What made classic wow better than current?

[Echo of Soul]

its subjective, the only reason why it took 100s of days was because of the bullshit rng, and weekly lockouts, combined with the fact that you could make zero progress on your character if you weren't raiding.

it doesn't matter how accessible the game is, there can exist a world in which casual players can progress along side elitist no lifers. other ppl being able to gear up doesn't affect you in any way whatsoever. unless you don't actually want geared ppl to group with and actually enjoy afking in ironforge for hours on end. because there is nothing left to do, your saved to your raid, the dungeons don't drop anything you can use, the quests aren't worth doing, you have a couple 100 mana potions and other elixirs ready for when your next raid does happen.. great times those, so much engaging afk.

Well I raid heroic and I play 3 hours per week in Legion and that's all that's required to keep going, we clear the new raid within a few weeks after they come out and then we farm it until the next one comes out praying for titanforging procs. The rest of my time is spent playing vanilla, about 24 hours per week.

And sure we could move on to mythic but we don't really have any interest in progressing through the same content at yet another difficulty.

[Akka]

again you didn't answer the question you expect me to go hunting for it in old threads...

First there is no point answering the question because you'll just ignore any part of the answer you can't twist, and then twist the rest to ignore the point and transform it into a way to claim the argument is bad/the people liking Vanilla are dumb/whatever.
You've already proved you completely ignore an answer and an argument when it doesn't fit what you want, to just ask it again and pretend the answer was never given (the whole shtick about what progression is).

But I'll humor you one last time : it'll take years to be decked in T3. It has even a high chance of not happenning at all on most char. That's already far enough to not be a concern before long. Which means for most char there is always something to aim for, and for the very few char that could reach it... well then it's the end for them. Which isn't a problem - I don't see a problem in a game having a end. There is still the possibility to look for a TBC server after (or at the same time), or to wait some monthes/years and do it again if the itch starts again (or don't if it doesn't).

Feel free to find a "clever" way to twist what I said so you can make a lot of stupid claims about it completely ignoring the actual point, as for me I'm done for now, I've already wasted too much time on people who have no intention of ever being of good faith.

[Heathy]

i'm sorry guys but the elitist mindset is why hardly anyone got to naxx, i'm just going to end here with, i would prefer everyone gets to see the content than very few getting to see it, there is no point in having arbitrarily difficult to meet barriers to content. while also arbitrarily stretching one tier over and entire year.

back in the day i would agree with ppl that 'filthy casuals shouldn't get to have any epux', but i'm 30 now, not 12, the days of imagining my epeen should be bigger than everyone elses is long gone.

its just a freaking game. if your making progress that should be all that matters. if your having fun with your guild, that should be all that matters.

moaning that ppl can get gear easily today, its just sad. i mean were lvl 110 now, what level should we be at before you'd expect gear to be much easier to attain, by classic standard our character have basically reach demi god status.

should we have to be lvl 500, level 1000? level 5 billion? at what point during the life of an mmo do you go from being a scrub to being almost godly, well we've vanquished a shit ton of extremely powerful entities so. yeah.

lots of dwelling on the past going on, unable to move forward it seems.

i didn't once call anyone dumb for liking vanilla, this thread is supposedly claiming that vanilla some how was better than the current game, which is just factually wrong in practically every single way. the game has many fold more content today, than what it had in classic, that is just a fact. the game is far more accessible, far more challenging. you can't realistically expect a version of this game that hasn't been updated in over a decade to be better than the version that has had improvement made to it over that same period of time, its just not possible. vanilla was fun, when it was current, that was a long time ago.

