Hello! I would like to hear from veterans of both Vanilla WoW and TBC who did some amount of end game raiding in both. Possible p.server veterans also welcome, althought the accuracy there is highly questionable.
Basically what I’d like to hear is how, in your opinion, does PvE difficulty compare between Vanilla and TBC.
I have just recently finally killed KT in one night without wipes, and thus consider WoW Classic “finished” for all of my personal purposes. And I have to say Naxx was tuned almost perfectly for my tastes. By no means a pushover, yet we progressed steadily, wiping from zero to maybe 5 times on harder bosses, an entire night on 4H with an epic kill at the very end with just several people standing, and similarly epic finishes on Sapp (<15 people up) and finally KT after 2 nights of wipes with a nerve wrecking race at the end and 5 people standing over his phylactery.
So what can I expect from TBC?
I did some raiding in boh Vanilla and TBC, but my memory is very spotty and frankly, I do not trust it. Maybe you feel yours is more accurate? What was it like?
We don’t know which version of TBC we will get. Its either challenging or a pushover based on that.
Pretty much this.
If they go with progressive patches as it was back then and not the way they went in Vanilla with ‘final’ talents and gear, and yes, that did make a bigger difference than people say it did it’ll be reasonably hard.
Mechanically tho I wouldn’t say TBC is very hard, the mechanics themselves are not super complicated and even many of the bosses called hard back then, think M’uru or however you spell it’s name from Sunwell are more of a numbers game, kinda like Sapph.
But I reckon TBC will be fairly easy, look at how much harder AQ40 was 16 years ago simply because people played the game at a much ‘worse’ way than now.
I mean much less min-maxing than people are doing today, it wasn’t normal back then to “buff log” for days in a row to go to a raid with full WB’s. Many never even used flasks in vanilla either.
So I think the playstyle of ‘todays’ players will mean TBC will be much much easier than I remember it being back then.
I think even pure 2.4.3 is still more challenging than 1.12.1. Raids have some actual mechanics starting early on. In Vanilla, effectively only Naxx and parts of AQ40 have mechanics.
I played vanilla since the very start and raided up and including Cataclysm.
I would say TBC, when rolled out properly, is about the same difficulty as Naxx.
However, by a general perspective, Naxx back in the day was a lot more difficult than it is now, and that mostly had to do with stacking of DPS warriors and worldbuffs really wasn’t a thing back then. It is this that makes Naxx now, relatively easy, ofcourse also a bit due to the many available detailed videos of how to play your class role.
I would say that TBC raiding was more manageable than Naxx raiding, back in the day. And now it will be even easier, due to guides and minmaxing. You will now find your party always getting the drums of war buff, because 3/4th of your guild has picked up leatherworking for it.
No, TBC was not harder than Naxx. Bosses have slightly more mechanics but I don’t think that is gonna matter much.
And Blizz might trivialize all content by pulling a nerf patch as they did with all of classic minus Naxx.
The flip side of that however, means that we get the patch of TBC where lvl60 world buffs no longer apply past lvl63.
Imagine having to still collect Classic world buffs for TBC, that would be awful.
Yes, clearly the release patch will influence this. Though I personally think the chances of us getting anything other than 2.4.3 with gated content are slim to none, simply because it will be the easiest for Blizz to implement and maintain.
I ask this because my memories are as follows: I started raiding seriously at the end of ZG patch, and by then both MC and ZG were well known and farmed easily, I then hopped into a more serious guild in AQ, and they farmed BWL with relative ease, yet they hit an insurmounable wall at HuHuran. Then naxx came out, we did some attempts at Anub and Instructor, found them nigh unkillable and decided to just wait for TBC.
But then in TBC my memory geta spotty. I know for a fact I farmed Kara, Gruul and Mag with laughable ease with some casual guild led by two swedish goths.
Then I remember joining a serious guild when the sunwell dailies were just about to come in, and they were already farming Hyjal and BT with very little problems, apart from some occasional hickups on Teron, the elf council or Illidan.
The as SWP opened, they killed the blue dragon and brutallus in reasonably fast order, and only got stuck on Felmyst, and by then I drifted out of the game again.
You see, from my subjective memory, I feel everything but SWP was actually significantly easier than Naxx. But it might also be that i simple became a better “gamer” and information became more widespread between 2006 ams 2008 or so.
So that’s why I made this. Could it be that everything in TBC before SWP will be even easier than classic?
As everyone else said, it depends entierly on the patch they give us.
T4 and T5 was nerfed many times, except for Karazhan that was buffed.
Magtheridon and Gruul was actually very hard to begin with, until they was nerfed pretty early into tbc.
T5 was heavily bugged, and it took blizzard a long time to adress the bugs, and nerfing the bosses, at the end of TBC, t5 content was pretty easy from all the nerfs.
However, if you are gonna compare TBC to Vanilla, there is a pretty massive difference. Vanilla raids are for the most part short fights with little to no mechanics, in TBC, pretty much every boss have mechanics that needs to be executed properly.
In Classic you could have so high dps that you removed mechanics completly, in TBC that wont be happening as much, thanks to no world buffs. But there might be some cheese strategies happening, looking forward to see all the shenanigans people can come up with to break the encounters 
I took a break from the game after having cleared t5 content, and didnt come back until T6 content was out for a while, so my experience with T6 is that it was pretty easy since all the bugs was already ironed out when i went in there.
Sunwell was pretty hard, but also recieved some nerfs at the end.
Having played Vanilla private servers, i knew from the start that classic would not be a challenge, im more interessted in TBC, cause pretty much every TBC private server have buffed all raids pretty hard.
