Comment by BeefWellington

> For most guilds, the first contact with Molten Core was a difficult one, brutal even, despite having decent gear. Classic guilds can clear the raid with subpar stuff and even underleveled players at speeds we couldn't reach at the time.

This was only true at the very beginning of the original launch.

My guild played on the last set of servers released just before Naxxramas was released and on the very first raid timer with a shorthanded raid full cleared MC and cleared all of BWL except for the last boss. Even by that point (essentially the end of Vanilla World of Warcraft) the strategies for every encounter was known. Our guild's only stumbling blocks were the actually difficult mechanics that required coordination (Twin Emperors) and gear-check fights.

It's a hard thing to do though, designing a game encounter that doesn't have one optimal strategy.