Time invested then and now

[idunnowatdo]

I mostly lurk and just read most threads throwing in a penny or 2 for what its worth. Ive been following the back and forth of people feeling the game was ruined with they made it more friendly to casuals. People have been clamoring for the game to go back to the "golden days" or whatever. So lets say.....Blizzard did revert some things back to how they where; removing some parts of LFG, making it so you had to go back to cities to change specs/talents, in essence making the game more like how it was back in vanilla or even BC. Given a week a month 2 months prior announcement, Do you think you could invest as much time now as you did back in the day? With the current age of the game do you think you could invest a lot of time into a game with vanilla/bc or even wrath systems? Could the game be sustainable?

[Relapses]

All of the hypothetical questions you asked are the same ones players "against" Legacy realms openly posit as the reasons why they cannot reasonably exist at this point in time. And truthfully, there's no way anybody on this forum can say.

It really depends on personal prerogative.

The players in favor will say that it's an undeniable truth that Legacy will be popular and point to things like the 250k+ signature petition as proof. The pragmatic realists on the other side wonder if they would fall out of popularity quickly after implementation, thereby completely nullifying the development time needed to get them up and running and potentially wasting resources which would be better spent on the retail version of the game.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

I wasted so many hours on private servers chasing that nostalgia. It takes soooo long to get to max, and when you get there you realize there is basically nothing to do other than 40 mans. Which are awesome, but in general even with how poor WoD is, there is still far more to do in WoW now than I could bring myself to do in Vanilla.
At least in TBC you can do dungeons for an extended period.

But no, the answer is there is no way I could dedicate any serious amount of time to Classic.
It sounds like it would be fun if they did add legacy to the live game list, but in reality it would just be a waste of time.
At least for me.

Nostalrius shutting down taught me this lesson. I was so consumed with "the game was better then" to actually make my own opinion about the topic.

[Deleted]

Just turn it around and look at a very specific group of players: Are the people who raided on the highest level back then very different in their mentality compared to the people who raid on the highest level now? If so, were they happier with the heavy farms on potions, flasks and resistance gear than they are now with the much higher skill-cap due to refined mechanics, highest balance due to a big homogenization of stats/abilities? You could ask them about the leveling process with every new expansion they have to go over through or the multiple alt raids in the first week of progression which is kinda the kind of "time investment" it was when you had so farm your stuff to raid before every single raid.

I believe the quality how you spend your time and with what aim is the true question here. Watcher just told us again that the highest level of the game is mythic raiding and high rated Arena/RBG, character progress is only available if you participate on these roads or you will stop at a certain point and be left behind. I believe this philosophy is what truly causes all the unhappiness of people who do not have the ability or mentality to participate here. Because even if they invest more time than others, they will not go anywhere.

[AndaliteBandit]

I suspect the playerbase has aged since WoW's launch. Most of the people hanging around these days are veterans, not newbies.

So I would suspect that most players don't have the luxury of being able to play the game "full-time" anymore. Blizz probably has data to support this, which would explain why the game's been made more and more casual friendly in recent years.

[purebalance]

I suspect the playerbase has aged since WoW's launch. Most of the people hanging around these days are veterans, not newbies.

So I would suspect that most players don't have the luxury of being able to play the game "full-time" anymore. Blizz probably has data to support this, which would explain why the game's been made more and more casual friendly in recent years.

That's a pretty bad assumption since nobody has the "full time" to devote to the game short of professional gamers. As a kid your parents more than likely restricted you. As a young adult, you either had work or college in the way taking more time than it really should. When you finally get job/school issues under control you might have children in the equation. Getting older really has nothing to do with ability to devote time as each era has time restrictions. However you may choose to devote the time you do have to yourself to other activities at each stage (drinking as young adult, playing outside as a child, family trips as a parent).

