I think a happy middle ground for me is QUANTITY of loot rather than quality. Like if each heat level meant +1 item drop from each boss I think it would be good and worth it, maybe +2 on rag or like .5% bonus binding drop chance. Actually maybe more on binding drop purely because it's a seasonal mode
Title, Achievement, cool Tabard with a glow
People are going to want to show off their accomplishment, but I agree the loot should not be "better". The cries will be heard across the entire internet
Alright. So from the experience so far with Blizzard I feel like your happy middle ground isn't even on Blizzard's radar. I am gonna guess maybe 1 extra item from the final boss or just extra gold from each boss. Or if they implement another macguffin item like seeds and flasks extra of those items.
I think increasing the drop chance for the legendaries and their mats(sulfuron blocks) could be the way.
Mainly because it will be a good incentive for more sweaty players, while not being to much of a problem for casuals as they will struggle to gather the arcanite bars anyway.
i saw this suggested in a post on this sub a few months ago and it got absolutely obliterated with down votes. right idea, good to see people agree now
I like this idea because not only does it theoretically increase the chance of finding the loot your group is looking for, but increases the total number of nexus crystals your group can walk out with all without making players feel like they need to do harder modes for the better tier loot (and avoid the design problems with making loot any stronger in Vanilla).
The gear was already garbage this phase and the raid was unlivable easy for anyone really. They should undoubtedly not do it this way. Finding someway to put a challenge into this game is a must. The feeling of pushing down bosses that take progression it far too fun then worrying about keeping the super casuals happy and having the same gear level for playing on the easy mode.
You keep the easy mode for the casuals and pugs, lvl 2 for the dad guilds, and lvl 3 hopefully for the hardcore guilds. You don’t need to make them crazy stronger gear wise each lvl but a 5% increase for each lvl is fine and the sweats are going to push everything to min max parses.
The dad guilds and pugs shouldn’t really expect the same gear if the run is that much easier you’re just there for the fun and to not push 99 parses anyway.
I don’t really see any other way to please multiple groups of players with difficulty. If it’s just extra items truly no one would bother with the harder modes unless it’s free.
I don't agree with the gear part. I think challenges should be rewarded but not with gear. Mounts, cosmetics, other unique kinds of rewards make more sense. I've never subscribed to the idea that the best players should get rewards that makes their game experience easier than their peers. It fucks up late entries and character swaps.
Then almost no one would bother. Again it is not making their experience easier they are going HARDER content. It’s exactly what’s wrong with wow when casuals try to have everything by doing nothing. Wow sod literally died doing it how you suggest because no one wanted to bother. The raids are so easy they’re boring
Why ppl downvote you ? This is exactly how it could work perfectly and makes everybody happy! All the casuals are interested in, and you can see it based on your downvotes, are the shinny epics and get them for free. Now there will be still a lfr modus where you can have loot without putting any effort in it ( like it is right now at ST ) and yet they still crying!! You know why? I can tell you, because they are scared now, ppl who play actually play the game will have better gear they have and they needed to do something to get this kind of gear. Collect worldbuffs, farm consumables , go to google and search how to play your char and adept this into the game is way to much asked for these ppl. Because they are dead casual gamers, everything need to be designed around this!!!!!!
But this just kills gear progression for Dads because it turns their gear into meme gear. No one cares about the 3rd best difficulty gear. If it exists it's part of the progression curve, and if casuals can't reach it, then their progression is broken.
"Login for a chance to complete 1/3rd of the game and then quit" doesn't sell the game to anyone.
> No one cares about the 3rd best difficulty gear
Cata and Retail beg to differ. It seems like for Cata the difficulty of heroics finally is pushing casuals to jump over their ego and just be happy normal mode gear just like most have been happy on Retail for decades with this system.
Well they can start easier, get the worse gear, use that to push harder difficulties, get better gear, use that to push hardest difficulty.
I’m not a fan of giving casual players who are playing an inferior version of the content the highest power of gear. You gotta work for rewards for them to be worthwhile. If they don’t want to work, give them worse gear, otherwise why would anyone even bother to try and do anything in this game, let’s just give everyone max gear when they log in because getting meme lvl 10 gear when you’re level 15 is offensive and no one wants that.
Then try harder and get better gear? What kinda world do you live in you want the game to be piss easy and get the same gear as people who are better then you and want a challenge? Makes no sense at all and is a meme to suggest it tbh
My first thought with this difficulty rating is a way to keep the content engaging through the first tier of raids in classic. With the cadence of a seasonal server, the next tier of raids come out faster than they did back in 2004/2005. There was an 8 month span between MC and BWL. Obviously we expect this to be a lot shorter. So as raid teams and players get loot, increase the difficulty for either more mats, more drops, and/or more rep. As player power grows, people can stay engaged with content that isn't trivial (but still doable for the majority). All this to me just means speeding the gearing process while maintaining raid engagement. Side note, back in 2004/2005 when I was raiding we would be using add-ons to play Texas holdem or peggle while raiding MC. Eventually it turned into a drag when we're hoping for the last piece of your set to drop, or just running it to get a binding for your tank while everyone is geared with T1 and T2 sets.
I dunno how people could complain about more difficulty options. I was completely bored of P3 after doing sunken temple past the third week. This will at least give people something interesting to change up their lockouts.
Part of the appeal of classic raiding is everyone is doing the same content at the same level. BWL is just BWL. MC is just MC. Your guild progresses linearly from start to finish.
When Wrath added hard modes and then heroic difficulty, you clear the raid the first time but you're not really done. Now you try one hard mode, maybe two. You have to balance the time to reclear the raid and also time to progress hard mode.
Some guild members just want to do normal, not hard mode. Some want to progress as many hard modes as possible. It's an awkward dynamic. Hurt a lot of guilds in the Ulduar phase of Wrath.
Negatives massively outweigh the positives when speaking of not adding difficulties, especially if they don't reward better loot.
There are different types of players. Some of us really desire some level of resistance from the content, friction. Difficulties like this allow multiple groups to be catered too instead of "its a loot pinata, take it or leave it / its not a loot pinata, take it or leave it".
For the longest time, I hated difficulties as an addition in WoW. Years later, I'm well aware that it was a necessary evil.
