How can you say that? I mean, almost every single talent revamp (except maybe rogues) has been a direct buff to the class. I mean, sure, reading " Due to significant talent changes, [insert-class-here] will have all talent points refunded and can be respent. Training costs for all talent spell replacements have been significantly reduced. " may not look as impactful as a direct list of buffs like we got in later expansions. But if you look at the actual content of the talent revamps… it’s really not that different. Especially when you consider that neither TBC nor WotLK had major talent revamps in the same vein as Vanilla.
Because I played then. Because I have read patch notes, and revamping and consistency is not the same as buffing. Until BC with every patch something got buffed, something got nerfed with the changes. There was no general making players OP in comparison the the world around them.
Things, abilities ect got easier to understand, compare and use, that you can call buffing, but the making players stronger relative to mobs and world is a thing of later patches.
I guess stuff like Warriors getting frickin Bloodthirst (at least the 1.6 version), or Mages getting Winter’s Chill (again, the 1.11 version), weren’t buffs, just “revamps”. Got it.
I did not say there were NO buffs, I said that some abilities got buffed, others nerfed. The first many patches felt more like a trying out, of balancing if you like. Correction of errors, mending of what went awry with earlier fixes.
I always felt that Vanilla launched not quite cooked, so that you had to stir the pot and add this and remove that regularly …
I mean, if you’re comparing the amount of changes that were buffs/nerfs in Vanilla compared to the other changes that we got in Vanilla, then yeah. But that mostly has to do with the fact that, as you mentioned, Vanilla launched into a much more incomplete and open-ended state than any other expansion. For obvious reasons, ofc.
That doesn’t change the fact that, while it’s difficult to put it in numbers, the level of power of most classes and specs by 1.12 was significantly higher than in 1.0, not unlike in 3.3 compared to 3.0. And that’s really all there’s to say to that. One can have a different opinion about whether specific changes were warranted or not, but the trend of buffing classes throughout the patches is a trend that has always been in WoW - it just wasn’t as apparent early on because it was somewhat overshadowed by all the other changes.
I still feel, mind only a feel, that the changes in Vanilla was slower, more (I almost cannot make myself to say this) in the spirit of the game, not driven by players’ complaining, but by a dedicated team trying to find out what worked, and what not. I think the power increase Player:Environment did not rise significantly until somewhere in Wrath, and that the increase thereafter was exponential instead of linear (gross exaggeration for clarity 
)
EDIT:
Gameplay was still made significantly more streamlined - and hence easier and potentially more damaging for the opponent - from Vanilla to BC as my example of Hunters’ attacking show.
Edit 2 citing:
I am so tired of people saying the same nonsense over and over again, as if it were a fact.
The RDF might not encourage social interactions, but neither does traditional group building. 90% of random dungeons in TBC Classic being without any social interaction at all proves this.
And traditional group building doesn’t require you to pull your weight either. Rather the opposite. If you play a meta class, tank or healer, you will have no problems finding groups, even if you are an underperforming toxic scumbag. Because the only thing people go by, when building groups is your class and maybe your equip. But they can’t know how good you are until you are in the dungeon. And if you are in the dungeon it’s very unlikely you will get kicked, because it’s easier to just push through the dungeon with an underperformer or toxic player, than finding a replacement for a half finished dungeon. Especially if it’s a tank or healer.
In the RDF class and equipment don’t matter, all that matters is, what kind of player you are. If you underperform or you behave toxic, you run the risk of getting vote kicked. Even tanks and healers can’t behave like idiots anymore, because even they can get replaced.
This is what bothered me the most about TBC Classic. I was able to pull my weight. Even more than that. I was able to carry weaker players through dungeons. But nobody knew. All they saw is I am a rogue and therefore they assumed I suck, without ever seeing my performance.
The RDF is much fairer than regular group building.
But since your initial post was about the difficulty, I give my opinion on that too. You absolutely can have hard content in the RDF. Other games prove this. BUT you would have to make it perfectly clear for the players, that they are pooling for hard content and best set some requirements for them to pool that type of content. Because players pooling hard content, that aren’t ready for it, will just lead to frustration and toxicity.
The problem with Cata back then, wasn’t the hard dungeons, but bad game design by Blizzard. Because Blizzard increased the difficulty by requiring CC again. While in the RDF it was completely random if you even had CC in the group. This led to a lot of frustration and toxicity back then.
