As one of the older players (age - not experience) dragged into WOW kicking and screaming by my son - who thought I needed another interest … I admit I didn’t play vanilla - and only came into wow at the beginning of Pandaria. However, I played retail through - and it appeared to me that everything got easier and easier with each expansion ( although I admit i’m not a hardcore gamer - more running around picking daisies ). I love Classic - primarily because you have to really think about tactics and things like the thrill of not knowing if you’re going to meet Stitches ambling along the road … I went to Duskwood the other night - on my very lowbie hunter, to find that one of the high level elites didn’t need a group anymore … had no guards - and although not a one shot kill … it was very nearly that.
I think what I am trying to get at … is that with Blizzard’s attempts to recreate things exactly as they were with each expansion - we are losing the magic. I personally loathed outland as it was when I first started, but I know a lot of people love it - however … wouldn’t it be possible to launch the new expansions as they come along - with the same level of difficulty as the original classic. without the nerfs … without all the pretty bought mounts ?
Otherwise … can’t we just go and replay Outland on retail - without all the cost of the cloning etc? (Takes a deep breath - and heads off to do the washing up! )
the reason why so many group quest have been trivialized is that blizz thought there wont be enough players to do them since majority was 60 and going to outland
Huh?! How did the game get harder? It got easier with every expansion.
In Retail you can accidentally pull 4 Mobs and you’re fine - in Classic/TBC you die and learn to be more careful.
In Retail there are no more high-level threats in lower level areas, that intimidate players and make the world feel dangerous.
All the Elite Quest Areas are gone in TBC, allowing more Solo Play and less socializing. Simplifying the game and destroying potential social connections.
No more challenging Class quests that often give key abilities or strong weapons.
Flying Mounts reducing the threat of players getting ganked when doing quests, farming, grinding.
4 Raid difficulties to make sure, everyone can experience PvE Raidcontent, even Solo Players that don’t have to talk to a single other person by joining LFR
There is tons of stuff to do. You just have to look around and do whatever you want. It leaves you open in your decisions and doesn’t themepark you as much as Retail.
There are no Achievements or mandatory Daily Quests that give you the feeling of “i have something to do”. You can do whatever you want, whenever you want.
You don’t feel pressured you have to log-on every day to do your boring Daily Quests.
But TBC/Classic/WotLK has
PvE in all forms
PvP open world and instanced
a meaningful economy
professions that feel useful and have a demand
some Titles, optional grinds or rep farms for Mounts or other special stuff
a better leveling experience than Retail, so playing and leveling alts is also a big thing
a stronger social connection to other players, which makes you just want to hang out chatting sometimes
There are HARDER Options but there are also EASIER Options. I would not consider it harder, when EVERYONE can access and clear LFR or normal dungeons.
Just because the hardest difficulty is more challenging then Classic Raids, doesn’t make the game harder for me.
It’s not harder. The difficulty in PvP is determined by the players themselves. It’s always equally hard because you compete with other players, not AIs.
It may feel harder while playing a more difficult specc, though.
I didn’t only mention points for leveling. But also for doing anything outside of instances. Does the game only consist of instanced PvE and PvP for you?
Because in Classic and TBC, endgame content is a much smaller part than in Retail
The only harder thing in Retail are the higher difficulties in Raids and Dungeons.
The rest of Retail is literally: Follow the sparkly thing, follow the arrow on your head, kill this thing with 1-hit. Good Job Hero, you saved Azeroth.
And is it a problem that there is an entry level of PvE ? You won´t get good gear for doing lfr/normal dungeons.
Retail simply doesn´t have a static difficulty which means it can provide the experience for players on basically every skill level. I don´t know how it is bad. People can simply get better and move on to higher difficulty = better gear. Skill matters in Retail. Skill difference between LFR raiders and HC raiders is huge, just like difference between HC raider and Mythic raider.
Problem on Classic is your skill basically doesn´t matter. If a boss has 1 mechanic to follow and your class has 1 button rotation there is simply no room for improving other than improving your gear.
Nothing you described was difficult, if you think it is, then you’re not one to speak on these matters.
There are easy options in TBC, too. There are ZERO difficult options.
Vanilla/TBC/WotLK are much better games but they are laughably easy in any content that determines character progression.
I actually agree with your other points about choices of things to do being more free in TBC especially in terms of making it feel as though there are more options, in retail you have a checklist and that feels prohibitive. Classic didn’t feel good or free, though, because of meta enslavement and WBs.
Players still find ways to increase their difficulty by pushing themselves with speedruns. Which can get just as hard as high M+.
Of course Classic raiding to execution is easy compared to Retail. But i personally think PvE endgame content is the only thing, that is harder in Retail. Everything else is almost meaningless and very easy and accessible for everyone.
IMO: I also dont like different difficulties. I prefer a raid increasing in difficulty with every Boss and the last Bosses in the Raid are so exclusive, only a small amount of players are able to beat it.
Or one Raid with optional hardmodes (like Ulduar) and increasing difficulty combined
The changes to elites and such was made at the time because most were in Outland, and finishing group quests was nearly impossible unless you pestered guildies to come help you. It was already more difficult late vanilla, and often the solution was jumping unsuspecting 60’s as they passed by. I got recruited a lot that way
I do get your concern tho, it does kill some of the magic. I think for that ‘pristine’ vibe you’d need to stick with the Classic realms like Dottie said. But those have been affected by TBCC going live soon, I have no idea how alive they feel atm.
In that sense I very much hope they will launch some fresh servers, esp for Classic, as for quite a few people it is their preferred era of the game and a new server would mean a new journey.
Looking at the populations on Classic-era realms they may not be popular, but that could just be the cost of cloning. I did a population scan of Pyrewood Classic-era at about 11pm last night and it had less than 100 people online.
Yep I know what you mean. I think the issue is tho that you can’t really compare the two things. Most people want to play in an active, lively community. While I think there wouldn’t have been a better solution, I can also imagine it must have felt like the community got ripped apart for those who are still on Classic servers. That’s not a fun feeling.
A new server would allow for a natural progression and establishment of a community, instead of a ‘heap of those left behind’ stuck in the last phase indefinitely. I’ve never played private servers, but I fully get the appeal of a fresh server, and in this case especially it would allow the people who prefer that era to reexperience it ‘accurately’ instead of the weird mish mash it probably is now.
