Vanilla WoW, pallies just did bad damage, period. :P
With AQ40 gear they could do some respectable numbers, but in the same gear warriors ran into the runaway rage generation and did probably twice that much (and only stopped there because of threat).
The really sad thing is, in pre-raid gear back then, holy was a better DPS spec and a better tanking spec than ret or prot. Paladins were pretty much broken all around, and itemization didn't do them any favors until BC.
Vanilla WoW, pallies just did bad damage, period. :P
With AQ40 gear they could do some respectable numbers, but in the same gear warriors ran into the runaway rage generation and did probably twice that much (and only stopped there because of threat).
The really sad thing is, in pre-raid gear back then, holy was a better DPS spec and a better tanking spec than ret or prot. Paladins were pretty much broken all around, and itemization didn't do them any favors until BC.
This kind of stuff is why I'm confused why people ask for Blizz to open realms only patched upto AQ or Naxx or whatever.
Rose colored glasses. I actually remember a small MMORPG I used to play had people like that - they finally did get a classic server using the old Ultima 4 style graphics that they'd been begging for for two years. When they got it, they realized it wasn't what they wanted - now they wanted all the stuff from the new version, but for the OLD version.
I have no doubt that if blizzard ever does release classic servers (which I doubt they will, but still), the bulk of people asking for them will take about 2 months to realize that's not what they wanted at all.
Hevach on
0
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited August 2009
you'd get a lot more out of the experience by, come 3.2, turning off Exp gain at level 60 and using all the new talents and advanced mechanics to do level 60 endgame.
you'd get a lot more out of the experience by, come 3.2, turning off Exp gain at level 60 and using all the new talents and advanced mechanics to do level 60 endgame.
That would be just as easy as doing it at level 80.
DisruptorX2 on
0
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited August 2009
which is pretty much proof how shitty game design was back then, since the only difficulty stemmed from the terrible design
which is pretty much proof how shitty game design was back then, since the only difficulty stemmed from the terrible design
Many level 70 raids could not beat old naxx. I'm pretty sure that most of the people doing naxx now couldn't even beat it at level 80. Now thats good dungeon design.
How much of Vanilla was hard just due to shitty design? While I'm sure there were some fights that required coordination, and would romp you over regardless of how well equipped you were, but the hardest thing by far, was keeping a guild together that could consistently put out a 40 man team.
The raid stacking that some fights required (hello 4h and all your required tanks), the stupid amount of mats from potions that required people had to grind out for each new attempt, the resistance fights, the list goes on.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the game back then, but the game has come on leaps and bounds since, and I don't see why anybody can look back then fondly. It erks me no end, when people complained about the heroics getting nerfed in TBC; yeah they did make them easier, but they were stupidly unfair at the start. I was a rogue, and the amount of times I'd die due to 360 cleave / sweep strikes / whatever was rediculous.
We used to have a Vanilla guild on my server during TBC, and they've now become a TBC guild during this expansion. They spend half their time asking in /2 for 80's to boost them, and the other half in the queue for AV.
which is pretty much proof how shitty game design was back then, since the only difficulty stemmed from the terrible design
Many level 70 raids could not beat old naxx. I'm pretty sure that most of the people doing naxx now couldn't even beat it at level 80. Now thats good dungeon design.
Actually, old Naxx was pretty trivial at level 70 even, two guilds that couldn't down Vashj or Kael combined their raids and in less than a week got my server's first Sapphiron/KT kills quite a while after BC launched - both then went on and continued to not kill Vashj or Kael until after attunement was lifted on BT/Hyjal a couple months later. There's absolutely nothing in level 60 naxx that would pose a threat to a guild capable of killing their level 80 counterparts, especially if they had the full 40 people (being limited to their usual 25 would only be a problem on fights that call for lots of tanks, the raid DPS requirements in level 80 naxx are higher than level 60, despite having half the raid size). A bad player at level 80 will do more than the best DPS ever seen in old Naxx, a good one will do five times that. Most 25 man naxx bosses have several times their level 60 counterpart's health and still die faster. Crossing charges on Thaddius is less forgiving now than it used to be - you have the same initial time to move, and then do twice the damage per tick, and faster ticks. Even at level 70, missing a couple dispells wasn't a wipe, on some there are fights at 80 where healers are expected to deal with unavoidable damage worse than a lot of the avoidable/preventable stuff in old Naxx.
