What made classic wow better than current?

[MabusGaming]

For me it's the less emphasis on end game, and more enjoyable experience for the entirety of the leveling experience from 1-60. The end game at 60 is just a bonus to me.

Modern WoW puts so much emphasis on end game content, that you blast through 110 levels of just nothing.

I also don't think anyone realistically thinks that classic wow is *better* than the current WoW.

I certainly do not think classic wow is better, there's so much quality of life changes and a lot of fun better things today.

That however, does not mean that classic wow isn't still Fun to play.

I think people confuse "better" with just the fact that classic wow is just as fun as current wow, and we just want to be able to play it again.

Just like picking up old video games to play again, which I am sure many of you have done before.

[Deleted]

It was new and that's it.

[Aleksej89]

Extreme danger and difficulty in the outdoor world, leveling was a tough adventure filled with threats.

Mobs were very dangerous even to well geared people and world pvp was very spontaneous and fun.

Classes, while poorly balanced, had a lot of uniqueness and flavor to them.

The whole world of warcraft was new and full of mystery, it was not about grinding valor points or whatever.

[MoanaLisa]

It was new then and it's not new now.

Game is actually better now but suffers from being very familiar.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Mobs were very dangerous even to well geared people

This myth was debunked in a thread where someone proclaimed that players in T2 were dying like flies to "world mobs"... Classic doesn't even have the scaling tech.

Most of the "extreme danger" came from players just being new to the game. It's not like the AI was different. New people die to questing mobs just fine even today through a simple lack of knowledge.

I believe Blizzard could create a TRULY challenging leveling experienced, aimed to challenge EXPERIENCED players, with the new scaling tech and the affix tech seen in Mythic+.

[MoanaLisa]

Extreme danger and difficulty in the outdoor world, leveling was a tough adventure filled with threats.

Mobs were very dangerous even to well geared people and world pvp was very spontaneous and fun.

That's fine and all and I would welcome a difficult leveling process for a new expansion that would be dangerous for players and take several weeks to finish. I'm absolutely 100% certain that I'm in a very small minority there. I'm also 100% certain that this would deal a very severe wound to the game's ever-shrinking base of players.

[Sastank]

I'm doing some research and I'd like to hear your opinions guys and gals

Bait thread? Do we really need another Vanilla wow thread? I don't think so.

Most of the bandwagoners obsessed with Vanilla these days never experienced it, so they want to for themselves. Most are going to/already did find out it's not all that it's hyped to be for people who did play back then. I don't miss the leveling speeds, the crashing of servers (moreso than today, I played on Mannoroth when it was actually a good server ding dong AQ) way more bugs (unkillable C'thun such a good game xDDDD) other various annoyances. The other grinds like farming mats for resistance gear weren't a big grievance for me, was just busy work and felt rewarding to be prepared.

tl;dr most people wanting Vanilla servers never played it and want to experience what x or y are hyping up for publicity / views

[Sastank]

You couldn't buy gold with money.

Yeah, you could.

[Benomatic]

scale
depth
exploration
wonderment
nostalgia
adventure
rpg
elwynn forest

[schwarzkopf]

I'm doing some research and I'd like to hear your opinions guys and gals

It was NEW.

In literally EVERY OTHER WAY it was far worse than WoW today.

If people eat Chocolate continually for 12 years, no matter how much better the chocolate gets - the individual will tire of it.

People whinge about WoW today just because it isn't new. That's all.

[Clozer]

The game itself just forced you to interact with other people. That's what a mmo is about. Right now i click join random dungeon/raid and i'm done. Awful.

[Sastank]

Oh yeah..you could. It is funny..the guy you quoted probably wanted to make a snarky remark about WoW tokens, but really - that was the time when buying gold put your account at risk. Do people forget that fast? Are we getting people next who say that the old times of actual gold buying made the game more exciting because there was a real danger of losing your account?

Probably just another person who wasn't around back then :/ I remember! I considered it tbh lmao. But I was a teen almost done with school. Just farmed Tanaris trolls for cloth a lot on my prot warrior for that leet mount

[Queen of Hamsters]

Oh yeah..you could. It is funny..the guy you quoted probably wanted to make a snarky remark about WoW tokens, but really - that was the time when buying gold put your account at risk. Do people forget that fast? Are we getting people next who say that the old times of actual gold buying made the game more exciting because there was a real danger of losing your account?

Wouldn't surprise me when people can still proclaim how "leveling is a challenge in Classic!!" based on their very first experience with the game...

Going by that logic, Barrens lions are a HUGE challenge I suppose, since I died to them... Let's forget that I only died because I was a scrub newbie trying to wear pants in the head slot and running into zones that were 10+ levels above my character. ^__^

[God Save The King]

Classic is worse than live in every single way.

[Flatspriest]

What made classic wow better than current?

Absolutely nothing. Those who keep wanting classic servers must not remember the horrible grind that was the game back then. Rose tinted glasses and all, it was a good game, but Legion is so much better with alot less grind.

