What made classic wow better than current?

[Dormie]

So, after all the fuss you guys made about Nostalrius and Vanilla, and Blizzard even helped you get your message across (there are vanilla servers, blabla) your numbers still didn't grow into anything significant. What does that tell you? On what grounds do you expect to have numbers even if Blizzard goes hardcore into vanilla servers? You understand that people who follow forums or anything wow related know about the servers, know even where to find them. Still they mostly stay on the current exp. Your passion for vanilla is shared by very few people. Nothing will bring back the "glorious" days of vanilla. They passed, Legion is now. Get along with it or play on vanilla, noone cares. Just don't talk about the quality of an expansion that was surpassed long time ago. Arguments do not exist. Only in your heavily subjective head.

Also, you are the one not taking all the factors in your calculations. Your illusion that vanilla only needs official support because back in the day it rocked comes from you not being aware of the simple fact that vanilla was revolution in those days. I repeat, IN THOSE DAYS. In the days that people who were hooked on warcraft universe got the opportunity to experience it in a completely new way. Now mmorpg is not a new shiny thing. Now the story is different. The market for gamers is spread across so many AAA titles, both on pc and consoles. Back in the day, WoW was a must try for everyone, even for those who knew nothing about warcraft. Now that's not enough, now the game needs to continually improve. Guess what, it does. Peeps love Legion.

About private servers during vanilla time, yes, they existed. Their quality was nowhere near what todays private servers are. You would have to be a masochist to go to a private server back then. Now you have a fairly stable experience. Yet most players don't want it. Think. Be passionate about it, but also be objective and admit that your opinion about the quality of expansion is not shared by most people. And it is ok, really. As long as you don't try to argue that millions would prefer it also, if only they knew what you know. It's not that complicated. People know about vanilla. People are not into the idea of playing it again. Deal with it.

Stop pretending to know what people want.

[Valech]

Nothing
/10char

[ping-pong]

Stop pretending to know what people want.

I'm not. He is. People play what they want, noone is forcing anyone to play this or that. People make choices, those choices tell you what they want. They chose Legion.

[Akka]

So, after all the fuss you guys made about Nostalrius and Vanilla, and Blizzard even helped you get your message across (there are vanilla servers, blabla) your numbers still didn't grow into anything significant.

They are not "my" numbers, I didn't even play there
Also you take for granted the numbers are insignificant, but that's stemming both from a problem I pointed already (comparing them to Legion ones as if they were market equivalent), the fact that you are simply grossly wrong about the number of people playing on private server (which is pretty pointless to discuss anyway because it will most probably ends up in nitpicking about how to inflate/deflate them) and finally about the fact that I never actually claimed that more people wanted to play Vanilla than Legion (though considering how messy these threads are, I can't really blame people for losing track about who claims what).
The closest thing I could have said is to point that sub numbers stopped growing when Blizzard switched from the old-school design to the new WotLK-like one. And even then, I tend to use this argument only as a counterpoint to people who make claims based on subscription numbers or who take for granted that WoW "had to evolve or die" : I don't believe in quality proved by sub numbers, I'm just showing these people that their own reasonings defeat their own arguments.

About private servers during vanilla time, yes, they existed. Their quality was nowhere near what todays private servers are. You would have to be a masochist to go to a private server back then. Now you have a fairly stable experience.

I hope you realize that was actually one of the argument I provided ? "private servers" brings in most people head the image of some buggy, unstable shit. It might have changed now (and TBH it's only true for Classic servers, TBC is yet to have a truly good one AFAIK, and even Classic has still very few), but it's still an image that stay in the head of people and make them mostly ignore private servers.

Yet most players don't want it. Think. Be passionate about it, but also be objective and admit that your opinion about the quality of expansion is not shared by most people. And it is ok, really. As long as you don't try to argue that millions would prefer it also, if only they knew what you know. It's not that complicated. People know about vanilla. People are not into the idea of playing it again. Deal with it.