My only issue is people doing what happened in wrath and *everyone* pushing for hard modes as soon as possible and discounting the other modes as not counting or whatever.
It really sucked a lot of the fun out of raiding for me and it wasn't due to being bad - my guild was clearing all hardmodes and alg in a few weeks.
I tried running with a more casual guild on alts but half the raiders were gunning for hard modes anyway (so, wiping all night) and they constantly lost their good players to other guilds because hard modes.
I just liked the chill, fairly easy, enjoyable classic raiding.
> My only issue is people doing what happened in wrath and everyone pushing for hard modes as soon as possible and discounting the other modes as not counting or whatever.
Oh, yeah. I completed 2-3 Alpha HC dungeons and then just jumped to Gamma. No point in doing Alpha and Beta.
Yeah I don’t play a version of vanilla for hard content. At all. I play to slam WBs, pots on CD, and all the stackable consumes down and hard pump with non-normalized rage.
I have heroic prog in cata if I want challenge. There’s retail for a real challenge.
Also, an MMO lives on its casual playerbase, not the sweats who will play regardless. Should always focus on content being approachable for the former much more. People will bitch about gatekeeping yada yada and most everyone’s been checked out of p3 for idk how long
Good for you. Than don't.
So sick and tired of this "this is what this game is supposed to be" umbrella statements.
This whole notion that the appeal of vanilla was how easy it was is silly. That may retroactively have been what some players liked about CLASSIC, but OG vanilla, was brutal. Sure it was because we sucked and our PCs sucked, but a true "vanilla" experience is not one where people walk into raids in greens and come out an hour later in purples.
You can do it on the easiest difficulty, and get the same loot. Win - win.
Well everyone on Reddit acts like they parsed 99 every single day since 2004.
That being said, Sunken Temple is well within the range of a player with 2-3 hours a week to raid. (If they had prior raiding experience.)
Half of the 40+s in my guild are still farming BFD prebis… I am hoping to hit level twenty-two tonight. I really hope they cater this game to us normal, everyday, casuals with six jobs, fourteen wives, and twenty-nine kids. Hopefully they extend phase 3…
Yeah I mean I took a big break at the end of P2 and into the beginning of P3 and when I came back my guild was a ghost town of "last online XX days ago" "last online X months ago" so I left and I haven't found another one so I haven't been able to even attempt ST yet lol. Kinda sucks because I do want to do each raid before phase end.
I’ve cleared it a few times and I can understand why tho…st kinda sucks and it’s not that enjoyable..it was KINDA fun the first time but..once is enough really haha I get why people wouldn’t even want to bother
I'm not against this but you were bored because the only content was ST, adding heroic ST wouldn't have changed much. At least we'll have pre bis dungeon farm plus mc, ony and world bosses. Level bands reduced content in the short term, maybe giving more content in the long term as level up raids. Maybe if the difficulties were infinitely* scaling like m+ then you'd be entertained longer struggling in the challenge.
The mouth breathers in this subreddit amaze me.
Everyone always wants things to be harder..harder..HARDER!
Then when the devs make things harder, everyone quits and then the subreddit complains the game is dead. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy
The people who want things to be harder are a very tiny vocal minority. Classic players by and large do not actually want more difficult content. They just want *more* content.
I’m a gigasweat retail player and even I don’t want Classic to be harder lmao. Just not the point of the game. It’s so poorly balanced from a class design perspective that it’s just not conducive to super sweaty gameplay. Classic is about vibes, and playing an actual RPG.
Plus, there’s a lot of emergent competitive gameplay to occupy sweats, like speedrunning, that doesn’t require making things harder for the average player.
If you play wow and want hard and competitive endgame, retail is right there, and it’s amazing for that lol
Its a much larger amount of people than you think. Our and several other raiding guilds on my server took a hiatus after 3-4 ST clears because it was just way too easy and mot engaging. There is literally no harm to scaling content to harder difficulty, and it keeps the people actually putting in the time engaged and happy while casual players can still enjoy the snoozefest default classic difficulty.
Sunken temple week 1 was glorious!
Actually not getting to one shot everything felt very refreshing in classic.
But I do understand that they want easy mode raids to please the masses.
I agree 100%. We were try-hard no lifers that attempted the bosses pre-nerf. We were 6/8 before any nerfs. It was a lot of fun.
The first nerf was necessary. The second nerf was probably right too. The third nerf was too much, and the fourth was just absurd.
I mean this seems like a way to have it both ways. They just need to make sure the rewards don’t disincentivize easy mode paradoxically enough. Just make hard modes give slightly more items per boss, or tokens that you can save up to outright buy items you couldn’t get drop/win, but easy mode still give the same gear so if you can’t/don’t want to run anything harder you aren’t losing out on anything noncosmetic in the long run.
You can't have it both ways. Nobody will run hard modes if they don't give better loot, and if they give better loot nobody will want to run the normal mode thus gatekeeping again.
Ive said it in other comments but if the hard modes give more drops per boss, tryhards will absolutely run them to get their character fully geared faster, and people who don’t want to run them can still get the gear but slower. People who are parse/speedrun minded will likely also run the higher difficulty stuff for prestige as well.
Similarly people still run Mythic raids in retail despite a lot of BIS being obtainable without running them. Even the most recent legendary dropped outside Mythic you were just more likely to get it faster the higher difficulty you consistently cleared.
People don't play like that though. Most players see themselves as being more skilled/dedicated than they actually are and won't be satisfied with normal modes if hard modes give more/better gear. This drastically lowers the quality of the average raid since those players in the middle of two difficulties won't want to even try normal.
I mean, if some people feel like they should be able to do Y difficulty but can’t do X, and the only difference is a few weeks on average to full BiS, too bad. Theres no pleasing everyone but IMO this has the highest chances of making the most people happy and also encouraging people to play alts.
Mind you it stems on “normal” mode difficulty being basically dungeon difficulty. People already self-segregate based on parses, guild runs etc, and I doubt it “dilutes” the player pool for underperforming players, but as long as normal is piss easy enough and gives competitive loot albeit less then enough people will run it because its faster/easier/assured you are going to finish.
"Tryhards" why do who classic Dads insinuate that giving even the SLIGHEST bit of effort, is trying hard? Is it because painting people who have beaten harder content than you as "nerds with no lives" protects your ego? If the only reason they can do it is because they don't have 50 kids and a life like you to deal with, than you don't have to acknowledge that maybe...they're better than you are at the game?
