What made classic wow better than current?

[Dormie]

Wrath did need some tuning. I would also have to agree that wrath was also the first step toward what is happening now. Although it was much less obvious and we didn't notice it as much. I believe this sort of thing started around the second half of wrath. It was a pretty great expansion at least for the first half as it still had the WoW "feel" to it.

The turning point of WoW was in Wrath at the time they added the LFG patch.

[Kallisto]

The turning point of WoW was in Wrath at the time they added the LFG patch.

Yes the patch where people who didn't have a set schedule in real life could finally see some of the major parts of the game regularly. Nothing wrong with adding that. Rather have people being able to work shifts and also play the game than some weeks only be home during the dead hours with very few others online and even less able to fill roles required for spots.

[Deleted]

I started playing wow in 2009, which means I never played classic wow. I played through the middle of MoP and then quit. I recently had the chance to experience vanilla in its original form, i.e. questing, 5 mans and raiding. I enjoy vanilla wow much more than I ever did wotlk, cata or mop. And since I never played vanilla in the first place, you can't argue nostalgia with me.

The game was more immersive, items took time to get and your character had a lot of perceived value to it.

The game is still immersive but grand quest lines, cinematics, dialogue in game, etc.
Items still take a lot of time to get. Just that now the color of the item does not matter anymore unless it's orange. Getting full epic now is not hard. Getting full epic lets say 910 ilevel is still hard as hell. It all depends on how you see it. If i saw in TBC lets say a guy with full sunwell gear i would be impressed. If i see a guy with full mythic set i would be equally impressed.

[Dormie]

Yes the patch where people who didn't have a set schedule in real life could finally see some of the major parts of the game regularly. Nothing wrong with adding that. Rather have people being able to work shifts and also play the game than some weeks only be home during the dead hours with very few others online and even less able to fill roles required for spots.

I'm not saying that specific feature was the turn, but that patch itself was the point in time where it turned.

[Charge me Doctor]

I recently had the chance to experience vanilla in its original form, i.e. questing, 5 mans and raiding.

No you didn't. You just played something vaguely resembling vanilla on a PS. You want real vanilla experience? Please emulate input lag, 640x480 resolution, lack of DBs, lack of addons (well, at least look for them yourself without typing "must have addons for playing on XXX server" in google), regular disconnects and general lack of understanding what the fuck to do from community. That's what vanilla is.

- - - Updated - - -

Funny, back during vanilla / TBC the word pug would invoke groans and rolling eyes. No one wanted to get near one. Now its the norm.

Mostly because back then if you dedicate your time and resources (which are hard to get by yourself) and put your effort in hands of random fuckers you don't know and have no clue what to expect from them - you will be disappointed and probably will get nothing out of a raid. The only "acceptable" pug i recall was Ony, because a lot of guilds needed scraps of her ass but regular raiders didn't wanted to do anything with her, so, chances are that you'll get in a group of geared people who just needed you to spam wand on her when she is in P2

[Deleted]

Yes the patch where people who didn't have a set schedule in real life could finally see some of the major parts of the game regularly. Nothing wrong with adding that. Rather have people being able to work shifts and also play the game than some weeks only be home during the dead hours with very few others online and even less able to fill roles required for spots.

Its automation part of LFD that made it bad. Very quickly developers found out that when people don't need to interact with each other to form groups, they don't care about groups. That means they don't care about performance, about social side and treat dungeon as job rather than fun experience. In such setting cooperation and effort are not to be expected, thus LFD dungeons were nerfed into oblivion, ruining dungeon experience for all players forever.

If only instead of automated group they made something like today's group finder, it would have been a much better solution.

Also, as posted you quoted mentions, its the entire patch that ruined it, not only LFD part. There was another major part of that patch: removal of elite mobs in world and making other mobs less powerful, thus trivializing leveling experience. They ruined 2 things that made old WoW so great with just 1 patch: social interaction in dungeons and challenging content during leveling.

