Forar is also correct in that mobs had a lot of silly AoE moves that neutered melee dps. Another reason why more mages tended to be better.
That sort of thing tended to irritate me to no end, because people always wanted a mage, and no, apparently a warlock isn't good enough. Goddammit.
On the other hand, getting into mechanar was never a problem.
(Edit: Of course, this was after a few nerfs, since I don't think I dared pug a heroic until then.)
On the subject of mob cleaves and so forth: they took abilities from vanilla raid bosses, bosses that are the size of a large roos, and put them on regular mobs. If I had to guess, it was because it's a heroic, so goddammit, let's give them raid boss abilities.
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
I tanked heroics in TBC two weeks after release. They were fucking brutal.
I tanked heroics in WotLK two weeks after release. They were laughably easy. I didn't even bother questing for a full tanking set, I just ran in with enough defense and resilience (lol season 4 PvP gear) to be uncrittable and we cleared everything without much difficulty.
Any claim that heroics at or near release in TBC and WotLK were comparable in terms of difficulty is absolute nonsense.
I'm not sure if blizzard ever really inteded it to one shot melee or if that was just an oopsie like activating hard mode on sourfang.
Thats not hardmode thats a modification made to the fight to account for people dieing to the marks to slow BP gen and to also make it so disc priests don't make the fight too trivial
It was a comment on the speculation that it might be happening faster than intended.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Your argument fucking fails because a lot of us did raid content in goddamn classic.
Again, your fire argument is retarded because that's not what is killing you in heroics. Trash mobs in heroics did high damage: they did not all have goddamn void zones.
Are you blind or stubborn?
I'd wager not many. And that's the point. If you're talking about the 5% of you that made it past ony, okay, if you say heroics in BC were that so much harder, that it'd make your eyes bleed, than heroics in wrath with comparable gear at both 70 and 80; I'll believe you.
You mention void zones and guess what Molten Core had? A boss that did random patches of Rain of Fire. That's the EXACT thing you're talking about and it's in the first fucking tier of content. Your argument consists of us somehow being so fucktarded we just forgot about that shit in Classic but it just stuck in TBC for whatever reason.
Heroics in TBC were harder than in Wrath. This was for a brief period before the first patch nerfed the majority of it. It was by no means impossible, but I was never challenged by Wrath's heroics and treated them like I did non-heroics before. This has nothing to do with past knowledge (I was starting damn Naxx before TBC came out) and everything to do with heroics being the baseline. Normal mode exists for newer players or people who need to switch over to a new role. Yes, it would be hard for them, but TBC would be downright murder.
You mention void zones and guess what Molten Core had? A boss that did random patches of Rain of Fire. That's the EXACT thing you're talking about and it's in the first fucking tier of content.
I guess I'll do this just to be the aforementioned goose I am. Where?
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Edit: and what was so wrong with malygos did I miss something?
Standard "good guy has gone KA-RAAAAAAAAAAZZZZY" bullshit.
It might have been interesting if they included heroes of the flight like Kalecgos and Tyri, but instead they were MIA. I understand the desire to keep the Lich King in the spotlight, but killing off a fucking Aspect is not something you relegate to the sideshow.
Edit: and what was so wrong with malygos did I miss something?
Standard "good guy has gone KA-RAAAAAAAAAAZZZZY" bullshit.
It might have been interesting if they included heroes of the flight like Kalecgos and Tyri, but instead they were MIA. I understand the desire to keep the Lich King in the spotlight, but killing off a fucking Aspect is not something you relegate to the sideshow.
To be fair, he was already crazy.
The silly part is that apparently he went crazy because he regained his sanity.
...
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
I'd like a citation on "only 5% got past Onyxia", please.
I'm pretty sure the numbers were more like 5% of the raider playerbase seeing anywhere in Naxx (5 bosses pre-2.0, copious attempts on 3 others, thanks). MC and BWL were stumbling points for most, but if you really think Onyxia was it for most people, you're really not playing with a full deck ... of geese.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
You mention void zones and guess what Molten Core had? A boss that did random patches of Rain of Fire. That's the EXACT thing you're talking about and it's in the first fucking tier of content.