I'm perfectly aware of this. That hasn't ever been my argument. My points have mainly been :

- I think that WoW would have been a superior product if the DESIGN PHILOSOPHY (notice it doesn't mean "exact copy of how Classic was", but just keeping the philosophy of how it was designed, i.e. more "RPG-like" and "immersion-based" and less "action & accessibility") of Vanilla had been preserved.
- If Blizzard doesn't want to get back to Vanilla design, I'd like to at least have OFFICIAL Classic servers (which, for reasons you seem to refuse to admit, are a very, very, very different beast than private ones).
- People claiming that today's WoW is "objectively" better are wrong and are confusing their opinion with factual truths.

Hope that clears the misunderstanding.

[scoobysnacks]

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

To say it was better is probably inaccurate. The game has benefitted from 12 years of updates, additions and quality of life changes. However, I'd say that there were aspects of classic WoW that I miss.

1. The sense of newness. The base game was innovative, building on older MMO's to create a better, more accessible experience. Coming from DAoC, I was blown away. You also had so much to look forward to (I remember being excited about the prospect of fighting the Lich King at some point). I don't get that anymore.

2. Server communities were much smaller, but this and the inability to change name/server made it more intimate. You knew most of the other 60's and it was easier to make new friends.

3. Everything we take for granted now felt like an achievement back then. Getting your fast mount, your first epic and going on your first raid made for heady times.

The game has changed so much, and on the whole is much better now but I still on occasion miss 2006 WoW.

[Jngizu]

- People claiming that today's WoW is "objectively" better are wrong and are confusing their opinion with factual truths.

Hope that clears the misunderstanding.

Which is what people take an issue with. That idea that your opinions are facts and you know better. The only real thing that could be taken as a fact, is that WoW felt more RPG-like pre-cata. All the other points are down to preferences.

[Vineri]

Please, don't try to play innocent. That is exactly what you implied in your post. You wouldn't do that if you liked the direction the game is going.


So, are you saying that insults toward people not currently present in the conversation is alright, then? Because that's exactly what you did, with your comment toward Blizzard developers.

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You're one to talk. You have five posts in this thread. And out of those five, four are not constructive at all to this thread. Only your first post is directly related to the thread's topic.

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Funny you're calling the retail fans "bots", but leave the legacy supporters completely blame-free. As if they didn't spam the same shit for the entire length of a 1800 pages thread.

Your batting average for your post is a whopping zero. All you did was criticize another poster instead of discussing what I commented on.


Ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a logical fallacy in which an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.

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If you feel there is a problem with my posts then feel free to report me to moderators or put me on ignore. I will post how I wish, when I wish about whatever I wish if it is within the guidelines of the site. If I am in the wrong then it is up to the moderators to moderate the site, NOT YOU. If you do not like it that is too fucking bad.

I fail to see why you are so hostile. Just because people feel Legacy is better should not give you free reign to insult them. Virtual muscle doesn't count here, sorry.

Original thread that sparked this outburst:

The issue I have with the game is more around the evolution in the idea of what an MMO is and the feeling that, in general, the emergent game play that was promised with most MMOs just hasn't panned out for WOW specifically and has caused some of the growing pains. More and more MMOs just seem like online multiplayer static games on rails. This isn't how things were originally envisioned way back in the day. But unfortunately ideals and theory have to live in the world of business and profit so of course things will change.

