Well, it's official: World of WarCraft Cataclysm incoming

[OmegaChief]

Exactly, but we'd have to ask two questions:

1) Is there enough demand to make this suggestion fesable, I mean 1-60 current content doesn't seem to be the most popular thing

2) Are the devs smart enough to realise this and impliment it? Or will they be too busy filling a swimming pool with money?

[Ghost Rider]

Exactly, but we'd have to ask two questions:

1) Is there enough demand to make this suggestion fesable, I mean 1-60 current content doesn't seem to be the most popular thing

Really...it wasn't fun unless you're level 80 with a healer and you two-three man the zone. If you were raiding the last fucking thing you want to hear is Molten Core run.

2 1/2 hours in the most boring zone ever was not fun even when you were bleeding edge.

2) Are the devs smart enough to realise this and impliment it? Or will they be too busy filling a swimming pool with money?

Never because only a small sect wants to *relive* the olden days. Ony is one thing because it's just Malygos with a Black Drake body. MC, BWL, AQ40? Those things took upwards of 2 1/2-3 hours with a cutting edge guild of 40...let alone the weeks of wipes.

If they have you access at 80? Then no point as a 5 man group can see it now.

[Oskuro]

I'd bet they would resort to such a thing once they had no more ideas to offer (wich I highly suspect is the reason they did this in City of Heroes). If giving acces to old content (wich equals almost neglible development time) lets them squeeze a few months worth of subcriptions, it might happen. Maybe after a few more expansions, though.

[Edward Yee]

Can't they just use phasing to allow >80 characters to explore pre-Cataclysm content?

They could, but dear god, alot of the stuff(1-60) is badly made. Running through Durotar-> Barrens compared to Eversong -> Ghostlands REALLY illustrates it.

Hear hear! It's even worse if you were coming from the Mulgore end. I recall running my Tauren hunter through the higher-level parts of the Barrens in the southwest to get to the lower-level parts in the north... it was amusing to see one designer admit that he was the "asshole" behind the Green Hills of Stranglethorn, at the time imagining a mini-economy centering around the pages yet completely missing the problem of "this quest chain takes up four inventory slots at each step (except for the last chapter which has three pages) and all you get is 182 armor, +7 Strength, +4 Stamina."

The move to add flying to parts of Old World is a godsend, as "tactically" the 100% mount is hella fast, but "strategically" it it still seems slow to travel and explore, whereas even a basic flying mount is 50% faster, and the epic flying mount is over 100% faster than that (this means the 280% and not just the rare 310% ones). Here's hoping that there's no world remaking of Outland or Northrend though, seeing as the lowering of the level requirement for basic flying has made Outland already overtly a "waypoint" on the way to Northrend, and in the future to Azeroth. I believe that it would be interesting if questing is set up in a way that players can actually entirely entirely bypass Outland or Northrend, thus allowing one to play fully immersed in the whole post-Cataclysm (and post-Icecrown Citadel) era.

AQ40 actually wasn't that bad when my guild ran it recently, but of course we're not level 60s. Amusingly, the Eye of C'Thun actually managed to (apparently) one-shot a guildie even before the encounter proper. I think the worst though is Blackwing Lair, due to two things: goddamn Shadow Flame -- you'd better buy up every Scale of Onyxia you can, get a Tailor and make those Onyxia Scale Cloaks while there's time -- and the Warlock summoning bug that'll wipe a raid even full of 80s.

[Broomstick]

Can't they just use phasing to allow >80 characters to explore pre-Cataclysm content?

Dear god WHY?

There were a few good quest chains or other bits in vanilla WoW, but a lot of the content is not as well done as Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King. A few have already been mentioned, such as "Green Hills of Stranglethorn", which sucks. I'm currently trying to get a couple alts through the 50's levels and it's back to running all over hell and gone - quest chains that have you go to a capital city, then an obscure out of the way spot on the other continent, back to the capital, back to the other continent.... Even with portals it's a pain in the ass. Can I say that again? My Alliance mage has portals and it's a time-wasting pain in the ass. Pre-BC it was enough to make you want to stab yourself with a dull fork. They stopped doing that after vanilla, thank goodness.

