The Number 1 Problem In Wow

- i have never said that vanilla was good, i just said it had hard raid content indeed because of the fact that people didnt have aoe healing or anything but whatever the conditions were, it was hard

The difficulty of Vanilla didn't really rely on DPS timers or complicated strategies, though (at least not as a norm, those definitely existed back then as well). Patchwerk was a tight DPS check in Naxxramas. Four Horsemen did have a strict tank requirement to be met. And some other bosses had gear resistance requirements.

However, what made it hard wasn't the actual boss in many cases, but the fact the only way to access those was by going through a rather lengthy tier route:

Tier 0.5: Zul'Gurub
Tier 1: Molten Core (except Ragnaros)
Tier 1.5: Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj
Tier 2: Onyxia, Blackwing Lair, Ragnaros
Tier 2.5: Temple of Ahn'Qiraj
Tier 3: Naxxramas

Of all these, Zul'Gurub and Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj could be ignored to some degree, but all the others were mandatory in order to get into the next step, with some overlapping though. (You might be able to take down Anub'rekhan in Naxxramas while still working on C'Thun in Temple of Ahn'Qiraj).

18/03/2013 14:43Posted by Ragaranos

- even though there is normal and heroic mode i dont see the challange there if it gets beaten in 48 hours

What could you possibly do now that people that aren't you have cleared Throne of Thunder in normal mode? (at the time of writing this post, the most progressed guild in the world is 11/13 Heroic)

In all seriousness, it's not even possible to compare this to the old days. Meaning, there wasn't a Heroic mode of which you could get enough gear to overgear the Normal mode raid of the upcoming raid tier (which happens to some degree these days), and the availability of online resources and general knowledge of the game inside the community has increased a thousand fold. These days you can find anything on the internet, from guides to optimize your gear to perfection (Ask Mr Robot) to guides for your bosses (Tankspot, Icy-Veins) to tips and hints about your best rotation, glyphs and talents (Max DPS). And of course, very complete Item/Spell/Quests DBs (WoWHead, WoWDB).

And not just for raiding, for Fishing (El's Extreme Anglin') making gold/using the AH (Elvine) and of course pets and pet battles (Warcraft Pets, Petopia).

Sites that follow what's going around the WoW scene and latest updates. (WoW Insider, MMO-Champion)

Oh, and comics. Those won't make you improve but will make you realize how big this community actually is and probably make you laugh as well (The Daily Blink, Dark Legacy Comics, Teh Gladiators).

And this is just scratching the surface. Really.

I didn't mention language specific fansites (there's a ton of them, and some are super popular in their languages), specialized fansites that focus on particular classes or aspects of the game, blogs, artists, addon developers and so much more. The Warcraft community is immense.

And of course, that huge size has also its impact on how much, how good and how quickly the information about raids flies around. So, you can't just pin it down to "the raids must be easier because now they are way easier" and call it a day, because the thing is, World of Warcraft is a very different game than 8 years ago. But the community? The community is always getting better and better (and bigger!). So, in my humble opinion, rather than arguing it's because the game now is easier (it isn't, there's a Heroic mode where guilds are facing some of the most challenging bosses ever released on this game) we should give a shout to all those guys and gals, known and yet-to-be-known that are enriching the community.

i would just like to see a extreme boost for all dungeons and raids even on normall mode, the casuals of today are not skilled in any way shape or form they are just wacking on a boss and it falls down, even casual players can live up to higher standards, thats why they need to boost everything

You'll probably be able to find very skilled casual players. But on a tool used to create groups randomly, it's unlikely they'll be able to coordinate together (they don't know each other, they might miss communication tools, or not even be there yet in terms of game knowledge to tackle harder bosses). Those players, if they wish to, and can, are more than welcome to experience the raids on normal and Heroic.

The challenge is there. It's up to you to decide how much of it you want, but I honestly don't think it's fair to say the game has gotten easier without having experienced the most difficult content available in-game and at the same time using as proof what someone else on the internet has done.

In the end, what's important is what you experience. If someone else beats Throne of Thunder Normal in 48 hours... good for them, your experience is still intact :-)

TLDR: Don't be lazy. Read the post.

And where was the problem with this? Isn't that the way games should be? You start at the beginning and go through all of the content in a specific order. Which game, except actual WoW, no matter whether on- or offline, allows you to leave out content and go directly to the final bosses?

With that route specifically? It was on the fact that if you came late to the game you didn't really have any way of catch-up to get into more advanced guilds, other than try to actually run that content when perhaps most guilds at that point had already moved past.

If you flash forward to Cataclysm, it probably isn't crazy to argue that it was too easy to bypass entire tiers by going into the Patch 4.3 5-man dungeons, sure.

If you flash forward to the present....
In Pandaria, now you do have to run that content, but the availability of tools as the Raid Finder and increased drop rates in previous raids means that while you're following that same route (as players were doing in Vanilla WoW) you're doing it at a quicker pace and even without the need of finding a guild running that content, looking for applicants and on the same time of the day you can raid.

So, it's not that there was something wrong with going through that route (in my opinion, I shall add), but, the fact there weren't many ways to bypass content meant that, the higher you went on that progress, the less guilds were around progressing, hence, less players were ready to experience that content.