What made classic wow better than current?

[Akka]

There are plenty of assets on the server side. The server cannot work without them. And the database contains server-side assets, too. Both reusing the client assets and sniffing for the server ones are prohibited.

Okay, which ones ?

- - - Updated - - -

Agreed. Idk how anyone can disagree with this.

You don't know the anti-Vanilla crowd from these forums very well then ^^
They will just grasp at any straw available to claim they are right about the most inane or pointless details - even if they are openly wrong or if these details are completely irrelevant to the point. It's more about tallying some sort of meaningless score than actually debating.

[Deleted]

Better community, novelty, immersion with good soundtrack.

There is more and better content today though and the game as a whole is much evolved and improved since classic. But classic will always be classic.

[Vash The Stampede]

If Blizzard wasn't currently supporting WoW and had absolutely no plans to do anything with the license, then you might have a small argument to be made in favor of PS but until Blizzard drops retail people who are playing on PS are pirating Blizzard's IP.

The problem here is that WoW has many versions. Is Blizzard supporting WoW? Which one, cause there was many expansions. You can't disagree that Vanilla, TBC, WOTLK, and etc are lost to time. As a player I can't experience those expansions as they were meant to be experienced. At least not until Blizzard implements realms that have only those expansions. Meanwhile I own games I cannot play even if I wanted to pay.

(Ever wonder why you can't talk about them here? There's the reason.)

No not really. Have too much experience with forums and their cumbersome rules. I know I've been told I can't talk about emulators here cause they're illegal, and that's 100% false. Other forums wouldn't let me talk about Ad Blocker. For a while we had a thread dedicated to a private server that was taken down and we were free to say what we want.

[rda]

Okay, which ones ?

Geodata, mob / object locations, all items, all spells, quest texts, event scripts.

I guess you might have meant graphics. That's not all that is protected.

[Eleccybubb]

The problem here is that WoW has many versions. Is Blizzard supporting WoW? Which one, cause there was many expansions. You can't disagree that Vanilla, TBC, WOTLK, and etc are lost to time. As a player I can't experience those expansions as they were meant to be experienced. At least not until Blizzard implements realms that have only those expansions. Meanwhile I own games I cannot play even if I wanted to pay.

No not really. Have too much experience with forums and their cumbersome rules. I know I've been told I can't talk about emulators here cause they're illegal, and that's 100% false. Other forums wouldn't let me talk about Ad Blocker. For a while we had a thread dedicated to a private server that was taken down and we were free to say what we want.

The thread was taken down because the rules were changed and people didn't seem to get the message. I swear people were deliberately trying to get it shut with the amount of spamming about servers in there such as images/videos and naming when being told god knows how many times not to.

Also so what if WoW has many versions? World of Warcraft is still owned by Blizzard under every version even ones that are not fully existent anymore. Also MMOs evolve and change over time. Nothing new.

[Pann]

Geodata, mob / object locations, all items, all spells, quest texts, event scripts.

I guess you might have meant graphics. That's not all that is protected.

Surely things such as spell, object data and quest texts are client side or the likes of wowhead and MMO-C would not be able to data mine them?

[rda]

Surely things such as spell, object data and quest texts are client side or the likes of wowhead and MMO-C would not be able to data mine them?

Some are transmitted from the server to the client, others are on both sides but the client's copy is strictly there for performance reasons, it is not authoritative. You can't put things like that onto the client and not on the server, because then the server would have to believe the client (ie, that you just made a fireball that hit the enemy for 500,000,000) and that's an invitation to hacks.

[Pann]

Some are transmitted from the server to the client, others are on both sides but the client's copy is strictly there for performance reasons, it is not authoritative. You can't put things like that onto the client and not on the server, because then the server would have to believe the client (ie, that you just made a fireball that hit the enemy for 500,000,000) and that's an invitation to hacks.

Ok, thanks.

[rda]

That's code. Code that's stored on the server and has never been leaked out of Blizz HQ. If anyone says they're using blizzard code for these things they are lying, it's all fan made code.

