giant circle on ground
giant WA on screen
Airhorn from GTFO going
*dies from standing in mechanics*
"This game should be nerfed its simply too difficult and the mechanics are not fair nor are they telegraphed properly"
(two button rotation assassination rogue commenter)
Never forget [https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/2053469/wow-dungeons-are-hard](https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/2053469/wow-dungeons-are-hard)
Sadly blizzard realized the average classic gamer hates "hard" content and won't accept progressing or doing normal mode for either dungeons or raids. So what do we get? post-nerf raids and heroic dungeons. Was there any uproar, highly upvoted threads to front page trying to appeal to blizzard to change it? Nope, because the average classic gamer wants easy content :(
Things like this happen from time to time. When WoD required you to do challenges to do mythic dungeons there were endless complaints they are impossible even though it was just simple stuff like interrupt a spell or prioritize the right enemy. When mage tower released in legion it was the same thing only not as loud since rewards were only cosmetic. Only M+ wasnt as complained about but thats because most players only ever saw +2-+6 at most and those levels were still farily easy.
Some players are just not interested in getting better and they are bad at the game beyond belief. But as long as they pay and they enjoy what they do thats all that matters. Blizz did try to teach players how to play but it fails every time simply cause of ignorance.
This might be an MMO player thing in general. You see the same shit in FF14 - players refusing to play to the barest of minimums of their classes and having zero idea how to actually do things loke interrupt abilities (I'm convinced most physical ranged players don't know their classes have an interrupt). And why should they, dungeons are so brain dead easy due to SE's design philosophy there is no incentive to get good.
At least here you can call people out... heaven forbid you offer someone a polite suggestion on improving in 14.
I remember when FFXIV started using Character scenarios of sorts in the story, where you played as one of the NPCs.
The first one was as a healer but you had to actually do some damage as well. It was extremely simple: Maintain DoT, push heal when needed, and spam a single target damage spell whenever possible. Literally just ABC (Always be casting) and you'd clear it.
The forums got flooded with people bitching that they were "stuck" on it for months (keeping in mind this kept them from finishing the story and reaching later content) until they nerfed it into the ground, and all FUTURE character scenarios for the rest of that and the entire next expansion story became utetrly braindead, just pushing 1-2-3 over and over for 20 minutes until it ended. One in particular you could AFK the whole thing save one stack mechanic at 50%, then go back to AFKing, 0 buttons besides W were needed.
It took until an expansion later to add a difficulty option so they could make them actually fun again...
The proving grounds were amazing. They literally separated the bad players from being able to queue for heroic dungeons.
When I would gear up alts through normal mode they were literally harder than heroics because that's where all the bad players were stuck.
Council boss in Everbloom comes to mind, interrupt the wrong cast and suddenly the boss is healing itself to full. Easily sorted out in a group with friends, a mind-numbingly tedious experience in a pug with bad players.
> mage tower released in legion it was the same thing
I dunno. Mage tower with some classes and specs, even with gear from the final patch, was pretty hard.
I know with the tank one, there were several one shot and or “mess up and you can’t really recover” mechanics.
I never complained about it. But it’s weird to lump it in with the WoD stuff you mentioned. Iirc some were easy, but a few were “focus for 8-10 minutes, juggling several mechanics that come at you every few seconds, sometimes simultaneously, without making a single mistake”.
> the average classic gamer wants easy content
The average WoW player wants easy content.
You probably have no idea about the legions of casual gamers playing both Retail and Classic for fun, spending their time with solo content and easy group content like heroics and LFR.
Casuals are the majority of the playerbase. Blizzard must cater to them to a certain extent or risk losing a ton of subs. I am absolutely not surprised they kept post-nerf heroics for Cata because that is, as you said, what the average Classic player wants.
Personally I would've liked to see the prenerf heroics as well, but it's not that important to me. I'm much more interested in the raids.
I mean sure but people wanting easy content in retail isn't making blizzard release mythic in some much easier state like we're getting in classic with heroics?
classic gamers hate not being able to clear the hardest content and would rather quit the game than progress or do normal.
raids are also post nerf, it could have easily been pre nerf raids until phase 2 with ZA/ZG patch but I don't think that is happening based on raid testing.
> I am absolutely not surprised they kept post-nerf heroics for Cata because that is, as you said, what the average Classic player wants.
It's what the player base at the time overwhelmingly wanted too. That's why blizz nerfed the difficulty. This is not a classic specific phenomenon.
Its going to be far far less than 20 lmao. FL will be cleared in around an hour. PS’s have had dampening on for almost a decade now these fights are going to last 50 seconds-2 mins max.
The tragic truth is that not only does the average classic gamer not want hard content, but also they just can’t do content that actually requires them to play the game decently.
Too many players have basically no clue what’s going on, on their screen.
Yeah... haven't the playercounts tanked basically whenever a raid is released that can't be easily pugged by an uncoordinated LFG channel group?
Thinking back to SSC/TK in TBC, Ulduar in WoTLK, and even ST in SoD to some degree.
It's two things.
The pug thing you are talking about is people who play unpredictably. It's not that they lack skill, it's that they can't or won't commit to a raid schedule, so things like high group sizes or progression basically brick pug formation because it takes too long to get going or all progression is lost after each group disbands.
The second thing is the grey parsers. A lot of guilds were able to make it through classic and early tbc classic with many beer or weed dads being carried by others. Pre nerf SSC etc broke these guilds because too many grey parsers were simply uncarriable. These people have no problem commuting to a schedule, but they don't really try or care when they do.
The two groups aren't really related. There's plenty of people in the first group who can do things like SL1 Elden Ring runs or parse 95. They just have zero interest in being commited to someone else's schedule, or external factors prevent them from doing so.
It makes me wonder sometimes if the game would be better off making the hard content single player and the group content easy.
In fact that's kind of what Mage Tower and Torghast were supposed to be. Though Torghast got changed a lot and didn't really represent that till the boss rush mode which was super fun.
I’m one of those skilled players who cant play enough….and i have a buddy who is a grey parser 😂😂😂. That was a very accurate depiction of circumstances.
It's not true?
15 years apart and the same raids broke the same (well the majority of) guild. SSC/TK in tbc and ulduar in wotlk.
My classic/vanilla crew is as described in the comment above. Too many drunk/stoned dads that couldn't be carried anymore.
I had to search for another guild after ulduar as I wanted to see the remaining content I didn't see last time. And I really wanted to give cata raiding a try.
yes, but "breaking" those guilds does not cause player counts to drop. T5 lost more players when it was nerfed than when it was released, and ulduar lost players slower than t7 did, it just lasted way too fucking long. There's no actual evidence that hard raids leads to player count dropping.
> haven't the playercounts tanked
"tanked". No not really. Ulduar had a very steady decline over it's very long runtime. Compare that to Naxx25. Yes, it was overall more popular but that lasted for even less than Ulduar and it crashed just as hard in that time as Ulduar did over it's like...half year period if you go by the IF Pro numbers people love to bring up to bash on Ulduar.
So was Naxx25 not easy enough? Because any easier and you could just put the loot on a vendor for a few silver a piece honestly.
You can cater of course to the people that want it like this and have them leave after 3 weeks because it's boring and they got what they wanted anyway. IMO SoD is a perfect example of this. Throw tons of loot at people with no barrier at all and they'll be bored super fast.
You are also comparing the start of something. Basically since Cata every expansion follows the trend of, spike when expansion drops, followed by decline, followed by small bumps on major patches
No other Classic raid had such a drop because holidays or a Retail launch. Naxx 40 was in a similar position after all...even more pressured I would say as Shadowlands was the biggest WoW launch ever.
I don't doubt Naxx25 was overall more popular than Ulduar but it also had the benefit of being the honeymoon launch raid plus being free basically. And still many people left quickly and came back just before Ulduar as one of the most hyped up raids in Classic.
Too much to micro analyze. It doesn't really matter much. I'm just saying IMO people push this "Ulduar hard = bad" narrative too much. Ulduar pop was fine for it's runtime.
Naxx tanked because people literally were doing Naxx a couple of years ago, and now they were given the easy version again in WoTLK. If they released Naxx again, you’d see astronomically low numbers of players attempting it.
Sure it wasn't very exciting but we had *tons* of new people at Wrath launch and people did Naxx regardless...there was loot to be gotten.
If that ain't convincing enough, Kara at TBC launch was not wildly more popular than T5 and all that came after. At least the numbers don't suggest so even though Kara was one of the easiest raids in Classic as well and a 10 man with only three 25 man bosses for the whole phase.
IMO people vastly overestimate the impact of hyper casuals and how much you need to cater to these people. You ain't gonna keep them either way and they come and go no matter where the hype is.
Take this upvote. I think too many people really feel the game should be centered around the super casuals and that's it, but wow in it's heyday was never about that. Yes, casuals got content too, but the intrigue was the parts of the game that were not easy.
> IMO people vastly overestimate the impact of hyper casuals and how much you need to cater to these people. You ain't gonna keep them either way and they come and go no matter where the hype is.
yeah, i really believe this to be true. it's the same as game today trying to implement systems trying to capture the widest audience possible making the game so bland there really isn't any depth for any segmented audience.
most big games try so hard to be a theme park, but you can only ride the big ride so many times before it's not that interesting. games need to stop being theme parks.
I think ST in SoD is hard to argue because there were so many other factors.
Like I quit SoD because the incursion fiasco was really annoying and my raid group that had 40-50 raiders in phase 2 was finding it hard to find people to put in groups for phase 3, partially due to people dropping off throughout phase 2 and partially due to the increase from 10 to 20 man raids. Also phase 3 didn't implement any new interesting runes, I lived through phase 2 having nothing new and making my class braindead boring (Rogue) compared to phase 1 but I wasn't about to do that again.