I guess I'll do this just to be the aforementioned goose I am. Where?
I think it was the 3rd boss. The one you had to cast decurse on nonstop. Also, if i recall correctly, the big corehound dog made fire on the ground.
Remember kids: The fire is only pretty and colorful until it melts flesh.
BC, "I'm completely fucking lost, does this fire hurt, oh shit I'm dead"
I find most of these comments are coming from people who have raided before and can figure out standing in fire is ultimately bad for survival
"Standing in fire" is just a long way a saying "void zone". A small AoE that does a lot of damage if you don't get the fuck out.
There was plenty of this in Classic. These aren't even that prevalent in TBC heroics, so I don't if you are being cute or just using an awful example.
I'll bite.
That first one was actually a jib that I'm surprised people haven't killed themselves (with real fire) that they're ignoring 90% of what I've said and have said and focusing on invisible things that I didn't say because they think I'm arguing something I'm not.
The others were responses to shit other people were talking about to void zones. If not, I apologize for the confusion on that one at least.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
The last blizzard citation I remember hearing about was when they were rationalizing the change from 40 to 25 man raids going into wrath. From memory I think they said that 1/3rd of the population ever SAW ragnaros, and only about 5% got to original Naxx. If someone can dig up the blue post that would help
You mention void zones and guess what Molten Core had? A boss that did random patches of Rain of Fire. That's the EXACT thing you're talking about and it's in the first fucking tier of content.
I guess I'll do this just to be the aforementioned goose I am. Where?
I think it was the 3rd boss. The one you had to cast decurse on nonstop. Also, if i recall correctly, the big corehound dog made fire on the ground.
Lucifron required nigh-nonstop decursing of the raid, however Decursive alleviated some of that.
Magmadar left flame patches and would fear people all over the damned place. People got fucked regularly by this.
Gehennas (sp?) would randomly rain of fire all over, along with (as I recall) a massive -healing debuff that had to be dealt with, or you were pretty much fucked.
Molten Core had plenty of tanking and spanking, but to say that this shit wasn't difficult when tanks barely understood why Defense was good and before the invention of Spell Power is to indicate that time has blinded you to these (among other) issues or that you did the content post nerfs.
I'd like a citation on "only 5% got past Onyxia", please.
Uh, it's pretty common knowledge that only a small handful of players raided in those days. Even TBC was barely over 5% for anything past Kara.
Wrath REALLY did a lot to open up raiding to the general population.
I know for a fact that's wrong.
According to armoury crawling, Karazhan was seen by the vast, vast majority of the playerbase. Blizzard themselves backed this by listing it as an overwhelming success, and noted that it was part of what led them to try out parallel 10 man content along with 25's, it was just that popular and accessible.
The other instances might've been 40-20%'ish, but T5 content was seen by a good number of the population, and T6 was by no means limited to 5% except at release.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Most people definitely saw kara. I don't know how many people actually made it to SSC or TK (or even ZA). I feel like a decent number at least visited uh...the loot guy with the shoulders.
Of course, 3.0 hitting would skew numbers, but I'm guessing any numbers anyone refers to is pre-3.0.
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
T5 conent was seen by vastly more than 5% of the playerbase, even on my shitty (for raiding) RP realm.
I used to check wowjutsu fairly regularly during TBC, and while those numbers probably don't exist anymore (unless I can find one of my posts from 1.5+ years ago), they definitely weren't even close to that low.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Your argument fucking fails because a lot of us did raid content in goddamn classic.
Again, your fire argument is retarded because that's not what is killing you in heroics. Trash mobs in heroics did high damage: they did not all have goddamn void zones.
Are you blind or stubborn?
Raid content in classic was hard... when?
Oh yeah mean if you didn't bring in the extra 20 filler people? I guess Naxx was pretty difficult but how many of the people making the claim that heroics were hard made it to AQ or Naxx or even fucking BWL?
