What made classic wow better than current?

[Echocho]

And here is where you get things wrong. Y'see, your example is perfectly fine, because, in it, you're writing an article talking about the advantages of one product over another. You're not asking people for their input.

However, here, you're not doing that. You're stating a conclusion (vanilla is better than retail) and then asking other people to support your conclusion. You're not giving your reasons why you think vanilla is better than retail. You're just stating it as fact, without giving a single reason why you think so.

When you make a statement (a false statement, in this case), and ignore all dissenting opinions, that is what an 'echo chamber' is like. You want to hear only opinions that support and validate your own, without even acknowledging opposing ideas and opinions at all, as if they don't even exist.

Research would mean listening to both sides AND not starting with the conclusion already set in stone.

So if I didn't ask for opinions and just stipulated the advantages of classic from whatever knowledge I already possessed it would be fine and dandy? I'm not gonna do that. I've gotten a lot of valuable information about the topic I'm researching.

[Ielenia]

So if I didn't ask for opinions and just stipulated the advantages of classic from whatever knowledge I already possessed it would be fine and dandy? I'm not gonna do that. I've gotten a lot of valuable information about the topic I'm researching.

You are not researching. What you're doing is not research. At the very least be honest with yourself: you're just trying to get validation and support for your opinion.

[Kyanion]

You are not researching. What you're doing is not research. At the very least be honest with yourself: you're just trying to get validation and support for your opinion.

It is totally research! Research into how you attempt to start an echo-chamber on the forums. Too bad it does not seem to work very well.

[Deleted]

absolutely nothing

[Deleted]

The fact that I was 12 years younger. I could sink a lot of playtime into the game.
I've changed a lot, the world around me has changed a lot. It was a simpler time back then.

I think those are the major contributing factors as to why classic WoW might have been better than current.

But let's be clear - I never really thought it was that good. And I don't think it was ever better than current. I always thought EQ1 was better than WoW - but all my friends quit EQ and moved to WoW. MMOs are not fun alone. Lot of the stuff in WoW didn't make much sense (systems and lore) and lot of the things were shamelessly ripped/stolen from my favorite fantasy setting - Warhammer, which sucked.

But hey, my friends were playing - so that made it fun.

WoW actually only really came together for me in MoP - that's the best WoW has ever been (for me).

[AeneasBK]

The game was less focused around end-game progression and as such had a lot more detail in the RPG elements of levelling. It required a lot more manual exploration; and as such the world felt more immersive.

[Deleted]

In most well designed games, the developer will give you a mechanic and then have you use it. Classic example is Mario, when you are given a Fire Mushroom, and then the game throws enemies at you to shoot them. Or when Blizzard designs a mission in Warcraft 2 where you learn the value of catapults etc. As you progress through a game, you learn new things, and you are expected to be able to use all the tools at the tail end.

Classic WoW very much had this. As soon as most classes gained CC, the dungeons in the game would require it, otherwise the tank and healer would get overwhelmed by the damage. You could, and did, Wailing Caverns without CC, but Dire Maul was more difficult. It wasent impossible to do without CC, but it greatly helped. And i am only using CC as an example, mechanics such as limited mana, value of silence, carefully pulling mobs etc were all just as important as crowd control.



These mechanics have largely been trivialized in modern WoW. And it does not stop there, there are less choices in WoW in regards to shaping your character, than there were in Classic WoW, where you made decisions regarding your talent tree.


This means that the game is ultimately less stimulating to play. There is less to think about, less to consider and less to plan.

[Queen of Hamsters]

This means that the game is ultimately less stimulating to play. There is less to think about, less to consider and less to plan.

Lmao, yes, this is totally the case.
Let's just ignore the fact that the game has never been more complex in terms of content variety and investment than Legion.
I don't consider throwing a freezing trap at the same mob every time you go into a dungeon, or cookie-cutter specs to be "decision making", "shaping your character" or a whole lot to "consider"...

If the game only became "less stimulating to play", we'd be at a stage with LESS complex fights, classes and variety of content than Classic at this point... If that would be possible.

[Mask]

In most well designed games, the developer will give you a mechanic and then have you use it. Classic example is Mario, when you are given a Fire Mushroom, and then the game throws enemies at you to shoot them. Or when Blizzard designs a mission in Warcraft 2 where you learn the value of catapults etc. As you progress through a game, you learn new things, and you are expected to be able to use all the tools at the tail end.

