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  1. #101
    Legendary! Deficineiron's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by RyanEX View Post
    The opposite could be said about Cataclysm. It introduced a villain that wasn't well known after an expansion with the best known villain of the universe. And that turned a lot of people off.
    I wonder what kind of debate was had about the cataclysm story-line, this was an obvious area of weakness/concern.
    Authors I have enjoyed enough to mention here: JRR Tolkein, Poul Anderson,Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, Glen Cook, Brian Stableford, MAR Barker, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, WM Hodgson, Fredrick Brown, Robert SheckleyJohn Steakley, Joe Abercrombie, Robert Silverberg, the norse sagas, CJ Cherryh, PG Wodehouse, Clark Ashton Smith, Alastair Reynolds, Cordwainer Smith, LE Modesitt, L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt, Stephen R Donaldon, and Jack L Chalker.

  2. #102
    Quote Originally Posted by Exinium View Post
    We have zones like that already. Timeless Isle can be ridiculously fierce competition for equally balanced PvP realms. In fact, the area we as players occupy at any given time is more concentrated than it was in Vanilla, there's just larger faction imbalances on the realms we play on.
    Sorry you must have played on some outback server or not at all with the latter being true for most people even arguing in this thread.

  3. #103
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    Quote Originally Posted by Exinium View Post
    A Vanilla Raider's View on the Development of World of Warcraft

    I've noticed quite a few people complaining about the quality of the game, and wishing that we'd turn more toward BC or Vanilla, and oftentimes even reminiscing about how good the game was. However, it's very likely that the players playing currently were rather young back then. This seems almost entirely irrelevant, but a vast majority of the experiences they draw themselves on are more about how new they were to the game, and less about "gaming" it.

    I started playing World of Warcraft when I was 11. My first character was a Hunter, on Aerie Peak. I remember logging in the first time, being so damned confused by everything, and so amazed by the world. Everything was so fresh and new, and all the content was engaging and enjoyable. I ran around in Robes as a hunter because I liked how they looked, and I had to beg to get gold for my regular speed mount. However, over time, I became a rather competent raider. I was a bit of a shut in, and lacked a large social circle, so World of Warcraft functioned as an escape for me. As a result, I was able to dedicate an (unhealthy) amount of time to becoming a better WoW player. Eventually, it developed to the point where I was able to perform aptly enough to raid with a coalition of guilds on my server in Molten Core.

    Vanilla

    People are really quick to jump on how "amazing" Vanilla was. I hate to burst your bubble, but I remember it rather clearly. Classes were disgustingly imbalanced. If you played a Balance Druid, you were undesirable. You didn't even have Moonkin form at the time. If you were a Shadow Priest, you had RACE BOUND ABILITIES. In fact, all of these were remedied in patch 1.8.0, the patch the World Dragons began spawning around the green portals. Patch 1.8 was released in October of 2005. Blackwing Lair opened July of 2005, in patch 1.6.0. I want to emphasize how big of a gap this is to not have spells we would now consider vital to our toolkits now. Things like having to turn in quests after you completed a battleground, having to turn in the marks you'd receive from the battleground, or having to fly to the actual physical location of the battleground itself to queue (Pre patch 1.6) all made for disgustingly monotonous tasks if you had any intentions of Pvping in a mostly broken system. Raiding itself was a cluster. Cramming 40 people into a vent and trying to coordinate them was near impossible, and with all the talking that inevitably happened, we actually ended up putting the tanks and healers in one channel on vent, and everyone else in the other. That was-- when we used vent. Otherwise, most of us got really familiar with the other 4 members of our parties. The boss mechanics were silly, to the point where they're actually difficult to solo today as a result. (Don't have a decurse? Haha, you're fucked in Molten Core. Not to mention the adds before the Corehound boss. Oh god.) I think I spent most of my time MC/BWL raiding days applying Serpent Sting to things as a hunter.

    Tl;Dr: Vanilla super broken, why would you want to play?

    Burning Crusade

    Admittedly, I didn't play for much of Burning Crusade. As a result, my knowledge is limited. However, I do know that many of the bugs in Vanilla WoW, as well as a good bit of the class imbalance, was fixed during Burning Crusade. Fixing an inherently broken game should not constitute a "good expansion". Someone had the audacity to state that "Burning Crusade was the most balanced PvP expansion". Really? The top 100 teams in ladder were Resto Druid or Disc Priest and Rogue or Warrior. Many classes were still entirely useless, just because these classes were so far outshining others in their roles. Stormherald Warriors and Glaive rogues dominated the top tier, while Resto Druids and Discipline Priests were so far ahead of the other casters that few else were even considered viable. On the positive side, Burning Crusade implemented a lot of the systems we still use today as Raiders. Currency systems were first introduced in BC in regards to raiding, and it was generally well received. (We still have them today.)

