What I see on this forum scares me...reflections from a 1%er

[Deleted]

I was a self entitled prick long ago I admit. I've moved on from it though. I had a problem balancing my gaming addiction and my ego. It's people like me who you will have to deal with if you want to do endgame in vanilla wow. I'm just trying to warn people.

Don't you see this server option is only adressed to the 1%ers like you say that want to play it again ? That's all they want. They don't need advice, they know what they are getting into.

Yes there will be a rush of plebs on day 1 and the servers will most probably go from a million of people trying it out to 17k Nost levels in a month's time and everyone is ok with that.

People like you coming out of the gates just to shit on it now that it has been announced officialy says more about the current playerbase than the former.

[Squishy Tia]

#5-#16 are easily just as applicable to WoW's live version as it would be to any vanilla server. There's literally nothing new here. Hell, the rest of your list has some choice examples avaialble in the live environment too.

And you're assuming that some of the more asinine aspects won't be "remastered", such as spawn rates, etc.

[Deleted]

There have always been ways around the grind, it's not set in stone. I mean going to raids with full consumables and buffs without grinding. What people aren't talking about are 3 particular things that constitute the most vicious cycle. The most awful thing about vanilla is the daily rotation of raids. You don't stop doing the raids when a new one comes out. You need to continue doing MC and BWL for Thunderfuries well into Naxx, AQ20/40 for the books, recipes and T2.5 materials, ZG for enchants (which resets every 3 days). This burns you out fundamentally, so much so that you don't want to ever see those color schemes ever again, let alone the raids. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the majority of bosses are really boring to fight and all you are doing is mechanically going through the motions like a zombie.

Which leads me to the degenerate meterwhoring gameplay. After the first 2-3 complete clears of a raid, all you are doing is trying to outheal/outdamage everyone, because you don't worry about the mechanics which are almost non-existent, so you are spamming those flash heals and renews like there's no tomorrow. Warlocks and mages are only spamming Shadowbolt and Frostbolt/Fireball depending on the raid. Also, as a mage, you have to respec between AQ/Naxx and MC/BWL, which means at least 2 respecs each week.

This meterwhoring gameplay is incentivized by loot councils that reward such behavior. It's very easy to just look at the meters and decide who gets gear, instead of looking out for skilled play, so this creates a toxic and competitive (in the worst possible way) environment within your own raid. It also creates an avalanche effect, where the more gear you get the more DPS you are doing compared to everyone else and the more the loot council rewards you. You might go months without getting a piece of gear because of that. The scarcity of gear (because bosses drop 3 items, not because they are hard to get or anything) worsen the issue, much more than in any other expansion. If your loot council keeps track of who gets what item every week and hand out items fairly, then it won't be such a problem, but good luck finding such a loot council. The other possibility is DKP, but if you don't have time for the aforementioned daily rotations of raids, you still won't see gear for a while. DKP also rewards only attendance, rather than results.

Then if you add grinding on top of all that... I'm not against vanilla servers, quite the contrary, I want them to succeed, but I also know very few people are going to go raiding past, at most, BWL when they realize they have to go to the old raids well into Naxx.

[Surfd]

Unfortunately, I'd say a higher percentage of guilds this time around will even fail to clear AQ40. The turnover rate will just be too high to sustain a 40 man guild with the old drop rates. Very few will make it that far. Corrected: 40 people on Twin Emps will be fucking hilarious.

Will be amusing trying to explain to the vanilla newbies that yes, we do infact need 10 to 15 people for Strath / UBRS / BRD / and Scholomance.

[Zarc]

I think a big part of why Blizzard finally decided to do this was because Nostalrius became so successful, thereby disproving the "rose-tinted glasses" myth perpetuated by the OP. I played on Nostalrius myself, it was a great and fun adventure.

