What made classic wow better than current?

[blitz156]

The thing about it is, while you seem pretty reasonable, most of the people here focus on the bad in legion and completely deny any of the bad from vanilla. It's silly tbh.
I miss a lot of classic wow. Would I play it again after playing subsequent expansions? Hell no.

(A lot of the ilvl issues go away when you don't pug. Pugging has always been cancer)

Oh I see, well overall it's definitely got better. Classic isn't better than Legion imo. I actually commented as in what I liked about classic, not why I think it's better than Legion lol

[Effenz]

Well I've got my personal 3 big gripes, but there's plenty of other issues as well.

1) Quests felt like actual quests; they actually took brainpower to complete. Vague, sometimes cryptic text was all you got to figure out where to go, and they weren't marked on your map.

2) The only one who got to zip around the world were Mages. The rest of us had to learn flight / boat / zeppelin paths to find the quickest way somewhere. The world felt FAR bigger back then because getting to another continent took some time.

3) The game didn't make you feel like the most badass overpowered hero in the galaxy back in Vanilla. You were just another adventurer that gets kind of thrown into the mix, teaming up with other players to hopefully take down some evil. I absolutely hate the direction WoW has gone with this notion; now it's like they don't want to acknowledge there's millions of other players, and instead now I'm some chosen god among men who the npc's think can solo all the baddies.

I don't disagree with your points, but as you can see above, people just installed addons that took away all of the brainpower. Portals aren't really as bad as people make them out to be, you still for the most part have portals from hubs to other hubs. Any of the addon content without ports back to orgrimmar at least would be outright painful for everyone. When the world was one continent it was much less needed.

As far as player power goes; 12 years passed. We got skrong. I understand, but it would be a bit silly if we were still noobs after the sheer amount of events we went through. Yeah, I agree to some extent that we shouldn't be the "chosen one" but by the time elapsed, even as regular scrub adventurers from vanilla, we would've had some rank by now. Which is why I guess a lot of people admire Nazgrim, as he started as a sergeant in WoTLK and eventually a general when we killed him. Players would be at least nazgrim's rank by now, especially with the events we've experienced.

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Oh I see, well overall it's definitely got better. Classic isn't better than Legion imo. I actually commented as in what I liked about classic, not why I think it's better than Legion lol

Understood bb

[Unholyground]

It is enjoyable in its own way, it is definitely not for everyone, it can be said for every expansion of the game.

[Relapses]

Oh I see, well overall it's definitely got better. Classic isn't better than Legion imo. I actually commented as in what I liked about classic, not why I think it's better than Legion lol

There are valid, intelligent points to be made about Vanilla. Yes, it's a very different game from Legion retail. Yes, Blizzard has made changes which alienated some of the playerbase. The trouble begins when people try to make arguments that the whole reason the game "is dying" is because of these changes, that's when you cross over into the nonsense territory which seems to fuel much of the discourse in this thread.

[Vash The Stampede]

How I vision Blizzard HQ debating this issue.

[Effenz]

Then after you get reasonable discussion, you get these idiots.

[Niwes]

It's so ironic, seeing posts like this, full of arrogance and elitism, implying that WoW wasn't, from its inception, a game designed to "cater to the masses". From the get-go, WoW was all about accessibility, and, as time progressed, it only continued to become more accessible. I'm sorry if it hurts your 'elitist' feelings, but it's the truth. WoW was never designed to be 'challenging', but, instead, it was designed to be more accessible than its competition.

first, there is no "elitism" here. i would consider myself probably also "casual", but casual dedicated to the mmorpg genre. the term "casual" anyway is inaccurate and stupid, same like "elitism". what IS casual? what IS elitism? what and who defines that? thats nonsense. so i stop here.

second, i do not fully agree. yes, its true that wow 2005 was a mmorpg that was more accessible than others on the market in these days. but that dont mean that this relativity should move on, to be same relative to other games, in 2017. they set their own gaming style in 2005. i see no "law" that says, you have to change that gaming style, just for the sake of it.

[Charge me Doctor]

snip

Overall i agree with you, but that mostly thanks to experiencing things in the first time and being ignorant about the game overall. Now you simply can't afford to do that because there is too high competition (because you can't get into a raid because you are druid and they need a battleres regardless of your performance). Well, you can if you don't plan to get anywhere, in this sense the game became even more inclusive, you can gear up and progress you character without engaging in tough activity. At really shitty rate tho, but you can.

