What made classic wow better than current?

[Rogalicus]

And for the record -- Vanilla WoW is crap compared to current, and you're unconditionally and willfully ignorant if you believe the game's dead.
Must be fantastic living the 'Ignorance is Bliss' life.

Today's game is so good that all you are doing is LFR and soloing old raids. Must be nice to play non-current content and brag about how awesome is Legion.

[Desparil]

9 mil at least!
That thing aside im genuinely interested when you go lets say to molten core to raid now how does it go? I mean in a way for tactics, do you all pretend you dont know fight and you take turns wiping the raid like "its Jims fault today to wipe the raid 3 times!" ?

[Molvonos]

Today's game is so good that all you are doing is LFR and soloing old raids. Must be nice to play non-current content and brag about how awesome is Legion.

I also do WQ and PvP, as well as farming stuff on alts from older content, because that's what I enjoy.

I don't have the time commitment to raid or get super serious with RPvP/Arenas, because of reality and other adult things. The fact you went after my Achieves to try and make a point is kinda pathetic, since i'm quite capable of forming a proper opinion based on the here and now, compared to Vanilla, when I actually did Hardcore Raid and Hardcore PvP.

But you knew that based off your assumption, yea?

[Kyanion]

Yeah you are really grasping at straws now. Claiming you know someone at Blizzard is just desperation for an argument. Just like you claimed you knew someone at a private server.

Yeah man they are TOTALLY going free to play, I mean look at that mad-dash for Bnet tokens that just happened. No money to be made in WoW better go free to play!

[Treeskee]

Easy. Nothing.

[Rogalicus]

I also do WQ and PvP, as well as farming stuff on alts from older content, because that's what I enjoy.

I don't have the time commitment to raid or get super serious with RPvP/Arenas, because of reality and other adult things. The fact you went after my Achieves to try and make a point is kinda pathetic, since i'm quite capable of forming a proper opinion based on the here and now, compared to Vanilla, when I actually did Hardcore Raid and Hardcore PvP.

But you knew that based off your assumption, yea?

No, you are not, since you don't even play the game now. And you played Vanilla ten years ago, so you might be a victim of negative nostalgia, when you remember only bad things through your black-tinted glasses.

[Kyanion]

The fact you guys are feeling the need to defend Blizzard, over what Hav says, speaks volumes.

Yeah there isn't any blizz defending going on but thanks for totally misreading what is going on. I can't help but notice you distance yourself from Hav as well.

[Daffan]

Most of the content in Classic was just as trivial. Sooooo I don't get the point you're trying to make.
The same way WQ loot is irrelevant to people in NH gear, is the same way UBRS/MC loot is irrelevant to someone in AQ gear. Nothing changed. Most of the loot in the entire game is obsolete garbage most of the time.

Was it? The raids, dungeons and crafting always was always relevant and non-trivial to at least someone.

EN/ToV is literally trivial (Mythic is not required for progression) to the majority because you can spam low level M+ and boost to 870 in less then 3-5 days from hitting 110. Then when 7.2 comes, it will expand even further and gobble up NH as well due to any other free gearing they provide from the Shore/Tomb pre-raid. Whereas UBRS/MC was legit even in 2006 to people, even when Naxx was available. It's completely different.

Obsolete means worthless to everyone, trivial means extremely easy to everyone. Even UBRS never became obsolete game-wide. If you got full T2 yeah you passed it, but for everyone below T1 it was still relevant. It would only be equal to Legion if Blizzard gave everyone full T2 back in Vanilla, then UBRS/MC would be truly be obsolete.

[Kyanion]

EN/ToV is literally trivial to someone because you can spam M+ and boost to 870 in less then 3 days from hitting 110.

Okay I know it can be fast for people that know what they are doing and how to do it to gear up quickly. But I don't think most casuals and definitely not new players
would be spam rushing M+ and hit 870 in sub 3 days. Hell even some of my alts that have done a fair amount of M+ do not have 870 so that is stretching stuff just a bit there.

Hell in late Vanilla you could gear up alts kinda quickly as well with either pvp honor grinding, carry runs in dungeons/raids to gear up people (as people still always needed warm bodies). The only thing slowing that down was the grind to max level but even near the end that got fairly quick for some people.

[Heathy]

Was it? The raids, dungeons and crafting always was always relevant and non-trivial to at least someone.

EN/ToV is literally trivial (Mythic is not required for progression) to the majority because you can spam low level M+ and boost to 870 in less then 3-5 days from hitting 110. Then when 7.2 comes, it will expand even further and gobble up NH as well due to any other free gearing they provide from the Shore/Tomb pre-raid. Whereas UBRS/MC was legit even in 2006 to people, even when Naxx was available. It's completely different.

