Vanilla Content

[Grenzstein]

So many rose tinted glasses that i think most of them didn't play on vanilla. Memoria praeteritorum bonorum.

If WoW was released right now, with the same content it had on vanilla, it would flop REALLY hard. People love to claim that doing things in vanilla felt "rewarding". It felt as rewarding as now. And PvE content is much better now. Raids in vanilla were boring, people barely knew what to do, class balance was awful and many specs were useless.

I enjoyed vanilla a lot but it had some serious issues.

[Zafire]

The content was gated behind reputation and currency grinding. Professions were too. Leveling took forever. Drop rates for raid-rivaled stuff out of 5-mans were so sooo bad that you could run them continuously for months and not get it.

All content stayed relevant, so as patches got added, there was more to do. You would still do old raid + new raid. When new-new raid came out, you'd do Old Raid+New Raid+New-New Raid. This meant raiding several times a week, instead of just once.

[Redroniksre]

Ummm regular mobs were still hard. To down mobs it took 10-20 seconds, and on my Mage I had to drink every couple pulls. It was at the very least a lot more tedious killing mobs.

Also pulling adds was often a death sentence. Pulled murlocs adds in Elwynn forest? GG.

In vanilla I had to play a lot more intelligently in certain quest areas (even non-elites)... Using CC and Control Spells to control adds , kiting, etc.. Ever since Cata I just aoe roflstomp through areas now.

Nothing rose tinted about the truth.

Maybe as a mage that was true, but as a rogue i did pretty well on my own and only ever died due to my own stupidity. i don't miss the days when Vanish was broken and mobs would still come after you and dots would break it immediately.

[Seranthor]

But Blizzard has all the original source code.

You and dozens of others have made this claim. Yet, not a single one of you can prove this. It's almost as if you think if you repeat the lie enough that it will some how become true. Perhaps you can be that hero that proves they have it.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I see constant posts about how current wow lacks content. Or it's done in 1 day etc etc.

Can someone please explain to me how the content that was so over flowing during the early wow days @ max level? Did people consider leveling from 1-60 for 2-3 months content? Did people not play vanilla/TBC? Maybe they had different experiences than me.

This is what you did @ level 60, Run dungeons (took forever) Farm mats (took forever) Raid 1 difficulty only on a week long lockout (took forever) PvP (some of it took forever) There was no story....most the quests were absurd and all over the world with no linear progression of story telling it was awful...I'm confused.

Vanilla & TBC had 0 new content throughout the expansion minus the sunwell staging area in TBC & new raids soooooo. idk. nothing that hails in comparison with argus...or isle of thunder..idk people are crazy...or am I crazy?

Thanks.

Rose-shimmering glasses, or the fact that a lot of people hailing Classic the wildest, actually never played it when it was current. They get their intel from certain people wearing the thickest rose-shimmering glasses, and from playing Private servers during WoD... An expansion which instantly killed the "worst expansion"-argument to most but a select, tiny minority.

In Classic, the leveling was the content to most people. It took a long-ass time, was fractured/unpolished, but a lot of people were young when they started playing and felt such wonder back then that as they grew jaded, they started remembering Classic as this pinnacle of game design. Now they're busy proclaiming how what they feel for the game is somehow by design once more, only this time in the negative direction. Meanwhile, Classic simply didn't have any deeper design in many areas, questing included. Wanna talk about questing being "a means to get to max level"? Check the content where you'd be forced to mindlessly kill mobs and there was no story in many areas... Wanna talk about questing being a means of story delivery and adventure, even if "on rails"? Check later expansions. Exploration has never been more encouraged.

But alas, people will feel what they feel.

I was the same way about Robocop. I watched it as a kid, one of the first movies I was old enough to enjoy and remember. For over a decade following, I never watched it again but I revered it all the same. I LOVED it, thinking it was superior simply by the fact that I had felt what I did when watching it the first time.

And then, when I was 25, I watched it again... Needless to say, I no longer hold Robocop up as the greatest movie ever made. It's fun, it's campy, it's aging quite well, but I've grown to expect a bit more from movies in my adult years, and I've seen tons of superior movies since.

Was Classic a marvel of its time and genre? Yes, it was considered shit and "casualcraft" by many MMORPG-players, but proved those wrong at hilarious levels. However, a game given the same development, polish and content released today, would make Wildstar come across as a gargantuan success story. The proof is in the pudding, really. If Blizzard were to recapture Classic designs, they'd need to devolve the game, strip it and abandon everything they learned about what players want in favor of the few whom believe that the game at its absolute core, had more complexity to it than 13 years of accumulated content + the current expansion's addition to the WoW universe...

If/when they remake the 1-60 content, I sure hope it'll adopt story delivery akin to what Legion brought... And hopefully, less pop culture references and more local threat focus. Cataclysm added some amazing questing such as the Undead starting experience, but it could be better in every single zone.

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I wouldn't know about current WoW, but expansions are on a 2 year cycle while a new mmo like vanilla takes 5+ years to build. .

No, WoW expansions are not started, built and finished "on a 2-year cycle".

When we learn what the next expansion is about, they're already working on the ones coming out years and years from then.