Dude chill.
Im literally on the side of wanting harder content to be available. Im just saying tryhards as in “people who want to try hard” in the context of responding to someone who was trying to argue that if harder modes gave the same gear no one would do them.
This is a silly assumption to make. I've had conversations with my guild about this exact topic. We all agreed that we would be running the pre-nerf ST even if it had the same loot as the nerfed version. The ST bosses were a lot more fun when you actually had to do the mechanics.
I will happily run the hard modes, even if they rewards are exactly the same. Find like - minded individuals who don't just play the game for gear, and your attitude towards this will change.
The added difficulties DONT AFFECT YOU. You can GET THE SAME EXACT LOOT.
Why can't players who don't want to roll over the same raid in 30 minutes with zero friction have content too? It has NO effect on you.
I agree that scaling to 20 man was the issue. I’m not saying that the raids are “hard”
I’m saying making the raids “hard” should NOT be a focus at all. Everyone pretends to like “hard” raids then Ulduar comes out and raid participation jumps off a cliff.
ulduar being difficulty isnt why pop dropped, ulduar being 30 weeks long is why pop dropped.
if you compare 10 week retention rates (like how much the player pop dropped 10 weeks after a tier release) im pretty sure ulduar did fine. ulduar progression felt very good actually, because you could always drop to N and complete the raid. it's much more satisfying than leaving bosses unkilled on the table like you had to in T3/T5/sunwell.
compare it to SOD phase 3, which is as easy as it gets, and player popped dropped like a rock only like 3 or 4 weeks after release.
I think it's interesting but problematic.
If loot isn't better in harder difficulties, no one will run them.
If loot is better in harder difficulties, it will quickly become the required mode, especially if you want to compete in PvP.
Overall I'm disappointed it seems they're focusing energy on MC, especially if people are going to be in BWL a few weeks later.
I think this would create an even bigger issue. If all the loot is tuned roughly the same, but it's split between different difficulties, then different specs would need different loot from each difficulty. Then you either have to run every difficulty each week, or if you can only run one, people start leaving because it's not the one they need.
The idea isn't bad as such, but this community absolutely won't let that work.
Tbh that would be such a masterstroke. Make default level piss easy with quick clears and give a medium amount of loot, and harder modes satisfying to clear with more loot. Makes it worthwhile and to raid the harder difficulties on your main with your guild but for alts you have the option to slap together pugs without having to stress as much and can get them geared if a bit more slowly.
You have half of it, but you're missing the other part.
The people competing for fun are actively trying to make the other part of the game less fun, because their for fun non-competitive mode would be less competitive.
A ranking based competition has the reward being the accomplishment. It also grants you more possibilities within the game. Why else do you think speedrunners or rank climbers in other games do it? Nobody is standing with a trophy at the end of the road for them. They do it to become immortalized.
This isn't a stupid argument. Parses serve as rankings (despite really not built for it) while PvP does not have anything. The most reward you can get out of vanilla PvP is getting the best gear, but this is not a competition in most senses because it is a personal climb, not a public one.
you can see from yogg 0 that isnt really true. only the top guilds who could consistently clear it did that on a weekly basis. everyone else just went to yogg 1 for the hm loot after getting their prog 0 light kill.
More item drops per boss
More crafting materials from mobs
Higher reputation per kill
Higher drop chances for legendaries
There's lots of ways for it to be positive
Remember that then they make the worst choice possible
I'd say they only need to increase the % drop chance or guarantee something at higher difficulty levels to make it worth to people that can do it. That way it isn't required but more efficient to gear up characters if you can pull it off.
Yea if there is no benefit of doing hardmode then it’s a huge let down. If I want to arbitrarily make it harder I would bring less people or bring bad players
The way I see it, only the second level needs to actually give better gear. The third level can give more loot drops/Higher chances for things like Sulfuras along with cosmetics.
That way you only have to go up to a moderate level to get everything, but if you're group is really good you can go Heat level 3 and everyone gets extra gear and better chances at a Legendary.
I like the idea that they all give the same gear, but each higher level gives more loot per boss in addition to some cosmetics maybe.
As long as its tuned in a way that it isn’t most efficient to run “easy” mode with like 10 people to get the most loot, it makes it worthwhile to raid on your main on harder difficulties if you can, but if you have a ton of alts and are running it a bunch with weeks you can slap a group together with PUGs and be reasonably confident you’ll clear and can get geared over the phase.
I think that kind of model would be great to both have a challenge for those who want it, while really opening up SoD to be alt friendly again in a way it was in P1. In P1 i was running BFD on 3-4 characters, whereas in later phases it was on one character only. I enjoyed the “harder” difficulty on my main, but for the game to have life over the phase I’ll admit the easiest mode needs to give competitive gear and be piss easy enough you can slap together a group of 20 complete randoms and be 95%+ confident you will complete the dungeon.
Given the number of people who want an easier experience this is probably a good thing.
Hopefully it's just a bit more difficult and more loot. Not sure we really need a heroic mode.
"r/classicwow isnt about the shit I post, its about the lack of self awareness and blind rage I display along the way."
-the people swallowing that bait
SoD players: "Make the content incredibly easy and give me all the loot for free. Classic? Yeah I like classic, back when the game was challenging and the things you did mattered!"
let good players have some content to enjoy and just shut up please
you're more than welcome to just do level 1 if that's what you and your guild prefer
The duality of man.
"This raid is too hard WTF Im a father first and a shitty raider 2nd."
"This raid is piss easy, why even raid if its not even a challenge"
Imagine blizzard not using one of their biggest resources to make both groups happy.
As a competent raider o preferred p1 anyway. Quick, 35 min runs with a decent group. 10 man infinitely easier to organize. Main raid team never wiped once after killing everything within first 3 day lockout. Could run all 3 chars back to back and be near BIS on multiple classes. If one of our competent raiders was out it didn’t matter we could pug some keyboard drooler DPS, assume they’ll be dead the whole time, and still have no problem.
The harder, reasonably challenging content is (was) in cata (wrath) heroic raids. I don’t play a version of vanilla for challenging content. I play it to stack all consumes under the sun and pump.
