Loads of people seem to confuse skill and knowledge in a video game.
Reaching level 60 takes no skill. It takes knowledge of what are the most efficient ways of reaching it.
Vanilla in 2004 was obviously harder than current classic, but only because of the poor and lack of equipment, low resolution monitor, laggy pc, ball mouse, poor internet connection, server issues and many more. 15 years later. The game didn’t change, only the equipment got better. Everything in vanilla (2004) and current classic is the same, except the equipment, plus the fact that there are a lot more people playing the game nowadays. This is the only reason why it took months to kill ragnaros in vanilla, meanwhile it took 5 days in current classic. The bosses have basically no mechanics to them or so little that you can basically not worry about them, like move out of one or two things and that’s it. Classes also have barely any abilities, no rotations to learn and keep track of. Retail WoW is harder than both vanilla classic and current classic. Even with all the modern equipment and in-game add-ons, it takes much effort to master a class. People say every class is easy to play. Yes they are easy to play and output enough damage to get through most of the content, but what they don’t seem to realise is that in order to maximise the damage output you need to focus, keep track of rotations while avoiding/executing numerous mechanics during a fight perfectly due to the number of one-shot mechanics during the fight. Also applying numerous tricks to increase dps and to facilitate the progress of the fight, which can only be achieved through multiple wipes and tries. None of this are needed in classic wow both vanilla and current. While you need to grind out the best in slot gear in retail, in classic you can get by with having most type of gear you get throughout leveling your character. While in retail, if a player dies during the fight, it’s such a loss for the team that in most cases it ends in a wipe due to lack of damage or healing, and most definitely a wipe if the one that died was a tank. In classic wow you can easily do the fight with a group that is far from being full, and also if half the group is dead and the boss is only at 50% health, no problem.
These are facts that nobody can argue with, and if you do, you are a hopeless fighter.
Now to move on to the personal opinions. The people seem to have such sentiment towards vanilla wow that it influences their logical point of views to the point that they claim that the game itself was harder in vanilla than it is now. They value those times so much more than the time now for an infinite amount of reasons that are both connected to the game, and are completely irrelevant to the game. The game has gotten harder and there is no doubt about it. Classes have more abilities, bosses have more mechanics and figuring to do. Most boss fights have mechanics that require multiple players to work as a team in order to beat it and if one of them messes up then it’s a wipe. That very factor of having to rely on one another makes things extremely difficult. The co-ordination of multiple players carrying out a single mechanic makes something a hundred folds more difficult than having one person execute a mechanic.
It is pretty obvious that people just have this intangible value for something from the past which can not be replicated ever, and because they cherish this feeling so much they take it a personal attack whenever someone tries to even start a debate over it which in their mind, they take it like you offend them.
In the end, everyone knows this but many refuse the reality.
How about just stop this kind of WoW-version tribalism everyone and enjoy the games. I’m having enough of this. You probably won’t change anyone’s mind anyway. In a few hours this thread will be full of classic defenders vs bfa defenders.
Now go kill murlocs in either version. Killing murlocs always brings joy.
When classic first came out it was hard for people because it was new. Fast forward 15 years later and we have gotten better at WOW, so yes with classic returning, it is not going to be that hard anymore.
Most people playing classic right now are reliving memories and reforming old guilds and enjoying the social aspect of it.
I have gone in at odd times on both horde and alliance alts in classic and have not really seen must of the socialization. I was still able to do quests by myself without being in a guild and talking to anyone.
I don’t have a horse in this race but it’s kind of a moot point you’re making when you basically dismiss every reason classic was hard. They were the factors that made it hard, just like how executing tactics while having high uptime is what makes current wow hard.
If everyone played perfectly and knew tactics like the back of their hand mythic raiding would be easy, no kidding, but they don’t and people in 2005 had crappy computers and people didn’t show up.
So you have saved Azeroth several times, killed almost godly creratures and you still want to kill wolves 1 by 1 because pulling 2 will kill you?
Of course you should be much much much more powerful now, it doesn’t make any sense otherwise.
It’s actually kind of stupid that so many quests are still “gather this”, for a champion of Azeroth whose supposed to be one of the most powerful beings in azeroth.
Maybe you dont know, but world first lvl 60 mage on classic grinded by AoEing down dozens of mobs in the highest level area?
Meanwhile i want to watch how you will manage a freshly dinged 120 vs 2 nazjatar mobs. You’ll trun black and white in under 10 seconds.
All that said, noone cares about how “hard” the world is. Longer doesnt mean hard. Clearly “retail is harder” comes from myhtics and raids being much more advanced mechanically.
Classic “hard” was all about the grind and slow fight mechanics.
I had forgotten how “exciting” is waiting for autoattack or wanding mobs to death - pure joy…
Classic, as mechanics is much much simpler. It’s actually much easier, but it takes longer to do anything and longer not in meaning of “you need more repetitions and training to do it better” but longer as more time sink in side activity.
no youz don’t, because you literally get a mob on your very first quest to your side, who takes a quarter of the enemies health with every single shot. And after that you get an NPC to your side, that heals you pretty massively and deals good damage.
also ye, congratz on finding the one class in vanilla, who can do that. literally no other class can do those masspulls my itself.
In Classic I started a clicker, raided ZG with green dagger and a shield as a warrior.
In TBC I barely finished Kara and was hardstuck in 1.8k rating.
In Wotlk I got to 2.6k rating, and raided LK.
Quit in Cata.
In MoP I got several insane logs and got to top 100 logs world wide in SoO on some bosses.
Went casual in Wod.
I’ve been playing the game for 15 years, I reckon veterans and players that played it a lot all know how to navigate the game very good.
It’s not that classic is easy, it’s that players are better now… much much better.
I always like to use my irl friend as in example, he started in legion I had so many sessions trying to teach him how to play rogue, our friend ( The one that taught me how to play rogue ) sat even more with him, another good rogue friend tried to teach him.
You can say he has over 50 hours or more of being taught how to play rogue by veteran rogues, yet still he does 20k overall dps and gets hit by a lot of avoidables getting about 1.5k+ fail damage, while this rogue that I barely play anymore can pull 30-35k+ overall and regularly get 0-200k fail damage in m+.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that retail is harder, relative to eachother retail is harder yes, but relative to Classic vs 2004 players and retail vs 2019 players retail is way easier than classic.
The greatest challenge in Vanilla was never skill or knowledge. It has always been patience. Having enough patience to pull carefully, to explore on foot, to work on your professions, to grind your gold, to find people to play with without a tool like LFD, to complete a maze-like dungeon with many routes, etc. The game rewards tenacity and patience above everything else.
And can we stop with this Retail vs Classic stuff? At this point they’re totally different games. Let people like what they like and leave them alone.
I don’t know man, your friend might just not be suited. A friend of mine started in 8.1.5. All I actually taught her was “don’t click” and “make yourself keybinds that reduce the movement of your hand” and then leveled with her to 120 without many other hints. Once she was done levelling we did a bit of LFR and a little Arena. I told her with the next tier we’re going to raid because in 8.1.5 we were just way too far behind and the tier was almost over. Now, in 8.2, she’s timing +10s, has AOTC and we’re looking forward to raid mythic soon. It’s more about how much effort you put into it as a new player. There were extremely good players in vanilla already.
It’s true people can have different skillsets, but even the worst players can become from the best with enough time put into the game which was my point
I’m having enough of this. You probably won’t change anyone’s mind anyway. In a few hours this thread will be full of classic defenders vs bfa defenders.