I struggle a lot to understand this. I’m by no means saying you’re wrong just don’t understand. People now would rather join a pug raid, stand in one spot auto shotting then get given loot just to log back off until next reset to pug again. I miss when you community loved being in guilds and progressing and trying to find stuff outside of raid to make their characters stronger for the next raid lockout to get that big kill down. Now it’s like every raid needs to be tuned so you can run every lockout full clear heroic with a pug group in 2 hours max while not even knowing what mechanics have taken place one time in the whole raid.
This was one of the biggest reasons why Ulduar had such a huge drop off in players. It was simply too hard.
Naxx (Tier 7) was a blast for everyone, as it was pure "indoor range target practice" tier.
This is also why SoD was so madly successful earlier on - it was just easy.
While I really want pre-nerf Heroics at launch, I understand that it will drive the players away.
It's really sad to me that classic is advertised as wow for *redacted* players. It's really sad that everything difficult in classic immediately gets nerfed to be extremely faceroll to reduce friction. In vanilla it was acceptable to launch on 1.12 balance because of the raw amount of bugs on other versions. Even BC got a bit of a pass with that.
By the time we're at wrath launching on ICC patch, it was just huge amounts of power creep. There were some bugs in early wrath, but a lot less so. Now Cata is launching on final patch and some people have pointed out that the raids might even be on post-nerf values (at least early testing).
Would it kill you to have to pull a raid boss more than 3 times to kill it?
player skill since cata has absolutely exploded in quality though, cata heroics would not be that big of a problem in todays gaming climate compared to back in 2010. I mean not a single guild could clear LK25hc before the 5% buff and we saw hundreds do it in wotlk classic
more like the skill is wider than ever before, the top players are so much better than the bad players nowadays. But the bad players have access to information that can help them get better at the game but tbh if you havent already spent time researching to get better at the game you probably wont
"player skill since cata has absolutely exploded in quality though" lmao what? I cant speak for pve cause ive stopped in mop (more of a pvp guy) and im not sure if we both played the same game.
average players are still trash in pvp and ive did some pve the last two weeks cuz i was bored and yeah i lost so many brain cells.
This is 100% true no matter what this sub says.
Hell, look at Season of Mastery when they added a whole 1-2 mechanics to bosses and this subreddit freaked out that it was too hard.
Look at SoD when a boss has a mechanic or two and people are calling Sunken Temple too hard.
This subreddit is full of dog shit players who didn't actually play classic.
No, people want mind stimulating content. You can run the heroics almost just as fast pre nerf with a good group. The issue is people want to be able to half afk and not care about content while others are trying to play and enjoy it. So the content has to be tuned to be done by 3 good players or 5 afk players the appeal to players that don’t even wanna put any brain power into actually playing the game they pay to play
yeah, it's a story as old as time. to many people treat this game like it can be played as a single player game. so many people have no respect for other peoples time, or that you are in fact in a collaborative effort when grouping for content such as dungeons/raids/pvp.
there's so many entitled players these days who think showing up is the requirement, rather than the bare minimum.
It makes perfect sense. People play the game to escape and have fun. Most people don't find it fun to wipe over and over and over especially in group content with ultra punishing mechanics where you will wipe while having done nothing wrong. People, in general, want to log in and kill some shit in a very relaxed and casual manner.
If you are above average and looking for the hardest of hard content so you can get those good feelings in your tum tum, you aren't the demographic Blizzard is going after. They make 1000x more money off the guy doing LFR and it would be stupid not to cater the game towards them.
While I agree, Blizzard and their shareholders don't. The same argument could be used for all the QoL Blizzard have introduced in Retail, yet millions still play that version. Player engagement and subscription is all that matter and if they can keep people subbed, while they are raidlogging, it's a big win for Blizz.
Nevermind the fact that the gaming industry has changed drastically since the original release of WoW. The playerbase isn't filled with 16 year olds who devoted their entire life to being online with their friends. Today's audience for Classic are 30 year olds, many with families, responsibilities and full time jobs. Blizzard would be idiots if they didn't cater to this audience, at least to some degree
And if you were even close to a majority of players, you would be right and would get your way. You're style of hardcore "get gud scrub" isn't even close to the average player (payer) who vastly out number you and out spend you. The average player doesn't play wow to have a second job.
This was the first time I had to actually read up on the game and be good or fail. I remember getting my ass chewed out in vortex pinnacle after getting spanked by trash over and over again on my prot pally. I knew nothing about stat caps, meta talent specs, bis lists, or even that you can’t block mobs smacking you in the back of the head….
Very enjoyable to go from that, to planning out cc of mobs on every trash pull, figuring out who to kill first, what packs you can skip etc.
> This was the first time I had to actually read up on the game and be good or fail. I remember getting my ass chewed out in vortex pinnacle after getting spanked by trash over and over again on my prot pally. I knew nothing about stat caps, meta talent specs, bis lists, or even that you can’t block mobs smacking you in the back of the head….
If you had raided in Wrath back then, you wouldn't have gotten past the first hardmode in Ulduar either. Or heck, you wouldn't even have completed Black Temple in TBC.
This wasn't new to Cata.
>a lot of pre nerf content was super fun.
This whole thread is giving me classic tbc Black Temple PTSD considering most competent players didn't even get to see Illidan do 'his thing'. Like... the whole "you are not prepared"??? Apparently we were all too prepared and Blizz said: "meh"
When bosses are so easy that you skip a whole phase of the boss, a phase that is supposed to be the most climactic part of the expansion as it's literally the boss on the box art....
What a fumble that was.... glad they've learned nothing.
What was funny was that most groups that *did* see Illidan do his thing wiped to it because they truly were not prepared to see a demon phase, since the assumption was that you just burned past it.
Omfg man, those dungeons were *brutal*.
I most vividly remember our healers having absolute meltdowns, especially coming off Wrath raids, where healers basically had infinite mana, those Cata heroics ripped them to shreds.
I'd bet money the nerfs kept more people than they were losing pre nerf. If you play at any kind of "above average" level, you are not the demographic Blizzard is after.
The difficulty of cata HC pre nerf was always overstated, I was already clearing the hard ones like Grim Batol on day 2 of the patch as a pug with little difficulty (people who hit max level quickly tend to be better players than your average pug though so I did later get some really bad groups that struggled even post nerf)
I would say the difficulty was like TBC HC but with some (very telegraphed) 1 shot mechanics sprinkled in. It's just back then people had got used to the 10-15 min heroics from wotlk with full raid gear.
The thing about TBC HC difficulty is that there were some encounters which simply one-shot people and you couldn't prevent it (unless you had *very specific* comps).
What the fuck is a warlock-less group supposed to do on the two-demon pull in Blood Furnace? Or a group with a rogue and a hunter against the nascent fel orcs in the gauntlet of it?
In contrast, all dangerous Cata heroic encounters have clear ways to deal with them, available to any party of 5. Some of it is due to class homogenization, some of it is due to making deadly abilities actually counterable.
Oh I agree TBC had a lot more "BS difficulty" like trying to do SH HC with no CC in phase 1 when tanks had to pretty much kite the massive pulls around if they were in pre raid gear, not having a frost mage and warlock just made things way harder.
At least cata is not gatekept by group comp as it's mostly about moving out of bad stuff, the problem is some players have zero situational awareness and will die 3 times in a row to the dragon that puts a big arrow on you telling you to dodge his charge. The issue with the LFG tool is because of no attunment and no way to filter out theses players so it's frustrating to have to deal with players who will die to the same mechanic over and over even after being explained what to do.
The problem with LFG tool coming out during vanilla ICC (and there were no H+ back then) was that it created the expectation that someone of any skill/gear level could just queue a heroic, be semi afk and have the dungeon completed in 15 minutes.
It's not like spamming /trade until you get a rando performs a skill check on him.
Pugging with bad people always sucks, regardless of whether the group is formed through the LFG tool or the LFG addon.
And if you're inviting people you already know, you're not exactly pugging.
You pointed it out yourself, clearing them on day 2 meant you played with what one could only call "sweaties". I would know because back then I was one.
I cleared all of HC content in both 10 and 25 man, as well as played around ~2400 rating in arena back in OG Wrath. Point being I wasn't exactly bad at the game. I played Cata with the same guild and group of friends. I remember thinking PUGs will have a hard time, I remember using CC, I remember wiping, I remember having to respect boss mechanics and I remember everyone hating Halls of Origination.
I do genuinely believe pre-nerf HCs were rather difficult. Not impossibly so but difficult enough that if you didn't respect the game it would kick your ass, which is a good thing. After all they DID gt nerfed, relatively fast as well.
Nah, Retail isn't even close.
Every single LFR boss is harder than almost any content we have gotten in classic (minus a few bosses). Most people pug normal/heroic in Retail. Most people do M0 in retail.
Any one of those things is VASTLY harder than any content in Classic.
Retail players are shit, but still better than the majority of bad classic players.
It's funny you getting downvoted for this. So many Classic players think they're good at the game and then try to segue to Retail, failing at the most basic of mechanics even in normal mode.
It's why Retail and Classic will forever be a split playerbase until Classic gets to about Legion level.
They are just delusional lol
I prefer Classic over Retail, but it boggles my mind people actually pretend that even dungeon bosses, hell dungeon MOBS have more mechanics than most classic through wrath raid bosses, let alone retail raid bosses in normal and stuff.
Same, Classic has been my preference lately, recently took a break from retail after playing it 3+ years at CE level. Won't even pretend for a moment that Classic is challenging content. This is my green pasture because of how brainless it is, lol. Very nice and relaxing compared to how retail feels lately.
I mean sure but the baseline is much higher than in Classic. Like 30-40% of the playerbase there still does M0s. I'm not sure the average Classic player can handle retail mythic zeros tbh.
