Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Nayami]

Don't mind me, just increasing the post count.

Infracted

[KrazyK923]

- I truly respect the world, because a mob of my level can solo me. I pay attention to what is there, not to my minimap to see where to go for a quest, not on theorycrafting. Pulling mobs is an art form; pulling one extra mob easily becomes a wipe. No aoe leveling.

Nothing more immersive than 60 levels of mobs who do a single ability or just auto attack you.

- You need people around you to complete quests, socializing is required.

Such a romanticized version of how reality actually worked back then. You're assuming that there were always people around to do stuff. There wasn't. And when there wasn't you sat there doing nothing because the elite quests gave by far the best rewards and experience. So players resorted to try and solo Hogger on their own at level 10, and died ten times over until they just gave up. There's a reason why they added in a "Killed X many times by Hogger" in the achievement system. I find it hilarious how your community always immediately glosses over the fact that there were plenty of times in Vanilla when there weren't people doing the elite quest you needed to do and you were just boned.

- You care about gold, it means something, and budgeting is essential.

This is a completely subjective point, but sure, I'll bite. I despised the fact that you basically had to whore yourself out to the auction house in order to get an epic mount. The fact that I got a free one at level 40 was the explicit reason why I initially chose a Warlock. Especially since the flight points were (and still are to a large extent) so utterly NOT optimized, it took forever to get to some place. I can't for the life of me figure out why people sit there with these nostalgic goggles on pretending that it was a good thing that it took like 15 minutes to get from Ironforge to WPL/EPL. Sitting on a taxi and doing nothing is such immersive gameplay!

- Phenomena in game actually exist in game. If it's there, it's there. No phasing, no cut scenes, and the scenes that exist other people can also see.

What scenes? There were maybe...what...four, if that, actual "cut scenes" that happened out in the world. Other than that there were no big story moments. There wasn't a cohesive story that wove throughout the zones, save maybe two or three. There wasn't some grand goal you were trying to help achieve. You were killing Kobolds for one town. Then going to the next town and killing defias. And then going to another town and killing Murlocs. And then going to another zone and killing Defias.

- Gear is tangible and you respect it. Sometimes you buy white gear or equip greys. Swords look like actual swords. Cities aren't packed with people wearing glowing neon-colored weapons.

Gear was HORRIBLE stat wise. You'd have stats on weapons that were entirely useless to every single person. Bows that would have spirit. Swords that would have intellect. Staves that would give you strength. I'm also not sure what world you were living in, but people still looked goofy as hell when they had mismatched ~50-60 quest/dungeon gear. Also what are you even on about? Swords still look like swords. This seems like such a nonsensical point here.

- Valid universe. Basically Orcs vs Humans, like the original games. The mounts make sense and don't go overboard. No pandas, worgen, draenei. The setting actually looks medieval. There are farms, castles, lumber mills, nothing weird.

Ah yes, the original games. You know, like in Warcraft 2 when you were fighting Orcs on another planet? Or Warcraft 3 where you were fighting zombies, or Draenei in the expansion, or Chen showed up in the Orc campaign. Furthermore, Vanilla wasn't really even Orcs vs Humans. Did you actually play then as you claim? There was such little factional conflict that most of it was left for the battlegrounds. Christ, the most infamous HvA area was Southshore vs Tarren Mill, which were Forsaken vs Humans.

Outside of Mists of Pandaria (Which lol the argument of "hurr pandas" is so asinine) there hasn't been an expansion that hasn't fit exactly in line with what Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne had set the world up to be like. MoP actually was refreshing since it wasn't just constant piggybacking on the RTS games for its narrative threads.

- The zones are mystical and beautiful. It's like a Zelda game, almost every zone is a comforting fantasy setting, with a few darker zones for upper level content.

For as much hate as WoD rightly deserves, this point equally applies to WoD zones. Shadowmoon Valley is goddamn beautiful. Gorgrond is exotic and alien looking. Nagrand has that weird serene/but/exotic look to it. Frostfire Ridge is strikingly different than most zones in the game. You can extend this to MoP as well, just to make my point. Jade Forest vs Kun Lai summit vs the Dread Wastes vs Krasarang Wilds.