[Thetruth1400]

The list is huge..

-No player-controlled Flying Mounts (this made and kept the world feeling absolutely massive (great for an explorer/adventurer PoV), world pvp was nurtured because of this because you couldn't just up and fly away from battles; you had to fight. Also content lasted longer because of having to actually travel everywhere like a traditional RPG)

-Singular difficulty (made the raiding scene more prestigious and way less watered down/convoluted -- took less resources to balance one difficulty comparatively to today)

-Linear Raiding (made raiding meaningful because you had to be successful in one raid in order to move on to the next. made content last longer and made the cream rise to the top)

-Attunements (rite of passage for players coming into the raiding scene, separated good from bad, and made everything more meaningful)

-RPG aspects (too many to list, but created a game with much more depth, nuance, realism, and made everything more meaningful)

-No anonymity (No realm change, no faction change, no race change, no name change) - created a continuity of community, and meant there'd be social consequences for breaking rules because you couldn't just run to a new server with a new identity. many trolls (etc.) had to completely start over which meant massive time sink and re-investment

Non-connected Realms (Each realm was its own community. You were known for your skill, professions, gear, pvp prowess, personality, etc. and realms were able to self-police trolls and the pariahs. the level of trolling that goes on today wouldn't have flown back then)

Talent Trees and non-Pruned skill sets (much more diverse and varying playerbase, actual meaningful decisions with consequences, and larger skill sets seriously separated great players from basic ones)


I could go on and on

Pretty much sums it up for me as well. WoW of the Vanilla era, WoW of the TBC - WotLK Era and WoW of the Cata - Legion era might as well be different games for how much they really are different.

Vanilla WoW was something that you had to commit to and in the end, felt you achieved a reward. That goes similarly for TBC - WotLK, but definitely not Cata - Legion. Today's WoW, you just get an all access pass with the absolute minimum of effort. Any player can hop in fresh, level to max level and get gear equivalent to raiding through the mind numbingly easy daily quests. The quests are literally the "Kill 10 boars" level of difficulty, rewarding the same gear as the over easy raid difficulty.

There is no longer anything to earn. Sure, people can act like Heroic or Mythic difficulty means something, but at the end of the day, it doesn't, it's the exact same as everyone else just with some numbers adjusted. No sense of accomplishment, of "Hey, I put in the effort and got to see and do all of this!" Just "Okay, here's my item that is marginally better than yours, but will be outdated just as fast as the next thing comes along."

So at the end of the day what makes it "better"? Nothing. In pretty much every respect, the games are two totally different games. Change up the art assets, names, etc. from Vanilla WoW, but keep the core the same, release it as a brand new game, and I bet you'd see people not able to tell it's the same game. Sure, they might call it a WoW clone, but they've done that to literally every MMO on the market, like Blizzard invented them with WoW.

[Queen of Hamsters]

The game itself just forced you to interact with other people. That's what a mmo is about. Right now i click join random dungeon/raid and i'm done. Awful.

For me to achieve the things I want in-game, I'm "forced" just fine to interact with other people. I wouldn't say I'm forced at all though. Both before the tools were in place and after, I've interacted with people because I want to. People blaming their lack of social interaction in-game on tools that only affect a small portion of the game are entertaining to say the least.

Having the process automated for people with no higher ambitions in-game than seeing a dungeon, random battleground or LFR, doesn't negate the fact that in order to get somewhere above that level, you need people with coordination.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

There was a sense of community which meant players had to be accountable for their actions. Now, anyone can go in to LFR/LFG and act like a total shitlord where the worst that can happen is being kicked from a group of players you'll likely never see again only to sign right back up for another while being a pariah on their home realm.

[Queen of Hamsters]

There is no longer anything to earn. Sure, people can act like Heroic or Mythic difficulty means something, but at the end of the day, it doesn't, it's the exact same as everyone else just with some numbers adjusted. No sense of accomplishment, of "Hey, I put in the effort and got to see and do all of this!" Just "Okay, here's my item that is marginally better than yours, but will be outdated just as fast as the next thing comes along."

There is. And "everyone else"... the people seeing and earning the highest difficulty rewards, are still what... 2% of the population? I'm sorry but seeing fights on LFR is a far cry from having to progress with a team on the higher difficulties.

How important something feels and how accomplished you feel after reaching a goal is highly subjective. Saying that WoW in modern times has none of those things and nobody feeling that way in the game because YOU might not, is arrogant though... on top of just being plain wrong.

And the whole "it's outdated with the next thing coming along" has always been a fact of the game.

[ls-]

That it's the first MMORPG for many people, they'd never experienced anything like WoW before, and thus they couldn't compare it to other games of the same genre. People didn't know if WoW easier or harder than other MMOs, they didn't know if it's better or worse in one aspect or another, they just knew that it's the first and the best MMO they'd ever played

I have quite strong nostalgic feeling towards Lineage 1, it's my first MMO, and I played it quite a lot, but I don't have similar feelings towards WoW... T_T