On a scale of 1 to erection how much better is Vanila > live

[gotmilk0112]

Yeah, BC feels like a logical improvement of vanilla. In terms of class balance, spec viability, and general combat, TBC is far superior to vanilla.

Tanks actually have AoE threat, healers actually have mana regen that doesn't involve chugging potions, hybrid DPS are raid-viable, etc. etc.

[Odomiah]

By the looks of this thread one good tbc server and nostalrius is dead.

I really don't see what's so special about tbc. It's same as wotlk just without lfg tool, which basicly means shit.
Arenas are bad idea.
Flying mounts are bad idea.
Shattrath design is bad.
Introducing dificulty modes normal/heroic is also stupid thing. There should only be ONE mode and that mode should be difficult, just as it is here.

Oh yea... feminine males on horde aka belfs and some goat-like race aka draenei.. i just never liked those.
Worgen / goblin addition was nice tough...

[Robotron]

Yeah, Firelands was disappointing. It was a nice idea, having a kind of "open" raid instead of a linear one, but all of the bosses were meh, and just felt like trash pulls before Ragnaros, due to the huge gap in difficulty.

Rag heroic however, was really fun and challenging.

One of my guildies got a top 50 world kill on that boss, and he said it was difficult in a bad and unfun way regarding the last phase and the length of the fight. It was apparently comparable to Heroic Lich King, but that boss was hard for good reasons.

Yeah, BC feels like a logical improvement of vanilla. In terms of class balance, spec viability, and general combat, TBC is far superior to vanilla.

Tanks actually have AoE threat, healers actually have mana regen that doesn't involve chugging potions, hybrid DPS are raid-viable, etc. etc.

Aside from the T5 > T6 difficulty, Resilience, and the "welfare epics" system, TBC was pretty much perfect.

What I mean by the welfare epic system was Heroics were originally part of Tier 4 in terms of loot and difficulty. The Badge of Justice system let you purchase only T4-equivalent gear, which let you fill gear gaps. It made sense because some Heroics were harder than Gruul/Kara/Mag, and it took quite a while to get some of the pieces. Then they ruined it all by making Heroics a joke and updating Badge of Justice rewards to be on par with T5 and T6. I remember my second best legs as a Rogue being from Badges (the only upgrade were the legs from Felmyst). That was the start of the cancer that ruined PVE. The second being adjustable raid difficulties/sizes.

TBC had the best class balance in PVE. Every spec was worth bringing at least one of to raids, and "hybrid tax" was still in place.

[gotmilk0112]

Yeah, my guild's H Rag 25 kill was somewhere around US 90th, I think. But yeah, there was a lot of shit in that fight where 1 mistake would wipe you, and lots of 1-shot crap. It was basically a test of doing the fight and having 0 fuck ups. However, phase 4 was kinda easy in comparison, especially when you could push for 1 meteor instead of 2. The only difficulty in that phase was the people putting out the spreading fires.

And yeah, wipes were painful due to the fight being like 15 minutes long. Phase 3/4 wipes were obnoxious.

It was also one of those fights that was easier on 10man. After tons of progression wipes on 25man, my guild tried it 10man and killed it in under 20 pulls. We didn't get realm first, but we did get realm first 25 kill.

What I mean by the welfare epic system was Heroics were originally part of Tier 4 in terms of loot and difficulty. The Badge of Justice system let you purchase only T4-equivalent gear, which let you fill gear gaps. It made sense because some Heroics were harder than Gruul/Kara/Mag, and it took quite a while to get some of the pieces.

Ehh, I don't really consider the 5man epics to be "welfare", especially being that they're slightly worse than raid gear. Vanilla 5mans drop epics (heck almost all of the level 58-60 dungeons have at least 1 epic drop), the only difference is that they're like 1% drop rate, instead of 100%.

Then they ruined it all by making Heroics a joke and updating Badge of Justice rewards to be on par with T5 and T6. That was the start of the cancer that ruined PVE.

I don't see it as "cancer", I see it as a catch-up mechanic to allow people to see the current content faster. So that if T6 is current content, a fresh 70 doesn't have to grind through kara/gruul/mag for 2 months, then grind through ssc/tk for 2 months, then grind through BT for 2 months, to see the "latest and greatest" release. Blizz doesn't want Naxx40 to happen again; they want as many people as possible to see each new content release, especially if it's a big, epic end-expac raid.

And shit, a lot of those items cost a lot as well. IIRC it was 35-75 badges for a T5-equivalent item, depending on the slot, and 100-150 badges for a T6-equivalent item. That's a lot of fuckin' heroics.

By the looks of this thread one good tbc server and nostalrius is dead.

What if I told you

That just because I like TBC better, doesn't mean I hate vanilla.

I really don't see what's so special about tbc. It's same as wotlk just without lfg tool, which basicly means shit.

You're delusional if you think Wotlk and TBC are the same.

[Jurary]

Yeah, my guild's H Rag 25 kill was somewhere around US 90th, I think. But yeah, there was a lot of shit in that fight where 1 mistake would wipe you, and lots of 1-shot crap. It was basically a test of doing the fight and having 0 fuck ups. However, phase 4 was kinda easy in comparison, especially when you could push for 1 meteor instead of 2. The only difficulty in that phase was the people putting out the spreading fires.

And yeah, wipes were painful due to the fight being like 15 minutes long. Phase 3/4 wipes were obnoxious.

It was also one of those fights that was easier on 10man. After tons of progression wipes on 25man, my guild tried it 10man and killed it in under 20 pulls. We didn't get realm first, but we did get realm first 25 kill.

What I mean by the welfare epic system was Heroics were originally part of Tier 4 in terms of loot and difficulty. The Badge of Justice system let you purchase only T4-equivalent gear, which let you fill gear gaps. It made sense because some Heroics were harder than Gruul/Kara/Mag, and it took quite a while to get some of the pieces.

