Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Borigrad]

yeah blows to die. So your point is "blizz pls not cater to the minorty, cater to me which results in lower sub numbers"

Carry on

What...? When did i say they had to cater to me, i said they have to cater to the majority and not a very vocal minority. Look at literally every MMO on the market, WoW continues to push 5 million active subs, while the rest of them hover at about 2 million active subs, if you want to know where your playerbase is, it's there, in the other MMO's cause the game finally has real competition after 10 years and Blizzard understands that.

[Perkunas]

As opposed to Vanilla where you could literally afk during bosses? Or TBC where some of the top DPS specs literally pressed two buttons (cough warlock and warrior)

Uh, are we comparing Loot for Retards to Vanilla raiding? Frankly, getting to cap in Vanilla was harder than any LFR fight that's ever existed.

[Morbownz]

Hope their servers stay dead just to pee off the whiny little leeches that can't move on

lol, why such spite?

[PenguinChan]

...how else do you measure an expansion's success if not by the number players it retained? Your opinions of the expansion do nothing to contradict the very real fact that WotLK is the last expansion where WoW's playerbase was not only consistent, but growing. That is something that WoW has not experienced since and will likely never experience again.

Pretty sure WotLK gained the least amount of subscribers over its life span compared to any other expansion. It grew what, 1 million near the end? That's nothing compared to classic and TBC. What he said has merit, things get hyped up and become extremely popular and have a growth. After that growth subsides and finally people start flaking off, there will be more people leaving than joining. WotLK was that tipping point and everyone knows that, it's the time period where WoW began to see its retention rate and growth rate pass one another. Cataclysm was unfortunately right at the tail end of where this started to happen, and MoP sustained a slight boost but quickly dropped. Warlords of Draenor was just horrible so retention is almost non-existent after awhile.

Now we have Legion, which by my count will probably end up the same way. Blizzard hasn't had a track record for creating long lasting and engaging content. In recent times anyways.

[AeneasBK]

...how else do you measure an expansion's success if not by the number players it retained? Your opinions of the expansion do nothing to contradict the very real fact that WotLK is the last expansion where WoW's playerbase was not only consistent, but growing. That is something that WoW has not experienced since and will likely never experience again.

If some 100 million people experienced WoW by it's 10th birthday, but the most active accounts at any one quarter was 12 million or 13 million, nobody can say for sure which retained more. Maybe 40 million people played WotLK and didn't like it, and 13 million stayed, maybe only 20 million played and 13 million of them stayed. We cannot say for sure. There was MASSIVE marketing drives during WotLK iirc.

[Marakesh]

As opposed to Vanilla where you could literally afk during bosses? Or TBC where some of the top DPS specs literally pressed two buttons (cough warlock and warrior)

There's more to a mmo than raiding. Also, the social game was huge then, you can't understand 40 man raiding without it. Personally, I don't care for any version of raiding that requires me to schedule days of the week for it, but looks like the same percentage of people finish the final raids now and then.

And this is the main part of the problem here at mmoc. Hey, I love raiding and that's great now! What, millions are leaving? Why, its so super awesome easy now? I mean no one wants anything in between auto-win 100% difficulty and scheduling your life around a video game, right?

[Borigrad]

Uh, are we comparing Loot for Retards to Vanilla raiding? Frankly, getting to cap in Vanilla was harder than any LFR fight that's ever existed.

Time investment doesn't equal difficulty.

https://inanage.com/2016/04/25/vanil...ge-levels-1-5/

1 hour 15 minutes to hit level 5. DIFFICULT AS FUCK.

[Marakesh]

How is it anything other than hypocritical to say that you'd be willing to PAY for a Legacy realm if Blizzard offered it then when the developers who are so eagerly championing your movement tell you that you won't be getting exactly what you ask for, you simply say, "Well fuck you then, I'm just gonna play on another free private server!"

Until Blizzard has legacy servers, it is not hypocrisy, its playing the version of the game you have available.

[Borigrad]

There's more to a mmo than raiding. Also, the social game was huge then, you can't understand 40 man raiding without it. Personally, I don't care for any version of raiding that requires me to schedule days of the week for it, but looks like the same percentage of people finish the final raids now and then.

And this is the main part of the problem here at mmoc. Hey, I love raiding and that's great now! What, millions are leaving? Why, its so super awesome easy now? I mean no one wants anything in between auto-win 100% difficulty and scheduling your life around a video game, right?

I'm one of the few people in the game who do Pet battles, I also encourage everyone to do them, cause they are legitimately fun. The usually response is "Why would i want to invest so much time into something with no reward." Then I look up Ironic on google and chuckle.

[Relapses]

Pretty sure WotLK gained the least amount of subscribers over its life span compared to any other expansion. It grew what, 1 million near the end? That's nothing compared to classic and TBC. What he said has merit, things get hyped up and become extremely popular and have a growth. After that growth subsides and finally people start flaking off, there will be more people leaving than joining. WotLK was that tipping point and everyone knows that, it's the time period where WoW began to see its retention rate and growth rate pass one another.

