What made classic wow better than current?

[Akka]

There is a difference between continuing to do something, and want to return to something you're no longer doing.

So if I play Vanilla regularly, it's not nostalgia because I'm not "returning to do something I'm no longer doing". So you just admitted that all the "NOSTALGIADURR" retardness is wrong. Thanks !

(and yet somehow I know you'll end up saying "it's nostalgia" later ; that's kinda how the whole debate has been running in circle for years)
Also, let's have some comical fun :

It is "ongoing and kept strong" exactly because of nostalgia. If it wasn't for the nostalgia, it wouldn't be "ongoing and kept strong". It was made over ten years ago, and then illegally re-launched several years by a third party later after its run was done. Why? Nostalgia.

=>

There is a difference between continuing to do something, and want to return to something you're no longer doing.

You can't even manage to not contradict yourself in consecutive posts.
The anti-Legacy crowd perfect example

[Deleted]

And that's objectively wrong, because your list of game mechanics isn't "objective" ("itemization was terrible" for example is a terrible argument, I won't find a game more fun just because items have the most efficiently distributed stat, that's just dumb) and is even downright false (there was never, ever, any moment in Vanilla where there were no quests available for your level ; this is a complete forum hoax with no basis on reality).

If you like your gear to have not evenly distributed stats it's your preference. From a design standpoint they were just badly tuned and badly distributed. That's why so much iteration went on stats over the years

Having agility on cloth items whose only role was to give you a tiny bit of dodge, but never in a significant way, or forcing your rogue to get an item of a non ideal armor class, was simply bad design.
The stats how they are made on Pillars of Eternity for example, is a much better design if you want to go with the "every stats is ok for every class" yes there are preferences but all stats are useful to some degree.

So if you find a breastplate with intellect is still useful to your warrior as it will extend the duration of knockback or other effects. If I find a cloth tunic on WoW with agility on my mage I just used to trash it cause it provide no usefulness at all

As for quests there was an entire area between 40 and 50 were you went to Stranglethorn (that was 40-50 area) did all the quest and that was still not enough to bring you over the fifty and there was no other quest area around that range as far as I remember as it spiked immediately to 55 or something. But there I admit I may not be remembering correctly or I couldn't be half assed to change zone because probably the only other one was on the other continent

[Darsithis]

You have a serious problem at getting meaning from description, and an even more serious problem at realizing how wrong your definitions are if you actually apply them...

Phumbles perfectly describe the total absurdity of your definition : if you play Legion now, it's nostalgia, because you wish to return to play the game after not playing it for eight hours. This fits your definition. It's downright stupid. Yet you still consider your definition is correct. Hello ?

You're splitting hairs.

Nostalgia is a sentimental feeling for the past. Not 8 hours ago, but weeks, months, years ago. So no, that is not what I've been saying. It is not nostalgia to play Legion tomorrow if I skipped it today. That's just ridiculous.

Classic ended nearly a decade ago. To want to return to something after a decade is nostalgia. Continuing to play it after that is not.

[Akka]

If you like your gear to have not evenly distributed stats it's your preference. From a design standpoint they were just badly tuned and badly distributed. That's why so much iteration went on stats over the years

Having agility on cloth items whose only role was to give you a tiny bit of dodge, but never in a significant way, or forcing your rogue to get an item of a non ideal armor class, was simply bad design.
The stats how they are made on Pillars of Eternity for example, is a much better design if you want to go with the "every stats is ok for every class" yes there are preferences but all stats are useful to some degree.

I won't deny that Pillars have a better design for stat. I deny that the efficiency of stat distribution has any link with the quality of the design - making "perfect" items have absolutely no relationship with making good design.

As for quests there was an entire area between 40 and 50 were you went to Stranglethorn (that was 40-50 area) did all the quest and that was still not enough to bring you over the fifty and there was no other quest area around that range as far as I remember as it spiked immediately to 55 or something. But there I admit I may not be remembering correctly or I couldn't be half assed to change zone because probably the only other one was on the other continent

40-50 range had quests in Stranglethorn, Badlands, Tanaris, Hinterlands, Blasted Lands, Dustwallow Marsh, Swamp of Sorrows, Searing Gorge and a bit of Felwood, Un'Goro and Western Plagueland. And probably a few others I can't name from the top of my head.