There was nothing about the fights there that represented good design - Thaddius was the only fight that introduced a mechanic that hadn't already been used (Heigan sort of - moving environmental damage wasn't new, but was never fatal damage before), they were just pushed to a farther limit - tighter enrage timers than AQ40, shorter time limits to dispell than MC and harsher penalties if you missed one, a bigger buff on mind controlled people if you didn't CC them before they fucked up the raid, and more incoming damage on tanks. By the designer's own admission, everything about the zone represents the problem of 40 man raids - there was no subtlety of design when raids were balanced around having 6 tanks, 15 healers, and 10 people who can remove any given debuff.
I used to like 10 mans more. Now I'm in a guild with a raid leader that doesn't put up with BS. It makes 25 mans so much more fun.
RedDawn on
0
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited August 2009
25mans are fun when they are run like 10mans. ie, if you suck, you don't get to come.
Dhalphir on
0
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited August 2009
I hate having two different raid sizes. I enjoy 10mans much, much more because you've just got you and a bunch of good people. On the other hand, 25mans have better gear and I like my e-peen, but hate having to drag with my people who couldn't find their way out from under a newspaper if it wasn't for someone telling them what to do.
They should just make a compromise for the next expansion and make all raids 15mans or something.
reVerse on
0
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited August 2009
you could always try doing 25mans with 15 more people like you have in your 10mans.
How much of Vanilla was hard just due to shitty design? While I'm sure there were some fights that required coordination, and would romp you over regardless of how well equipped you were, but the hardest thing by far, was keeping a guild together that could consistently put out a 40 man team.
I never raided before Wrath, so I'm curious; what were some of the more well designed encounters from vanilla WoW (and BC, I suppose)? Have they aged well, considering the content we have now?
Razorgore, Vaelastrasz, Nefarian, Twin Emps, C'thun, most of Naxx. I'm not sure what you mean by "aged well" if you mean are they still cool to do now, not really since you can LOLGEAR them, but comparatively between now and then? Yes, they are still well done.
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited August 2009
most of the mechanics have been re-used in one form or another, which is kind of a good indicator that they were well designed
we haven't had another Vael yet though.
and I find it hard to believe that Vael would be particularly difficult if his numbers were tuned to level 80 equivalents...one of the big challenges of Vael was properly managing threat without accurate threat meters to make sure he always went to your nearest tank, and DPS had to kind of measure themselves, instead of what they do now where they can just ride 120-125% of tank threat as ranged.
you could always try doing 25mans with 15 more people like you have in your 10mans.
then you'd find they're a lot more fun.
Eh, I have come across an interesting feature now that we I am in a guild with enough people for 25-mans.
In 25-man there are several people (two priests, Shadow and Holy) and a paladin (ret) that I can think of specifically.
These people are ATROCIOUS. They stand in fires. They pull bosses early. The don't pay attention and go afk in the middle of fights.
It got to the point that we were one raid away from gkicking them and then we found something interesting.
Invited the three of them into 10man to fill some spots and they blew us away. Ret pally was topping DPS, priests didn't stand in fires, they kept people alive they brought food and flasks for the entire raid.... all without us having said anything to them about their performance.
Thus I posit this- 25 mans are the new 40 man and 10 mans are the new 20 mans in terms of how willing people are to slack off.
I was so happy about their performance I gladly joined a 25m with them the next week only to have all three of them revert to slobbering morons.
