"Its just nostalgia"

[Mormolyce]

There is undeniably a group of people who want the 2004 version of WoW in 2017. It's just that it's pretty small.

[Morbownz]

Would it just be nostalgia thousands of players leveled to 60, raided, pvp'ed and grinded rep? It takes on average around, give or take, 11 days worth of play time to reach 60. And many more to even get a full tier set. It takes many hours of grinding to afford an epic mount and weeks to reach an officer rank in pvp. Could anyone, let alone tens to hundreds of thousands of players, do that out of pure nostalgia? I know many of people who did such a thing and never even played vanilla, myself included.

Why do you even reply? Can't you see? the clue is in the name? He's a troll, a bad troll that you're making look competent.

[Deleted]

It is by definition nostalgia, as in yearning for something from the past. Nostalgia isn't a bad thing, except when it gets in the way of progress.

I don't know why so many people get all riled up that someone calls it nostalgia, when it literally is. It's not an insult.

[owbu]

Nostalgia is making gaming and movie studios all over the world billions of dollars every year. I have no idea what the "just" in that argument means.

Sure, very few people would give a game that looks just like vanilla wow and plays just like vanilla wow, but isnt vanilla wow more than a glance before declaring it a terrible game. So yeah, we want to play vanilla, because of nostalgia. But thats a pretty good reason to want to play it again. Its tons of fun. It makes you happy. I dont see any justification for not playing something out of nostalgia reasons.

[Super Kami Dende]

It is just Nostalgia, since people that constantly go "OMG VANILLA WAS SO GOOD!" forget all the horrible and bad things about it, which is literally the definition of Nostalgia.

People that also bring up the "BUT PRIVATE SERVERS HAD A HUGE FOLLOWING!" Even at it's largest Nost had less than 1% of the overall accounts that ever played Classic and was FREE on top of that, meaning people that wanted to play Classic could have very easily yet chose not to.

People also don't seem to grasp the reason Private Servers have much of a population at all is because they are Free, which tends to draw the basement dwelling unemployed NEET's and poor undeveloped Country players who can't afford it or can't access retail.

I tried a Private server once and for every 1 English speaker there were about 10 Various Asian/South American people

[Ishayu]

It is by definition nostalgia, as in yearning for something from the past. Nostalgia isn't a bad thing, except when it gets in the way of progress.

I don't know why so many people get all riled up that someone calls it nostalgia, when it literally is. It's not an insult.

But it wasn't that! All the people who wanted to play vanilla but didn't want to play on private servers were definitely hit by nostalgia, but the people who actually played on private vanilla servers weren't! WoW vanilla was current to them, and many of them hadn't actually played vanilla WoW before they went on those realms, and so to them it was exactly as current as it was for us in 2004, 2005, and 2006.

Every time you call this nostalgia, you're ignoring what it really is: A genre of video games has been lost (well, there's still EVE and 2007scape, but that's about it), and a lot of people enjoy it, and they want to play the king of that hill, which was vanilla WoW, regardless of whether they played it back then or not.

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It is just Nostalgia, since people that constantly go "OMG VANILLA WAS SO GOOD!" forget all the horrible and bad things about it, which is literally the definition of Nostalgia.

People that also bring up the "BUT PRIVATE SERVERS HAD A HUGE FOLLOWING!" Even at it's largest Nost had less than 1% of the overall accounts that ever played Classic and was FREE on top of that, meaning people that wanted to play Classic could have very easily yet chose not to.

People also don't seem to grasp the reason Private Servers have much of a population at all is because they are Free, which tends to draw the basement dwelling unemployed NEET's and poor undeveloped Country players who can't afford it or can't access retail.

I tried a Private server once and for every 1 English speaker there were about 10 Various Asian/South American people

Dude it had 1 million players logging in at least once a month. That's not 1% of live back then, it's around 16% of live back then.

Also, the people who dismiss it as noslagia often only remember all the bad things while ignoring the good things, mostly because the good things are difficult to explain, even though they are HUGE features, which is also why no other company managed to be the WoW killer. None of them understood it, and you don't either. I've tried to explain above, but it's still woefully inadequate. The only way to understand is to play it.

[Deleted]

They said the same about Starcraft. I even really like the SC2 campaigns, but after playing the original again I just am having way more fun with it than with the SC2 campaigns.
Most people will even say that there are a number of things in WoW that have improved, but for me, the immersion has been squeezed out of it in favor of other things that were meant to keep people playing.

[Super Kami Dende]

Dude it had 1 million players logging in at least once a month. That's not 1% of live back then, it's around 16% of live back then.

It had 800k "registered" accounts, it had around 150k monthly users.

[Deathpath]

Nostalgia is making gaming and movie studios all over the world billions of dollars every year. I have no idea what the "just" in that argument means.

Sure, very few people would give a game that looks just like vanilla wow and plays just like vanilla wow, but isnt vanilla wow more than a glance before declaring it a terrible game. So yeah, we want to play vanilla, because of nostalgia. But thats a pretty good reason to want to play it again. Its tons of fun. It makes you happy. I dont see any justification for not playing something out of nostalgia reasons.

