic mode with the best possible loot.

Sure you can go kill the same bosses as I can, but my loot is better, and my kill tool more effort, time, and coordination than yours did.

All this is fine. People come people go. WoW won't die until they stop putting out content. People will leave, content will be released, people will come back to see the changes and then leave again. It's the cycle. It will always be.

 

[RedDragonXXX]

I wish I started playing WoW back when it first came out as everyone I know describes Vanilla experience as Epic. Sadly I didn't know much about the game until I got to try EQ2 and started liking the MMO concept.

By then I started hearing about WoW as a game and how addictive it was and that I should stay away... One night I was browsing the net and the WoW add popped up with the free trial and I was like "what the hell, might as well see what all the fuss is about" and rest is history

Well played Blizzard

 

[RedDragonXXX]

I don't mean to sound like an elitist but peope who talk about forming pugs and clearing content in a few hours clearly don't clear heroic content.

Yes the game is much easier than it it used to be, but I find that most people who lose interest aren't really doing competitive raiding, an by competitive I mean top 100 in the country.

Heroic raids never appealed to me. I can see why Blizzard did it, but I never liked it. Yea you get better loot on heroic (by better I mean same loot with higher stats), but for me it was always much more about the actual encounter. So when I kill a boss on normal I don't have much more incentive to kill it on heroic as there is virtually no difference in the actual fight. They might have new ability and hit harder, but does that really make up for the fact that you're still fighting the same boss?

 

[Qlix]

I wish I started playing WoW back when it first came out as everyone I know describes Vanilla experience as Epic. Sadly I didn't know much about the game until I got to try EQ2 and started liking the MMO concept.

By then I started hearing about WoW as a game and how addictive it was and that I should stay away... One night I was browsing the net and the WoW add popped up with the free trial and I was like "what the hell, might as well see what all the fuss is about" and rest is history

Well played Blizzard

I was the guy that refused to play and made fun of those that did. One day my roomate offered to buy the game and pay for a month after I played the trial if I liked it. I upgraded to full version on day 2 of my 10 day trial..... :knock:

 

[Qlix]

Heroic loch king was nowhere near the same fight. 0 lights and anubarak were not the same.

Yes most add an ability, but most of the time that ability changes the entire complexity of an encounter making everything else (although unchanged) much more difficult.

 

[Qlix]

Btw full blown thread necro successful! Yay me lol

 

[fornoob]

The problem is that there is no challenge in normal versions: I stopped right at the end of naxx40 and came back to WoW with ECC (most epic level design for a raid, I have to admit ).
Then ICC: I still was stuffed with 200 gear for the main parts and each wing got cleared in one night, as often as they opened them. Arthas in 10man normal was a joke. Not the same fight in epic 25 as you said but still nowhere close to the difficulty of a Kel'Thuzad 40
An other point is that bosses now can be discovered on the test servers which didn't exist at the time (or I didn't know about them) and it really take a lot of pleasure off the server first

 

[RedDragonXXX]

LoL

I started reading through the thread again when it came back up and almost logged in to WoW the other day as I still have sub until May since I bought 12-month one to get D3

 

[Qlix]

You bring up a good point: ptr testing.

Are the bosses really as easy as they appear to be? Or is it that most top end guilds require ptr testing. So they've already been pulling bosses long before it is released for play on live.

 

[fornoob]

I did stop again during cataclysm: bosses were tried and tried again by some guilds. So when they get released, there is no new stuff, they kick its *** almost immediatly.

But since I didn't do any ptr during wotlk or cataclysm, I can tell you: bosses are extremely easy regarding the skills required or the strategy, you don't have to absorb 10 pages of strategy for a single fight and for your single class as it was the case for anub rekhan for example. Most of the bosses now have 2 or 3 maximum spells that will concern you.
Bosses are a lot more "gearcheck" than "skillproofed". Let's make me clear: you couldn't finish a vanilla's boss without the required gear, but the require gear didn't give you the pass as easily as it does now.

 

[Qlix]

Again that's what heroic mode is for though, you're comparing vanilla fights to normal mode fights. Unless you're in the 99th percentile you don't clear those instances in the first month of release

 

[Kylesims]

Again that's what heroic Morris for though, you're comparing vanilla fights to normal mode fights. Unless you're in the 99th percentile you don't clear those instances in the first month of release

Ehhh.. I'd disagree. I played on an RP server that, more often then not, had 'new content' down within the first month. Two or three months, tops, starting as far back as ICC.

