Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[McNeil]

I don't think the rose coloured glasses excuse can be used if you can still play vanilla WoW today (trough private servers) and then still preferring it over retail. I did play Nostalrius for a few weeks before it was closed, and I had much more fun than in all of WoD's lifespan. And I actually enjoyed the first week in WoD, but after that it felt like there was nothing to do. While in Nostalrius I was only level 15 at that time.

Vanilla and retail are whole different games, and I enjoy them both for what they are. But I prefer vanilla more for its open world feel and server community.

[Edison]

I don't think the rose coloured glasses excuse can be used if you can still play vanilla WoW today (trough private servers) and then still preferring it over retail. I did play Nostalrius for a few weeks before it was closed, and I had much more fun than in all of WoD's lifespan. And I actually enjoyed the first week in WoD, but after that it felt like there was nothing to do. While in Nostalrius I was only level 15 at that time.

Vanilla and retail are whole different games, and I enjoy them both for what they are. But I prefer vanilla more for its open world feel and server community.

Indeed
The whole rose-tinted argument is extremely dumb. Nostalrius wouldn't keep growing after a year and Kronos and other vanilla servers wouldn't be this big if it was just "Rose tinted glasses, nostalgia" As you say it's a complete different game, and while I'm fine with people loving the current wow I find it weird how the anti-legacy crowd are so against it, like you're not allowed to prefer the classic era.

[anon5123]

Exactly. MC starting to be easy in the 1.9 patch to 1.12. 1.1 to 1.6 whas hard as fuck.

Only because class mechanics were so broken and unbalanced. Talents were fucked up, abilities were badly tuned, gear had shitty stats on it, etc.

It wasn't until later patches that talents got fixed and gear got non-shit stats.

It was hard because of bad game design, not because of actual difficulty.

[slaise1]

Only because class mechanics were so broken and unbalanced. Talents were fucked up, abilities were badly tuned, gear had shitty stats on it, etc.

It wasn't until later patches that talents got fixed and gear got non-shit stats.

It was hard because of bad game design, not because of actual difficulty.

Asymmetrical game design makes up for some intresting gameplay

[Holtzmann]

Asymmetrical game design makes up for some intresting gameplay

Only so far as people don't know what's optimal. WoW knowledge has become saturated.

Back in Vanilla (and I'd argue even early TBC) people didn't have the easy access to information they have now. Yeah, Thottbot and ElitistJerks were a thing, but most people lived and died by the words of "that guild mate who seemed to know everything" instead. Since video guides like Tankspot's (hi, Lore!) weren't around and PTR information wasn't as prevalent as it is today. Back then guilds had to roll up to a new boss, bash their heads against it until they figured out a strategy, then use whatever gear dropped to equip their members in whatever way seemed appropriate (Fury Warriors in leather armor, anyone?).

Nowadays the moment a new raid is released, everybody and their dog already has strategies outlined and a list of BiS gear and stat weighs for their entire roster. Anything that's "asymmetrical" is immediately labeled as either "overpowered" or "useless".

Wanna know a good reason Vanilla WoW was interesting to so many people? The game and its systems were still being discovered. I remember back in Wrath folks were still trying to figure out the formula for Armor Penetration. It took a Blue poster to point them to the correct equation. Nowadays everything has been poked at and dissected to hell and back even before it's released.

I'm pretty sure my current enjoyment of Legion is in part because I actively avoided information about the expansion. I didn't check any beta streams, I didn't look at news, I just went in with what the worldofwarcraft.com frontpage told me. And now I'm actually discovering new things as I level my characters (I don't raid, so I can afford to take it slow) and wonder of wonders... I'm having as much fun as I had back when I just started playing. Discovery is an important thing in MMOs.

[anon5123]

Wanna know a good reason Vanilla WoW was interesting to so many people? The game and its systems were still being discovered.

Pretty much, yeah. Nostalgia plays a huge factor in it. Not entirely, but a large part. Back then, the game was new and mysterious and information was hard to come by. Just being new to something, by itself, will have a huge impact on one's opinion of it.