Obsolete means worthless to everyone, trivial means extremely easy to everyone. Even UBRS never became obsolete game-wide. If you got full T2 yeah you passed it, but for everyone below T1 it was still relevant. It would only be equal to Legion if Blizzard gave everyone full T2 back in Vanilla, then UBRS/MC would be truly be obsolete.

on the bright side with 7.2 the dungeons stay relevant for ppl, the max ilvl goes up the scaling gets tweaked, that didn't happen in classic, all they did do was enforce the dungeon size at some point, only BRS stayed a 10 man, all the others were forced 5 mans.

the entry tier raids are going to become perpetually easier for seasoned raiders/wow players, the difficulty isn't always in dodging one shot mechanics, its just learning the fights once you know the abilities you know what to expect and react to it, this intuitiveness has become a lot better for most ppl over the years.
tbc karazhan was easy, magtheridon was easy t5 eventually became easy, t6 was mostly easier than t5 so its not like previous tiers didn't become irrelevant for those who've already cleared it, that has happened in every expansion, ppl got better at the game, and cleared the content faster and faster.

I don't think they can resell vanilla as it was, the mmo world in general has all adopted QoL in some form and ppl come to expect it, most f2p mmos are better today than wow was 12 years ago. I tried everquest a couple years ago and only got to 75, but holy shit that game is one fuck of a grind, in a lot of ways it reminds me of classic wow, running around aimlessly, grinding mobs, getting killed by individual mobs, having to learn each rank of every spell, large empty zones.

progression servers could be fun for those who missed it, the actual effort required and the amount of ppl willing to pay for it on the other hand makes me think it'll never happen unless they run out of expansion ideas. either the current game switches to horizontal progression no leveling up just better and better gear. some ppl want that from vanilla a server that is always locked to that one game, that'll never go anywhere.

it was never particularly easy to get or run a 40 man guild, today i think it would be easier if you have the interested players there is really not a lot to it, ppl show up you raid, have fun, all you do need are the willing and able bodies but thats another problem, it would be as hard or harder to find enough ppl, again ppl would be fighting over tanks or geared players again. many problems that blizzard would probably like to avoid entirely. the classic raid scene is never going to be able to compete with the current raid scene on any level. if someone said 'do you want to do timewalking molten core or bwl instead of nighthold heroic' i would most likely say 'no'.

what ppl essentially miss are the peasants that can't progress into raiding at all and just run around doing dungeons levelling alts never really able to climb over that time commitment hurdle. that really is what the complaints boil down to

'everyone is middle class, theres no peasants to look down on'

[Pann]

See this page here? See all those red numbers? The 'red' means that the data is very inaccurate due to the low number of 'snapshots' uploaded.

Warcraft Realms has predicted with high accuracy subscriber trends you can choose not to believe this but it is a fact. The red data means that the data for the individual realm may not be accurate however the overall data of 1.5million characters polled in the last 30 days will give an accurate measure of player activity trends.

[Relapses]

Warcraft Realms has predicted with high accuracy subscriber trends you can choose not to believe this but it is a fact. The red data means that the data for the individual realm may not be accurate however the overall data of 1.5million characters polled in the last 30 days will give an accurate measure of player activity trends.

The problem is that they're rends which cannot be substantiated with any factual data. If you compare the data from today to data during periods where we do know the subscriber levels, it's still prone to error since we do not know the exact level of variance between what these websites collect and where the actual subscriber levels reside. I understand completely that it's the best guess we have but without actual conclusive data from Blizzard any argument which uses this data as a foundation for any argument is, imo, fundamentally flawed.

[Belisaurio]

A lot of things:
-Fresh and new (like every new game).
-Community (sry, but we are less and divided).
-RPG elements: QoL killed alot of RPG elements. Maybe they were really bad implemented, but now they are not even in this game anymore. Fix=/=remove.
-Linked "things to do": After you did X, you could go to Y. Imagine that this method was for the whole game and not only for raids. Then you have an extremely big spiderweb of "things to do" that affect your character: Specialised professions, new unique crafting materials, factions (and new resources for that factions), map keys (attunements, even if they were tedious, you wanted a rogue in BRD), mobility using portals/tricks/items, Cenarius staff, etc...
-Personality in EVERYTHING: having Que'Serrar, cooking chimera chops, crafting some Elementium (the old ones) bars, 180 nature resist (yeah, I know, one can dream...), etc... we have something close to that but it doesn't' affect anything so it has become something trivial.
-"Special snowflake vs Jealous dude": The eternal debate.. maybe it sux, I don't know.
-Friendly MMO for veteran gamers: Yeah, we all played MU, RO, Tibia, L2, EQ , etc... and we all remember the grinding/farm fest, but the new direction that Blizzard created in wow was our messiah. We have a diferent direction now, and we are not even sure if we like or not...