I'd wager not many. And that's the point. If you're talking about the 5% of you that made it past ony, okay, if you say heroics in BC were that so much harder, that it'd make your eyes bleed, than heroics in wrath with comparable gear at both 70 and 80; I'll believe you.
I'll bite.
I was one of the few 5% or whatever that saw Naxx. We didn't make it through all the way, but we cleared a couple of wings. We had horde first C'thun kill, most overall progress in Naxx and as far as I'm aware the only Ouro kill on the server.
You couldn't carry anyone through C'thun. It required massive amounts of coordination.
Most of us rushed to 80 and heroics to start attunements and were doing heroics in blue gear and kara. I was an enhancement shaman, which at the time wasn't a proven spec and was a melee class without CC.
I did 40 man Naxx and C'thun and still had to be carried by my guild through TBC heroics at launch because they were stupidly designed. Not all of them, but enough.
I quit before BT was released and resubscribed around WoTLK launch. Leveled pretty fast to 80 and pugged heroics with my brother's prot pally and me healing.
So, blues and levelling gear at 80, pugging. At 70 blues and Naxx gear with guild members who had done the hardest content.
TBC heroics at launch were so hard they made your eyes bleed, compared to WoTLK heroics at launch.
There are approximately 10 million subscriptions for WoW. According to a google search, approximately 2.5 million are in North America and 2 million are in Europe. These figures are about half a year old, so they may be slightly higher, but let's use them for arguments sake.
WoWJutsu lists 4.07 million players who have at the very least seen Karazhan. This number is likely inflated due to Alts being counted as "raiders", but I have doubts it's massively off base.
99.26% have been into Karazhan. Clearly raiding 10 mans is very, very popular. Despite the cries of "OMG ARENAS AND WELFARE EPIXXXXXXX", there are a LOT of people raiding.
2/3 of the recorded raiders have been to ZA.
1/2 have defeated HKM and/or Gruul.
1/3 killed Magtheridon.
That's a pretty drastic cut, but it's still well over a million people, so let's call T4 content "very successful".
About 1/3 have been to T5 content. Not bad, and shows pretty clearly the demarcation line between "casual" and "committed" raiders, in my opinion.
Between 22% and 16% (under 1 million) have put a dent into T6 content, and considering that this number used to be closer to the 5-10%ish mark pre-Sunwell, I'd say this is a pretty damned fine jump. Badge gear and the removal of attunements has likely had a massive part to play in this, and while it's clearly not "karazhan 2.0", high end raid content has been opened up to droves of new raiders. As a high end raider, I applaud this, and hope that in the 4-6+ months before WLK is released, this number only gets bigger.
Sunwell: 3.18%, or about 130,000 Sunwell raiders. This makes up approximately 2.9% of the North America/Europe population, and as with T6 content, will most likely continue to grow as people plunge deeper into BT/Hyjal/Badge Gear and decide to take a stab at Kalecgos (mostly a coordination fight) and Brutallus (massive gear check).
So, yes, I'd say a few more than just 5% made it past Karazhan during TBC's reign.
Edit part deux: and those aren't final numbers. Especially with 3.0, I know many people made huge strides in at least seeing content they'd missed while it was still un-nerfed, but before they had a 10 level advantage over it.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
- It's scraped off of the armory, looking at the achievements (leading to some issues listed below)
- Alts increase the population size, since a lot of people took their alts into Kara.
- Assuming you're only a "raider" if you've cleared kara decreases the population size. I don't have a better way for guessing if a character raids or not.
- My big window inflates the harder instances, since suddenly a lot of people could clear harder stuff. I could solve the problem, but I'm too lazy to write a query that attempts to deduce if they got the achievement upon logging on the first time after 3.0. It's not actually hard, just don't feel like it.
- Realms can vary greatly. My realm isn't yours, or representative of the entire game.
- I count people who might not have been on my realm when 3.0 hit.
- It doesn't count characters that disappeared from the armory.
So yeah, I don't know how much you can conclude off of my data, given the issues there are, but there you have it.