For example, I played Ragnarok Online back in 2004 or so. Fucking loved the shit out of it. Played it so much, across both official servers and private servers, for like 3 years. But looking back at it now? It's fucking horrible and clunky and unbalanced and broken as shit. Design choices that make no sense, 2-button classes, completely unbalanced PvP, hell the PvE was unbalanced as well, because only like 5 or 6 classes were even viable to solo with; every other class had to stick with groups just to do basic leveling/grinding. There was also fucked up shit classes like Merchant, Blacksmith and Alchemist that were literally unviable for combat, and were only used for crafting things and opening shops. So, so much in this game was completely fucked up and broken, compared to WoW...

...but I still look back super fondly on it because I spent a good portion of my childhood playing it. Just listening to the (fucking amazing) soundtrack gets me all tingly with good nostalgic feelings.

That's not to say Vanilla is broken or bad, it's perfectly playable even today. It's just that, yeah, a huge aspect of the game's appeal was that it was this huge, expansive world full of all sorts of fun and interesting things, and being able to experience it all for the first time without being spoiled or informed beforehand, THAT is what people remember when they think back to 2004-2006. I too remember my first night playing WoW, making a human Mage and thinking "holy fuck this game is way better than Ragnarok", getting to level 12 in one night (this was in late BC, not vanilla, so EXP gains were a lot faster) and playing with my brother who already had a high level warlock, etc...yeah, I've got tons of fond memories too, and while playing BC again is perfectly fun, it's not quite *as* fun as when I first started, because I don't have that sense of intrigue anymore, because I'm a hardened veteran that knows shitloads about the game.

[Gadzooks]

Not my idea, honestly. There was a post back buried where they cited another game out there with private servers and a live version running different patches and the devs didn't throw a fit. I'd like to know where exactly somebody running an outdated version of your game on a not for profit private server could cost you your IP? I really want to see that because if that's the case copyright law is psychotic because what's stopping me from making a copy of Lord of the Rings Extended thus shattering the the rights and making it free from now on?

What's stopping you from making a free copy of LOTR Extended?

A very, very, very easy concept: the materials don't belong to you.

Even a 6 year old can understand that simple a concept, yet you seem to have difficulty doing so.

Everything follows from that. There is no combination of events/situations that will make a World Of Warcraft server legal, without Blizzard's explicit permission.

What other companies have done is 100% irrelevant.

My comment wasn't about "losing" a copyright", but that a private server is indeed a "threat" to the IP involved, as it's infringement, thus, a "threat", and that you should test your theory that it's not in court. My bad for not being specifoic about the rest of the nonsense you posted.

I shouldn't have to explain this, but then: MMOC, and the legacy server agendas. It's a never endong source of ignorance and hilarity.

[Deleted]

Only because class mechanics were so broken and unbalanced. Talents were fucked up, abilities were badly tuned, gear had shitty stats on it, etc.

It wasn't until later patches that talents got fixed and gear got non-shit stats.

It was hard because of bad game design, not because of actual difficulty.

And after 12y only thing we get rid of are broken mechanics rest is there till this day.

[Vash The Stampede]

'PvP - Massive imbalance and honour grind'
'Raid - Forced into certain roles because others were just completely useless. All paladins were forced to heal at one point, remember!?
'Dungeons - A gateway to Raids where you spent 30 minutes or more in Stormwind spamming trade chat for a group only to have to travel to the dungeon. If someone left you gotta do the entire thing again!' I have fond memories of getting a group only to have someone leave, having to go back to stormwind, get a new member and then go back to the dungeon....
'Quests - Boring, repetetive, running to and from the quest giver, long travel times because of mounts at 40 and 60. Let's not forget that there are no repeatable quests!
'Proffessions - Lol, grind grind grind grind grind.

Oh hey. I just covered all of the content that vanilla WoW had. Let's finish this off...

Nobody will deny that Vanilla isn't perfect, but neither is modern WoW. Sure you don't have those issues, but you bring up lots of new ones.