Anything worthwhile they can put in Caverns of Time as far as I'm concerned, then re-write a shitload of the level 1-60 content. Sure, some things it will be easy to keep - for instance, I see no reason for them to change Ragefire Chasm or Wailing Caverns, which are still regularly run on my usual server, even if Orgrimmar or the Barrens change around them. Some quest chains would fit into a changed landscape with no problem. Others would only need a minor rewrite. But having a coherent starting story for levels 1-15 worked much better in Burning Crusade for the Belfs and Dranei, and even better for the Death Knights. More of that, please, and perhaps re-write the starting quests for the other races. At least the Foresaken had a good start with "Oh, a good thing you woke up - we were just about to put you on the cremation pile with the other corpses" but went down hill from there.

[Lord Revan]

I hope they'll keep Gilneas phased off the main world until you have no business in there apart from visiting the capital and maybe a bit of PvP, or there'll be a point where the Worgen starting chain will hit a wall hard from all (and I mean every single one of them) the quest NPCs constantly being spawn camped and killed (Gilneas being just a short flight away from Undercity(for the uninformed (though there shouldn't be any) Undercity is a Horde capital)).

Why no other Alliance starting zone (or the Lost Isles for that matter) will have this as major problem, they're simply too far for the people who like ruining other players gaming experience to this be a major problem (getting to them still needs some effort even with flying mounts (not to mention that SW and IF are major source of high level alliance players which these types of people don't like to encounter (being a challenge to them)).

[Oskuro]

I believe that it would be interesting if questing is set up in a way that players can actually entirely entirely bypass Outland or Northrend, thus allowing one to play fully immersed in the whole post-Cataclysm (and post-Icecrown Citadel) era.

Not going to happen. They need to justify having people buy the previous expansions. Remember how the DK starting quest would leave you set to enter Outland? They could've skipped Outland entirely (with its horrid bright-colored items), but still didn't.

Being an old-content fanwhore conservationist of sorts, I'm sad to see things go, but agree on the dullness of most of it. If they were ever to implement old content through CoT, though, it could be done through a pre-Cataclysm sub-zone that gave access to the old instances. Riding through said old content just to make it to an instance would feel nice, even if just for sightseeing, and to appreciate how much the world has changed (let's not forget that, for players new to the game during Cataclysm, the world would have always been like that).

But well, pointless speculation, I do hope they apply the lessons learned in the expansions, but I also hope they don't railroad things too much (as they seem to be doing with the "Epic Storylines"), since replayability really suffers there (yes, there was a modicum of replayability before, choosing to take your character to a different starter zone, not so with DKs for example, and some racial quests for Draeneis and Blood Elves could only be accessed in their starting areas).

[Crossroads Inc.]

Can't they just make "pre-expansion" sevrsthe same way they make Pvp and RP servers?
How hard would it be to load up the older saved Data from their vaults and have a Server where 60 was the level cap and no BC content existed... Or do one with 70, or 80? I mean, im sure it would be popular, and the data exists, couldn't they just make a new server for people what want to relive "the good ol days" ?

[Minischoles]

Can't they just make "pre-expansion" sevrsthe same way they make Pvp and RP servers?
How hard would it be to load up the older saved Data from their vaults and have a Server where 60 was the level cap and no BC content existed... Or do one with 70, or 80? I mean, im sure it would be popular, and the data exists, couldn't they just make a new server for people what want to relive "the good ol days" ?

They've stated multiple times that players have more chance of being given a free level 80 than them bringing in old world servers. The people wanting and liking (!) old world content is so infintesimally small compared to the numbers that play WoW that its just not worth it. When you've got 11 million subscribers you cater to the majority, not that tiny minority that wants to relive the 'good ol' days'.

I'm glad they're revamping the old world, since as mentioned its just a horrible bland mess. Leveling is so fast nowadays you skip half the zones anyway, thats not even mentioning things like RaF or BoA items which make it even faster. I think Blizzard have actually been acknowledging how bad old world content is with the ways they've been speeding it up and lowering mount requirements.