So yeah, you KINDA are wrong. By the ton. At least you admit you might be misremembering

[Ielenia]

You can't even manage to not contradict yourself in consecutive posts.
The anti-Legacy crowd perfect example

You berate others for "not getting meaning from description", yet you suffer of the same thing yourself.

The reason we have illegal vanilla servers today is because of nostalgia. That's a simple fact. That's irrefutable. If it wasn't for the desire to return to something of the past (i.e., nostalgia), those servers wouldn't exist. What keeps them going is the people's desire to relive the past. Without it, those servers wouldn't exist.

Playing a current game is not nostalgia. Playing a game that ran its course over a decade ago? That is nostalgia.

[Akka]

You're splitting hairs.

Nostalgia is a sentimental feeling for the past. Not 8 hours ago, but weeks, months, years ago. So no, that is not what I've been saying. It is not nostalgia to play Legion tomorrow if I skipped it today. That's just ridiculous.

Yes it's ridiculous. But then that's exactly the point : to show you that your use of nostalgia was ridiculous.

Classic ended nearly a decade ago. To want to return to something after a decade is nostalgia. Continuing to play it after that is not.

That's already a pretty different change of definition compared to what you said before. Now you're putting a requirement of having stopped doing something for a long time, and an exit condition about how playing regularly remove the entire "nostalgia" argument.
It's still not there, but it's better.

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You berate others for "not getting meaning from description", yet you suffer of the same thing yourself.

Actually, no I don't. You're the one making completely stupid re-definition of nostalgia, like somehow linking it to "the game is old, hence it's automatically nostalgia to play it, even if you never played it before". That's just completely nonsensical. And you manage to even try to give lesson about understanding meaning :lol:

You're also the one who say in one breath "you can't have nostalgia about something you're regularly doing right now" and in the other "people who are regularly playing Vanilla do it out of nostalgia". That's 100 % self-contradiction, from which you're attempting to miserably weasel out through double-speak and double-think.

The reason we have illegal vanilla servers today is because of nostalgia. That's a simple fact. That's irrefutable. If it wasn't for their desire to return to something of the past (i.e., nostalgia), those servers wouldn't exist. What keeps them going is the people's desire to relive the past. Without it, those servers wouldn't exist.

Playing a current game is not nostalgia. Playing a game that ran its course over a decade ago? That is nostalgia.

This distinction is completely stupid and nonsensical. Nostalgia is about personal feeling from something of your own past, not about anything from "the past".
Seriously, how broken is your brain to end up with such ridiculous definition ?

"hey, I never saw Titanic but I'd like to watch it because I heard it's good"
"MAN THAT'S JUST NOSTALGIA !"

/facepalm

[Ielenia]

completely stupid re-definition of nostalgia

You claim Oxford and Collins dictionaries are stupid now? Got it. I shudder to think what you consider 'credible', then.

This distinction is completely stupid and nonsensical. Nostalgia is about personal feeling from something of your own past, not about anything from "the past".

It applies perfectly to a significant portion of the legacy supporters, namely the ones who claim to have played during vanilla, does it not?

[Deleted]

back then: it was new
today: nostalgia

[Akka]

You claim Oxford and Collins dictionaries are stupid now? Got it. I shudder to think what you consider 'credible', then.

Their definitions are fine. Your re-definition adding just enough conditions so you can continue to shriek "NOSTALGIA !" while ignoring the actual meaning, is not.
Hint : if two people regularly play a game they like and they discovered the last week, trying to shoehorn the age of the game in the equation just so you can say one play because the game is good and the other play because NOSTALGIA!!!, is probably an evidence of you being of complete bad faith.

It applies perfectly to a significant portion of the legacy supporters, namely the ones who claim to have played during vanilla, does it not?

Only those who support legacy basing itself ONLY on their misty-eyed memory (and yes there are a number of them).
If you like Vanilla because you prefer the design, it's not nostalgia, it's just regular preference. This is absolutely obvious to anyone who is not of pure bad faith.

I hate Civ5, I love Civ4. It's not because Civ4 is further along in the past and so "NOSTALGIADURRR", but because Civ4 has a much better and more elegant design.
Samely, I like Civ3, but still prefer Civ4.
The age of Civ4 is irrelevant : I prefer it because it's better design. Nostalgia has nothing to do with it.