Classic WoW very much had this. As soon as most classes gained CC, the dungeons in the game would require it, otherwise the tank and healer would get overwhelmed by the damage. You could, and did, Wailing Caverns without CC, but Dire Maul was more difficult. It wasent impossible to do without CC, but it greatly helped. And i am only using CC as an example, mechanics such as limited mana, value of silence, carefully pulling mobs etc were all just as important as crowd control.



These mechanics have largely been trivialized in modern WoW.

Yup this is important. Things like threat, mana, crowd control all were important to the core gameplay back in vanilla (and BC too). For some reason the developers decided that those things weren't fun and effectively got rid of them all. It really changed the nature of playing through the game. It's all about spamming abilities as fast as your GCD will let you now rather than being patient and thoughtful with ability use. Modern WoW really is more like an action game than an RPG.

[Heathy]

there are less choices in WoW in regards to shaping your character, than there were in Classic WoW, where you made decisions regarding your talent tree.


This means that the game is ultimately less stimulating to play. There is less to think about, less to consider and less to plan.

I still don't agree with this line of reasoning, the talent trees gave the impression of choice but the only real choice was which 51 or 61 talent point you wanted, today we have less overall talents, most of the old talents have been baked into the classes, but at least for me i have a much better actual choice of which talents will perform better on different encounters. for example as holy i have the choice between divinity and halo, that is an actual choice, that didn't exist in classic, you had 3 end tier talents that you could pick and that was it, the choice was an illusion.

sure you could make really terribly under performing hybrids if you wanted to but why was the ability to deliberately gimp yourself a good thing? the tactics are considerably more advanced the bosses these days have more than 2 or 3 abilities, there is more planning required. you don't have to spend hours farming consumables anymore and that is good aswell i didn't mind potion stacking in classic being an alchemist it didn't bother me, i had plenty of time to run around picking herbs, although for ppl who couldn't do that it was unfair for them. requiring ppl to farm xxx amount of consumables to spam on raid night was not one of the highlights it basically highlights how bland the game was and that farming consumables was one of the only things that was worth doing out side of raids.

[Mask]

I still don't agree with this line of reasoning, the talent trees gave the impression of choice but the only real choice was which 51 or 61 talent point you wanted, today we have less overall talents, most of the old talents have been baked into the classes, but at least for me i have a much better actual choice of which talents will perform better on different encounters. for example as holy i have the choice between divinity and halo, that is an actual choice, that didn't exist in classic, you had 3 end tier talents that you could pick and that was it, the choice was an illusion.

sure you could make really terribly under performing hybrids if you wanted to but why was the ability to deliberately gimp yourself a good thing?

This might depend a lot on the class. I know that rogues had a very popular talent builds that didn't go to a 31-point talent at all (it was Assassination/Sub hybrid for pvp). There were cool things you could do with the talent tree in Vanilla. As the expansions came in and it got bloated up to 41 and 51 point trees in BC/Wrath things did become more restrictive, though.

[Deleted]

In most well designed games, the developer will give you a mechanic and then have you use it. Classic example is Mario, when you are given a Fire Mushroom, and then the game throws enemies at you to shoot them. Or when Blizzard designs a mission in Warcraft 2 where you learn the value of catapults etc. As you progress through a game, you learn new things, and you are expected to be able to use all the tools at the tail end.

Classic WoW very much had this. As soon as most classes gained CC, the dungeons in the game would require it, otherwise the tank and healer would get overwhelmed by the damage. You could, and did, Wailing Caverns without CC, but Dire Maul was more difficult. It wasent impossible to do without CC, but it greatly helped. And i am only using CC as an example, mechanics such as limited mana, value of silence, carefully pulling mobs etc were all just as important as crowd control.



These mechanics have largely been trivialized in modern WoW. And it does not stop there, there are less choices in WoW in regards to shaping your character, than there were in Classic WoW, where you made decisions regarding your talent tree.


This means that the game is ultimately less stimulating to play. There is less to think about, less to consider and less to plan.

I remember it a bit differently. It was quite a mess really. Rogue have to put talent into zap, even then it there is a chance you will not restealth. Which for some reason always happens when you are in the final room of Upper Blackrock Spire. It didn't help that sheep didn't work there either.