Ehh, I don't really consider the 5man epics to be "welfare", especially being that they're slightly worse than raid gear. Vanilla 5mans drop epics (heck almost all of the level 58-60 dungeons have at least 1 epic drop), the only difference is that they're like 1% drop rate, instead of 100%.

Then they ruined it all by making Heroics a joke and updating Badge of Justice rewards to be on par with T5 and T6. That was the start of the cancer that ruined PVE.

I don't see it as "cancer", I see it as a catch-up mechanic to allow people to see the current content faster. So that if T6 is current content, a fresh 70 doesn't have to grind through kara/gruul/mag for 2 months, then grind through ssc/tk for 2 months, then grind through BT for 2 months, to see the "latest and greatest" release. Blizz doesn't want Naxx40 to happen again; they want as many people as possible to see each new content release, especially if it's a big, epic end-expac raid.

And shit, a lot of those items cost a lot as well. IIRC it was 35-75 badges for a T5-equivalent item, depending on the slot, and 100-150 badges for a T6-equivalent item. That's a lot of fuckin' heroics.

By the looks of this thread one good tbc server and nostalrius is dead.

What if I told you

That just because I like TBC better, doesn't mean I hate vanilla.

I really don't see what's so special about tbc. It's same as wotlk just without lfg tool, which basicly means shit.

You're delusional if you think Wotlk and TBC are the same.

The thing is though. Nost has 8k pop and blizz retail has/had 2.5k (i'm just going to base this off tbc and early wrath to get my point across). You kind of WANT to have people go through the lower tier raids/dungeons in order to reach the higher ones. This keeps all content and the world alive. Sure it may seem like a grind on your 3rd alt, but damn, i'd much prefer doing that again with new people than getting my alt to max lvl and queue raidfinder for the highest tier raid on it's lowest difficulty and skip the rest. Also iirc, epics in tbc/wotlk didn't have a 100% droprate. I did shitloads of runs to get my Red Sword of Courage from that one WotlK donger :3.

[Robotron]

Ehh, I don't really consider the 5man epics to be "welfare", especially being that they're slightly worse than raid gear. Vanilla 5mans drop epics (heck almost all of the level 58-60 dungeons have at least 1 epic drop), the only difference is that they're like 1% drop rate, instead of 100%.

The 5 man drops themselves were fine. They overnerfed the 5 mans so they were piss-easy compared to Kara/Gruul/Mag, which wasn't okay, but still not bad. I'm talking about them updating Badge of Justice gear. I get to farm something easier than T4 for rewards that were in some cases superior to T6? COOL.

And shit, a lot of those items cost a lot as well. IIRC it was 35-75 badges for a T5-equivalent item, depending on the slot, and 100-150 badges for a T6-equivalent item. That's a lot of fuckin' heroics.

Not when you could AoE everything down in a matter of seconds.

The point I'm trying to make is all this shit made raid epics mean less and less, which is bad for an MMO. Time is supposed to give players an advantage, and any means to reduce that advantage is a bad thing. And regardless of that shit, you still had to gear new people up in BT and Hyjal in order to allow them to be useful in Sunwell. The end-of-expansion tier should be prohibitively hard. It provides people who aren't good enough to see the content with motivation to improve. This is coming from someone who started out as every definition of bad (2006) to being able to hang with the best of them later on.

[Stalk]

They overnerfed the 5 mans so they were piss-easy compared to Kara/Gruul/Mag

Heroics were balanced, NOT nerfed. They were never meant to be more difficult than the first tier of raiding. The developers wanted players to spend their time upgrading their gear in these 5 player dungeons. If the heroic dungeons were harder than the raids, no one would even bother with them when they realize that they can begin raiding to get better gear. There would be almost no reason to complete a heroic dungeon for fun if it would be more stressful than trying to pug-raid SSC on release day.

[Robotron]

Normal modes geared/keyed you for Kara/Heroics and geared you for Gruul and Mag. Some Heroics were harder than Kara/Gruul/Mag, but most were on par or easier. They also allowed you to get loot on par with those raids.

Also, how did you get keyed for SSC? Nightbane (Kara) and Gruul. How did you get keyed for TK? The hardest Heroics (Aracatraz, Shattered Halls timed run, Shadow Labs, Steam Vaults) and then Magtheridon.

How do you not understand this? Heroic 5 mans weren't pre-raid content. They were 5 man "raid" content.

[zusukie]

for me its vanilla > tbc > rest
tbc would actually be my favourite if it had no flying mounts (because that shit kills open world pvp) and rbgs

[gotmilk0112]

Not when you could AoE everything down in a matter of seconds.

Ehhhh, heroics only became "AoE everything down in seconds" if the entire group was like, full T5.

Time is supposed to give players an advantage, and any means to reduce that advantage is a bad thing. And regardless of that shit, you still had to gear new people up in BT and Hyjal in order to allow them to be useful in Sunwell. The end-of-expansion tier should be prohibitively hard. It provides people who aren't good enough to see the content with motivation to improve. This is coming from someone who started out as every definition of bad (2006) to being able to hang with the best of them later on.

Though when you make the content require loads and loads of time and effort to get into, the end result is Naxx40 and Sunwell where less than 1% of the playerbase completes the raid while it's still current content. If you were a game developer, would you want to spend shitloads of time developing things that only 1% of the playerbase is ever going to see?

Don't get me wrong, I like having content require time and effort, but it's not very good for development, and of course, making the game more accessible brings in loads more players/revenue. After all, WoW's peak was during WOTLK, which was constantly decried as being "casual", and its newcomers labeled "wrath babies".