Vanilla hit the sweet spot

[Queen of Hamsters]

So show me some real numbers. Bonus points if we can remove the influence of the Chinese release.

Your entire existence in this thread and forum in general are to justify your bitter wrathbaby mentality. You so invested yourself emotionally into defending Blizzard's previous anti-vanilla stance that you now spend your time making a fool of yourself on the internet to satisfy your cognitive dissonance. I'm sure Blizzard had no idea the psychological impact their announcement would have on some people.

Wow, you're really triggered, aren't you? I'm flattered that you put so much thought into who I am that you're making up little stories in your mind though, even going so far as to revive the "wrathbaby" argument to support your ramblings.

And why should we "remove the influence" of the Chinese? They're customers and players of this game as well.
If you want the numbers, go seek up the quarterly reports from all these years. I'm not the one throwing a hissy fit here over the fact that WoW lived on and remained a success past Classic/TBC.

[durrtygoodz]

The game had by far the most mainstream hype in classic, and surpassed every other MMO in history way before BC's launch. Wrath is when the playerbase "peaked" (in other words, STOPPED GROWING) because that's when people started QUITTING. The only thing that saved Wrath's "subscriber" numbers from falling like a brick were the Chinese release and a massive marketing push, hence "wrathbabies".

Sub numbers didn't start falling until Cata, actually. The subscriber base peaked at 12million towards the end of Wrath. I think Vanilla had around 5mill peak subs.

[Macaquerie]

The thing is though: WotLK was far better than Vanilla WoW. At least in the real world where actual thinking people live.

Interestingly enough, I think that WotLK both tried to exploit players' nostalgia for old content and ended up magnifying it in the process. It's actually quite surprising that people didn't make more of a stink about the first raid tier of that expansion just being rehashed content, and an inferior version at that, which curiously enough had the effect of building up the legend of Vanilla Naxx and its legendary difficulty and oh-so-shiny-never-again-obtainable goodies even more.

And honestly, an underrated feature of WotLK was the whole achievement system which really shifted the game from being about exploring, whether in-game or through Thottbot/Wowhead, and discovering interesting content, to just the game flat out telling you what you needed to do in order to "complete" the game.

[Deleted]

I will go as far as to admit that wotlk was fun for the most part but after Ulduar it became bland and casual. Hell, the casual-creep even started in tbc with badges/honor tokens from heroic dungeons letting you buy epic pieces equal to T5. In my mind WoW greatness has always scaled down with each and every expansion.

Vanilla was best.
TBC was great.
Wotlk was fun.
Cata was garbage.
MoP was garbage.
WoD was "meh".
Legion - Havnt tried it.

Cata and MoP were far from "garbage", and both (especially MoP) had more challenging content available than earlier iterations of the game, so... wut?

[Queen of Hamsters]

Sub numbers didn't start falling until Cata, actually. The subscriber base peaked at 12million towards the end of Wrath. I think Vanilla had around 5mill peak subs.

Yeup.

Took until WoD for subs to get back to Vanilla levels, and that was due to WoD being dogshit.
Needless to say, that's been rectified with Legion. If Legion had been another WoD-style expansion, we'd probably be facing maintenance mode rather than another expansion + Classic servers coming.

[RapBreon]

Wow, you're really triggered, aren't you? I'm flattered that you put so much thought into who I am that you're making up little stories in your mind though, even going so far as to revive the "wrathbaby" argument to support your ramblings.

And why should we "remove the influence" of the Chinese? They're customers and players of this game as well.
If you want the numbers, go seek up the quarterly reports from all these years. I'm not the one throwing a hissy fit here over the fact that WoW lived on and remained a success past Classic/TBC.

I'd say broadly because it's a market earlier iterations didn't have access too and not really fault of the game's design.

Again though this whole conversation is correlation =/= causation. Stuff like this can be wildly complex and multi-factorial. I.e Game design was a facet of WoW's financial success at the time.

Sub numbers didn't start falling until Cata, actually. The subscriber base peaked at 12million towards the end of Wrath. I think Vanilla had around 5mill peak subs.

5 million is what it says on my original box!

[solarfallz]

Sub numbers didn't start falling until Cata, actually. The subscriber base peaked at 12million towards the end of Wrath. I think Vanilla had around 5mill peak subs.

Yeah nah. Wrath plateaued and was only sustained by its massive marketing push and chinese release. About 95% of the old school players that I knew quit during this time. The people on my server changed completely, it was like being at a company and seeing everyone but you get fired and replaced.

[crusadernero]

As a german, WoW became big because it released in a time, we finally got flatrates and DSL. All MMOs before were nice, but paying internet per minute was pretty expensiv (had a hardcore player DOAC as friend with a bill between 120-140 €/month). When we finally got "cheap" flatrates (2004 the reached prices below 10 €) we had to decide to play games like EQ or DOAC (which we did, but not hardcore) and are way behind other players or start with the pack on a brand new game. So WoW it was.

