Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by Raekon

EQ2 was there for years and they had not even ONE spot running to tv and barely any were in the magazines to say the least.
 

Additionaly EQ2 was mostly for people that had a clue about the lore AND was partially and it wasn't mindless bring me 100 heads from the same person questing like WoW to say the least.

You seem to under the impression that Blizzard was running television ads for warcraft prior to its release.  Perhaps I missed it, but warcraft television ads started showing in late 2007 with the shatner/troyner spots.  

As for eq2 not advertising much, are you kidding?  You didn't see the full size cutouts in stores of Antonia Bayle of Lucan D'lere?  For petes sakes they hired Heather Graham and Christopher Lee to head up the voice acting in the game.  Soe had an entire division devoted to advertising and marketing mmos, not only for themselves, but other companies that needed a publisher.  There was plenty of EQ2 vs Warcraft advertising going on. 

I also think you are mistaken with your view of what eq2 was supposed to be.  EQ2 was supposed to be the next generation mmo that would dominate the market.  That is why soe worked so hard to compete and rush to beat wow to market.  It wasn't aimed to be some niche game as you are trying to make it out to be.  EQ2 was aimed at capturing a wider and more casual market.  Just because it failed to do that doesn't change what it was intended to be.

 

The question I keep coming back to is, if the key to success of an mmo was simply advertising it, what is holding back so many games from doing just that?  It can't be that big of a secret if the posters on mmorpg.com know about it. 

 

Dear daffid.... you obviously missed that I'm talking about a worldwide scale and not only about your place right?
 

In Germany heck even in Greece when I went there you could see tv spots about wow as the only one mmo.

Advertisement HELPS and that's no lie! Additionaly as others said fans from diablo and warcraft/starcraft were millions already? I'm one of them and I'm not denying that this was one of the main reasons I joined wow and to my dissappointment I saw a screwed up story that had barely to do with the warcraft series (illogical stuff they as I heard partially corrected later) a very simple character editor that make no difference with some mediocre or simple korean mmos and couldn't match editors like the unmatchable one from city of heroes/villains (OK no mmo ever managed to do that yet. :P ), a gameplay that was nothing else than mediocre, a frustrating and boring repeatable quest system (hey! Let's let this guy get into the fight with the mobs so we can steal the quest item so when he comes out after he made the whole effort gets nothing and has to wait for a respawn while he needs to fight again!), a bad distribution (random luck in "epic items" and rare items with dice roll) of items, holes in the generated blending of the BITMAPS of the environment (yes they were bitmaps....), a traveling system that had you to walk 30 minutes to reach the next place so you can open a travel option and travel with a griffin or flying bot, the possibility to fall out of a map and land on the water with the only option to either swim for 30 minutes or longer to reach a place you can come back on a land spot or instantly die and much more that actually any good mmo would had done  and already has done much better!

Don't even start me with the pvp....

So don't start me please with "it's the unmatched gameplay fanboy talk" cause such talks are epic fails in my opinion.

Their whole gameplay are pieces they took out of other mmos, polished a bit and sold as their own system and nothing more.

Nothing new, nothing special. I don't mind that though cause if someone likes it they should play it!

However, the game itself is definately not the reason for the success they had with it cause there are many other mmos that did many of these features much better then they ever did!

Have Fun!

I never liked WoW at all, but Blizzard did everything quite well. Very little was outstanding but almost nothing was bad. They had sound financial backing, a loyal ready-made market from the Warcraft franchise and they didn't scare away people trying their first mmo.

Contrast that with EQ and you can see the differences immediately. I'm English and I was in EQ from the start but not only didn't I know any other English players back then, I didn't even know anyone who'd heard of Everquest. The game just didn't exist over here in 1999 beyond a handful of people like me who stumbled across it by accident. I remember finding out about the /played command when I was level 14 and I had 14 played days.  That's 336 hours of gameplay to get to level 14. People won't tolerate that now.

Not competing with WoW is nowhere near the realms of failure though. WoW is the exception, not the rule. EQ was a massive success with half a million subscribers.

Originally posted by Raekon 

Dear daffid.... you obviously missed that I'm talking about a worldwide scale and not only about your place right?
 

In Germany heck even in Greece when I went there you could see tv spots about wow as the only one mmo.

<<snip>>

However, the game itself is definately not the reason for the success they had with it cause there are many other mmos that did many of these features much better then they ever did!