Further proof that given the opportunity most people will faceroll or just drool on the keyboard.
most of the mechanics have been re-used in one form or another, which is kind of a good indicator that they were well designed
we haven't had another Vael yet though.
and I find it hard to believe that Vael would be particularly difficult if his numbers were tuned to level 80 equivalents...one of the big challenges of Vael was properly managing threat without accurate threat meters to make sure he always went to your nearest tank, and DPS had to kind of measure themselves, instead of what they do now where they can just ride 120-125% of tank threat as ranged.
Actually if your first few BAs were healers you could end up fucked pretty quickly. It's one of the reasons we'll probley never see Vael 2.0 is that random fuck you in the ass element.
Razorgore, Vaelastrasz, Nefarian, Twin Emps, C'thun, most of Naxx. I'm not sure what you mean by "aged well" if you mean are they still cool to do now, not really since you can LOLGEAR them, but comparatively between now and then? Yes, they are still well done.
Rags should be added to the list. Movement phases, raid coordination and adds. Majordomo required the use of small groups and really broke down the raid. Both are actually fairly interesting fights.
most of the mechanics have been re-used in one form or another, which is kind of a good indicator that they were well designed
we haven't had another Vael yet though.
and I find it hard to believe that Vael would be particularly difficult if his numbers were tuned to level 80 equivalents...one of the big challenges of Vael was properly managing threat without accurate threat meters to make sure he always went to your nearest tank, and DPS had to kind of measure themselves, instead of what they do now where they can just ride 120-125% of tank threat as ranged.
Actually if your first few BAs were healers you could end up fucked pretty quickly. It's one of the reasons we'll probley never see Vael 2.0 is that random fuck you in the ass element.
Razorgore, Vaelastrasz, Nefarian, Twin Emps, C'thun, most of Naxx. I'm not sure what you mean by "aged well" if you mean are they still cool to do now, not really since you can LOLGEAR them, but comparatively between now and then? Yes, they are still well done.
Rags should be added to the list. Movement phases, raid coordination and adds. Majordomo required the use of small groups and really broke down the raid. Both are actually fairly interesting fights.
I am of the opinion that the things that made old-world raids annoyingly eye-gouging was
A. Getting 40 people to log on at once
B. Horribly Repetitive/killer trash (Mainly in MC)
C. Getting 40 people to log on at once
The fights themselves are for the most part pretty well done with some fun mechanics that you totally miss because each boss takes forever to kill and you are hoping that 40 people can concentrate as a whole on one task for several hours with no interruptions.
you could always try doing 25mans with 15 more people like you have in your 10mans.
then you'd find they're a lot more fun.
Eh, I have come across an interesting feature now that we I am in a guild with enough people for 25-mans.
In 25-man there are several people (two priests, Shadow and Holy) and a paladin (ret) that I can think of specifically.
These people are ATROCIOUS. They stand in fires. They pull bosses early. The don't pay attention and go afk in the middle of fights.
It got to the point that we were one raid away from gkicking them and then we found something interesting.
Invited the three of them into 10man to fill some spots and they blew us away. Ret pally was topping DPS, priests didn't stand in fires, they kept people alive they brought food and flasks for the entire raid.... all without us having said anything to them about their performance.
Thus I posit this- 25 mans are the new 40 man and 10 mans are the new 20 mans in terms of how willing people are to slack off.
I was so happy about their performance I gladly joined a 25m with them the next week only to have all three of them revert to slobbering morons.
Further proof that given the opportunity most people will faceroll or just drool on the keyboard.
I am of the opinion that the things that made old-world raids annoyingly eye-gouging was
A. Getting 40 people to log on at once
B. Horribly Repetitive/killer trash (Mainly in MC)
C. Getting 40 people to log on at once
The fights themselves are for the most part pretty well done with some fun mechanics that you totally miss because each boss takes forever to kill and you are hoping that 40 people can concentrate as a whole on one task for several hours with no interruptions.
A: More a matter of the right 40 people. Not trivial but it wasn't nearly as hard as getting 25 people together for TBC could be. If you hear someone saying that attunements need to come back, just slit their throat. It's a clear sign of stupidity and a valid excuse for cleansing the gene pool.