Ilvl thing was brought by the community aswel (see, the notion of "things that made wow worse" coming from the community itself?) via gearscore addon.
If you ignore stats and simply boost ilvl you will get poor results and end up being kicked. Also "in bags" ilvl accounting to everything really helps the case, but there is simply no other metric we can play around to see if a player is any good outside of him carrying over the portfolio of logs. It used to not be the case, because even baddest of the bad could be enough to complete an encounter, now since content became much harder it's impossible.

I don't see a way of returning back to vanilla, it's impossible, the game naturally evolved to what it currently is

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I don't disagree with your points, but as you can see above, people just installed addons that took away all of the brainpower.

It never was about brainpower. Literally no brainpower required to fucking click a flight point, wait to a pierce, wait for a ship, get on the ship, wait for a load, get stuck in stonetalon off the ship, get to a flight master, click a flight point.
It requires as much brainpower as playing Dear Ester

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i see no "law" that says, you have to change that gaming style, just for the sake of it.

Exactly so, and it was change by... community. Not blizzard. Blizzard only do things that community wants them to do.

[Effenz]

Overall i agree with you, but that mostly thanks to experiencing things in the first time and being ignorant about the game overall. Now you simply can't afford to do that because there is too high competition (because you can't get into a raid because you are druid and they need a battleres regardless of your performance). Well, you can if you don't plan to get anywhere, in this sense the game became even more inclusive, you can gear up and progress you character without engaging in tough activity. At really shitty rate tho, but you can.

Ilvl thing was brought by the community aswel (see, the notion of "things that made wow worse" coming from the community itself?) via gearscore addon.
If you ignore stats and simply boost ilvl you will get poor results and end up being kicked. Also "in bags" ilvl accounting to everything really helps the case, but there is simply no other metric we can play around to see if a player is any good outside of him carrying over the portfolio of logs. It used to not be the case, because even baddest of the bad could be enough to complete an encounter, now since content became much harder it's impossible.

I don't see a way of returning back to vanilla, it's impossible, the game naturally evolved to what it currently is

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It never was about brainpower. Literally no brainpower required to fucking click a flight point, wait to a pierce, wait for a ship, get on the ship, wait for a load, get stuck in stonetalon off the ship, get to a flight master, click a flight point.
It requires as much brainpower as playing Dear Ester

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Exactly so, and it was change by... community. Not blizzard. Blizzard only do things that community wants them to do.

Well though I don't disagree @ brainpower, the comment was directed to questhelper/quest text more than flightplans or something. lol @ stuck in stonetalon too.

[Ielenia]

first, there is no "elitism" here. i would consider myself probably also "casual", but casual dedicated to the mmorpg genre.

"Wrong audience". You said "wrong audience". Why are the majority of WoW players the "wrong audience"? How can you call it 'not elitism' when you're calling the majority of WoW players the "wrong audience"?

what IS casual? what IS elitism? what and who defines that? thats nonsense. so i stop here.

What qualifies someone as 'casual'? For the normal, reasonable people, the 'casual' is the type of player who plays WoW who either does not have enough free time to devote themselves to organized raiding (for whatever reason) or simply believes that taking a game seriously enough to devote time to read pro guides and min-max his gear and talent choices isn't a fun thing to spend time on.

And elitism? Basically, it means that just because you reached a higher plateau than the majority of players (whether by being a veteran vanilla player, or because you do mythic raiding on a consistent basis, even going for 'world firsts'), you believe you're "superior" to others, or that your opinion somehow is worth more. Like calling them "wrong audience".

second, i do not fully agree. yes, its true that wow 2005 was a mmorpg that was more accessible than others on the market in these days. but that dont mean that this relativity should move on, to be same relative to other games, in 2017. they set their own gaming style in 2005. i see no "law" that says, you have to change that gaming style, just for the sake of it.

Their "gaming style" was set, indeed, when WoW launched, in 2004. And what 'style' was that? Accessibility. WoW has always been about accessibility.

[Relapses]

Back then the game was new, you played it because you actually enjoyed the game. Today a lot of people are playing Legion because of nostalgia for the game.

...what? Come on dude, if you're going to troll at least try making sense.

[Niwes]

"Wrong audience". You said "wrong audience". Why are the majority of WoW players the "wrong audience"? How can you call it 'not elitism' when you're calling the majority of WoW players the "wrong audience"?


