"So much better than before"

[Dr. Doom]

This has been in the back of my mind for a little bit.

One of the most recurrent things I remember being told in guild chat during wotlk, was how absolutely incredible and more difficult the raids (Ulduar and ICC specifically) are compared to the ezmode of vanilla, and maybe they were I guess.

But more importantly, this idea that "people back then sucked and we know got it all figured out".

Eh, didn't make much of it, stopped playing, moved on.

Yet several years down the line, I look up again what are people playing WoW up to, and I get to hear the exact same thing with different items being discussed. "Oh man, Lei Shen was such a great encounter, blows Lich King out of the water", followed by the mandatory "those raids seemed hard back then, just because people sucked, and didn't have it all figured out like we do". And I've found several entries doing it just like that in the current expac. "Blackhand is so hard it makes Yogg 0 lights look like a walk in the park. The fact STARS was the only one that could do it on time, was... because people back then sucked".


So I wonder. What's the earliest reference of this catchphrase, that is the common rule 24/7 around here as well, that you can find? As you know I find amusement in dissecting people's minds, sometimes more than playing even.

Look around and see what you can find. Here's my entry:
http://www.octopusoverlords.com/forum/v ... 36&start=0

Replying to:

"KePoW » Thu Jul 14, 2005 1:39 am

", but as of now (and you'll have to forgive me tinyogre), it basically seems like Blizzard is c*ckblocking guilds cause they don't want their content beaten too fast. kinda similar to Ragnaros at launch/release when you could only try him for 2 hours once per week...

all in all, I have to say I'm very disappointed in general with BWL... blizzard claimed it was going to be some hardcore raid instance that is way harder than MC (which is a freaking joke, other than Ragnaros version 2.0 and 3.0, which sometimes we still wipe on the first or second tries). but it turned out to be a cakewalk too, which we cleared in about 1.5 days *with* having to figure stuff out. now granted, Nefarius might take some work. even if we had the chance to try it multiple times tonight, there's certainly no guarantee we would have killed him. but still, the fact that we cleared every single named boss up to him (which is 7 I believe, I lost track) in that time is pretty ridiculous given their claims on BWL's difficulty, which I and other guildies were hoping would be way harder than MC "

Comes the magic card:

"by Eightball » Thu Jul 14, 2005 10:41 am

Huge outcry over the WoW forums over this. Oh well, I'm sure it'll shake out alright. I just think having guilds in full epic gear from Onxy and MC, along with having had months of grinding MC to full farming status, means that those players have figured out the game mechanics almost completely. BWL imho had to have been a pretty monumental leap forward in difficulty, since the basic AI paradigm of monsters and monster abilities aren't much of a challenge for the raid guilds anymore."

It's pretty certain that 4-5 years from now, people playing the game will look up Nost videos and go "omg, those people sucked, they didn't have the game figured out like we do".

Hehe.


Anyhow, can you beat my entry in early mention? Jul 2005, game being released in Nov 2004. 9 months after vanilla launch.

[visou]

"those raids seemed hard back then, just because people sucked, and didn't have it all figured out like we do".

I've never understood that argument and the discussion around it, it's all relative, everything will always be hard until you've figured it out.

[Aggronaught]

Another shit post by Dr. Doom, what do you know.

[Kyrro]

Another shit post by Dr. Doom, what do you know.

rude

[Dr. Doom]

Another shit post by Dr. Doom, what do you know.

rude

Eh, I don't mind, there's no such thing as bad publicity.
If anything, when someone goes ad-hominem in any discussion, I take it as an admission of ignorance/incapacity to reply properly.

Anyhow, I have kept looking around for a bit, and can't seem to find any commentary along these lines that comes before the one I already linked. I found a good chunk of Naxxramas era where people use it to say, you guessed it "guilds back during BWL just sucked", but those are mid-late 2006.

[Dr. Doom]

"those raids seemed hard back then, just because people sucked, and didn't have it all figured out like we do".

I've never understood that argument and the discussion around it, it's all relative, everything will always be hard until you've figured it out.

This reminds me of that sort of asinine argument you get to hear sometimes in other topics, whether politics, society, economics, etcetera.
"Come on dude, it's 2016, we know a lot better than before", when in practise that's hardly ever the case when material evidence is considered. Heh. I guess patting oneself in the back is just too pleasurable, regardless of what's the issue being talked over.

[Kyrro]

I found a good chunk of Naxxramas era where people use it to say, you guessed it "guilds back during BWL just sucked", but those are mid-late 2006.

That's funny because isn't Naxx the one raid that required consumables even with all the BiS pre-Naxx gear?

At the same time, Naxx focused super hard on team coordination and perfect timing more so than other raids.

[Taladril]

Difficulty is always a spectrum. And as mentioned already, if you know the fight then it's easy. If you don't then it's hard. MC is easy. It can be pugged and guilds don't have a lot of effort to be able to full clear it. BWL is definitely harder than MC. There are far more opportunities to wipe and it actually takes some level of planning and coordination. There are tons of guilds that can clear BWL and there are also plenty that continue to have trouble. If this content was so easy then everyone would one shot it. The fact is that it isn't "easy" until you practice it, learn it, and have a whole contingent of 39 other people who also know it.
The difficulty of vanilla was always in the size of the raid. It takes far more coordination for errors to not be made amongst 40 people rather than 20 or 10. If someone messes up 5% of the time, you will see more errors happen in 40 man raids. It's just statistics. That's the difficulty when AQ and Naxx happen where one person dying has a much stronger impact.
Is AQ and Naxx easy raid content compared to retail now? Sure, at least from a mechanics standpoint. But I can guarantee there will be many, many people struggling and dying in those raids. So I don't think just calling it easy is accurate.

[Botmaster5]

"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.

speaking form experience, playing back on one of the OG servers, US-Illidan. I was a member of <Hazardous>, the server #3 horde guild. As we were taking 5+ hrs to clear BWL, the top 2 horde guilds <Blood Legion> and <Team Ice> were clearing in a couple hours. They had it figured out. Back then progression strats were closely guarded secrets. People didnt share strats, nor was the copious amounts of online info we have today available back then.

[Dr. Doom]

"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.

speaking form experience, playing back on one of the OG servers, US-Illidan. I was a member of <Hazardous>, the server #3 horde guild. As we were taking 5+ hrs to clear BWL, the top 2 horde guilds <Blood Legion> and <Team Ice> were clearing in a couple hours. They had it figured out. Back then progression strats were closely guarded secrets. People didnt share strats, nor was the copious amounts of online info we have today available back then.

Probably should have remained this way. There's something that feels very off when a guy purchases a game that is supposedly challenging, downloads an add-on, watches a youtube video and reads a few complementary notes, and can down the encounters after just a couple tries.