What made classic wow better than current?

[May90]

From what I've played on Vanilla server, I can mention only two things I liked there more: questing difficulty and lack of streamlining. While still an easy game, you had to actually be careful about who and when you fight, a lot of quests didn't have much direction and no map marks, so you had to read the quest description and try to figure out the rest... Some quests requiring you to fly to another city, only to talk to an NPC there shortly and then fly back - I think these things add to the feeling of the real world. Now it feels more like the game is catering for much less intelligent and demanding players, those who value reflexes over thinking.

Aside from that though... Overall clunkiness of just about everything, extreme immobility of the character, lack of diversity of items, much fewer areas to explore, a lot of annoying mechanics that make the gameplay more tedious than challenging... It seems to me that Vanilla is a very raw product catering for serious gamers, while current WoW is extremely polished quality product catering for a more mainstream crowd. I still much prefer current WoW, from what I have seen.

[endersblade]

Because it was something new. Up to that point, we basically had games like Ultima Online, Runescape, FFXI, and EverQuest, amongst others. All of them tedious, grindy, and difficult. Then WoW came out, and it just sort of blew everything else out of the water. The engine itself was a marvel for its time, nothing could match the fluidity of what WoW could do.

Class design, while certainly flawed by today's standards, gave something different than other games. The crafting system was intuitive and easy to use. Hotbars, hotkeys, and combat combined extremely well to make combat easier to follow. The penalties for death were far less harsh than other games, PvP combat was a lot more balanced (although watching paladins absolutely wreck Undead characters was hysterical), and the gryphon flight paths were, while extremely convoluted and hard to follow (in vanilla, you got off at every stop and had to pick a new destination), something new and better than just hoofing it all over the damned place, or having to use central portals and then running through several zones.

If you died, there was no penalty other than durability loss. Most zones had a graveyard fairly close to most major locations (Ugh, FUCK YOU Barrens!), and you didn't have to wait and spam chat for someone to come res you. Instances were also sort of a new thing. While other games had something similar, I really think that the way WoW pulled them off was just all-around better.

tl;dnr: It was new, and brought a lot of refreshing ideas to the table.

[Relapses]

What do you mean by the fifteen who are just along for the ride? Are these fifteen members still good players, but not quite the same as the other 25? Or are these fifteen complete idiots? I keep hearing that number, but i feel like its a rumor circulated so much that people consider it to be truth.

It means that the difficulty of 40M was more logistics than anything else. Due the factor of logistics in larger raid sizes, sometimes the hardest part of the encounters was simply having 40 people online. Yes, personal accountability did exist in Vanilla but it was not nearly as pressing as it is in current raids. It's part of the reason Blizzard cut down to 25M in TBC and later even further to parity between 10- and 25M for Cata/MoP. (Current 20M Mythic represents a compromise between 10 and 25M raid sizes.)

[Heathy]

nothing made classic better than current..

some of the things i miss from classic.

class synergy, it was minor but it was kinda cool that shadow priest and warlocks buffed each others damage, it felt consistent like it was meant to be.

getting gear was equally as random as it is today, although i did like that they mixed up the ways in which you got gear, like zg and aq with the tokens and bijous, it was just different than seeing set pieces drop strait from the boss. for variety sake i enjoyed that diversity.

dire maul north, seriously why has there not been another tribute dungeon?

nothing else was that great, I miss professions being more useful, enchanting has almost been entirely eradicated and well i'm an alchemist so potion stacking was easy for me, i spent most of my time while i wasn't raiding running strath for righteous orbs and farming herbs.

not much else was that great, you run a dungeon with a bunch of randoms and you'd get ninjas all the time, my brother made the chromatic breastplate but ppl would ninja the scales every time he ran ubrs. ninjas galore in classic. don't miss that crap one bit.

[Relapses]

But, the player was far weaker in the early vanilla conception than in its current Legion conception. Having to deal with mana significantly contributes to vanilla raid difficulty.

Uh, what? Have you actually even stepped foot in a Mythic raid in the last ten years?