If you want to make RDF content hard, you obviously have to make it hard in a way, that still allows it to be beaten with any setup or you add an algorithm to the RDF, that makes sure a group has all the classes it needs to clear the dungeon.
But in the end it’s irrelevant, because most people don’t want hard content. That’s why it’s much harder to find groups for dungeons, that are actually a challenge, than for dungeons that can be cleared blind.
Where have all those players, seeking a challenge, been, when I was building groups for bloodfurnance hc or CoT 1 and 2 hc?
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If you look at the graph you’ll see that the numbers had plateaued. WLK hadn’t seen the same growth as Vanilla and TBC. If they suspected that numbers would drop they’d have to do something, and that something was the Dungeon Finder (or so I believe). It was preemptive, and I suppose it did work. Most of their solutions have, but it has had consequences on the gameplay.
Yes, but the ability to group and play dungeons together through realID came in 4.2 (according to wowpedia). Of course, one could argue that the Dungeon Finder in Wrath could use that functionality, but if they were to do it it would not be #nochanges. In Wrath, strangers you met in dungeons were strangers you would only meet again by chance.
Did you miss the part where they said they don’t want heroics to become trivialised by gear? Whether they’ll deliver on that we can’t yet know, but seeing as everyone admits that dungeons were roflstomp ez mode, maybe we should encourage change.
I don’t know, I’ve been open to #somechanges ever since the launch of Classic. I wish they had done #somechanges since Phase 2 in TBCC, as someone who was in a casual raiding guild I ran out of things to do. The game doesn’t have the same stream of new players coming to try the game. It peaks at launch and then it drops. That is not an issue we had in the past and #somechanges could have helped with player retention.
Do you even remember what he said directly after that quote? Jesus.
The numbers actually rose sligthly all the way through Wrath. But of course every player, that you could hope to catch could very well be caught by then. It was as you say a question of retaining the players. And they obviously did a very bad job of it, as the numbers began falling with Cata. I won’t blame the RDF alone. The ruining of “our” world sat badly with many of us. Tauren Pallys and removing of ammo and all thise small immersive details did nothing good either.
I remember playing only in the new zones, and taking long breaks from Cata pre-patch onwards. The game kinda lost its magic. It was still the best,it was still what I played when I did, but not as often and as much as before the Shattering.
Real ID has been in Classic from the start. So much for #NoChanges. I suppose adding this to the RDF would not be a great issue.
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Reply #1 blizz is absolutely incapable of creating entertaining content, but personal opinions aside … 5man will always be outgeared, the only thing they can do is A add new spells and stuff and create new season of garbage that noone plays and is NOT a wotlk … B increase hp/dmg that will only create bigger barrier for lower ranking players and will kill weaker/non-fotm classes even more and higher ranking players will notice absolutely zero difference …
Both of these changes can work alongside RDF …
Reply #2 yes absolutely, lets get #somechanges … so where is that new auction house ? the only people who think current auction house is good are scammers and people who use addons instead … no ? lets jump straight into ruining the game …
I could say the exact same thing about your statement here:
Only difference is that I don’t pull numbers out of my rear. I don’t know the numbers (and neither do you), but I know what I’ve experienced playing Classic, and I know what I’ve experienced having played retail when the Dungeon Finder was introduced and seen the subsequent harm it did.
My experience in Classic is the opposite of what you claim. I came into the game with three friends and on my way to max level I encountered many people who I would play together with at max level. I didn’t have to apply to a guild – I found my guild by simply playing and communicating with people. This does not happen in retail, at least not with the Dungeon Finder. But it can happen with Mythic Dungeons as there’s a recruitment process there that’s not automated.
Did you not say in another thread that your experience with the Dungeon Finder was from a private server? Have you actually tried the Dungeon Finder in retail? It is not a very fun experience. I wish someone would tell me with a straight face that the Dungeon Finder is fun.
Even so, queues for dungeons had never been shorter. Your server is dead? No problem, server sharding is here to save the day. These tools were put in place in order to account for player drops, and they did so successfully – at the cost of the soul of the game, some might argue (myself included).