I think what people are alluding to, is that now, -everything- is easier. Yeah, they have heroic modes.. But the heroic mode of today, is no where near what the Vanilla stuff was. Nothing, at all, in currentday WoW is as hard as Vanilla and BC stuff was. Cata was a step in the right direction, to get back to the difficult stuff.. And then Deathwing was a joke, leading right into the comedy that is MoP.

 

[Firey_chasm]

Heroic modes are a good idea, but wotlk heroics were a joke! (cant talk for cata or mop as havent even bought them, so willing to accept they are crazy hard if people say so )

icc 25man heroic was nearly clearable most weeks so long as you got in a good pug (although rare to clear every boss with a pug).

The fact any heroic boss can die to any non dedicated raiding guild is a joke. If you sent anything but the best of the best into naxx40 they wiped faster than you could blink, even on trash

I dont remember any boss causing so many people to think it was impossible as the 4 horseman in naxx40. If memory serves me right it took 3months purely on that 1 fight (ignoring the time it took to even get there in the 1st place) for a world 1st. Or then the wonders of c'thun pre nerf which no-one managed to kill.

and also, ptr existed for naxx40, it didnt help people clear it faster!

One thing I dont miss though is the exact requirements for classes you have to take to raids. 8 tanks, 16 healers as a minimum for 4 horsemen and back then paladin tanks didnt exist, DKs obviously didnt and tbh druid tanks were a rarity (I remember we had 1 but I cant remember how effective they were, think they had tonnes of life, but the rest of their defensive stats were abit crap, so they werent that viable as they just drained healers mana too much), and also tanks dps just didnt exist, unlike wotlk where it wasnt uncommon to see a tank at the top of the damage meter. I certainly managed it alot in naxx40 as DK tank, my brother also was regularly very high as a pala tank in icc.

It was always annoying logging on 1 night hoping to have a full evening powering away trying to take down the new boss, to find out your Xth Tank, or Xth healer wasnt around and therefore it was just another BWL/MC/AQ speed run to gear up alts, as every other naxx boss you could stand a chance against was dead.

 

[mvp4him3]

Heroic modes are a good idea, but wotlk heroics were a joke! (cant talk for cata or mop as havent even bought them, so willing to accept they are crazy hard if people say so )

icc 25man heroic was nearly clearable most weeks so long as you got in a good pug (although rare to clear every boss with a pug).

The fact any heroic boss can die to any non dedicated raiding guild is a joke. If you sent anything but the best of the best into naxx40 they wiped faster than you could blink, even on trash

I dont remember any boss causing so many people to think it was impossible as the 4 horseman in naxx40. If memory serves me right it took 3months purely on that 1 fight (ignoring the time it took to even get there in the 1st place) for a world 1st. Or then the wonders of c'thun pre nerf which no-one managed to kill.

and also, ptr existed for naxx40, it didnt help people clear it faster!

One thing I dont miss though is the exact requirements for classes you have to take to raids. 8 tanks, 16 healers as a minimum for 4 horsemen and back then paladin tanks didnt exist, DKs obviously didnt and tbh druid tanks were a rarity (I remember we had 1 but I cant remember how effective they were, think they had tonnes of life, but the rest of their defensive stats were abit crap, so they werent that viable as they just drained healers mana too much), and also tanks dps just didnt exist, unlike wotlk where it wasnt uncommon to see a tank at the top of the damage meter. I certainly managed it alot in naxx40 as DK tank, my brother also was regularly very high as a pala tank in icc.

It was always annoying logging on 1 night hoping to have a full evening powering away trying to take down the new boss, to find out your Xth Tank, or Xth healer wasnt around and therefore it was just another BWL/MC/AQ speed run to gear up alts, as every other naxx boss you could stand a chance against was dead.

Ahh I remember those days when all you had to do was faceroll. The new Mists expansion raids are somewhat harder than Cata and I do kind of like the whole challenge mode they brought in. Should start pushing Mists heroic raids a lot more next week in my guild. What server is everyone on? I am Horde on Zul'jin.