So starting from the top:
1) Classes. In Vanilla, they went with the old school approach of the D&D classes (based on Warcraft Lore). Classes had unique spells and abilities and generally all had niches. This meant each class had particular strengths and weaknesses. Ie, magic users could wield powerful spells, but could be easily smacked down by physical attacks because they wore no armor. Tanks had all sort of ways to mitigate damage like blocks, parries and shields but really couldn't heal themselves. And so forth. Giving rise to the trinity of tank, heal, dps for most group encounters. And the underlying philosophy is that there was supposed to be imbalances between classes and specs in various areas. And this 'class fantasy' was reinforced by flavor spells and abilities unique to certain classes. Hybrids, such as druids, never could keep up with dedicated classes by design. But, over time just like with D&D, more classes became hybrids, starting with the first Hero class, which had the ability to heal themselves through combo attacks. And eventually more and more class specific spells and abilities were lost and more classes gained healing abilities, to the point where in WOD, some tanks and DPS classes were topping out the healing meters. Not sure that these kinds of changes are really for the benefit of the game. And then of course with Legion comes a whole new set of class changes revamping a lot of class abilities that were still present. In my opinion, some of these core class design philosophies have swung too much towards the wrong end of the spectrum and classes should absolutely have strengths and weaknesses and the game play should reflect that. An example is how back in the day, certain bosses and mobs were immune to certain forms of magic and had various forms of resists to damage. That has all but been removed from the game. Part of the fantasy of the genre goes back to the tabletop where the fun is in being able to decide the outcome of an encounter based on the mobs present and the strengths and weaknesses of the party composition.

2) The world. Obviously the original game was an entire world or series of zones spread across multiple continents. But that was the beginning and end of the concept of the MMO being a dynamically changing world, especially in WOW. Most MMOs just do expansions and create new zones only for paying customers. And typically these are only for top level players at that. Therefore, over time, the rest of the world goes stale as the events of the new expansion rarely have an impact on these old zones. That really goes against the original idea and philosophy of what an MMO was supposed to be and diminishes the sense of immersion in an open virtual world. Flying would not be the boondoggle it currently is (at least on the forums) if there was actually an entire world to navigate around. There is no rule in place saying that it has to be like that in an MMO and mostly I see it as a business decision to provide incentives for customers to pay for new content on top of a subscription fee. But the problem is what happens when a game is 20 years old and you have areas that are stuck in a time warp? That really doesn't help promote the fantasy of what an MMO is supposed to be. World Building has suffered because of this having the disastrous side effect of limiting the viability of what can be done in the world. The original RTS had no such issues and therefore each version featured tremendous amounts of world building building on and creating much of the established world. But most of those world building/defining events would never have happened in the same way if they happened in WOW, where each expansion does not have the world impact it should have or would have if it was done in the RTS.

3) Lore and Story. Most of the good lore and story for WOW actually comes from the RTS. And the best bits of that were actually interactive parts of the game. What made story and the lore so great was the sense of loss and great suffering during these conflicts of the original games. Given that these bits of lore happened during the RTS, this means it was generated within the game itself. Unfortunately just like world building, this ability to define deep meaningful lore and stories is lost with WOW. You could never have an Arthas or even the scourge if done in WOW versus the RTS. Whole zones and cities could never be destroyed because players would be to worried about losing a flight path, or even better because the arthas expansion would be in a separate zone not connected to the old world and therefore never have the lore and story impact as the original game. This is why Wrath was the pinnacle of WOW in many people's eyes, as it wrapped up a major lore point and story established from the events of the original RTS. The issue then becomes how to generate new lore and stories that are just as meaningful as things introduced in the RTS. (note orcs, the horde, the scourge, demons and so forth all came from the events of the original RTS). The key thing lacking in WOW is that as expansions move along, major lore and story points are abandoned or take a back burner and hence never get updated, which only reinforces the idea of a dead world with little world building.