As Ghost Rider pointed out, none of the 60 content is actually fun. People tend to look back on it with rose tinted glasses because for many it was the first raiding experience and they've forgotten all the bad things about it in the meantime. Spending days, weeks doing nothing but farming for resist sets. Piss-poor itemisation that had the best druid staff being a level 51 world drop epic, or the best rogue dagger being in BRD (which took roughly 4-6 hours to clear at that time). Or the endless consumable farming, it always makes me laugh slightly when people complain about consumables in TBC and WOTLK, when they never had to spend most of your day in Felwood farming for Whiper Tubers, or farming the mats for shadow resist potions, or the Black Lotus spawns (6 spawn points, spread across the entire world, and only one appears at a time).
Its not even as if the raid content was particularly imaginative, MC was just a fuckton of trash and mostly tank and spank bosses (except towards the end), BWL was probably the best they had to offer. AQ was horrible at first, and the lag it caused during the quest chain was unbearable due to guilds camping the dragon spawns or attacking another guild that got there first. Naxx was probably where they started to stretch their wings, but less than 1% of the population ever saw the place, let alone cleared it. And even Naxx had artificial cockblocks and insane farming like original Loatheb (needing 3-4 shadow resist pots, per attempt and per kill), Heigan and the gauntlet (always teleported your healers who instantly died), Thaddius (think it was bad trying to co-ordinate 25 people to do that right? imagine 40 people with far less stable servers), Four Horsemen (required your tanks to have certain gear that meant a lot of farming). Half the time you were doing bosses that were tuned around the assumption you had a pally, and the other half around having a shaman.
It was just awful, and to bring it back unchanged but just tuned higher would be terrible. If they do update it, they'd have to change half the boss mechanics just to make it interesting.

[Civil War Man]

Vanilla servers would have little more than niche appeal. There are only a few different groups who would actually want them.

A: Newer players who regret not experiencing the content from the beginning
B: Douchebag hardcore raiders who are incensed that Blizzard is allowing plebes to see content
C: People who regret not being a raider in Vanilla and don't realize how much shit raiders had to deal with back then
D: People who have forgotten how buggy and unbalanced original WoW was
E: People who didn't realize how buggy and unbalanced original WoW was because they were lucky enough to have chosen one of the good classes when they signed up

Groups A, C, D, and E will create a character in a Vanilla server, realize that the original game looks a lot different when you take off the rose-colored glasses, and return to their old servers. Group B will probably eat itself alive because they won't be able to get enough people to raid or they'll become even more bitter because all the plebes left so there will be no one to lord their phat lootz over (or both).

[Serafina]

What Minischoles wrote

You know, some people actually LIKED all that "artificial roadblocks" and other difficult stuff.
Granted, Molten Core was too easy - most bosses did not require a "raid tactic", just standard healing/tanking/damage.

But Blackwing Lair, Ahn'Quirai and especially Naxxramas provided challenges that NO BC+ raid did.
In fact, the biggest roadblock in BC was equipment, not tactics. At least if you are comparing top guilds.
The guild with the best equipment made the biggest progress, not the one with the best tactics.
At least that was the case on our server.
Why? Well, in my personal oppinion, every BC+ -Raidboss tactic was a mix&match of previous tactics. We described every boss as "ok, phase one is just like X, phase 2 like Y, and you have to to the same thing as with Z".

For me, it was all about coordinating 40 players. the reduction to 25 was a severe blow. It just did not feel as "epic" as before.

Well, i am not playing WoW for a long time now. I have personal experience with every raidboss until WotLK, from that point, it's just some reading of bosstactics.

P.S.: Yes, you can call me a "douchebag hard-core raider" if you want to. I propably was one of them, given that i was in the top-ranking guild of my server.

Regards
Fina

[Darmalus]

As I level more and more alts, I am coming to the realization that almost all the things I fondly remember and enjoyed about the old instances and content was more the people I did it with, rather than the content itself, even though I still love some of it, even solo.

Now that the crew I ran with has slowly faded into the nether, I can't get anyone to give me the time of day unless I'm 80. I think I'm starting to get bitter. I don't think my alts have run any instance they couldn't solo for months.

[Sharp-kun]

I think the worst though is Blackwing Lair, due to two things: goddamn Shadow Flame -- you'd better buy up every Scale of Onyxia you can, get a Tailor and make those Onyxia Scale Cloaks while there's time -- and the Warlock summoning bug that'll wipe a raid even full of 80s.