B: Trash is almost always boring and repetitive. Their job is to be mooks. But in Vanilla you did have some trash worth respecting. Anyone who did pre-emps, pre-c'thun trash knows what I mean.
C: See A.
What made the old world raids annoying was the following:
Repetition. We got stuck in limbo for a long time. I can still run MC in my sleep. I have nightmares of looting the dog. And it extended to abilites. Healers....spammed one spell over and over. DPS spammed one or two spells over and over. Tanks...spammed a few more.
Lack of flexibility. Class X did Y. Only Y. Don't ask to do Z. Ever. Combine that with other retarded bullshit and it got old. There are only so many times you can cast FoL before you want to take a nap. And swapping that up for spamming decurses wasn't an improvement.
The 40 member bit was annoying and as always, finding good healers was a dark art. But it's could have been much worse.
The other problem with 40-mans is if someone starts causing a little trouble or slacking off every fight here and there but they're necessary for the raid, for example you only have x amount of class and you need all of them to even attempt the fight and there's no other available person that's geared, there's not much you can do about it. You'd have to get someone new and run them through a ton of shit to get back to where you were. This was a big problem for one of my old guilds when we had two or three people quit or disappear or start sucking. Caused a problem in the entire raid makeup.
25 still has this to some extent, I'm sure, but with the complementary 10-mans that problem is much less severe than it used to be, gear disparity between standard shit and huge raids is also not the ridiculous thing it once was.
Or bindings. I still haven't gotten either of them to drop. But I'm gonna be running MC at least until Exalted with Hydraxian Waterlords, so that's gonna be every week until mid-December at this rate.
I am of the opinion that the things that made old-world raids annoyingly eye-gouging was
A. Getting 40 people to log on at once
B. Horribly Repetitive/killer trash (Mainly in MC)
C. Getting 40 people to log on at once
The fights themselves are for the most part pretty well done with some fun mechanics that you totally miss because each boss takes forever to kill and you are hoping that 40 people can concentrate as a whole on one task for several hours with no interruptions.
A: More a matter of the right 40 people. Not trivial but it wasn't nearly as hard as getting 25 people together for TBC could be. If you hear someone saying that attunements need to come back, just slit their throat. It's a clear sign of stupidity and a valid excuse for cleansing the gene pool.
B: Trash is almost always boring and repetitive. Their job is to be mooks. But in Vanilla you did have some trash worth respecting. Anyone who did pre-emps, pre-c'thun trash knows what I mean.
C: See A.
What made the old world raids annoying was the following:
Repetition. We got stuck in limbo for a long time. I can still run MC in my sleep. I have nightmares of looting the dog. And it extended to abilites. Healers....spammed one spell over and over. DPS spammed one or two spells over and over. Tanks...spammed a few more.
Lack of flexibility. Class X did Y. Only Y. Don't ask to do Z. Ever. Combine that with other retarded bullshit and it got old. There are only so many times you can cast FoL before you want to take a nap. And swapping that up for spamming decurses wasn't an improvement.
The 40 member bit was annoying and as always, finding good healers was a dark art. But it's could have been much worse.
No, you are wrong here. Unless what you mean by "the right 40 people" is "40 people who will ignore any distraction no matter what for several hours" When you have that many people the probability that something that honestly needs immediate attention by one of them will become so close to 1 that it is inevitable. And Murphy fills in that the person (or persons) that this happens too will invariable be someone important.
The rest I kind of agree with- but trash should be tough not stupid hard. And again, the repetitiveness factor came in as a result of having that many people. Sure, you COULD cast X spell, but really you only have time to cast Y because there are so many people (at least on the healer side) that needed attention. 40 man was terribad. Add in the fact that there were only like 2 raids for a while and guhhhhh.
No, you are wrong here. Unless what you mean by "the right 40 people" is "40 people who will ignore any distraction no matter what for several hours" When you have that many people the probability that something that honestly needs immediate attention by one of them will become so close to 1 that it is inevitable. And Murphy fills in that the person (or persons) that this happens too will invariable be someone important.