[AndaliteBandit]

That's a pretty bad assumption since nobody has the "full time" to devote to the game short of professional gamers. As a kid your parents more than likely restricted you. As a young adult, you either had work or college in the way taking more time than it really should. When you finally get job/school issues under control you might have children in the equation. Getting older really has nothing to do with ability to devote time as each era has time restrictions. However you may choose to devote the time you do have to yourself to other activities at each stage (drinking as young adult, playing outside as a child, family trips as a parent).

When I said full-time, I meant ~40 hours a week, which a lot of people did manage (or at least try) to pull off in high school and college. Typically at the expense of other things, like grades and a social life, but many of the people I know who used to devote that much time to the game still grew up to be successful and productive adults.

[purebalance]

When I said full-time, I meant ~40 hours a week, which a lot of people did manage (or at least try) to pull off in high school and college. Typically at the expense of other things, like grades and a social life, but many of the people I know who used to devote that much time to the game still grew up to be successful and productive adults.

You can easily do that as an adult "at the expense" of your job hours. Still doesn't stand. You can invest the same amount of time regardless of age because each age bracket has its own restrictions.

[AndaliteBandit]

You can easily do that as an adult "at the expense" of your job hours. Still doesn't stand. You can invest the same amount of time regardless of age because each age bracket has its own restrictions.

Yes, but the consequences of doing so escalate exponentially as you age. You might lose household privileges as a kid. As an adult, you might lose your house or kids.

[idunnowatdo]

All of the hypothetical questions you asked are the same ones players "against" Legacy realms openly posit as the reasons why they cannot reasonably exist at this point in time. And truthfully, there's no way anybody on this forum can say.

It really depends on personal prerogative.

The players in favor will say that it's an undeniable truth that Legacy will be popular and point to things like the 250k+ signature petition as proof. The pragmatic realists on the other side wonder if they would fall out of popularity quickly after implementation, thereby completely nullifying the development time needed to get them up and running and potentially wasting resources which would be better spent on the retail version of the game.

Thats what I was trying to say. Personally I dont think I could at this time in my life and if I cant play end game stuff i wouldnt find the game too fun.

[Thimagryn]

I just finished my 7-day 'Return to WoD!' trial. I literally got everything I wanted to do done within that time. Hit lvl 100, did LFR, got a full set of PVP gear, got my garrison up. All on the 4th day. I really couldn't figure what else to do on the other 3 days other than monotonous bullshit or doing side stuff like achieves/old raids.

I could invest more time in the game if there was something to invest in. I play Heroes of the Storm just to do dailies and get gold. I have no problems with a grind when there's something to work towards. Unlocking a new hero is rewarding. I don't see what apexis grinds would get me when PVP gear got me close to 700 ilvl and it was super easy to get with a few hours of Ashran.

It's hard to say. I don't know if I'd be happy with doing grinds to get that one epic item like I did back in TBC. Going back to that system is a huge step backwards. At the same time, the current game is so broken that there's very little to work towards other than Mythics. Those are just higher stats that I know will be outdated by the time of the next expansion. Spending months on 5-10% better stats upgrades is not rewarding. It should be the other way around, where time spent opens more gameplay options, like getting gear in Diablo which changes your build.

I felt like I got all I needed out of WoW in 4-5 days. I can't imagine spending 2 full years on this.

[Mytheros]

The problem, in my opinion, with just so many topics raised on game forums is simply that most of the issues talked about (and this topic is no different) is purely subjective to each individual. I think that's why so many times flame wars erupt because people are very passionate about their own views or beliefs on things. What one person says "There's literally nothing to do in this game that can't be done in one week"....another could easily come back to "LOL well you haven't scratched the surface of doing everything if you think that..." (which inevitably leads to the "Have you cleared all the raids? Have you gotten all variations of Lore master? Have you attained gladiator status? have you learned all profession recipes......have you mastered all classes...have you explored every inch of every zone...have you this...have you that...etc. etc.".....