Also wow was much more advertised than the other games. In our Gaming magazines the old MMOs were always described as "a good but expensive game". WoW was the first MMO with lacked the "expensive" part. The ratings and reviews were not better.

Good point. Broadband got really good here in Norway about when wow released. Faster and cheaper prices and all that. Its a major factor into all of this, one that its easy to forget.

[Florena]

Early wow was lightning in a bottle. I'm sure Classic will get enough players to sustain itself but it's not going to recreate the boom WoW had. It was great for its time but a lot about Vanilla is outdated, because it's been 13 years. Other MMOs tried and failed to recreate its success by copying it, but you can't replicate that sort of thing.

Honestly I liked BC and Wrath more than Vanilla, and Wrath more than BC by a smaller margin. Then for me things dipped a bit in cata, bumped up a bit in MOP, and then WoD I didn't play much because I was finally burnt out on WoW and I've only played Legion off and on for the same reason.

Anecdotes are anecdotes but whenever the topic comes up in my guild it's always Wrath followed by MoP that people liked most, and a good number of us started in Vanilla we're not 'wrath babies.'

[Storfan]

Cata and MoP were far from "garbage", and both (especially MoP) had more challenging content available than earlier iterations of the game, so... wut?

Garbage from a lore/storyline and gameplay point of view.

[Aydinx2]

??????????????????? No?

The game had by far the most mainstream hype in classic, and surpassed every other MMO in history way before BC's launch. Wrath is when the playerbase "peaked" (in other words, STOPPED GROWING) because that's when people started QUITTING. The only thing that saved Wrath's "subscriber" numbers from falling like a brick were the Chinese release and a massive marketing push, hence "wrathbabies".

Wrath had objectively the most active players, so regardless of what you make of it, that's when it was the most popular.

[Storfan]

Yeah nah. Wrath plateaued and was only sustained by its massive marketing push and chinese release. About 95% of the old school players that I knew quit during this time. The people on my server changed completely, it was like being at a company and seeing everyone but you get fired and replaced.

Holy shit this analogy actually hits home. This is exactly what Cata (and my short return in MoP) felt like.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Holy shit this analogy actually hits home. This is exactly what Cata (and my short return in MoP) felt like.

And to others, it never felt like that. I still play largely with the same people I always did.

[Deleted]

Early wow was lightning in a bottle. I'm sure Classic will get enough players to sustain itself but it's not going to recreate the boom WoW had. It was great for its time but a lot about Vanilla is outdated, because it's been 13 years. Other MMOs tried and failed to recreate its success by copying it, but you can't replicate that sort of thing.

I agree completely. Vanilla WoW should be enshrined as a piece of gaming history + a thing people can return to any time for reasons that are their own (nostalgia, curiosity, actual preference to old school gameplay, 's all good). But there is no turning back to it. Ever again. Same as no car company will start mass producing 50's Cadillacs in the 21st century. The market's changed, the customers have changed, a decade and a half (counting development, then release, then the game's lifespan) is a fucking EPOCH in computer gaming.

[Deleted]

I remember playing in vanilla and even BC, i was running around the world and seeing people........ when i wanted to play in cata the world was pretty empty, felt like im playing single player mmo

[Queen of Hamsters]

Garbage from a lore/storyline and gameplay point of view.

Disagree 100%. Lore, storyline and gameplay was ace during MoP. Cata had it worse.

[Deleted]

Cata and MoP were far from "garbage", and both (especially MoP) had more challenging content available than earlier iterations of the game, so... wut?

Dont talk about challenge in game what offers easy mods.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Dont talk about challenge in game what offers easy mods.

... Spoken as someone never seeking challenge?

WoW has challenging gameplay aplenty, try your hand at it rather than focusing on the content aimed at the lowest common denominator.

[Florena]

Dont talk about challenge in game what offers easy mods.

When people talk about challenge in games, it's also unfair to exclude the hardest difficulties. Currently that would be high end mythic + dungeons and mythic raids.

Nobody will argue levelig has gotten easier and I ohpe the new stat squish and scaling will help fix the balance there. But you can't call MoP 'easy' if you weren't doing the mythic (or was it still 'heroic' back then?) versions of the raids.

If you play all games on the easiest difficulty and then complain they're too easy without ever doing the harder ones, that says more about the player than the game.

- - - Updated - - -

Disagree 100%. Lore, storyline and gameplay was ace during MoP. Cata had it worse.

Lore wise MOP was one of the top expansions for me. Sure on the surface it's easy to say 'lol stupid kung fu pandas' but once you delve into it, it was pretty well done. Not without some hiccups but certainly not garbage.

[Storfan]

Disagree 100%. Lore, storyline and gameplay was ace during MoP. Cata had it worse.

To each their own I suppose. With MoP I simply couldnt take it seriously with cute plushy pandas running about. It was a funny joke character in the wc3 bonus campaign but as the theme for an expansion, no thanks. And Cata I just think everything was too fragmented.