The rest I kind of agree with- but trash should be tough not stupid hard. And again, the repetitiveness factor came in as a result of having that many people. Sure, you COULD cast X spell, but really you only have time to cast Y because there are so many people (at least on the healer side) that needed attention. 40 man was terribad. Add in the fact that there were only like 2 raids for a while and guhhhhh.
That really high level of focus required didn't become a big deal until AQ40/Naxx. MC could be undermanned if much of your raid was in Tier 1. A guild I belonged to was doing it with 20 or so people before ZG was released. BWL needed more warm bodies but there really were only a few real "skill" positions for much of those fights. Someone AFK on Vael could be bad. But most of BWL could be done with a couple of people AFK. The diffculty of getting 40 good people in Vanilla was highly over rated.
Some of the old fights were also just really poorly designed.
Shazzrah for example was a terribly designed fight. Every class had to ranged DPS him, that's right, if you were a warrior or a rogue have fun watching your ranged auto-attack animation. You just had to hope you hadn't fallen asleep by the time he teleported to you so you could run him back to the center.
That said, some of the fights in MC were actually a lot of fun back in the day I remember Garr, Sulfuron, Domo and Rag all being quite fun. Ony was also a ton of fun. I took a break from the game before I got around to raiding BWL though.
Some of the old fights were also just really poorly designed.
Shazzrah for example was a terribly designed fight. Every class had to ranged DPS him, that's right, if you were a warrior or a rogue have fun watching your ranged auto-attack animation. You just had to hope you hadn't fallen asleep by the time he teleported to you so you could run him back to the center.
That said, some of the fights in MC were actually a lot of fun back in the day I remember Garr, Sulfuron, Domo and Rag all being quite fun. Ony was also a ton of fun. I took a break from the game before I got around to raiding BWL though.
Baron Geddon became fun when you had enough health/smart healers who would keep you alive when you got the bomb, and used it to kill afkers in the fight.
Some of the old fights were also just really poorly designed.
Shazzrah for example was a terribly designed fight. Every class had to ranged DPS him, that's right, if you were a warrior or a rogue have fun watching your ranged auto-attack animation. You just had to hope you hadn't fallen asleep by the time he teleported to you so you could run him back to the center.
That said, some of the fights in MC were actually a lot of fun back in the day I remember Garr, Sulfuron, Domo and Rag all being quite fun. Ony was also a ton of fun. I took a break from the game before I got around to raiding BWL though.
My old guild had a rogue who put together an arcane resist set specifically for the Spazz fight.
HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
edited August 2009
New pets to farm, a grind-fest for a raptor mount, the ability for your alts to fly nine levels sooner (if you have a level 80 character), more heirloom stuff
God I hope the patch comes tomorrow. I have my pally alt at 20, just waiting for the heirloom chest and axe AND mount ready to kick ass. He already has the shoulders. I have my alt rogue at 40 ready for his epic mount. Same with my 66 ally priest.
I've been holding off on buying my epic riding skill out of fear that the day I finally buy it, 3.2 will come out and the price will drop by 1k...so I'm hoping for tomorrow also
Posts
With AQ40 gear they could do some respectable numbers, but in the same gear warriors ran into the runaway rage generation and did probably twice that much (and only stopped there because of threat).
The really sad thing is, in pre-raid gear back then, holy was a better DPS spec and a better tanking spec than ret or prot. Paladins were pretty much broken all around, and itemization didn't do them any favors until BC.
I have no doubt that if blizzard ever does release classic servers (which I doubt they will, but still), the bulk of people asking for them will take about 2 months to realize that's not what they wanted at all.
That would be just as easy as doing it at level 80.
Many level 70 raids could not beat old naxx. I'm pretty sure that most of the people doing naxx now couldn't even beat it at level 80. Now thats good dungeon design.