That's code and data. Data is subject to copyright. (Code is, too, but we are talking about reproducing data.)

[Requimortem]

Vanilla World of Warcraft had plenty of grinding and faults but what made it great (or at least tolerable) was two things: One, this was Blizzard's first attempt at converting what was originally an RTS into a full blown MMORPG so the game not being perfect was understandable. Two, it was brand new and for a lot of people (including myself) to have a more personal experience in the Warcraft universe was amazing. I don't think nostalgia has anything to do with it even though that's the go-to excuse for people who don't want to acknowledge that World of Warcraft is unbearably flawed.

I've been around since vanilla and there have been numerous quality of life improvements that I would never want to lose but at the same time, they stripped away all of the RPG elements in the process. They've butchered their own lore constantly to squeeze in classes like the Demon Hunter or to bring back a character only a vocal minority wanted (i.e. Illidan). Their concept of "fun" is based entirely on running the same raids and dungeons ad infinitum.

One of the big things that keeps people around and enjoying the game is the ability to create "alts" which thanks to how horribly grind-y and luck dependent Legion is, is impossible to do for anyone but the most devoted of players (i.e. "no-lifers"). I don't see World of Warcraft dying anytime soon but I doubt they'll be able to last much longer if they don't change their view on what makes for fun, engaging content.

[voidillusion]

Geodata, mob / object locations, all items, all spells, quest texts, event scripts.

I guess you might have meant graphics. That's not all that is protected.

Ok, tricky question, or maybe not. Assuming what you say is correct, and none of that is on the client side, according to blizz they "lost" much of that original data right? Meaning they have it but for later versions, if this is correct how could they actually prove that the stolen data is theirs if they clame not to have it

[Deleted]

Maybe, maybe not. My actual point is that we don't know (though the only correlation available doesn't go your way) while yours is that it's a factual truth - and as said above, we're still waiting on anything to support this affirmation.

Exactly, it's impossible to tell.

The twelve million people that played during Wrath of the Lich King isn't the extent of the pool from which WoW has gained and lost subscribers. Blizzard in 2014 said that there are over 100 million WoW accounts. People will come and go for a whole host of reasons. Some will have left in part because of the simplification and streamlining that some have dubbed 'quality of life', others will have stuck around in part because of them.

All we know for certain is that WoW's subscriber base has peaked over half a decade ago, and that everything from automated group-finders, cross-realm everything, account-wide progress, LFR 'difficulty', fast levelling, single-player focussed questing, etc. has been unable to put the number back at that previous level. Maybe some would argue that without these changes WoW would be in worse shape than it is today, and perhaps that's true - but we can't know for sure.

[Tackhisis]

Surely things such as spell, object data and quest texts are client side

Client caches some of this data locally and pirates can extract them from there.

[Akka]

Geodata, mob / object locations, all items, all spells, quest texts, event scripts.

I guess you might have meant graphics. That's not all that is protected.

All this is about a bunch of ID sent to the client to tell it to get special effect #X, or item of the template #Y that has the icon #Z.
The server have stat and formula, but it becomes a pretty grey area (can you copyright "an item has X amount of stat A, Y amound of stat B" ?).
As for the geodata, it's constructed by the server - based on maps, sure, but it can be argued that it's just the whole concept of "emulation", adapting the behaviour so it fits what's emulated.

[Noxina]

Nothing. Nothing at all made Vanilla better than current expansion, simply because it wasn't.

It was grindy, it was awful, you never had enough gold, you rarely got an upgrade simply because in raids there where 40 man sharing a small loot table, and for dungeons you had to gather a group for a couple of hours, then wipe a couple more, and if you where lucky you might get a rare item that was an upgrade.
PvP was one long grind fest, AV was infested by bots and people who had placed something on a keybinding so they where running into a wall, simply because that was the way to get to a high rank (Unless you in some way or another had the time to play 12 hours of AV each day, and by 12 I mean 12. EVERY day.)

The only thing I remember that was somewhat great back in Vanilla, was that reputation was something important. Did you want to be able to join pugs? Well, don't EVER ninja loot ANYTHING, because that shit would get you on the black list of every pug starter out there.