[Deleted]

Its automation part of LFD that made it bad. Very quickly developers found out that when people don't need to interact with each other to form groups, they don't care about groups. That means they don't care about performance, about social side and treat dungeon as job rather than fun experience. In such setting cooperation and effort are not to be expected, thus LFD dungeons were nerfed into oblivion, ruining dungeon experience for all players forever.

If only instead of automated group they made something like today's group finder, it would have been a much better solution.

Also, as posted you quoted mentions, its the entire patch that ruined it, not only LFD part. There was another major part of that patch: removal of elite mobs in world and making other mobs less powerful, thus trivializing leveling experience. They ruined 2 things that made old WoW so great with just 1 patch: social interaction in dungeons and challenging content during leveling.

Well said.
Ppl asked for a tool to help them get groups to go in dungeons, instead of spamming chats and random whispering.
What blizz gave us was a complete overkill. The tool we have today would have been the perfect solution, but instead we got a tool that finds us group, teleports us to the dungeon and back, increased damages/healths and as a cherry on top it also rewarded u for using it instead of doing the old fashion way.

[deniter]

I see Wrath and LFG as the final nail in the coffin. The turning point was patch 2.3 when they accelerated exp gains, which made the whole vanilla content pointless and you effectively had only one quest: "Level up to 58 as soon as possible to enter the Dark Portal where the real game starts".

They then adopted this philosophy in later expansions rendering everything else but the very latest exp pack obsolete and pointless grind.

[SilverCoin]

It just wasn´t better TBH at least IMO.

It was completely new, my first MMO-experience... so it was amazing to travel in this big open world, which I only knew from WC3.
Well maybe there was one thing i prefered over the current state: the zones in vanilla had somewhat of an own storyline each. Some were connected to each other but not like the all-strings-come-together strategy blizz is doing now (which I understand because of the settings of the expacs).

I would love to see a more grounded expack again (mayber after legion) where we focus on inner conflicts with more surprising turns storytellingwise and stuff like that. I´m really looking forward to match Sargeras finally but I think not every expansion have to deal with BIGGER and BIGGER threats.

Maybe I´m in the minority but I do like MoP very much. Again it was pretty new and the storytelling was fantastic IMO. Well the last raid lasted to long but well that´s something different.

Maybe Blizz can manage with a really big new expac to give the players again the feeling of discovering something completely new. The end of the Legion could be a good start here
cheers

[Deleted]

Struggling guilds and players not keen on transferring because of 1.money 2.fear of loosing their communities led to the easy/lazy ass "fix" of LFG. And since content was poorer than before (not gonna argue about it atm , I will accept that vanilla been a whole new world/game whereas expansions are small additions to it) playing with alts was a good way of adding to playtime and LFG was a good way to work around it.
However it ended up playing with bots atm. I mean back in the day if you grouped with 5 people to do an instance and one would not even say a hello he would be considered a weirdo whereas now u wont mind joining 5 instances str8 for timewalk and no one cares to see even the class of the teammates.

[Moozart]

The turning point of WoW was in Wrath at the time they added the LFG patch.

That was the day that elitists like yourself felt a little tingle in their assholes.

[Kyanion]

I see Wrath and LFG as the final nail in the coffin.

Remember guys, WoW has been dying for how many years now?

[deniter]

Remember guys, WoW has been dying for how many years now?

What do you mean? The game died in 2010-11-23 after a long illness. RIP WoW.

[Dormie]

That was the day that elitists like yourself felt a little tingle in their assholes.

That was a dumb thing to say.

[Arbiter]

That was the day that elitists like yourself felt a little tingle in their assholes.

That's a pretty ignorant thing to say. He's pretty much right and it's got nothing to do with being elitist.

LFR and LFD played a big role in ruining the community. It's nothing like it used to be. Social aspect has gone down hill since you don't really have to communicate to kill most content or to even get into groups for that matter. It's also created much less expectations in skill to a point to where people can get gear but yet still have no sense of logic or skill creating problems in pugs. It's harder to determine ones skill based off a quick armory search than it used to be. Not to mention that cross realm gameplay has made it easier for people to act like a shitty and do really shitty things with no repercussions. Used to the communities were so close that people often refrained from shitty behavior because it could cost them groups and guild positions in the future.