[garneroutlaw]

There have always been ways around the grind, it's not set in stone. I mean going to raids with full consumables and buffs without grinding. What people aren't talking about are 3 particular things that constitute the most vicious cycle. The most awful thing about vanilla is the daily rotation of raids. You don't stop doing the raids when a new one comes out. You need to continue doing MC and BWL for Thunderfuries well into Naxx, AQ20/40 for the books, recipes and T2.5 materials, ZG for enchants (which resets every 3 days). This burns you out fundamentally, so much so that you don't want to ever see those color schemes ever again, let alone the raids. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the majority of bosses are really boring to fight and all you are doing is mechanically going through the motions like a zombie.

Which leads me to the degenerate meterwhoring gameplay. After the first 2-3 complete clears of a raid, all you are doing is trying to outheal/outdamage everyone, because you don't worry about the mechanics which are almost non-existent, so you are spamming those flash heals and renews like there's no tomorrow. Warlocks and mages are only spamming Shadowbolt and Frostbolt/Fireball depending on the raid. Also, as a mage, you have to respec between AQ/Naxx and MC/BWL, which means at least 2 respecs each week.

This meterwhoring gameplay is incentivized by loot councils that reward such behavior. It's very easy to just look at the meters and decide who gets gear, instead of looking out for skilled play, so this creates a toxic and competitive (in the worst possible way) environment within your own raid. It also creates an avalanche effect, where the more gear you get the more DPS you are doing compared to everyone else and the more the loot council rewards you. You might go months without getting a piece of gear because of that. The scarcity of gear (because bosses drop 3 items, not because they are hard to get or anything) worsen the issue, much more than in any other expansion. If your loot council keeps track of who gets what item every week and hand out items fairly, then it won't be such a problem, but good luck finding such a loot council. The other possibility is DKP, but if you don't have time for the aforementioned daily rotations of raids, you still won't see gear for a while. DKP also rewards only attendance, rather than results.

Then if you add grinding on top of all that... I'm not against vanilla servers, quite the contrary, I want them to succeed, but I also know very few people are going to go raiding past, at most, BWL when they realize they have to go to the old raids well into Naxx.

A+post. Thanks for adding this. Do you think the number will be in the hundreds or thousands?

[Deleted]

I think a big part of why Blizzard finally decided to do this was because Nostalrius became so successful, thereby disproving the "rose-tinted glasses" myth perpetuated by the OP. I played on Nostalrius myself, it was a great and fun adventure.

The only thing is, that the private server all run a 1.12 wow with increased mob spawns and increased spawns on the most rare items. I hope that Blizzard brings a max 1.4 server with all the old talents and slow spawns and I bet the private server people will be the first to whine, because it is nothing like classic.

[RapBreon]

Seeing as quest objectives are now easily googleable, people know not to run around as warriors in +int gear, people know which specs are actually viable, and what used to pass as dungeon boss mechanics are things you encounter fighting trash mobs in the overworld, I highly doubt that.

Yeah yeah yeah gear took forever to acquire and dungeons were a bitch to get into, but I think people underestimate how truly terrible people used to be at the game.

Are you assuming that everyone that plays on Vanilla servers are going to have just up and forgot everything they learned playing WoW for the past however many years?

Are...you capable of that? I'll pay good money to be turned into a noob again.

[Santoryu]

What a load of garbage. The audience at which these realms are aimed know what it was like and are prepared to do it. Why can't people finally get this into their thick skulls?

[Deleted]

A+post. Thanks for adding this. Do you think the number will be in the hundreds or thousands?

I really have no idea. I predict the vanilla servers being popular, but not many people going raiding. If you don't have long-term goals for vanilla, then you won't even begin to see its problems. Be it PvE or PvP goals. Rank 14 is a complete joke, 16 hours a day grind, that's such idiotic design I don't know how the person responsible wasn't fired on the spot.

I also want to address another misconception now that I'm reading about it - the myth of the terrible and uninformed players. A lot of the top guilds were veteran EQ players that knew what they were doing. Elitist Jerks also existed back then, too, so gearing, rotations, bosses and their mechanics weren't an obfuscated secret that nobody knew anything about. Just most people didn't. Don't forget that only <1% of people/guilds have ever done the most difficult content in each expansion. That hasn't changed regardless of how "good" players have become over the years. Which they haven't. Mythic raiding now requires much, much less time commitment than vanilla, and everyone can set aside 3-4 hours maximum a week for that, so the problem is a skill-based one, not the excuse of lack of time.