No, the worst thing is going back with no rogue

[Ghost Rider]

LMAO...gear wasn't a cockblock in Vanilla? What unmitigated horseshit.

Gear was such a huge disparity in Vanilla that if you weren't bleeding edge you didn't win. Fuck the PvP roadblock. Taking in a Blue tank in TBC/Wrath versus Vanilla? The sheer difference is astounding. As for tactics? What, tank and spank with..movement was hard? Oh and bosses being interesting in Vanilla? Yeah, because when 90% were tank and spank with adds...except a bare few. What the real strain was the healers had to fucking keep everyone alive with abilites that were shit. Hell, everyone in Vanilla was far less well crafted talent spec because Blizzard had nearly no clue.

Thank you Sera for reminding me the only ones I love more then the rose colored glass whores are the E-Peen flinging whores.

[Serafina]

LMAO...gear wasn't a cockblock in Vanilla? What unmitigated horseshit.

Gear was such a huge disparity in Vanilla that if you weren't bleeding edge you didn't win. Fuck the PvP roadblock. Taking in a Blue tank in TBC/Wrath versus Vanilla? The sheer difference is astounding. As for tactics? What, tank and spank with..movement was hard? Oh and bosses being interesting in Vanilla? Yeah, because when 90% were tank and spank with adds...except a bare few. What the real strain was the healers had to fucking keep everyone alive with abilites that were shit. Hell, everyone in Vanilla was far less well crafted talent spec because Blizzard had nearly no clue.

Thank you Sera for reminding me the only ones I love more then the rose colored glass whores are the E-Peen flinging whores.

Hey, i did not say that equipment was not important - i am just saying that skill was more important.

I was raiding AQ40 with an 70/30 mix of MC and BWL gear, and my guild had all of the server-first kill there (except for the first boss and the two side-bosses).

I hardly had top equipment (and that was true for the rest of my guild).

Regards
Fina

[Enforcer Talen]

So I just completed Loremaster;

and having done every quest as an 80, Im saying good riddance to the old world. It was a painful couple of weeks, and I cant wait for it to be changed to the quality of Northrend or even the Exodar.

I dont have any problems with the new lore (elf mages, et al). When the world blows up, you may a few adjustments in your thinking.

And flying mounts! Having them in the old world is fantastic

On the (down?) other side, there are now going to be 894236435 furries in the game. . .and Im on an rp server.

[Ghost Rider]

LMAO...gear wasn't a cockblock in Vanilla? What unmitigated horseshit.

Gear was such a huge disparity in Vanilla that if you weren't bleeding edge you didn't win. Fuck the PvP roadblock. Taking in a Blue tank in TBC/Wrath versus Vanilla? The sheer difference is astounding. As for tactics? What, tank and spank with..movement was hard? Oh and bosses being interesting in Vanilla? Yeah, because when 90% were tank and spank with adds...except a bare few. What the real strain was the healers had to fucking keep everyone alive with abilites that were shit. Hell, everyone in Vanilla was far less well crafted talent spec because Blizzard had nearly no clue.

Thank you Sera for reminding me the only ones I love more then the rose colored glass whores are the E-Peen flinging whores.

Hey, i did not say that equipment was not important - i am just saying that skill was more important.

What skill? You mean "Don't step in the fire, dumbfuck!!!" skill? That's being cognizant beyond a gerbil or a huntard. Compensating for piss poor talents? That's just rotation that we...do to this day and with greater ability because it's better understood.

In fact one of the HARDEST raid bosses in Vanilla was nothing more then stacking warrior tanks and grabbing from other top end guilds, and getting a trinket from ZG. It was the largest cockblock in WoW. That entire fight wasn't any more skill then the rest...it was pure fucking gear check against the RNG monster.

I was raiding AQ40 with an 70/30 mix of MC and BWL gear, and my guild had all of the server-first kill there (except for the first boss and the two side-bosses).

Ooooh, special!!! So were most raiders, dumbfuck.

I hardly had top equipment (and that was true for the rest of my guild).

Again, RNG dumbfuck. Only a few special luck cases were ever BiS for most of Vanilla.