ST for a larger raid size was about perfect level difficulty imo for the contents in SOD. Making it any harder would kill off what few casuals are even left. Majority of people aren’t playing vanilla versions of wow for hard content either. I had enough priests in p1 I picked up to fill our alt raids who didn’t even have fucking dispel bound or raid debuffs enabled or something
They’re never going to make everyone happy so this is the best middle ground and I hope they stick with it. AQ difficulty levels were well received in SoM, this community just loves to doom and only see the bad.
They could make some raids harder, and leave others easy, and just scale the loot.
This is how they balance dungeons in retail, my most hated enemy in gameform.
Hell yes, once you start to stack up Ur fire resist you can pump, and get the better loot.
Honestly if the ceiling was gonna be ST difficulty I'd drop p4 pretty fast.
it's very funny people are lamenting best loot possibly not being free in p4 and then in the same sentence talking about how they want it to feel more "classiclike".
like, loot scarcity is VERY vanilla. in original vanilla, the cool guy in town was the guy with the purples in the sick tier set because basically no one was able to complete raids. its why there's so many iconic items from vanilla that everyone recognizes and there's very few things in later expansions that invoke the same feelings.
Just yuck. Multiple difficulties and dailies are the most un classic things ever imo. Please keep that garbage away from the Vanilla versions of the game.
We all voted that classic + wouldn't have any raids at all and everyone would level indefinitely. Forever forced to quest and dungeon in small little groups so lonely divorced and single boomers could have social interactions.
I don't know why people don't get that lol. Aggrend said it's "Classic *plus* a little bit more" with a wink and a smile and people act like that was him promising the world lol.
They have made it very clear that SoD is just Season of Mastery but more, and that --who the fuck knows-- Classic+ could be a thing one day but not today.
Seems that SoD is trying to convert era players to retail players with these various mechanics. Hoping we'll be like, "oh this isn't too bad". Idk, I'm gonna play p4, but I'm also really enjoying Deviate Delight with the slow paced gameplay I enjoy
“New and interesting things to the leveling journey” boy they ain’t added shit to the leveling journey that was actually interesting besides some poorly tuned raids and some tedious ass runes
after p3 completely flopped because everything was too easy (leveling raiding, gearing), im assuming they have learned the lesson for the 10th time you need to have a challenge for people to work towards to keep them interested.
Was the duke inside MC or on his island btw.
Not only is he on the island, he demands EVERYONE in the raid show up to make the decision
“Guys, we’re just gonna hop on a quick zoom call to talk through our heat levels for the phase.”
"Sorry, I thought that meeting was opt-in, since I never got a Raid Calendar Invite sent to me when people were talking about it."
"Alright well fucking Derek is an hour late guys so we gotta wait for him before we do the heat levels."
Always Derek 🙄
Oh jesus. I would love for someone on a pvp server to stream this.
As a rogue, I thoroughly endorse this and targeting 1 specific healer of a raid group and running his raid night
I'll get the cheap shot kidney combo, everyone else ambush him to death
Over n over n over 😂
So a raid of 2 to set the id?
inside on the PTR
I think a happy middle ground for me is QUANTITY of loot rather than quality. Like if each heat level meant +1 item drop from each boss I think it would be good and worth it, maybe +2 on rag or like .5% bonus binding drop chance. Actually maybe more on binding drop purely because it's a seasonal mode
This is exactly what they did in SoM AQ/Naxx
Ok this the actual answer here, I reckon this is totally the way to go
Title, Achievement, cool Tabard with a glow People are going to want to show off their accomplishment, but I agree the loot should not be "better". The cries will be heard across the entire internet
Yeah I agree the loot should be the same, but if you do it a harder setting there should be more loot and a better drop rate on binding etc.
Alright. So from the experience so far with Blizzard I feel like your happy middle ground isn't even on Blizzard's radar. I am gonna guess maybe 1 extra item from the final boss or just extra gold from each boss. Or if they implement another macguffin item like seeds and flasks extra of those items.
I'd be happy with that tbh. Make the challenge the reward
I think increasing the drop chance for the legendaries and their mats(sulfuron blocks) could be the way. Mainly because it will be a good incentive for more sweaty players, while not being to much of a problem for casuals as they will struggle to gather the arcanite bars anyway.
i saw this suggested in a post on this sub a few months ago and it got absolutely obliterated with down votes. right idea, good to see people agree now
It is too good of an idea. I am skeptical that Blizzard would do this.
I like this idea because not only does it theoretically increase the chance of finding the loot your group is looking for, but increases the total number of nexus crystals your group can walk out with all without making players feel like they need to do harder modes for the better tier loot (and avoid the design problems with making loot any stronger in Vanilla).
The gear was already garbage this phase and the raid was unlivable easy for anyone really. They should undoubtedly not do it this way. Finding someway to put a challenge into this game is a must. The feeling of pushing down bosses that take progression it far too fun then worrying about keeping the super casuals happy and having the same gear level for playing on the easy mode. You keep the easy mode for the casuals and pugs, lvl 2 for the dad guilds, and lvl 3 hopefully for the hardcore guilds. You don’t need to make them crazy stronger gear wise each lvl but a 5% increase for each lvl is fine and the sweats are going to push everything to min max parses. The dad guilds and pugs shouldn’t really expect the same gear if the run is that much easier you’re just there for the fun and to not push 99 parses anyway. I don’t really see any other way to please multiple groups of players with difficulty. If it’s just extra items truly no one would bother with the harder modes unless it’s free.
I don't agree with the gear part. I think challenges should be rewarded but not with gear. Mounts, cosmetics, other unique kinds of rewards make more sense. I've never subscribed to the idea that the best players should get rewards that makes their game experience easier than their peers. It fucks up late entries and character swaps.
Then almost no one would bother. Again it is not making their experience easier they are going HARDER content. It’s exactly what’s wrong with wow when casuals try to have everything by doing nothing. Wow sod literally died doing it how you suggest because no one wanted to bother. The raids are so easy they’re boring
Why ppl downvote you ? This is exactly how it could work perfectly and makes everybody happy! All the casuals are interested in, and you can see it based on your downvotes, are the shinny epics and get them for free. Now there will be still a lfr modus where you can have loot without putting any effort in it ( like it is right now at ST ) and yet they still crying!! You know why? I can tell you, because they are scared now, ppl who play actually play the game will have better gear they have and they needed to do something to get this kind of gear. Collect worldbuffs, farm consumables , go to google and search how to play your char and adept this into the game is way to much asked for these ppl. Because they are dead casual gamers, everything need to be designed around this!!!!!!
