Were the expansions necessary?

[Felixon]

Hello!


I was thinking lately,due these private realm closure events,what was the thing,that Blizzard did wrong,if people by this day would prefer vanilla WoW,where the content peak is KT than WoD?Maybe the whole issue is with the expansions - probably,the WoW players would be more happy,if the level cap till this day would be level 60 and just keep releasing raids?Maybe the game was perfect at the state it was back then,when so many things seemed much more difficult and getting an "epic" really seemed like an achievement?Or the WoW had to adapt to keep up with the other MMOs and by this time would be dead if they would stick to their old model?


I do understand,that if they wouldn't add expasions,we wouldn't see Outland,Northrend,Pandaria etc....Or would we?Would they actually add zones or even continents for max players? Would you be happy to progress through above mentioned continents on max level without acquiring xp?

My main question on this is - do you think,that the idea of expansions and maximum level increase are actually to blame for the current state of WoW? Share your opinions!

[Thoughtsinchaos]

Expansions are great and exciting, especially during the first month of release. I don't think it's xpacs themselves that rub people the wrong way. Added features, or lack thereof, are more the culprits.

[Goondicker]

Expansions are great and exciting, especially during the first month of release. I don't think it's xpacs themselves that rub people the wrong way. Added features, or lack thereof, are more the culprits.

Ding ding ding!

Someone get this man a beer!

[Boathouse]

The game being 12 years old is the thing to blame. Seriously how do people keep overlooking that? No game has survived that long with a player base as large as WoW. It's a god damn miracle it has.

Without expansions and a level cap of 60 this game would have faded into nothing long ago.

Epics Feeling epic - They feel no different now from how they did at vanilla. If you were a raider then you were sharding and selling them just as often. Bosses regularly dropped all loot that no one needed.

Game was perfect - ....did you play it? It was a mess. Nostalgia nothing more.

Level increases - leveling in MMOs is used to get the story rolling and to get you accustomed to the new zones and abilities. To a long term player it seems trivial, to a new player it's incredibly important.

People moved on, it's really just that simple. The movie releasing will bring in a lot of new blood for sure, which is exciting. WoW only got as big as it did thanks to Warcraft already having an established story, that's why so many people say WoW ended with Wrath. It was considered "Babies first MMO" for a long time, and still is to many other MMO players. The game was good casual fun that the MMO market just didn't have which WoW still meets to this day. People tend to forget that WoW -always- targeted the casual market. The casual market is just becoming even more casual as time moves on with so many games being "Log in, queue, GAME TIME BOYS"

[Boathouse]

yes that is why people still play vanilla and even more would if it was official. please keep narrow mindedness to self.

age doesn't matter for a good game. just like graphics doesn't matter for good gameplay. great games have no expiry date, but community and devs usually do theirs to ensure it does expire.

most people consider wow to have expired, long ago.

with expansions and increased level cap the game have faded into nothing, long ago. it's like people are blind to the fact that many of who have quit over the years have quit just for these reasons, and are firm in the knowledge of that vanilla was and is a far greater game. i'd dear say they are a majority, as majority certainly agree that wow have become garbage, even more so by every expansion released. People not to stop making numbers up to prove this vanilla server fiasco.

>.>

Vanilla had the lowest sub count out of every expansion until late MoP, what are you even talking about. The game peaked in Wrath and steadily fell from there at a slow pace until WoD. Even WoD release shot the sub numbers higher than mop (Which on average had 3 million more than vanilla at the lowest sub expac until mid WoD)

[Amerissis]

age doesn't matter for a good game.

No, it doesn't matter for the game, it matters for the players. When you play the same game for 12 years, you will get bored, no matter how good it is. It's still the same every time; level, quests, raids, dungeons, etc. and the futility of it all hits.

And then nostalgia hits. I remember doing Naxx in Wrath and especially that spider boss (Maexxna?) and I miss it, working together with my guild and all. But I know I hated it at the time. We wiped so, so, so often because people were too stupid to learn the mechanics, it was hell. It was the breaking point for me to quit raiding. Yet I still have those warm fuzzy feelings when I think about it. That's how the human mind works, you remember good times and good feelings, even when it's not accurate at all.

[Boathouse]

That you weren't even born when vanilla was released or you hardly knew what internet and mmo was doesn't say anything about the quality of a game. You are focusing on irrelevancy in fear of something that you don't understand.

the game doesn't decide itself whether it is good or not.

good games don't expire.

just like TES, Skyrim is a disgrace to the series, but hype makes it a winner in this pseudo world where less is better.

I've been playing at a higher level than most anyone who still plays ever did. Keep on talking about things you don't know. You're making things up.

[RoxyBlue]

The game is about progression. If people cant progress it stagnates, but people also need to realize the game has to evolve. MMO's are not as popular as they once were, so in order to attract that fast moving player it has to become something not very mmo like. Imo a hybrid game, and while the dyed in the wool mmo gamer will frown on that, companies know generations change. For them its about grabbing that new playerbase for as long as they can hold them, and yet hoping the old mmo player will stick out the changes.