Real ID is a function of Battlenet, though… but it’s pointless to argue about. I’ll freely admit that if they implement a dungeon finder it makes sense to allow people to group up cross server as well even if that is against #nochanges. Because there wouldn’t really be a good reason to not do so, except for everyone’s favourite argument: #nochanges.
But … I thougth NoChanges was an argument that only Classic andyes and naive people ever used (Count me in the last category).
I know you did not say this to me, but I’ll answer anyway.
I don’t play Retail, and I have no intention whatsoever of doing it. So, no wont buy SL just to try a non-Dungeonfinder-Dungeonfinder tool.
But Yes, I think Wrath Dungeon finder was fun. I could keep on Questing while a group was made for me. I was put in a group with - mostly - clueless people who tolerated me. I’m a good tank (or was, I stopped due to eye problems), but I get lost in Dungeons every time, which the non-dungeon-finders never tolerated. In RDF we maybe lost one impatient DPS now and then, but then we always had a new in seconds. And some became BFF - after spending more than 4 hours wiping and fighting in Auchindoun you can not NOT be friends afterwards
And best of all. When the dungeon has ended BAM I was back to where I left off.
I had more fun in dungeons in the last half of Wrath than in the previous Vanilla, BC and first half Wrath rolled into one.
My vision problems are also the reason why I - apart from #NoChanges - could not care less for or against Dungeon Finder - I’m not going to use it.
Yes you could, but it wouldn’t be true, because my arguments are based on recent experiences while yours are based on 12 year old memories. And people tend to mix up a lot of stuff in the memories over Y years, or think they remember stuff, that actually never happened. Memory Isn’t reliable and therefore arguments based on memory are worthless.
Ok the numbers are just an estimate of my experience in TBC Classic. And there are many more that say the same thing. I think you’ve only had a different experience, because you didn’t run many random dungeons.
And that’s exactly the point. You weren’t running random dungeons, you were running with your 3 friends plus a random. This makes a completely different group synergy and of course your experience was different than mine, because I was doing most of my dungeon runs random. I actually played with the community and not just a small social circle.
No I didn’t try the random dungeon finder in Retail. But I had a lot of fun with the RDF on Warmane. And if the experience is so different in retail, than it is on warmane, while both have the RDF, it just shows the RDF isn’t to blame for a bad experience. So what exactly is your point here?
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Yikes. You’re making so many assumptions about me, you’d think you were more of an expert on myself than I am. I will put the record straight in a second post, but for this post I want to tackle one thing in particular:
So I did some research and Warmane and from what I can tell the entire private server is about the size of one of our high/full populated realms in Classic (if maybe even less). I highly doubt you had access to cross-server grouping whilst on a private server, which means the Dungeon Finder was local. So when you queue up, chances are you’ll recognize the people you end up grouped with, no?
That makes all the difference in the world. The Dungeon Finder is cross-server. The pool from which to draw players is massive in comparison to your private server. Chances are that the people you meet when using the Dungeon Finder you’ll never meet again. This has had an averse affect on the overall mindset of the playerbase, of course. People going from retail to Classic likely bring this attitude with them which may explain why you’ve had such a bad luck with groups. If you’re looking for “easy” and “fast” dungeons, the retail-minded people are the ones you’ll find.
They’re based on my experiences in Classic (2019), TBCC (2021-present), my time playing WoW back in the day (active player from 2007-2011), my time playing sporadically (2013-2017) and my time returning to the game once again as an active player (2017-2019). An additional note: In 2017 I decided to play a completely fresh character which became my new main. I started with 0 gold and levelled without using any heirlooms.
Well, then based on my experience I can say that pretty much 100% of the dungeons I ran had some social activity in them (including chatter en route to the dungeon, during the dungeon or after the dungeon – sometimes I’d stick around in party chat to trade a few words).
But you are correct. I did not run many random dungeons. Because when I ran dungeons I actually got to know people. I played DPS myself (rogue, as you), and if I wanted a tank I’d always ask my guild and people on my friend list first. If none of them replied I would seek for randoms. So dungeons became less random as I got to know more people on my server. If a tank misbehaved I would not contact them simply because I needed a tank, and in fact the only time I can remember using votekick was when a druid tank needed on a spellcaster cloak from the Ahune event last year.
In comparison, when I returned to the game in 2017 I was only accompanied by one friend, and while we did have fun levelling together we made 0 new contacts on our way to max level. That is not a 12 year memory.