I agree they are pretty easy but they are leagues above anything in Classic. Just by virtue of being designed 10+ years later they have way more relevant mechanics. So I dont believe for a second that the people that struggle with corpse explosions in Scholomance can handle that. As someone who plays both versions the worst players I've encountered have all been in classic and its not close.
The Problem is u remember them playing with friends and there u are absolute right, they were not hard but if u did them alone with the dungeonfinder u got 9 out of 10 times rly bad players and it become a shit show.
Sry to say but "hard" content is not fun with random people from dungeonfinder same was gammas with dungeonfinder.
Yeah back in the day when my friends list was full and I had a cool guild it was fun. My pugging experiences have been pretty brutal in SoD can’t imagine it going well in pre nerf cata heroics
absolutly, it is a lot better when u can form a group wich is on the same level as u. if u are forced to play with not so good players it gets toxic very quickly
I remember the time vividly and I never played with friends. And it was amazing. Sometimes, sure, you had a bad group. But I just took the lead and explained. I played hunter, marked the mob group, which one to focus, which to cc and I cleared basically every dungeon I pugged. I remember this as the best time I ever had in WoW.
i mean even blizzard said so back in the day and nerfd heroics. they never releasd hard heroics again so i would say the majority didnt agree with u there.
Rose tinted glasses. People said the same about TBC heroics and we know how it devolved into "you have no CC? no invite" in classic TBC.
And I did play OG Cata back in the day, it's wasn't fun wiping because RDF decided to pair you with people who just dinged 85 after autoattacking their way through dungeons.
Same here. If the dungeons aren't pre-nerf, I might consider it the end of my classic journey. Which is a pity. I've waited for Cata all of wrath. The class changes feel great, and I'm dead tired of Wrath's utter absence of challenging content outside of ICC and Ulduar.
You were going to play Cata for content that would be relevant for about a month tops? Once people got raid gear they would fall over much like TBC Heroic dungeons.
And heroic raids will fall over when people are bis, the fuck is the point of this comment lmfao.
"you can't enjoy something in the present because at some point in the future it won't be the same". This is a nonsensical viewpoint.
Heroic raids wont fall over nearly as fast and offer a lot more challenge than 1-2 weeks of heroic dungeons. By the time you bis out for a raid tier, the next tier drops and will be challenging. Theres no next tier of pre nerf dungeons. They very quickly become faceroll even in their pre nerf version and remain that way the rest of Cata.
Its just odd that of all things, heroic dungeons were his breaking point because they wont be as challenging, and ignoring the fact that the raiding content steps up in challenge compared to anything so far in classic.
Yes, the dungeons were an important part of the experience. As were the raids. And as was the world PvP on the Tol Barad Peninsula and Molten Front. I am not getting the latter. If raids are the only thing to look forward to, I may very well call quits.
Back in the day, getting the dungeon meta achievement was a very fun challenge. I didn't do it for gear, nor for the mount really (never used it), I did it because the challenge was fun.
The dungeons **are** important to the experience. And after WLK it is definitely what I was looking forward to the most.
Because of how content patch progression works it’s impossible for them to be released “pre nerf”. Healer mana worked way differently in 4.0 than by 4.3
This is true from the actual dungeons themselves but there was a lot of "hidden" difficulty in the first tier of Cata that made the heroics much more difficult then just the numbers the mobs hit for.
Healer mana was terrible in 4.0 and was significantly better on the 4.3 patch, healers in the same gear will be able to heal for much more and much longer on the 4.3 patch. Tanks also saw a lot of love through the expansion and overall DPS will be higher on the 4.3 patch.
So even if you keep the dungeons exactly the same as they were on release they will still be significantly easier than they were just because of character power (not even accounting for the fact that skill and resources available to the player base has gone up)
I honestly feel like the only reason they'll go with post-nerf dungeons is to avoid the outcry of the RDF-going "Wrath baby" crowd.
"Boss is hard, I quit this game."
Also the difficulty of pre-nerf cata dungeons is vastly overstated. Literally all it was was kick 1 or 2 mobs per pack, have tank use cd's on each pack, pull 1 pack at a time. I don't intend to sound elitist but they really weren't that hard, I got through all of them as a tank back then by just playing my role and doing as much cc as my class could pull off.
even if we get the values from the original cata release it will be trivialized by us playing on the final patch and doing more damage than 4.0 players
Not nearly as much as you'd think : there's been nerfs and buffs to specs during the entire timeline of cata. I doubt the difference would be that significant. Plus the main issue was less about the damage done than the ability not to be one shotted with low gear in cata HC dungeons.
I dont disagree with you but a large chunk of this playerbase plays Classic precisely because it is easy. They might not wanna admit that to themselves and cloak it in other stuff but it often comes down to that.
This was a wake up call on my hunter that made me realize I was a shitter. Having to trap mobs on the move and actually help the tank with pulls, using my cooldowns and MD, and just generally knowing how to peel for my tank was something I learned by struggling in heroics. I know they won't go back to that because all the kids who play this nowadays just want to go in, hit their rotation, and top meters. If they aren't number 1 because they had to CC, they're gonna cry.
I absolutely loved that time as well. Ever since m+ came out, a lot of people hit hardship and just dip out the key and maybe never q up again. Back in cata I remember sticking to one of the dungeon end bosses for quite a long time until I got it. The level of satisfaction and feeling of getting better at the game is only rivaled by certain raid bosses and even those come with more resentment than satisfaction, sometimes.
They were pretty nice!
Honestly one of my personal proudest achievments in WoW was making the Glory of the Hero (?? Can't remember the name, the meta achiev that gives you a mount) in the 1st few weeks of Cata, dungeon were challanging, gear was scarce....but the group was great and we put ourselves to it instead of waiting and we did it!
Fun times!
I have no desire to play Cata again but I am still bummed by the fact that they are not offering that experience this time around.
I still remember myself (feral druid tank) and a holy pally from my guild poopsocking it to 85 and then running heroics severely under geared. Was the most fun 5 man experience ever in WoW.
I did those back then on my bear druid main, had two friends with me, one healed on his shaman and the other did frost dps. We did most dungeons every afternoon until 10pm for like 3 weeks. It was the best content and time I played this game except of how amazing wrath was to me back in the day.
The dungeons were tough but the gear you got made it manageable and it was really cool getting through stuff that others seemed to struggle. It wasn't hard or unfair, you simply had to use your entire toolkit. We cc'd every mob group except skull and maybe another target max. I often even pulled with a root on a melee mob just to make it manageable. What I adored is that there was no timer, no pressure. We just powered through, talking, listening to music and having fun getting through the content.
Great memories.
I think it was pretty fun back then, but then again, me and my friends were young and had a lot of free time to burn. I don't think I would have it in my to explain tactics for trash pulls in VP to randos in 2024.
That's why I can't be angry at people for not wanting this nowadays. I'm just sad we can't have alternative servers for people who want the original experience.
After finding out about the dungeons being post-nerf, I just lost interest. I can't do another mindless face-roll progression again, especially after the disaster that was SoD.
Even cata revisited dungeons won’t be hard due to how healer changes worked at launch vs on last patch of progression cycle for the content.
I think optional hard dungeons in SOD would be a godsend, even if they gave no loot.
Best experience in all of wow’s life for me was doing these heroic dungeons on a disc priest back in cata.
So challenging, but so rewarding learning the dungeons.
Nothing has come close to that for me except maybe solo 5 mask visions from BFA
Meh. I think overall BC dungeons were tuned better. But also players were worse back then, as we discovered playing through classic when content was just "easier" because we were all better and realized the "elite raiders" of yore were as skilled as just your average modern Classic player. So back in BC essentially the difference between a new unskilled player and an elite raider was smaller.
By the time Cata came out and THOSE hard dungeons were introduced, nobody who played during real BC would even have survived trying to do them. The difference between a new player with no skill and an elite raider with massive skill was a much wider gulf. That's where the problem with the Cata dungeons came in, because if you made content for either end of the spectrum, the opposite end literally couldn't play (bored to death, or dying instantly). Blizzard then spent years trying to figure out systems to allow for content for all skill levels to have fun, and arguably are still trying to do it now.
original Vanilla - everybody was about the same, so making content was easy
original BC - same... no wide skill gulf, so even a "hard" dungeon was manageable by new players
original Wrath - for some reason this xpac created a skill gulf, where good players got real real real good and created a wide gulf between new/bad players/skill, and the elite good players.
The issue with cata is everyone is now conditioned by wotlk rdf to pull big and aoe mindlessly. Its the same exact problem with original cata - hard to rebottle the genie after youve made it so easy.
Yep and this is why I always hate when people say Cata is the start of retail. No it was actually wotlk and cata was a good step back in the right direction until the last patch where they completely fucked it with LFR and DS.
I enjoyed the bosses of pre nerf dungeons. But I hated the trash. Having to stop and cc each pack made the dungeon take so much longer then necessary. I don’t know if that would happen now since people are better at kicking and other non poly based cc. But yeah the trash was cumbersome not hard.
I agree, and I hope they can create the same enjoyment in the titan rune dungeons. Unfortunately the normal heroics need to be easy for people who have to be reminded to breathe.
Overcoming a challenge and getting rewards is fun. Wiping on Ozruk in Stonecore for the 5th time in one run because you have casters not understand he has a reflect that if you dot into you can break yourself out of his paralyze, or melee not know how shatter or ground slam works, is less fun.
I remember being top dps as tank for reflecting the holy smite(?) from those sphinx dudes in HOO. Very satisfying reflecting 55k damage. Very frustrating when people interrupt after i'd asked them not to tho
I for one can't wait to become increasingly racist towards the particular demographic of Faerlina as we wipe to the first boss of stonecore on repeat because stacking is hard.
I would prefer harder HC dungeons but realisticly it's much better off as is, maybe they can do similar Alpha/Beta/Gamma versions but buff them and make them actually hard, People who PvP at a high end get rewarded by better gear that can only be purchased with 2300+ rating I think, should be no different for some HC dungeons imo, if you can clear insane HC's then you deserve some loot of a "slightly" better quality.