What qualifies someone as 'casual'? For the normal, reasonable people, the 'casual' is the type of player who plays WoW who either does not have enough free time to devote themselves to organized raiding (for whatever reason) or simply believes that taking a game seriously enough to devote time to read pro guides and min-max his gear and talent choices isn't a fun thing to spend time on.

And elitism? Basically, it means that just because you reached a higher plateau than the majority of players (whether by being a veteran vanilla player, or because you do mythic raiding on a consistent basis, even going for 'world firsts'), you believe you're "superior" to others, or that your opinion somehow is worth more. Like calling them "wrong audience".


Their "gaming style" was set, indeed, when WoW launched, in 2004. And what 'style' was that? Accessibility. WoW has always been about accessibility.

1) "wrong audience" is meant by "not a targteted audience" but the "mass audience" (many diff playstyle types, not just mmorpg genre fans). "wrong" is not meant elitist like the "wrong ones" (wrong persons, bad persons, etc) but its meant as "non targeted". and its obvious that i meant that and not what you try to put me in my mouth, just for the sake of your argument.

2) in your terms i am no casual. i min max, i raid semi hardcore, i do a few midhigh m+. but know what? i call myself a casual. i play just 5-8 hours a week. sometimes i stop raiding 1-2 months and just play alts. i dont like your definition of casual. i have another oppinion here.

3) same goes with elitism. you have some wishy washy explanation to type down what that IS, and some points are understandable. but what defines that in reality, is nothing what your context could deliver. its some nice typed words, sounding logical, and have no real content. and additional you failed yourself when callling me elitist by your definition, while i not reached any higher plataeu and be a way more casual gamer than an elitist.

4) i could repeat myself here and say again "just bc something started to be accessible, do not mean it has to hold onto the same relative level to other games in terms of accesibility, when it gets older." but i shouldnt do that. oops.

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Overall i agree with you, but that mostly thanks to experiencing things in the first time and being ignorant about the game overall. Now you simply can't afford to do that because there is too high competition (because you can't get into a raid because you are druid and they need a battleres regardless of your performance). Well, you can if you don't plan to get anywhere, in this sense the game became even more inclusive, you can gear up and progress you character without engaging in tough activity. At really shitty rate tho, but you can.

Ilvl thing was brought by the community aswel (see, the notion of "things that made wow worse" coming from the community itself?) via gearscore addon.
If you ignore stats and simply boost ilvl you will get poor results and end up being kicked. Also "in bags" ilvl accounting to everything really helps the case, but there is simply no other metric we can play around to see if a player is any good outside of him carrying over the portfolio of logs. It used to not be the case, because even baddest of the bad could be enough to complete an encounter, now since content became much harder it's impossible.

I don't see a way of returning back to vanilla, it's impossible, the game naturally evolved to what it currently is

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It never was about brainpower. Literally no brainpower required to fucking click a flight point, wait to a pierce, wait for a ship, get on the ship, wait for a load, get stuck in stonetalon off the ship, get to a flight master, click a flight point.
It requires as much brainpower as playing Dear Ester

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Exactly so, and it was change by... community. Not blizzard. Blizzard only do things that community wants them to do.

that blizz do only things what community want, is very veeery veeeeeeeeeeeeeery new to me. you are talking about the same blizzard as me ???

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Not trolling, nostalgia is the only reason I play Legion. If it were any other game I would've quit. Vanilla on the other hand I play because I actually enjoy it.

you should stop thinking that your reasons for doing things is the same reason of all other ppls.

it sounds like "just because".

[Daffan]

Tedium isn't a compelling element.
Design philosophy? You mean actually requiring people to play to their best ability rather than play a certain class is worse? You mean being unable to play 2/3 of the specs for a LOT of classes in a group/raid environment was a good thing? Lol. Sure.

Raid/dungeon philosophy back then was bad.

The points you are talking about have nothing to do with what he was talking about.

Nobody wants the crap rotations, 1 button boss fights back or unbalanced specs, nobody is asking for them.

You have to think about more underlying core things, not the stuff bolted on top (graphics, rotations etc). You could have had legion rotations, specs and high quality boss fights in Vanilla and that still wouldn't be the reason it was good.

As an example, a 'Core' thing is how the progression works on a grand scale, the journey and content relevancy etc. Good/Bad rotations mean nothing if that sucks.

[Effenz]

The points you are talking about have nothing to do with what he was talking about.

Nobody wants the crap rotations, 1 button boss fights back or unbalanced specs, nobody is asking for them.

