Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Jeniwyn]

The more I read this thread the more I get the feeling that there is very little overlap between the vanilla crowd and the retail crowd.

That would suggest close to a 1:1 ratio between a vanilla player and a new (re)subscription.

This would make this project even more profitable than I first thought.

[Coconut]

Legacy servers will not compete with retail ones.. there are 2 different playerbases. I dont think the LFR and flying mount players will be interested in legacy servers...I dont see how the "community" (what community? you mean population..) will be split. Vegetarians will sit on the table with vegetables and non vegetarians will go for the meat.

Really? I take it you won't buy Legion? Or ever subscribe to WoW? And you know for a FACT nobody who is crying for Vanilla right now wouldn't settle for buying and playing Legion instead?

[Erwarth]

But in this case, retail players are the vegetarians... these players will quit only because there is not a magic button to teleport them into dungeon...let alone the rest of the game... so dont worry, retail wow players will not get split..

Retails players have the choice, either play on WoD / Legion or Vanilla. There are the omnivorous.

Legacy players only plays legacy because WoD is shit and WoW is dead. They are the vegetarians.

So yes, the community will be split.

[Deleted]

I agree. Quite frankly I am more concerned with the well-being of the retail version. I'd love to see improvements made to the current version of the game and have it be steered in the right direction again.

This is also my main concern. As long as there is a retail version, we should try to get this improved.

Unfortunately, some features that Vanilla fans like, contradict other features on retail, which I for example don't want to miss anymore - all features which save my time (like LFD/LFR and heirlooms) and give me more freedom to play (like flying). Also such QoL features like mount tab, pet tab, toy tab and wardrobe. I would not want to miss dualspec as well, to mention one change in game mechanics.

But I would certainly like to take back some of the pruning they have made - especially reserving abilities / spells / talents to 1 spec while these have been available to all specs previously (but not as efficient and strong as in the main associated spec). Yes, every spec should have 1-2 special abilities which define it, but the rest of the abilities should be available to all specs, and just be better when the ability matches your spec. Situational abilities are also important, just as utility. Every class should have some kind of dispel, for example. Healers should just be the masters of dispels and have more than one dispel in their toolbox. (Like classes who attack physically like rogues, hunters, warriors could be good at cleansing wounds; mages, warlocks, elemental shamans and moonkins would handle curses and dispel magic; shadow priests, retri paladins, monks and DKs could cleanse diseases.)

Over-simplification definitively kills the RPG aspect of WoW, and I have been speaking against it when they have started pruning in MoP (mostly in private). But having tediousness in the game just that people can say: "Wow, this took me a month of work to achieve!" is not my idea of fun. I don't mind needing a month to achieve something, but please frame this in a meaningful way like a questline, like the need to progress a reputation via daily quests which develop storyparts with increasing reputation status (like we had in MoP, for example).

[jvbastel]

The more I read this thread the more I get the feeling that there is very little overlap between the vanilla crowd and the retail crowd.

That would suggest close to a 1:1 ratio between a vanilla player and a new (re)subscription.

This would make this project even more profitable than I first thought.

From what I've seen from the private server crowd, at least on vanilla servers, most were paying customers before, or still are.
I assume the people who never paid for the game would choose newer versions.

[wombinator04]

WE HAVE REACHED 1000 PAGES! THIS IS A MONUMENTAL ACHIEVEMENT!

That'll show Blizzard and Mike Morhaime who is clearly some sort of evil demon god emperor who personally shut down Nostalrius.

[Kyanion]

WE HAVE REACHED 1000 PAGES! THIS IS A MONUMENTAL ACHIEVEMENT!

That'll show Blizzard and Mike Morhaime who is clearly some sort of evil demon god emperor who personally shut down Nostalrius.

so 1k pages of circle jerking will show them? I...guess?

[papajohn4]

Really? I take it you won't buy Legion? Or ever subscribe to WoW? And you know for a FACT nobody who is crying for Vanilla right now wouldn't settle for buying and playing Legion instead?