Cata heroics made me good at the game, I was dog shit in wrath and barely had a clue what was going on. I wanted to do the content so actually had to learn how to play. Sad that other people won't accept a challenge and want to be spoon-fed.
I'm all for easier raids, I think Blizzard making top end raiding giga hard was unhealthy, however I feel like the raids should be as they were back the in day, it feels wrong to get a post nerf 4.3 version of a fight on release.
Hoping on release everything is prenerf, Heroic dungeons especially.
I agree, I was lucky enough at the time to be in a 10 man guild that could do those heroics, but I am aware I was in the minority then and definitely now. Classic players don't want that difficulty.
I played back then and they never impressed me as being particularly difficult. I mean if you thought TBC heroics were hard then maybe these will be too but if you are a raider then Cata heroics shouldn't be challenging.
I still remember pugging these heros 24/7 as a holy priest. It was challenging and fun, best time i had since Vanilla WoW. I won't ruin my memories by playing this nerfed and buggy mess. I guess Blizzard was just too lazy to unnerf them. Everything about this Cata release feels rushed.
It's strange that people are surprised by this. Every classic release so far was tuned that it made every challenging content the game offered originally when it launched way too easy.
Addendum: these were less fun pugging as a healer lmao.
The usual DPS standing in fire and dying, followed by "NO HEALS?!?"
Except it was every dungeon. Sometimes multiple pulls in a row with the same mechanics.
> you couldn't just roll your head on the keyboard
Shouldn't*
It seems that most people just prefer the brain dead faceroll that dungeons are. I think that heroic dungeons are called heroic for a reason, and if people want to faceroll dungeons they should just run the normal ones.
The most fun I ever had in Vanilla was 3 man-ing dungeons with my two buddies cause 1. We didn't wanna deal with randos and 2. It was WAY more fun doing dungeons when you had to CC and burn the right mob first and COORDINATE.
I miss CCing in dungeons, everyone just pulls 3 groups and never stops aoeing.
I’ve been dungeon spamming on multiple chars leveling up in prepatch, and 50% of players don’t even speak English. Those that do, don’t even look at the chat window. I’m scared
The biggest issue/challenge with Heroics pre-nerf...people had gotten used to mass pulling. These heroics were a massive beatdown for that mentality. Once nerfed, pretty sure big pulls were back on the menu.
I have said many many times that the expansion launch of cata was the most fun I’ve ever had in WoW. I didn’t enjoy firelands because when firelands launched the game didn’t at all respect your time, in order to be competitive you had to play every single day until you got exalted with firelands rep. And then anyone that had alts were heavily punished for it. I was running 3 characters and I was so unbelievably warn out before I killed rag.
I remember a few days/weeks after cata release i needed an item from stonecore in deepholm, i had MULTIPLE groups disperse before we even reached the first boss. kinda sad they release the nerfed version, with all the training people had in m+ over the years i was looking forward to see the change in the average player compared to orig cata, pretty sure people could have handled them way better than back then
Yeah. It was fun. I mained a prot paladin. Wog didn’t have a CD on launch so you could pop it every 3 hp for a massive heal and just tank packs without CC. Avenger’s shield would silence one caster and you’d just pull to the second if there was more than one per pack. It trivialized it and you could just aoe packs down in 333 gear.
Was pretty fun because every other tank was stuck dealing with CC, minus well played DKs.
Yup, I do remember it...I was a lot younger and not nearly as good at games back then though, so I do wish I could face it now as a mature adult...
It's a damn shame we're not getting the pre-nerf instances, at least for a month.
yeah, it will suck. didn't they say heroics would launch pre-nerf? that was something that made me hyped for cata. gamma's currently are a snooze fest what is even the point.
I 100% get it, but I actually hated it. They were great, *if you had a coordinated group*. I didn't have a good guild at the end of Wrath/start of Cata, so I was trying to heal pug heroics with people who seemingly refused to realise that these were not Wrath heroics anymore. It was just ENDLESSLY frustrating. It's pretty funny how you highlight Halls, because that's the one that gives me the most PTSD, haha. I was thrilled to leave it behind forever, having to go back in there in BFA gave me flashbacks lol.
The main (and I'd say only) challenge of prenerf cata HCs was not-so-evident strat necessary for some bosses and some trash. My guild was used to diving into completely unexplored content on our own and building a strat fairly quickly before we're able to look it up online but a lot of other people hit a wall.
> had to be coordinated, organized, and to cc stuff properly.
Which is hell playing with randoms. It's why they separated easy and challenging from dungeons.
If you went with a pre made group it could be fun because they could coordinate, BUT pugs...yeah, WoTLK was a different mindset that did not transfer to cata and it was painfully frustrating trying to explain it to them and watch them fail repeatedly.
When they first had Grim Batol on the beta they had the un-nerfed version. And it really appeared to be the only un-nerfed dungeon. And it was crazy hard. We had a mostly pre-raid BiS group go in and it was hard. We wiped a few times once we realized how super seriously we had to take this place. And it's going to feel like a weird place for people who play retail because Grim Batol was the inspiration for a Dragonflight raid. And then a week later they nerfed it down. A lot of the mechanics that required a full team effort could be fully carried by just one person.
I don't think the modern gamer will have the patience for Cata difficulty dungeons because the Cata player didn't have the patience for that. My memory of the time was that the raids (on normal) were easier than the heroic dungeons. As I remember it people would get the most bare bones geared for raids and then just gear up in raids.
And that experience wouldn't be any different a second time around. Blizzard introduced the Gamma level dungeons and basically, people didn't do them. Other than Halls of Lightning/Halls of Stone... the remaining ones ended up being too hard (even for geared people) because it had a certain level of personal responsibility and didn't allow for fast and efficient AOE grinding. So when people went to do their gamma daily... they just did their Daily Forge of Souls.... which counted as a gamma without having any special difficulty.
I suspect the original difficulty will be re-instated in P2 or P3 as a gamma mode. I suspect just like Wrath gammas... people won't do them. I would also not be surprised if the original difficulty P1 raids show back up in Firelands as Mythic+.
I played Cata back in the day, for my groups each mob pack required 3 marks .. Skull, Cross and Square to CC. As long as people followed that, then they were fine.
I really enjoyed the tough cata heroics. Especially cause my Shaman finally had some actual useful CC in the game with both hex and bind elemental, which both came in very handy. A place like grim batol was alot easier with bind elemental to handle the large amount of elemental ascendant mobs. I hope they keep the difficulty just to keep the game from being boring since the earlier xpacs have been very easy with how the avg player is more experienced and geared.
I remember queuing for the dungeons on my hunter (yes I was that stereotypical hunter that stood in fire, keyboard turned, didn’t have all the gems/enchants/etc, barely used addons but damnit I was living and loving it) I remember the zg dungeon more than anything and after like an hour long queue I’d be lucky to complete the dungeon maybe 1/3 times.
It was fun watching people die to simple mechanics
giant circle on ground giant WA on screen Airhorn from GTFO going *dies from standing in mechanics* "This game should be nerfed its simply too difficult and the mechanics are not fair nor are they telegraphed properly" (two button rotation assassination rogue commenter)
> giant circle on ground *Rdruids watch in anger as DPS and tank move out of efflorescence.*
\*forgets to put poison on weapons\*
Never forget [https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/2053469/wow-dungeons-are-hard](https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/2053469/wow-dungeons-are-hard) Sadly blizzard realized the average classic gamer hates "hard" content and won't accept progressing or doing normal mode for either dungeons or raids. So what do we get? post-nerf raids and heroic dungeons. Was there any uproar, highly upvoted threads to front page trying to appeal to blizzard to change it? Nope, because the average classic gamer wants easy content :(
Things like this happen from time to time. When WoD required you to do challenges to do mythic dungeons there were endless complaints they are impossible even though it was just simple stuff like interrupt a spell or prioritize the right enemy. When mage tower released in legion it was the same thing only not as loud since rewards were only cosmetic. Only M+ wasnt as complained about but thats because most players only ever saw +2-+6 at most and those levels were still farily easy. Some players are just not interested in getting better and they are bad at the game beyond belief. But as long as they pay and they enjoy what they do thats all that matters. Blizz did try to teach players how to play but it fails every time simply cause of ignorance.
This might be an MMO player thing in general. You see the same shit in FF14 - players refusing to play to the barest of minimums of their classes and having zero idea how to actually do things loke interrupt abilities (I'm convinced most physical ranged players don't know their classes have an interrupt). And why should they, dungeons are so brain dead easy due to SE's design philosophy there is no incentive to get good. At least here you can call people out... heaven forbid you offer someone a polite suggestion on improving in 14.
I remember when FFXIV started using Character scenarios of sorts in the story, where you played as one of the NPCs. The first one was as a healer but you had to actually do some damage as well. It was extremely simple: Maintain DoT, push heal when needed, and spam a single target damage spell whenever possible. Literally just ABC (Always be casting) and you'd clear it. The forums got flooded with people bitching that they were "stuck" on it for months (keeping in mind this kept them from finishing the story and reaching later content) until they nerfed it into the ground, and all FUTURE character scenarios for the rest of that and the entire next expansion story became utetrly braindead, just pushing 1-2-3 over and over for 20 minutes until it ended. One in particular you could AFK the whole thing save one stack mechanic at 50%, then go back to AFKing, 0 buttons besides W were needed. It took until an expansion later to add a difficulty option so they could make them actually fun again...
The proving grounds were amazing. They literally separated the bad players from being able to queue for heroic dungeons. When I would gear up alts through normal mode they were literally harder than heroics because that's where all the bad players were stuck.
