What made classic wow better than current?

[Kyanion]

You can keep raging and blaming the players for the game design failures, but it's not going to change anything.

Uh no one is raging unless you are and I'm not aware. I'm not blaming the players for game design failures either. What the fuck are you even talking about here?

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There is no reason why one difficulty means everything gets cleared in no time. It didn't mean it in vanilla nor in TBC. And just because you have one difficulty level per piece of content doesn't mean you cannot have different content with different difficulty levels.

Guess what. This isn't 10 freaking years ago. One difficulty would never fly in today's WoW. And I don't even know what you're going on about with the last sentence. Are you talking about the difficulty or number of players just randomly changing on a whim? 1st raid is for 20 players and easy. 2nd raid is for 15 players and is ultra hard. Hope you like it!

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And I think had they stuck with their original design concepts, the ones that made WoW hugely popular in the first place, and evolved based on those, the game would be twice as popular as it is today. They took what seemed like the right design choices ("everyone sees everything"), but unfortunately it lead to a dull, uninteresting, meaningless design. And if they stick with it, the subs will just keep going down until it's not worth it to make another xpac.

Well we can't go back into the past or anklestabber's magical fantasy land where all the perfect choices were made. I happen to think that if WoW stayed the same for TWELVE years it wouldn't be as popular as it is. Even TBC and WotLK made some important changes in adding varied raid sizes and difficulty modes such as heroic dungeons in TBC and hard modes in Ulduar and heroic in ICC.

We get it, they did things you don't like. Too bad. You are just one former paying customer. You don't even play the game anymore but you feel like Blizz needs to listen to you and bring back a 10-12 year old relic of the game.

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You know, I debased this ridiculous idea of yours in another thread. You never even bothered to respond to it but here you are doubling down on the ignorance.

As ignoble as I'm sure you believe your intentions are, it does not entitle you to a revisionist paintbrush for you to attempt rewriting history in a way which fits your happy little narrative. Until you can prove unequivocally (I'll give you a hint: you can't) that the design changes you so revile aren't the exact reason we're even playing the game today, all you're doing is expanding on a hunch which is supported by little more than your own feelings about what was best for the game. You do not speak for a majority of players and you cannot possibly know what would have been "better" for the game so please stop pretending like you do.

That is what burns my ass the most about that type of person in these threads. They refuse to come at this in a rational manner and make all these fucked up assumptions. And what I mean is this: If the game never made any sweeping changes and stayed true to Vanilla (whatever the fuck that means) then he believes the game would have more subs than ever and would be the best game that has ever existed.

If I was to think up the same scenario wondering how the game would look if it never, you know, evolved...I just don't think it would be very popular and might have a much lower playerbase than it does now. I don't know which is right but I am not crazy enough to think my way of thinking is the only correct one. Maybe in some Bizzaro Universe WoW stayed the same and is a massive 20mil+ player awesome game.

[Deleted]

this is ofc an easy one.....drumroll.....: absolutely NOTHING!

from the broken specs to the lack of quests in multiple areas of the game id say classic wow was never better than legion (or any of the xpac in general).

ok maybe there is somethingthat made classic better than current content: hugely popular statement incoming: the lack of flying. And of course the whole of azeroth. Nothing will kill my nostalgic feelings when thinking back of running over the barrens (with environment music on) in the evening (yes day&night cycle) onn my old hunter.

lots of fun.


ow yea one other thing that made classic miles better than current...... NO STUPIDASS TOPICS LIKE THESE EVERY COUPLE OF MONTHS

[Daffan]

It's hard to say overall;

Legion is better in a lot of ways, like a lot - fair because they've had almost a decade to improve every system. There are a lot of systems in old WoW that are garbage by today's standards.

But there are two big big things that make original WoW more enjoyable in some cases.

Better sense of progression and actual relevant content. I'm a casual so Legion is rip because 90% of the content I do is either trivial garbage or gets invalidated by welfare purples each patch. Everything is so futile to work on and apathy runs high. Whereas no matter what you were working on in old WoW, it mattered to some degree, From T4 scrub to T6 elitist (The only problem with this system was flex/b.net/premade never existed so it was a hassle)

Cool the graphics, sound, rotations, bosses and other content stuff are mechanically better in Legion - but I don't even care to do them more then once and most of the time they are so easy it's garbage due to abundance of overgearing. A rebuttal might be to play Mythic Raids, but 1) you have to be more then a casual and 2) A mythic raid only lasts a patch, because the next patch will allow you to skip/trivialize/obsolete the previous raid by crazy overgear.

That's what I liked about older wow. Way less overgearing, less trivial crap to waste time on, no skipping content (fk sunwell welfare) (you don't even get a choice in modern WoW, it's either made trivial or obsolete) and everything felt worth the time. I mean why do casuals/avg player even farm gear or AP in Legion when next month you can get it 100x faster and easier. It's not like you need it for anything.