Here's a quote from Furor on the most popular EQ site back in the day when EQ devs didn't have their shit together ->

The Plane of Time

2003-05-09 18:50:26 - Furor Planedefiler
You have 14 Days. If after that time the Plane is not properly tuned, I am deleting my characters, and cancelling all of my accounts. The rest of my guild will follow suit, as will several other guilds and people that play Everquest.

To be brief, I did not work my ass off, jumping through your idiotic hoops with my friends and guildmates, so I could go to a zone where only groups of 18 could enjoy the content. EVEN if past these initial moronic events I can finally get my entire guild in to raid with me, FUCK YOU GUYS. Seriously, FUCK YOU.

I cannot believe this... right now I'm just so pissed off. I am sitting here in the Plane of Time, and 3/4 of my guild is just sitting around while a group of 18 is repeatedly trying to beat one of the mini ring encounters. Don't you people have ANY FUCKING DECENCY? SMEDLEY WHY DON'T YOU STOP COUNTING YOUR MONEY AND START ISSUING ORDERS?

The tragic irony of creating the ultimate cockblock encounter in the form of the Rathe which requires 80 people to defeat and then to limit encounters in the Plane of Time to 18.

14 Days.... after that this site will change from the most popular EQ fan site on the internet to the most popular World of Warcraft fan site on the internet. I'm done playing ball with you useless fuckers... it's my turn.

This shows how much effort top people were putting in MMOs even before WoW existed. To think these people were terrible and uninformed back then is absolutely laughable and disingenuous. Here's also a video from the first Rag kill, you can see that addons existed back then. More specifically, check out the raid chat, someone knows exactly when Sons are going to spawn, so they had addons to warn about mechanics even then -



People don't have rose-tinted glasses, they know exactly what they want, they just didn't do the actual content Blizzard were putting out. And we know this because less than 1% of people cleared Naxx, I don't know the statistic for AQ40, but I doubt it's significantly more. All they did was use WoW as a glorified chat room with mini-games attached, like BGs and dungeons. Yes, there are still people who are going to do vanilla exactly how it is and rotate their raids daily. That's fine and all the power to them, I just don't think that sort of thing will be popular. Maybe I am wrong and raiding will explode like never before, that's great as well.

[Queen of Hamsters]

People seem to be doing just fine as we speak on Classic servers.

Don't you fret.

[KaPe]

Will be amusing trying to explain to the vanilla newbies that yes, we do infact need 10 to 15 people for Strath / UBRS / BRD / and Scholomance.

Will be amusing trying to explain to the vanilla "veterans" that no, you do not need 10 to 15 people for Strath, BRD and Scholomance, because it will be a version where those were already changed to five mans.

[Xjev]

Will be amusing trying to explain to the vanilla "veterans" that no, you do not need 10 to 15 people for Strath, BRD and Scholomance, because it will be a version where those were already changed to five mans.

When did UBRS change to 5 man? I remember it as 10 man instance

[RapBreon]

-snip -

I found that video hysterical. The weird lack of sounds was the most jarring part tho.

[Deleted]

I found that video hysterical. The weird lack of sounds was the most jarring part tho.

Yeah, some of the things are weird. Like the rogue clicking his abilities, even though he has them bound, at least I think Cold Blood is bound to Q. I didn't post it to make fun of the rogue for clicking, I posted it for the addon information.

[KaPe]

When did UBRS change to 5 man? I remember it as 10 man instance

Which is exactly why it's not in that quote? It was changed from 15 to 10, which meant you actually had to kite final boss or his adds to Beast's room.

[SirCowdog]

I don't even know where to start. I have yet to see an accurate account of what end game vanilla was really like on these boards and how atrocious it really was. I hate to make another topic saying, "you think you do, but you don't", but it's really freaking true. Do you really want to see Naxx? Answer this set of questions. If you can get by them all, I could definitely brain storm another dozen to see if you could pass the second test.