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Blizzard developers know that their player base has no sense of quality or taste in quality. It's an ability to recognize a quality work, intellectual output and pure garbage, it takes effort and requires intelligence which is non-existent in most of their player base. This is precisely why developer team thinks it is okay to put a farce like some NPC calling you "High general xxx, you are so awesome and bad-ass and savage". It gets the job done: strokes the ego of poor players, and make them think that they are subjected to some immersion miracle pulled off by WoW developers.

To me, such take on game design is nothing more than an insult to human intelligence. It's a spit on player base's face.

.

You're just a person with an opinion. Other people having different opinions from you, doesn't mean they lack a sense for quality and intelligence... I'm sure you enjoy games that others would deem garbage just fine. Guess that makes you lack a sense for quality and lacking in the intelligence department as well, eh?

Also; Comparing Witcher 3 with Classic WoW, and WoW today... Top kek, such superior opinions! You even confuse a lack of quest design for "superior quest design"...

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I'm not measuring degradation rate. I'm comparing old and new while also understanding why "new" is new and why old is old. Also, I use common sense. Not sure what do you mean by game direction when WoW so far was "Raids/Dungeons, PvP, Quests". I'll try to make this as vivid as possible.

If you were a new player back in Vanilla, world was BIG and NEW and full of adventure and quests.
If you are a new player NOW, world is 3 contents and 5 zones larger filled with more quests than it was back in vanilla.
If you are not new player and you want hours spent while doing just questing, one of the least important (not trivial) experience in the game, you are either masochist or trying to enforce vanilla style, which makes you nostalgic.

I like Witcher 3 but it was a bit slow for my taste so I did not finish. However, Witcher 3 is not a game which is meant to be played over and over again. Why would you if you finished the story? I wonder if you would play Witcher 3 again after 4 years because if you say you do, you are just confirming nostalgia. Only parallel that Witcher 3 and Vanilla WoW have is the pace you do things and them being called RPG. They are games with 10 years difference and not very alike.

Amen, it all boils down to nostalgia goggles. He even has the "And anyone liking X today is WRONG AND STUPID!!!"-mentality down to a t.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Anyone who says Legion has no content is just trolling, but on the topic of Classic what you are dealing with there is just nostalgia and being a noob.

I tried to play Classic and then TBC servers seriously and you are right - there is soooo little to do compared to modern wow.
There are just not enough ways to progress your character in Classic especially. Its so bad that most dungeons only have 3-4 real upgrades in them and people skip as much as possible. They are basically playing a checklist simulator, making you think the only viable reason to play the game is for the raids.

but to be fair there wasn't that many more in WoD.
Legion REALLY changed the game in a crazy way.

[Eleccybubb]

I genuinely don't think the love of Vanilla is just down to "nostalgia"

It's a factor for sure but one of many. I can understand those wanting to play an older version of the game personally. I go play my retro consoles and nostalgia is one of the many reasons. I genuinely enjoy retro games.

However as someone who played EQ/FF11 back then and has done research like crazy on Vanilla since I went GW1 over WoW back then. I can't say I'd play those kinds of MMOs today. They were fun back then for me because they were fresh and new.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

You and dozens of others have made this claim. Yet, not a single one of you can prove this. It's almost as if you think if you repeat the lie enough that it will some how become true. Perhaps you can be that hero that proves they have it.

Ya, I never understood why so many people believe this. When you are creating a video game you iterate on what's there and those changes overwrite the old. You don't save a copy of the 100 or so patches there has been to this game.

Ask anyone who runs a private server. The changes they make are for good. They probably keep a few backups, but not every one they have ever made.

[Aeula]

Regarding the supposed 'no story' thing, I disagree. Those epic, long questlines like the fiasco with the Defias, Tirion's Redemption and the Onyxia questline were pretty enjoyable and memorable. More so than all the jokey reference quests the old world is filled with now (Though one or two questlines remain superb, like the Ferelas one).

I'm not defending vanilla mind you, far too grindy and difficult for me to enjoy. But the content was nice to experience in Wrath once everything was easier. It's a shame it's all gone from retail now...

[KainneAbsolute]

I started at Burning Crusade but i liked to make parties and travelling to enter a dungeon.

But what i didnt like, when everyone tried to enter the dungeon and we had to wait hours to enter

[Doomchicken]

Put aside the legality of the whole thing for a second---

Blizzard had made a claim that nobody wanted to play earlier versions of WoW, and then Nostalrius came out, and swiftly shattered that statement.

.

150k active accounts on a totally free game is "shattering that statement"? Yeah, no.

[Queen of Hamsters]

150k active accounts on a totally free game is "shattering that statement"? Yeah, no.

*During a time when retail WoW was at an all-time bad.

Also a detail to note. :P

People at Blizzcon hyped for what's in store for us in the future of this game: X thousand
People at Blizzcon championing the cause of Classic: 1 random person being laughed at by the other X thousand as he yells "LEGACY SERVERS!!" during a QA... XD

[Charge me Doctor]

Nostalrius calls, they want to show you the almost 2mill active players they used to have before bliiz took them down.