Meanwhile we have zones like Burning Steppes and Searing Gorge or the Blasted Lands and the Badlands or Tirisfal Glades and Silverpine (And throw in Hillsbrad too). There were multiple zones in Vanilla that looked like the other ones. Yes, it was beautiful, but can we please just stop ignoring things to make our point?

- The older character stats and mechanics are cool. Skill levels, talent trees, spell rankings, a variety of spells to have fun with (many of which were removed), realistic hunter dead zone, way less self-heals, way less defensive and offensive cooldowns, true respect for warlocks and their ability to summon, true respect for buff classes like pallies or druids, true advantages and disadvantages to classes when forming a dungeon group (druids only have battle res), etc.

You are literally the first person I've ever encountered who thought that the janky ass way spell ranks worked in Vanilla was a good thing. The fact that it was more optimal to use lower ranks of spells because they were more mana efficient. Or the fact that plenty of specs were just plain bad. That if you played them, you were mechanically just worse than other specs rather than how it is now, where specs are all pretty balanced by there are slight DPS differences. Compared to Paladins, where you HAD to be a healer or you were garbage. I would bring up how stupid the talent tree system is, but I'm assuming you're one of those people who thought it was good that 90% of the talents were wholly uninteresting and only slightly buffed crap by 2/3/4/5% per rank as if that was interesting gameplay.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As usual with people in your crowd, you've seemed to completely ignore the actual reality of how Vanilla played in favor of this romanticized nonsensical version that didn't even exist. That or you're talking out of your ass and didn't actually play back then and are just repeating what you've heard.

Vanilla was amazing for its time. But a lot of that amazement was the fact that it fixed/streamlined a lot of the janky ass systems from EQ. And they've refined the game further since then. Sure, go ahead and be mad that the classes in Legion had abilities pruned. I don't agree but at least I can see that argument. But the idea that mechanically, at its core, ignoring the subjective crap like "gold was more rare!," the game is far better back then, with all of its bugs and nonsensical designs, than when it was released is just absurd.

[Simplex]

Doesn't prove mmo's are gone and fading.

Sort of expected this kind of an answer, because no such proof obviously exists. Based on other game's performances, internet store's infrastructure and shift in general player's preferences, I think MMOs have been playing the second fiddle since around 2012. What you believe is up to you

[Deleted]

Such a romanticized version of how reality actually worked back then. You're assuming that there were always people around to do stuff. There wasn't. And when there wasn't you sat there doing nothing because the elite quests gave by far the best rewards and experience. So players resorted to try and solo Hogger on their own at level 10, and died ten times over until they just gave up. There's a reason why they added in a "Killed X many times by Hogger" in the achievement system. I find it hilarious how your community always immediately glosses over the fact that there were plenty of times in Vanilla when there weren't people doing the elite quest you needed to do and you were just boned.

Funny becouse i joined Nostalrious after like 1y what they launched and there was so many players in leveling zones and i had no problem at all do elite Q.

[Struggle]

- You need people around you to complete quests, socializing is required.

Didn't have to have them, though, and I feel this requires a clarification. There were enough solo quests to get you to the point of only needing to grind a few bars to level and go to the next zone. You could play old iterations of Warcraft (Vanilla and BC) casually. Millions did and had a blast. Not saying you were implying otherwise, but a better way to word it would be "You had the option to complete quests and socialize with the people around you, and there were legitimate rewards for grouping up if you chose."

- People bring their WoD min-maxing mindset to the game, so there is way more theorycrafting than back in the day.

This isn't the fault of WoD, and as much as I don't want to sound like an anti-legacy waterhead I have to say that your nostalgia is getting in the way here. People didn't theorycraft or min-max as much WAAAY back then because the game was still new and everyone "sucked" at it. Hell, watch some of the old C'thun kill videos. One of my favorites is a Warlock PoV with the guild Fusion. He keyboard turned, he was worried more about mana management than doing damage when he's got life tap, and missed probably 20 seconds worth of casting on weakened C'thun. By the time the fight was over 5 or 6 people had died, but they still killed it.