1. Can you spend your entire day Tuesday farming 2 spawn points in Blasted Lands and 4 spawn points in Felwood for Gromsblood?
2. Do you have time to level an alt high enough to camp those spawn points?
3. Do you have 2-3 days a week available to stay up till 3 AM doing Strat live runs for crusader orbs or farming Hearthglen?
4. Are you willing to go back to wipe on Rag for two hours to help some scrub guild get the kill in exchange for a flask of the titans?
5. Are you willing to royally screw other people out of loot so that it goes to your own guild during a PUG even if you know it's wrong?
6. Are you willing to set that PUG up in advance knowing you will screw people?
7. Are you willing to sit through and watch IRL drama such as your GM who is married having an affair with a fellow officer?
8. Are you going to be okay with some Australian narcissistic kid ninjaing all the loot on your first Ouro kill and then insta gquit?
9. Are you going to stay firm when you witness over half of the loot handed out in your guild exit your guild before you even get the shot at it?
10. Are you going to have the fortitude when your main tank quits to go back and gear a tank in molten core for 2-3 weeks?
11. Are you going to keep your mouth shut when only 30 people show up for BWL farm night?
12. Are you going to stay in the group when the GM decides to do a ZG run to gear up new players?
13. Are you going to be okay when 3 of your members decide to stop raiding once they get the gear they need to PvP?
14. Oh shit, you accidentally made a racially charged statement in general chat - you just got blacklisted from two of the top guilds.
15. Do you have a solid 30-40 hours per week to devote to an MMORPG?
16. Are you willing to sacrifice everything in your life to see some pixels on a screen, hear some random guys scream, bitch and moan? That includes sacrificing performance at work, time with family, socializing, and even taking vacations are out the window.

You get my point....vanilla is savage - a viscous cycle. That 40 man model was broken. If you joined after TBC, you have no idea how brutal it was. It was like a cut throat job with everything you hate about your job now present. You all better pray that they make some quality of life changes. If not, the server will be a ghost town 6 months in. Not my thoughts, just reality.

Sincerely,
Mesaba, level 60 rogue from Garithos (Blackrock migration server)

Daggerspine here. A bunch of you guys merged with us back in the day(or maybe we merged with you, can't remember exactly), so I know you're speaking the truth. People just don't remember how bad vanilla really was. However, having said that, I have to disagree with #7 and #14. While these things did happen, they're specific to individuals and not an actual product of the game itself.

The only ray of light I see with this entire "Classic" server thing is that "Classic" doesn't necessarily mean a purist version of vanilla. For the reasons you just listed, I think going with such a purist version of the Vanilla game would be a tremendous mistake on the part of Blizzard. Maybe a few super-hardcore people really do want that experience again. But I think what people REALLY want is the the version of WoW as filtered through nostalgia, and they just aren't going to get it without compromising on some pretty fundamental QoL changes.

[RapBreon]

Yeah, some of the things are weird. Like the rogue clicking his abilities, even though he has them bound, at least I think Cold Blood is bound to Q. I didn't post it to make fun of the rogue for clicking, I posted it for the addon information.

Nah don't get me wrong, it's just the most noticeable part of that game where quality lacks compared today is oddly...sound. I didn't expect that, but come to think of it, I do remember my Vanilla experience to be a less auditory clusterfuck.

[Deleted]

When did UBRS change to 5 man? I remember it as 10 man instance

Along with the new Armor Sets, the high-level 5-10 man dungeons have received some changes regarding loot. Many items have been improved in quality and use. In addition, several epic items, such as Headmaster's Charge and the Runeblade of Baron Rivendare, have had their drop rates significantly increased. In order to preserve the challenge of these dungeons, they have had their instance caps lowered. Stratholme, Scholomance, and Blackrock Depths now allow a maximum of five players inside, and Blackrock Spire allows a maximum of ten.

Patch 1.10. UBRS was always +5

[Deleted]

Can't wait to relive the good old days: