From a Vanilla Player: The reason why I think WoW lost its glory.

[Riistov]

Because the concept of "difficulty settings" eludes most WoW forum posters it seems.

This hit the nail on the head. Many of the complaints I see regarding raids being easy are coming from people sleepwalking through it on LFR/Normal.

[Dug]

Then why less people play if the majority want that?

But this is assuming people that stopped playing had some sort of grievances with the game. I got my circle of friends (7ish) to finally pick up WoW in wrath/cata and most stopped playing after a few months because they were extremely casual, saw what they wanted to see and bowed out. Only one of them stayed until WoD and even he quit because he got busy with school.

The problem is assuming everyone leaves the game because they're dissatisfied and not simply busy/bored/want to try different things.

I'm not going to say my friends are the norm but they view the game like any other game that you buy, play for a bit and forget about. Generally most people on forums are the more "hardcore" and therefore invest way more of themselves into the game.

[Vineri]

Vanilla wasn't hard - it was new. Most of the raid mechanics that existed back then wouldn't make it into an instance nowadays. (Mobs must die at the same time! one of you needs to run out of the group to avoid exploding and killing the raid!!!!). What made them hard was a player base who'd never done anything like this before coupled with a punishingly small loot table that slowed down progression massively. In MC each boss bar raggy dropped 2 epics for a 40 man team. Which meant most of the 'vanilla hard' bosses were just a dps check. As soon as the raid group finally got enough people equipped they could plow through most of the bosses like a knife through butter. It wasn't that you somehow became amazing - it was that your tanks and dps were equipped enough to handle Vaelastrasz the Corrupt you beat him. If not? Your raid wiped.

As for outside content - again, most instances were hard purely because of overwhelming packs of mobs. It wasn't a skill check in most cases, it was things like having 8 mobs at a time, bad aoe and constantly respawning packs behind you which made druids unviable as instance healers because they didn't have a general resurrect (for some insane reason).

Fact is, encounters now are a lot more intricate. Most bosses have involved mechanics, different phases and, as said before, most players haven't touched mythic raiding or the higher levels of mythic+.

I do understand some complaints (I think the loss of unique server identity was a shame) but 'dumbed down mechanics' is not one of them.

But Vanilla was fun. Challenging and fun. The new stuff can just be nerfed anyways with addons - this makes the Retail encounters more annoying than anything else. Vanilla was just you and whatever you brought to the table (mostly .. some addons did help with timing and such)

Also managing 40 people was part of the game. If you were not a leader, a raid officer, or a class leader, then you may feel the game was easy because other people did the research for you, and simply told you what to do.

I agree though that server community was a tremendous loss. I loved spotting players of opposite faction who did me wrong in the past, and stomping them. Nowadays I'd never find anyone I ever saw before

[Adamas102]

/snip

As a raider in vanilla, sure I was happy when I got my T2. It looked cool, and it didn't bother me that I was dressed like every mage in the guild. And every mage in all the other serious raiding guilds. You might have seen one or two of us at a time in SW or IF and thought "man, that guy is special", but we saw each other all the time while waiting outside raid instances. When we moved into Naxx I was even able to get T2 on my alt pally through our farm runs which I thought looked awesome. Didn't bother me that I looked like all the other pallies in our guild or all the other T2+ guilds and I certainly wasn't playing to show off to the fucking plebs in front of the IF bank.

You want to find validation from strangers online and pretend like your gear and achievements matter(ed)? Go right ahead, but don't put all of us vanilla raiders up on that pedestal. I can assure you that most of us didn't care about what you or anyone else thought about our gear. We knew we weren't special in that respect among our peers. We played that game that we found fun at the time. Simple as that.

[Zalamander]

I have a feeling you are one of those people that need extreme hand holding in the game or you get lost and feel like there is nothing to do. It's ok if you hate Legion. But the numbers suggest you are in the minority. And it still goes back to the point I made originally ... if you aren't into what is on the table now, then maybe you should move on. And I don't say that meanly ... I say it because it is very obvious this is the direction of WoW for some time to come. And if you aren't into this expac, chances are you are no longer into the game. Cheers.

I'm not that ignorant to let my favorite game I invested over 11 years in get ruined by a new crappy design lead without giving feedback mate. I just tell you what I see. The bouble has already burst. activity in my guild since two weeks ago is already halfed. Many of my friends already quit playing WoW again. Even WoD didn't have such bad rep this early in and it scares me. I don't like the way the game is heading for sure, neither should anyone else if they care at all.