[Senistian]

I think the main thing that made wow vanilla so awesome compared to current has nothing to do with the game itself. Its more of information. Now you can see all the raid bosses, all the dungeon bosses before you ever step into the place. There are strats designed by top raiders that everyone basically follows. In vanilla there was none of this. Each group just made their own strat and adjusted it as they went. There was also no knowledge of what was out in the world. When you leveled you had no real idea where to go, what you would find. It was a massive adventure and one of the main reasons why there were tons of players who didn't even hit level 60. Players were just playing the game. Now its all spreadsheets and stats and sims and videos with X is better then Y because of Z. We knew some things were bad back then but not like today. All the adventure of the game is gone now, we know exactly whats in the world. We know how the bosses work. We know how pvp will work. There are no surprises.

[TheNumber35]

Nostalgia made classic WoW better than current. There are things that are better/worse about both, but the fact that others cling to the past is similar to all things in life...nostalgia goggles making us remember things more fondly because they happened at a different time in our lives.

[Donald Hellscream]

I don't think it is better.

I mean if WoW hadn't changed at all the past 12 years it would be looked upon as an outdated game, people would still play it and I am fine with people choosing to play an old version of WoW, I just don't believe that it is better than the game we have now. My 12-13 year old self fucking loved Classic but would I love it now as an adult? I don't think I would now that I have played in my opinion better versions throughout the years.

[schwarzkopf]

That's not true. You can't speak for others.

I wasn't - I was just speaking about the game and about human nature.

Just information, not opinion.

99% of what you could do in Vanilla, you can do now.
2000% of what you could do in vanilla has been added to the game.

Simple maths dude.

[hulkgor]

Game is different, and this discussion (and arguing) is pointless.

The game now is vastly more complete, polished, balanced, every class is viable, every spec 'works', etc.

But WoW vanilla is more of a social and immersive world. You rely a lot on other players for most tasks and most content, and even if that content is 'simpler' and the encounters have a lot less mechanics and aspects to them, they still were challenging and hard in other ways.

Nostalgia does play a part, and even if i do like what they did with Legion (bar some aspects like legendary obtainability and ap grinding), WoW vanilla is still an amazing game, and i still play it at regular intervals, ALWAYS having a blast. I interact with more players in 1 week of vanilla than i probably have in months or years of live.

Also, i dislike when games\movies\shows reach the 'catastrophic' level of threats, and we're the gods\commanders\leaders\etc. I like how we're just regular adventurers on vanilla, an unknown group of ragtags... when we reach godlike levels of power\popularity, threats just lose impact and meaning.

[Queen of Hamsters]

It means that the difficulty of 40M was more logistics than anything else. Due the factor of logistics in larger raid sizes, sometimes the hardest part of the encounters was simply having 40 people online. Yes, personal accountability did exist in Vanilla but it was not nearly as pressing as it is in current raids. It's part of the reason Blizzard cut down to 25M in TBC and later even further to parity between 10- and 25M for Cata/MoP. (Current 20M Mythic represents a compromise between 10 and 25M raid sizes.)

^ This.

The personal requirements and pressure put on coordination in raid content goes steadily up. It didn't peak in Classic. I pick the number 15 because that's exactly the number of people my brothers had on their raid team that came along just to pad the team, and I quote, "because they were level 60 and had time to raid and bother with some preparation". People from other guilds even tried poaching those players simply because they were level 60 and had raid-ready gear.

Also, my sig applies.

[McNeil]

I really have to ask (again) why the nostalgia excuse is being used while there are some really solid legacy servers (even a new one that launched yesterday) where you can just play the game it was. If you really like playing that version of the game a lot more than retail, then is it still nostalgia?

[hulkgor]

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.

Dude... Legion? Less grind? LOL.

[ls-]

What do you mean by the fifteen who are just along for the ride? Are these fifteen members still good players, but not quite the same as the other 25? Or are these fifteen complete idiots? I keep hearing that number, but i feel like its a rumor circulated so much that people consider it to be truth.

In Vanilla you could pretty much carry 15 dead bodies w/ no issues, if other 25 were capable players w/ decent gear, and ofc you needed well geared tanks, not even exceptional as players, but well geared, so they could withstand A LOT of incoming damage, a.k.a. bullet sponges. Despite having MANY buttons to press, majority of those were quite useless in raids, quite often multiple lower ranks of the same ability were on action bars, cuz casting highest rank wasn't viable at all.

Raids were difficulty cuz it's difficult to manage 40ppl. Encounters weren't mechanically hard, everything was simple and straightforwards, both classes and bosses, bosses just had to hit hard, and raid had to kill them ASAP, almost no one hits enrage timers nowadays, but they're a huge issue back in the day.

