What made classic wow better than current?

[truckboattruck]

Why do they need to do that? Blizzard as a company is doing damn well with all the games they have. All those tasty services in the games that bring in extra money. Sub count doesn't mean nearly as much if someone spends 5 dollars MORE than the sub cost to buy a token to sell in WoW.

for general praise and also the benefit of share holders

again, you are asking silly questions and trying to string out some stupid beataroundthebush narrative that blizzards subs arent low because the game sucks
you wouldn't admit that the sky is blue at this rate

think whatever you want if it makes you feel better.....just dont try to spew that fanboy horseshit onto me

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The game is doing well enough that Blizzard dedicates a great part of their own convention to solely talk about World of Warcraft and Q&A about the game. That tells us the game is still well and good.

piss poor compared to earlier iterations

[Kyanion]

for general praise and also the benefit of share holders

again, you are asking silly questions and trying to string out some stupid beataroundthebush narrative that blizzards subs arent low because the game sucks
you wouldn't admit that the sky is blue at this rate

think whatever you want if it makes you feel better.....just dont try to spew that fanboy horseshit onto me

There is no fanboy horseshit. I'm critical of Blizz when it is needed but this isn't one of those situations. All the announcing of subs would do is bring doom and gloomsayers like you to the forums in droves to pronounce the game dead like has happened over and over again when they announced subs. Let us get down to a fact here. You do NOT know the number of subs that are playing the game. Period. It could be as low as WoD it could be higher. It does not fucking matter though, to be honest.

[Charge me Doctor]

The progression now is not linear. I can Netflix AOE down mythic 4's and have 860 item level in <3 days of hitting 110, then spam mythic 7's with friends/randoms, trade loot and get even higher no problem. Crafting doesn't even make sense in this game, and the raids are either skip-able or made trivial with overgearing. (I'm not saying you should have to do mythic EN, just at least something before moving up the IlvL chain)

Fair enough, if your 860ilvl is your ceiling that's fine.
Some crafted items are sold for millions because of double stat + gem rolls. It makes sense and it's relevant instead of "oh i use these items while leveling then they get way worse than what drops from the raid"
There are 880 players wiping on ToV pug groups, so, no, it's not "trivial with overgearing". Also, no one forces you to overgear content before doing it.

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Have you considered the possibility of being shortshighted regarding this and that maybe those comunities died because there was/is little to no incentive for them to flourish? I mean, instead of whiteknighting constantly for blizzard, considering that maybe there's more to it and that maybe, just maybe they are indeed guilty because of changes to the game design, that led the game into a direction where, sure you can have guilds and communitys here and there, but there is next to no need at all for them to exist since you can almost do everything in single player mode.

So... the game stops forcing people to be nice to each other and don't be dicks less and now more people are not nice to each other and are dicks now because of that and it's somehow games fault...? I don't get it. Literally nothing changed, if you was a decent person no amount of LFG/LFD/whatever people use as an excuse to be a dick to others (aka, "i am 858 paladin and i'm gathering a mythic 5+ run with 870+ requirement"). No, it's community that changed over time, it's community that wanted these changes, without community these changes to the game would never make it and it's community, not blizzard, is to blame for being shit

[Echo of Soul]

Fair enough, if your 860ilvl is your ceiling that's fine.
Some crafted items are sold for millions because of double stat + gem rolls. It makes sense and it's relevant instead of "oh i use these items while leveling then they get way worse than what drops from the raid"
There are 880 players wiping on ToV pug groups, so, no, it's not "trivial with overgearing". Also, no one forces you to overgear content before doing it.

The biggest issue I have with it is that there's really not a strong incentive to progress your character in Legion. Unless you're a hardcore raider you're only gearing for the sake of gearing, not in order to see more content or make things easier.

Back in vanilla you needed that gear in order to see the next raid, you needed it to make world content easier like farming devilsaur leather, doing righteous orb runs or just plain world PvP.

In Legion I don't feel all that interested in pursuing specific pieces of gear in order to overcome obstacles. World Quests were easy 50 iLvls ago and I get to see the new raids and dungeons no matter how my gear looks, it's just a matter och climbing a difficulty ladder and seeing the same content again. And even in that setting I don't have to go out of my way to find what's best for me, I can pretty much just play the game and slap on whatever piece of loot I get that has more iLvl and I'll be fine.