- Toxic, elitist, nerd-raging, sometimes racist community

I didn't raid hardcore in Vanilla but I did in BC with a decent ranking. That mentality has always existed, and always will. It's human nature. Some people are better than others and different things, and a select few of those some people feel the need to let everyone know how good they are. And like the casual players back then did, you can either ignore it and not care...keep playing the way you want, or use it as inspiration like I did and get better.

That's the enjoyment of the game for hardcore players. Being the best, playing with the best. They pay their sub fees just like everyone else does, and are entitled to have fun with the game like everyone else is.

[KrazyK923]

Funny becouse i joined Nostalrious after like 1y what they launched and there was so many players in leveling zones and i had no problem at all do elite Q.

Yeah that's probably because there was only one server for you to go. Which wasn't how Vanilla was. By that very fact alone, Nostalrius was not like Vanilla.

I played on Azgalor in Vanilla, one of THE highest population servers. And there were plenty of times when I was leveling (And it wasn't at some weird time like 2 or 3 am, it was 4-7pm after I got home from High School) where I couldn't find people for elite quest. And that was early in Elwynn or Westfall. Not even going to get into the higher zones, like trying to do any of the goddamn obnoxious troll quests in Hinterlands or ANY of the Plaguelands stuff, Eastern or Western.

If there's one word I could use to describe how I remember Vanilla it's this: waiting. Sitting around doing nothing waiting to play more of the game.

Waiting to find people for an elite quest. Waiting while I fly back to Ironforge to upgrade Shadowbolt to rank 12. Waiting for an hour looking for a group for Scholomance. Waiting for an hour to find a group for Dire Maul so I could hopefully get my epic mount quest finished for the tenth attempt. Waiting for mobs to respawn since they took FOREVER. Waiting in Deadmines for 30+ minutes because our healer dropped after two or three of us went back to IF to find a new one. And that was in a guild large enough to be able to successfully weekly raid BWL/AQ40 and starting into Naxx before BC dropped.

There was so much goddamn waiting in Vanilla. And it served no purpose. It wasn't making the game better. I wasn't more immersed. I sure as hell wasn't having fun. When one of the most popular early addons in Vanilla was BEJEWELED so you could play another game while you were waiting, that means your game isn't working how it should.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Funny becouse i joined Nostalrious after like 1y what they launched and there was so many players in leveling zones and i had no problem at all do elite Q.

I remember, the zones were just so crowded we could barely get mobs. The fight was constant - Westfall was particularly painful. That damned stew? Took me hours just to be able to complete the quest.

Not even going to comment on that escort quest in Loch Modan.

[Uurdz]

Sort of expected this kind of an answer, because no such proof obviously exists. Based on other game's performances, internet store's infrastructure and shift in general player's preferences, I think MMOs have been playing the second fiddle since around 2012. What you believe is up to you

I believe they've always been niche but Dota was around long before WoW. I think more non-gamers are now playing games and thus the population for those less uh nerdy games has picked up.

Smartphones have rapidly expanded the gamer pool. Happy to elaborate further but hope this explains my point?

WoW didn't struggle until the very end of Wotlk and cata. Don't get me wrong - they did well but they lost growth and went backwards. They tried desperately to provide a more inclusive game but targeted a market that is flakey and in the end lost their core. I remember starting wild star and hoping it would be like vanilla wow, got dissappointed but it did ok I guess. In my opinion of course

- - - Updated - - -

I remember, the zones were just so crowded we could barely get mobs. The fight was constant - Westfall was particularly painful. That damned stew? Took me hours just to be able to complete the quest.

Not even going to comment on that escort quest in Loch Modan.

Yes and the anti-legacy crowd think that this is the worst possible thing. It's not at all, it's just not everyone's cup of tea

[Wries]

Yeah that's probably because there was only one server for you to go. Which wasn't how Vanilla was. By that very fact alone, Nostalrius was not like Vanilla.

I played on Azgalor in Vanilla, one of THE highest population servers. And there were plenty of times when I was leveling (And it wasn't at some weird time like 2 or 3 am, it was 4-7pm after I got home from High School) where I couldn't find people for elite quest. And that was early in like Elwynn or Westfall. Not even going to get into the higher zones, like trying to do any of the goddamn obnoxious troll quests in Hinterlands or ANY of the Plaguelands stuff, Eastern or Western.