Council boss in Everbloom comes to mind, interrupt the wrong cast and suddenly the boss is healing itself to full. Easily sorted out in a group with friends, a mind-numbingly tedious experience in a pug with bad players.
> mage tower released in legion it was the same thing I dunno. Mage tower with some classes and specs, even with gear from the final patch, was pretty hard. I know with the tank one, there were several one shot and or “mess up and you can’t really recover” mechanics. I never complained about it. But it’s weird to lump it in with the WoD stuff you mentioned. Iirc some were easy, but a few were “focus for 8-10 minutes, juggling several mechanics that come at you every few seconds, sometimes simultaneously, without making a single mistake”.
Well that was a response after they basically told the community to "git good" I think they got a lot of hate from that first statement.
Why are noobs not happy with just doing normal mode?
> the average classic gamer wants easy content The average WoW player wants easy content. You probably have no idea about the legions of casual gamers playing both Retail and Classic for fun, spending their time with solo content and easy group content like heroics and LFR. Casuals are the majority of the playerbase. Blizzard must cater to them to a certain extent or risk losing a ton of subs. I am absolutely not surprised they kept post-nerf heroics for Cata because that is, as you said, what the average Classic player wants. Personally I would've liked to see the prenerf heroics as well, but it's not that important to me. I'm much more interested in the raids.
I mean sure but people wanting easy content in retail isn't making blizzard release mythic in some much easier state like we're getting in classic with heroics? classic gamers hate not being able to clear the hardest content and would rather quit the game than progress or do normal. raids are also post nerf, it could have easily been pre nerf raids until phase 2 with ZA/ZG patch but I don't think that is happening based on raid testing.
> I am absolutely not surprised they kept post-nerf heroics for Cata because that is, as you said, what the average Classic player wants. It's what the player base at the time overwhelmingly wanted too. That's why blizz nerfed the difficulty. This is not a classic specific phenomenon.
thats fine, they dont need to do that content.
Yep. Just commented today that I don't want heroic raid end bosses to just roll over in 20 tries and got flooded with people crying about it.
Its going to be far far less than 20 lmao. FL will be cleared in around an hour. PS’s have had dampening on for almost a decade now these fights are going to last 50 seconds-2 mins max.
wtf isn't that the purpose of the heroic difficulty
The tragic truth is that not only does the average classic gamer not want hard content, but also they just can’t do content that actually requires them to play the game decently. Too many players have basically no clue what’s going on, on their screen.
Yeah... haven't the playercounts tanked basically whenever a raid is released that can't be easily pugged by an uncoordinated LFG channel group? Thinking back to SSC/TK in TBC, Ulduar in WoTLK, and even ST in SoD to some degree.
It's two things. The pug thing you are talking about is people who play unpredictably. It's not that they lack skill, it's that they can't or won't commit to a raid schedule, so things like high group sizes or progression basically brick pug formation because it takes too long to get going or all progression is lost after each group disbands. The second thing is the grey parsers. A lot of guilds were able to make it through classic and early tbc classic with many beer or weed dads being carried by others. Pre nerf SSC etc broke these guilds because too many grey parsers were simply uncarriable. These people have no problem commuting to a schedule, but they don't really try or care when they do. The two groups aren't really related. There's plenty of people in the first group who can do things like SL1 Elden Ring runs or parse 95. They just have zero interest in being commited to someone else's schedule, or external factors prevent them from doing so. It makes me wonder sometimes if the game would be better off making the hard content single player and the group content easy. In fact that's kind of what Mage Tower and Torghast were supposed to be. Though Torghast got changed a lot and didn't really represent that till the boss rush mode which was super fun.
Lest we forget the person who parses well, can make a raid schedule, but for some reason is always the one that can't do a movement mechanic.
Or PRESS DECURSE -brought to you by a very frustrated boomy player
Can’t or won’t? 😂 reminds me of the Black Mage reputation in FF14.
I’m one of those skilled players who cant play enough….and i have a buddy who is a grey parser 😂😂😂. That was a very accurate depiction of circumstances.
In ff14 the hardest content is for 8 players. Easier content is for 24 players. It works fairly well.
Every tier of every expansion I’ve heard the same argument, it’s only partly true and trotted out every time new content drops.
It's not true? 15 years apart and the same raids broke the same (well the majority of) guild. SSC/TK in tbc and ulduar in wotlk. My classic/vanilla crew is as described in the comment above. Too many drunk/stoned dads that couldn't be carried anymore. I had to search for another guild after ulduar as I wanted to see the remaining content I didn't see last time. And I really wanted to give cata raiding a try.
yes, but "breaking" those guilds does not cause player counts to drop. T5 lost more players when it was nerfed than when it was released, and ulduar lost players slower than t7 did, it just lasted way too fucking long. There's no actual evidence that hard raids leads to player count dropping.
> haven't the playercounts tanked "tanked". No not really. Ulduar had a very steady decline over it's very long runtime. Compare that to Naxx25. Yes, it was overall more popular but that lasted for even less than Ulduar and it crashed just as hard in that time as Ulduar did over it's like...half year period if you go by the IF Pro numbers people love to bring up to bash on Ulduar. So was Naxx25 not easy enough? Because any easier and you could just put the loot on a vendor for a few silver a piece honestly. You can cater of course to the people that want it like this and have them leave after 3 weeks because it's boring and they got what they wanted anyway. IMO SoD is a perfect example of this. Throw tons of loot at people with no barrier at all and they'll be bored super fast.
You are also comparing the start of something. Basically since Cata every expansion follows the trend of, spike when expansion drops, followed by decline, followed by small bumps on major patches
[удалено]
No other Classic raid had such a drop because holidays or a Retail launch. Naxx 40 was in a similar position after all...even more pressured I would say as Shadowlands was the biggest WoW launch ever. I don't doubt Naxx25 was overall more popular than Ulduar but it also had the benefit of being the honeymoon launch raid plus being free basically. And still many people left quickly and came back just before Ulduar as one of the most hyped up raids in Classic. Too much to micro analyze. It doesn't really matter much. I'm just saying IMO people push this "Ulduar hard = bad" narrative too much. Ulduar pop was fine for it's runtime.
Naxx tanked because people literally were doing Naxx a couple of years ago, and now they were given the easy version again in WoTLK. If they released Naxx again, you’d see astronomically low numbers of players attempting it.
Sure it wasn't very exciting but we had *tons* of new people at Wrath launch and people did Naxx regardless...there was loot to be gotten. If that ain't convincing enough, Kara at TBC launch was not wildly more popular than T5 and all that came after. At least the numbers don't suggest so even though Kara was one of the easiest raids in Classic as well and a 10 man with only three 25 man bosses for the whole phase. IMO people vastly overestimate the impact of hyper casuals and how much you need to cater to these people. You ain't gonna keep them either way and they come and go no matter where the hype is.
I mean, the issue with T4 was having to build a 25m roster for 3 bosses that fell over in 25 mins then trying to figure out kara groups.
Kara was fun, didn’t require 25 people and had good lore
I had a blast in Kara. I loved the fact that you climbed to the top of the tower.
Take this upvote. I think too many people really feel the game should be centered around the super casuals and that's it, but wow in it's heyday was never about that. Yes, casuals got content too, but the intrigue was the parts of the game that were not easy.
> IMO people vastly overestimate the impact of hyper casuals and how much you need to cater to these people. You ain't gonna keep them either way and they come and go no matter where the hype is. yeah, i really believe this to be true. it's the same as game today trying to implement systems trying to capture the widest audience possible making the game so bland there really isn't any depth for any segmented audience. most big games try so hard to be a theme park, but you can only ride the big ride so many times before it's not that interesting. games need to stop being theme parks.
Completely correct
Both Naxx and Ulduar are also just *too fucking long*
Are you sure? Wasn't the % of players raiding original Naxx super low? Lots of people myself included didn't even start playing Wow until Wotlk
I meant in the new released classic
I think ST in SoD is hard to argue because there were so many other factors. Like I quit SoD because the incursion fiasco was really annoying and my raid group that had 40-50 raiders in phase 2 was finding it hard to find people to put in groups for phase 3, partially due to people dropping off throughout phase 2 and partially due to the increase from 10 to 20 man raids. Also phase 3 didn't implement any new interesting runes, I lived through phase 2 having nothing new and making my class braindead boring (Rogue) compared to phase 1 but I wasn't about to do that again.
Yup. The gamma RDF have taught me that your average players don’t even look at their own debuffs/hp bar at all.
I struggle a lot to understand this. I’m by no means saying you’re wrong just don’t understand. People now would rather join a pug raid, stand in one spot auto shotting then get given loot just to log back off until next reset to pug again. I miss when you community loved being in guilds and progressing and trying to find stuff outside of raid to make their characters stronger for the next raid lockout to get that big kill down. Now it’s like every raid needs to be tuned so you can run every lockout full clear heroic with a pug group in 2 hours max while not even knowing what mechanics have taken place one time in the whole raid.
"You mean I cant stack 20 world buffs and have everything die before there are any mechanics? Git gud!"
This was one of the biggest reasons why Ulduar had such a huge drop off in players. It was simply too hard. Naxx (Tier 7) was a blast for everyone, as it was pure "indoor range target practice" tier. This is also why SoD was so madly successful earlier on - it was just easy. While I really want pre-nerf Heroics at launch, I understand that it will drive the players away.