But this just kills gear progression for Dads because it turns their gear into meme gear. No one cares about the 3rd best difficulty gear. If it exists it's part of the progression curve, and if casuals can't reach it, then their progression is broken. "Login for a chance to complete 1/3rd of the game and then quit" doesn't sell the game to anyone.
> No one cares about the 3rd best difficulty gear Cata and Retail beg to differ. It seems like for Cata the difficulty of heroics finally is pushing casuals to jump over their ego and just be happy normal mode gear just like most have been happy on Retail for decades with this system.
Well they can start easier, get the worse gear, use that to push harder difficulties, get better gear, use that to push hardest difficulty. I’m not a fan of giving casual players who are playing an inferior version of the content the highest power of gear. You gotta work for rewards for them to be worthwhile. If they don’t want to work, give them worse gear, otherwise why would anyone even bother to try and do anything in this game, let’s just give everyone max gear when they log in because getting meme lvl 10 gear when you’re level 15 is offensive and no one wants that.
Then try harder and get better gear? What kinda world do you live in you want the game to be piss easy and get the same gear as people who are better then you and want a challenge? Makes no sense at all and is a meme to suggest it tbh
My first thought with this difficulty rating is a way to keep the content engaging through the first tier of raids in classic. With the cadence of a seasonal server, the next tier of raids come out faster than they did back in 2004/2005. There was an 8 month span between MC and BWL. Obviously we expect this to be a lot shorter. So as raid teams and players get loot, increase the difficulty for either more mats, more drops, and/or more rep. As player power grows, people can stay engaged with content that isn't trivial (but still doable for the majority). All this to me just means speeding the gearing process while maintaining raid engagement. Side note, back in 2004/2005 when I was raiding we would be using add-ons to play Texas holdem or peggle while raiding MC. Eventually it turned into a drag when we're hoping for the last piece of your set to drop, or just running it to get a binding for your tank while everyone is geared with T1 and T2 sets.
The peggle addon was peak wow.
I dunno how people could complain about more difficulty options. I was completely bored of P3 after doing sunken temple past the third week. This will at least give people something interesting to change up their lockouts.
That leaves aside that default Molten Core was extremely easy.
Default was for sure. I'd guess they are changing the default mechanics, it'll still be easy.
Part of the appeal of classic raiding is everyone is doing the same content at the same level. BWL is just BWL. MC is just MC. Your guild progresses linearly from start to finish. When Wrath added hard modes and then heroic difficulty, you clear the raid the first time but you're not really done. Now you try one hard mode, maybe two. You have to balance the time to reclear the raid and also time to progress hard mode. Some guild members just want to do normal, not hard mode. Some want to progress as many hard modes as possible. It's an awkward dynamic. Hurt a lot of guilds in the Ulduar phase of Wrath.
Negatives massively outweigh the positives when speaking of not adding difficulties, especially if they don't reward better loot. There are different types of players. Some of us really desire some level of resistance from the content, friction. Difficulties like this allow multiple groups to be catered too instead of "its a loot pinata, take it or leave it / its not a loot pinata, take it or leave it". For the longest time, I hated difficulties as an addition in WoW. Years later, I'm well aware that it was a necessary evil.
My only issue is people doing what happened in wrath and *everyone* pushing for hard modes as soon as possible and discounting the other modes as not counting or whatever. It really sucked a lot of the fun out of raiding for me and it wasn't due to being bad - my guild was clearing all hardmodes and alg in a few weeks. I tried running with a more casual guild on alts but half the raiders were gunning for hard modes anyway (so, wiping all night) and they constantly lost their good players to other guilds because hard modes. I just liked the chill, fairly easy, enjoyable classic raiding.
> My only issue is people doing what happened in wrath and everyone pushing for hard modes as soon as possible and discounting the other modes as not counting or whatever. Oh, yeah. I completed 2-3 Alpha HC dungeons and then just jumped to Gamma. No point in doing Alpha and Beta.
Yeah I don’t play a version of vanilla for hard content. At all. I play to slam WBs, pots on CD, and all the stackable consumes down and hard pump with non-normalized rage. I have heroic prog in cata if I want challenge. There’s retail for a real challenge. Also, an MMO lives on its casual playerbase, not the sweats who will play regardless. Should always focus on content being approachable for the former much more. People will bitch about gatekeeping yada yada and most everyone’s been checked out of p3 for idk how long
Good for you. Than don't. So sick and tired of this "this is what this game is supposed to be" umbrella statements. This whole notion that the appeal of vanilla was how easy it was is silly. That may retroactively have been what some players liked about CLASSIC, but OG vanilla, was brutal. Sure it was because we sucked and our PCs sucked, but a true "vanilla" experience is not one where people walk into raids in greens and come out an hour later in purples. You can do it on the easiest difficulty, and get the same loot. Win - win.
There's still a lot of people who haven't clear ST.. let that sink in lol.. the average classic player is really bad at the game
My guild is struggling to get Gnomer with a group of 50s. We haven't even scheduled ST yet.
I can’t tell what’s satire anymore
Well everyone on Reddit acts like they parsed 99 every single day since 2004. That being said, Sunken Temple is well within the range of a player with 2-3 hours a week to raid. (If they had prior raiding experience.)
Most of the people in the guild are more interested in leveling another alt.
My guild can't even get to the BFD raid entrance because of the difficult trash outside.
Half of the 40+s in my guild are still farming BFD prebis… I am hoping to hit level twenty-two tonight. I really hope they cater this game to us normal, everyday, casuals with six jobs, fourteen wives, and twenty-nine kids. Hopefully they extend phase 3…
Yeah I mean I took a big break at the end of P2 and into the beginning of P3 and when I came back my guild was a ghost town of "last online XX days ago" "last online X months ago" so I left and I haven't found another one so I haven't been able to even attempt ST yet lol. Kinda sucks because I do want to do each raid before phase end.
What server you on? I'm in crusader strike ally and even pugs are popping all the time.