PVP- are Ret Paladins still not brought to RBG's? Nothing like trying to PvP as a dps spec that everyone still hates to have around.
Raid - While I don't have to heal in a modern raid, I do have to deal with LFR, Normal, Heroic, and now Mythic. WTF? Four, that's four versions of the same raid.
Dungeons - No longer a gateway to raids, cause everyone just AOE spams their way through. And again, multiple difficulties.
Quests - I hate repeatable quests cause it wasn't fun the first time, and there's not much difference between Vanilla and modern WoW except today I could pull a group and not die. You can solo every quest today without ever needing to group up.
Professions - Was the best in TBC where you'd get a unique perk. WoD was just using them as a way to do Garrison crap that's essentially farming.

Oh hey, modern WoW sucks too, just differently. Some people just think Vanilla had less suck.

'Classes - Yeah it was great, all mages had to be frost, all paladins had to heal, all warriors had to tank, the list goes on. If you raided, you were forced to play a certain roll. If you PvP'd you HAD to play a certain roll because the others were so underpowered.

As someone who's played Ret since Vanilla, I can assure you that the community would still rather have us heal, and considering the talent changes, so does Blizzard. Here's a famous Ret Paladin video before TBC was released, where we finally got Crusader Strike. Give me this Vanilla, cause it was the best Vanilla.

But let's face it, even with all these facts dangling right infront of your faces like some kind of preverbial carrot, you still can't see the damn thing because your rose coloured glasses are so thick they even block out the fucking sun.

Hello, I am the ret.

I am the Retribution Paladin, maybe you have heard of me??

I am the one who is not playing WoW 7.0.
Or sometimes also, the Legion - but that is hard, because several people do not like it when I do that.

Sometimes I am said to "Hey yous, you ret. Stop playing pirate servers"

I el oh el at this notion - and substitute my own. Often times my server hunting has gotten me trouble

[Perkunas]

What's stopping you from making a free copy of LOTR Extended?

A very, very, very easy concept: the materials don't belong to you.

Even a 6 year old can understand that simple a concept, yet you seem to have difficulty doing so.

Everything follows from that. There is no combination of events/situations that will make a World Of Warcraft server legal, without Blizzard's explicit permission.

What other companies have done is 100% irrelevant.

My comment wasn't about "losing" a copyright", but that a private server is indeed a "threat" to the IP involved, as it's infringement, thus, a "threat", and that you should test your theory that it's not in court. My bad for not being specifoic about the rest of the nonsense you posted.

I shouldn't have to explain this, but then: MMOC, and the legacy server agendas. It's a never endong source of ignorance and hilarity.

I'm actually neutral on the topic of private servers for existing games that run outdated versions and realize that Blizzard wont give in to legacy realms until Warcraft is completely floundering in order to juice another 2 years out of it. The fact that you lump me in with the others because I'm not hostile toward the idea of people playing an outdated version of the game makes you simply come off like a zealot. I realize that it's far more realistic to hope for "Pristine Realms" as opposed to waiting for a legacy or pinning your hopes on a private server that can be shut down. I have also not argued the legality of what Blizzard did. It's WELL within their right to do so, but it doesn't make it any less of a dick move especially considering that Daybreak actually embraced the Project 1999 and EA has allowed UO private realms to stand. It's once again "The Lebowski Dilemma" here. "You're not wrong, Walter. You're just an asshole." Blizzard is pulling a Walter.

The way you came off was that Blizzard would lose their rights to their IP and now that you've cleared up what you meant it doesn't change that it's just a matter of principle. So get off your moral high horse unless you're planning on diving on the guy on the corner trying to sell copied DVD's. Seriously, you're beyond sanctimonious.

[Eleccybubb]

Tbh I have decided to start again on a Wrath server that I won't name because ofc rules and tbh can just play that when I'm not sat on FF14. Legion is in no way bad I'm just not enjoying it and I don't want to force myself to.