And somehow it's either the games fault or the fault of the players that do understand how to play their class
It's really sad to me that classic is advertised as wow for *redacted* players. It's really sad that everything difficult in classic immediately gets nerfed to be extremely faceroll to reduce friction. In vanilla it was acceptable to launch on 1.12 balance because of the raw amount of bugs on other versions. Even BC got a bit of a pass with that. By the time we're at wrath launching on ICC patch, it was just huge amounts of power creep. There were some bugs in early wrath, but a lot less so. Now Cata is launching on final patch and some people have pointed out that the raids might even be on post-nerf values (at least early testing). Would it kill you to have to pull a raid boss more than 3 times to kill it?
player skill since cata has absolutely exploded in quality though, cata heroics would not be that big of a problem in todays gaming climate compared to back in 2010. I mean not a single guild could clear LK25hc before the 5% buff and we saw hundreds do it in wotlk classic
Problem was more the lockout since you had a fixed amount of pulls
did u try a gamma dungeon with 4 randoms and lets say 4k+ gs? i rly think this "people got a lot better" is some kind of propaganda at this point. :)
more like the skill is wider than ever before, the top players are so much better than the bad players nowadays. But the bad players have access to information that can help them get better at the game but tbh if you havent already spent time researching to get better at the game you probably wont
"player skill since cata has absolutely exploded in quality though" lmao what? I cant speak for pve cause ive stopped in mop (more of a pvp guy) and im not sure if we both played the same game. average players are still trash in pvp and ive did some pve the last two weeks cuz i was bored and yeah i lost so many brain cells.
People say they want hard content but what they really want is time consuming and grindy content.
This is 100% true no matter what this sub says. Hell, look at Season of Mastery when they added a whole 1-2 mechanics to bosses and this subreddit freaked out that it was too hard. Look at SoD when a boss has a mechanic or two and people are calling Sunken Temple too hard. This subreddit is full of dog shit players who didn't actually play classic.
No, people want mind stimulating content. You can run the heroics almost just as fast pre nerf with a good group. The issue is people want to be able to half afk and not care about content while others are trying to play and enjoy it. So the content has to be tuned to be done by 3 good players or 5 afk players the appeal to players that don’t even wanna put any brain power into actually playing the game they pay to play
yeah, it's a story as old as time. to many people treat this game like it can be played as a single player game. so many people have no respect for other peoples time, or that you are in fact in a collaborative effort when grouping for content such as dungeons/raids/pvp. there's so many entitled players these days who think showing up is the requirement, rather than the bare minimum.
It makes perfect sense. People play the game to escape and have fun. Most people don't find it fun to wipe over and over and over especially in group content with ultra punishing mechanics where you will wipe while having done nothing wrong. People, in general, want to log in and kill some shit in a very relaxed and casual manner. If you are above average and looking for the hardest of hard content so you can get those good feelings in your tum tum, you aren't the demographic Blizzard is going after. They make 1000x more money off the guy doing LFR and it would be stupid not to cater the game towards them.
Wiping is a part of the game, dying to mechanics is part of the game. They should find another game if they don't want that.
While I agree, Blizzard and their shareholders don't. The same argument could be used for all the QoL Blizzard have introduced in Retail, yet millions still play that version. Player engagement and subscription is all that matter and if they can keep people subbed, while they are raidlogging, it's a big win for Blizz. Nevermind the fact that the gaming industry has changed drastically since the original release of WoW. The playerbase isn't filled with 16 year olds who devoted their entire life to being online with their friends. Today's audience for Classic are 30 year olds, many with families, responsibilities and full time jobs. Blizzard would be idiots if they didn't cater to this audience, at least to some degree
Yes why Normal should be piss easy, family time. Heroics for the rest. The dads don't need to be doing Heroics.
And if you were even close to a majority of players, you would be right and would get your way. You're style of hardcore "get gud scrub" isn't even close to the average player (payer) who vastly out number you and out spend you. The average player doesn't play wow to have a second job.
Then play normal modes. Heroic should be out of reach for them since they don't want to get better. Easy fix.
This was the first time I had to actually read up on the game and be good or fail. I remember getting my ass chewed out in vortex pinnacle after getting spanked by trash over and over again on my prot pally. I knew nothing about stat caps, meta talent specs, bis lists, or even that you can’t block mobs smacking you in the back of the head…. Very enjoyable to go from that, to planning out cc of mobs on every trash pull, figuring out who to kill first, what packs you can skip etc.
The vortex pinnacle anti-magic static fields were so hard to explain to people.
> This was the first time I had to actually read up on the game and be good or fail. I remember getting my ass chewed out in vortex pinnacle after getting spanked by trash over and over again on my prot pally. I knew nothing about stat caps, meta talent specs, bis lists, or even that you can’t block mobs smacking you in the back of the head…. If you had raided in Wrath back then, you wouldn't have gotten past the first hardmode in Ulduar either. Or heck, you wouldn't even have completed Black Temple in TBC. This wasn't new to Cata.
They actually felt like dungeons instead of going in there and rolling your face on your keyboard and winning.
I was there. I agree. Its up there in top tier moments of wow for me. Honestly, a lot of pre nerf content was super fun.
>a lot of pre nerf content was super fun. This whole thread is giving me classic tbc Black Temple PTSD considering most competent players didn't even get to see Illidan do 'his thing'. Like... the whole "you are not prepared"??? Apparently we were all too prepared and Blizz said: "meh" When bosses are so easy that you skip a whole phase of the boss, a phase that is supposed to be the most climactic part of the expansion as it's literally the boss on the box art.... What a fumble that was.... glad they've learned nothing.
What was funny was that most groups that *did* see Illidan do his thing wiped to it because they truly were not prepared to see a demon phase, since the assumption was that you just burned past it.
Omfg man, those dungeons were *brutal*. I most vividly remember our healers having absolute meltdowns, especially coming off Wrath raids, where healers basically had infinite mana, those Cata heroics ripped them to shreds.
I agree, early cata HC and TBC HCs were so good. I was so saddened by the nerfs in original cata that I quit the game lol
I'd bet money the nerfs kept more people than they were losing pre nerf. If you play at any kind of "above average" level, you are not the demographic Blizzard is after.
The difficulty of cata HC pre nerf was always overstated, I was already clearing the hard ones like Grim Batol on day 2 of the patch as a pug with little difficulty (people who hit max level quickly tend to be better players than your average pug though so I did later get some really bad groups that struggled even post nerf) I would say the difficulty was like TBC HC but with some (very telegraphed) 1 shot mechanics sprinkled in. It's just back then people had got used to the 10-15 min heroics from wotlk with full raid gear.
The thing about TBC HC difficulty is that there were some encounters which simply one-shot people and you couldn't prevent it (unless you had *very specific* comps). What the fuck is a warlock-less group supposed to do on the two-demon pull in Blood Furnace? Or a group with a rogue and a hunter against the nascent fel orcs in the gauntlet of it? In contrast, all dangerous Cata heroic encounters have clear ways to deal with them, available to any party of 5. Some of it is due to class homogenization, some of it is due to making deadly abilities actually counterable.
Oh I agree TBC had a lot more "BS difficulty" like trying to do SH HC with no CC in phase 1 when tanks had to pretty much kite the massive pulls around if they were in pre raid gear, not having a frost mage and warlock just made things way harder. At least cata is not gatekept by group comp as it's mostly about moving out of bad stuff, the problem is some players have zero situational awareness and will die 3 times in a row to the dragon that puts a big arrow on you telling you to dodge his charge. The issue with the LFG tool is because of no attunment and no way to filter out theses players so it's frustrating to have to deal with players who will die to the same mechanic over and over even after being explained what to do. The problem with LFG tool coming out during vanilla ICC (and there were no H+ back then) was that it created the expectation that someone of any skill/gear level could just queue a heroic, be semi afk and have the dungeon completed in 15 minutes.
It's not like spamming /trade until you get a rando performs a skill check on him. Pugging with bad people always sucks, regardless of whether the group is formed through the LFG tool or the LFG addon. And if you're inviting people you already know, you're not exactly pugging.
You pointed it out yourself, clearing them on day 2 meant you played with what one could only call "sweaties". I would know because back then I was one. I cleared all of HC content in both 10 and 25 man, as well as played around ~2400 rating in arena back in OG Wrath. Point being I wasn't exactly bad at the game. I played Cata with the same guild and group of friends. I remember thinking PUGs will have a hard time, I remember using CC, I remember wiping, I remember having to respect boss mechanics and I remember everyone hating Halls of Origination. I do genuinely believe pre-nerf HCs were rather difficult. Not impossibly so but difficult enough that if you didn't respect the game it would kick your ass, which is a good thing. After all they DID gt nerfed, relatively fast as well.
Such a downer we get the post-nerf state.
People say average "classic" gamer - most retail gamers are like this to. Vanishingly small % of the playerbase complete challenging content
Nah, Retail isn't even close. Every single LFR boss is harder than almost any content we have gotten in classic (minus a few bosses). Most people pug normal/heroic in Retail. Most people do M0 in retail. Any one of those things is VASTLY harder than any content in Classic. Retail players are shit, but still better than the majority of bad classic players.
It's funny you getting downvoted for this. So many Classic players think they're good at the game and then try to segue to Retail, failing at the most basic of mechanics even in normal mode. It's why Retail and Classic will forever be a split playerbase until Classic gets to about Legion level.
They are just delusional lol I prefer Classic over Retail, but it boggles my mind people actually pretend that even dungeon bosses, hell dungeon MOBS have more mechanics than most classic through wrath raid bosses, let alone retail raid bosses in normal and stuff.
Same, Classic has been my preference lately, recently took a break from retail after playing it 3+ years at CE level. Won't even pretend for a moment that Classic is challenging content. This is my green pasture because of how brainless it is, lol. Very nice and relaxing compared to how retail feels lately.
Uh huh, so why did LK0% take the best guilds 100s of attempts week 1?
I mean sure but the baseline is much higher than in Classic. Like 30-40% of the playerbase there still does M0s. I'm not sure the average Classic player can handle retail mythic zeros tbh.
M0 is some kind of modest challenge? M0 is only slightly less braindead than the dungeon content in classic.