4) Lack of a serious sense of threat. In the RTS, the events of the game showed that the good guys didn't always win and sometimes very bad things happened that had a devastating affect on the world. This meant that the bad guys actually presented a clear and tangible threat. Take the scourge for example. That was one clear threat introduced from the RTS and continued in WOW to the present day. You have not seen anything like that introduced in WOW itself. Because in the MMO, the champions will always go in and save the day because the bad guys always stay in one place and wait for you to 'get gud' and beat them. This never happened in the RTS. Bad guys did bad things out in the world and either you stopped them or you just got steamrolled. Most times folks got steamrolled. The MMO format doesn't necessarily cause this, as opposed to the way most MMOs have been designed. To most MMO designers, a persistent world means zones, towns and NPCs stay in place forever and therefore nothing bad ever happens to them, which means baddies don't just roam around and wreck shop like they would in the real world. Threats stay in artificially walled off areas called raids and never venture out into the world and DO anything of consequence. Hence they are never a threat. They stay contained in their little theme area and you get to go in and kill them at some point. No massive plagues can be unleashed on towns and citizens. No massive waves of demonic minions laying waste to whole zones, no massive fel asteroids destroying whole areas. Nothing that would naturally induce a sense of threat and danger. And of course you the player can never die so the game play philosophy of WOW as an MMO weakens the emergent game play opportunities that would keep content relevant for a longer time.

I doubt that most of these things were thought about in a serious way when WOW started because most people didn't expect the game to last this long. But given that it has and if they ever plan on keeping it going in one form or another, certainly these kinds of things should be addressed. There are plenty of ways of addressing this, such as option for 'evil/bad guy aligned' factions and for mercenary or pirate factions. WOW currently doesn't support this, but there is nothing that says you couldn't have them in a traditional MMO. Player vs player has more emergent and long lasting game play than purely player vs AI. But all of these things come with hindsight and most folks weren't aware of what would take place over time after most people hit level cap and the game reached centuries old.

I think it was well composed, solid, and heart felt. Not to mention a fun read. Sorry you tried to bury it.

[Akka]

Which is what people take an issue with. That idea that your opinions are facts and you know better. The only real thing that could be taken as a fact, is that WoW felt more RPG-like pre-cata. All the other points are down to preferences.

Wait, they are claiming "I'm right, Legion is objectively better" and I'm the one claiming my opinions are facts and I know better ? Aren't you inverting the roles here ?
Clarification : when I say "they are wrong", I mean "they are wrong to claim they objectively know".

[Ielenia]

Your batting average for your post is a whopping zero. All you did was criticize another poster instead of discussing what I commented on.

Except your comment had nothing of substance. Your entire post consists of nothing more of an "I agree /10chars" plus insults toward Blizzard developers for not taking the game in a direction you like.

Ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a logical fallacy in which an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.

In your own words:

I call it as I see it baby.

Now, being honest, your usage of "ad hominem" is wrong in this instance. I didn't try to rebut your "argument" (which was nonexistent, to begin with) with attacks to your character. This is what I replied to your original post:

It's amusing how your second sentence completely puts the sentiment of your first one in question. "Yes-men who answer only to bean-counters". Such a ridiculous inflammatory statement, making such wild accusations with the only supporting "evidence" behind it being "they're no longer making what I like".

The "ad hominem", as you like to claim, came after that, just as a simple comment on how "your head spins 720 degrees in all directions."

There was no adhominem because I did not attempt to counter any of your "arguments" with insults.

[Heathy]

Wait, they are claiming "I'm right, Legion is objectively better" and I'm the one claiming my opinions are facts and I know better ? Aren't you inverting the roles here ?
Clarification : when I say "they are wrong", I mean "they are wrong to claim they objectively know".

I mean we can put it down to things like technical improvements, after 12 years the game has had so many patches fixes & updates its just silly and factually wrong to assume that a version of this game thats 12 years older than the current version is more stable than what we have right now.

graphically speaking the game has much better options for higher fidelity. various things have improved over the years.

game play, as any spec is viable and fun, your not going to reach max level as a dps paladin or druid and be told you need to spec healer if you want to raid.