[thevidya]

But Vanilla was fun. Challenging and fun. The new stuff can just be nerfed anyways with addons - this makes the Retail encounters more annoying than anything else. Vanilla was just you and whatever you brought to the table (mostly .. some addons did help with timing and such)

Also managing 40 people was part of the game. If you were not a leader, a raid officer, or a class leader, then you may feel the game was easy because other people did the research for you, and simply told you what to do.

I agree though that server community was a tremendous loss. I loved spotting players of opposite faction who did me wrong in the past, and stomping them. Nowadays I'd never find anyone I ever saw before

Vanilla was "fun" because it was new. It's challenge came from bad design not difficulty. Artificial Challenge if you will.

Vanilla had a LOT of problems. Flight Paths were broken and you could get stuck on a griffin for hours. Classes were not tuned properly. Talent trees made you have to spec like everyone else or be at the bottom of DPS charts. Dungeons took more than an hour because of poor design and being too big yet having a lot of empty spots so it was just a big maze of nothing filled with sparse packs of mobs (BRD).

And yeah what about addons? Vanilla had them too, idjit. BigWings was the precursor to DBM.

[Deleted]

I think that besides the obvious lack of community in the game, the other problem this game has and Blizzard has had since several years is how linear their games have become. The company is so used to guide players by the hand that you feel like you have no freedom of choice in how you enjoy the game. An example with Legion is how they force one way of leveling instead of many. I remember during the first years of the game you could level up just grinding mobs or doing dungeons. It was less efficient than quests but it was still fast enough to be a decent alternative. You also had pvp leveling during cataclysm or mop I think. But Legion forces you to quests through all the zones to reach lvl 110 and have worldquests. Because if you try to level with dungeons, grinding or pvp, you will have to do that for 10000 longer.

This is very obnoxious in my opinion, I get that WoW is a themepark but this is really pushing it to the extreme. I don't like to feel constantly "guided" by the developers when I play an open world MMO. This is not call of duty scripted gameplay and yet the direction of the game is making it increasingly similar to these type of games.

[Mizix]

This discussion is a waste of time, mainly because it fails to achieve anything. People who have never played Vanilla or were children at the time mostly continue to keep talking out of their arse referring to how they think Vanilla was and the argument goes on and on and on.

Agreeing on most of what he's said about vanilla playing and couldn't agree more on the part quoted here. Pretty please, could people who never even played Vanilla STOP pretending to be vanilla players and tell us how it was? Furthermore, could people stop being so shocked that a 12 y.o game has changed over time?! @OP

[Dsc]

I agree 100% with the new generation, i really started seeing the change from wrath onwards. But in the same breath i think Wrath invited a whole new sort of player base.

This was the HUGE turning point. (right after flight and those stupid "emblems of Heroism, now called valor)

LFD came with wrath, as did AOE tanking ( pallys had it in TBC though)
And AOE all things, No CC, no interaction or planning a pull.. go go random pug, go go kkthxbye, que again....


see the pattern of shit that followed? Loss of community, and people giving a care about one another in a Massively Multiplayer, Online Game.


I blame Ghost-troller and the Wrath team for what this game has devolved to. Its what it is. and... we still play it, longing for what will never be again.

[alabaster jones]

I blame Ghost-troller and the Wrath team for what this game has devolved to.

In Ghostcrawler's defence, he has said he a lot of regrets about introducing LFR (source), and at this point they couldn't really take it away without some pretty dire ramifications (owing to the design shift to a more single-player focused WoW).

[TheCount]

You can't stay the same for 8+ years in this industry, its constantly changing. I started late vanilla and stayed subbed all through mid WoD. Came back during Legion pre patch and personally I have been having a lot of fun since.

[Deleted]

Whats up with people claiming raiding was harder in vanilla? Classes was harder to play duo 'complex' rotations?

Raids are way harder now, the bosses and mechanics are much more complex. Its just that many raiders have raided for years, ofc they are used to it. Much easier to find great guides and strats too.

Classes have more mechanics to use, in Vanilla was it like spamming 1-2 abilities all the time lol.

Thanks for listening, but it is not like I am on a nostalgia crysis,

Honestly sounds like you are nothing else than in a nostalgia crisis.

[Inci]

WoW is evolving to survive, Indeed its not the same old game, but its changing for the BETTER to keep itself going, adjusting with time so how about you appreciate things they are instead of wishing what they could be.

- - - Updated - - -

P.S: From a Vanilla player.