Edit: oops, forgot ZA. Added it.
Edit2: For reference, the Sunwell clear count overall for my realm is 975, so obviously a lot of people have gone back in since WotLK hit.
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
Well, yeah, you gave some numbers about Vanilla, and then we started talking about how many people even made it passed Kara, and what the TBC figures were.
Edit: I'm guessing they gave the figures out at a Blizzcon.
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
There are lots of people who did Sunwell during TBC but never got the last boss down, thus would never have the achievement. I know of one guild that quit not long after getting Brutallus down. Many of those people never got achievements for BT or other TBC raids either.
Numbers from achievements are going to be incredibly inaccurate.
What is the achievement based off of? Do you have to have gear from KJ when the system was put in place? And what about post 3.0 kills? I killed KJ but never did any real raiding beyond Gruul/ZA. They just needed me for the Moonkin buff.
Sterica on
0
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited February 2010
Rorus, you're just confusing the 'commonly quoted' statistic with the actual statistic, which is what Javen said.
About 1/3 of players SAW Ragnaros. Less than 5% attempted any part of Naxx.
And personally, I have seen almost zero TBC content outside of the ten mans.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
This is all lovely but where's my fucking Troll raid?
I loved Zul'Aman, probably my favourite raid.
815165 on
0
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
This is all lovely but where's my fucking Troll raid?
I loved Zul'Aman, probably my favourite raid.
There are too many Troll instances in the game. The standard fallback for blizzard is usually "Let's put the trolls there and have them fuck up their gods!"
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
There are lots of people who did Sunwell during TBC but never got the last boss down, thus would never have the achievement. I know of one guild that quit not long after getting Brutallus down. Many of those people never got achievements for BT or other TBC raids either.
Numbers from achievements are going to be incredibly inaccurate.
Yeah, I think I said that, although I think more often than not, if you got a bit into Sunwell, you at least cleared BT and Hyjal.
Clearing is still an interesting/useful statistic, regardless, although I'd have to agree it gets kinda fucked up in TBC, since endbosses tended to be ohballs hard compared to earlier bosses in the instance.
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
This is all lovely but where's my fucking Troll raid?
I loved Zul'Aman, probably my favourite raid.
There are too many Troll instances in the game. The standard fallback for blizzard is usually "Let's put the trolls there and have them fuck up their gods!"
Raiding was harder back in Vanilla. Were the fights harder or easier than they are now? That'll always be debated. What is true is that very, very few people were part of an organization, whether it was a guild or group of guilds that could raid 40 man content regularly. More often than not, you would seem "super guilds" form on servers were basically anyone who wanted to raid was funneled into a few guilds that did the raid on a regular basis.
However, for a majority of people, the content was inaccessible. Coordinating fights with 40 people just went beyond what a majority of the playerbase was capable of, or even wanted to do.
We've seen over the last five years the scale slide back into easier raid content through the reduction in the number of people, as well as a shift from gear checks to fights with more gimmicks or coordination.
The fights in the original MC were laid out to be fairly simple, as far as today's standards are concerned, and were more of an equation. Could your raid mitigate x damage for the y minutes it took your DPS to down the fight, with very few gimmicks thrown in. As we shifted to AQ and beyond, the developers purposely reduced the number of people required to raid, as well as shifted tactics to go away from a win/lose equation to a more involved or gimmicky (used in a positive connotation) fights that allowed for more flexibility in gear levels, but compensating for this on the coordination.
Ultimately, the complaint always was about having to be "hardcore" to see the end game content. For a majority of the player-base, 5 and 10 man dungeons were the end game. Especially in WotLK, we've seen a shift to make 5-man the gearing phase to do 10 man contents, as well as seeing 10 man content become easier as people access higher level gear. And through the escalation of badge gear, Blizzard is allowing people to basically skip progression and jump into the newest tier of raid content, without having completed prior tiers.
It is now very possible to level to 80, run heroics for enough badge gear and skip Naxx, Ulduar and ToC altogether to get into ICC.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? For a vast majority of the player base, it's a very good thing, and very healthy for the game on the whole.