[Kyanion]

I'm actually neutral on the topic of private servers for existing games that run outdated versions and realize that Blizzard wont give in to legacy realms until Warcraft is completely floundering in order to juice another 2 years out of it. The fact that you lump me in with the others because I'm not hostile toward the idea of people playing an outdated version of the game makes you simply come off like a zealot. I realize that it's far more realistic to hope for "Pristine Realms" as opposed to waiting for a legacy or pinning your hopes on a private server that can be shut down. I have also not argued the legality of what Blizzard did. It's WELL within their right to do so, but it doesn't make it any less of a dick move especially considering that Daybreak actually embraced the Project 1999 and EA has allowed UO private realms to stand. It's once again "The Lebowski Dilemma" here. "You're not wrong, Walter. You're just an asshole." Blizzard is pulling a Walter.

The way you came off was that Blizzard would lose their rights to their IP and now that you've cleared up what you meant it doesn't change that it's just a matter of principle. So get off your moral high horse unless you're planning on diving on the guy on the corner trying to sell copied DVD's. Seriously, you're beyond sanctimonious.

While I see where you are coming from on many of your points I have to disagree with you on one thing. It is NOT a dick move of Blizzard to shut down Private Servers that get out of hand. There is a very big difference on private servers getting hundreds of thousands of people playing and what Project 1999 is. Everquest was not bringing in massive amounts of players and money compared to what WoW is doing. I can understand EA and Daybreak allowing UO and EQ servers because those games were much much smaller. We're talking about a game that still has millions of people playing it and giving plenty of income to Blizz. Just a bit different.

[Hrishi]

I'm still unsure why people feel the need to post about how shitty classic WoW is in this thread. If you don't like classic WoW and don't intend to play on a legacy server, why does it matter to you what other people enjoy?

[Aggrophobic]

I'm still unsure why people feel the need to post about how shitty classic WoW is in this thread. If you don't like classic WoW and don't intend to play on a legacy server, why does it matter to you what other people enjoy?

Becuase Blizzard spending time and resources on "legacy" might mean less on new versions/expantions of WoW.
Most players would probably not like that.

[Duronos]

Indeed
The whole rose-tinted argument is extremely dumb. Nostalrius wouldn't keep growing after a year and Kronos and other vanilla servers wouldn't be this big if it was just "Rose tinted glasses, nostalgia" As you say it's a complete different game, and while I'm fine with people loving the current wow I find it weird how the anti-legacy crowd are so against it, like you're not allowed to prefer the classic era.

Uhh but Nostalrius had more people on than ever after a year. I played from release till they shut it down and until the announcement of the shutdown it had more people on it than ever before so that is a complete utter fallacy.

[Duronos]

Nobody will deny that Vanilla isn't perfect, but neither is modern WoW. Sure you don't have those issues, but you bring up lots of new ones.

PVP- are Ret Paladins still not brought to RBG's? Nothing like trying to PvP as a dps spec that everyone still hates to have around.
Raid - While I don't have to heal in a modern raid, I do have to deal with LFR, Normal, Heroic, and now Mythic. WTF? Four, that's four versions of the same raid.
Dungeons - No longer a gateway to raids, cause everyone just AOE spams their way through. And again, multiple difficulties.
Quests - I hate repeatable quests cause it wasn't fun the first time, and there's not much difference between Vanilla and modern WoW except today I could pull a group and not die. You can solo every quest today without ever needing to group up.
Professions - Was the best in TBC where you'd get a unique perk. WoD was just using them as a way to do Garrison crap that's essentially farming.

Oh hey, modern WoW sucks too, just differently. Some people just think Vanilla had less suck.


As someone who's played Ret since Vanilla, I can assure you that the community would still rather have us heal, and considering the talent changes, so does Blizzard. Here's a famous Ret Paladin video before TBC was released, where we finally got Crusader Strike. Give me this Vanilla, cause it was the best Vanilla.





Hello, I am the ret.

I am the Retribution Paladin, maybe you have heard of me??

I am the one who is not playing WoW 7.0.
Or sometimes also, the Legion - but that is hard, because several people do not like it when I do that.