[Akka]

So... the game stops forcing people to be nice to each other and don't be dicks less and now more people are not nice to each other and are dicks now because of that and it's somehow games fault...? I don't get it.

People adapt to their surrounding. An environment which rewards/not punishes being a dick will A) attracts more dickish people, B) encourages people acting like dicks.
I'm pretty sure you actually get it, you just pretend you don't so you can claim it's not the game's fault.

[Charge me Doctor]

The biggest issue I have with it is that there's really not a strong incentive to progress your character in Legion. Unless you're a hardcore raider you're only gearing for the sake of gearing, not in order to see more content or make things easier.

It's a RPG game, progress of your character is pretty much the goal for player. Your character slowly progresses doing basically anything in Legion. Also, gearing to see more content is sometimes called "gating" and "linear experience", which takes away from replayability.

Back in vanilla you needed that gear in order to see the next raid, you needed it to make world content easier like farming devilsaur leather, doing righteous orb runs or just plain world PvP.

You didn't actually needed that gear, you needed exactly that aka buttskin cloak from Oni (or you didn't and just died at the start of a fight, it was acceptable unless whole raid died) or resistance gear, which is gating - it stops player from progressing and forces him into doing looped activity over and over again.
Have you played at the start of legion when you couldn't handle 2 mobs beating your ass in Suramar unless you are a tank? Certainly, me getting 880 ilvl helped a lot to make world content easier.

In Legion I don't feel all that interested in pursuing specific pieces of gear in order to overcome obstacles. World Quests were easy 50 iLvls ago and I get to see the new raids and dungeons no matter how my gear looks, it's just a matter och climbing a difficulty ladder and seeing the same content again. And even in that setting I don't have to go out of my way to find what's best for me, I can pretty much just play the game and slap on whatever piece of loot I get that has more iLvl and I'll be fine.

So, you do your main gameplay loop (Legion: world quests/dungeons/raid; Vanilla: Auction house/Mats farming/Dungeons/Raids) and get to see new raids and dungeons no matter how your gear looks. I don't see any difference here actually. If you think that in legion doing 250k DPS (and this is what you achieve by slapping onto your butt pants of simply higher ilvl. 350k maximum) will get you anywhere - you are soooo wrong. People with 870 gear struggle to find party and are too lazy to create their own, so they go to forums and cry about blizzard ruining community.

[Heathy]

If you want to make progress on heroic, there is incentive to improve your gear, the vanilla dungeons became trivial aswell. if you want to just fly through the lfr thats upto you, the problem with there being only one version of the content is that, some ppl breeze right through it and say 'whats next'? then others get stuck and can't progress.

the current system has a difficulty scale that lets everyone from scrubs to pros see the content and hopefully get a challenge out of it.

essentially the flaw i find in the classic argument is that, mmos are built on progression, once that stops you've lost a large portion of the drive to keep playing. player skill increases over time so new challenge has to be created for those who are just getting better at playing the game. there is no way the game can support its current player base on how the game was in the past. i had some characters that were great in pvp in classic, although i play on pve so i got most of my pvp from bgs, the balance was broken though today there is a sort of balance between classes, back then i mean i had an warlord enhance shaman with the unstoppable force and i think i did manage to get the hand of justice for it aswell, that was just stupidly over powered when you can one shot basically anyone with windfury. rogues aswell with the stun locking and cooldowns, drop combat restealth. practically unkillable in 1v1.

i think one of the benefits of something like the lfr is that if you do decide to start a new class at least there is a way for you to try a class you probably haven't played for 10 years in a raid setting so if you do want to raid with that character properly, you can at least practice and learn how that class is played. I mean thats exactly what i did after not playing for a year, to get a feel for how my specs have changed.

[voidillusion]

Fair enough, if your 860ilvl is your ceiling that's fine.
Some crafted items are sold for millions because of double stat + gem rolls. It makes sense and it's relevant instead of "oh i use these items while leveling then they get way worse than what drops from the raid"
There are 880 players wiping on ToV pug groups, so, no, it's not "trivial with overgearing". Also, no one forces you to overgear content before doing it.