But once you got the gear, you destroyed 90% of content because of the difference in healing, DPS, and effective health. Skill was nothing more then move boss, keep tanks topped off, spam decursive and telling DPS not to stand in the fire.

[Oskuro]

On the (down?) other side, there are now going to be 894236435 furries in the game. . .and Im on an rp server.

Oh, no no no, that's not the worst. The worst will be when we start seeing Worgen Death Knights, that is EMO FURRIES. Yep, RP server too.

[Civil War Man]

What the real strain was the healers had to fucking keep everyone alive with abilites that were shit. Hell, everyone in Vanilla was far less well crafted talent spec because Blizzard had nearly no clue.

I am glad that I did not come into WoW until a decent time after Burning Crusade came out. Particularly since my first character was a Paladin.

Ah, the dark days of WoW when tanking a raid boss with a Paladin would have been considered as much of a gimmick setup as using a Warlock's Voidwalker as a main tank.

All Raiding Shamans were Resto, all Raiding Druids were Resto, all Raiding Paladins were Holy, all Raiding Warriors were Protection. Paladins had to wear cloth because healing plate didn't exist. Fire Mages didn't exist for an entire tier of raiding because pretty much everything in Molten Core was either resistant or immune to their spells.

Why would anyone not want to go back to those days?

[Ghost Rider]

What the real strain was the healers had to fucking keep everyone alive with abilites that were shit. Hell, everyone in Vanilla was far less well crafted talent spec because Blizzard had nearly no clue.

I am glad that I did not come into WoW until a decent time after Burning Crusade came out. Particularly since my first character was a Paladin.

Ah, the dark days of WoW when tanking a raid boss with a Paladin would have been considered as much of a gimmick setup as using a Warlock's Voidwalker as a main tank.

All Raiding Shamans were Resto, all Raiding Druids were Resto, all Raiding Paladins were Holy, all Raiding Warriors were Protection. Paladins had to wear cloth because healing plate didn't exist. Fire Mages didn't exist for an entire tier of raiding because pretty much everything in Molten Core was either resistant or immune to their spells.

Why would anyone not want to go back to those days?

To build upon the love, the ultra l33t bitches did change it up...only because they had the gear.

Let's go down the line:

Druid: Resto for innervate. There are no other specs. Later they allowed a Kitty for the buff.

Hunter: A mix of Marksmen and Survival, depending on gear. Beast Master was a greater joke then ever.

Mage: Fire or Ice. Arcane was even lower then before, and Fire was considered THE Spec for rolling ignites, which then made people wanting to STACK Mages.

Paladin: Ret or Holy. Ret you say? WTF you say? Way back in the day...Blessings were only 5 minutes long, and had no greater. Again an innovation that old school retards forget. Also! Retribution's 31 pt talent? BLESSING OF KINGS. You can bet your sweet ass every raider of worth understood it's awesome abilities. But Ret wasn't for damage...just the blessing. Holy was for tank healing and Out of Combat Rez, and Protect was only used when you geared your 6-8 warriors with tank gear and realized Blizzard fucked up Protect's threat level to be abyssmal to fucktastically awesome.

To be honest, I loved the screams that how much BoK shifted favor for the alliance and how hardcore one needed to be in a Horde raiding guild.

Priest: Heal. Dwarf priest valued above all. This was the only legit complaint of Alliance over Horde given the fact what fear used to do as a threat manager.

Rogue: Depending on what fuck up of the week, any of them. Really they have fucked around damage variables on rogues.

Shaman: Windfury/Heal. That's about it. And as I stated above, I loved the Alliance tear filled hatred of Windfury and how it made the Horde supahl33t.

Warlock: ? No really...they existed? Warlocks were so fucking pathetic on damage, that you brought one for curses.

Warrior: 1 31 Protect, the rest were 31/5/15. Why such a spec? Two reasons. 1. Defiance defined the Protect tree. That's all an OT needed. 2. Fury sucked unless you were sucking off the Guild/Raid leader cock off for gear. Arms was easier to maintain.

Sure raiders/guilds have demanded very specific specs from all classes, but they are not literally shoehorned unless they are fucking the GL for the possible postion of maybe off specing. And this is not even going into the insanity of buffing yourself with god knows what, and that debuffs were such a premium space that bleeds were very bad.