Actually, my point was that in spite of me starting playing with 3 friends I still made contacts throughout the my journey to max level (as opposed to my experience in retail). We weren’t always on the same level – in fact one of my friends was in Outland whilst the rest of us were around level 38-45 range. Sometimes I would run dungeons without any of my friends. I only really experienced trouble in finding people for groups right before Outland, as few people wanted to do old school dungeons since Hellfire Ramparts had so much better loot.
While I did not get overly involved in the server community I did nevertheless play my small part. I was part of a small casual guild, not even a raiding guild (we did not have a set raiding schedule, it varied from week to week). As Phase 2 approached there was a desire among people in my guild to run T5 content, but we wouldn’t be able to do it on our own and had to find another guild to partner up with. I actually helped out in this regard! Our potential partner-guild was short on DPS one evening, so my guild agreed to send me to help them. We also had some success with this guild as we managed to beat Gruul. Before we could attempt Magtheridon this guild went over to try Amazon’s new MMO, and my guild was back to square one. And sadly for us, we never really did find another guild to partner up with.
In fact, that’s when server transfers began. My server was not targeted, at first, but people began crying doom and gloom. It was hyperbole, but effective hyperbole. For my guild, interest in the game began to wane as we simply had ran out of content to do. We weren’t willing to convert into a raiding guild as we deemed the casual atmosphere more important and so we went on a hiatus. I got back to the game in May this year because of some of my other guildees. We’re now stuck on a dead server, but life endures. We’ve teamed up with a surviving guild and we run mainly 10mans though we have managed to do one 25man raid (Gruul). And as of right now I am very engaged in the server community.
Long story short: your presumptions were way off mark. If you did read my story, well, thank you for showing an interest? The point of this long post is only to set the record straight.
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Are you trying to make it look bad? While every class has a form of cc and interrupt it is still a very different kind of cc for most classes.
You have things like simple single stuns, aoe stuns, aoe roots, treants / earth ele to taunt, binding shot, ring of peace and so on.
Not every class is and feels the same like you imagine, they are all quite different and excel in different situations
I like the idea, they also did that with the M+ Affix “Inspired” (An Inspired mob can be CCed but it gives mobs in the area CC immunity). Essentially forcing you to sometimes hard CC those mobs and separate the Pulls.
The problem with that is though, players seem to hate it more than they like it
I also played since vanilla, we had people in guild who didnt say a word during whole naxx … we also had dude in guild who was getting death threats by whole realm the moment he logged in, we were the only guild who took him in …
When RDF came during WotLK, the only thing that changed was people who didnt have active friends could now actually get into the game …
With cata I would start skipping xpacs, playing month or two here and there, coming back for new raids and new seasons …
I started playing again on Legion, most of my friends stopped playing, I found my new guild while leveling, I met them in RDF and stayed with them for the rest of legion …
Oh yes we also have Mythics now, you know, get your own group, walk to the dungeon kinda things, they are hard and stuff, you need to cooperate and talk to others … except none of that is happening, either you play fotm or you can just uninstall wow, group finder tool shows you class and Ilvl and you just click decline on anything that isnt bis …
Also people are trashtalking Raid finder … I did raid through that like 2 times, once being on BFA where I just didnt care about the game anymore so I checked that crappy new raid and unsubbed … its like saying just because there are people playing arenas on 800mmr, it somehow ruins your 2.5k experience …
Thing is so far the only argument against RDF is "Social Interaction™ ", which is nice but completely useless argument, because you suddenly wont change mentality of people by removing one random thing from 15 years old game …
Arguments for RDF are 2, first is, it was in the bloody game, its as if you removed PvP gear from game because people cant find vendors …
Second argument is, we have 2 classic games, they suck hard, both of them, and no amount of changes is going to fix that and RDF is thing that can make at least one tiny aspect of the game suck slightly less … so why remove it …
Am I trying to make what look bad?
I’m afraid I do simply not understand what you’re trying to prove.
Telling me that M+ is so hard that you have to use a teqnique
You precisely use stuns / interrupts to shut down scary casts or abilities from going off.
that was not always possible with a random group in TBC, tells me absolutely nothing and is not an argument.