If there's one word I could use to describe how I remember Vanilla it's this: waiting. Sitting around doing nothing waiting to play more of the game.

Waiting to find people for an elite quest. Waiting while I fly back to Ironforge to upgrade Shadowbolt to rank 12. Waiting for an hour looking for a group for Scholomance. Waiting for an hour to find a group for Dire Maul so I could hopefully get my epic mount quest finished for the tenth attempt. Waiting for mobs to respawn since they took FOREVER. Waiting in Deadmines for 30+ minutes because our healer dropped after two or three of us went back to IF to find a new one.

There was so much goddamn waiting in Vanilla. And it served no purpose. It wasn't making the game better. I wasn't more immersed. I sure as hell wasn't having fun. When one of the most popular early addons in Vanilla was BEJEWELED so you could play another game while you were waiting, that means your game isn't working how it should.

Here's the thing, and yes I don't expect everyone to agree but to some of us the charming part of early WoW was that it really was a "world" and it carried some consequences by the word. To make it really simple: A harsher outdoor world made stakes seem higher. And that attracts players as well. Just look at really punishing games as Dark Souls and the Day-Z mod.

I leveled during TBC, one patch before they removed most Elite quests, but had no trouble finding people for them and on a med-pop server no less. People were still leveling because leveling still took time and counted as a part of character progress.

Though I have to say.. The LFG-system was only just recently really improved with the Group Finder in WoD. I really like it and I think spamming chat channels of old simply isn't charming in any way.

The details of a pristine realms needs to be looked into more than simply removing a couple of leveling conveniences, but it's a great first thought to an ultimate solution: Let us "who want to be tortured", be off to our own little realm and enjoy ourselves. Then lets see in polls which type of player enjoyed the game the most in the long run

[Shridevi]

Vanilla was amazing for its time. But a lot of that amazement was the fact that it fixed/streamlined a lot of the janky ass systems from EQ. And they've refined the game further since then. Sure, go ahead and be mad that the classes in Legion had abilities pruned. I don't agree but at least I can see that argument. But the idea that mechanically, at its core, ignoring the subjective crap like "gold was more rare!," the game is far better back then, with all of its bugs and nonsensical designs, than when it was released is just absurd.

I acknowledge some of your points, but your intention confuses me. I'm talking about my observations while actually replaying vanilla about a month ago. You are trying to think back and criticize, perhaps because you like current WoW.

I am not saying that vanilla WoW translates into the same amazing game today as it once was. I am just saying that I enjoyed it far more than WoD, that it is a part of gaming history, and it is absolutely necessary to preserve it in the form of a dedicated server. You are saying that my practical observations are wrong, even though you haven’t tried it, while most who have tried it usually cite the same reasons for liking it that I did.

What you are saying is that you would be okay with having every old Sonic, Mario, Zelda, Mega Man game purged from existence, because the game designs started off as primitive, and that we should all play the new Sonic games (which have questionable artistic integrity) instead. People appreciate the “primitive” qualities and the intense challenge. Games today are rarely challenging. There is currently no way to play older expansions of WoW. I can watch German expressionist films from the 1930s and they are very primitive, boring, and visually interesting at the same time, but at least I can watch them.

You are saying that there is zero merit to being able to play classic WoW? Even though we paid around $60 for it? We paid for it, yet we’re stupid for wanting to play it?

[Struggle]

Nothing more immersive than 60 levels of mobs who do a single ability or just auto attack you.

When that single mob can kill you if you're not paying attention, yeah, it's immersive.

Such a romanticized version of how reality actually worked back then. You're assuming that there were always people around to do stuff. There wasn't. And when there wasn't you sat there doing nothing because the elite quests gave by far the best rewards and experience.

You only sat around and did nothing if you were doing it wrong. Go grind some mobs and get your level so you can move into the next zone and get an even better reward and more xp, go to a major city and look for a group for said quest.... His version may be romanticized but yours is the opposite end of the spectrum's equivalent.

