WoW is still that way, but your average WoW player is a lot better now. Back in Vanilla, i clicked everything. I healed Molten Core as a Shadow Priest.

Today's Raids have way more, and way harder mechanics. But, im fully keybound and i dont click a damn thing. My reaction time, rotation and awareness are way, way better and its not even close.

I find a lot people on Blizzard's forums complain about how easy WoW is, yet only 1% of Raiders have cleared current Hard Mode raid content and it's something like 8% have cleared Normal mode current content. Easy to play, difficult to play well.

Pantheon failed to make their kickstarter deadline, but they are running a similar type of event on their own website.

https://www.pantheonrotf.com/

I have to say, the more I read about the game, the more excited I get. For one thing, Enchanters are back. No more zero challenge, just AE nuke everything to death boring game play. Crowd control is one of the funnest if not hardest roles to play, and I really look forward to doing it again. Since Vanguard, I have not seen one game where CC was even close to a viable thing to use.

I haven't raided in wow since Burning Crusade, dabbed a bit in WotLK when it came out but lost interest very early. But when I was in a raiding guild in BC I was waaaaaaaay behind my guilds progression and as soon as I hit 70 they had me raiding literally right when I dinged. Still in green spell/dmg gear from the mid 60's on my pally, we killed Gruul (server first), before they nerfed the shit out of him (not many guilds actually killed him prenerf). It wasn't too long after that we killed Magtheridon (2nd on server).

There is nothing challenging about raiding in WoW. Once you figure out the sequence of the fight its all grade school. The reason so few people have cleared the current content is because WoW has switched to a more casual focus. Clearing current content requires large amounts of time farming materials for potions and other random things. The overwhelming majority of WoW players don't have the interest in doing that shit. They'll play their 10 arena matches a week and be happy.

Take this list for what you may but here's the top 10 raid boss world firsts from date of access:

#1 Ouro - 87 days from the Twin Emperors' death. (1 day from C'thun's death) 26th April 2006.
#2 C'thun - 86 days from the Twin Emperors' death. 25th April 2006.
#3 Yogg-Saron, Alone in the Darkness - 83 days from General Vezax's death. (39 days from STARS' previous Ulduar kill) 7th July 2009
#4 tied Chromaggus - 74 days from Ebonroc's death. 25th September 2005.
#4 tied Ragnaros - 74 days from Majordomo Executus' death. 25th April 2005.
#6 High Astromancer Solarian - 59 days from Magtheridon's death. (24 days from Death Wish's previous tier 5 kill) 24th April 2007
#7 The Four Horsemen - 56 days from Gothik's death to D&T's kill. August 25th 2006
#8 Al'ar <Phoenix God> - 48 days from Magtheridon's death. 13th April 2007
#9 Heroic The Lich King - 42 Days from Heroic Putricide's death (first pull). March 26th 2010
#10 Heroic Al'Akir - 38 days from being unlocked. (36 days from Heroic Conclave of Wind's death) January 22nd 2011.

5 from vanilla
2 from BC
2 from WotLK
1 from Cataclysm

There's only 1 boss in the top 30 from MoP.

I remember when the first Asian guild killed Illidan... Their gear was mostly made up of vanilla raid gear. Their main tanks were still using TF's. The game is incredibly easy but takes vast amounts of time and dedication to playing 4 or 5 hours every night to be current on content.

So I'm just curious (not trying to call you out, I promise), what would make a raid difficult?

I forget teh name of the game I was playing. MMO, where action mattered. It had all mobs including you have a physical body, you could not run through mobs. Had to run around them.

I would say add that. Then have each raid boss have a bigger randomized ability subset. Basically, instead of just youtubing the top guilds to learn tactics. The bosses have 30 to 50 random moves they could do. Not all during a fight, but have it completely random.

Another thing I also think they should add, any weapon/gear that drops from raid bosses should be able to be bought. Say you defeat a boss 30plus times and your weapon or gear never drops. Well every time you defeat him you get a chance say 50% of getting a coin to use that is only available for that bosses loot. After you collect so many, you can just buy the item from a vendor at the end of the raid.

You could do the same for the mounts, make it something insane that will take a good portion of the expansion.


I also hate that they try and make pvp/arena a esport. I am sorry, but it cannot be a esport when gear is the only thing that matters and group setup.
esports are about skill. Everyone should the same equal access to gear in pvp. Have the best still get arena or different looking gear.

I quit after wotlk after being in a top 150 US raiding guild for years. It just got stale. Literally had study sessions for learning raids to keep pace on server firsts. That shit is not fun.

Wildstar, looks interesting with what they are starting with. Hopefully it goes well.

Warhammer Online online had solid body models you could not run through.

Solid body models get real old, real fast. Especially in large scale PvP.

BC mechanics are a far cry from MoP mechanics. It's not really comparable. There is a lot more movement involved and the bosses have more abilities in general. And in Ranked PvP, everyone who's contending has the same ilvl. It only takes but a month or two to fully gear up. If you can't take the time to get the same gear then you're probably not a top 1% player. The heart of an MMO is progression. PvP would be dead without a sense of progression, even in the form of gear.

But i do agree though, it is just a pattern. Its not that difficult if you dedicate enough time to it anyone can learn it.

But i think it's silly to call a game too easy when the majority of the players who play it can't complete the content. It's not just time, there is a good amount of skill involved. If you spend enough time on something, you'll get good at it. But i've raided with enough players to see that it is challenging for a lot of people.

Sometimes you get high in the middle of the night, write a post and look back, "wtf why did i...?"

offtopic from this general offtopic.

I have played wildstar beta and its bad too.

I could swear i brought this point up early in the thread. It would work like this:

3 variations of a raid/dungeon, easy, normal, hard. We will use raids as an example. each boss encounter in this raid has it's own set of 20 abilities.

On easy, each boss will RNG 5 of it's unique abilities, normal will be 10 and hard will be 15.

This means that a guild will rarely ever have the same fight as they had before and will never actually know what is going to happen. This would actually keep raiding kind of fresh. Sometimes the encounter would be very easy, sometimes it would be really hard, but it would never be the same thing.

"Death ray in 3 seconds, melee joust out"

Obviously the details would need to be worked out, and the actual number of things to be refined, but no encounter should always be the same.

As long as those abilities are the same after each wipe. If the abilities are changing during each pull then progression would be a nightmare assuming that the abilities are in fact game changing.

If the abilities are minor, then it would defeat the purpose. If they are major, then they need to be static after the first pull. Dealing with 20 Random, major abilities that change per pull could bring progression to a complete stop.

In my mind, the abilities are decided upon entering the instance. Once set, they are what they are for the entire encounter.

And yes, these abilities are the major abilities of that encounter. This way, like valiant said, you can never just go watch the how the top guilds beat the encounter on youtube. You may learn how to deal with the different abilities themselves, for example jousting on fire breath, but you won't know if fire breath is actually going to be used until it is.

Then Hard mode would be more desirable since you'd have a much much higher chance of encountering every single ability and then know how to deal with them. 20 isn't enough.

Hard mode is always preferable in my mind, but then, I like the challenge. And like I said the details would need to be ironed out. I think 15 abilities in one fight is a lot, look at how many major abilities current encounters have, not that many.

When I was playing EQ2 three years ago, most encounters had 3 maybe 4 major abilities that you had to deal with, 15 would be insane. Also, note that I listed 20 total possibilities, but only 15 on hard mode, this would mean that the players would still not be able to count on any specific ability, and still keep it fresh.

Also, these are major abilities, like huge attacks, heals, stuns and other stuff like that, not just standard auto-attack, potential raid wiping abilities.