5 man dungeons are more or less the same repetitive method of small group content, raiding is mostly the same large group content, mechanically the encounters are challenging and yet different which keeps things feeling fresh.

not many ppl really care much about the mid game, the levelling up aspect of the game at one point was a kind of tutorial, going from 1-60 was like playing a tutorial, every other level you gained new ranks of spells and the whole journey from 1-60 introduced you slowly to your abilities. today that aspect just isn't needed, ppl don't need to be lead through that same sort of tutorial experience because for a start the whole thing has been refined but for alts, I can pick up any of the 13 characters, pick a spec and learn how to play it within a few days to a week. the classes are more complex than they were, but there is a general flow to each class and spec that isn't hard to grasp. once you figure out what your main abilities and cool downs are and bind them to keys, setting up and tweaking your ui takes longer than learning a rotation.

is it a better game today, from various standpoints it is, if all vanilla brings to the table is a better rpg experience (and by rpg experience we mean a more D&D experience) its not really got many pros over its massive list of cons. the things ive listed are just objective, a lot of classes are a lot more fun to play today than they were, 5 mans and raids are still challenging loot grinds like they always have been, the game is more detailed today than it was. it crashes less, it lags less. it bugs less.

[Akka]

The graphical aspect and a big amount of UI improvement is obviously better, but that'd be completely dishonest to pretend it was the meat of the claim.

Everything else is about design preferences, and the claims of "objectively better" are bullshit.

[Tome]

I mean we can put it down to things like technical improvements, after 12 years the game has had so many patches fixes & updates its just silly and factually wrong to assume that a version of this game thats 12 years older than the current version is more stable than what we have right now.

graphically speaking the game has much better options for higher fidelity. various things have improved over the years.

game play, as any spec is viable and fun, your not going to reach max level as a dps paladin or druid and be told you need to spec healer if you want to raid.

5 man dungeons are more or less the same repetitive method of small group content, raiding is mostly the same large group content, mechanically the encounters are challenging and yet different which keeps things feeling fresh.

not many ppl really care much about the mid game, the levelling up aspect of the game at one point was a kind of tutorial, going from 1-60 was like playing a tutorial, every other level you gained new ranks of spells and the whole journey from 1-60 introduced you slowly to your abilities. today that aspect just isn't needed, ppl don't need to be lead through that same sort of tutorial experience because for a start the whole thing has been refined but for alts, I can pick up any of the 13 characters, pick a spec and learn how to play it within a few days to a week. the classes are more complex than they were, but there is a general flow to each class and spec that isn't hard to grasp. once you figure out what your main abilities and cool downs are and bind them to keys, setting up and tweaking your ui takes longer than learning a rotation.

is it a better game today, from various standpoints it is, if all vanilla brings to the table is a better rpg experience (and by rpg experience we mean a more D&D experience) its not really got many pros over its massive list of cons. the things ive listed are just objective, a lot of classes are a lot more fun to play today than they were, 5 mans and raids are still challenging loot grinds like they always have been, the game is more detailed today than it was. it crashes less, it lags less. it bugs less.

It would only be fair to list the cons of today's WoW, since you only listed the cons of classic. There's a lot of them, and people will notice just how different everything is, why people feel it's a different game entirely.

In my opinion, neither game is really superior to one another or vice versa.

They just feel like two different games, and I treat them as such.

[Sencha]

Because there were social interactions and guilds mattered. It wasn't a solo player fest in a MMO environment.

[Heathy]

It would only be fair to list the cons of today's WoW, since you only listed the cons of classic. There's a lot of them, and people will notice just how different everything is, why people feel it's a different game entirely.

In my opinion, neither game is really superior to one another or vice versa.

They just feel like two different games, and I treat them as such.

the only cons i'm reading about legion today are ppl picking apart a game, for being a game, 'this is too grindy' 'this is too easy' 'this is unbalanced' 'rng sucks' these problems also existed in classic. to me the game still has levelling up, the classes still have buttons you press that do damage healing or tanking, the dungeons and raids still have fun boss encounters that drop loot. everything else is just a bonus. the game still follows the exact same principle that made it popular in the first place, level up, run group content, get better loot, repeat. originally for me, i was just happy to be raiding, I honestly didn't care much about loot at first, eventually there were some bits of gear that just didn't drop and became really sought after but yes initially i was pretty low on loot craze with raiding and was quite happy letting others get loot over me. today its moved into a much more loot orientated grind. mainly because thats what ppl found to be the most fun part of the game, getting better loot.