I don't consider needing to play the game for years to be any sort of measure of how great something is, 'it takes years to be decked in t3' how is that a good thing? how is making none or very little progress a good thing?

progression servers would be much much better than a vanilla server. everquest has this i didn't play much eq it was too grindy for me in the end. but the idea of a server that progresses through the expansions as guilds clear the content seemed like a cool idea for those who missed it.

i don't have to twist anything bud, your the only one hand waving here. I did actually play all the way through classic so its not like i don't know what the game was like back then, and thats actual classic not private server-not-really-classic, classic.

i wrote this in another thread but back in the day where last bosses in the dungeons had 1 epic drop with a stupidly low chance to drop, 1% maybe, i kinda imagine the warforged and titanforged system replaced that, so sure you get the base item easier today, 835 is very easy to get, but the old loot excitement has definitely gone from stupidly low drops to the chance at an item rolling a higher ilvl. its almost exactly the same level of random. sure it can be frustrating when items don't upgrade but its really no different to farming those old dungeons for those 1% drops.

when it comes right down to it, classic just doesn't appeal to me any more, I heal, healing in classic was very simplistic, in fact it revolved around pretty much spamming flash heal, and TBC was the same although we did get some extra abilities that made healing a bit more dynamic than what it was in classic. as said on like page 20, in classic i had 4 abilities bound to keys, which meant i spent most of my time just using 4 moves, dispel, renew, flash heal and wand.. that was basically the entirety of my tool kit i had other abilities ofc most of them were just situational and very rarely used, spells like holy shield were just a waste of mana, it absorbed such a tiny amount of damage it just wasn't worth using over a flash heal.

today my priest is sporting at least 19 different bound abilities that I use all the time.
;
classic, 4 abilities, today, 19. the healing game left that old simplistic game play years ago, there is no way i'm going to say that my character that used 4 abilities back in the day, was more fun and more challenging than playing it today with the amount of utility i have, its much more fun to heal everything, when you were just spamming one ability until you went oom, then either asked for an innervate or wanded the boss, that gameplay just would not be compelling to me anymore and not challenging in the slightest. mana management was a joke, you could chain mana pots, you could wand the boss for mana, if you had a macro to /y OOM! you were essentially pro and would never go oom, most bosses died way befor that happened anyway.

with 9-10 healers in a 40 man, sometimes sporting 4 priest 4 druids and 2 palas or some other combination there was never a shortage of innervate or someone to take over healing while you stand there wanding the boss.

the pace of the game has just increased exponentially almost, since tbc, heroics in tbc were hard to heal in the beginning that difficulty ramp has been consistent through each expansion since then, each expansion has made healing 5 mans and raids harder and harder, its just crazy to think that classic was even a fraction of what the game is today, that snails pace of encounters just wouldn't be compelling to anyone that has been healing through each expansion. i mean if you prefer the simplicity, enjoyed being a 1 button wonder, and don't like having a variety of different abilities to use for different situations and different encounters, i don't know what to say, easily pleased maybe?

And sure we could move on to mythic but we don't really have any interest in progressing through the same content at yet another difficulty.

then don't thats your choice. my guild isn't doing mythic either, heroic is enough for us old timers aswell. if i want to challenge my own skill ill run mythic+ there is a lot more required focus, especially m+10> m+12 is harder to heal than both heroic raids.

[Dilemma90]

It isn't better... Theres no way I could play WoW from 12 years ago

[glowpipe]

Nothing. the game was simply not better.

If you played it a lot back in vanilla, you understand why it is a much better game now. If somone tell you otherwise, he did not play actively in vanilla. Its that simple.

[Marston]

That everything was new and you simply did not know what to expect.

That feeling is just no longer there and it will never come back and there is nothing Blizzard can do about it.

[Sanguinerd]

It boils down to what you enjoy doing in-game. I, at least, had more fun pre-MoP than I had post-MoP.

You could do all the things you said during MoP aswel.. I really fail to see how MoP specifically ruined anything for you? If anything MoP fixed alot of shit Cataclysm broke and improved upon it. Or are you just one of those people that can't look past the Pandaren?

Anyway, other than that you're absolutely right.

[last1214]

Leveling in vanilla wow was 100% better than current wow. It was a bit more challenging, and nearly everyone speced in such a way to ease the process. the world was fresh and new, so people were excited about it. Now, you're better off buying a boost than wasting your time leveling, because it just isn't a rewarding experience (until you get to current expac leveling 100-110.)
Vanilla was far from perfect, but current wow also has a few big issues.