[Bisso]

yes that is why people still play vanilla and even more would if it was official. please keep narrow mindedness to self.

age doesn't matter for a good game. just like graphics doesn't matter for good gameplay. great games have no expiry date, but community and devs usually do theirs to ensure it does expire.

most people consider wow to have expired, long ago.

with expansions and increased level cap the game have faded into nothing, long ago. it's like people are blind to the fact that many of who have quit over the years have quit just for these reasons, and are firm in the knowledge of that vanilla was and is a far greater game. i'd dear say they are a majority, as majority certainly agree that wow have become garbage, increased by every expansion and patch released.

>.>

Amazing how much assumptions you make to argue your point.

Vanilla private servers have been around since TBC, I know cause I played them, when I was low on cash and I just wanted my WoW fix, btw, I was during the first month. These private servers weren't populated, and the greater part of the traffic in the private servers were all converging into the latest working client version, namely, TBC, later wrath.

You are basically saying that the few thousands (no one cares about total subscribers) of players that connect to a FREE server on a 1 year old project is the same thing has: The wow playerbase would prefer to stay in vanilla? Damn, that's a interesting statement. Especially when looking at past subscription numbers, that peaked every new expansions. You look at that graph, and you could basically think this is a apple stock whenever a new iphone is announced. But yeah, everytime there's a new expansion, people just lose faith, and leave because they don't like change.

Please, carry on day dreaming with your rose-tinted glasses.

[Boathouse]

The game is about progression. If people cant progress it stagnates, but people also need to realize the game has to evolve. MMO's are not as popular as they once were, so in order to attract that fast moving player it has to become something not very mmo like. Imo a hybrid game, and while the dyed in the wool mmo gamer will frown on that, companies know generations change. For them its about grabbing that new playerbase for as long as they can hold them, and yet hoping the old mmo player will stick out the changes.

Exactly this. The base game and intro portions may very much so be WAY more casual than WoW ever was (Which WoW in it's early days was the most casual MMO on the market, even the hardcore portion) but I will argue that Mythics are incredibly engaging. There's just no "special snowflake" feeling anymore that there used to be with raids having 4 difficulties and 5 mans being trivial compared how they used to be, but that's what the market wants. The hardcore players don't pay the bills required to get the content they want. It happens and we adapt or move on.

[Masser]

Game was perfect - ....did you play it? It was a mess. Nostalgia nothing more.

The denial is strong with this one.

[Boathouse]

Nice title, beware what game design you got it from and are running around advertising for.

I can promise you that if you think the game is easier now than in vanilla you haven't killed Mythic Archimonde. (Or Mannaroth...what even is that boss...)

The denial is strong with this one.

Check my screenshot, denial is hardly what it is. I was just old enough then and old enough now to have already learned what nostalgia was.

[Exiztence]

I honestly don't get the hype of vanilla lately, having played vanilla back then up to few bosses in Naxxramas, how can people even be entertained by the content after a while ? Last year I played on fenix which was I guess pretty close to vanilla and with like 20 people, dual to quadboxing we cleared all available content while raiding only few nites a week in no time at all, the mechanics are so simple compared to what they are nowdays, rotations could be executed with mouseclicker, oh and farm I suppose that's what everyone is missing having to prepare for raids well in advance...

[Mormolyce]

Nostalgia goggles engage!

Vanilla is utter garbage by 2016 standards. It was great in 2004 though.

[Boathouse]

I honestly don't get the hype of vanilla lately, having played vanilla back then up to few bosses in Naxxramas, how can people even be entertained by the content after a while ? Last year I played on fenix which was I guess pretty close to vanilla and with like 20 people, dual to quadboxing we cleared all available content while raiding only few nites a week in no time at all, the mechanics are so simple compared to what they are nowdays, rotations could be executed with mouseclicker, oh and farm I suppose that's what everyone is missing having to prepare for raids well in advance...

So many elixirs....so many tubers...so much more time was spent grinding consumables for raids than actually playing the game. Vanilla was Busy Work of Warcraft the game, I have no idea how people don't remember that. The average 3-4 button rotations were soooo engaging

[Tuesdays]

The denial is strong with this one.

It was new it was different and it was a hell of a lot better than SWG at the time.

I still prefer newer content over vanilla.

[endersblade]

I've been playing at a higher level than most anyone who still plays ever did. Keep on talking about things you don't know. You're making things up.

Ok, I'm extremely jelly.

[Boathouse]

lol yea start a tbc vs wod in both quality and popularity

and it clearly can not be said enough, none have any figures of what population would be for a official vanilla server.

Do you remember when they were releasing new servers in vanilla after the War Effort for AQ? It was a common past time for people to reroll on new servers to race to Naxx. It was on average taking those groups 2 months tops to be in Naxx and clearing bosses. Those server were dead a few months after. Anub'arak was a good example. People started, finished, and moved on leaving the servers as ghost towns. It'd be finished MUCH faster now. And it would die MUCH faster. It's really starting to look as if you didn't play in vanilla, or if you did you never hit the end game. It wasn't as good as people pretend to remember.

Ok, I'm extremely jelly.

<3

[Nathreim]

Sometimes I think Expansions were too short. Wrath and Mop for example could have been better had they just added more content before the final raids came out.

For example Wrath could have had at least one more raid focusing on the Scourge before ICC.

[Lady Dragonheart]

Yes, the expansions were extremely necessary.

Vanilla is dead and buried, it should be left there as such.