 

[Janus67]

Heroic modes are a good idea, but wotlk heroics were a joke! (cant talk for cata or mop as havent even bought them, so willing to accept they are crazy hard if people say so )

icc 25man heroic was nearly clearable most weeks so long as you got in a good pug (although rare to clear every boss with a pug).

The fact any heroic boss can die to any non dedicated raiding guild is a joke. If you sent anything but the best of the best into naxx40 they wiped faster than you could blink, even on trash

I dont remember any boss causing so many people to think it was impossible as the 4 horseman in naxx40. If memory serves me right it took 3months purely on that 1 fight (ignoring the time it took to even get there in the 1st place) for a world 1st. Or then the wonders of c'thun pre nerf which no-one managed to kill.

and also, ptr existed for naxx40, it didnt help people clear it faster!

One thing I dont miss though is the exact requirements for classes you have to take to raids. 8 tanks, 16 healers as a minimum for 4 horsemen and back then paladin tanks didnt exist, DKs obviously didnt and tbh druid tanks were a rarity (I remember we had 1 but I cant remember how effective they were, think they had tonnes of life, but the rest of their defensive stats were abit crap, so they werent that viable as they just drained healers mana too much), and also tanks dps just didnt exist, unlike wotlk where it wasnt uncommon to see a tank at the top of the damage meter. I certainly managed it alot in naxx40 as DK tank, my brother also was regularly very high as a pala tank in icc.

It was always annoying logging on 1 night hoping to have a full evening powering away trying to take down the new boss, to find out your Xth Tank, or Xth healer wasnt around and therefore it was just another BWL/MC/AQ speed run to gear up alts, as every other naxx boss you could stand a chance against was dead.

I never ended up clearing/beating Lich King 25man Heroic, very few guilds did on my server (Stormscale), and it definitely wasn't pugged. I did it in 10man (was a lot easier/easier to have 10 great raiders than 25 good ones)

 

[fornoob]

I certainly managed it alot in naxx40 as DK tank

Hmmm.... I didn't understand something: dk? naxx 40?

But anyway yes: one of the thoughest challenge in vanilla was, outside the bosses, to have 40 guys skilled enough to not permawipe ^^'.

Challenge remains the same nowadays (I guess, I no longer play?) to get 25 man

 

[Qlix]

This is the same debate that exists today: 10 vs 25. It much easier to find 10 skilled players, to build a strat, to organize, to class stack than it is in 25 man. Same thing can be said with 40 vs 25.

We get all caught up in comparing expansion difficulties we forget all the things that have changed and take all these things in the context of the expansion. The world itself has changed in the last 15 years. Society has changed, of course WoW changes. We forget about all of the tools available to us now for wow that we didn't have then. Sites like elitistjerks, wowhead... Even YouTube strat videos. Simcraft tools, Rawr, the now extinct cheeky's spreadsheet. We have addons today that basically play the game for us, we are flooded with information on our screen. The game has changed because the information we have has changed.

 

[fornoob]

When I came back to Wow, a friend of mine showed me its screen while raiding: a nightmare, I don't know how he was able to see anything with all those add ons!!

The only add on I used was to rearrange my spell bar to make it shorter and easier to read

There was so much stuff on its screen it was looking like matrix

The best part was when he did ask me how I managed to tank bosses in HM that easily without having the timers and CDs on my screen... "I look at bosses animations, did you notice they are all different for each spell?"
He didn't even notice it

 

[Firey_chasm]

Hmmm.... I didn't understand something: dk? naxx 40?

woops, caught my haxxoring through vanilla *naxx 25

good point on the addons, the community help has progressed massively over the years.

The most complicated I ever got was an ever changing Ui for my hunter based on when I could use abilities, ie a big button for mongoose and raptor strike appeared in the middle of my screen when I could use them for pvp. Rapid fire woudl appear when rdy to be used. HM would appear if my current target didnt have it on etc.

Took a long time to code that 1 up, got bored of maintaining it on every patch release though so then just reverted to default with only a few minor mods like dmg meter

 

[Qlix]

The reality is though that vanilla was much more modable than current wow is because everything was open. Now everything is locked out and restricted. We just have more developers to come up with good stuff.

Your friend whose ui looked like "matrix" was clearly doing it wrong. Characteristics of a a great ui are that it's clean, organized, full of information when you need it, while still maintaining a clear viewing area.