How is that even an argument??? You'd have to completely ignore the fact that the number of players were RETAINED for it have any merit whatsoever. During WotLK, it was consistently the highest it's ever been and it remained that way for years. Of course the earlier expansions had higher periods of growth because there's a ceiling of how many people would be willing to play a subscription MMO -- WoW reached that ceiling in WotLK. There is no way the growth of Vanilla/TBC would could have been sustainable unless you live in a fantasy world where you think every single gamer in the universe would want to play WoW if it were perfect.

[PenguinChan]

Time investment doesn't equal difficulty.

https://inanage.com/2016/04/25/vanil...ge-levels-1-5/

1 hour 15 minutes to hit level 5. DIFFICULT AS FUCK.

If you did any kind of group quests or quests in general without taking on one mob at a time, it became a lot more difficult and dependent on your specialization and gear. Funny how that still applies today but at an exponential growth. But yes, earlier levels were just tedious since it was too simple to use abilities in better ways. Some classes and specializations never got past the 1 on 1 mob battles, most notably retribution paladin.

[Borigrad]

Why dont play a moba?

Has instant queus, no nasty world you must farm, grind, explore. No time investment

I do, I'm in the top 1% of the skill level for every MobA i've ever played, just like I was in the top 1% for PvE in WoW when i had the ability to invest the time.

[Dormie]

I'd love to watch the people who say Vanilla leveling wasn't harder level through Elwynn while dying 10+ times.

[Triks]

Forum post by the Nost boys detailing some of the stuff.

http://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=44031

EDIT:

If you don't want to read - the meeting with Blizzard is scheduled for next week. They WILL NOT release the source code to the server, they will develop some e-sport spectating tool for Blizzard and they have become the official ambassadors for the Vanilla and private server communities.

Honestly, pretty anti-climactic but we just have to wait and see.

[Borigrad]

I'd love to watch the people who say Vanilla leveling wasn't harder level through Elwynn while dying 10+ times.

I linked a guy taking 1 hour and 15 minutes to level to 5, i wonder how many people are willing to watch it... probably not cause it would destroy they're arguments.

[kary]

I'd love to watch the people who say Vanilla leveling wasn't harder level through Elwynn while dying 10+ times.

How do you die in elwynn? do you run through the kobold cave and spam /sit?

[Borigrad]

Then why you play mmorpgs and what things out of the game which are akin to mmorpgs mr. 1 %?

why not simply play heroes of the storm if you want a wow style moba?

Because... i... enjoy them? What, how is that an argument. I don't raid in WoD cause i don't like WoD, but WoD is still better than Vanilla.

[Perkunas]

Time investment doesn't equal difficulty.

https://inanage.com/2016/04/25/vanil...ge-levels-1-5/

1 hour 15 minutes to hit level 5. DIFFICULT AS FUCK.

Actually having to CC and pull properly is actually more difficult than facerolling. Simply go to a Vanilla realm and try to pull like you can in retail. It's impossible you will get stomped. Mobs hit for larger percentages of health, you do far less damage, mobs have larger social aggro. Leveling was more difficult beyond just "taking time". Hell, leveling in Wildstar at launch was more difficult than most non-heroic raid content in Warcraft.

[PenguinChan]

How is that even an argument??? You'd have to completely ignore the fact that the number of players were RETAINED for it have any merit whatsoever. During WotLK, it was consistently the highest it's ever been and it remained that way for years. Of course the earlier expansions had higher periods of growth because there's a ceiling of how many people would be willing to play a subscription MMO -- WoW reached that ceiling in WotLK. There is no way the growth of Vanilla/TBC would could have been sustainable unless you live in a fantasy world where you think every single gamer in the universe would want to play WoW if it were perfect.

Calm down man, this isn't an argument it's a discussion. It was certainly the most successful for retention rates and by all means the most financially successful. I'm not disagreeing with that at all, because that's just plainly obvious. What I'm saying (And I think the other poster was) is that WotLK rode on the back of just as good if not better previous installments. Classic and The Burning Crusade both had their ups and downs, and so did Wrath. My guess (like I said before) was just time and eventual product growth becoming too grand and the interest of individuals waning. People end up throwing MMORPGs (or any game) away after awhile, and after 1 or 2 expansions (maybe 3 if they were classic players) -- you start to see people just not wanting to play anymore.

There is a huge subset of discussions as to why the decline happened, and it wasn't just purely because of difficulty as most try to assume.

[Zarc]

I like how on every other page there are still people who jump into the discussion with the old "rose-tinted glasses" responses. I mean seriously. We who played from level 1 to 60 on Nostalrius have JUST experience Vanilla. It wasn't 10 years ago. It was a few weeks ago. We know exactly what our feelings and experiences of it was without any sort of nostalgia standing in our way. So please. That part of this discussion is long gone.

Anyways. I'm very excited to hear what Blizzard have to say regarding them meeting with the developers of Nostalrius on the Blizzard campus as announced @NostalBegins. I think if official Legacy servers are ever to become a reality, 2016 would be the year when they are announced. I really hope Blizzard's response will be more than "Pristine servers" (which I have zero interest in). That is, to actually provide what this segment of players are asking for, and not trying to sell something they think might possibly satisfy this demographic of players. Just sell us want we want to buy already.