The bad thing is, that hardcore raiders are no longer the shiney shizzzle that they use to be. I remember back in the MC days, seeing someone with purples or a matching armor set (even before they were referred to as "tiers"), meatn that he was the hardest of the hardcore. I remember see my first rogue decked out in what was later called Tier 1. It was badass. Now, everyone has a glitzy armor set on.
Now, all hardcore raiders have are the hardmode, but that's only gives them slightly better stats on their drops, but their glitzy epics aren't quite as shiny any more. They get the challenge, but very little of the prestige that comes with it. So what if you got Firefighter down? I didn't but my armor or weapon isn't any less shiny. And shit, I got it doing "easy mode" heroics. How's that for insult to injury?
I think that's where you find old school or hard core raiders have the biggest problem. It's not finding a challenge in the content (see hard modes), it's just that it's no longer obvious to everyone in Dalaran who the hardest of the hardcore are.
The being hardcore hasn't lost any luster; it's image has been completely shattered.
Posts
That sort of thing tended to irritate me to no end, because people always wanted a mage, and no, apparently a warlock isn't good enough. Goddammit.
On the other hand, getting into mechanar was never a problem.
(Edit: Of course, this was after a few nerfs, since I don't think I dared pug a heroic until then.)
On the subject of mob cleaves and so forth: they took abilities from vanilla raid bosses, bosses that are the size of a large roos, and put them on regular mobs. If I had to guess, it was because it's a heroic, so goddammit, let's give them raid boss abilities.
I tanked heroics in WotLK two weeks after release. They were laughably easy. I didn't even bother questing for a full tanking set, I just ran in with enough defense and resilience (lol season 4 PvP gear) to be uncrittable and we cleared everything without much difficulty.
Any claim that heroics at or near release in TBC and WotLK were comparable in terms of difficulty is absolute nonsense.
It was a comment on the speculation that it might be happening faster than intended.
Heroics in TBC were harder than in Wrath. This was for a brief period before the first patch nerfed the majority of it. It was by no means impossible, but I was never challenged by Wrath's heroics and treated them like I did non-heroics before. This has nothing to do with past knowledge (I was starting damn Naxx before TBC came out) and everything to do with heroics being the baseline. Normal mode exists for newer players or people who need to switch over to a new role. Yes, it would be hard for them, but TBC would be downright murder.
I guess I'll do this just to be the aforementioned goose I am. Where?
It might have been interesting if they included heroes of the flight like Kalecgos and Tyri, but instead they were MIA. I understand the desire to keep the Lich King in the spotlight, but killing off a fucking Aspect is not something you relegate to the sideshow.
To be fair, he was already crazy.
The silly part is that apparently he went crazy because he regained his sanity.
...
There was plenty of this in Classic. These aren't even that prevalent in TBC heroics, so I don't if you are being cute or just using an awful example.
Pretty much. Yeah.
I'm pretty sure the numbers were more like 5% of the raider playerbase seeing anywhere in Naxx (5 bosses pre-2.0, copious attempts on 3 others, thanks). MC and BWL were stumbling points for most, but if you really think Onyxia was it for most people, you're really not playing with a full deck ... of geese.
I think it was the 3rd boss. The one you had to cast decurse on nonstop. Also, if i recall correctly, the big corehound dog made fire on the ground.
I'll bite.
That first one was actually a jib that I'm surprised people haven't killed themselves (with real fire) that they're ignoring 90% of what I've said and have said and focusing on invisible things that I didn't say because they think I'm arguing something I'm not.
The others were responses to shit other people were talking about to void zones. If not, I apologize for the confusion on that one at least.
Wrath REALLY did a lot to open up raiding to the general population.
Lucifron required nigh-nonstop decursing of the raid, however Decursive alleviated some of that.
Magmadar left flame patches and would fear people all over the damned place. People got fucked regularly by this.
Gehennas (sp?) would randomly rain of fire all over, along with (as I recall) a massive -healing debuff that had to be dealt with, or you were pretty much fucked.