The game felt a bit more alive, I guess. But fuck, it was horrible. But great AT that time because it was one of the few MMOs out there (I didn't know about any else back then).

Everything about Legion is better than Vanilla. Everything.

[Bapestar]

Vanilla World of Warcraft had plenty of grinding and faults but what made it great (or at least tolerable) was two things: One, this was Blizzard's first attempt at converting what was originally an RTS into a full blown MMORPG so the game not being perfect was understandable. Two, it was brand new and for a lot of people (including myself) to have a more personal experience in the Warcraft universe was amazing. I don't think nostalgia has anything to do with it even though that's the go-to excuse for people who don't want to acknowledge that World of Warcraft is unbearably flawed.

I've been around since vanilla and there have been numerous quality of life improvements that I would never want to lose but at the same time, they stripped away all of the RPG elements in the process. They've butchered their own lore constantly to squeeze in classes like the Demon Hunter or to bring back a character only a vocal minority wanted (i.e. Illidan). Their concept of "fun" is based entirely on running the same raids and dungeons ad infinitum.

One of the big things that keeps people around and enjoying the game is the ability to create "alts" which thanks to how horribly grind-y and luck dependent Legion is, is impossible to do for anyone but the most devoted of players (i.e. "no-lifers"). I don't see World of Warcraft dying anytime soon but I doubt they'll be able to last much longer if they don't change their view on what makes for fun, engaging content.

This is very true.

[Effenz]

RPG elements like what?
Everyone makes this jackass statement without anything to back it up.

[Sansnom]

You don't know the anti-Vanilla crowd from these forums very well then ^^
They will just grasp at any straw available to claim they are right about the most inane or pointless details - even if they are openly wrong or if these details are completely irrelevant to the point. It's more about tallying some sort of meaningless score than actually debating.

There are supporters on both that uses all kind of claims. The Pro-Vanilla also has supports of similar ilks.

Personally, I fail to see what makes people think Vanilla so great than the todays WoW. Some things has changed. Sure. Were they actually better? For me no. Different yes.

Questing was longer. That is better? More grind? That is suppose to be better? No LFD, No LFR. That is considered to be better? I do not see why restricting players from doing contents makes the game better.

Better community? The players makes the community better or worse. If the community was better then, then it most likely means the players were different back then.

This makes feel me like some geriatric rambling on how better it was it the good old days. It wasn't. It was different. My opinion anyway.

[Relapses]

The problem here is that WoW has many versions. Is Blizzard supporting WoW? Which one, cause there was many expansions. You can't disagree that Vanilla, TBC, WOTLK, and etc are lost to time. As a player I can't experience those expansions as they were meant to be experienced. At least not until Blizzard implements realms that have only those expansions. Meanwhile I own games I cannot play even if I wanted to pay.

This is not a right. Blizzard has no compelling reason to maintain old versions of their game simply because a fraction of its playerbase prefers it to the current retail version. (The same holds true for any developers whose updates are iterative.) You didn't purchase a standalone video game. You purchased a license to connect to Blizzard's servers using the software they developed.

Sucks, yeah, but that's life.

No not really. Have too much experience with forums and their cumbersome rules. I know I've been told I can't talk about emulators here cause they're illegal, and that's 100% false. Other forums wouldn't let me talk about Ad Blocker. For a while we had a thread dedicated to a private server that was taken down and we were free to say what we want.

The Megathread was allowed to exist because it was in response to a major event in the community and the Mods wanted to keep the discussion in a single place instead of having dozens of "DAE Vanilla WoW" threads popping up. The Mods went against one of their longest standing rules to give people a place to talk about the server being shut down. When it became obvious that its developers intended to bring it back, the rule was reinforced. If you have a problem with the Mods enforcing rules, though, I'd recommend bringing it up with them. I was simply providing context for the reason such a rule exists.

[PenguinChan]

Older versions of World of Warcraft encouraged socializing more than it does now, and that alone made it better / worse depending on your outlook.