"So much better than before"

[zmandude24]

Vanilla raids are not by any means difficult in individual skill level compared to retail, but there are many ways a raid can get screwed over by one person. Even with the first boss in MC, one guy can wipe the raid. I've had a guy wipe the raid on Luci because he stood too close to the cave and pulled the imps. Compare that to the retail equivalent of normal mode HFC where if one guy fails at the mechanics, you can brush it off and still kill the boss. Even if the guy is a tank, there are multiple classes that can brez with a low cooldown.

[davidnenn]

game has been a joke since wotlk. ulduar hard modes were the last thing with any difficulty

[Dr. Doom]

game has been a joke since wotlk. ulduar hard modes were the last thing with any difficulty

Borrowing from AlphaGaming, I think there's a difference between difficulty in technique and difficulty in accesibility. A fight right now in mythic might be quite a challenge in coordination or positioning or burning cooldowns at the perfect moment, but getting to it and gearing for it is extremely easy, as well as the consumables requiring only to use the garrison.

For what I've seen, retail raiders mock vanilla raids for the first aspect, comparing things like Molten Core to the mechanic complexity of Imperator Mar'gok or Blackhand or what have you; whereas people who like vanilla/BC are pretty annoyed with the total ease in accessibility, AKA, make an account, max level it in a couple of weeks, faceroll heroics (each taking 15 minutes), faceroll LFR, and you're ready for heroic modes (no reason to do normal raiding) of the current raiding tier, as all previous tiers are rendered pointless.
These take some degree of difficulty and only after that, you get the only challenge of the game in mythic mode.

But what I mean here is just the attitude of looking back, deriding people who played before and tell oneself "those dudes sucked, we got the game figured out now".

[Robotron]

game has been a joke since wotlk. ulduar hard modes were the last thing with any difficulty

25 man Heroic Lich King at 0% buff was the hardest encounter ever created during my 2006-2011 tenure in the game. Apparently the original Heroic Ragnaros (25) was comparable, and I heard one or two of the WoD encounters were very nasty, including one that broke Blood Legion.

Borrowing from AlphaGaming

The same AlphaGaming who kept saying they were hot shit, transferring to a server, claiming they'd take it over and be #1 in the progression race, then getting destroyed by the server's local guild? I remember them quite well. I heard they actually made something of themselves a few years down the road, though, which is nice after like 4-6 failed transfers.

[Dr. Doom]

The same AlphaGaming who kept saying they were hot shit, transferring to a server, claiming they'd take it over and be #1 in the progression race, then getting destroyed by the server's local guild? I remember them quite well. I heard they actually made something of themselves a few years down the road, though, which is nice after like 4-6 failed transfers.

I meant this dude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WCmHkTGZSQ
Rather than the guild.

[Robotron]

Ah. One of the downfalls of taking a generic name.

[Takaminara]

The main difference with vanilla and later expansions are the mechanics.
Basically every single expansion mechanics became more in depth, better and to an extend harder.
While the mechanics in vanilla and some in TBC are rather lacking, that fact is mainly hidden by how the instances past BWL are hardtuned.
If you fail the simple mechanics you die instantly or almost instantly.
Later content is more focussed on in depth mechanics, personal responsibility and working around mechanics or things that would otherwise kill you.
It's harder in a different way.
I'm not talking about LFR or normal modes because those are easier as Molten Core, where all the mechanics are "Dispel Debuff #xx"
While you can't compare fights like Mythic Gorefiend to original Ragnaros. If you want to see the difference look up a video.
Bosses in naxxramas (original) have hardhitting debuffs, like really hard hitting debuffs, to hide the basic mechanics. While as stated, a fight like Mythic Gorefiend is mechanic on top of mechanic on top of personal responsibility on top of mechanic,...

[Robotron]

One thing to remember (this may be reiterating a previous point, but I cbf to read through this thread ATM) is while the complexity of mechanics went up as expansions came out, so did player survival tools, and a good chunk of the Vanilla mechanics do quite a high percentage of your life total when doing a boss in appropriate gear. Like, a Gehennas Shadow Bolt would hit me for about 80% of my maximum raid buffed HP or something when I was in blues and greens, which meant a single hit from anything else before getting healed was death. If something hit that hard in TBC or later, I'd just hit Cloak of Shadows to remove the -75% healing curse and pop a healing item.

However, average skill level, mechanics/theorycraft knowledge, and availability information in general has increased exponentially over the past 10 years.

[Xaverius]

"whats a debuff limit?"
"obviously we are all supposed to be wearing 8/8 t2, its the 'best' gear, so its the most powerful"
"everyone put on your FR gear, were about to talk to Domo"
"purple ALWAYS trumps blue"

these are all hyperbole, but the fact remains. people assume what's common knowledge today, wasnt 'known' back in the retail vanilla days.

Maybe here, because we sort of specialize in vanilla.

But on retail, unless they put some encounters that need it back ingame, I highly doubt people know what fire resist gear even is.

I bet there's people who began playing on wotlk, went to T7 Naxxramas and were like "now THIS is hard, people back on vanilla just didn't know what to do in *their* raids" while being totally oblivious to the fact Naxx is originally vanilla raid (this is a special kind of people, you can't be mad at them. It's like being mad at a puppy).

And I hope it's happening with timewalking too. People never encountering the instances and thinking it's something new and hard.

25 man Heroic Lich King at 0% buff was the hardest encounter ever created during my 2006-2011 tenure in the game.

Well there was also C'thun who needed to be nerfed so people could kill him.

[Soulxlock]

Well there was also C'thun who needed to be nerfed so people could kill him.

Nerfed is the wrong term here, he got bugfixed. There were tentacles spawning inside C'Thuns stomach and inside the walls that you couldn't kill and wiped the raid.