I play since vanilla and back then we had a somewhat meaningful progression. Not the super-early vanilla ofc, but the second half so to say.
Let me explain: first you were going into dungeons, like Dire maul, UBRS etc. It was done through gathering people through posting msgs in local in a city, smth like “LF2M UBRS”… etc. After that you had lower-tier raids like ZG for measly 20 people. Then ofc the first “real” raid would be 40-man Molten Core and BWL after that and Naxx at the end of vanilla.
The core game had so much content in it. Sure it wasn’t there from the start, but the core thing is that while top guilds raided the latest content, others progressed through the previous and it was not like you could just grind [insert a word] and just have the gear to raid w/e is just released.
Only few people, me included, could achieve getting the best or close-to-best gear via PvP. Getting Grand Marshall (rank14) in the old honor system was a hellish grind, which I did, so I know what I’m talking about. Having top gear from PvP instantly promoted me to the top of dmg meters in my guild’s raids. It was fun and rewarding and made others jealous, but like in a good way.
Anyway, now, instead of “content” we have M+ which partly consists of old dungeons and promotes grinding above all else. I won’t mention toxicity which is also present, but it did spoil the community.
And while there are surely other “systems” in game, currently, M+ grind is the only way to progress gear-wise. Every day I see people with item levels above 410 who didn’t kill a single raid boss. Raiding, instead of being the top-tier activity that was always the core of this whole game, is now a small unnecessary addition for those who’s into the “storyline” mostly. Raid tuning being also horribly done with normal difficulty being like the old LFR, heroic like old normal and mythic… mythic is like old heroic, maybe even easier for today’s casual audience. Compare it to original WotLK raids for example. I reference to them cause it was my hardcore raiding time in the game, we even got the Tribute to dedicated insanity done, way be4 the modern plethora of helper addons.
Raids are immensely harder to manage than an M+ run, eps at the top difficulties. Yet, the rewards are… the same?! Same item lvls for the top stuff? Blizz like srsly? This is your solution?
These days on my main I hardly find any motivation to join another M+ run. It is tedious and exhausting to even find a group with your “brilliant” group finder tool that was already outdated like 2 expansions ago. Then when you find a spot or fill in your own party, you go to the instance… yeah, the same one you do probably every day. You know it inside out, some1 seems like they don’t… whatever, pull through, get zero loot, like always, back to the step one. Honestly, it make me wanna vomit. WoW degraded to this?
Later in the week get into the raid with your guild, all your gear is already better than anything that can drop from the content you’re doing, so the raid is more like a runway show where you get to flex what you’ve gathered during those M+ runs.
Of course, being alliance “helps” - horde has about 80% of the playerbase so it’s hard to even have a full guild group for a raid these days, always a bunch of PuGs from another faction.
All this combined makes me wanna question - what am I still doing here? And indeed, what? I think I’ll drop WoW for now. It just doesn’t worth my time anymore, it doesn’t give any satisfaction. I wrote this to help some lonely Blizz employee, who will probably read it, to realize where they made a wrong turn. Why WoW is losing players? Why your last expansion did so poor on sales? This is why. Keep on destroying your own game, apparently, constantly destroying working class specs cause some noobs whined about them and making pink cloaks for transmong is your top priority.
there is already thread about mythic+ loot
so you think playing/afking 14-24+h a day for vanilla grandmarshall was better for the game contrary to do rated bgs and more or less aquire it via skill?
same for m+, the problem is the amount of raid drops is still nerfed compared to pre SL and the raid is overtuned for the gear it drops, at least for hc and not many do mythic also because of the fixed size which isnt great for normal guilds.
Are you saying the current raids are easier than usual? If so I am curious, what raids were harder than the current raids (outside of Shadowlands expansion)?
first tier in DF is without doubt significantly easier then anything since first raid in Legion.
that said those raids are still a lot harder then anything before cata/mop.
raiding should be still 20-30 % easier imo and have much less deadly overlaping mechanics.
wolk era raid tuning was ideal imo . other perfect tier was stuff like siege of orgrimar with with how vp upgrades and wf worked to nerf over time that raids
Not according to the numbers.
From a mechanical perspective? Maybe (I honestly don´t know), but not overall difficulty it seems!!