    Tl;Dr: Fixed vanilla, still pretty imbalanced for pvp. Good implementation of systems we still use today.

    Wrath of the Lich King

    My most active expansion. I played a Death Knight during the introduction of Wrath of the Lich King, but switched to my Restoration Druid near the end. My view of WotLK is that it was a poor expansion in general, but a few things shined. One was the rise of 3's arenas. Rogue Mage Priest dominated, but other compositions became viable. Death Knights were disgustingly overpowered, but quickly fixed (And even a little overnerfed at the time.) The Naxxramas remake was a rehash of the Naxx 40 encounter, which bothered me a lot, having raided Naxx 40. It lacked the "draw" of raiding, since I'd spent so much time in the instance in the first place. 0/10 for rehashing Naxx. Anyway, the mini raids were silly. Sartharion was a poorly designed encounter, and served more as a Nalak/Sha of Anger/Celestials loot dispenser rather than an actual encounter. (In fact, that's probably what it was. 10/10 for making me realize that Sartharion was one of the first successful loot catchups. There had been some before this, but none were widely killed.) Anywho, Ulduar comes along. I consider Ulduar one of the best raids. It introduced so many new mechanics, with Vehicles, the creative use of Hardmode activations, etc. It was such a well designed and well balanced raid, and reflects now what Blizzard looks to design in World of Warcraft raids. Engaging content that is not only challenging on the highest tier, but entertaining enough for the casual tier. Trial of the Crusader followed Ulduar and was a total failure on Blizzard's part. It was probably a necessary failure, as they tried to develop an instance without trash like a lot of people were asking for, but the attempts mechanism in the encounter, paired with the lack of actual interesting boss mechanics, as well as the stale playing field, made it a total failure of a raid. Anub'Arak was still kind of a cool fight though. I've gone on too long about this expansion, so I'll cover ICC in a quick statement. Gating mechanisms were dumb, and as a <US100 Raider, they were easily the poorest decision made regarding an otherwise mediocre instance. LK fight was pretty cool though.

    Tl;Dr: Balance at last! A few major mistakes made this a poor expansion for a lot of people, but still all and all, not a bad expansion.

    Cataclysm

    Cataclysm is a lot of people's least favorite expansions. I was admittedly not very active in arenas, so I cannot speak to that degree. However, my RBG team was a ragtag group of people thrown together at the last minute, and I'd give anything to have them back and playing together. *Wipes tears* Anywho. I thoroughly enjoyed Cataclysm. The healing was disgustingly difficult, and I enjoyed struggling through it on my Resto Druid. I actually gave up and went Feral for quite awhile, but was very poor at Feral, and ended up going back Resto once I was 90. A few things I hated were the disgusting amount of rep grinding I had to do, as well as the fact that I had to discover the entrance to every dungeon. Huge pain in the ass. (Is that still a thing, by the way?) I thought the raiding encounters were decent. Heroic Magmaw and Omnomnom Defense Council were engaging fights, and the only two I really remember. I think I wiped a lot to H Maloriak as well. H Ascendant Council was a huge progress bar for a lot of guilds, and I think killing it was my biggest accomplishment. Our kill video is still out there somewhere, even. I quit when Firelands dropped, so I know nothing beyond this. However, I've heard that Firelands was one of the worst raids in WoW. (I think I killed Shaddox actually. He was a boss in there right? The hunter dude? I killed spider bitch too. Wow, that was a long time ago. We finally got into the raid when we were done crashing because so many people were there, and no one actually wanted to do the raid.) Anyway, if we assume Fire Lands was as bad as people say it was, and Dragon Soul was as mediocre and awful to be stuck on for a number of months as people say it was, then the bottom line is, Cataclysm was a necessary expansion due to the fact that leveling an alt character was painful. It helped to streamline the game, and make it more enjoyable to play casually. Many of the zone revamps were visually astounding, and just like the model update, if it didn't happen, people would be asking for it down the road.

    Tl;Dr: Totally necessary expansion, even if you think it's bad from whatever perspective. Kept the game from dieing probably.