Have Fun!

You do realize Warcraft was already a success years.. yes years.. before they ran television ads.

For all the ranting you are doing about advertising winning the masses, soe was king of the mmo hill at the time.  They had an entire division devoted to marketing and distribution.  They beat wow to market in north america by a few weeks and europe by months.  By your logic eq2 should be a monster of an mmo, yet it struggles to retain 1/3 of what the original game held population wise.

At the end of the day people were leaving other mmos (which you claim do things so much better) that they could log into and immediately play to join wow, where they had to wait in a login que sometimes for hours just to play. 

I can't think of one single commercial or advertisement that is powerful enough to draw people away from a better product with immediate gameplay to an inferior product (as you put it) only to have to sit and wait at the server select screen waiting and waiting just to play the game.

I never said wow had a flawless release.  The logic that people get sucked into a bad game for years on end as the result of advertising is just plain dumb.  There are a great number of mmos that had significant advertising and well history proves you wrong.

Originally posted by Roin

The idea that advertising was respondible for WoW's success is laughable.  

Really?  I guess that's why any mainstream corporation spends millions upon millions on advertising campaigns, endorsements, prime television spots, billboard placements, marketing freebies, etc.  These corporations will cut expenses killing product quality & hamper their operations before cutting advertising budgets. 

I hate to break it to the WoW fanbois, but the reason Blizzard went so mainstream is because they purposely set it out mainstream with massive advertising.  If you were a MMO player at the time, you definitely took notice.  The reality is most of the WoW players in here are the new batch who were not playing MMOs then and noticed the transition.  The game was significantly easier than other MMOs.

Blizzard took notice of the success and has been progressively dumbing down the game while pumping advertisements.  Contrary to what some fanboys think, WoW has high turnover.   Each new influx of players is dumber than the previous one.  WotLK made the game accessible to retards.  The guilds I was in just a few months ago are pretty much done, most players have quit.  But the number of utter retards went up significantly, while the overall IQ of community has taken a dive.  Lot of new players with bought accounts just to roll Deathtard and be completely clueless.

Blizzard tapped into a demographic that previously unavailable to MMOs.  The "bads", "casuals" & easily amused morons.  Most people, by a wide margin, are stupid.  Hence WoW's position.

Originally posted by Daffid011

 There are a great number of mmos that had significant advertising and well history proves you wrong.

There is not one other MMO that has even comes close to Blizzard's marketing.  There is no comparison, especially back around launch.

Warhammer did some TV spots, but WoW had multiple times more ads.  Warhammer also geared toward cable channels & shows with more serious gamer demographic while WoW was penetrating prime channels.  I barely watch TV and I think I saw two WAR ad spots while over 20 WoW spots.

Just think about how much they had to pay Ozzy & Shatner.  Their current ad budget is probably higher than other games' development budget.

Nice theory blunt, but if that were that only case then some sizable portion of turnover that you claim would migrate to other mmos.  Care to explain why almost every other mmos is on a continual decline when they should be seeing an increase since the entire mmo market has risen so much in the last several years?

I understand that marketing is important.  I understand that blizzard had a fanbase.  I understand that there is a turnover in the game (maybe you don't understand that there is also a high rate of returns?).  None of that I dispute or ignore.  

I understand that companies in other markets spend millions on advertising and brand name recognition, because they have competition.  Most of those products it is hard to find one that clearly outperforms the other.  It isn't like there is a world of difference between detergent a and detergent b. 

I also understand that you can advertise a horrible product all you want and it will not get repeat business, fantastic word of mouth, critical acclaim from industry peers and reviewers and so on.  People will not flock to it in droves while leaving their superior products behind.  Especially if they cannot even log in to play the game and have to wait in line.  That just won't happen unless there is something more than marketing smoke and mirrors. 

At the end of the day, everything in the mmo market points to the exact opposite of what you guys are claiming.  There are plenty of example where high profile heavily marketed games tanked, but that shows a flaw in peoples logic so they ignore that.  The same for games with massive followings, but that doesn't fit the opinion so it is ignored.  Big budget experienced game development companies.. same story.  Rock star software developers putting out independant games... ditto.   How many half baked game releases do mmo players have to put up with before people see the truth behind so many failures?