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back then: it was new
today: nostalgia

Yeah, more drive-by posting by idiots who can't even manage to realize their argument is factually wrong and is being torn to shred in the very same page !
So original.

[Darsithis]

Yes it's ridiculous. But then that's exactly the point : to show you that your use of nostalgia was ridiculous.

That's already a pretty different change of definition compared to what you said before. Now you're putting a requirement of having stopped doing something for a long time, and an exit condition about how playing regularly remove the entire "nostalgia" argument.
It's still not there, but it's better.

My use of nostalgia was never "ridiculous". I said from the beginning that the desire to return to a point in the past to re-experience something you experienced is nostalgia. Wanting to visit your old high school (or elementary) or old friends you haven't seen in years, or play a game you haven't played in years, or watch an old movie you haven't seen in...again...years...is nostalgia. Classic is old. Anyone wanting to return to it initially is coming from a point of nostalgia, even if they choose to continue playing it. If they've actually been playing it for 12 years, that's another thing, but I really doubt anyone has.

That's all I've said, and you have spent weeks following my posts in here to berate me on my "misuse" of nostalgia by making absurd comparisons.

[Deleted]

I won't deny that Pillars have a better design for stat. I deny that the efficiency of stat distribution has any link with the quality of the design - making "perfect" items have absolutely no relationship with making good design.

Making things that have *sense* does though. Having something that is either PERFECT (so that no choice is involved because you always wear it) or COMPLETELY USELESS (so that no choice is involved because you always trash it) are two extreme of bad design.

Stat distribution *Is* an indicator of class design cause distribution of stats need to be done according to how your stats works in your game. If you make a system in which intellect is the *only* useful stat for mages and strength has absolutely zero benefits whatsoever and you put it on a piece of cloth then you are distributing stats not in accordance with the philosophy on which you developed your stat system.

In this regard we can argue that vanilla is not better than current and that current is no better than vanilla because they both may be hitting bad design in different ways.

[deniter]

As for quests there was an entire area between 40 and 50 were you went to Stranglethorn (that was 40-50 area) did all the quest and that was still not enough to bring you over the fifty and there was no other quest area around that range as far as I remember as it spiked immediately to 55 or something. But there I admit I may not be remembering correctly or I couldn't be half assed to change zone because probably the only other one was on the other continent

In vanilla you were not stuck with only one zone at the time. You had the whole world (of warcraft) at your disposal. Zones were not 'stages in an arcade game' you had to complete before you moved on to the next one. This is one of the most important reasons why i just can't get into modern WoW. The only thing that is missing there is a message 'level completed' and some numbers showing your score for this zone.

[Heathy]

its called beating around the bush, its nostalgia but its not nostalgia its some other imaginary word that isn't nostalgia but just like nostalgia.

if it wasn't for classic i wouldn't be playing today, any memory I have of that time is either good or bad, raid days were fun, just like today, sitting around making no progress, wasn't fun. unfortunately i remember more sitting around doing nothing than raid days.

what i remember is nostalgia, if i were to feel the urge to play the game as it was, again, that would be entirely fuelled by nostalgia, not because 'the game mechanics were better in any particular way' because they just weren't they were objectively more time consuming that is all there was no inherent game play lost from what they changed or removed in vanilla, they took out the superficial time sinks because we don't need pointless busy work. they changed the talent system because anyone with half a brain can see balancing those old trees through various expansions was going to become stupidly impossible. it was already at the point where your 15 spare talents were the only 'choice' and they made very little overall difference to your spec. I prefered the old talent system at the time but the new talent system appears to be more easily balanced, while allowing them to continue to add more tiers without making said balancing even more convoluted. I tried a holy/disc hybrid during my t5 progression it was cool but there was too much power in the 51 and later 61 point talents for them to be ignored, hybrids were a gimmick that never actually worked, no hybrid spec was ever as good as a pure specced class.

[Akka]

Making things that have *sense* does though. Having something that is either PERFECT (so that no choice is involved because you always wear it) or COMPLETELY USELESS (so that no choice is involved because you always trash it) are two extreme of bad design.

In this regard we can argue that vanilla is not better than current and that current is no better than vanilla because they both may be hitting bad design in different ways.