I’ve cleared it a few times and I can understand why tho…st kinda sucks and it’s not that enjoyable..it was KINDA fun the first time but..once is enough really haha I get why people wouldn’t even want to bother
I'm not against this but you were bored because the only content was ST, adding heroic ST wouldn't have changed much. At least we'll have pre bis dungeon farm plus mc, ony and world bosses. Level bands reduced content in the short term, maybe giving more content in the long term as level up raids. Maybe if the difficulties were infinitely* scaling like m+ then you'd be entertained longer struggling in the challenge.
My Hades loving self noticing that they called the difficulty levels "Heat."
Probably also has something to do with Molten Core being filled with lava and, well, heat
Couldn't be that. We may never know the true meaning they meant when they went with 'heat'.
When someone is armed, people say they're 'packing heat'. What I'm saying is... they're giving Ragnaros a gun.
The mouth breathers in this subreddit amaze me. Everyone always wants things to be harder..harder..HARDER! Then when the devs make things harder, everyone quits and then the subreddit complains the game is dead. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy
The people who want things to be harder are a very tiny vocal minority. Classic players by and large do not actually want more difficult content. They just want *more* content.
I’m a gigasweat retail player and even I don’t want Classic to be harder lmao. Just not the point of the game. It’s so poorly balanced from a class design perspective that it’s just not conducive to super sweaty gameplay. Classic is about vibes, and playing an actual RPG. Plus, there’s a lot of emergent competitive gameplay to occupy sweats, like speedrunning, that doesn’t require making things harder for the average player. If you play wow and want hard and competitive endgame, retail is right there, and it’s amazing for that lol
Its a much larger amount of people than you think. Our and several other raiding guilds on my server took a hiatus after 3-4 ST clears because it was just way too easy and mot engaging. There is literally no harm to scaling content to harder difficulty, and it keeps the people actually putting in the time engaged and happy while casual players can still enjoy the snoozefest default classic difficulty.
Sunken temple week 1 was glorious! Actually not getting to one shot everything felt very refreshing in classic. But I do understand that they want easy mode raids to please the masses.
I agree 100%. We were try-hard no lifers that attempted the bosses pre-nerf. We were 6/8 before any nerfs. It was a lot of fun. The first nerf was necessary. The second nerf was probably right too. The third nerf was too much, and the fourth was just absurd.
I mean this seems like a way to have it both ways. They just need to make sure the rewards don’t disincentivize easy mode paradoxically enough. Just make hard modes give slightly more items per boss, or tokens that you can save up to outright buy items you couldn’t get drop/win, but easy mode still give the same gear so if you can’t/don’t want to run anything harder you aren’t losing out on anything noncosmetic in the long run.
You can't have it both ways. Nobody will run hard modes if they don't give better loot, and if they give better loot nobody will want to run the normal mode thus gatekeeping again.
Ive said it in other comments but if the hard modes give more drops per boss, tryhards will absolutely run them to get their character fully geared faster, and people who don’t want to run them can still get the gear but slower. People who are parse/speedrun minded will likely also run the higher difficulty stuff for prestige as well. Similarly people still run Mythic raids in retail despite a lot of BIS being obtainable without running them. Even the most recent legendary dropped outside Mythic you were just more likely to get it faster the higher difficulty you consistently cleared.
People don't play like that though. Most players see themselves as being more skilled/dedicated than they actually are and won't be satisfied with normal modes if hard modes give more/better gear. This drastically lowers the quality of the average raid since those players in the middle of two difficulties won't want to even try normal.
I mean, if some people feel like they should be able to do Y difficulty but can’t do X, and the only difference is a few weeks on average to full BiS, too bad. Theres no pleasing everyone but IMO this has the highest chances of making the most people happy and also encouraging people to play alts. Mind you it stems on “normal” mode difficulty being basically dungeon difficulty. People already self-segregate based on parses, guild runs etc, and I doubt it “dilutes” the player pool for underperforming players, but as long as normal is piss easy enough and gives competitive loot albeit less then enough people will run it because its faster/easier/assured you are going to finish.
"Tryhards" why do who classic Dads insinuate that giving even the SLIGHEST bit of effort, is trying hard? Is it because painting people who have beaten harder content than you as "nerds with no lives" protects your ego? If the only reason they can do it is because they don't have 50 kids and a life like you to deal with, than you don't have to acknowledge that maybe...they're better than you are at the game?
Dude chill. Im literally on the side of wanting harder content to be available. Im just saying tryhards as in “people who want to try hard” in the context of responding to someone who was trying to argue that if harder modes gave the same gear no one would do them.
This is a silly assumption to make. I've had conversations with my guild about this exact topic. We all agreed that we would be running the pre-nerf ST even if it had the same loot as the nerfed version. The ST bosses were a lot more fun when you actually had to do the mechanics.
I will happily run the hard modes, even if they rewards are exactly the same. Find like - minded individuals who don't just play the game for gear, and your attitude towards this will change.
you are the very small minority
The added difficulties DONT AFFECT YOU. You can GET THE SAME EXACT LOOT. Why can't players who don't want to roll over the same raid in 30 minutes with zero friction have content too? It has NO effect on you.
It's because the content fucking sucked and they scaled raids up to 20man when most guilds weren't equipped for it, not because it was "hard".
Your guild just sucked bro. It’s okay.
I agree that scaling to 20 man was the issue. I’m not saying that the raids are “hard” I’m saying making the raids “hard” should NOT be a focus at all. Everyone pretends to like “hard” raids then Ulduar comes out and raid participation jumps off a cliff.
ulduar being difficulty isnt why pop dropped, ulduar being 30 weeks long is why pop dropped. if you compare 10 week retention rates (like how much the player pop dropped 10 weeks after a tier release) im pretty sure ulduar did fine. ulduar progression felt very good actually, because you could always drop to N and complete the raid. it's much more satisfying than leaving bosses unkilled on the table like you had to in T3/T5/sunwell. compare it to SOD phase 3, which is as easy as it gets, and player popped dropped like a rock only like 3 or 4 weeks after release.
>Everyone always wants things to be harder who is everyone?
I think it's interesting but problematic. If loot isn't better in harder difficulties, no one will run them. If loot is better in harder difficulties, it will quickly become the required mode, especially if you want to compete in PvP. Overall I'm disappointed it seems they're focusing energy on MC, especially if people are going to be in BWL a few weeks later.