My point is that the game mechanics of vanilla is what makes vanilla fun and attractive for the people who want it. Sure the initial nostalgia is what attracted a lot of people to play a vanilla server, but it wasn't what kept them. My argument is that nostalgia isn't the driving force behind people investing days worth of play time into vanilla, which is what everyone who uses "its nostalgia" seems to think and say about the subject, regardless of if they say its a good or bad thing.

[Super Kami Dende]

Also, the people who dismiss it as noslagia often only remember all the bad things while ignoring the good things, mostly because the good things are difficult to explain, even though they are HUGE features

I remember the good things of Vanilla. Because most of the Good things of Vanilla continued on for a while and got re-iterated upon.

The main good thing I remember is simply the Community. But a re-released Vanilla will never capture that same community by evidence of the toxic place it has become in the last 6 years. Ironically mostly by people that want Vanilla.

[Ishayu]

It had 800k "registered" accounts, it had around 150k monthly users.

No, that was the average, not how it ended up by the end.

But whatever, Nostalrius was just the biggest English-speaking servers. Most of the asian speaking communities and the russians had their own separate private servers, several of which were colossal as well.

[Deleted]

But it wasn't that! All the people who wanted to play vanilla but didn't want to play on private servers were definitely hit by nostalgia, but the people who actually played on private vanilla servers weren't! WoW vanilla was current to them, and many of them hadn't actually played vanilla WoW before they went on those realms, and so to them it was exactly as current as it was for us in 2004, 2005, and 2006.

Every time you call this nostalgia, you're ignoring what it really is: A genre of video games has been lost (well, there's still EVE and 2007scape, but that's about it), and a lot of people enjoy it, and they want to play the king of that hill, which was vanilla WoW, regardless of whether they played it back then or not.

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Dude it had 1 million players logging in at least once a month. That's not 1% of live back then, it's around 16% of live back then.

Also, the people who dismiss it as noslagia often only remember all the bad things while ignoring the good things, mostly because the good things are difficult to explain, even though they are HUGE features, which is also why no other company managed to be the WoW killer. None of them understood it, and you don't either. I've tried to explain above, but it's still woefully inadequate. The only way to understand is to play it.

It's still a game from the past or a version of the game from the past, playing it in 2017 doesn't make it current, even if it's for the first time for someone.
Sure for that person it may not be nostalgia but I really doubt that a significant portion of the private server players are the ones that tried and played it for the first time in recent years. It's mostly players that miss the old wow, the ones that wanted for blizzard to bring back vanilla i.e. nostalgic players.

[Ishayu]

I remember the good things of Vanilla. Because most of the Good things of Vanilla continued on for a while and got re-iterated upon.

The main good thing I remember is simply the Community. But a re-released Vanilla will never capture that same community by evidence of the toxic place it has become in the last 6 years. Ironically mostly by people that want Vanilla.

Yeah, they iterated on a lot of those systems by breaking them horribly, for the most part.

Also, I really don't agree with you that the vanilla WoW community is toxic. This community is vastly more toxic than it is, and this community isn't that toxic.

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It's still a game from the past or a version of the game from the past, playing it in 2017 doesn't make it current, even if it's for the first time for someone.
Sure for that person it may not be nostalgia but I really doubt that a significant portion of the private server players are the ones that tried and played it for the first time in recent years. It's mostly players that miss the old wow, the ones that wanted for blizzard to bring back vanilla i.e. nostalgic players.

It doesn't matter whether they tried and played it in recent years. All that matters is it's a current game they're playing right now. They aren't yearning for something in the past, they are doing it right now. When the object they are getting their enjoyment from was designed is of no relevance. This is a bit like telling people who are using a fridge and liking it that they need to stop being nostalgic about fridges because fridges were designed a long time ago. It's complete and utter nonsense.

EDIT: Slightly closer to home - you might as well be arguing that anyone who likes Tetris is being nostalgic. Again, ****ing nonsense squared. Get outta here with that trite.

The only reason vanilla's desin' isn't "current" is because nobody managed to replicate it and the team who originally created it scattered to the winds, unfortunately.

[cparle87]

Have the forum moderators just given up? I thought talking about private servers was against the rules.

[Ishayu]

Have the forum moderators just given up? I thought talking about private servers was against the rules.

I imagine they're in a weird spot about this, and I understand why.

I've had interviews with 6 vanilla WoW devs, and every single one of them played on Nostalrius. Several of them even made blog posts about it or petitioned Blizzard to make these vanilla servers.

And now Blizzard have opened up about it.

So what is Blizzard's stance on vanilla WoW private servers? Hard to tell. Not even sure they know anymore, which makes it hard to make rules as a Blizzard fan community.

Honestly, the ONLY WAY to destroy the "nostalgia argument", and it NEEDS to be destroyed, is to bring up private servers. Private servers are a vital part of what happened here, they are an integral part of Blizzard's decision, and thus they must be part of the conversation if we want to have an honest conversation, even though Blizzard prohibits them and they're therefore against the rule.