If success is as simple as advertising to stupid people, where are the other mmos that follow this simple road to riches?  It should be easy right?  Just advertise advertise advertise and nothing can stop the legions of people that will flock to your game and bring all of their friends.  Do you see how flawed that logic is?  

EQ2 did exactly the same thing as wow with marketing and target market, yet it has a tiny fraction of the success wow had.  Do you really think everyone was marketed away from it?   

You can label people fanboys all you like, call player retards or whatever other insults make you feel superior in your opinion.  The fact is the majority of new players, experienced players and everything in between migrated to warcraft.  If you think the only reason for that was advertising then I don't know what else can be said. 

Originally posted by HydrobluntX

Originally posted by Daffid011

 There are a great number of mmos that had significant advertising and well history proves you wrong.

 

There is not one other MMO that has even comes close to Blizzard's marketing.  There is no comparison, especially back around launch.

Warhammer did some TV spots, but WoW had multiple times more ads.  Warhammer also geared toward cable channels & shows with more serious gamer demographic while WoW was penetrating prime channels.  I barely watch TV and I think I saw two WAR ad spots while over 20 WoW spots.

Just think about how much they had to pay Ozzy & Shatner.  Their current ad budget is probably higher than other games' development budget.

I hope you realize that wow did not start that type of advertising until several years after it released and already had millions of subscribers. Their budget NOW might be bigger than other games develope with, but that doesn't mean it was the reason it got to where it is now.  The television ads are a result of the success, not the cause.

Wow didn't have tv ads at release, but here you say warhammer did (I don't know).  Warhammer sold over a million copies, but lost the overwhelming majority of those players.  How can that be if they put out marketing at release (more than wow)?

Maybe the gameplay is a bigger factor than you care to admit?

As I said, advertising won't get people to stay.

Originally posted by HydrobluntX

Originally posted by Daffid011

 There are a great number of mmos that had significant advertising and well history proves you wrong.

 

There is not one other MMO that has even comes close to Blizzard's marketing.  There is no comparison, especially back around launch.

Warhammer did some TV spots, but WoW had multiple times more ads.  Warhammer also geared toward cable channels & shows with more serious gamer demographic while WoW was penetrating prime channels.  I barely watch TV and I think I saw two WAR ad spots while over 20 WoW spots.

Just think about how much they had to pay Ozzy & Shatner.  Their current ad budget is probably higher than other games' development budget.

So? Sure advertising gets people to TRY out a game.

Advertising does not make people stay. That is marketing 101.

Its simple:

- Polished Gameplay

- Stable Servers

- Good GUI

I've only played WoW for 15 mins and I can tell you it is one of the few MMOs that actually has all 3.  My guess is the rest of its popularity comes from its "casual" mentality.  75% of the gamer's don't have time nor probably want to spend time "leveling" for 6 - 12 months to get a chance to enjoy the whole game.

WoW was the first MMO that took nothing for granted.  Blizzard was determined to make a game that didn't punish people for playing it.  I've seen some idiots here bash WoW for having a user-friendly interface.  How much of an idiot do you have to be to criticize a game for having a good interface?

Originally posted by Chieftan

WoW was the first MMO that took nothing for granted.  Blizzard was determined to make a game that didn't punish people for playing it.  I've seen some idiots here bash WoW for having a user-friendly interface.  How much of an idiot do you have to be to criticize a game for having a good interface?

Not an idiot. A hardcore veteran MMO specialist.

Yea, the reason why WoW is popular is pretty simple. Unlimited funding,  concentrated on funny youth things (april fools day), popular, user-friendly, shatner and mr t.

Originally posted by Chieftan

WoW was the first MMO that took nothing for granted.  Blizzard was determined to make a game that didn't punish people for playing it.  I've seen some idiots here bash WoW for having a user-friendly interface.  How much of an idiot do you have to be to criticize a game for having a good interface?

Some peole just like different hings, that doesn't make them morons, just different from you.

Personally, the only UI I like is Guildwars (Which BTW is made by the guy that made most of Wows UI, but I GWs just fit me better).

But  that a UI is easy to use is good in my opinion, my problem with Wow is that I think that the gameplay is to easy. I like a challenge, other people want it easier, it have nothing to do if Wow is a good or bad game, just my personal preferance.

Originally posted by Murdus

Not an idiot. A hardcore veteran MMO specialist.

Congratulations on one of the (very few) posts on this board ever to make me /lol in real life.

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

Originally posted by Murdus

Not an idiot. A hardcore veteran MMO specialist.

Congratulations on one of the (very few) posts on this board ever to make me /lol in real life.

lol...that is a pretty good line. Think I'll use it the next time I go to the club.

Because noone has yet to sell game accounts in bulk to internet cafes in Asia excpet Blizzard ?

Originally posted by Raekon

Well you can be sure that any good PR department and by that I don't mean only Blizzards but any company will tell you things about "unicorns and rainbows" so take such announcements always with a good grain of  salt portion. :/

Anyway.... for me was, still is and if they don't mess up in the future always be the best developer on MMOs and one of the first ones ever NCsoft.

I can't wait for AION and Soul&Blade to go into the beta status or be released! :)

Even Gems like City of Heroes/Villains, Guild Wars and many other games they brought were much better than WoW will ever be. Not to mention what Blizzard ripped from games like that and sold them as "new ideas" which wasn't the case.

Heck even free mmos are out there that are more fun than wow.

I remember the days where the first C&C came out from a VERY small company that couldn't afford large advertisement and stuff and then all of sudden Warcraft that "surprisingly" were using the exact same system popped out of nothing with the Blizzard name on it, lots of advertisement and money to push things to success which we all know took place.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the Warcraft series (except wow of course) till the frozen throne and I still have them.

Fact is though that money rules the world in many occassions (sad but unfortunately true) and blizzard is the best example on this.

If my memory serves me well, both C&C and Warcraft were ''surprisingly'' using the same system as Dune II :)

 

  To answer the OP directly, by its title

  "Because they are still TRYING to"

  You cannot compete with WoW, that forces you to meet them head on...and on THEIR turf.  To "compete" with WoW, you must meet them on YOUR turf. 

 In other words.....

MAKE SOME NEW CRAP PEOPLE!

 I think it's quite simple, at least for me when I tried lotro and WAR, it's the feeling of running around with your guy and using skills that is way off. It feels sluggish and not as responsive as in wow and the animations are not as nice. This is basic stuff, this is what you will be doing the rest of your guy's life, (running around and killing stuff), so this is what a company should spen a majority of their time on perfecting. I'm not saying that WoW is perfect in this regard, but at least it plays as good as most single player games (in some cases better) - this I cannot say for the other mmorpgs. Get the movement and gameplay right and the masses will stay.

Originally posted by beaverz

I found lineage 2 much harder than wow.  You found L2 to be harder, that means squat.  I found breathing to be harder.

Bigger: hell even f2P games like rubies of eventide had a bigger world and I dont even need to mention eve, sure wow has Around 7 mil real players but are they all on the same server? most mmos have more or less the same pop per serv  Bigger in what aspect?  Fun?  Map size?

Better: Considering wow's community i'd say many games are better than wow. Graphics are old looking, even darkfall looks better and df is truly ugly.  Comparing community?  How?  Comparing the number of people you hate in game?  WoW has a large audience, there are obviously more people to hate.  Try to find someone to hate in EQ1.  Graphics are bad?  Ok, I hear you.  I would say, WoW has designed a game that plays on a wide span of hardware.  That alone is remarkable.

Whatever wow does there is a game that does it better, if you want a complex economy there is eve, hardcore raiding isnt wow's stong point considering how fast raid guilds has raped the new expansion so that also shows how good wow's end game is. PvP in wow is better than hello kitty's i'll give you that, but compare it with most other mmos and the pvp is subpar, there is a reason why wow is the carebear game.  But we have yet to find a game that offers everything in a parcel and is good in each aspect.  Good enuf that a lot more people agree with than any other games can muster.  WoW does not need to be the "best" in every aspect, they just need to deliver a game enuf people are willing to pay to subscribe.  They did that.

So instead of acting all smart because wow has the most subs, go and try a few other mmos (ask your mommy for the cash).  Thank you for trying to insult, you look smart enuf with that remarks.

If you werent so stupid you might have noticed that I didnt talk about wow killers because I dont htink wow will be killed, all the carebears with shiny raid armor will prolly play this game till the servers are shut down because they cant stand to start over after having spend thousands of hours playing the game.  Thank you for calling us stupid, I suddenly realise you are so bright.  So bad, being so smart, you are still a Mr nobody, no one care for.