The raid stacking that some fights required (hello 4h and all your required tanks), the stupid amount of mats from potions that required people had to grind out for each new attempt, the resistance fights, the list goes on.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the game back then, but the game has come on leaps and bounds since, and I don't see why anybody can look back then fondly. It erks me no end, when people complained about the heroics getting nerfed in TBC; yeah they did make them easier, but they were stupidly unfair at the start. I was a rogue, and the amount of times I'd die due to 360 cleave / sweep strikes / whatever was rediculous.
We used to have a Vanilla guild on my server during TBC, and they've now become a TBC guild during this expansion. They spend half their time asking in /2 for 80's to boost them, and the other half in the queue for AV.
Actually, old Naxx was pretty trivial at level 70 even, two guilds that couldn't down Vashj or Kael combined their raids and in less than a week got my server's first Sapphiron/KT kills quite a while after BC launched - both then went on and continued to not kill Vashj or Kael until after attunement was lifted on BT/Hyjal a couple months later. There's absolutely nothing in level 60 naxx that would pose a threat to a guild capable of killing their level 80 counterparts, especially if they had the full 40 people (being limited to their usual 25 would only be a problem on fights that call for lots of tanks, the raid DPS requirements in level 80 naxx are higher than level 60, despite having half the raid size). A bad player at level 80 will do more than the best DPS ever seen in old Naxx, a good one will do five times that. Most 25 man naxx bosses have several times their level 60 counterpart's health and still die faster. Crossing charges on Thaddius is less forgiving now than it used to be - you have the same initial time to move, and then do twice the damage per tick, and faster ticks. Even at level 70, missing a couple dispells wasn't a wipe, on some there are fights at 80 where healers are expected to deal with unavoidable damage worse than a lot of the avoidable/preventable stuff in old Naxx.
There was nothing about the fights there that represented good design - Thaddius was the only fight that introduced a mechanic that hadn't already been used (Heigan sort of - moving environmental damage wasn't new, but was never fatal damage before), they were just pushed to a farther limit - tighter enrage timers than AQ40, shorter time limits to dispell than MC and harsher penalties if you missed one, a bigger buff on mind controlled people if you didn't CC them before they fucked up the raid, and more incoming damage on tanks. By the designer's own admission, everything about the zone represents the problem of 40 man raids - there was no subtlety of design when raids were balanced around having 6 tanks, 15 healers, and 10 people who can remove any given debuff.
I believe I speak for the vast majority of people when I say this.
25-mans are bad enough.
I am perfectly happy with 10-man raid dungeons.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
YES
They should just make a compromise for the next expansion and make all raids 15mans or something.
then you'd find they're a lot more fun.
I never raided before Wrath, so I'm curious; what were some of the more well designed encounters from vanilla WoW (and BC, I suppose)? Have they aged well, considering the content we have now?
we haven't had another Vael yet though.
and I find it hard to believe that Vael would be particularly difficult if his numbers were tuned to level 80 equivalents...one of the big challenges of Vael was properly managing threat without accurate threat meters to make sure he always went to your nearest tank, and DPS had to kind of measure themselves, instead of what they do now where they can just ride 120-125% of tank threat as ranged.
Eh, I have come across an interesting feature now that we I am in a guild with enough people for 25-mans.
In 25-man there are several people (two priests, Shadow and Holy) and a paladin (ret) that I can think of specifically.
These people are ATROCIOUS. They stand in fires. They pull bosses early. The don't pay attention and go afk in the middle of fights.
It got to the point that we were one raid away from gkicking them and then we found something interesting.
Invited the three of them into 10man to fill some spots and they blew us away. Ret pally was topping DPS, priests didn't stand in fires, they kept people alive they brought food and flasks for the entire raid....
all without us having said anything to them about their performance.
Thus I posit this- 25 mans are the new 40 man and 10 mans are the new 20 mans in terms of how willing people are to slack off.
I was so happy about their performance I gladly joined a 25m with them the next week only to have all three of them revert to slobbering morons.