I like having the ability to join certain content much easier, but it being THAT easy to join without saying a word and THAT easy to kill that content makes for a pretty boring time and most of the time even when you need to communicate to someone they just stay silent because it's pretty normal to not need to look at chat in a group.

The only plus side to those systems is that I can get into groups much faster and since I don't have time like I used to it's convenient, but it often makes me wonder if it was worth losing the close communities.

[Kyanion]

LFR and LFD played a big role in ruining the community. It's nothing like it used to be. Social aspect has gone down hill since you don't really have to communicate to kill most content or to even get into groups for that matter.

And is that the fault of WoW or how things have changed over many parts of the internet? Sure the social aspect in WoW isn't as good as it used to be but that isn't the only game that has had things happen to it.

[Arbiter]

And is that the fault of WoW or how things have changed over many parts of the internet? Sure the social aspect in WoW isn't as good as it used to be but that isn't the only game that has had things happen to it.

I didn't say anything about other games or the internet?

I said that the social aspect of WoW has severely diminished with LFR and LFD implementations. Which it has. It's hard to argue that it isn't true.

And giving people access to gear as high as Mythic level just by doing LFR also isn't helping.

[Heathy]

I honestly don't really mind that you don't generally have to make sure ppl know how to play their classes every trash pack. my social interaction hasn't changed most of it came from being in a guild. guild social interaction is pretty much exactly the same. I remember speaking to a few ppl out of guild but its not like i went out of my way to befriend the entire realm.

[Kyanion]

I didn't say anything about other games or the internet?

I said that the social aspect of WoW has severely diminished with LFR and LFD implementations. Which it has. It's hard to argue that it isn't true.

And giving people access to gear as high as Mythic level just by doing LFR also isn't helping.

And I am saying there are REASONS social aspects changed over the years. You are saying LFR and LFD are the sole reasons. However, if you go do some FACT CHECKING the population of WotLK did NOT go down at all after LFD was implemented. They only started to lose subs after Cata released. You can not say LFD was the cause of sub loss because YOU DON'T KNOW. You could say Cata being a bad expansion started the downward trend and people prolly wouldn't argue you. But don't pin the problems on LFD bud.

Here. go take a GOOD hard look at sub numbers during WotLK. Patch 3.3 which introduced LFD came out on Dec 8 2009. They GAINED 500k subs over the year and went into Cata on Dec 7 2010. LFD was out an ENTIRE year and subs went up 500k. Any response to that?

[Moozart]

That's a pretty ignorant thing to say. He's pretty much right and it's got nothing to do with being elitist.

LFR and LFD played a big role in ruining the community. It's nothing like it used to be. Social aspect has gone down hill since you don't really have to communicate to kill most content or to even get into groups for that matter. It's also created much less expectations in skill to a point to where people can get gear but yet still have no sense of logic or skill creating problems in pugs. It's harder to determine ones skill based off a quick armory search than it used to be. Not to mention that cross realm gameplay has made it easier for people to act like a shitty and do really shitty things with no repercussions. Used to the communities were so close that people often refrained from shitty behavior because it could cost them groups and guild positions in the future.

I like having the ability to join certain content much easier, but it being THAT easy to join without saying a word and THAT easy to kill that content makes for a pretty boring time and most of the time even when you need to communicate to someone they just stay silent because it's pretty normal to not need to look at chat in a group.

The only plus side to those systems is that I can get into groups much faster and since I don't have time like I used to it's convenient, but it often makes me wonder if it was worth losing the close communities.

Elitist are the main ones that complain about LFR wanting it removed. "casuals should get this loot or that loot if they dont do real raids, WHAAAAA MY BUTT HURTS"

Most of the "remove lfr" threads are by some arrogant elitists thinking they are better than the casuals. (even though without the casuals wow would not exist in the state it is now. even Blizz posted recently that Casuals are the VAST majority of the player base.)