    Mists of Pandaria

    I've played on and off in Pandaria. I have all of my Cutting Edge titles however, and raided with some big-name guilds during ToT and H HoF/ToES progression. MSV was a rather uninteresting raid, and served as a walkover to gear accomplished raiders, while being easy enough for casual raiders to feel challenged and entertained by. Heart of Fear introduced a few cool game mechanics, and the boss fights were engaging enough that they were worth doing. Nothing incredible came out of the first tier of MoP however. Throne of Thunder, on the other hand. I happen to have a few realm first kills in Throne of Thunder. I played a Mistweaver monk during ToT. I felt incredibly gimped by the shift in playstyle, but ultimately, my healing was rather unaffected. I quit after killing Heroic Council in a spurt of rage that Monk was a dumb class, and I didn't feel like leveling my Druid however. So I moved on with my life, coming back a decent while later. I actually started playing again about 3-4 months ago. PvP feels satisfying, but not engaging. The new battlegrounds are neat, but not incredible. However, what really shines, I believe, is Siege of Orgrimmar. I consider this one of the best raids in the game to date. The encounters are incredibly varied, and no two are similar. (Unless you're a ranged dps, then fuck you Iron Juggernaut and Malkorok.) I've had the pleasure of finding a guild that examined my extensive list of high end raiding guilds, and as a result, was able to gear up relatively quickly. However, when I initially started playing, I found it to be quite a challenge to find groups for Flex. Many required an item level of 540, which didn't make sense to me, considering if you were wearing exclusively flex-gear, you'd have an average item level of 540. Either way, performed well enough to be kept around in my current guild. MoP has had its ups and downs, but the two exceptional raid tiers (ToT and SoO) mixed with the fairly good PvP seasons mean MoP is one of the most well rounded expansions in the game, from an objective perspective. As an offhand comment, since I can't really fit this in anywhere, Garrosh is the worst encounter. It introduces no interesting game mechanics for an end game boss, and serves simply as a "RUN HERE AT THIS TIME" fight. Incredible let down in my opinion. Regardless, good expansion.

    Tl;Dr: MoP shines in the fact that it's consistently been good for the last two tiers. The first tier was unspectacular, but tolerable.
    You do not understand what fun is. Perhaps the game was imballanced, but it was a 100 times more exciting to play than todays chest opening, stupid LFR and stupid world boss farm. That is what you do. LFR, World bosses each week, and opening weekly chests on timeless isle to gain the bonus roll coins. That is amazing content i must say, NOT. I remember i had so much more exciting stuff to do back in Vanilla, TBC and Wotlk. MoP has been all about LFR, rep and valor grinding since the 2nd month of its release. Dungeons in MoP has been irrelevant which is really sad when i think they bring a lot to the game.

  4. #104
    Quote Originally Posted by Deficineiron View Post
    I wonder what kind of debate was had about the cataclysm story-line, this was an obvious area of weakness/concern.

    My personal opinion?

    Blizzard realised early on that Deathwing was not being well received and worked from early to bring the xpac to a close. A cancelled raid, followed by a small if entertaining raid, then the main end raid being thoroughly unentertaining indicated that people had been moved from it's development early.

    Especially when you consider that the DW fight was promised to be one that eclipsed Arthas' in epicness.
    STRESS
    The confusion caused when one's mind
    overrides the body's basic
    desire to choke the living shit out of
    some jerk who desperately needs it

  5. #105
    The Lightbringer Issalice's Avatar
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    I enjoyed reading this, brought back a lot of memories. It actually made me want to play again then I logged and was like eh...what to do....never mind and promptly logged out lol. This late in the xpac though the only thing to keep people going is progression raiding if you haven't downed garrosh yet and pvping. I'm tired of both so I'm just going to take a step back from WoW for a bit, which is fine. I will be back for WoD.

  6. #106
    Quote Originally Posted by Exinium View Post
    This is how I know you didn't play WoW back then. You're saying they're removing abilities and that by doing that Blizzard is catering to the masses. You do realize back in Vanilla you had spell rankings right? Vanilla had infinitely more spells and clutter than we do now.
    You know spell rankings were in TBC and Wrath right? There was far more clutter in those two x-pacs than in vanilla.

    That's how I know YOU didn't play WoW back then.

  7. #107
    Vanilla-MOP, though there've been hiccups here and there, I've thoroughly enjoyed every version thus far. There are a lot of options to find something fun and more coming down the pipeline. Like life, Warcraft will never be perfect. But seriously, I love the game for what it has been and what it is. You know...you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and then you have...

  8. #108
    Quote Originally Posted by Bigpolomo View Post
    You do not understand what fun is. Perhaps the game was imballanced, but it was a 100 times more exciting to play than todays chest opening, stupid LFR and stupid world boss farm. That is what you do. LFR, World bosses each week, and opening weekly chests on timeless isle to gain the bonus roll coins. That is amazing content i must say, NOT. I remember i had so much more exciting stuff to do back in Vanilla, TBC and Wotlk. MoP has been all about LFR, rep and valor grinding since the 2nd month of its release. Dungeons in MoP has been irrelevant which is really sad when i think they bring a lot to the game.
    There's more to WoW than just LFR and Timeless Isle, but the amount of content people are willing to do has become so dwindling. No one goes out and does a few quests for cool cutscenes anymore. How many people actually watched the wrathgate cutscene?