Then there is the buffing and rebuffing. Paladin 5 min buff, dumb as hell in raids. I remember conjuring water for raids omg...

There were a tons of other dumb shits

People also talk out epic items where awesome in vanilla. The dagger from Rag was acutally worse than the bar shanker, and that sword from black rock spire was one of the best sword for a long long time.

[Sabever]

All of those people calling Vanilla great because of rose tinted goggles or nostalgia are fools.

What makes any game great? Is it graphics, ease of use, physics, gameplay, story etc? It is the experience that makes a game great. Vanilla was an MMORPG set in a world. People made their own content. There were constant wars going on between the Horde and Alliance. The world was alive. Retail WoW is not an MMORPG. It is a game with dungeons. If you like faster paced games, retail is for you. If you like an actual challenge, long term commitment, world to explore, community to interact with or want to be a warrior stopping the other faction.... Vanilla is for you.

Snowflakes!

- - - Updated - - -

I still don't agree with this line of reasoning, the talent trees gave the impression of choice but the only real choice was which 51 or 61 talent point you wanted, today we have less overall talents, most of the old talents have been baked into the classes, but at least for me i have a much better actual choice of which talents will perform better on different encounters. for example as holy i have the choice between divinity and halo, that is an actual choice, that didn't exist in classic, you had 3 end tier talents that you could pick and that was it, the choice was an illusion.

sure you could make really terribly under performing hybrids if you wanted to but why was the ability to deliberately gimp yourself a good thing? the tactics are considerably more advanced the bosses these days have more than 2 or 3 abilities, there is more planning required. you don't have to spend hours farming consumables anymore and that is good aswell i didn't mind potion stacking in classic being an alchemist it didn't bother me, i had plenty of time to run around picking herbs, although for ppl who couldn't do that it was unfair for them. requiring ppl to farm xxx amount of consumables to spam on raid night was not one of the highlights it basically highlights how bland the game was and that farming consumables was one of the only things that was worth doing out side of raids.

So 40 options for a particular point at level 60 is greater than 3. I think your math is off.

[Heathy]

All of those people calling Vanilla great because of rose tinted goggles or nostalgia are fools.

What makes any game great? Is it graphics, ease of use, physics, gameplay, story etc? It is the experience that makes a game great. Vanilla was an MMORPG set in a world. People made their own content. There were constant wars going on between the Horde and Alliance. The world was alive. Retail WoW is not an MMORPG. It is a game with dungeons. If you like faster paced games, retail is for you. If you like an actual challenge, long term commitment, world to explore, community to interact with or want to be a warrior stopping the other faction.... Vanilla is for you.

Snowflakes!

- - - Updated - - -



So 40 options for a particular point at level 60 is greater than 3. I think your math is off.

what you wrote there about vanilla is the biggest load of overblown nostalgia tripe i've ever read. explain to me how the current game 1) isn't set in a world, 2) doesn't have content that you choose to do, 3) doesn't have dungeons 4) doesn't have pvp.

i think your talking out your ass to be fair. if you weren't on a pvp server there weren't 'wars going on all the time' unless your talking about those never ending AV battles. with shared servers i'm seeing the world being MORE alive than it was in classic, you have access to a much greater pool of players so it can't be anything less than more alive.

ok 31 pointers, my bad, i was thinking about later in classic, perhaps tbc. doesn't matter, the current system with the artifact weapons is a near perfect improvement over any of those old cookie cutter talent builds. the points you unlock in your weapon today are very close to the old talent system, except the whole thing is a massive improvement, in every single way, objectively. you get to choose which of the 3 gold dragons you want to go for first, which is way more actual choice than just choosing which of your 3 specs to max.

i remember the occasional crossroads and tarren mill cluster fucks, but to flat out claim that retail doesn't have long term commitment (artifact weapons?) and challenge, haha whatever you say.

ppl seem to be getting some sort of raging boner over community when the only community you should care about is your guild, that has always been the only ever real community you needed. you might make some buds in other guilds but to assume that the entire community was some sort of amazing quality the game lost is disingenuous. I'm still seeing plenty of skilled players from other servers and my own server in pugs.

again everyone who is pro vanilla seems to be pulling delusional level bullshit out of thin air, like vanilla was actually the second coming of Christ. vanilla was easily outclassed by TBC. if anything we should be comparing that expansion to now, and ill still say that legion is many fold improvement over that expansion aswell.

for the record an MMORPG is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.

wow is massively multiplayer still, there are still 1000s of ppl per server, you still pick a role to play in the game

wow still meets every definition of the genre.