Experienced guilds, will have no issue with any raid in TBC, there will be a much larger gap in the lower tier guilds.
While vanilla was all about the world buffs, in TBC it’s more about your raid setup.
A perfectly created raid setup vs a raid setup with just random classes thrown in, have almost as big of a difference as a world buffed raid vs no world buffs, so you will see massive differences in difficulty for the guilds who are able to make a perfect raid setup, vs the guilds that just need to take what they can get.
I did not raid in original vanila, and my first raid was Kara, so can’t compare directly. But acording to what we have in classic, like Ragy never reach phase 2 and so on. This will be different, I heard that TBC raids were ment to continue with Naxx difficulty. Remember that you will not have world buffs (drums are much less powerful compared to WB) and can’t stack consumables. So less preparation, but more challenging fights.
People already said all things about raids, i just wanna add another thing to them.
At vanilla we were simply clueless. Just watch some world first videos, you will see rogues without mongoose, mages spamming arcane missiles etc.
ELITIST JERKS EFFECT: Back in time, a bunch of jerks have started this guild and after that their famous forums. It all started at the end of vanilla and developed in tbc and so on. They were actually a guild which put dps in front of everything else. They were great theorycrafters who put numbers into the game, and we wrote, test, learnt at their forums.
The main difference between vanilla and tbc was the “knowledge” of playerbase. Vanilla was just like an introduction, modern raiding has started at tbc with min/maxing, setups, formulas, theorycrafting etc.
Kara, Gruul and Maggy are pretty straightforward raids, not too many difficult strategies. Then it gets progressivly harder. I would say the T4 raids are slightly easier than nax and AQ, I think it was mostly to get used to the new raid sizes. T5 and T6 pretty challenging for the most part allthough you did have lootreaver in BT :). Removal of worldbuffs was a pretty big win as well for tuning of difficulty imo
Void Reaver was in Tempest Keep, not Black Temple
Anyway, at OP: on a personal, performance-based level, TBC is undeniably harder. In Vanilla, aside from a few key roles, most ppl can just plant their feet and tunnel-vision heal or DPS on over 50% of the raid bosses (especially in 40m raids). This is not the case in TBC. There’re a few “joke” bosses, like Void Reaver and Shade of Akama, but almost everywhere else you need just about every raid member to know the strategy for the encounter - much like in Naxxramas.
On a logistical scale, though, TBC is significantly easier than Vanilla, and especially easier than Naxx. A large part of Naxx’s difficulty lies in the ridiculous amount of consumables required, not to mention worldbuffs etc. In TBC, consumables are much cheaper and you don’t need to worry about wbuffs at all. This in turn eases pressure on the raid and its leaders/members, leading to much less burn out, more player retention, which in turn leads to a smoother experience.
In short, I’d say TBC is more performance-driven than Vanilla, so in many ways it’s both easier and harder - but for all the right reasons.
Whoops got him and doomwalker confused…
Doomwalker isn’t a Black Temple boss either. He’s a world boss, like Doom Lord Kazzak. He just happens to wander in Shadowmoon Valley, in the vicinity of BT’s entrance. But he’s not an actual boss from BT. BT bosses are:
- High Warlord Najentus
- Supremus
- Shade of Akama
- Teron Gorefiend
- Gurtogg Bloodboil
- Reliquary of Souls
- Mother Sharaz
- Illidari Council
- Illidan Stormrage
EDIT: Oh and Doomwalker isn’t exactly as much of a joke as Void Reaver is. He has a Chain Lightning that works like C’thun’s infamous Eye Beam, which can cause a lot of havoc especially if your pug isn’t too coordinated or if you have to deal with harassment from the other faction. And flying mounts make it incredibly easier to harass a raid (for example, a few casters with instant spells can literally divebomb on the main tank and obliterate him at the worst time). Add a nasty Enrage (20% HP remaining, +100% physical damage), Earthquakes, Charges, an even nastier Mark of Death (15 min duration) that affects you upon death and instantly kills you if you die near Doomwalker… and you can see how bothersome this boss can be.
Excuse me what? 
Other than that, thank you for your contributions!
It kinda works like Azuregos’ Mark of Frost. Basically, if you die while fighting Doomwalker you get a debuff called Mark of Death that lasts 15 minutes. If you approach Doomwalker with this debuff added, you instantly die, no questions asked. It’s made so as to prevent a GY zerg strategy, much like with Azuregos and the Dragons of Nightmare.
Yeah I know, I remember him always walking in the path towards the entrance. And much harder than the voidreaver. 14 years screw with your memory ^^
On the top of my head difficultywise when progressing my feeling back then was like this:
From easiest to hardest (while not overgearing content):
Trivial: Onyxia / ZG / Magteridon >
Very easy: ZA / AQ20 >
Easy: MC / Kara >
Normal: Gruul / AQ 40 >
Challenging: Naxx / SSC (Vasjh especially) >
Hard: BT >>
Very hard: Sunwell
Think Kael Thas should also be placed at Challenging, Tempest Keep that is. Mount Hyjal was probably normal.
So yeah, when looking at the whole thing TBC equals Naxx.
Well, almost. No one on my server (argent dawn) cleared Naxx, whereas 2 guilds cleared Sunwell before major nerf, 1 on horde and 1 on alliance where I was in.
Alright, so the general consensus seems to be that TBC has about the difficulty of AQ40 and Naxx with SWP being even harder, but without requiring an inordinate amount of consumables.
I can hardly contain my anticipation! TBC Classic can not come soon enough.
Please feel free to contribute further, the more opinions on TBC PvE we get the better.