[quintpp]

WoW is evolving to survive, Indeed its not the same old game, but its changing for the BETTER to keep itself going, adjusting with time so how about you appreciate things they are instead of wishing what they could be.

- - - Updated - - -

P.S: From a Vanilla player.

this pretty much,wow has had its up and downtimes "cough wod/cata", i think legion is bringing back alot i have missed and im enjoying it so far,i just hope blizzard will keep the good work up the rest of the expansion.

[Deleted]

Whats up with people claiming raiding was harder in vanilla? Classes was harder to play duo 'complex' rotations?

Raids are way harder now, the bosses and mechanics are much more complex. Its just that many raiders have raided for years, ofc they are used to it. Much easier to find great guides and strats too.

Classes have more mechanics to use, in Vanilla was it like spamming 1-2 abilities all the time lol.

Honestly sounds like you are nothing else than in a nostalgia crisis.

It really wasn't... it's just that more of it stemmed from randomness.
I've seen someone claim in this thread that difficulty as a warlock was "fearing mobs without pulling additional trash"... This shouldn't happen with proper preparation anyway and even if it did... it was more a RNG issue than most things.

The game became way more complicated, but we also have more ways to deal with situations arising nowadays... so it is hard to say whether the game itself became harder or not.

[Jewsco]

Wait what? This makes no sense at all. How could your gear, profession and the spells be different as well as the build from EVERY other mage? Could you research and invent new proffessions that didn't exist? Or spells. What interesting builds did you work out that couldn't be looked up on a website that gave you the optimal talent build (just like now)?

..and the rest is just your standard snoozefest. How often do we need to hear " Epics are too easily available and raiding is not as rewarding as it was anymore"? Epics were BoE on the AH ever since Molten Core and really nothing special anymore since TBC. "Rewarding raiding" I guess is crying that you don't have exclusive content? Well, that dies with over a million people clearing ICC, with the 30% zonebuff the LFR of WotLK. No, strike that. Pugging Naxx in ICC probably killed "exclusive content for special snowflakes"

For the record: Also Vanilla player, haven't skipped a day and raided all content progressively.

Don't use facts in another things were better back in the day thread. Because back in the day my toon walked up hill thru snow both ways to raid it to do dungeons.

[Deleted]

WoW is evolving to survive, Indeed its not the same old game, but its changing for the BETTER to keep itself going, adjusting with time so how about you appreciate things they are instead of wishing what they could be.

- - - Updated - - -

P.S: From a Vanilla player.

And that's your opinion.

Please people don't drop opinions as facts cause is really bad for discussion topic

[Deleted]

And that's your opinion.

Please people don't drop opinions as facts cause is really bad for discussion topic

Thats all you Pro Vanilla people have been doing for months now.
Your opinion isn't a fact either.

I personally played Vanilla from and raided 6 times a week, cleared everything up to halfway trough Naxx.
It was NOT better then what we have no, it was even grindier, even more gated and just a pain in the hole. (my opinion of course).

[Tart]

Thats all you Pro Vanilla people have been doing for months now.
Your opinion isn't a fact either.

I personally played Vanilla from and raided 6 times a week, cleared everything up to halfway trough Naxx.
It was NOT better then what we have no, it was even grindier, even more gated and just a pain in the hole. (my opinion of course).

How old were you?

[Deleted]

Thats all you Pro Vanilla people have been doing for months now.
Your opinion isn't a fact either.

I personally played Vanilla from and raided 6 times a week, cleared everything up to halfway trough Naxx.
It was NOT better then what we have no, it was even grindier, even more gated and just a pain in the hole. (my opinion of course).

Of course my opinion is not a fact, and i don't wan't that either. Opinions are just a reflect of what we think. And i am pro vanilla but i don't wan't to force nothing to nobody.

I raided too in vanilla, like you, i never cleared Saphiron and Keltuzhad. I have to grind stuff to prepare for the raids? Yes. But FOR ME, that was ok cause i see the game as and RPG, and that wat's all was about.

And of course I RESPECT your opinion, and i love to read all the opinions from everybody, that's is the best we have here i guess.

Also yes, i like tha game how it is today, yes, i have 12 more years now (i starting playing Vanilla with 19, now i have 31), and yes i have less time to play the game, but for me that doesn't mean that i cannon enjoy no more how the game was back in the day.

I like raiding today, i like clearing normal, heroic and mithyc, and i like to do stuff in less time. Just, i like more the old ways. That's all.

I personally listen heavy metal all the time, and also i prefeer old albums than new ones. Maybe the sound is old and not like today, but i like it more. In that case, is the same.