This is a completely subjective point, but sure, I'll bite. I despised the fact that you basically had to whore yourself out to the auction house in order to get an epic mount. The fact that I got a free one at level 40 was the explicit reason why I initially chose a Warlock. Especially since the flight points were (and still are to a large extent) so utterly NOT optimized, it took forever to get to some place. I can't for the life of me figure out why people sit there with these nostalgic goggles on pretending that it was a good thing that it took like 15 minutes to get from Ironforge to WPL/EPL. Sitting on a taxi and doing nothing is such immersive gameplay!

You didn't have to whore yourself out to the AH, you had to farm. Find a decent item to sell, or farm up enough shit to sell to afford your mount. Gives you a goal to work towards, and when you finally got it the taste was that much sweeter. Flight paths were annoying back then, but they provided time to organize your gameplan for leveling, or what materials you needed to buy when you got to Stormwind/IF/Org, or maybe you could get up and take a shit? Freestyle.

There were multiple zones in Vanilla that looked like the other ones. Yes, it was beautiful, but can we please just stop ignoring things to make our point?

He didn't say otherwise, though. You're literally ignoring what he said to make your own point...

You are literally the first person I've ever encountered who thought that the janky ass way spell ranks worked in Vanilla was a good thing. The fact that it was more optimal to use lower ranks of spells because they were more mana efficient. Or the fact that plenty of specs were just plain bad. That if you played them, you were mechanically just worse than other specs rather than how it is now, where specs are all pretty balanced by there are slight DPS differences. Compared to Paladins, where you HAD to be a healer or you were garbage. I would bring up how stupid the talent tree system is, but I'm assuming you're one of those people who thought it was good that 90% of the talents were wholly uninteresting and only slightly buffed crap by 2/3/4/5% per rank as if that was interesting gameplay.

Are you blind? I see comments all the time about how the old talent trees and spell ranks were preferable and I don't even play or hardly keep up with the damn game anymore. You were more or less 'forced' into a spec as a hybrid player back then, though, and it's easy to see where people had problems with that. It was remedied by a large margin in BC, though.

As usual with people in your crowd, you've seemed to completely ignore the actual reality of how Vanilla played in favor of this romanticized nonsensical version that didn't even exist. That or you're talking out of your ass and didn't actually play back then and are just repeating what you've heard.

As usual with people in your crowd, you lump everyone into crowds. Vanilla didn't play as horribly as you remember it either, and just because people enjoyed and want to play the game again doesn't mean it's only due to us having a "romanticized nonsensical" viewpoint of the game we played. Pull your head out of your own ass and you might make the realization that some people think differently than you.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Yes and the anti-legacy crowd think that this is the worst possible thing. It's not at all, it's just not everyone's cup of tea

That's the thing. I think some people do not understand there's a world of difference between Vanilla and today. While I applaud Blizzard for trying to make things right with Pristine, it doesn't answer to the request of bringing back the game as it was. You'll never be able to recreate the initial experience simply because the game has changed too much. It would literally take more work to do so than to create legacy servers.

I'm still not against Pristine though and if they do go through with it, I'll definitely switch realm (actually more like start from scratch but eh, same thing).

[KrazyK923]

When that single mob can kill you if you're not paying attention, yeah, it's immersive.

Which could always happen.

You only sat around and did nothing if you were doing it wrong. Go grind some mobs and get your level so you can move into the next zone and get an even better reward and more xp, go to a major city and look for a group for said quest.... His version may be romanticized but yours is the opposite end of the spectrum's equivalent.

I did have to resort to grinding mobs. That doesn't mean the system was good. The opposite, in fact.

You didn't have to whore yourself out to the AH, you had to farm. Find a decent item to sell, or farm up enough shit to sell to afford your mount. Gives you a goal to work towards, and when you finally got it the taste was that much sweeter. Flight paths were annoying back then, but they provided time to organize your gameplan for leveling, or what materials you needed to buy when you got to Stormwind/IF/Org, or maybe you could get up and take a shit? Freestyle.

Hahaha, yes you did. You did not have 1000 gold unless you were hardcore farming for months and months and months or you where a AH whore.

