Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Vineri]

You can go on the WoW forums right now and look at the realm forums still existing. You can go on web archive and look at the Ysondre forums existing continually for 5 years after LFD was implemented, up until the realm was connected and merged with other

The facts, of course, never got in the way of a good narrative.

Doubtful, since Warcraft purged old data upon introduction of battle.net.

Anyways, looking at cross-realm server forums isn't my cup of tea.

[angrys13]

Doubtful, since Warcraft purged old data upon introduction of battle.net.

They said, since you missed it, you can view archived Ysondre forums.

This is a separate entity from battle.net. It's an entire web archive. I hope I shouldn't need to define what that actually means.

[Mahourai]

Doubtful, since Warcraft purged old data upon introduction of battle.net..

What part of my statement is "doubtful", exactly?

[Vineri]

They said, since you missed it, you can view archived Ysondre forums.

This is a separate entity from battle.net. It's an entire web archive. I hope I shouldn't need to define what that actually means.

I guess you missed it too. Each server had it's own active subforum, not an archive, not a forum for cross-realm clusters. Oh well, it's useless, nevermind.

[Mahourai]

I guess you missed it too. Each server had it's own active subforum, not an archive, not a forum for cross-realm clusters. Oh well, it's useless, nevermind.

Ok, in case you are somehow not a gimmick, let me repeat myself. The realm forums were never removed when you claim they were removed. You can confirm this via web.archive, which is a site that snapshots the state of webpages and has continuous updates for the realm forums for five years after you claim they were closed. This does not mean that the forums were closed and archived - you appear confused about the nature of web.archive.

[deniter]

I gave examples of six different games in the post before the one you quoted.

MMOs are simply no longer the enormous cash cow they were when WoW was at its peak. And the oft-maligned QoL tools which have kept WoW relevant are exactly why the game hasn't fully succumbed to enormous pressure from other more successful game genres. Yes, there is definitely a market for gamers who prefer the game as it was before the QoL tools were introduced. Yes, I understand this is the core concept of Legacy and the entire movement. But it needs to be considered that such a version of the game would not find as broad appeal in today's demographic of gamers as it did when it was still in a period of rapid growth ten years ago.

They no longer are cash cows because they try to cater to the same crowd than MOBAs, FPSs, single player RPGs, etc. but have to make too many compromises to be actually better than the games in said genres. Those genres were hugely popular even when WoW was just released, still WoW gained 10+ mil. subscribers. What once was a great MMORPG is now a mediocre MOBA-SPG -hybrid, and that's how they come these days: FFXIV, Wildstar, SWOTR, ESO, GW2, RIFT, etc. You solo play most of the game and have an option to queue for the MOBA part.

I bet WoW was more successful at this point if they made it a pure PvE/PvP MOBA, and stopped using dev time for a few hour long single player game that is called 'leveling'. All those QoL features move WoW more and more towards MOBA genre, which is not necessarily a bad thing if your only interest is to increase profit, but the game cease to be an MMORPG. Modern MMOs are not MMORPGs; they are single player RPG's with a MOBA inside, and if a single player game doesn't interest you, why play a game that makes you play something else before you can play the game you want.

[Eapoe]

They no longer are cash cows because they try to cater to the same crowd than MOBAs, FPSs, single player RPGs, etc. but have to make too many compromises to be actually better than the games in said genres. Those genres were hugely popular even when WoW was just released, still WoW gained 10+ mil. subscribers. What once was a great MMORPG is now a mediocre MOBA-SPG -hybrid, and that's how they come these days: FFXIV, Wildstar, SWOTR, ESO, GW2, RIFT, etc. You solo play most of the game and have an option to queue for the MOBA part.

I bet WoW was more successful at this point if they made it a pure PvE/PvP MOBA, and stopped using dev time for a few hour long single player game that is called 'leveling'. All those QoL features move WoW more and more towards MOBA genre, which is not necessarily a bad thing if your only interest is to increase profit, but the game cease to be an MMORPG. Modern MMOs are not MMORPGs; they are single player RPG's with a MOBA inside, and if a single player game doesn't interest you, why play a game that makes you play something else before you can play the game you want.

What's the MOBA part you are talking about? I'm assuming dungeons/raids/BGs. Well, maybe you are close with the BG, but how exactly is this any different from what "WoW once was" to what it is today? Only difference is LFD/LFR instead of spending up to an hour spamming chat for a group.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't MMORPG mean Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game? You just said it's an RPG, and it has a multitude of people on at any one time that one might even say is "massive," as well as the fact that it's online. Seems pretty cut and dry to me.
I get what you are trying to say (I think), but you are so far off from your point you might want to type that up differently.

[deniter]

What's the MOBA part you are talking about? I'm assuming dungeons/raids/BGs. Well, maybe you are close with the BG, but how exactly is this any different from what "WoW once was" to what it is today? Only difference is LFD/LFR instead of spending up to an hour spamming chat for a group.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't MMORPG mean Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game? You just said it's an RPG, and it has a multitude of people on at any one time that one might even say is "massive," as well as the fact that it's online. Seems pretty cut and dry to me.
I get what you are trying to say (I think), but you are so far off from your point you might want to type that up differently.