Some of this points are still valid this days, but they are so diferent/trivial that don't solve what they were supposed to fix. Other points were just removed for a QoL investment.
Of course the old wow had alot of handicaps, but I remember the good games because the quality points and not because the problems they had.

[Niwes]

Blizz doing things the community wants/is already doing themselves is something Blizzard tends to do A LOT even if the idea isn't well thought out.

Take wrath for example. Many people yelling about how dungeons are just too damn east. They bring in the original cata dungeons which suddenly is too hard, people bail out and essentially have the worst launch until WoD with a huge sub loss (which only got stemmed when LFR came out). Also perceived lack of daily content (Even though you could fill your 25 in Twilight highlands, Hyjal, Deepholm pre firelands). This perception and ask for more dailies + call for Pandaren pushed them for MOP with dailies everywhere, easier dungeons, 3 man scenarios, horde vs alliance showing a darker theme than most actually realise.. Plus LFG (Wrath) because people didn't want to be stuck spamming trade or if they have shift work having to inconvenience others to dungeon. Shift workers shouldn't be excluded from MMOs. LFR Cata because 2-5% of players seeing areas is bad business, loot system leads to LFR MoP which put loot on personal loot because less ninjaing or people crying for loot someone else won.

But Blizzard were shoved with complaints about how scenarios were dumb and no one wants to do dailies. So WoD one of the announcements during Blizzcon was that Blizzard put no dailies in WoD. The place erupted with cheering, no scenarios, a (botched) player housing system. Plus return to Warcraft roots.. Again all this was player demanded. Plus LFR being meaningless too with no tier and poor optimized gear. (Gear look is subjective)

Then most of that got complaints which leads to Legion. World quests because people A) Don't like dailies but B) Want to be able to do something at any time. AP/AK because players wanted a means to still gain XP style player power once hitting 110. C) Mythic + with no limits because i) people wanted dungeons to remain relevant no matter what, ii) Don't want to be having to log on day or so after reset or be Shit out of luck and iii) don't want gating.

Then there's flying/no flying which simply something I simply wouldn't want to wade into anymore. But in the end the vast majority of changes blizzard has done to the game are either what the fanbase asked for or what a huge number of fanbase was using as addons anyway. Blizzard reacts to fans even when they shouldn't. (But not reacting to fan wants can also be extremely bad business)

- - - Updated - - -



I'd say no simply because best game of all time is simply put the most subjective thing in gaming. Though some people might use graphics as a knock down others might not.

I will say though sometimes games in the past go for realism do tend to show their age faster than those that go cartoonish in look and might hurt it more. For me. But gameplay still trumps.

to some points i agree. but i never believed that the huge loss of ppl at start of cata was cause of hard dungeons. ppl just think when there is a loud howl in the forums about 1 fact, and a lot of subs are lost at the same time, that 1 fact MUST be the reason for the loss. you have no data. you know nothing without. its just your brain saying so, because it feels "logical".

imo the big lost is cause of the introduction of LFR. a lot ppl hated LFG and stupid easy dungeons in wotlk. and a lot of that ppl saw the direction, the game taked, confirmed with introduction of LFR. so they left. the other half was whining about too hard dungeons. and so ppl thought that players left bc of it. but i dont believe that. otherwise the sub numbers should climb up, after they nerfed the dungeons, to wotlk numbers. but they didnt. so, ofc, ppl must had another reason to leave, and that reason (overall game direction) didnt chaanged, so they didnt come back. btw: i think that were excatly that ppl that all came back on WoD release, thinking it is a second TBC "going back to old game style" and left afetr realizing its not.

ofc i have as much less data as you have, to confirm this.

[Effenz]

to some points i agree. but i never believed that the huge loss of ppl at start of cata was cause of hard dungeons. ppl just think when there is a loud howl in the forums about 1 fact, and a lot of subs are lost at the same time, that 1 fact MUST be the reason for the loss. you have no data. you know nothing without. its just your brain saying so, because it feels "logical".

imo the big lost is cause of the introduction of LFR. a lot ppl hated LFG and stupid easy dungeons in wotlk. and a lot of that ppl saw the direction, the game taked, confirmed with introduction of LFR. so they left. the other half was whining about too hard dungeons. and so ppl thought that players left bc of it. but i dont believe that. otherwise the sub numbers should climb up, after they nerfed the dungeons, to wotlk numbers. but they didnt. so, ofc, ppl must had another reason to leave, and that reason (overall game direction) didnt chaanged, so they didnt come back. btw: i think that were excatly that ppl that all came back on WoD release, thinking it is a second TBC "going back to old game style" and left afetr realizing its not.

ofc i have as much less data as you have, to confirm this.