I dont really see whats so essential about an auction house, then again I dont see why wow should be the best mmo out there other than it's n°1 at asian gold farmers.   You do not see?  Oh I thought you were smart.  Now I begin to wonder.

Shaking head.

Originally posted by Raekon

The OP must be kidding with this thread saying or doing as if WoW is the best mmo ever or out there.  Did the OP try to say that WoW is the "best"?  Or did the OP tried to list a few factors why the other games have not yet caught up with WoW, presumably in sub base and such?

No bugs? I was there as one of their testers and the game was filled with bugs partially even after the release.  Ok a game has bugs during test stage, that must be news.  The coding of the game is not bug free after release, that must be news.  OK lesson learnt from you.  You expect codes to be bug free during testing and after launch.  Now I know how wise you are.

Spreading lies to make WoW more important than it actually is while it lost players and players over the years is not quite good.  Did the OP say WoW is important?

The game mainly lives through promotion that had taken place in a huge scale compared to any other

developer only because they had the money to do so. Innovative? You must be kidding me?

What was/is innovative in WoW? That they ripped everything they saw in other mmos, placed them in one package and sold them as their own work after the original blizzards employs left the company so they can finally be original since Blizzard never was?  Oh WoW redesigned a game incorporating features good for gaming, and that is a crime.  Oh you steal the alphabets I used for years and try to talk on this message board, that is also a crime.  Original blizzard employees left?  Oh the company is defined by the employees, when someone died or resigned, blizz should go tank.  Oh wise man, now I know how you reason.

I'm not here to flame but I won't close my eyes to the truth either and go like " wow is the best of the best and no one can compare".  OK keep you eyes open, if you need to.  Does that mean anything?

I have alpha/beta and play tested almost every mmo game you can find on mmorpg.com, onrpg or any other site so far which means 100+ additionaly to offline games and mods through the years and I can tell you that there are much better mmos out there then wow will ever be.  First I need to trust that you are able to alpha almost every game.  Its hard to imagine someone so lucky to be involved in almost every beta.  As for alphas, how are people usually involved in alpha stage?  In house people are used in alpha, as alpha are inhouse stages of development.  Wow, you happened to be inhouse in almost every game during the alpha stage, hmm.  Yes you said so and I have to believe in you.  Now I realise how credible your claims are.

The major difference is and always was  that blizzard had the money and the huge promotion as also all the warcraft fans through the years that tuned in after the release (many left after they show how the screwed the story and other things from the original story only because vivendi which hides behind the blizzard name for a few years now obviously had no clue of) additionaly to many mmo newbies that started there as their first mmo not knowing anything else when it comes to mmos at all.  I hardly know what you are saying, maybe you finally come to terms with your sense of ... nonsense.  Keep cooking up more and more nonsense, you know how many fans left, you know how vivendi and blizzard works, maybe you can also tell me how many beans obama ate for dinner tonight.

On a sidenote, you can't go out there comparing different types of mmos only because they are both mmo games cause there are major difference between many depending if they are action based, sci fi space (like eve as example), fantasy, racing, jump n run, beat em up and so on....  Nice finally some sense,  But what are you saying above?  You are comparing WoW to other games.  But ... oh well you can compare, then tell us we cannot compare, indeed very wise.

Just my two coins. ;) 

Tons of Fanbois everywhere...... How can you say "no game managed to compete with WOW as of yet". As a game WoW have good rivals but the Advertising its what really counts here, not the game it self.

uh you uh, know those like, 3 people who left blizzard. yeah they sure went on to big things didnt they. im mean clearly they were the critical parts of the team. yeah. yeah i bet they fucking wish they still had their piece of that pie now! jesus lol barely anyone has left blizzard at all,  ever.

you know why? because blizzard is a fucking class company to work for, one of the top rated in the whole games industry. why the fuck would anyone want to leave a job where they have one of the cushtiest dev houses, a huge gym, pool, gardens, pool tables etc. Oh and health insurance, pretty sure blizz are one of the only ones who do that as standard.

mm yeah but lets go leave and make this shitty game and then oh its dead wish I hadnt sold my stocks

Originally posted by Darkor_hXc

As a game WoW have good rivals but the Advertising its what really counts here, not the game it self.