No, sorry. I'm not going to sit there and pretend that waiting 15 minutes while flying on a taxi was good. There was nothing to prepare. You were sitting there doing nothing. It's amazing to me that you're defending this as some kind of good thing. This wasn't like Dark Souls where you need to prepare your every single action when you landed in a city.

As usual with people in your crowd, you lump everyone into crowds. Vanilla didn't play as horribly as you remember it either, and just because people enjoyed and want to play the game again doesn't mean it's only due to us having a "romanticized nonsensical" viewpoint of the game we played. Pull your head out of your own ass and you might make the realization that some people think differently than you.

Yes, it did. Vanilla was horribly optimized, full of bugs, with terrible class design that left almost every class having a "this is the only good spec" situation. Maybe if your crowd had actual good points instead of "the game is bad now," then people wouldn't constantly saw you guys are just looking through nostalgic goggles.

[kenoathcarn]

Yeah that's probably because there was only one server for you to go. Which wasn't how Vanilla was. By that very fact alone, Nostalrius was not like Vanilla.

I played on Azgalor in Vanilla, one of THE highest population servers. And there were plenty of times when I was leveling (And it wasn't at some weird time like 2 or 3 am, it was 4-7pm after I got home from High School) where I couldn't find people for elite quest. And that was early in Elwynn or Westfall. Not even going to get into the higher zones, like trying to do any of the goddamn obnoxious troll quests in Hinterlands or ANY of the Plaguelands stuff, Eastern or Western.

If there's one word I could use to describe how I remember Vanilla it's this: waiting. Sitting around doing nothing waiting to play more of the game.

Waiting to find people for an elite quest. Waiting while I fly back to Ironforge to upgrade Shadowbolt to rank 12. Waiting for an hour looking for a group for Scholomance. Waiting for an hour to find a group for Dire Maul so I could hopefully get my epic mount quest finished for the tenth attempt. Waiting for mobs to respawn since they took FOREVER. Waiting in Deadmines for 30+ minutes because our healer dropped after two or three of us went back to IF to find a new one. And that was in a guild large enough to be able to successfully weekly raid BWL/AQ40 and starting into Naxx before BC dropped.

There was so much goddamn waiting in Vanilla. And it served no purpose. It wasn't making the game better. I wasn't more immersed. I sure as hell wasn't having fun. When one of the most popular early addons in Vanilla was BEJEWELED so you could play another game while you were waiting, that means your game isn't working how it should.

part of these things you label as negatives also brought something to the game i think you overlook...

"Waiting in Deadmines for 30+ minutes because our healer dropped after two or three of us went back to IF to find a new one"

it also forced you to actually socialize with people, and generally when you found a replacement priest and completed a succesful run after he was your new go-to healer for the next dungeon you decided to run.

By contrast to how to works now where you just que up, lose a healer, re-que, find a healer, complete dungeon or repeat previous steps and all the while never saying a word to anyone. I cant even remember the last time i talked to someone outside of my guild in the game, i guess I'm to busy in the garrison collecting my gold cap for the third time.

One thing i personally miss is the open-world pvp, too many realms now have awful amounts of faction imbalance, the last time i had fun was thanks Censor on the Timeless isle that everyone had a cry about and got nurfed and never to be seen again.

I would really like to see blizzard do something about this on the legion servers, promote getting back to a 50:50 ratio for pvp realms somehow (free transfers or merging realms).

[Darsithis]

it also forced you to actually socialize with people, and generally when you found a replacement priest and completed a succesful run after he was your new go-to healer for the next dungeon you decided to run.

By contrast to how to works now where you just que up, lose a healer, re-que, find a healer, complete dungeon or repeat previous steps and all the while never saying a word to anyone. I cant even remember the last time i talked to someone outside of my guild in the game, i guess I'm to busy in the garrison collecting my gold cap for the third time..

It didn't force you to do anything. You didn't have to socialize then and you don't have to now. It's always been a choice, just now it's even easier to socialize, despite the anonymity of the group finding tools.

[Uurdz]

Which could always happen.



I did have to resort to grinding mobs. That doesn't mean the system was good. The opposite, in fact.