Me? I say to each their own... the only thing that I don't like is when one person makes fun of another for what they did or didn't do. In other words if you are the type that says "I did everything in a week and now I'm bored of the game"...hey that's your right and you are entitled to that -- as long as you then don't slam others saying crap like "LOL really guys you stick around in the game just to level alts of each class ....or just to kill a raid boss you already killed 1,000 times, etc.".... that's the stuff i don't like (if its in the context of joking around I guess its ok though).

Just as with our bodies and health -- being different foods, drinks, medicines may affect us all in different ways.....everyone has their own set of motivations and interests...some people for example are completionists....they will literally quest until they have cleared every single quest in a zone.....if you play that way -- there's no way you are running out of things to do in game any time soon with literally thousands of quests in the game. Finally an ENORMOUS factor that drives me up a wall in conversations about consuming content, because its so overlooked or just don't right not mentioned at all, is how much you play the game. If you someone says "stupid game has nothing to do I completed literally ever goal I wanted to achieve in two weeks!".....that's generally the way we see it presented in debates on forums.... but then if you dig deeper what the player leaves out is that in those two weeks -- they averaged about 8 hours per day playing the game....while you could argue 'still that's not promising for the content of an entire expansion' true but the point here is ....don't dismiss time played when people tell you "there's nothing to do"...personally in my mind my own joke to people when they say that is "yeah well if you didn't play the game 200 hours a month maybe you'd still have stuff to do..."


I don't play like I used to -- my play times are whenever the mood hits me these days so its hard to lock in to specific hours so I always just use an "average"...on average for the last year or so I've probably played WoW 5-10 hours per *week* (now that's an AVERAGE, in reality there's been whole months I don't log a single minute in the game). Lately (last two months) play time increased about double 10-20 hours per week on average and yes its been due to legion excitement.

Back during Vanilla and maintained through Wrath I embarrassingly played probably an *average* of 30 - 40 hours a week. But I can say even when Legion is released I will *NEVER* go back to that amount of time invested in the game again, first off I'm just not "into" the game like that anymore so the temptation to play it that much is just not there anymore...second I'm older now -- there's other interests to spread my free time on that are more rewarding than playing a computer game all the time.

That said I fully plan to take off a nice 4 day weekend to splurge on playing Legion and I will maintain no time restrictions on myself -- it'll pretty much being "play until I'm tired and want to sleep OR until I'm bored of playing".

[Taeldorian]

I wasted so many hours on private servers chasing that nostalgia. It takes soooo long to get to max, and when you get there you realize there is basically nothing to do other than 40 mans. Which are awesome, but in general even with how poor WoD is, there is still far more to do in WoW now than I could bring myself to do in Vanilla.
At least in TBC you can do dungeons for an extended period.

But no, the answer is there is no way I could dedicate any serious amount of time to Classic.
It sounds like it would be fun if they did add legacy to the live game list, but in reality it would just be a waste of time.
At least for me.

Nostalrius shutting down taught me this lesson. I was so consumed with "the game was better then" to actually make my own opinion about the topic.

This. I wasted way too much time on private servers in general slowly realizing there is actually way more to do on retail (not wod, but every expac before it). Nost taught me a lesson as well, couldn't find shit to do other than gear up and do 40 mans. Was fun for a while but it got boring quick, leveling was slow and got boring. Back in Vanilla the world was new but I've seen every zone to date now multiple times so leveling again but slower was really boring. Back in Vanilla the raids were new but I've run them over 100 times for mounts/mog so seeing the same thing but a bit harder also got boring.

As for now, in WoD, I don't do much other than gear. Gear for raids, do the raids and that's it. In Legion I see plenty of sustainability. World quests, artifact power grind, mythic+ dungeons for those who don't really like raiding but still want to earn gear that rewards them for their skill. There's a lot to get done in Legion so I can see plenty of people sinking time into it. Game definitely has a lot of potential for sustainability.