I said earlier MMOs are now designed around LFD/LFR, not the other way around. Dungeons are made so easy you don't have to worry about classes anymore - you can even play without tank or healer. Dungeon quests are now given at the beginning of the dungeon when you enter turning quests to nothing more than free exp, gold and loot, while before the quests were outside in the world and gave you the reason to find a group for a dungeon in the first place. Same is also true for raids - what made players to raid was the quests you got from long quest chains with nice quest rewards, not the raiding feature itself.

Dungeons, raids and 'questing experience' (god i hate that term) are so separated from each others that a player can ignore any of them and still make progress in the game, thus you can say you have a choice to play a single player game (questing), queue for PvE MOBA (LFD/LFR), queue for PvP MOBA (BG's) or play any of those mini games they have put inside the game (pet battles, garrisons, etc.). You can effectively take any of those parts away and make it a separate game and it would work just fine (which takes away a lot of what the first 'M' in 'MMORPG' stands for).

In the old design you had to do quests to unlock these dungeon quests, which gave you a reason to find a group for a dungeon, which gave you some decent gear to make it even possible to reach higher levels. Everything was connected to everything, and you needed other players' help to get anywhere in the game. That's what people mean when they talk about 'social MMO', not only talking to other players.

Finding people for dungeons was pretty hard sometimes, and some kind of LFG-tool could have been great, but as always, Blizzard takes everything from zero to max, which in this case changed the game to something else what it originally was. Should they have introduced a feature that helps finding groups for dungeons, i would still be playing WoW and other MMORPGs. But no, they made a feature that didn't work in the original game, so they changed and redesigned everything.

[Kyanion]

I said earlier MMOs are now designed around LFD/LFR, not the other way around. Dungeons and raids are made so easy you don't have to worry about classes anymore - you can even play without tank or healer. Dungeon quests are now given at the beginning of the dungeon when you enter turning quests to nothing more than free exp, gold and loot, while before the quests were outside in the world and gave you the reason to find a group for a dungeon in the first place. Same is also true for raids - what made players to raid was the quests you got from long quest chains with nice quest rewards, not the raiding feature itself.

Dungeons, raids and 'questing experience' (god i hate that term) are so separated from each others that a player can ignore any of them and still make progress in the game, thus you can say you have a choice to play a single player game (questing), queue for PvE MOBA (LFD/LFR), queue for PvP MOBA (BG's) or play any of those mini games they have put inside the game (pet battles, garrisons, etc.). You can effectively take any of those parts away and make it a separate game and it would work just fine (which takes away a lot of what the first 'M' in 'MMORPG' stands for).

In the old design you had to do quests to unlock these dungeon quests, which gave you a reason to find a group for a dungeon, which gave you some decent gear to make it even possible to reach higher levels. Everything was connected to everything, and you needed other players' help to get anywhere in the game. That's what people mean when they talk about 'social MMO', not only talking to other players.

Finding people for dungeons was pretty hard sometimes, and some kind of LFG-tool could have been great, but as always, Blizzard takes everything from zero to max, which in this case changed the game to something else what it originally was. Should they have introduced a feature that helps finding groups for dungeons, i would still be playing WoW and other MMORPGs. But no, they made a feature that didn't work in the original game, so they changed and redesigned everything.

And in Legion there will be Mythic+ dungeons that just get harder and harder the further you try and push it which will give some of us the difficulty in dungeons we missed from TBC/WotLK/Cata. And give me a break. Raids are not 'easy' if you are serious about it. Just doing it on LFR and going "heh done" does not mean you really did much.

[deniter]

And in Legion there will be Mythic+ dungeons that just get harder and harder the further you try and push it which will give some of us the difficulty in dungeons we missed from TBC/WotLK/Cata. And give me a break. Raids are not 'easy' if you are serious about it. Just doing it on LFR and going "heh done" does not mean you really did much.

I didn't say raids were easy, i said dungeons are because of a nature of an LFD tool. Only a tiny minority raided in MMORPGs anyway, and i'm not one of them. That's why i miss the old WoW and good, challenging and social dungeon runs. I chose not to commit to any raiding schedules, but nerfing all raids to the ground wouldn't make me any more interested, quite the opposite. It's nice if dungeons really get harder and harder in Legion, but it's not good enough if the rest of the game doesn't support it.

[Deleted]

Id rather stab my self in the face then play vanilla ever again.
Holy shit that was some tedious fucking grinding.
The content wasn't more then it is now, it was just more community based which we can't do anymore seeing this community is full of idiots. (like most other gaming communities.. OW? LoL? Dota? CSGO?).

People asking for Vanilla back are really fucking mental.

That being said, do whatever you want. Doesn't affect me if you want to go play vanilla.

[deniter]

Id rather stab my self in the face then play vanilla ever again.
Holy shit that was some tedious fucking grinding.
The content wasn't more then it is now, it was just more community based which we can't do anymore seeing this community is full of idiots. (like most other gaming communities.. OW? LoL? Dota? CSGO?).