[Demithio]

It would only be fair to list the cons of today's WoW, since you only listed the cons of classic. There's a lot of them, and people will notice just how different everything is, why people feel it's a different game entirely.

In my opinion, neither game is really superior to one another or vice versa.

They just feel like two different games, and I treat them as such.

Probably a fair assessment. Vanilla / TBC (and even wotlk) and today are two different games with two different audiences. The version of WoW that some of us were really into is long gone. Doubt it will ever be back.

[roahn the warlock]

Ever hear a baby boomer bitch about our generation? It's kinda like that.

[Deleted]

Objectively talking current WoW is different, generally is better on most of the game aspects.

Its more polished better mechanics, more balanced.

But it lacks one 1 aspect that it happens to be the most important since we are talking about a MMORPG, and thats community.
X-realms even though they might have been profitable for Blizz, literally destroyed community, server pride. I Personally flew from Greece to meet some Wales guild-mates and stay there for a few days, thats how close we were and we werent kids.

It is always nice to be part of something and to hold a reputation it gives another weight to the term MMORGP.

Current game is better? Yes it is but who cares if the current version of the game is better of the 10 years ago one.The strange thing would be the opposite. Dont get me wrong i still play the game,more casually ofc , majority of the ppl are just old players that just dont bother deleting their accounts and have some fun right and left.

[Deleted]

About private servers during vanilla time, yes, they existed. Their quality was nowhere near what todays private servers are. You would have to be a masochist to go to a private server back then. Now you have a fairly stable experience. Yet most players don't want it. Think. Be passionate about it, but also be objective and admit that your opinion about the quality of expansion is not shared by most people. And it is ok, really. As long as you don't try to argue that millions would prefer it also, if only they knew what you know. It's not that complicated. People know about vanilla. People are not into the idea of playing it again. Deal with it.

That's bullshit. I played on Nostalrius until they shut it down, because of the mess that WoD was. I enjoyed MoP and i absolutely enjoy Legion now (i haven´t been this hooked since Wrath on the official server), but if Blizzard would provide official classic servers, i would play there in a heartbeat (and, at least in my circle of friends and in my guild, i am by far not the only one). When i played on Nostalrius, i didn´t believe that Blizzard will shut it off, because most of the user base had no intention to play on the retail servers again, so there wasn ´t really anything to be gained. I personally think, but i could be wrong, that the uproar after the shutdown had a way worse impact on Blizzard than they thought it would have. So basically, what holds me back from continuing playing classic is the fear that my character might be gone again and that the current elysium/nostalrius team is pretty bad (not at all stable, soo many cheated characters, shady game masters and so on...).

You cant really define what made classic great, because it was more than the sum of its parts. Legion today is a great themepark (in my opinion the best), but Classic WoW was an adventure and it still felt that way when i leveled and geared my warlock and my warrior on Nostalrius.

[Deleted]

I was watching the stream of some guy leveling a priest and this is how it looked:

1. Pull one mob
2. Use 2 abilites and wand him to death
3. Drink and repeat

Suffice to say it was so painful to watch that I had to quit after 5 minutes (he managed to kill 3 mobs during that time). Let's bring back that awesome vanilla experience back!

[Deleted]

I was watching the stream of some guy leveling a priest and this is how it looked:

1. Pull one mob
2. Use 2 abilites and wand him to death
3. Drink and repeat

Suffice to say it was so painful to watch that I had to quit after 5 minutes (he managed to kill 3 mobs during that time). Let's bring back that awesome vanilla experience back!

That´s basically how all the leveling streams of mmorpgs look, not really an indicator for the quality of a mmorpg. Vanilla WoW and Legion WoW streams both bore me to death, yet i still love to play.