[Deleted]

You know, I debased this ridiculous idea of yours in another thread.

I'm sure that's what you think. But the reality is you just kept writing essays without addressing my points.

As ignoble as I'm sure you believe your intentions are, it does not entitle you to a revisionist paintbrush for you to attempt rewriting history in a way which fits your happy little narrative.

And here you keep doing precisely that.

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Guess what. This isn't 10 freaking years ago. One difficulty would never fly in today's WoW.

Prove it.

And I don't even know what you're going on about with the last sentence.

It's really not that difficult to understand if you just try a bit. For example, instead of having an easy mode and a hard mode to a raid, they should build one easy raid and one hard raid. Like TBC had Kara+ZA as the easy mode raiding, and T5/T6 as the hard mode raiding.

I won't bother responding to the rest of your emotional raging.

[Relapses]

I'm sure that's what you think. But the reality is you just kept writing essays without addressing my points.

Your points are completely inconsequential because they're so heavily interwoven with this stubborn fascination you have about what constitutes "great game design" that you refuse to even acknowledge there's a possibility you might be wrong.

And here you keep doing precisely that.

How in the world is defending what has already happened revisionist? It's quite literally the opposite.

Prove it.

The onus is not on either myself or Kyan to disprove your ridiculous claims. It's on you. And I know you'll claim subscriber levels mean something but anybody who takes this argument seriously is able to understand that there's far more at play than just the number of people playing it. (I've made repeated arguments against the flawed logic of subscriber trends since it seems to be the only fragile shred of factual data pro-Legacy folks can cling onto.) Simply reverting the game back to the way it was more than half a decade ago will not suddenly change the currents of gaming back in favor of WoW. In fact, it's far more likely to alienate the people who are currently playing more than it is to recapture its "previous glory." But in your fantasy world, the circumstances which led to WoW's runaway success are somehow just waiting in limbo to happen again, and here you are... a lone prophet who knows more about what gamers want than the market analysts a billion dollar gaming company like Blizzard surely pays handsomely.

I'm sorry dude, if Legacy were as nearly popular as you seem to think we'd already have the servers. So until Blizzard makes an announcement otherwise, keep dreaming.

[Kyanion]

Prove it.

Prove what? Proving that removing content is a good idea? Okay... lol.

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It's really not that difficult to understand if you just try a bit. For example, instead of having an easy mode and a hard mode to a raid, they should build one easy raid and one hard raid. Like TBC had Kara+ZA as the easy mode raiding, and T5/T6 as the hard mode raiding.

I won't bother responding to the rest of your emotional raging.

Yeah another great idea. Okay so for the first raid with a single difficulty it will be easy. Then for the 2nd raid we'll make it super hard with one difficulty. It totally won't alienate or bore players to death (sarcasm). For example great players will get bored to tears with an easy raid and you'll push people away when the raid is set to UltraHard mode. Oh what's that you don't like raiding as if you were on current mythic? Better go to easy mode and never ever see the hard mode content. You know that cool raid they spent that time on and all the lore takes place? TOO BAD YOU CAN'T GO, SCRUB. That is what it would be saying and that is a surefire way to piss off your customers.

But what am I saying, you are likely some amazing analyst for games and you should get hired on by Blizz to design all of this and send WoW back into the stone ages. I'm sure you'll get hired with such great ideas.

And finally, how about you just stop responding to me period. I am tired of making you look silly.

[araine]

short answer nothing, if you released a game like classic wow today it would fail badly since it would be a total shit game by todays standards

[Deleted]

Prove what? Proving that removing content is a good idea?

Prove your statement that the vanilla one-difficulty design "would never fly today". Although I suspect you'll have quite a bit of difficulty with the fact that there was such a hugely successful private server that Blizzard had to close it down. And that was old content on a reverse engineer server that could not be advertised on sites like mmo-c.

Yeah another great idea. Okay so for the first raid with a single difficulty it will be easy. Then for the 2nd raid we'll make it super hard with one difficulty. It totally won't alienate or bore players to death (sarcasm). For example great players will get bored to tears with an easy raid and you'll push people away when the raid is set to UltraHard mode. Oh what's that you don't like raiding as if you were on current mythic? Better go to easy mode and never ever see the hard mode content. You know that cool raid they spent that time on and all the lore takes place? TOO BAD YOU CAN'T GO, SCRUB. That is what it would be saying and that is a surefire way to piss off your customers.

This is just a bad design dreamed up by you so you have something you can rage at. It is not what I'm proposing.

The design I'm proposing worked perfectly well in TBC. Casual raiders had Kara -> ZA progression path, organized raiders had T5 -> T6 -> Sunwell. They should have built on that model rather than tried to use the same content for different raid sizes and difficulties.