Molten Core had plenty of tanking and spanking, but to say that this shit wasn't difficult when tanks barely understood why Defense was good and before the invention of Spell Power is to indicate that time has blinded you to these (among other) issues or that you did the content post nerfs.
I know for a fact that's wrong.
According to armoury crawling, Karazhan was seen by the vast, vast majority of the playerbase. Blizzard themselves backed this by listing it as an overwhelming success, and noted that it was part of what led them to try out parallel 10 man content along with 25's, it was just that popular and accessible.
The other instances might've been 40-20%'ish, but T5 content was seen by a good number of the population, and T6 was by no means limited to 5% except at release.
Reread my post, especially the part about TBC.
Which, I dunno.
Most people definitely saw kara. I don't know how many people actually made it to SSC or TK (or even ZA). I feel like a decent number at least visited uh...the loot guy with the shoulders.
Of course, 3.0 hitting would skew numbers, but I'm guessing any numbers anyone refers to is pre-3.0.
T5 conent was seen by vastly more than 5% of the playerbase, even on my shitty (for raiding) RP realm.
I used to check wowjutsu fairly regularly during TBC, and while those numbers probably don't exist anymore (unless I can find one of my posts from 1.5+ years ago), they definitely weren't even close to that low.
(Of course, there's the obvious caveat with how they gathered data, and how they're limited to raiders)
I'll bite.
I was one of the few 5% or whatever that saw Naxx. We didn't make it through all the way, but we cleared a couple of wings. We had horde first C'thun kill, most overall progress in Naxx and as far as I'm aware the only Ouro kill on the server.
You couldn't carry anyone through C'thun. It required massive amounts of coordination.
Most of us rushed to 80 and heroics to start attunements and were doing heroics in blue gear and kara. I was an enhancement shaman, which at the time wasn't a proven spec and was a melee class without CC.
I did 40 man Naxx and C'thun and still had to be carried by my guild through TBC heroics at launch because they were stupidly designed. Not all of them, but enough.
I quit before BT was released and resubscribed around WoTLK launch. Leveled pretty fast to 80 and pugged heroics with my brother's prot pally and me healing.
So, blues and levelling gear at 80, pugging. At 70 blues and Naxx gear with guild members who had done the hardest content.
TBC heroics at launch were so hard they made your eyes bleed, compared to WoTLK heroics at launch.
So, yes, I'd say a few more than just 5% made it past Karazhan during TBC's reign.
Edit part deux: and those aren't final numbers. Especially with 3.0, I know many people made huge strides in at least seeing content they'd missed while it was still un-nerfed, but before they had a 10 level advantage over it.
Characters with clears of instances on my realm within about two weeks after 3.0 launched, according to achievement credit:
Sunwell: 81 (2%)
Black Temple: 444 (12%)
Hyjal: 465 (13%)
Tempest Keep: 497 (14%)
Serpentshrine Cavern: 729 (20%)
Gruul's Lair: 2862 (79%)
Magtheridan's Lair: 1803 (49.5%)
Zul'Aman: 1215 (33%)
Karazhan: 3637 (100%)
Level 70: 7101
There's several big caveats with my data.
- It's scraped off of the armory, looking at the achievements (leading to some issues listed below)
- Alts increase the population size, since a lot of people took their alts into Kara.
- Assuming you're only a "raider" if you've cleared kara decreases the population size. I don't have a better way for guessing if a character raids or not.
- My big window inflates the harder instances, since suddenly a lot of people could clear harder stuff. I could solve the problem, but I'm too lazy to write a query that attempts to deduce if they got the achievement upon logging on the first time after 3.0. It's not actually hard, just don't feel like it.
- Realms can vary greatly. My realm isn't yours, or representative of the entire game.
- I count people who might not have been on my realm when 3.0 hit.
- It doesn't count characters that disappeared from the armory.
So yeah, I don't know how much you can conclude off of my data, given the issues there are, but there you have it.
Edit: oops, forgot ZA. Added it.