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So... the game stops forcing people to be nice to each other and don't be dicks less and now more people are not nice to each other and are dicks now because of that and it's somehow games fault...? I don't get it. Literally nothing changed, if you was a decent person no amount of LFG/LFD/whatever people use as an excuse to be a dick to others (aka, "i am 858 paladin and i'm gathering a mythic 5+ run with 870+ requirement"). No, it's community that changed over time, it's community that wanted these changes, without community these changes to the game would never make it and it's community, not blizzard, is to blame for being shit

The game keeps pushing for features that incentivise solo play, i think it's pretty much factual that apart from mythic+ and hc/mythic raids you can do everything, EVERYTHING like if your were playing a solo game. During leveling there are no mobs/quests you can't handle alone, elite mobs/zones were all neutered, dungeons and battlegrounds you queue, enter, zerg, exit, you can be a perfect moron to everyone else and nothing happens to you.

I said it and repeat it, it's fine that it is like this, it seems that a big majority of the players actually prefer it this way, and that is ok since it's a matter of taste and nothing else. I think it's better as it was in vanilla and prefer it that way.

Preference however has nothing to do with delusion, don't give the bshit that you have the same incentives to actually group play and create communitys as you have in vanilla because you don't, and as i said, this is factual, not subjective.

[Echocho]

Wrong question. Better would be:
Do you feel that Classic World of Warcraft was better than current World of Warcraft? (Follow-up) If so, why?

Don't make draw a conclusion before you ask the question, if you're truly wanting to do research. Let the answers guide you.

It's pretty much common knowledge at this point that a certain subgroup of the community feel that the game was better back then. I'm not drawing conclusions, I'm asking for opinions from those players, and even then they are still opinions.

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People adapt to their surrounding. An environment which rewards/not punishes being a dick will A) attracts more dickish people, B) encourages people acting like dicks.
I'm pretty sure you actually get it, you just pretend you don't so you can claim it's not the game's fault.

It's kinda like Lord of the Flies actually. Kids that when in society behaved well devolving into savages when left unsupervised

[Ielenia]

I'm not drawing conclusions

Yes, you did. It's evident in your very first sentence in this thread: the title.

[Charge me Doctor]

The game keeps pushing for features that incentivise solo play, i think it's pretty much factual that apart from mythic+ and hc/mythic raids you can do everything, EVERYTHING like if your were playing a solo game. During leveling there are no mobs/quests you can't handle alone, elite mobs/zones were all neutered, dungeons and battlegrounds you queue, enter, zerg, exit, you can be a perfect moron to everyone else and nothing happens to you.

I said it and repeat it, it's fine that it is like this, it seems that a big majority of the players actually prefer it this way, and that is ok since it's a matter of taste and nothing else. I think it's better as it was in vanilla and prefer it that way.

Preference however has nothing to do with delusion, don't give the bshit that you have the same incentives to actually group play and create communitys as you have in vanilla because you don't, and as i said, this is factual, not subjective.

You could do that in Vanilla too. I played paladin up to level 40-something and never had a quest i couldn't handle solo. I wasn't an asshole but met plenty of them and regardless of that we played together, because you can't remove a someone you disagree with from a guild or a party without gimping yourself or other party members (looking for healer into half-done dungeon plus waiting for him to come by.. catastrophic", people used to deal with assholes like they do in real life - you can ignore they attitude but have to function with them, you can't simply votekick him and get replacement 2 minutes later.

People who think that vanilla was a land when everyone was happy and cooperative are delusional. People cooperated with other people only because of rewards. Group quests and dungeons were rewarding - that's why you spend an hour to get group together, that's why you bought overpriced shit from trade spammers, even if the very second ago they called you a retard noob in barrens chat.

[Osmeric]

The biggest issue I have with it is that there's really not a strong incentive to progress your character in Legion. Unless you're a hardcore raider you're only gearing for the sake of gearing, not in order to see more content or make things easier.

Back in vanilla you needed that gear in order to see the next raid, you needed it to make world content easier like farming devilsaur leather, doing righteous orb runs or just plain world PvP.

And back in Vanilla that largely failed. Most people didn't "see more content". Blizzard moved away from that approach because it didn't work.

[Akka]

It's kinda like Lord of the Flies actually. Kids that when in society behaved well devolving into savages when left unsupervised

Pretty much.
Or why people in some cultures had different values. But somehow the fanboys are ready to claim that this doesn't exist when it comes to WoW. That's magic !

[Granyala]

Not sure if it was "better" or "worse".

Legion is simply a completely different beast than classic-wrath.
Esp in the realm of game pacing, it's a world of difference.
WoW is much more action focused and much quicker with far fewer breaks / downtime.

I prefer the slower pace nowadays. Esp notice that in FF-XIV. Legion tends to be stressful when I heal / tank, FF-XIV is far more relaxed.