But what am I saying, you are likely some amazing analyst for games and you should get hired on by Blizz to design all of this and send WoW back into the stone ages. I'm sure you'll get hired with such great ideas.

You seem quite upset for some reason. How terrible that other people have other ideas than you. Modern WoW is hardly a shining example of great game design, given that it has been steadily losing 100k players every month since Cata, while the overall market has grown.

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Simply reverting the game back to the way it was more than half a decade ago will not suddenly change the currents of gaming back in favor of WoW.

It is these kinds of vague, meaningless statements that you repeat as if they have some deep meaning and somehow you think you've made some point. I already pointed out your circular reasoning when it comes to the "currents" of MMORPGs: WoW declines for whatever reason (could be, for example, due to poor design choices) causing players to leave WoW, since WoW is the biggest sub MMORPG and there are no viable competitors, you see a big move to other games, and you then interpret this as a "current of gaming", which you then think is the cause of WoW's decline (when in reality it could've been anything, e.g., poor game design).

[voidillusion]

The onus is not on either myself or Kyan to disprove your ridiculous claims. It's on you.

Why? Why is the burden of proof always on other ppl yet you two can say whatever you want and never have to present any proof whatsoever?

[Kyanion]

Why? Why is the burden of proof always on other ppl yet you two can say whatever you want and never have to present any proof whatsoever?

Except in this situation it is asking for proof that could never be provided by either party. By giving my opinion that one difficulty mode would never fly in today's WoW I was told to 'prove it'. Do you think that going from 4 modes down to 1 would work? I sure dont. Removing options isn't a great way to make the game stronger. But no one could provide proof of this which is exactly why anklestabber made the 'prove it' statement.

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Prove your statement that the vanilla one-difficulty design "would never fly today". Although I suspect you'll have quite a bit of difficulty with the fact that there was such a hugely successful private server that Blizzard had to close it down. And that was old content on a reverse engineer server that could not be advertised on sites like mmo-c.

See this is exactly why trying to have debates with people so far down the rabbit hole of Vanilla servers is almost pointless. You want me to prove my OPINION on one difficulty never flying in today's WoW? Sure let me use my magic powers... And slow down there "hugely successful" is a bit debatable when compared to the amount of players on current WoW or that have played over the years. Blizz closed it down because it became a nice huge target of saying "Hey we're copyright infringing, suck it Blizz". And of course it couldn't be advertised here..I don't make the rules for this site but I understand why it shouldn't be allowed.

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This is just a bad design dreamed up by you so you have something you can rage at. It is not what I'm proposing.

The design I'm proposing worked perfectly well in TBC. Casual raiders had Kara -> ZA progression path, organized raiders had T5 -> T6 -> Sunwell. They should have built on that model rather than tried to use the same content for different raid sizes and difficulties.

And this isn't 10 years ago. You think it would be totally fine to go back to that type of model. Maybe it would have worked, but they went a different direction and trying to go back down that road would just piss off players who actually like having normal/heroic/mythic being 3 separate things. The game didn't go the direction you liked, we get it. Get over it.

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You seem quite upset for some reason. How terrible that other people have other ideas than you. Modern WoW is hardly a shining example of great game design, given that it has been steadily losing 100k players every month since Cata, while the overall market has grown.

And you bitch about me having proof? How do you know wow has lost 100k players a month. Did they invite you to some secret share-holders call for the elite? Also WoW hasn't been losing 100k players a month since Cata. Go look at some reported numbers okay? They gained subs in the latter half of 2014 and of course with WoD's release in 2015. I don't even have to do much work to prove you full of shit right there. Next?

[Kyanion]

We all know you hate <insert version here> with a passion. No need to pop a vein, go take a breather everyone.

Umm I actually liked Vanilla and each expansion quite a bit but I just don't think it is a great idea to have Blizz making Legacy realms at this time.

[Shridevi]

When Nostalrius shut down 1 year ago and a thread started on MMO-C, the same exact people were bashing the idea of legacy servers. One year later they still do it every single day. Pretty sad.

[Kyanion]

When Nostalrius shut down 1 year ago and a thread started on MMO-C, the same exact people were bashing the idea of legacy servers. One year later they still do it every single day. Pretty sad.

One year ago people tried to start a circle-jerk thread and people opposed it. Welcome to MMO-C.

[Deleted]

You want me to prove my OPINION on one difficulty never flying in today's WoW?

You stated it as if it was an unquestionable fact. If it's just your opinion and you have no hard evidence to back that up, then that's perfectly fine. However, the existence of a private server that got a few hundred thousand, and growing, players in very adverse conditions (cannot be talked about, reverse engineered code, etc.) is hard evidence that the vanilla model would fly today just like it did 10 years ago (hardly surprising since people have not changed in the last 10 years and still have the same fundamental desires).