[Kyanion]

i think your talking out your ass to be fair. if you weren't on a pvp server there weren't 'wars going on all the time' unless your talking about those never ending AV battles. with shared servers i'm seeing the world being MORE alive than it was in classic, you have access to a much greater pool of players so it can't be anything less than more alive.

They are talking out of their ass in some ways because these people are relating their "Vanilla-Like" experiences on a Private Server and acting is if that is how it was back in original Vanilla. These are servers that have a much higher allowed cap of people online at one time than Vanilla ever had. So when you have a smaller world like Vanilla is and try to cram 3 to 4 times the amount of people onto said server it is a totally different experience. So for them it is constant pvp clusterfucks I guess. Not exactly what it was like on every PvP server in Vanilla.

[Akka]

what you wrote there about vanilla is the biggest load of overblown nostalgia tripe i've ever read. explain to me how the current game 1) isn't set in a world, 2) doesn't have content that you choose to do, 3) doesn't have dungeons 4) doesn't have pvp.

Funny, I think the opposite, he's right and you're just grasping at straws and lawering details.

[Alefnir]

Mostly that it was new. Also, imo, that the leveling experience wasn't something you could and would just try to get over as quickly as possible. It was an actual part of the game rather than an intermittent period you have to go through to get to the real game. Of course, having it that way again would be a huge pain in the ass now that wow has a bunch of expansions so it's a moot point.

[Heathy]

Funny, I think the opposite, he's right and you're just grasping at straws and lawering details.

care to explain why instead of just hand waving? no i thought not

can someone explain to me the appeal of playing an mmo that has no progression left?

ppl STILL haven't told me what they are doing with their full t3 private chars, do you just blitz dungeons? do you sit around in stormwind or orgrimmar looking awesome? how does an mmo with no progression left stay engaging? the whole point of playing a game like this is for the progression, once that dead ends the game can only be fun for so long before you want to progress again.

there is no future in an mmo that has no progression left.

why deliberately hold yourself back in the past. its like skyrim, great game, although once you own a majority stake in the world have the best armor and weapons, best enchants, get to max level, max all the skills, is the game still fun to play? no by that point you have probably given up or burnt out. there comes a point when its time to move on, for vanilla that was 10 years ago.

They are talking out of their ass in some ways because these people are relating their "Vanilla-Like" experiences on a Private Server and acting is if that is how it was back in original Vanilla. These are servers that have a much higher allowed cap of people online at one time than Vanilla ever had. So when you have a smaller world like Vanilla is and try to cram 3 to 4 times the amount of people onto said server it is a totally different experience. So for them it is constant pvp clusterfucks I guess. Not exactly what it was like on every PvP server in Vanilla.

the only funny part of pvp i liked was mind controlling ppl and jumping them into the lava in blackrock mountain, everything else was kinda meh, i didn't pvp with my priest and mostly only did it with the rogue mainly because they were OP in 1v1. you could just stealth around AV one shotting mages, stun locking everyone else.

[Deleted]

Yup this is important. Things like threat, mana, crowd control all were important to the core gameplay back in vanilla (and BC too). For some reason the developers decided that those things weren't fun and effectively got rid of them all. It really changed the nature of playing through the game. It's all about spamming abilities as fast as your GCD will let you now rather than being patient and thoughtful with ability use. Modern WoW really is more like an action game than an RPG.

I agree, i prefer the old system of being patient to manage mana, threat and crowd control.
It had much more depth even though nowadays the rotaions are more complex, is just a matter os spaming abilities on cooldown as fast as possible.

[Akka]

care to explain why instead of just hand waving? no i thought not

Just reading your post is enough.

can someone explain to me the appeal of playing an mmo that has no progression left?

That's what I wonder about Legion in fact.

why deliberately hold yourself back in the past.

This argument is plain retarded. A good game is good by its design, not by some magical virtue of time going forward. If a game is good due to good design, it won't suddendly becomes bad five years later. Only things which have a strong correlation between time and quality are graphics.