TBC may not be the golden age some suck off to...but it made Blizzard wake up a bit more on gear and level of difficulty. Wrath and so on at least has made Blizzard learn that casuals pay the servers and the hardcore are fucking insane minority and gear should be made available not some scrounged over glass grinding piss fest over who's epeen is the shiniest.

[Minischoles]

What Minischoles wrote

You know, some people actually LIKED all that "artificial roadblocks" and other difficult stuff.
Granted, Molten Core was too easy - most bosses did not require a "raid tactic", just standard healing/tanking/damage.

But Blackwing Lair, Ahn'Quirai and especially Naxxramas provided challenges that NO BC+ raid did.
In fact, the biggest roadblock in BC was equipment, not tactics. At least if you are comparing top guilds.
The guild with the best equipment made the biggest progress, not the one with the best tactics.
At least that was the case on our server.
Why? Well, in my personal oppinion, every BC+ -Raidboss tactic was a mix&match of previous tactics. We described every boss as "ok, phase one is just like X, phase 2 like Y, and you have to to the same thing as with Z".

For me, it was all about coordinating 40 players. the reduction to 25 was a severe blow. It just did not feel as "epic" as before.

Well, i am not playing WoW for a long time now. I have personal experience with every raidboss until WotLK, from that point, it's just some reading of bosstactics.

P.S.: Yes, you can call me a "douchebag hard-core raider" if you want to. I propably was one of them, given that i was in the top-ranking guild of my server.

Regards
Fina

I was a hardcore raider (still am) I did manage to complete Naxx before TBC came out, I completed Sunwell pre-nerf, and I can still recognise what a massive shit fest Vanilla was.
And please as GR said, Vanilla had massive gear cockblocks. Wanna do any nature boss? go farm Maraudon for Nature Resist gear. Wanna do any fire raid? go and farm for weeks for materials, rep etc to get fire resist gear. Oh I remember going around and around and around Un'goro for Thorium. Wanna do Four Horsemen? hope you've got 8 warrior tanks all with their set bonus, or you're shit outta luck. Guilds would ruthlessly pillage main tanks from any other guild to get enough tanks for that fight. Again as GR said, the talent trees and spells were complete horse-shit for the most parts, other healers and tanks were crippled to keep warriors/priests as the top dogs.

TBC was completely different, and if you try and say its not you're a fucking liar. The difference in skill and gear needed was completely different to Vanilla. Kael and Vashj pre-nerf alone shit all over any vanilla boss 'tactics' you can mention. I'm not even gonna start on Sunwell, since even less people saw that then saw Naxxramas. Sunwell was the epitome of hardcore raiding, in terms of gear and in terms of personal skill and tactics. Yes there were gear cockblocks, but the main block was skill. You couldn't just waltz in, with your badge vendor gear and T6 farmed gear and kill Brutallus, you needed to know your class to the absolute maximum bleeding edge of skill, one wrong move, one wasted GCD, and you wouldn't kill him.

[Civil War Man]

P.S.: Yes, you can call me a "douchebag hard-core raider" if you want to. I propably was one of them, given that i was in the top-ranking guild of my server.

Honestly? I have absolutely no problem with hardcore raiders. They have fun (or get paid *coughEnsidiacough*) by doing the raids and challenging themselves to kill the bosses faster, with less losses, or with self-imposed handicaps. Personally I don't raid. I group with people I know in real life, and we never had the numbers to raid even when they added the 10-mans (though at our peak we were able to run Kara or a wing of Naxx when the stars aligned, but a majority are taking a break from the game now). So raiding is not my bag, but I don't hold a grudge against hardcore raiders in general.

The only raiders I have a problem with are the ones who are real dicks about it. The ones who complained about 10-man raids opening up the raiding scene to smaller guilds. Or that easier fights ruined the game because it allowed casual players to raid, even though they could still prove their superiority with the "hard mode" fights. Most of these people, I find, are posers. People from Ensidia or Premonition don't care if I end up getting into a raid that downs Yogg-Saron, because they've beaten Yogg-Saron months ago, then did it without any deaths, then did it without any Watchers, etc, etc. But the douchebag raiders care because they can't do what the top guilds do, and so they want the difficulty bar to be set just low enough that they can do the raid, but high enough that it'll keep out anyone they consider to be beneath them. Wrath infurated them because they aren't good enough to do the hard modes, but the bar is set low enough that for the most part the only people who don't raid are the ones who don't want to.