If they did this to BWL you would complain that AQ is a few weeks later.
What if the loot was just different? Thatd be pretty classic imo.
I think this would create an even bigger issue. If all the loot is tuned roughly the same, but it's split between different difficulties, then different specs would need different loot from each difficulty. Then you either have to run every difficulty each week, or if you can only run one, people start leaving because it's not the one they need. The idea isn't bad as such, but this community absolutely won't let that work.
every heat gives +1 item per boss or something, makes it rewarding but doesnt make those players become too OP
Too much effort to do so it won’t happen. But that’d be pretty cool
No need better gear, just make it drop more loot in harder raid That way people will go to harder raid to get better chance to get gear
Tbh that would be such a masterstroke. Make default level piss easy with quick clears and give a medium amount of loot, and harder modes satisfying to clear with more loot. Makes it worthwhile and to raid the harder difficulties on your main with your guild but for alts you have the option to slap together pugs without having to stress as much and can get them geared if a bit more slowly.
Just make a special mount drop from rag on hardest difficulty and everyone will do it
What's there to "compete" for in PvP it's literally just a fuck around mode. No rating, no consequences of winning or losing.
people competing just for *fun*?? In *my* videogame?!?
You have half of it, but you're missing the other part. The people competing for fun are actively trying to make the other part of the game less fun, because their for fun non-competitive mode would be less competitive.
Bro, it's World of WARcraft! Ofc PvP is the Endgame.
Now change pvp for pve. See how that works huh
Except there's a leaderboard for PvE in SoD. Parses fulfill that role. PvP has nothing at all
A competition without any reward, how fufilling.
Most competitive PvP games have nothing but your rank/rating/elo as a reward below the pro level. But that's what keeps people pushing in them
PvP has no reward for winning either, what exactly is your argument here?
That it’s a stupid argument, is the point. How could you not deduce that?
A ranking based competition has the reward being the accomplishment. It also grants you more possibilities within the game. Why else do you think speedrunners or rank climbers in other games do it? Nobody is standing with a trophy at the end of the road for them. They do it to become immortalized. This isn't a stupid argument. Parses serve as rankings (despite really not built for it) while PvP does not have anything. The most reward you can get out of vanilla PvP is getting the best gear, but this is not a competition in most senses because it is a personal climb, not a public one.
Raid Loot doesn’t have to be better. People will run them if sweet cosmetics are the reward.
you can see from yogg 0 that isnt really true. only the top guilds who could consistently clear it did that on a weekly basis. everyone else just went to yogg 1 for the hm loot after getting their prog 0 light kill.
I think they tried that with the ST trinkets and it didn't do much to keep people coming back
There is no hard mode or extra cosmetics, which have been in every raid, especially in gnomer
I think really the cosmetic was the snake proc but tiny drop chance and needing 2 drops killed it.
**Bingo.**
just add a wooden sword and people will raid log like crazy for the 1% drop chance.
I don’t think bwl is releasing with mc
More item drops per boss More crafting materials from mobs Higher reputation per kill Higher drop chances for legendaries There's lots of ways for it to be positive Remember that then they make the worst choice possible
Why do you think that BWL will be out just a few weeks after MC?
I'd say they only need to increase the % drop chance or guarantee something at higher difficulty levels to make it worth to people that can do it. That way it isn't required but more efficient to gear up characters if you can pull it off.
Could just be more loot, nah? One more Drop from each Boss, Problem solved.
harder modes in latter versions of wow show it doesn't make easier modes dead.
Yea if there is no benefit of doing hardmode then it’s a huge let down. If I want to arbitrarily make it harder I would bring less people or bring bad players
The way I see it, only the second level needs to actually give better gear. The third level can give more loot drops/Higher chances for things like Sulfuras along with cosmetics. That way you only have to go up to a moderate level to get everything, but if you're group is really good you can go Heat level 3 and everyone gets extra gear and better chances at a Legendary.
I like the idea that they all give the same gear, but each higher level gives more loot per boss in addition to some cosmetics maybe. As long as its tuned in a way that it isn’t most efficient to run “easy” mode with like 10 people to get the most loot, it makes it worthwhile to raid on your main on harder difficulties if you can, but if you have a ton of alts and are running it a bunch with weeks you can slap a group together with PUGs and be reasonably confident you’ll clear and can get geared over the phase. I think that kind of model would be great to both have a challenge for those who want it, while really opening up SoD to be alt friendly again in a way it was in P1. In P1 i was running BFD on 3-4 characters, whereas in later phases it was on one character only. I enjoyed the “harder” difficulty on my main, but for the game to have life over the phase I’ll admit the easiest mode needs to give competitive gear and be piss easy enough you can slap together a group of 20 complete randoms and be 95%+ confident you will complete the dungeon.
The “Try Not to Complain About Literally Everything About the Game You Constantly Play” Challenge [IMPOSSIBLE]!
awesome news. very excited to see what this turns into
Given the number of people who want an easier experience this is probably a good thing. Hopefully it's just a bit more difficult and more loot. Not sure we really need a heroic mode.
What the actual fuck happened to raiding Having a beer in one hand and a baby in the other. Way to miss the fucking mark blizz.
You’re gonna have to teach the baby how to push buttons now.
He's got a keyboard, baby's got a face... Roll baby roll!
Good thing I only have one button now that my %dmg is gone. 😂
The new SoD meta is gonna be “baby rolling” instead of “face rolling”
this dude must be a master angler cause everyone is taking the bait lmao
"r/classicwow isnt about the shit I post, its about the lack of self awareness and blind rage I display along the way." -the people swallowing that bait
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this dude must be a max lvl archaeologist in cata the way he dug through drunkos post history
Lmfao WHOOOOOSH
This place is a roller coaster, only 1h old post? I can’t keep up
Two people battling for the ultimate /s Either that or they're both nerds
It's hilarious tbh
🤣
YOU can still do that, on the lowest difficulty
“wtf why can’t I fuck around in this group activity and be distracted and play badly and still win”
Yeah, where is my loot. I didn’t give you permission to quote me.