Sometimes I am said to "Hey yous, you ret. Stop playing pirate servers"

I el oh el at this notion - and substitute my own. Often times my server hunting has gotten me trouble

As someone who played retail Vanilla and Nost this is probably the best explanation as to what a lot of us feel. We're not saying Legion is bad we're just saying overall there is "less suck" in our opinions. Vanilla while it has its glaring issues overall is a very solid game even if rotations etc. are a bit basic (BC imo is the best version of WoW and fixes a lot of Vanilla shit). If I played Vanilla again on official Blizzard servers I'd hope they would make it harder and add some cool extra things or mechanics to dungeons without taking away the charm of the game, like make the bosses in deadmines have harder mechanics but leave trash the same.

I actually think heroic 5 mans was a great addition to the game in BC because it made 5 mans relevant at level 70, I'd say add it to Vanilla but if you do that you have to upscale raid difficulty as well which leads me to my next point... Make the raids harder. By today's standards they are to easy due to access of information, add extra mechanics again to places like MC and BWL but at the same damn time do not allow us to datamine stuff like that, no PTR etc. If shits bugged to all end then we'll find out when we get there like we did before (C'thun).

I'd also say add some more quests to certain zones like Dustwallow Marsh for Horde and Thousand Needles for Alliance. Allow retribution Paladins to actually be something. Now allowing retribution paladins to be good would take away from Vanilla gear and how you gear right? No make that shit have the same kind of RNG for drops as it did before (even if RNG in Vanilla can be frustrating it's a key part of the game) but add more pieces of gear for every class spec because if there is one gigantic glaring issue with Vanilla that is bigger than anything else it's that the some specs are just complete shit until gearing really found its own right when AQ finally came out.

As someone who has played it again I really did enjoy it but if I rolled druid I'd be a healer no matter what and some zones run bone dry for quests to early. Horde actually have it easier than Alliance for leveling up since they have way more quests overall. The only change I'd say that is controversial in this post is heroic 5 mans, that may go to far but I think it could potentially work. I know there are more problems with things like ret pally than just gearing and changes could be made a little without changing them really at all (Judgement tweaks for example). That's what I'd personally want if Blizzard ever did that, sounds far fetched but I think it would actually make it more popular.

[caervek]

It wasn't until later patches that talents got fixed and gear got non-shit stats.

It was hard because of bad game design, not because of actual difficulty.

I remember when they changed endgame dungeons (except LBRS/UBRS) to only allow five players because you no longer required more than that, was a big thing.

[Deleted]

I'd take vanilla (before cross realm bgs or any of that crap) over legion any time.
While I acknowledge that it was in no way perfect and had plenty of bugs/inconveniences, those inconveniences seem minor when compared to the current ones.

[deniter]

I'd also say add some more quests to certain zones like Dustwallow Marsh for Horde and Thousand Needles for Alliance. Allow retribution Paladins to actually be something. Now allowing retribution paladins to be good would take away from Vanilla gear and how you gear right? No make that shit have the same kind of RNG for drops as it did before (even if RNG in Vanilla can be frustrating it's a key part of the game) but add more pieces of gear for every class spec because if there is one gigantic glaring issue with Vanilla that is bigger than anything else it's that the some specs are just complete shit until gearing really found its own right when AQ finally came out.

I pretty much agree with you 100%, but i'd not add any quests; there are more than enough quests to level up, you only have to know where they are and do many zones at the same time. If something should be added, then maybe some breadcrumb quests to notify a player there are more quests elsewhere.

[Kyanion]

Becuase Blizzard spending time and resources on "legacy" might mean less on new version of WoW.
Most players would probably not like that.

Yup that is one of the arguments I've used as to why I'm against Legacy. I don't want Legacy to come out and flop and harm retail in some manner.

- - - Updated - - -

Please stay out of this thread. You have proven time and time again that you are nothing but a blind fan girl. Blizzard would take a shit on you and you would still pay for the product. You are quite clearly and idiot and if you don't like the fact that some people prefer vanilla then screw you. Keep your autism out of thread you stupid idiot.

Sorry that you don't like Rocanna's post but they made some good points. But to just attack them like that....really classy.