You have no data whatsoever, and why would people quit right after crying that they couldn't see sinestra or ragnaros and blizzard actually giving them what they wanted?

Honestly, ICC closed off the WC3 story. People who played to continue WC3's story were content and if they didn't get hooked on the mmo nature, cata was when they'd quit.

I have just as much data as you do (absolutely none) but I'm right and you're wrong.

Also, WoTLK dungeons only became easy when you overgeared them, sorta like every dungeon. I sold a couple bronze drakes and gundrak achievs early in WoTLK; it wasn't *that* easy in ilvl 200 gear.

[Pann]

to some points i agree. but i never believed that the huge loss of ppl at start of cata was cause of hard dungeons. ppl just think when there is a loud howl in the forums about 1 fact, and a lot of subs are lost at the same time, that 1 fact MUST be the reason for the loss. you have no data. you know nothing without. its just your brain saying so, because it feels "logical".

The warcraft realms shows a massive spike in player activity in Dec 2010 when Cata launched followed by a large drop off at the end of Jan/beginning of Feb which just so happened to coincide with Ghostcrawler's get good blog.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110509...hp?serverid=-1

The fact that Blizzard nerfed the dungeons and made future dungeons much easier suggests that they felt difficulty was an underlying reason for sub losses.

imo the big lost is cause of the introduction of LFR. a lot ppl hated LFG and stupid easy dungeons in wotlk. and a lot of that ppl saw the direction, the game taked, confirmed with introduction of LFR. so they left. the other half was whining about too hard dungeons. and so ppl thought that players left bc of it. but i dont believe that. otherwise the sub numbers should climb up, after they nerfed the dungeons, to wotlk numbers. but they didnt. so, ofc, ppl must had another reason to leave, and that reason (overall game direction) didnt chaanged, so they didnt come back. btw: i think that were excatly that ppl that all came back on WoD release, thinking it is a second TBC "going back to old game style" and left afetr realizing its not.

ofc i have as much less data as you have, to confirm this.

LFR did not launch until 4.3 in Nov 2011 by which time 1.7million subs had been lost. Post LFR saw a further loss of 1.2million subs however this was in a period of no new content and the subs remained relatively stable for two quarters until Q2 '12 when 1.1million left. The fact that LFR is still, to this day, in game suggests that its existence is not a major reason for people quitting.

Why would sub numbers increase after the dungeons were nerfed? It is unlikely that people who quit closely followed WoW waiting for the moment to return.

[Phlegethon]

I'm doing some research and I'd like to hear your opinions guys and gals

It wasn't. End of story.

[deniter]

I don't think dungeons played such a massive role you're suggesting. My own experience was that in Cata pre-patch they let us to play the new 1-60 questing experience, which made me quit for good. I didn't care if the dungeons were gonna be hard or easy, or if there was gonna be LFR or RDF. It was already obvious to everyone which direction WoW was about to take in future. The game was ruined to me, period.

Blue posters on blizzard forums talked about how they still had to figure out 'what our new playerbase wants'. They knew the crowd was changing. The old players didn't like what they saw and quit, and many new players joined and embraced the more casual game design. So instead of saying 'they lost x million players' i'd say 'the new playerbase was smaller than the old one'.

[Deleted]

Community was more tight knit. You remembered names of even opposite faction.
Guilds were more important than today since you were limited to your servers guilds only.
Everyone couldn't do everything.

[Effenz]

I don't think dungeons played such a massive role you're suggesting. My own experience was that in Cata pre-patch they let us to play the new 1-60 questing experience, which made me quit for good. I didn't care if the dungeons were gonna be hard or easy, or if there was gonna be LFR or RDF. It was already obvious to everyone which direction WoW was about to take in future. The game was ruined to me, period.

Blue posters on blizzard forums talked about how they still had to figure out 'what our new playerbase wants'. They knew the crowd was changing. The old players didn't like what they saw and quit, and many new players joined and embraced the more casual game design. So instead of saying 'they lost x million players' i'd say 'the new playerbase was smaller than the old one'.

My entire guild is full of 11+ year vets.
sooooo no?

Lol no one liked the whole cc and take 2hrs to do a 5man. Yall say that now because of whatever mental condition you've developed but at the point in time no one liked it; as soon as people got gear/got the ability to zerg 5mans they did. Ever do a strath/scholomance in T2? CC what?

Cata leveling experience was highly streamlined. Again, it's the nostalgia talking. From an alliance PoV it was super fun running out of quests and having to decide whether you wanted to A) get ganked in STV for hours or B) walk to desolace for 45 minutes. I guess yall are either straight up masochists or liars, and I'm likely to believe the latter.