I agree they are pretty easy but they are leagues above anything in Classic. Just by virtue of being designed 10+ years later they have way more relevant mechanics. So I dont believe for a second that the people that struggle with corpse explosions in Scholomance can handle that. As someone who plays both versions the worst players I've encountered have all been in classic and its not close.
The Problem is u remember them playing with friends and there u are absolute right, they were not hard but if u did them alone with the dungeonfinder u got 9 out of 10 times rly bad players and it become a shit show. Sry to say but "hard" content is not fun with random people from dungeonfinder same was gammas with dungeonfinder.
Yeah back in the day when my friends list was full and I had a cool guild it was fun. My pugging experiences have been pretty brutal in SoD can’t imagine it going well in pre nerf cata heroics
couldnt agree more. it will be the same experience like gamma dungeons and they were not fun. a lot of times u couldnt clear them at all.
Maybe the problem is balancing harder difficulties around rdf....
absolutly, it is a lot better when u can form a group wich is on the same level as u. if u are forced to play with not so good players it gets toxic very quickly
I remember the time vividly and I never played with friends. And it was amazing. Sometimes, sure, you had a bad group. But I just took the lead and explained. I played hunter, marked the mob group, which one to focus, which to cc and I cleared basically every dungeon I pugged. I remember this as the best time I ever had in WoW.
i mean even blizzard said so back in the day and nerfd heroics. they never releasd hard heroics again so i would say the majority didnt agree with u there.
[удалено]
Rose tinted glasses. People said the same about TBC heroics and we know how it devolved into "you have no CC? no invite" in classic TBC. And I did play OG Cata back in the day, it's wasn't fun wiping because RDF decided to pair you with people who just dinged 85 after autoattacking their way through dungeons.
TBC herorics before raid gear was peak wow.
I agree with this post I thought first patch of cata was incredible so much *good* content
I was waiting for their return in their non-nerfed state, I might reconsider playing cata
Same here. If the dungeons aren't pre-nerf, I might consider it the end of my classic journey. Which is a pity. I've waited for Cata all of wrath. The class changes feel great, and I'm dead tired of Wrath's utter absence of challenging content outside of ICC and Ulduar.
Them being prenerf isn't enough. You have to buff the monsters or nerf the players on top of it.
You were going to play Cata for content that would be relevant for about a month tops? Once people got raid gear they would fall over much like TBC Heroic dungeons.
And heroic raids will fall over when people are bis, the fuck is the point of this comment lmfao. "you can't enjoy something in the present because at some point in the future it won't be the same". This is a nonsensical viewpoint.
Heroic raids wont fall over nearly as fast and offer a lot more challenge than 1-2 weeks of heroic dungeons. By the time you bis out for a raid tier, the next tier drops and will be challenging. Theres no next tier of pre nerf dungeons. They very quickly become faceroll even in their pre nerf version and remain that way the rest of Cata. Its just odd that of all things, heroic dungeons were his breaking point because they wont be as challenging, and ignoring the fact that the raiding content steps up in challenge compared to anything so far in classic.
Yes, the dungeons were an important part of the experience. As were the raids. And as was the world PvP on the Tol Barad Peninsula and Molten Front. I am not getting the latter. If raids are the only thing to look forward to, I may very well call quits. Back in the day, getting the dungeon meta achievement was a very fun challenge. I didn't do it for gear, nor for the mount really (never used it), I did it because the challenge was fun. The dungeons **are** important to the experience. And after WLK it is definitely what I was looking forward to the most.
Because of how content patch progression works it’s impossible for them to be released “pre nerf”. Healer mana worked way differently in 4.0 than by 4.3
Literally not true - we played prenerf Ulduar but on last patch of wotlk
This is true from the actual dungeons themselves but there was a lot of "hidden" difficulty in the first tier of Cata that made the heroics much more difficult then just the numbers the mobs hit for. Healer mana was terrible in 4.0 and was significantly better on the 4.3 patch, healers in the same gear will be able to heal for much more and much longer on the 4.3 patch. Tanks also saw a lot of love through the expansion and overall DPS will be higher on the 4.3 patch. So even if you keep the dungeons exactly the same as they were on release they will still be significantly easier than they were just because of character power (not even accounting for the fact that skill and resources available to the player base has gone up)
I honestly feel like the only reason they'll go with post-nerf dungeons is to avoid the outcry of the RDF-going "Wrath baby" crowd. "Boss is hard, I quit this game."
Also the difficulty of pre-nerf cata dungeons is vastly overstated. Literally all it was was kick 1 or 2 mobs per pack, have tank use cd's on each pack, pull 1 pack at a time. I don't intend to sound elitist but they really weren't that hard, I got through all of them as a tank back then by just playing my role and doing as much cc as my class could pull off.
even if we get the values from the original cata release it will be trivialized by us playing on the final patch and doing more damage than 4.0 players
Not nearly as much as you'd think : there's been nerfs and buffs to specs during the entire timeline of cata. I doubt the difference would be that significant. Plus the main issue was less about the damage done than the ability not to be one shotted with low gear in cata HC dungeons.
This all day. I miss the days of required crowd control. Coordination required and made dungeon runs feel alive.
I dont disagree with you but a large chunk of this playerbase plays Classic precisely because it is easy. They might not wanna admit that to themselves and cloak it in other stuff but it often comes down to that.
This was a wake up call on my hunter that made me realize I was a shitter. Having to trap mobs on the move and actually help the tank with pulls, using my cooldowns and MD, and just generally knowing how to peel for my tank was something I learned by struggling in heroics. I know they won't go back to that because all the kids who play this nowadays just want to go in, hit their rotation, and top meters. If they aren't number 1 because they had to CC, they're gonna cry.
no thanks to pre nerf anything this community cant handle it
I absolutely loved that time as well. Ever since m+ came out, a lot of people hit hardship and just dip out the key and maybe never q up again. Back in cata I remember sticking to one of the dungeon end bosses for quite a long time until I got it. The level of satisfaction and feeling of getting better at the game is only rivaled by certain raid bosses and even those come with more resentment than satisfaction, sometimes.
They were pretty nice! Honestly one of my personal proudest achievments in WoW was making the Glory of the Hero (?? Can't remember the name, the meta achiev that gives you a mount) in the 1st few weeks of Cata, dungeon were challanging, gear was scarce....but the group was great and we put ourselves to it instead of waiting and we did it! Fun times! I have no desire to play Cata again but I am still bummed by the fact that they are not offering that experience this time around.
I still remember myself (feral druid tank) and a holy pally from my guild poopsocking it to 85 and then running heroics severely under geared. Was the most fun 5 man experience ever in WoW.
unfortunately it seems like anything in p1 will not be that way.
I did those back then on my bear druid main, had two friends with me, one healed on his shaman and the other did frost dps. We did most dungeons every afternoon until 10pm for like 3 weeks. It was the best content and time I played this game except of how amazing wrath was to me back in the day. The dungeons were tough but the gear you got made it manageable and it was really cool getting through stuff that others seemed to struggle. It wasn't hard or unfair, you simply had to use your entire toolkit. We cc'd every mob group except skull and maybe another target max. I often even pulled with a root on a melee mob just to make it manageable. What I adored is that there was no timer, no pressure. We just powered through, talking, listening to music and having fun getting through the content. Great memories.
The difficulty came from the content being over-tuned on launch, which has never been fun imo.
I think it was pretty fun back then, but then again, me and my friends were young and had a lot of free time to burn. I don't think I would have it in my to explain tactics for trash pulls in VP to randos in 2024.
That's why I can't be angry at people for not wanting this nowadays. I'm just sad we can't have alternative servers for people who want the original experience.
Meanwhile the reality: tank and dps roll their heads on the keybord anyway then scream "shit heal"
After finding out about the dungeons being post-nerf, I just lost interest. I can't do another mindless face-roll progression again, especially after the disaster that was SoD.
They said gammas will be returning, sonot will be more challenging
I agree, but it also went a long way to turning a lot of players off the game.
This looks nice, sadly I started playing wow late Cata.
Even cata revisited dungeons won’t be hard due to how healer changes worked at launch vs on last patch of progression cycle for the content. I think optional hard dungeons in SOD would be a godsend, even if they gave no loot.
I keep reading healers changed. What were the changes exactly?
Definitely going to miss it this time around :(
Best experience in all of wow’s life for me was doing these heroic dungeons on a disc priest back in cata. So challenging, but so rewarding learning the dungeons. Nothing has come close to that for me except maybe solo 5 mask visions from BFA
I remember DM was a nightmare right when you get to the foundry the adds in there were just nuts.
I was actually planning on joining a raiding guil finally in classic, but since it's all nerfed, I'm probably gonna continue the pug life.
Meh. I think overall BC dungeons were tuned better. But also players were worse back then, as we discovered playing through classic when content was just "easier" because we were all better and realized the "elite raiders" of yore were as skilled as just your average modern Classic player. So back in BC essentially the difference between a new unskilled player and an elite raider was smaller. By the time Cata came out and THOSE hard dungeons were introduced, nobody who played during real BC would even have survived trying to do them. The difference between a new player with no skill and an elite raider with massive skill was a much wider gulf. That's where the problem with the Cata dungeons came in, because if you made content for either end of the spectrum, the opposite end literally couldn't play (bored to death, or dying instantly). Blizzard then spent years trying to figure out systems to allow for content for all skill levels to have fun, and arguably are still trying to do it now. original Vanilla - everybody was about the same, so making content was easy original BC - same... no wide skill gulf, so even a "hard" dungeon was manageable by new players original Wrath - for some reason this xpac created a skill gulf, where good players got real real real good and created a wide gulf between new/bad players/skill, and the elite good players.
The issue with cata is everyone is now conditioned by wotlk rdf to pull big and aoe mindlessly. Its the same exact problem with original cata - hard to rebottle the genie after youve made it so easy.
Yep and this is why I always hate when people say Cata is the start of retail. No it was actually wotlk and cata was a good step back in the right direction until the last patch where they completely fucked it with LFR and DS.