[Deleted]

You could do all the things you said during MoP aswel.. I really fail to see how MoP specifically ruined anything for you? If anything MoP fixed alot of shit Cataclysm broke and improved upon it. Or are you just one of those people that can't look past the Pandaren?

Anyway, other than that you're absolutely right.

I honestly can't remember exactly why I didn't like MoP. I remember it felt so dead at the start due to the new zoning technology going full retard and I think MoP was the expansion that ruined gold from legacy raids, a huge part of my in-game income. And the PVP set items looked kinda lame. Didn't like the art style of the gear at all. I did 84 and 89 twinking for awhile, that was fun but they ruined that, how I don't remember but they did. A lot of my friends quit at the start of MoP, too. I guess it was mostly small stuff like that stacking up that made me dislike it. I did enjoy doing arena as Holy priest at the end of the expansion though. It wasn't all bad. MoP was just the pivot point where I stopped enjoying the game as much as I used to and that's why I said pre-mop.

Never really cared about the story or scenery so Pandas never bothered me. Although, I did find it hilarious that Pandas were first passed off as an april fools joke by Blizzard themselves only to later become the central point of an expansion.

[Bapestar]

Nothing. the game was simply not better.

If you played it a lot back in vanilla, you understand why it is a much better game now. If somone tell you otherwise, he did not play actively in vanilla. Its that simple.

Yea ok buddy. Its amazing how closed minded you guys are, and can't imagine how someone likes different things.

[InfiniteCharger]

Some people just cannot accept that everything about the game was different then by conscious design.
Part of that had to do with the fact that MMOs were still a new concept and most were still experimenting with things.
The fact that so many people played vanilla, with all the grinding and all the time commitment and all the bugs and everything else, shows that Blizzard did it better than others and it was the full MMO experience that people were looking for.

Vanilla had millions of people who were spread out over two continents, playing multiple sets of dungeons and doing all sorts of different content. And on top of that for those who reached level cap, which was very few initially, you had raids and end game content. There was a lot to do and a lot of ways to do it, much more than what you can fit into one expansion. And that is the point. It was a whole game and a whole world of content to play and enjoy.

That doesn't mean it was perfect or polished, but the fact that you had a whole world of content to enjoy at your own pace with millions of other people was a once in a lifetime experience. You cannot get that experience in the current game. Things have changed too much in the game.

Vanilla servers wont bring that back. Legacy servers wont bring that back either.

[shammypowa]

The only real reason I miss vanilla WoW was levelling was slower and more challenging and certain classes were more fun. If Blizzard finally added some kind of voluntary level scaling system like EQ2 to breathe life back into older content then today's WoW would be near perfect I think.

[Relapses]

Because your own affirmation is based on something more than your anecdotal experience ? No, it's not, so don't act all high and mighty about it.

I have no "affirmation" about people being assholes on the internet. My disagreement with you is that you seem to want to pretend Vanilla didn't have just as many assholes playing it as the retail game does now.

[Rusken]

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

I agree with you on Flying Mounts, although with the recent model of no flying until later patches I feel this point is moot now.

Singular raiding difficulty was fine if you were part of a guild organised enough to pool 40 players who knew what they were doing enough to kill anything past Lucifron, it discluded everyone who didn't have the time to sit in MC for 6 hours a night wiping to Baron, and eventually got to the point where Naxx had to be so difficult and convoluted to enter that basically no one saw it.

Linear Raiding is the most boring end-game possible. You've hit ilvl 820? Good now you HAVE to raid EN until you're 850 then you can do one boss in ToV, repeat that until the next expansion.

Attunements CAN work, but a lot of the time don't prove anything besides you've cheesed a couple dungeons. They do provide some extra story around certain dungeons though, which is fun if you're into that.