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People who think that vanilla was a land when everyone was happy and cooperative are delusional. People cooperated with other people only because of rewards. Group quests and dungeons were rewarding - that's why you spend an hour to get group together, that's why you bought overpriced shit from trade spammers, even if the very second ago they called you a retard noob in barrens chat.

Completely agree and that's why it was almost impossible to find people for the group questing areas if you started in TBC.
Them quests always turned grey before I managed to find a few. ._.

[Deleted]

in large part the community feel in general on the servers was alot better back in vanilla. but that was largely in part because most servers got populated by players who had already played mmo's before, for instance a great deal of the big name guilds from the days of everyquest & daoc made the transition to wow. bringing with them the 'cross community' established through years of playing these games.

you also had 'separate' ''realmforums'' run by people on the servers, not to mention the prevalance of irc which also further tied people together.

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with the ever expanding social media, things like irc are archaic today, and most if not all of the people that came from everquest & daoc have aged out of this particular type of games. and gamers of today are a very different breed, our society as a whole have changed alot from the ''community'' and ''family'' aspect into perspective where it's about you as a individual first and foremost.

meaning, that for a large part of the agebrackets making up the majority bulk of the wow-population today, you value entirely different things then you did 12 years ago.

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on the other hand, in terms of raiding, todays state of raiding is lightyears better in terms of mechanics and how engaging and challenging they are, most of the ''challenges'' in vanilla were created by artificial means, meaning either 'resistance gear' or things like four horsemen that required a minimum of six warriors in 4 pieces of dreadnaught (optimally you wanted 8 warriors with 4p) which is probably the dumbest design idea in terms of raid encounter blizzard have ever made.

on top of this you had bosses that blizzard intentionally broke, to hinder progress. like the first incarnation of ragnaros had a fire aura that would ramp up immensly and oneshot people within seconds, making it unkillable, and then you had c'thun where tentacles would start spawning at (x) seconds that would throw you up into the ceeling resulting in you dying due to fall damage.

so for me, who already established my ''community'' through 12+ years of playing i still very much enjoy legion for the most part. but i can definetly see the point of view from people who doesn't have these established ties, and the game world feeling very empty to them.

[voidillusion]

You could do that in Vanilla too. I played paladin up to level 40-something and never had a quest i couldn't handle solo. I wasn't an asshole but met plenty of them and regardless of that we played together, because you can't remove a someone you disagree with from a guild or a party without gimping yourself or other party members (looking for healer into half-done dungeon plus waiting for him to come by.. catastrophic", people used to deal with assholes like they do in real life - you can ignore they attitude but have to function with them, you can't simply votekick him and get replacement 2 minutes later.

People who think that vanilla was a land when everyone was happy and cooperative are delusional. People cooperated with other people only because of rewards. Group quests and dungeons were rewarding - that's why you spend an hour to get group together, that's why you bought overpriced shit from trade spammers, even if the very second ago they called you a retard noob in barrens chat.

If you did that then it was either post expansion, or you skipped the elite quests/zones or you basicly did them way past your lvl. You can skip them perfectly sure, but each zone havin X elite quests/zones encourage ppl to group up to complete them, you can say it is for rewards, i say its for progression. I'm in Redridge, my remaining 2 quests there are elite ones, mid 20s you won't search for groups for rewards unless they are really awesome, you do it for completion, the journey as many call it, and even if it was for the rewards that says miles about game design where you go about your way to group up for some quests to get a damn green item! I find this so obvious that's trully hard to understand how and why some ppl can't see this.

[3DTyrant]

The game is miles better now than what it was in Vanilla (maybe not so much community wise). The only reason people claim Vanilla is/was the best, becasue of how new the game was, 12 years go...

[Echo of Soul]

The game is miles better now than what it was in Vanilla (maybe not so much community wise). The only reason people claim Vanilla is/was the best, becasue of how new the game was, 12 years go...

I personally think it's better still, 12 years later.

[Shridevi]

I personally think it's better still, 12 years later.

I agree, vanilla is better.

[Deleted]

A lot of blame goes to Blizzard for the decline in community as the game gets older. Don't forget it wasn't only that the game introduced a lot of people to MMO games for the first time. But the Internet back then was also in it's infancy state not everyone was toxic memer as we have it today.

There were limited information on the game also compared to today so you need to explore a bunch of stuff yourself.