Retails players have the choice, either play on WoD / Legion or Vanilla. There are the omnivorous.

Legacy players only plays legacy because WoD is shit and WoW is dead. They are the vegetarians.

So yes, the community will be split.

so let me understand.. are you worrying that some of the current wow players may like vanilla more and chose to play Vanilla instead of the new "exciting" expansion? And I guess this is bad because you will have longer ques for LFR? Thats a valid concern, though I disagree with that approach...

Its like you wanna play with the dolls and ask your mama to "hide" the soccer ball, because some kids will go and play football instead..

[Jeniwyn]

The community is already split. Out of the 10 million who were subbed for wod the majority has split off to become non-wow players.

[Kyanion]

From what I've seen from the private server crowd, at least on vanilla servers, most were paying customers before, or still are.
I assume the people who never paid for the game would choose newer versions.

I mean hell one thing we don't know is WHEN those 95 million people have left the game since Vanilla was released. For all we know it could have been massive spikes in WotLK and people started to leave in Cata (even then that was a slow loss). Maybe they didn't lose that many players in Vanilla and they kept playing until Cata. Beats me. Blizz has those numbers though.

What if the best move was to make the game more like WotLK to bring people back and not Vanilla. So many things we don't know and will never know as far as the data on subs goes.

Maybe the pro-Vanilla crowd is just really noisy but more people would come back with TBC/WotLK realms. Fuck if I know, this topic has been going back and forth so much it is exhausting.

[Deleted]

The zones are still there, NPC, most story quests are the same. Both Naxx and Onyxia are in game, with the same bosses and tactics. WoW was intended as a rolling release, and you bought it not as a game, but as a service.

No, they're not still there. You don't even know what you're talking about.

Feel free to go into Naxxramas at level 60. I'd like to see that. Let me know when you get your first Tier3 drop, eh?
So is Onyxia still a 40 people - level 60 - raid? Really?

Are the zones still there, you say? So then Cataclysm hasn't happened in your world?

Is the stuff I bought still there? Really?

I bought it as a rolling release? Hell, no. There was no mention of anything happening in the future on the scale it has happened.

You're simply clueless and have no idea of what you're talking about. but then again that was obvious from your previous post:

It worth noting that all private servers, including Nost, are PvP-only. That is enough to tell you what kind of "community" such servers are usually populated with. In case of vanilla servers, we have "junkies", who are OK with wasting their time in artificial time-wasting and grinding (which no company would recreate today because of social stigma such kind of games obtained), and griefers which abuse the PvP mode of server to harassing everyone else. Do you want such community? I don't.

Obviously in your head, pvp players have some sort of problem.
In vanilla wow, on the official servers, PVE servers (with very few exceptions) have been deserted incredibly fast and PVP servers were all the rage. Not because people were deranged or anything, but because what's the point of getting good gear if you can't use it to fight others?

Some of the most popular WoW videos ever were outdoor pvp videos, which most people absolutely loved. Like I said...you're clueless. So clueless you don't even realize vanilla had double the number of players WOD has. I don't even want to talk about late BC/early Wrath.

But then again, your approval or understanding really aren't necessary. Fortunately for those of us that actually played vanilla, setting up a private server takes under one hour nowadays, including ordering the server in Russia. So why don't you keep talking about stuff you haven't experienced and don't understand - I'd hate to interrupt that...

[Deleted]

The more I read this thread the more I get the feeling that there is very little overlap between the vanilla crowd and the retail crowd.

That would suggest close to a 1:1 ratio between a vanilla player and a new (re)subscription.

This would make this project even more profitable than I first thought.

Only if you would actually get these people back into the game and make them stay. Who knows how many of the people would be staying after the initial hype wears off? How much would they be willing to pay for a 10 year old game?

[Deleted]

So yes, the community will be split.

First, there is no "community" in WoW anymore, just a playerbase. And the playerbase has been split into realms from day one, so I don't see the problem here.