"RPG Aspects, but none that I can think of to actually name"

Your points on community are the only things I 100% agree with, server community will always be the best thing from Vanilla/BC. Knowing who to go to when you needed certain enchants and having a kind of hierarchy within the server felt awesome, but you can't honestly say that the level of trolling these days "wouldn't have flown back then" when I can pretty vividly remember trade chat in Vanilla still being a cesspool of garbage and bullshit, it just had more actual trade mixed in with it.

Talent Trees were awful, so many boring, mandatory talents to take to get the proper build. If you weren't using "the" spec for you class you weren't optimal. Talents needed pruning, and the ultimate result we have now is probably the best we've had. Most tiers for each class have 2 or 3 talents viable for different situations, giving players a meaningful decision (Do I want better AoE or ST? Do I want passive damage reduction or an absorb bubble to use at my discretion? etc) As opposed to "You didn't take x talent? What a scrub."

[truckboattruck]

Wow. Just.... wow.

Really? You really think that the only reason a product's sales are diminishing is because its quality is getting worse? It just couldn't be because other companies are putting out more/better games, while this product's quality remains the same? It just couldn't be that while the quality remained the same, people's interests just moved elsewhere?

Seriously, the irony and levels of delusion displayed in your statement are baffling.

the reason they stops showing sub numbers is because they dropped and gave even more credence to the notion that the game sucks now
....so yes

[Akka]

I have no "affirmation" about people being assholes on the internet. My disagreement with you is that you seem to want to pretend Vanilla didn't have just as many assholes playing it as the retail game does now.

So you do have an affirmation ("the community wasn't better"), and it's not based on anything more tangible than your feelings either.
Exactly what I said.

[Relapses]

So you do have an affirmation ("the community wasn't better"), and it's not based on anything more tangible than your feelings either.
Exactly what I said.

At this point, I don't think you understand simple English so I'll try to slow this down for you:

People have always been assholes. Since the beginning of time and until the end of time. This is a fact. There is no fucking way people were any less of assholes in Vanilla than they are today. Any attempts to argue otherwise have no basis in reality.

[Charge me Doctor]

At this point, I don't think you understand simple English so I'll try to slow this down for you:

People have always been assholes. Since the beginning of time and until the end of time. This is a fact. There is no fucking way people were any less of assholes in Vanilla than they are today. Any attempts to argue otherwise have no basis in reality.

There is a chance that he played on a recommended server and never actually seen any drama. But oh god people used to be entitled to literally everything. Do you think "tank ego" thing is bad now? Ego of our AQ geared tanks used to be the size of Jupiter, and more gear they acquired - bigger their ego was.

That was the beauty of low pop servers back then, you either played your semi-solo game with what we call now "cesspool guild" or simply rerolled to another server when you realize that blizzard fucked you over with a "recommended" tag on a server.

[Akka]

At this point, I don't think you understand simple English so I'll try to slow this down for you:

People have always been assholes. Since the beginning of time and until the end of time. This is a fact. There is no fucking way people were any less of assholes in Vanilla than they are today. Any attempts to argue otherwise have no basis in reality.

Okay, I'll try to make it simple because you seem to be a bit stupid.
Not all people are the same, which means that some communities are better than others - if you're going to claim that LoL community is the same, with the same mentality and the same amount of assholeness than the Civilization community, then please just go back drooling on your keyboard and wait for the nurse to bring you back to your padded room.
Vanilla attracted a different community than today's WoW, and the game shaped behaviours in a different way. This means on average (operative word : average) the mentality was slightly better then.

I know this explanation uses lots of words with plenty of letters that you might struggle with, but I hope I've held your hand enough you might at least understand some parts. With luck.

[Mendzia]

- Fresh game with overwhelming huge world filled with people everywhere and outstanding gameplay
- No flying mounts
- Gold/guild/trade chat meant alot
- People were interacting with each other alot more than now
- No LFR/LFD/CRZ shit
- You had a few epics = you were better than average player
- Raid prequests
- Almost zero guides/addons/vids
- I knew alot of people from my server
- So many good memories...