    Quote Originally Posted by Isotope View Post
    You know spell rankings were in TBC and Wrath right? There was far more clutter in those two x-pacs than in vanilla.

    That's how I know YOU didn't play WoW back then.
    My username is the same as one of my alt's names, and I've posted many a time-- I'm making no effort to hide my identity.

    My main: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...xzinium/simple

    If you go into my feats of strength, you'll realize that I did play in Vanilla, and did all the things I said I did. I've tried to be up front about my experiences, but apparently this dissatisfies some people.

  9. #109
    Quote Originally Posted by Exinium View Post
    My main: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...xzinium/simple

    If you go into my feats of strength, you'll realize that I did play in Vanilla, and did all the things I said I did. I've tried to be up front about my experiences, but apparently this dissatisfies some people.
    To be honest your armory proves you pvped in Vanilla at the most. The FoS dates shows you were awarded the vanilla raiding ones after the initial login. Where as you would have been granted them at the same time, if you had completed a quest from the boss drop, or had a item in inventory from the boss. Benefit of the doubt incase you didn't fall into one of those categories.

    In fact what is far more telling is that for the whole of Wrath you didn't kill one boss that was current content, and in Cata you killed a handful. You want to pass judgment on old teirs by cheesing them years later? GG.

  10. #110
    Quote Originally Posted by Dotcha View Post
    To be honest your armory proves you pvped in Vanilla at the most. The FoS dates shows you were awarded the vanilla raiding ones after the initial login. Where as you would have been granted them at the same time, if you had completed a quest from the boss drop, or had a item in inventory from the boss. Benefit of the doubt incase you didn't fall into one of those categories.
    That's pretty accurate although I wouldn't even call that pvping as Sergeant merely meant you actually entered an av twice or something.

  11. #111
    Quote Originally Posted by Dotcha View Post
    To be honest your armory proves you pvped in Vanilla at the most. The FoS dates shows you were awarded the vanilla raiding ones after the initial login. Where as you would have been granted them at the same time, if you had completed a quest from the boss drop, or had a item in inventory from the boss. Benefit of the doubt incase you didn't fall into one of those categories.

    In fact what is far more telling is that for the whole of Wrath you didn't kill one boss that was current content, and in Cata you killed a handful. You want to pass judgment on old teirs by cheesing them years later? GG.
    That character wasn't my main in Wrath. I cleared Icecrown in a casual manner, but I was still well within the average on my server at the time. I'm not going to go through and link all my characters, because honestly, my character never should have come into question in the first place. Like I said in the OP, I ended up quitting when BC came out, and playing again sometime in WotLK. As a result, my FoS's were awarded on this date.

  12. #112
    Quote Originally Posted by Exinium View Post
    my character never should have come into question in the first place.
    Credibility seems like a fair point anytime a piece about vanilla pops up.

  13. #113
    But damn vanilla was so much fun!
    I don't know a single player that doesn't look back on it with fond memories.

  14. #114
    Legendary! Deficineiron's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bbr View Post
    But damn vanilla was so much fun!
    I don't know a single player that doesn't look back on it with fond memories.
    By forum logic, all that proves is diagnosable nostalgia or the non-ophthalmologic condition called rose-colored glasses Maybe mass hysteria? Like all those old coca-cola fans. (yes yes I am being sarcastic).
    Authors I have enjoyed enough to mention here: JRR Tolkein, Poul Anderson,Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, Glen Cook, Brian Stableford, MAR Barker, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, WM Hodgson, Fredrick Brown, Robert SheckleyJohn Steakley, Joe Abercrombie, Robert Silverberg, the norse sagas, CJ Cherryh, PG Wodehouse, Clark Ashton Smith, Alastair Reynolds, Cordwainer Smith, LE Modesitt, L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt, Stephen R Donaldon, and Jack L Chalker.

  15. #115
    Quote Originally Posted by bbr View Post
    But damn vanilla was so much fun!
    I don't know a single player that doesn't look back on it with fond memories.
    Fun and fond memories yes, but I'd never want it back because the game was fundamentally broken and the class I most enjoy playing was unplayable.

    From the point of view of heroic raider the game is better now than it has been ever before.

  16. #116

  17. #117
    Quote Originally Posted by Morbownz View Post


    This video disagrees with you.
    Gamespot is the premier videogame reviewing source. /s

  18. #118
    What I missed the most is the BWL days and no that's not nostalgia talking.

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