Hahaha, yes you did. You did not have 1000 gold unless you were hardcore farming for months and months and months or you where a AH whore.

No, sorry. I'm not going to sit there and pretend that waiting 15 minutes while flying on a taxi was good. There was nothing to prepare. You were sitting there doing nothing. It's amazing to me that you're defending this as some kind of good thing. This wasn't like Dark Souls where you need to prepare your every single action when you landed in a city.



Yes, it did. Vanilla was horribly optimized, full of bugs, with terrible class design that left almost every class having a "this is the only good spec" situation. Maybe if your crowd had actual good points instead of "the game is bad now," then people wouldn't constantly saw you guys are just looking through nostalgic goggles.

Your final paragraph ruins any of your other points imo.
1) vanilla/tbc/Wotlk was and is to the day the most successful mmo. Nothing has come as close. You seem to bad it like it was super shit game. It wasn't.
2) you argue this is all through nostalgia googles yet your posting in a thread that's had over 20,000 individual posts as a result of the nostalrius server. People played this for a full year, until recently. Nostalgia from a month ago? What do they all have some kind of mental illness???

[Shridevi]

This isn't the fault of WoD, and as much as I don't want to sound like an anti-legacy waterhead I have to say that your nostalgia is getting in the way here. People didn't theorycraft or min-max as much WAAAY back then because the game was still new and everyone "sucked" at it. Hell, watch some of the old C'thun kill videos. One of my favorites is a Warlock PoV with the guild Fusion. He keyboard turned, he was worried more about mana management than doing damage when he's got life tap, and missed probably 20 seconds worth of casting on weakened C'thun. By the time the fight was over 5 or 6 people had died, but they still killed it.

You're right that it isn't WoD's fault, but it has been pervasive since WotLK, and seeing it applied to classic WoW was kind of a buzz kill. I almost hate that WoW did this to me, because it's impossible for me to play a game without min-maxing, researching approaches and strategies online, and being super competitive in general. It also means that WoW eventually became one of the best strategy games of all time, but approaching games intuitively is much more relaxing and fun.

[Uurdz]

It didn't force you to do anything. You didn't have to socialize then and you don't have to now. It's always been a choice, just now it's even easier to socialize, despite the anonymity of the group finding tools.

There is far less incentive to socialise and build a friends list now as you can accomplish a lot without talking to others. Vanilla you just didn't achieve anything of much consequence without chatting to others.

I'd say he's right to say the game forced you to socialise at least to accomplish things like raids.

[kary]

People mistake needing additional members for their group as socializing.

Socializing is talking to people because you want to, not need to.

But eh.

[Vash The Stampede]

First off,
at the start of WoD Ret wasnt that bad, abit OP in PvP if youd ask me but that doesnt change anything.

I wasn't there for it. I played for 3 months after 6.2 was released. And soon after that there was a 8% damage buff to everything.

And as far as legion goes they are only making it worse by taking any ability that took somewhat of skill away and adding things like a 30 second aura mastery, more mindless AoE stuns and so on, but were getting way too off-topic here.

In short, as much as some poeple hate the old talent tree, i really preferred it.

The good thing about Legion is that devs finally took notice and added it to the weapons. So the old talent tree sorta made its way to the legendary weapons. I'd prefer it just brought back.

Ontop of that i prefered the old gating of content, for example, nowadays you always get to do the latest raid after being maxlevel for a few hours, if it was like "back then" you would atleast see Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry before going into HFC, besides having 4 difficultys of each, but thats just my opinion, didnt raid that much.

Difficulty modes are a lazy mechanic that tries to appeal to casual and hardcore audiences. It doesn't work for any of them. That was another big appeal about Vanilla WoW. There's just a raid, and not a LFR Raid, or Normal Raid, or Heroic, or Mythic. I'm going to pull my hair out for all the raids they have in the game.

Just one raid, and make it so new players have to try and experience older raids first, cause that's where the epics are.

Doesn't prove mmo's are gone and fading.

MMO's were great when players were getting a lot for their money. But modern WoW devs are cutting corners with "copy and Paste quests" and dailies.