[tommyhil622]

Personally, I get the "Vanilla" thing, but i played Wow from day one. If i ever get a chance to play vanilla wow, it will be fun for the first day or so, after that i will want to go back to the current game. Some people don't realize that the feeling you had way back then will never come back.

[Jeniwyn]

From what I've seen from the private server crowd, at least on vanilla servers, most were paying customers before, or still are.
I assume the people who never paid for the game would choose newer versions.

Yes.

What I'm saying is that there seem to be enourmous difference in preferences on almost any issue. So much so that cannibalisation should be much less than I initially thought.

[Coconut]

so let me understand.. are you worrying that some of the current wow players may like vanilla more and chose to play Vanilla instead of the new "exciting" expansion? And I guess this is bad because you will have longer ques for LFR? Thats a valid concern, though I disagree with that approach...

Its like you wanna play with the dolls and ask your mama to "hide" the soccer ball, because some kids will go and play football instead..

More like Blizzard won't get any money for giving you that choice, so they might as well not buy a soccer ball for you if you're just gonna play with the doll house instead. Can you follow an argument from the start, or are you too scared to face reality?

Also, I don't think the kind of customers who stamp their feet and yell "I must get EXACTLY what I want, or I won't give you a dime!!!" are the kind of customers that Blizzard, or any large company is, or should be, trying to please.

Go and find a custom game producer to deliver EXACTLY the product you want. Make sure you can afford them and that they actually own their IPs, though.

[jvbastel]

Personally, I get the "Vanilla" thing, but i played Wow from day one. If i ever get a chance to play vanilla wow, it will be fun for the first day or so, after that i will want to go back to the current game. Some people don't realize that the feeling you had way back then will never come back.

A lot of people on nostalrius seem to disagree, most of what I read from them is that that feeling did return.

[Kyanion]

A lot of people on nostalrius seem to disagree, most of what I read from them is that that feeling did return.

Well to be fair a lot of them left the game too, I wonder what reasons some of them had. Maybe the nostalgia wore off.

And what portion is 'most'?

[Deleted]

No, they're not still there. You don't even know what you're talking about.

Feel free to go into Naxxramas at level 60. I'd like to see that. Let me know when you get your first Tier3 drop, eh?
So is Onyxia still a 40 people - level 60 - raid? Really?

Are the zones still there, you say? So then Cataclysm hasn't happened in your world?

Is the stuff I bought still there? Really?

I bought it as a rolling release? Hell, no. There was no mention of anything happening in the future on the scale it has happened.

You're simply clueless and have no idea of what you're talking about. but then again that was obvious from your previous post:



Obviously in your head, pvp players have some sort of problem.
In vanilla wow, on the official servers, PVE servers (with very few exceptions) have been deserted incredibly fast and PVP servers were all the rage. Not because people were deranged or anything, but because what's the point of getting good gear if you can't use it to fight others?

Some of the most popular WoW videos ever were outdoor pvp videos, which most people absolutely loved. Like I said...you're clueless. So clueless you don't even realize vanilla had double the number of players WOD has. I don't even want to talk about late BC/early Wrath.

But then again, your approval or understanding really aren't necessary. Fortunately for those of us that actually played vanilla, setting up a private server takes under one hour nowadays, including ordering the server in Russia. So why don't you keep talking about stuff you haven't experienced and don't understand - I'd hate to interrupt that...

My RP-PvE server was actually quite full with login queues in Vanilla and is still one of the most populated of its kind in our region. PvE servers were not deserted. People just did more PvP in BGs after their introduction.

[jvbastel]

Yes.

What I'm saying is that there seem to be enourmous difference in preferences on almost any issue. So much so that cannibalisation should be much less than I initially thought.

I think if blizzard requires you to buy legion and subscribe to play on legacy servers, it would up the active playerbase of legion as well, since the people playing on legacy would try out legion since it would not cost them extra.

It would also give the legion players something to do during content droughts. That would also lower the amount of people unsubscribing between expansions.