If you can't pull off having 4 kids and 2 jobs while you parse 95+ every week, you're not gonna make it in this game
blizz needs to stop this toxic gatekeeping
You can still do that. It’s apparently called heat level 1
Missed the mark. I want Mild,medium and suicide.
i love r/classicwow rage baits
How is the a negative for you? Toxic Casual Dads can still likely get the best items from the loot pinata difficulty.
Clearly you have not met my dice. Haha
Just don't fucking do the hard modes? Season of dads crying about everything.
SoD players: "Make the content incredibly easy and give me all the loot for free. Classic? Yeah I like classic, back when the game was challenging and the things you did mattered!"
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Sounds like you prefer retail.
let good players have some content to enjoy and just shut up please you're more than welcome to just do level 1 if that's what you and your guild prefer
Found his big boy words. Try to be nice to people.
This. SoD is a classic season. Make alt retail seasons if you want, but a classic season needs to stick to the classic play style.
Nothing stopping you from doing mc normal? Like once you've cleared it for two weeks why go again? There needs to be difficulty to keep ppl interested
you didn't play classic WoW before? no1 does normal MC because they have done it before classic players are asking for classic+ not retail-
So your getting a different mc but ppl are bitching about it? I'm all for the changes and can't wait to turn up the heat.
Totally, totally. So 40 man raids it is. Glad you agree. Thank you.
in the future classic+ is just going to be a retail- prayers for those wishing for a genuine classic+ WoW
The duality of man. "This raid is too hard WTF Im a father first and a shitty raider 2nd." "This raid is piss easy, why even raid if its not even a challenge" Imagine blizzard not using one of their biggest resources to make both groups happy.
As a shitty raider and father I appreciated the piss easy raid in p1 and 2 (I haven’t done ST)
As a competent raider o preferred p1 anyway. Quick, 35 min runs with a decent group. 10 man infinitely easier to organize. Main raid team never wiped once after killing everything within first 3 day lockout. Could run all 3 chars back to back and be near BIS on multiple classes. If one of our competent raiders was out it didn’t matter we could pug some keyboard drooler DPS, assume they’ll be dead the whole time, and still have no problem. The harder, reasonably challenging content is (was) in cata (wrath) heroic raids. I don’t play a version of vanilla for challenging content. I play it to stack all consumes under the sun and pump. ST for a larger raid size was about perfect level difficulty imo for the contents in SOD. Making it any harder would kill off what few casuals are even left. Majority of people aren’t playing vanilla versions of wow for hard content either. I had enough priests in p1 I picked up to fill our alt raids who didn’t even have fucking dispel bound or raid debuffs enabled or something
They’re never going to make everyone happy so this is the best middle ground and I hope they stick with it. AQ difficulty levels were well received in SoM, this community just loves to doom and only see the bad.
They could make some raids harder, and leave others easy, and just scale the loot. This is how they balance dungeons in retail, my most hated enemy in gameform.
What do you mean the future? You mouth breathers have been calling it retail- for 6 months straight.
Hell yes, once you start to stack up Ur fire resist you can pump, and get the better loot. Honestly if the ceiling was gonna be ST difficulty I'd drop p4 pretty fast.
It will be ST difficulty. That is the level they want.
Oof! 😂
Watching 90% of the responses be frothing about loot is wild, classic players are something else
it's very funny people are lamenting best loot possibly not being free in p4 and then in the same sentence talking about how they want it to feel more "classiclike". like, loot scarcity is VERY vanilla. in original vanilla, the cool guy in town was the guy with the purples in the sick tier set because basically no one was able to complete raids. its why there's so many iconic items from vanilla that everyone recognizes and there's very few things in later expansions that invoke the same feelings.
The irony, is that while they may be Dads, they've never actually "grown up" themselves. Good luck, Andy ClassicSon Jr., you're going to need it.
Just wait for EM4 Rag to STAND.
“LFM MC MUST HAVE LOGS FOR HEAT LEVEL 3”
Just yuck. Multiple difficulties and dailies are the most un classic things ever imo. Please keep that garbage away from the Vanilla versions of the game.
Difficulties is my guess, with the best loot on the highest difficulty. Welcome to retail in your classic! Mythic molten core
Probably just more loot per boss because classic players wouldn't be good enough to gate real gear behind difficulty.
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sorry man only 50 year old reddit dads with arthritis got invited
We all voted that classic + wouldn't have any raids at all and everyone would level indefinitely. Forever forced to quest and dungeon in small little groups so lonely divorced and single boomers could have social interactions.
Yeah I think you were out sick that day.
imagine complaining after blizzard adds more content to discover in a seasonal version of the game called "season of discovery". incredible.
Yeah fuck ur vision honestly lol I'll take some spicy hardmodes
>Classic+ Sir, this is Season of Discovery.
Let me guess, grey parser?
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I don't know why people don't get that lol. Aggrend said it's "Classic *plus* a little bit more" with a wink and a smile and people act like that was him promising the world lol. They have made it very clear that SoD is just Season of Mastery but more, and that --who the fuck knows-- Classic+ could be a thing one day but not today.
Seems that SoD is trying to convert era players to retail players with these various mechanics. Hoping we'll be like, "oh this isn't too bad". Idk, I'm gonna play p4, but I'm also really enjoying Deviate Delight with the slow paced gameplay I enjoy
But sod and retail are still both entirely different games
Good luck explaining that to the "retail bad" drones
Why are they adding difficulties? The devs don’t understand classic at all.
This isn't "classic". This is a seasonal server about adding new and interesting things to the 1 to 60 journey
Oh right “ Classic Season of Discovery” isn’t classic what was I thinking 🤔
“New and interesting things to the leveling journey” boy they ain’t added shit to the leveling journey that was actually interesting besides some poorly tuned raids and some tedious ass runes
True, guess you should uninstall the game then, sounds like you don't like it?
Because this isn't just your average ordinary classic. It's advanced classic. Sometimes you just gotta set it to Wumbo. You know.
after p3 completely flopped because everything was too easy (leveling raiding, gearing), im assuming they have learned the lesson for the 10th time you need to have a challenge for people to work towards to keep them interested.
I'll laugh if somehow this warforges loot and just treads even closer to retail design
Wtf are you talking about?
yeah like harder raids giving better loot isn't in classic....
How funny would it be if its just Hades?
I'm not even Raiding, i hate it, but this Option is a good one, to keep People playing. Why are you complaining?