Edit2: For reference, the Sunwell clear count overall for my realm is 975, so obviously a lot of people have gone back in since WotLK hit.
You're not the only person here. We're addressing Rorus Raz's comment, in reference to whether or not TBC was raider friendly or not either.
Edit: I'm guessing they gave the figures out at a Blizzcon.
Numbers from achievements are going to be incredibly inaccurate.
TBC opened things up, but I think their numbers for Wrath have to be leagues ahead of that.
About 1/3 of players SAW Ragnaros. Less than 5% attempted any part of Naxx.
And personally, I have seen almost zero TBC content outside of the ten mans.
I loved Zul'Aman, probably my favourite raid.
There are too many Troll instances in the game. The standard fallback for blizzard is usually "Let's put the trolls there and have them fuck up their gods!"
Yeah, I think I said that, although I think more often than not, if you got a bit into Sunwell, you at least cleared BT and Hyjal.
Clearing is still an interesting/useful statistic, regardless, although I'd have to agree it gets kinda fucked up in TBC, since endbosses tended to be ohballs hard compared to earlier bosses in the instance.
I think Forar questioned my 5% originally, hence my comment.
Unless you like being a silly goose other than to prove a point.
As much as I think it'd help, I don't think the mods would appreciate starting a new thread for that.
Still though, it is yet to fatigue me, more!
Raiding was harder back in Vanilla. Were the fights harder or easier than they are now? That'll always be debated. What is true is that very, very few people were part of an organization, whether it was a guild or group of guilds that could raid 40 man content regularly. More often than not, you would seem "super guilds" form on servers were basically anyone who wanted to raid was funneled into a few guilds that did the raid on a regular basis.
However, for a majority of people, the content was inaccessible. Coordinating fights with 40 people just went beyond what a majority of the playerbase was capable of, or even wanted to do.
We've seen over the last five years the scale slide back into easier raid content through the reduction in the number of people, as well as a shift from gear checks to fights with more gimmicks or coordination.
The fights in the original MC were laid out to be fairly simple, as far as today's standards are concerned, and were more of an equation. Could your raid mitigate x damage for the y minutes it took your DPS to down the fight, with very few gimmicks thrown in. As we shifted to AQ and beyond, the developers purposely reduced the number of people required to raid, as well as shifted tactics to go away from a win/lose equation to a more involved or gimmicky (used in a positive connotation) fights that allowed for more flexibility in gear levels, but compensating for this on the coordination.
Ultimately, the complaint always was about having to be "hardcore" to see the end game content. For a majority of the player-base, 5 and 10 man dungeons were the end game. Especially in WotLK, we've seen a shift to make 5-man the gearing phase to do 10 man contents, as well as seeing 10 man content become easier as people access higher level gear. And through the escalation of badge gear, Blizzard is allowing people to basically skip progression and jump into the newest tier of raid content, without having completed prior tiers.
It is now very possible to level to 80, run heroics for enough badge gear and skip Naxx, Ulduar and ToC altogether to get into ICC.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? For a vast majority of the player base, it's a very good thing, and very healthy for the game on the whole.
The bad thing is, that hardcore raiders are no longer the shiney shizzzle that they use to be. I remember back in the MC days, seeing someone with purples or a matching armor set (even before they were referred to as "tiers"), meatn that he was the hardest of the hardcore. I remember see my first rogue decked out in what was later called Tier 1. It was badass. Now, everyone has a glitzy armor set on.
Now, all hardcore raiders have are the hardmode, but that's only gives them slightly better stats on their drops, but their glitzy epics aren't quite as shiny any more. They get the challenge, but very little of the prestige that comes with it. So what if you got Firefighter down? I didn't but my armor or weapon isn't any less shiny. And shit, I got it doing "easy mode" heroics. How's that for insult to injury?
I think that's where you find old school or hard core raiders have the biggest problem. It's not finding a challenge in the content (see hard modes), it's just that it's no longer obvious to everyone in Dalaran who the hardest of the hardcore are.
The being hardcore hasn't lost any luster; it's image has been completely shattered.