And when I then ask if this might be because people in SL as opposed to in TBC all having stuns and interrupts?
You reply by telling me that in SL you have
things like simple single stuns, aoe stuns, aoe roots, treants / earth ele to taunt, binding shot, ring of peace and so on.
only proving to me that every class now acrtually do have stuns and interrups at their disposal. You’re in short arguing for my point here.
Yes you are right, the warmane RDF isn’t cross realm, but it’s cross faction. So you still end up with people in the dungeon you can’t interact with in the game world or run dungeons with together outside the RDF.
Plus I played on an almost dead server in TBC Classic, with only 1500 active accounts in horde. Still there only were a few players I’ve ever ran into again when doing random dungeons. Most of the people I’ve met in the dungeon, I’ve never seen again. So in the end if you see or talk to somebody again after a dungeon is completely up to you. In the RDF you could also exchange battle tags and stay in touch. If you never see them again, it’s just because you decided so.
Well in the recent time you neither used the RDF nor did you run a lot if random dungeons, so how are you able to form an opinion about the RDF? Your opinion on the RDF is only based on your memory.
Yes because you ran dungeons mostly with people you know and only added an occasional random here and there. This is a complete different thing than running completely random. And it wouldn’t even change if the one random you occasionally add would be added by the RDF. So this whole discussion doesn’t even concern you.
There was no vote kick in TBC Classic, but even ignoring that, I don’t see why this shouldn’t be possible with the RDF, as you can completely ignore the RDF and build groups with people, that are looking exactly for the same social interactions as you.
Yes maybe, but do you have any proof, that this is just because of the RDF and not all the other features implemented in the game or even a general change of society and therefore playerbase?
I guess not.
I just can repeat myself. If you play with friends it’s a completely different experience, than running completely random most of the time. Even if you did an occasional random run, this will be barely enough to really form an opinion.
I don’t know which presumptions you mean, but what you described is actually not so far from what I’ve guessed.
I noticed that most players that dislike the RDF usually play a lot with their guild and friends. For them it’s important, to have fun with their social circle and the arguments usually reflect that, because the view on the community is different from somebody, that ran mostly random dungeons, because the interactions with the community largely consisted of interactions with people from the social circle. And this is absolutely fine, I would have actually loved, if I had friends still interested in WoW or if, I would have been accepted better into the guild I joined. In fact for me the social interactions just didn’t work out. No matter how many work I’ve put in, people were fine with taking my help, but when I needed something, I had to run random because everybody suddenly had no time or an ID or other shenanigans.
I can absolutely understand, that you fear the RDF might destroy your experience. I don’t think this would happen, but we can both just assume. We would only know for sure if Blizzard would add the RDF and we would see the changes.
But for me TBC Classic was almost unplayable without the RDF. Every time I had to run a dungeon, I was so wishing I could use the RDF. So WotLK Classic is not something I want to experience let alone pay for it.
But as the length of the posts is getting out of hand here I will stop replying.
Basically we’ve had different backgrounds and value different things in the game, that’s why we have different opinions about the RDF.
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So it was like two servers, then. It still does not compare to the player pool of cross-faction in retail (and, indeed, old school Wrath). You are talking about a subject you have absolutely no experience of.
This really sounds like a “you”-problem. So you make no effort to befriend the people you play with? You play with randoms every time? You never meet the same person again? Forgive me if I doubt that claim.
So 2019 was officially the last time I used the RDF in BFA. I didn’t enjoy doing it but you pretty much had to do randoms due to all the rewards tied to it. Is that a distant memory in your view?
There are many reasons as to why retail is the way it is. There is usually no need to communicate – so people don’t. When Classic first launched in 2019 I was afraid that all that talk about “server community” was just rosetinted nostalgia, but that was absolutely not the case. Being social in Classic comes easy because there is often a need to communicate. If I had to point at one thing that separates Classic from Retail then that is it.
My point is that people may start out as complete strangers but grow into friends as you get to know one another. In order for that to happen you kind of have to communicate. I don’t know how you’ve played Classic but based on my experience compared to yours it feels like you’ve been doing something wrong.
This is completely backwards. If this logic holds true, then retail would be the place where people socialize and find new friends and Classic would be the place where people play with friends and don’t communicate with strangers. Are you living in opposite-land? Or are you just a literal forum troll?
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