Doing stuff in Vanilla/TBC actually felt meaningful.
I remember spending months trying to level my warlock up to 70. Quests weren't linear and that was part of the fun. You had to walk and explore every corner of the .

there is no trying since you have no exp loss from death, how the fuck do you "try" to level in wow? You literally just jump into the game, kill monsters and you get exp, there is no trying, leveling didn't took even a half of a brain

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I draw lots of parallels between Witcher 3 and Vanilla WoW in terms of game design. I think those are two great RPGs.

They are incomparable, and there are little to no parallels. But i do understand that people will go lengths just to make a weak argument

[Grenzstein]

Rose-shimmering glasses, or the fact that a lot of people hailing Classic the wildest, actually never played it when it was current. They get their intel from certain people wearing the thickest rose-shimmering glasses, and from playing Private servers during WoD... An expansion which instantly killed the "worst expansion"-argument to most but a select, tiny minority.

In Classic, the leveling was the content to most people. It took a long-ass time, was fractured/unpolished, but a lot of people were young when they started playing and felt such wonder back then that as they grew jaded, they started remembering Classic as this pinnacle of game design. Now they're busy proclaiming how what they feel for the game is somehow by design once more, only this time in the negative direction. Meanwhile, Classic simply didn't have any deeper design in many areas, questing included. Wanna talk about questing being "a means to get to max level"? Check the content where you'd be forced to mindlessly kill mobs and there was no story in many areas... Wanna talk about questing being a means of story delivery and adventure, even if "on rails"? Check later expansions. Exploration has never been more encouraged.

But alas, people will feel what they feel.

I was the same way about Robocop. I watched it as a kid, one of the first movies I was old enough to enjoy and remember. For over a decade following, I never watched it again but I revered it all the same. I LOVED it, thinking it was superior simply by the fact that I had felt what I did when watching it the first time.

And then, when I was 25, I watched it again... Needless to say, I no longer hold Robocop up as the greatest movie ever made. It's fun, it's campy, it's aging quite well, but I've grown to expect a bit more from movies in my adult years, and I've seen tons of superior movies since.

Was Classic a marvel of its time and genre? Yes, it was considered shit and "casualcraft" by many MMORPG-players, but proved those wrong at hilarious levels. However, a game given the same development, polish and content released today, would make Wildstar come across as a gargantuan success story. The proof is in the pudding, really. If Blizzard were to recapture Classic designs, they'd need to devolve the game, strip it and abandon everything they learned about what players want in favor of the few whom believe that the game at its absolute core, had more complexity to it than 13 years of accumulated content + the current expansion's addition to the WoW universe...

If/when they remake the 1-60 content, I sure hope it'll adopt story delivery akin to what Legion brought... And hopefully, less pop culture references and more local threat focus. Cataclysm added some amazing questing such as the Undead starting experience, but it could be better in every single zone.

Perfect!
I don't think anything else needs to be added

[Kathranis]

But Blizzard has all the original source code.

As I recall they didn't maintain strict version control until much later in development. They discussed it a bit at one of the engineering panels at Blizzcon, maybe 2015.

Even if they did have all of their old source code, most of it is undocumented spaghetti code written and rewritten by people who have long since departed from the team and/or company, built on hardware and server architecture that they no longer support. Not only that, but the modern Battle.net infrastructure, including account and billing, deployment, and even the game's fundamental internal file structure, is also completely different now.

Even in terms of present WoW these are constant headaches stemming from old code that the developers have to deal with, nevermind trying to revert back to a version of the game that's over a decade old at this point. They still can't even correct fundamental flaws in some of the game's code, like how the inventory and bag functions are intertwined, so what makes you think it would be easy?

It would be an enormous engineering task to retrofit an older version of the game to be compatible with their present day architecture and infrastructure. Add to that customer support, QA, maintenance, etc.

And all for what? A dated, stagnant, null-growth version of the game that would at best fragment the playerbase. More realistically, it would fail to even attract a sizeable playerbase because most people aren't actually willing to pay monthly subscription fees for a version of the game that will never under any circumstances change or get new content.

IMO, better to spend that time and those resources on improving the live game.

[Soon-TM]

^
See, I find that to be a far more compelling argument for Blizzard not revisiting Vanilla somehow; money. They have concluded, rightly or not, that the $$$ gained from opening legacy servers would be marginal at best, and thus not worth the maintenance hassle. By extension, (re) introducing more old-school gameplay would turn many players away. While I don't agree with that reasoning, at least it is a solid one. Not that "rose-tinted glasses" nonsense used by some to disqualify anyone who wants to recapture the atmosphere of Vanilla through gameplay adjustments.

Does that mean that Vanilla was perfect? Far from that, my personal peeve being those troll specs such as Moonkin or Protection Warrior, which served no purpose whatsoever, whether it was levelling, raiding or PvP. Raid bosses were fairly simplistic, and many pieces of gear didn't make any sense (+armour on a MAGE set, anyone?). While the game has certainly improved in these areas, it has become worse in others, and looking back might help.

[Splenda]

It's okay to bump this one, it has relevancy and we're using it as a megathread.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...r-than-current