That's the dumbest thing I've read today. Advertising can do a lot, but it sure as hell won't make a game last for 4+ years.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Darkor_hXc

Tons of Fanbois everywhere...... How can you say "no game managed to compete with WOW as of yet". As a game WoW have good rivals but the Advertising its what really counts here, not the game it self.

 

Advertising doesn't explain why people want to pay 15 bucks a month to just play a PC game that massively.

www.xfire.com

... shows that every day more on line playing time is invested in Wow than in any other game .... that is even FREE to play.

And xfire is western based btw.

Give it up : false argument. Advertising shit doesn't sell monthly subscriptions for 4 years in an industry where a game lasts 6 months on average.

 

 

If you go to the library and read some books maybe someday you can understand how "Mass Management" actually works.

BTW wtf with Xfire, how can you even know if those stats are real?? Are you the kind of person that believe in everything you see?? Have you ever thought that Xfire and those Stats are nothing but "Advertising/Propaganda"??

Originally posted by xeniar

Originally posted by arimer

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by xeniar

no game competes with WoW because the WoW audience are easymode basterds.

EQ2 is too hard for them to be playign they would get confused trying to find the mobs they need to kill, and they would whine because the have a experience penalty in death.

not gonna make other comparisons you guys catch my drift anyway.

Yes im a ex-WoW player and ive quit because blizzard has made content too easy nowadays and evrything is unbalanced (no plans of returning...)

Dura Dwarf warrior Outland EU

 

The fact that nobody could even do the achievement lists 5 months after launch (out of those 5 million players), shows that the challenge in the end game of Wow is fucking hard.

Show me another game where only 1 team of 2, 3 or 5 persons get the Brutal Gladiaor title in a rated ladder based PvP out of 200.000 players (20 servers clustered). Being Brutal Gladiator is a unique title on a server (and a lot of servers don't even have the title).

The same with PVE Raids these days.

Blizzard is the first mmorpg maker where some bosses are SCALED in difficulty, making for a very very small percentage to have the fantastic black or red dragons in its end game. Downing a boss on easy mode is to let everyone enjoy the scenery, but that's NOT the aim of the game anymore.

The aim now is prestige of downing them in a hard setting with all achievements up (like downing Sart has 8 different hard modes).

On my server only ... 0.3% of the Raiders could do all these Raid achievements. That's perhaps 0.01% of total players on a server.

Easy? Only for those not daring the difficult challenges in the Raid or PvP competitions....The others show off with their red and black dragons. Show me your armory and I'll laugh with the "easy" boosts.

No longer the gear is elite, it's the titles and mounts that do the shows these days. And everyone can look at the armory how poorly 99% of the people play. :)))

 

Wait?  So the point of raiding now and what decides its difficulty are optional achievements which give you nothing?   So your saying if a game made an achievement for a raid that was beat 90 bosses in 3 seconds which would be impossible, then it would therefore be the most challenging end game out there?    I'm sorry but that doesn't make any sense.
 

BAsed on numbers Since TBC the raids have gotten easier.  Look at vanilla wow, how many progressed, look at TBC slightly more did,  Now in northrend you have guilds full of retarded monkeys clearing every raid.

 

youve said exactly what i wanted to say.

the achievments are meaningless its show to show your epeen to other players. and with a good grind most of em are not a chalange

the brutal gladiator. m8 let me tell you that me as a PVE prot warrior almost had the gladiator title season 1 (i was off by a few), yes things have changed now i know that but its not a chalange.

people with brutal gladiotor stuff have: no job, too much time on their hands, good gear, and are concentrated enough not to fuck up shit. and alot of luck is also a part of PvP (you cannot control absolutely evry aspect of the whole fight)

 

Vanila WoW was hardcore PVE we had to do bosses night after night after night.

in tbc it went down hill with a few walls here and there. raids now are nothing. the difrent achievment settings are a aim then but as far as i know most of the guilds on my server now have completed alot of it. so your server m8 must be bullshit.

The only hardcore PvE in Vanilla WoW was couple of bugged BwL fights, C'thun before it got nerfed and couple of Naxxramas fights. The rest was easy and cleared very fast. I was raiding from early 2005 and really don't know about this night after night raiding. Maybe if you were in some mediocre casual guild. But the real hardcore guilds cleared the content fast. As I said only exception to this is C'thun and The Four Horsemen. And those are just 2 fights. Both M'uru and Kil' Jaeden are better and harder if you are really looking for something hardcore.