Agree on the principle.
I disagree on saying that Vanilla and Legion are equal about this, though, for several reasons :
- Stats are more sensical in Vanilla. They have secondary effects which are logical with their definition. Main stat in Legion are just "attack/spell power" and have no effect outside that.
- Gear had much more variety in Vanilla. Due to "each stat give different benefits", it was actually possible to take rather different gear orientation, which made use of different gear. Some gear would be completely useless for a particular gameplay, and very useful for another.
- Legion is just so streamlined about gear, there is just nothing at all to play about. Vanilla (and TBC even more with the addition of more enchanting and gems) was much more interesting, allowing for tweaks and to have fun empowering your items (even if it was rather straigthforward in the end, at least the metagame was here).

[Darsithis]

Agree on the principle.
I disagree on saying that Vanilla and Legion are equal about this, though, for several reasons :
- Stats are more sensical in Vanilla. They have secondary effects which are logical with their definition. Main stat in Legion are just "attack/spell power" and have no effect outside that.
- Gear had much more variety in Vanilla. Due to "each stat give different benefits", it was actually possible to take rather different gear orientation, which made use of different gear. Some gear would be completely useless for a particular gameplay, and very useful for another.
- Legion is just so streamlined about gear, there is just nothing at all to play about. Vanilla (and TBC even more with the addition of more enchanting and gems) was much more interesting, allowing for tweaks and to have fun empowering your items (even if it was rather straigthforward in the end, at least the metagame was here).

They've definitely hit and miss things in later expansions with the gear. I preferred reforging, more sockets, and more secondary stats, but that's just because I like to min-max things. I get that a lot of people found the concept of hitting a certain level of expertise or hit pointless because once you hit it, the stat was utterly worthless.

[Heathy]

I think the gear has taken a hit in the stats department, I was one to complain when they changed +healing spells and +magical and damage spells into just spellpower, you had ppl like 'its the same thing, you get +2 healing spell power for every 1 spell power' no, I like having gear that is specifically for healers.

armor penetration, expertise, hit.

today we have, speed, leech & avoidance. its cool if a piece of gear rolls with one of those stats, but its far too random to try to stack any of them.

on the bright side I do like that gear can roll with higher ilvls, there is a certain element of unexpected gear lasting longer than anticipated. its a shame that the stats have slowly just consolidated down into one main stat, stamina, and either crit haste mastery or versatility being the thing to stack, min maxing isn't as fun as it has been in the past although i think that will be fit to change once the expansion is in full swing, i think the min maxing is more about which legendary to use vs which epic pieces you have to replace for a legendary, probably be more apparent once most ppl have 6+ legends to choose from.

I don't think many ppl min/maxxed in classic though, there just wasn't much point, you use the gear with the most stats and tried to keep any set bonuses you had, i remember ending up using most of t1, 2 peices of t2, legs and head, and some bits of gear from aq20, maybe the cape and shoulders from the 3 piece set. for priests the best thing you could do was to just stack as much INT as you could for a bigger mana pool. more int = more mana = more heals. i'm pretty sure thats all i did in the end was replace gear for gear with more int.

[Deleted]

Agree on the principle.
I disagree on saying that Vanilla and Legion are equal about this, though, for several reasons :
- Stats are more sensical in Vanilla. They have secondary effects which are logical with their definition. Main stat in Legion are just "attack/spell power" and have no effect outside that.
- Gear had much more variety in Vanilla. Due to "each stat give different benefits", it was actually possible to take rather different gear orientation, which made use of different gear. Some gear would be completely useless for a particular gameplay, and very useful for another.
- Legion is just so streamlined about gear, there is just nothing at all to play about. Vanilla (and TBC even more with the addition of more enchanting and gems) was much more interesting, allowing for tweaks and to have fun empowering your items (even if it was rather straigthforward in the end, at least the metagame was here).

that's my point actually. They had all these side effects but you were never ever gonna pick the agility tunic, because to get those benefits in a way that was any kind of significant you had to mass that stat, however gimping your performance in a terrible way.

Ever saw a mage with full agi gear? Please don't tell me "yes" because I'm not gonna believe you EVER on this. And if there was one, it was an idiot.