You have to think about more underlying core things, not the stuff bolted on top (graphics, rotations etc). You could have had legion rotations, specs and high quality boss fights in Vanilla and that still wouldn't be the reason it was good.

As an example, a 'Core' thing is how the progression works on a grand scale, the journey and content relevancy etc. Good/Bad rotations mean nothing if that sucks.

Okay, but the "core things" like "progression on a grand scale" in vanilla wasn't really that good, either.
Anyway I addressed things like cherry picking in another post, if you're comparing things you can't focus on the things you like in one vs the things you dislike in the other one, you have to take both into consideration.

Also it's kinda foolish that you don't consider gameplay a core "thing"
But do what you got to do to try to make your point, I guess.

(also content today is far more relevant than it ever was, Titanforging in old content is a good idea. It's 1000000000000% times better than having one item on an 18 item loot table being op for the entire expansion, looking at you DFT)

[Charge me Doctor]

that blizz do only things what community want, is very veeery veeeeeeeeeeeeeery new to me. you are talking about the same blizzard as me ???

Probably you weren't part of a community then.
People cried for a quest helper (even implemented this via API)
People cried for easier way to form a group (even implemented it via API)
People cried for flying
People cried for classes being something more than just one spec
People cried for things to do besides raiding
People cried for faster leveling (wanted to throw another 5 lines about faster reputation gain, about faster gear progression, etc, but it's covered in one big next thing)
People cried for catch-up mechanics
People cried for skill to matter
People cried for PvP content

This list can continue and continue, sorry for not filtering it in chronological order

[Niwes]

Probably you weren't part of a community then.
People cried for a quest helper (even implemented this via API)
People cried for easier way to form a group (even implemented it via API)
People cried for flying
People cried for classes being something more than just one spec
People cried for things to do besides raiding
People cried for faster leveling (wanted to throw another 5 lines about faster reputation gain, about faster gear progression, etc, but it's covered in one big next thing)
People cried for catch-up mechanics
People cried for skill to matter
People cried for PvP content

This list can continue and continue, sorry for not filtering it in chronological order

strange. i play this game since release without interruption (also have the orc statue as an evidence if needed), read forums and mmoc and elitists jerks (years ago) and so on, everyday, but i have never seen crying that many ppl about half of the tings of your list???

especially quest helper and flying. show me all the massive threads BEFORE the flyingVSnoflying debatte was started while/after WoD beta??? show me massive threads with asking for a quest helper ??? they implemented (as they said in a blue post while wotlk) the quest helper system, because their data showed that A LOT of ppl used the addon at this time, and they try to implement things to the UI that are massively used as addons. but nowhere ppl asked for that.

[Deleted]

strange. i play this game since release without interruption (also have the orc statue as an evidence if needed), read forums and mmoc and elitists jerks (years ago) and so on, everyday, but i have never seen crying that many ppl about half of the tings of your list???

especially quest helper and flying. show me all the massive threads BEFORE the flyingVSnoflying debatte was started while/after WoD beta??? show me massive threads with asking for a quest helper ??? they implemented (as they said in a blue post while wotlk) the quest helper system, because their data showed that A LOT of ppl used the addon at this time, and they try to implement things to the UI that are massively used as addons. but nowhere ppl asked for that.

If you played this game since release without interuption, there is no way you're unaware of the fact that the QuestHelper addon was probably THE MOST popular addon for the game for a long time. The QuestHelper addon was effectively the result of people wanting a streamlined questing experience. Blizzard then implemented it into the basegame, since so many people used it anyway.

[voidillusion]

If you played this game since release without interuption, there is no way you're unaware of the fact that the QuestHelper addon was probably THE MOST popular addon for the game for a long time. The QuestHelper addon was effectively the result of people wanting a streamlined questing experience. Blizzard then implemented it into the basegame, since so many people used it anyway.

Yup, not only that but wow has a long history of incorporating in it's ui popular and heavily used addons/functions.

[Tommy T]

It isn't

People get influenced by nostalgia.
It's like me saying I still think Mario 64 is the greatest game ever made.

It isn't - but to me, it is because of the memories.

[Deleted]

It isn't

People get influenced by nostalgia.
It's like me saying I still think Mario 64 is the greatest game ever made.

It isn't - but to me, it is because of the memories.

It could easily be.
Can a old game deemed "not worthy" of best game of all time just because of the graphics? That isn't fair.