If that rant described you, then yes, you are a douchebag hardcore raider. If not, then you probably count under one of the "Forgot how buggy and unbalanced Vanilla WoW was" groups I mentioned earlier.

[Ghost Rider]

Here's something I do like of the current patch...it gives people decent gear even unto 5 mans. And I'm not talking about the daily heroic.

As for TBC versus Vanilla. While Sunwell was bustingly stupid hard...it did require something beyond Tank and Spank. So did Kael and Vash. One thing of Ulduar is that the Hard Modes are actually as close to that, with Mimiron Hard being easily Kael/Vash and closer to M'Uru level. And Yogg +0 is a step all unto it's own.

Thus really, living back in the rose colored dreams of Vanilla being the glory days is for fuck ups. The raiding was hellish because of gear cockblocks and 40 numbskulls, regular got SHIT, and PvP was more grindy then leveling in EQ.

[Steve]

I didn't play WoW until after TBC came out, I always wondered how those 40 player raids went as they seemed to me to be quite challenging to gather and control.

Of course, even once I got my primary to 70 I didn't get into any raids, didn't have the gear for it and never got a chance to run the higher instances to get said gear (I think my best gear was an SLab trinket and a chest plate piece from OHB. Can't remember if I got anything from my one Steamvaults run.).

[Minischoles]

Ensidia don't get paid, just to dispell one myth. They get stuff like free mousepads, and maybe the odd graphics card, but the only people that get paid are those that take care of the website, and thats not to play, thats to be admins/managers of the community site.
I'm similar to Civil War Man, but i'm approaching it from the other side. I've got absolutely no problem with raiding getting easier, since it has hardmodes as well. So if you want a challenge you do those, and for those who can't commit to that, who lack the time/gear/skill to complete the hardmodes, they've still got a chance to see the content and enjoy the game like the rest of us do. Different strokes for different folks. But there are those who are dicks about it, who claim everything is being dumbed down and made casual, which of course it is. The game has 11 million people in, and its got to be realised that the vast vast majority of those are not hardcore raiders, so appealing to the minority simply doesn't work or you end up with things like Naxx and Sunwell (like 1% of the population of WoW has ever seen both pre nerfs or out leveling)

Here's something I do like of the current patch...it gives people decent gear even unto 5 mans. And I'm not talking about the daily heroic.

As for TBC versus Vanilla. While Sunwell was bustingly stupid hard...it did require something beyond Tank and Spank. So did Kael and Vash. One thing of Ulduar is that the Hard Modes are actually as close to that, with Mimiron Hard being easily Kael/Vash and closer to M'Uru level. And Yogg +0 is a step all unto it's own.

Thus really, living back in the rose colored dreams of Vanilla being the glory days is for fuck ups. The raiding was hellish because of gear cockblocks and 40 numbskulls, regular got SHIT, and PvP was more grindy then leveling in EQ.

I love the current patch for my alts, getting some nice easy gear from the 5mans, especially ToC which is just great for equipping any fresh 80 in enough gear to actually enjoy the game in. And i'd personally rate Mimiron hardmode (pre-nerf) at the M'uru level, it was nuts how hard that fight was, which is what I loved about it, it really was tuned for those hardcore guilds/raiders who absolutely love a tightly tuned fight that requires people to be on the top of their game skill wise.

I didn't play WoW until after TBC came out, I always wondered how those 40 player raids went as they seemed to me to be quite challenging to gather and control.

Of course, even once I got my primary to 70 I didn't get into any raids, didn't have the gear for it and never got a chance to run the higher instances to get said gear (I think my best gear was an SLab trinket and a chest plate piece from OHB. Can't remember if I got anything from my one Steamvaults run.).

They were just terrible to control, and odds were at least 10-15 of those players at any one time were completely afk. Luckily the fights weren't much beyond tank hits this for aggro, healers keep him alive, DPS hit it to kill it, bandage/pot/healthstone if they got low on hp, or managed to beg a healer into healing them.