I've done the same thing in my guild. Our guild tolerates no cheating of any kind - in fact we ask our members specifically to follow Blizzard's rules or they get the boot. And yes, we did boot 2 people for botting from the guild. We're serious about it. However, on this specific topic, we just opened the floodgates, because we had to, and because it was the healthy and right thing to do.

[Rafoel]

You have to be a troll to push it all on nostalgia...? No, you have to be a retard. Same people who were crying since WotLK and especially Cataclysm that Blizzard was destroying WoW are rejoicing now on perspective on Classic servers. Mind you, I'm not one of them. I like most of features that were deemed "worthless and destructive" by Vanilla players, even pet battles. Still, it is a FACT, that many features of Vanilla that are typical for RPG settings were just deleted, and people who played WoW for RPG reasons were left with nothing.

As a matter of it, all changes made to WoW fall into one of the following categories:

1) QoL improvements. GVs everywhere, Flight paths everywhere, teleports everywhere, LFG tool, etc. What these changes do, however, is make the game feel more like playground than real world. For modern players, its completely fine. They log in to play and have fun. For Vanilla fans, however, it means the game lost its appeal, as they see no value without immersion. Immersion is fundamental for original RPG fans. If the world reeks artificial, why engage in it?

2) Balance improvements. Making all specs vialable. Balancing both PvE and PvP. Giving classes similar amounts of abilities, nerfing op abilities, etc. All these seem good from perspective of somebody who approaches the game competitively. Their influence can best be seen in PvP, where gear stopped mattering entirely, something unthinkable in RPG, even unthinkable in WoW for many years. Gear, progress and uniqueness, however, are essential for Vanilla fans. They expect to see meaningful consequences of their choices, be it positive or negative. They want to be able to fuck up their character so badly its basically useless at 60, but also theorycraft an op build that crushes everybody else. They want to see themselves getting stronger, also in comparison to others, with time they put into their character. They want their class to be unique among others, to offer what other classes offer not, to have their niche nobody else can fill. This is not nostalgia. This is fundamental approach to gaming in general. Something that isn't understandable from people coming from games like LoL, where everything is about ranking.

3) Completely new features. Pet battles. MoP scenarios. Garrisons. Artifacts. All of them have good and bad aspects. Modern players always expect new features in new xpacs to keep them interested in the game. We know however how most of those end up. Scenarios were deemed failure by Blizzard. Garrisons as well. Most players consider pet battles absurd and silly, yet they tolerate them as they are completely optional. For Vanilla fans, however, all those "features" are a distraction from core elements of original WoW, especially irritating when you have to engage in them to play the as its intended to. Example? Gathering was core RPG element of Vanilla, yet Garrisons destroyed it completely. The tank-healer-dps system was a fundament of RPG group play, yet scenarios destroyed it completely.

[Tree1171]

Of course it's nostalgia. If World of Warcraft didn't get released in 2004 and instead was announced at Gamescom 2017 to be released in 2019 would you be hyped for it?

[Super Kami Dende]

No, that was the average, not how it ended up by the end.

Look it up yourself, It's even on their Wiki page. On time of Closure they had 150k active monthly users. Nowhere NEAR the 1 Million you claim and that was meant to be the "biggest" Private Server.

What a fucking joke.

[Deleted]

Yeah, they iterated on a lot of those systems by breaking them horribly, for the most part.

Also, I really don't agree with you that the vanilla WoW community is toxic. This community is vastly more toxic than it is, and this community isn't that toxic.

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It doesn't matter whether they tried and played it in recent years. All that matters is it's a current game they're playing right now. They aren't yearning for something in the past, they are doing it right now. When the object they are getting their enjoyment from was designed is of no relevance. This is a bit like telling people who are using a fridge and liking it that they need to stop being nostalgic about fridges because fridges were designed a long time ago. It's complete and utter nonsense.

EDIT: Slightly closer to home - you might as well be arguing that anyone who likes Tetris is being nostalgic. Again, ****ing nonsense squared. Get outta here with that trite.

The only reason vanilla's desin' isn't "current" is because nobody managed to replicate it and the team who originally created it scattered to the winds, unfortunately.

They aren't yearning for private servers tho, they want classic wow, which is in the past. It hasn't existed ever since TBC came out. Private servers aren't classic wow and neither are they the current iteration of wow.

And that analogy with the fridges doesn't work because even fridges evolved, nostalgic would be someone wanting to use a fridge from the 90s that isn't being made any more.

I too get nostalgic sometimes and play on a wotlk private server, but it doesn't make wotlk the current game version. And if I wanted genuine wotlk servers from blizzard, I know that it would be for the nostalgia. Don't see why someone would get so riled up about a word that defines said behaviour.

[Super Kami Dende]

Yeah, they iterated on a lot of those systems by breaking them horribly, for the most part.

Also, I really don't agree with you that the vanilla WoW community is toxic. This community is vastly more toxic than it is, and this community isn't that toxic.

Literally 95% of the Toxic Threads before the Classic announcement were people crying that the game was Shit and they wanted to go back to "old" WoW. Most of these Thread starters were and are active throughout all the Pro-Vanilla Threads.

The Pro-Vanilla/Legacy People are by far the most Toxic on these forums when it comes to WoW Gen Discussion.