During something like Azshara’s Eternal Palace players had access to
- Titanforging (I think they first removed it in corruption patch? Correct me if I am wrong)
- Azerite armor gear which provided passive DPS / HPS which was impossible for bad players to screw up
- Essences which also provided possible passive DPS / HPS, again good for awful players
- Benthic gear, which also enabled outgearing of content and even more possible passive DPS / HPS for bad players (maybe the passives were not BiS, but for bad players they were an option? I honestly can´t remember the system that well).
All these things were good for bad players. Now we basically only have M+ to outgear content, which is why I jokingly called M+ the borrowed power of DF. The problem is that bad WoW players basically can´t do their DPS / HPS rotations at all. Their DPS is absolutely atrocious, and there is not enough gear in the world of Dragonflight to make up for this. This is not meant as an insult to bad players, being bad in a video game you play for fun is absolutely fine. It is however a problem when they add ´´difficult´´ DPS / HPS checks and no proper way for bad players to outpower it (unlike Legion and BFA).
We both agree the raid should be easier though as always.
the text is unreadable so I’m just going to respond to the title.
raiding doesn’t force you to deal with affixes so imo its a good tradeoff (tried actual group raiding and man the lack of affixes just make it as fun as I used to believe dungeons were before affixes were added)
You can only get 1 item of max ilvl gear a week through the vault with m+ a week and nothing through actual loot tables
I dont think current raid tier is the easiest since legion. Uldir was also an 8 boss raid and IMO easier than what we’re seeing atm, atleast in terms of mechanics and gearing outside of raid.
It’s 18 years later. This is no longer vanilla.
End of story.
Vanilla players looking back at outdated awful systems:
wwhich number ? completion ? ofc its lower because DF is failed expansion that provides 0 casual non-instanced content so ofc much less people even bought it.
tuningwise its significantly easier then any raid in last 4 years,
Really?.
Last i checked pvp and raids still existed.
Funny enough more people quit everytime they enforce raiding then m+ 
and a even larger reason is due to how empty the open world is.
Sounds like u just want WoW to cater to “only a few of us”.
DF has less expansion because blizzard burnt alot of bridges in the prior 2 expansions, and many are reluncent to give the game a second chance.
Also DF has higher player retention then Prior expansions.
So sure DF started at a lower number. But we are higher then both expansions in regards to how many are still playin.
There needs to be a gap between Mythic Raiding and Heroic, most people don’t have the schedule to dedicate to raiding. I run my own business internationally, sometimes I have meetings at 9 PM, I can’t tell my clients, sorry I’m raiding bro.
Order of difficulty and rewards
Normal Raid = Snooze Fest = Equivalent to 1-10 M+
Heroic Raid = Snooze Fest except Razageth = Equivalent to 10-16
Mythic + 18-22
Mythic Raiding / Mythic 25-30 (except SWB/COS which is the equivalent of the first few bosses)
So it’s all good. If you want to push hardcore you go M+ 24+ or Mythic Raiding. If you want to be casual you do Heroics and M16s, if you want more of a challenge but not the level of challenging Mythic Raiding provides you do 18-22s.
What’s the problem? It’s about catering for everyone. This isnt the 2000s any more, you can’t make a game for just one demographic. There’s lots of competition out there for people’s time when it comes to gaming these days, WoW isn’t the king any more.
How dare there is more than 1 boring way for 15 years to get relevant gear and making the game more accessible
Yeah maybe but he doesnt want to put effort into raiding or m+ he wants free loot
just delete raiding, problem fixed
I’m sorry but heroic or normal raid so often is absolutely trivial. I do it for relaxation after a couple even less than +20 runs. It’s extremely easy compared to effort and skill required to succeed in even sort of high keys. Proof can be found in amount of people that done let’s say 7/8 HC or at least +19 of all dungeons.
Yes it’s grindy. No it’s not more toxic than raiding often is - see MOAR DOTS. Most people I encountered in m+ are friendly or just quiet. More people required doesn’t = harder. M+ is just as hard and needs just as determination as it takes to do HC or up to 6/8 mythic raid. Anything above 22 probably same as 8/8.
I understand your issue that m+ doesn’t need 20 people and 3+ hours. But times change, most of player base are not absolute no lifers anymore nor professional gamers and can’t commit full 3-4 hours at same exact time every other day with only medical emergency as excuse to not attend or afk. This is a choice made by players and shouldn’t result in much better gear than high end m+ as it’s mostly non-skill related difference of “difficulty” in raid content.
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