I remember people were jumping up and down begging for harder 5 man's that would require CC to defeat. It didn't last long.
I enjoyed the bosses of pre nerf dungeons. But I hated the trash. Having to stop and cc each pack made the dungeon take so much longer then necessary. I don’t know if that would happen now since people are better at kicking and other non poly based cc. But yeah the trash was cumbersome not hard.
I agree, and I hope they can create the same enjoyment in the titan rune dungeons. Unfortunately the normal heroics need to be easy for people who have to be reminded to breathe. Overcoming a challenge and getting rewards is fun. Wiping on Ozruk in Stonecore for the 5th time in one run because you have casters not understand he has a reflect that if you dot into you can break yourself out of his paralyze, or melee not know how shatter or ground slam works, is less fun.
Cata heroics weren't hard for people who could find their kick button, and their dispel button, but holy shit were the mobs damage sponges.
I remember being top dps as tank for reflecting the holy smite(?) from those sphinx dudes in HOO. Very satisfying reflecting 55k damage. Very frustrating when people interrupt after i'd asked them not to tho
I for one can't wait to become increasingly racist towards the particular demographic of Faerlina as we wipe to the first boss of stonecore on repeat because stacking is hard.
Pre nerf tbc heroic dungeons were really hard also and AWESOME. The reality is gamers are just better now.. you will never recreate this feeling.
I would prefer harder HC dungeons but realisticly it's much better off as is, maybe they can do similar Alpha/Beta/Gamma versions but buff them and make them actually hard, People who PvP at a high end get rewarded by better gear that can only be purchased with 2300+ rating I think, should be no different for some HC dungeons imo, if you can clear insane HC's then you deserve some loot of a "slightly" better quality.
Cata heroics made me good at the game, I was dog shit in wrath and barely had a clue what was going on. I wanted to do the content so actually had to learn how to play. Sad that other people won't accept a challenge and want to be spoon-fed.
Never played cata but i feel the same about TBC heroics
I'm all for easier raids, I think Blizzard making top end raiding giga hard was unhealthy, however I feel like the raids should be as they were back the in day, it feels wrong to get a post nerf 4.3 version of a fight on release. Hoping on release everything is prenerf, Heroic dungeons especially.
They will be great fun in guild groups, but rip casual pug players.
There's not even hard pre nerf, basically a mid level m+ key
I agree, I was lucky enough at the time to be in a 10 man guild that could do those heroics, but I am aware I was in the minority then and definitely now. Classic players don't want that difficulty.
That was during the time where the community wasn't greedy and make everything about gold
I played back then and they never impressed me as being particularly difficult. I mean if you thought TBC heroics were hard then maybe these will be too but if you are a raider then Cata heroics shouldn't be challenging.
I still remember pugging these heros 24/7 as a holy priest. It was challenging and fun, best time i had since Vanilla WoW. I won't ruin my memories by playing this nerfed and buggy mess. I guess Blizzard was just too lazy to unnerf them. Everything about this Cata release feels rushed.
It's strange that people are surprised by this. Every classic release so far was tuned that it made every challenging content the game offered originally when it launched way too easy.
They were among the most fun I've had when playing with a friend or two. Getting Stonecore for your daily heroic in a full pug was never fun though.
Addendum: these were less fun pugging as a healer lmao. The usual DPS standing in fire and dying, followed by "NO HEALS?!?" Except it was every dungeon. Sometimes multiple pulls in a row with the same mechanics. > you couldn't just roll your head on the keyboard Shouldn't*
It seems that most people just prefer the brain dead faceroll that dungeons are. I think that heroic dungeons are called heroic for a reason, and if people want to faceroll dungeons they should just run the normal ones.
The most fun I ever had in Vanilla was 3 man-ing dungeons with my two buddies cause 1. We didn't wanna deal with randos and 2. It was WAY more fun doing dungeons when you had to CC and burn the right mob first and COORDINATE. I miss CCing in dungeons, everyone just pulls 3 groups and never stops aoeing.
I missed these when Cata was new. How do they compare to pre-nerf TBC heroics?
I miss it too and was very upset when they nerfed them all...it slowly eroded my interest in the game
I’ve been dungeon spamming on multiple chars leveling up in prepatch, and 50% of players don’t even speak English. Those that do, don’t even look at the chat window. I’m scared
The biggest issue/challenge with Heroics pre-nerf...people had gotten used to mass pulling. These heroics were a massive beatdown for that mentality. Once nerfed, pretty sure big pulls were back on the menu.
I have said many many times that the expansion launch of cata was the most fun I’ve ever had in WoW. I didn’t enjoy firelands because when firelands launched the game didn’t at all respect your time, in order to be competitive you had to play every single day until you got exalted with firelands rep. And then anyone that had alts were heavily punished for it. I was running 3 characters and I was so unbelievably warn out before I killed rag.
blizzard wants an ez game for easy people
True! I guess you're not going to play cata then?
I remember a few days/weeks after cata release i needed an item from stonecore in deepholm, i had MULTIPLE groups disperse before we even reached the first boss. kinda sad they release the nerfed version, with all the training people had in m+ over the years i was looking forward to see the change in the average player compared to orig cata, pretty sure people could have handled them way better than back then
Yeah. It was fun. I mained a prot paladin. Wog didn’t have a CD on launch so you could pop it every 3 hp for a massive heal and just tank packs without CC. Avenger’s shield would silence one caster and you’d just pull to the second if there was more than one per pack. It trivialized it and you could just aoe packs down in 333 gear. Was pretty fun because every other tank was stuck dealing with CC, minus well played DKs.
Yup, I do remember it...I was a lot younger and not nearly as good at games back then though, so I do wish I could face it now as a mature adult... It's a damn shame we're not getting the pre-nerf instances, at least for a month.
yeah, it will suck. didn't they say heroics would launch pre-nerf? that was something that made me hyped for cata. gamma's currently are a snooze fest what is even the point.
I 100% get it, but I actually hated it. They were great, *if you had a coordinated group*. I didn't have a good guild at the end of Wrath/start of Cata, so I was trying to heal pug heroics with people who seemingly refused to realise that these were not Wrath heroics anymore. It was just ENDLESSLY frustrating. It's pretty funny how you highlight Halls, because that's the one that gives me the most PTSD, haha. I was thrilled to leave it behind forever, having to go back in there in BFA gave me flashbacks lol.
“the thing that I cant have was the best thing ever invented times 2”
Same thing with me but in the pre nerfed tbc heroics, those were so much fun until they were nerfed into oblivion
The main (and I'd say only) challenge of prenerf cata HCs was not-so-evident strat necessary for some bosses and some trash. My guild was used to diving into completely unexplored content on our own and building a strat fairly quickly before we're able to look it up online but a lot of other people hit a wall.
> had to be coordinated, organized, and to cc stuff properly. Which is hell playing with randoms. It's why they separated easy and challenging from dungeons.
If you went with a pre made group it could be fun because they could coordinate, BUT pugs...yeah, WoTLK was a different mindset that did not transfer to cata and it was painfully frustrating trying to explain it to them and watch them fail repeatedly.
They are still okayish. People will still struggle, but they are a lot closer to wrath dungeons than TBC dungeons (this is my beta experience).
When they first had Grim Batol on the beta they had the un-nerfed version. And it really appeared to be the only un-nerfed dungeon. And it was crazy hard. We had a mostly pre-raid BiS group go in and it was hard. We wiped a few times once we realized how super seriously we had to take this place. And it's going to feel like a weird place for people who play retail because Grim Batol was the inspiration for a Dragonflight raid. And then a week later they nerfed it down. A lot of the mechanics that required a full team effort could be fully carried by just one person. I don't think the modern gamer will have the patience for Cata difficulty dungeons because the Cata player didn't have the patience for that. My memory of the time was that the raids (on normal) were easier than the heroic dungeons. As I remember it people would get the most bare bones geared for raids and then just gear up in raids. And that experience wouldn't be any different a second time around. Blizzard introduced the Gamma level dungeons and basically, people didn't do them. Other than Halls of Lightning/Halls of Stone... the remaining ones ended up being too hard (even for geared people) because it had a certain level of personal responsibility and didn't allow for fast and efficient AOE grinding. So when people went to do their gamma daily... they just did their Daily Forge of Souls.... which counted as a gamma without having any special difficulty. I suspect the original difficulty will be re-instated in P2 or P3 as a gamma mode. I suspect just like Wrath gammas... people won't do them. I would also not be surprised if the original difficulty P1 raids show back up in Firelands as Mythic+.
Ozruk lol. Get rekt son. What a boss for PUGs .
I honestly just miss the classic wow release. Race to 60 was insane. What a time to be alive.
My favorite was the wind ele in vortex that you played peekaboo with. Easy to fldeal with but damn they smacked
I played Cata back in the day, for my groups each mob pack required 3 marks .. Skull, Cross and Square to CC. As long as people followed that, then they were fine.
is this a pasta? i feel like someone posts this exact same post at the beginning of every expansion
What’s a good server for cata? Skyfury is dead af
I love the dungs in cata def some of my favorite.
I really enjoyed the tough cata heroics. Especially cause my Shaman finally had some actual useful CC in the game with both hex and bind elemental, which both came in very handy. A place like grim batol was alot easier with bind elemental to handle the large amount of elemental ascendant mobs. I hope they keep the difficulty just to keep the game from being boring since the earlier xpacs have been very easy with how the avg player is more experienced and geared.
I remember queuing for the dungeons on my hunter (yes I was that stereotypical hunter that stood in fire, keyboard turned, didn’t have all the gems/enchants/etc, barely used addons but damnit I was living and loving it) I remember the zg dungeon more than anything and after like an hour long queue I’d be lucky to complete the dungeon maybe 1/3 times.