How do you know wow has lost 100k players a month. Did they invite you to some secret share-holders call for the elite? Also WoW hasn't been losing 100k players a month since Cata. Go look at some reported numbers okay?

They are perfectly public share holder calls. Take the reported numbers, put them into Excel or R or whatever you like, then run a linear regression from Cata onwards (ignoring xpac release peaks). Have you done that? Because I have. The result is around 115k sub losses per month with very good fit (R^2=0.97).

[Demithio]

When Nostalrius shut down 1 year ago and a thread started on MMO-C, the same exact people were bashing the idea of legacy servers. One year later they still do it every single day. Pretty sad.

Yeah it is sad, and pathetic. Some people just have nothing better to do with themselves I suppose.

[Kyanion]

You stated it as if it was an unquestionable fact. If it's just your opinion and you have no hard evidence to back that up, then that's perfectly fine. However, the existence of a private server that got a few hundred thousand, and growing, players in very adverse conditions (cannot be talked about, reverse engineered code, etc.) is hard evidence that the vanilla model would fly today just like it did 10 years ago (hardly surprising since people have not changed in the last 10 years and still have the same fundamental desires).

Umm this is a forum with people talking about stuff that they have no power to influence. It is opinions. And sorry you can claim a few hundred thousand people playing a free PS is hard evidence but I disagree. It flies in saying that people enjoy free WoW if nothing else.

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They are perfectly public share holder calls. Take the reported numbers, put them into Excel or R or whatever you like, then run a linear regression from Cata onwards (ignoring xpac release peaks). Have you done that? Because I have. The result is around 115k sub losses per month with very good fit (R^2=0.97).

Okay go run those numbers of reported subs that they don't report anymore. Also don't forget that they make more money from the WoW token than an actual sub so make sure to factor that money in. Every 3 tokens they sell is 15 bucks in profit or another sub in equal value. You said they lost subs every month from Cata. I proved you wrong and so you moved the goalposts. They gained subs at the end of MoP and into WoD. They likely gained subs at the end of WoD into Legion and who knows what the actual sub number is. You don't. I don't. Period.

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Yeah it is sad, and pathetic. Some people just have nothing better to do with themselves I suppose.

*pats you on the head* I know it must be tough. Sometimes people talk about things you may not like.

[Banthare]

I didn't even play back then but maybe the sense of a community, but aside from that nothing.

[Slashnox]

We were young and innocent in a brand new world where socializing was required.

Now we're old and spoiled in a recycled game where we grind alone.

[Deleted]

And sorry you can claim a few hundred thousand people playing a free PS is hard evidence but I disagree. It flies in saying that people enjoy free WoW if nothing else.

You can disagree all you want, but so far you've made no convincing counter argument. If the vanilla design "would not fly today" then hundreds of thousands of people wouldn't have flocked to a private vanilla server. Free or not, they simply would not have played there. There are plenty of good, new free games out there to fill everyone's time, there is no need for anyone to go play vanilla if it's so terribly bad as you claim. Hence the most plausible explanation is that many people actually enjoy the vanilla design just as they enjoyed in 10 years ago.

Also don't forget that they make more money from the WoW token than an actual sub so make sure to factor that money in. Every 3 tokens they sell is 15 bucks in profit or another sub in equal value.

I have said nothing about their profits. That is completely orthogonal. I'm talking about whether people enjoy the game design, not how much money Blizzard manages to squeeze out of them.

You said they lost subs every month from Cata. I proved you wrong and so you moved the goalposts. They gained subs at the end of MoP and into WoD. They likely gained subs at the end of WoD into Legion and who knows what the actual sub number is.

You are starting to sound really desperate. Of course I didn't mean WoW lost subs every month, that's obviously not true and nobody would claim that. You're just interpreting it wrongly on purpose so you have a strawman to beat on since you have no actual argument to make. You're just wasting everyone's time.

[Kyanion]

You can disagree all you want, but so far you've made no convincing counter argument. If the vanilla design "would not fly today" then hundreds of thousands of people wouldn't have flocked to a private vanilla server. Free or not, they simply would not have played there. There are plenty of good, new free games out there to fill everyone's time, there is no need for anyone to go play vanilla if it's so terribly bad as you claim. Hence the most plausible explanation is that many people actually enjoy the vanilla design just as they enjoyed in 10 years ago.

Here is a convincing counter argument. Blizzard has not put out Vanilla servers. Period. I don't think I need to say anything else.

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Modern WoW is hardly a shining example of great game design, given that it has been steadily losing 100k players every month since Cata, while the overall market has grown.

How else would you like this statement to be read? That is what you said:

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You are starting to sound really desperate. Of course I didn't mean WoW lost subs every month, that's obviously not true and nobody would claim that. You're just interpreting it wrongly on purpose so you have a strawman to beat on since you have no actual argument to make.

Oops? Did you want to go back and correct what you said? *eyeroll