People asking for Vanilla back are really fucking mental.

That being said, do whatever you want. Doesn't affect me if you want to go play vanilla.

I guess i'm a fucking mental then.

What i'm looking forward to is some kind of 'Advanced vanilla WoW' where the grind starts at the very beginning and everything takes lots of time.

Definitely something that's not for ADD kids of today's gaming crowd.

[Kyanion]

I didn't say raids were easy, i said dungeons are because of a nature of an LFD tool. Only a tiny minority raided in MMORPGs anyway, and i'm not one of them. That's why i miss the old WoW and good, challenging and social dungeon runs. I chose not to commit to any raiding schedules, but nerfing all raids to the ground wouldn't make me any more interested, quite the opposite. It's nice if dungeons really get harder and harder in Legion, but it's not good enough if the rest of the game doesn't support it.

Umm quoting from your post you said "Dungeons and raids are made so easy you don't have to worry about classes anymore - you can even play without tank or healer" Perhaps you didn't mean to put raid there, but I will agree dungeons are pathetic right now. That will be remedied in Legion at least.

[deniter]

Umm quoting from your post you said "Dungeons and raids are made so easy you don't have to worry about classes anymore - you can even play without tank or healer" Perhaps you didn't mean to put raid there, but I will agree dungeons are pathetic right now. That will be remedied in Legion at least.

That's correct, i didn't mean to include raids. I'll edit my post a bit. Thank you.

[Kyanion]

That's correct, i didn't mean to include raids. I'll edit my post a bit. Thank you.

No worries

[voidillusion]

You're assuming "old school gamers" are a market worth building a game around. It's 2016. The market in which WoW was popular in 2004-2010 is much different today than it was back then. The emphasis today is on shorter, more concise periods of gaming with equal rewards.

Look at the most popular games on the market today: CS:GO, DotA, League, Battlefield...even Overwatch and Diablo. Each one of these games have one thing in common: The average length of a game (or necessity for a gaming session) is under an hour. You can pick up and play for extremely short periods of time. MMOs, on the other hand, often require hours and hours of grinding. This does appeal to some gamers but I think it's a much easier correlation to make that the general gaming market moved away from grindy games like MMOs to the climate that we have right now. As such, it's still an extremely weak argument to say that QoL tools were the only contributing factor since players would've quit anyway as MMOs in general declined in popularity.

Add to that the fact that the "old school gamer" demographic has already moved on with their lives (ie, kids, jobs, etc), and what you're doing is making the incredibly contrived presumption that the same conditions which allowed WoW to prosper in its infancy would somehow duplicate themselves if the game reappeared in a similar state today. This is the core issue with the pro Legacy argument. They look at the situation as a strictly black and white problem -- {x} feature resulted in {y} results -- when it's there's so much more to consider.

Mate you grabbed the bull by the horns now damn it... Isn't that what you say just what many already pointed out? Wow indeed changed to a model of more instant gratification and shorter gamming periods (you even laughed at me a couple of pages ago for doing the same comparison with games like CS, BF, etc) and it's not supposed to! If ppl want to play games of that gendre well.... why not go play them and leave WoW as it was, a MMORPG that requires time investment in a way that a portion of the playerbase still enjoys and aspires to have again?

[Supakaiser]

Mate you grabbed the bull by the horns now damn it... Isn't that what you say just what many already pointed out? Wow indeed changed to a model of more instant gratification and shorter gamming periods (you even laughed at me a couple of pages ago for doing the same comparison with games like CS, BF, etc) and it's not supposed to! If ppl want to play games of that gendre well.... why not go play them and leave WoW as it was, a MMORPG that requires time investment in a way that a portion of the playerbase still enjoys and aspires to have again?

Probably because Blizzard is running a business. A gaming business and to keep up with the times (ie make good $$$$) they have to change their product to fit a changing market. I am not saying the old ways / experiences weren't better or anything but sadly everything makes sense.

[voidillusion]

Probably because Blizzard is running a business. A gaming business and to keep up with the times (ie make good $$$$) they have to change their product to fit a changing market. I am not saying the old ways / experiences weren't better or anything but sadly everything makes sense.

My question was rethorical, ofc the answer is the one you gave

If transforming it into something it's not and shouldn't be its more profitable, they're all over it.

[Relapses]

Probably because Blizzard is running a business. A gaming business and to keep up with the times (ie make good $$$$) they have to change their product to fit a changing market. I am not saying the old ways / experiences weren't better or anything but sadly everything makes sense.

This is pretty much on the money.

The entire impetus of the last few pages of discussion has been whether the QoL changes made to WoW were overall unhealthy for the games' health. And while I definitely understand the arguments made against them, the game still stood to lose a lot more ground by refusing to adapt to the changing climate for gaming in general.

[Deleted]

Could wow be more succesfull than it is now? Could it be a better game than it is now? Yes to both, but it's very easy to say so.

Without retrospect, it's probably doing as well as it could.

A few years ago it probably made less sense to think about Legacy in terms of making more $$$. Now as live makes less and less profit, it makes more and more sense.

Eventually they'll do it, no doubt about. No time soon though, IMO.