[Heathy]

I really have to ask (again) why the nostalgia excuse is being used while there are some really solid legacy servers (even a new one that launched yesterday) where you can just play the game it was. If you really like playing that version of the game a lot more than retail, then is it still nostalgia?

nostalgia and perhaps very low standards, or not enough money to pay for a subscription.

the inability to let things go and move on? I liked classic but i think it would be wasted on me now, i know most of the encounters, i know it would present very little challenge compared to now. which means it would get boring very quickly. honestly i got tired of spamming flash heal endlessly, its great that the encounters these days are challenging and require you to actually think about what spell you use next, not just spam the 1 spell you have then wand the boss then back to spamming that 1 spell. I guess if you like playing your class when it only had at most 3 or 4 abilities that you actually used often by all means, enjoy the hell out of it, for me, i couldn't go back to that simplicity in boss encounters i'd fall asleep.

i did actually fall asleep once in a MC raid, my brother had to hop on TS and say 'hey guys meme fell asleep, i can try play his character for him' ' sure lewie just spam flash heal on ppl who are dying' i think the first time my brother played my priest he killed 5 or 6 bosses in MC. so no leveling up, no idea how to play the class, i think the only healing addon i had at the time was the old Benecast, which added little buttons next to the default player frames renew, flash heal and shield, the 3 abilities priests used in classic, renew largely a waste of time, holy shield too expensive to use often, prayer of healing also too costly to use often, so it boiled down to spamming down ranked flash heals.. no healbot back then. my guild probably told him about the wanding for mana, but that was it, spam flash heal, wand boss when oom, move from fire and occasionally dispell, we did have decursive at least.

you couldn't do that today, you can't learn how to play a class in 1hr any more, none of them are pick up and play, they all require you to know wtf your abilities do and how they can be used to maximum effect. you'd be fine in LFR, but the entirety of classic was basically one big LFR. ppl were actually pretty terrible at raiding, the reason why blizzard released ZG AFTER BWL I MIGHT ADD, was to get ppl into raiding. when have blizzard released a tier of content that is behind the current tier? not since then.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I really have to ask (again) why the nostalgia excuse is being used while there are some really solid legacy servers (even a new one that launched yesterday) where you can just play the game it was. If you really like playing that version of the game a lot more than retail, then is it still nostalgia?

Nope, just means some people like different things.
The clashes happen when those people come to forums where others that enjoy the game as it is right now reside only to make sweeping statements about how "there's no community", "there's no sense of achievement", "no sense of discovery", "no challenge" etc etc when all those things are more than present on Live servers... I've been playing this game for 9 years straight (never unsubbed) and I still get the sense of discovery when I enter new zones, for example.

The fact that Classic is immune to repetition and loss of novelty and accumulation of knowledge about the limited game world in the minds of many however, THAT is nostalgia.

[Queen of Hamsters]

This doesn't pass the smell test. Let's see: on Vael, i am going to just stand in the middle of the raid, doing subpar dps; and when i get the debuff, i'll just blow up the raid. Now, multiply that times fifteen. Yes, we will down Vael in just a few tries.

It took some coordination, it was raiding after all. Laughable compared to today's raids though. It's your claim that it required MORE coordination than the fights that has the BEST players in the game wipe 400 times that's under scrutiny here.

[dess]

You couldn't buy gold with money.

This is false, there were gold sellers and lvling services.

[Relapses]

You had to manage forty, versus managing twenty.

Each player, on the other hand, had to worry about less boss mechanics (far less), but was more concerned with their personal mechanics more. It's a trade off.

Finally, you also had to deal with subpar internet connections and more bugs in early vanilla.

Yeah, guess I forgot about the super complicated Vanilla spell rotations. For example, Elemental Shamans, whose rotation consisted of standing in one spot and pressing Lightning Bolt.

[Juderlol]

Older versions of wow were imo better because you were forced to make meaningful interactions with players on your server to complete quests, uphold your own characters reputation and if you were a dedicated raider you had to work hard to earn your place not only in the raid but on the loot table.

There were minimal welfare handouts, but all the noobs still had a great time. If you were bored you just caught a flight path and went exploring, there was always some high level vs. low level pvp carnage that forced you to get help and band together.

I had more player friends during BC than any other expansion, the game was more immersive yet simplistic compared to todays wow.