You may have seen someone that had some pieces with some Agi (and I keep using it as an example because it was literally the only one that had kind of useful side effects apart from attack power to agi classes, strength only provided melee benefit, intellect and spirit only caster benefits, spirit was supposed to give health regen but the amount it gave was laughable), but that's mainly because they weren't dropping anything else. Not because they were "tweaking".

It wasn't streamlined "in theory" but the path you had to take to get what you needed was indeed very streamlined because of the relative usefulness of the various stats to your class.

Now enter the sets, when we can see that even devs knew that the idea of stats was a mess:
http://vanilla-wow.wikia.com/wiki/Arcanist_Regalia

mmm.. no strenght.. no agi.. spirit ok made sense for caster at the time.. stamina makes always sense.. Intellect... aaand that's it. Not seeing any "tweaking" maybe one of the trinket slots, I say one because the other was taken by Blackhand Insignia with that 1% crit that was so powerful they had to convert to a "ratings" system in TBC because the trinket was stronger that even level 70 trinkets in TBC.

Some resistances here and there, obviously shadow res because next raid was having a bit of that.
In the raid of course there was no drop that was cloth with strength or agi, of course, because it made absolutely no sense, whatsoever design wise.

Please understand I'm saying in no way that today is "better" just differently bad.

[Akka]

if it wasn't for classic i wouldn't be playing today, any memory I have of that time is either good or bad, raid days were fun, just like today, sitting around making no progress, wasn't fun. unfortunately i remember more sitting around doing nothing than raid days.

what i remember is nostalgia, if i were to feel the urge to play the game as it was, again, that would be entirely fuelled by nostalgia, not because 'the game mechanics were better in any particular way' because they just weren't they were objectively more time consuming that is all there was no inherent game play lost from what they changed or removed in vanilla

*sigh*
Well, you're wrong. I'd explain you why, but then I realize we are in a 100-page long thread filled with such explanations. If you didn't get it up to now, I doubt you'll ever get it - I doubt you're even able to grasp the fact that maybe YOU would only play it "for nostalgia", but others actually genuinely prefers the previous design.

But then, if the anti-Legacy crowd was able to understand that other have different tastes than them, they wouldn't be the anti-Legacy crowd to begin with.

[Deleted]

But then, if the anti-Legacy crowd was able to understand that other have different tastes than them, they wouldn't be the anti-Legacy crowd to begin with.

Just to clarify on this, before I get labeled. I don't honestly care about what you want or like to play, if you get a vanilla server, good more power to you. I just limited myself to answer the question in the topic

[Heathy]

All i remember is very unskilled players, encounters that are essentially a joke by todays standard. time consuming busy work that had no inherent game play and was there just to slow you down.

then I remember raids where ppl would DC all night, I remember doing molten core one week which had a 10 second delay, all night long.

the community was equally full of ass hats as it is today.

so we've lost time sinks and the ability to ninja gear, not feeling the grief of that loss.

oh and also the ability to get roflstomped by quest mobs at level 10, because we all spent so long getting our asses handed to us by quest mobs at low levels it was practically the entire game.

I miss gear with varied stats, i miss long dungeons, i miss potion stacking, i miss the uncertainty, but i don't miss playing the game as it was. i miss certain aspects not the whole cake.

as a healer the game has essentially scaled around my role, ppl have been getting progressively harder to heal and the game relies on ppl to use cds frequently. in classic i doubt i ever used my cds that well, not that we had many, i didn't use power infusion that often i know i had it on my bar, but never really needed to use it. the healing game, is a lot more fun than it was, healing in classic and for a lot of tbc revolved around spamming flash heal, it still does today, but there are a lot more fun abilities than there were back then.

i found some old pictures of me back in the day and the oldest screenshot i have is of me standing near ragnaros, the first time my guild got to him and it dawned on me 'holy shit i made it through MC without one bind, and i still have auto attack bound to 1.

Here is the screen, I was a 100% clicker, you couldn't clear a dungeon with action bars like that today at least it would be a freaking mind numbing chore trying to do so without anyone dying. benecast was as close to a healing addon that you were going to get, and it was terrible, today i use healbot and have various click combo heals, much better than the little buttons near the target and player frames. healing is a lot faster paced than it was. I don't miss going oom and wanding bosses for mana.