Further proof that given the opportunity most people will faceroll or just drool on the keyboard.
Actually if your first few BAs were healers you could end up fucked pretty quickly. It's one of the reasons we'll probley never see Vael 2.0 is that random fuck you in the ass element.
Rags should be added to the list. Movement phases, raid coordination and adds. Majordomo required the use of small groups and really broke down the raid. Both are actually fairly interesting fights.
I am of the opinion that the things that made old-world raids annoyingly eye-gouging was
A. Getting 40 people to log on at once
B. Horribly Repetitive/killer trash (Mainly in MC)
C. Getting 40 people to log on at once
The fights themselves are for the most part pretty well done with some fun mechanics that you totally miss because each boss takes forever to kill and you are hoping that 40 people can concentrate as a whole on one task for several hours with no interruptions.
More people should conduct this experiment.
A: More a matter of the right 40 people. Not trivial but it wasn't nearly as hard as getting 25 people together for TBC could be. If you hear someone saying that attunements need to come back, just slit their throat. It's a clear sign of stupidity and a valid excuse for cleansing the gene pool.
B: Trash is almost always boring and repetitive. Their job is to be mooks. But in Vanilla you did have some trash worth respecting. Anyone who did pre-emps, pre-c'thun trash knows what I mean.
C: See A.
What made the old world raids annoying was the following:
Repetition. We got stuck in limbo for a long time. I can still run MC in my sleep. I have nightmares of looting the dog. And it extended to abilites. Healers....spammed one spell over and over. DPS spammed one or two spells over and over. Tanks...spammed a few more.
Lack of flexibility. Class X did Y. Only Y. Don't ask to do Z. Ever. Combine that with other retarded bullshit and it got old. There are only so many times you can cast FoL before you want to take a nap. And swapping that up for spamming decurses wasn't an improvement.
The 40 member bit was annoying and as always, finding good healers was a dark art. But it's could have been much worse.
25 still has this to some extent, I'm sure, but with the complementary 10-mans that problem is much less severe than it used to be, gear disparity between standard shit and huge raids is also not the ridiculous thing it once was.
Or TF.
No, you are wrong here. Unless what you mean by "the right 40 people" is "40 people who will ignore any distraction no matter what for several hours" When you have that many people the probability that something that honestly needs immediate attention by one of them will become so close to 1 that it is inevitable. And Murphy fills in that the person (or persons) that this happens too will invariable be someone important.
The rest I kind of agree with- but trash should be tough not stupid hard. And again, the repetitiveness factor came in as a result of having that many people. Sure, you COULD cast X spell, but really you only have time to cast Y because there are so many people (at least on the healer side) that needed attention. 40 man was terribad. Add in the fact that there were only like 2 raids for a while and guhhhhh.
That really high level of focus required didn't become a big deal until AQ40/Naxx. MC could be undermanned if much of your raid was in Tier 1. A guild I belonged to was doing it with 20 or so people before ZG was released. BWL needed more warm bodies but there really were only a few real "skill" positions for much of those fights. Someone AFK on Vael could be bad. But most of BWL could be done with a couple of people AFK. The diffculty of getting 40 good people in Vanilla was highly over rated.
Shazzrah for example was a terribly designed fight. Every class had to ranged DPS him, that's right, if you were a warrior or a rogue have fun watching your ranged auto-attack animation. You just had to hope you hadn't fallen asleep by the time he teleported to you so you could run him back to the center.
That said, some of the fights in MC were actually a lot of fun back in the day I remember Garr, Sulfuron, Domo and Rag all being quite fun. Ony was also a ton of fun. I took a break from the game before I got around to raiding BWL though.
Baron Geddon became fun when you had enough health/smart healers who would keep you alive when you got the bomb, and used it to kill afkers in the fight.
My old guild had a rogue who put together an arcane resist set specifically for the Spazz fight.
there's that 5 man dungeon and uh..?
Also, clues that patch is imminent.
Xbox Live: Kunohara