Please explain to me why the game felt more "alive" for me when there was <500k SUBS

[salate]

Community.
BG for one realm.
You knew your enemies, you knew your friends.
you really used /wave to alliance PVP heroes, and /smile after every fight.

You [Dirge] chatted for no reason to make haters wake up and report you for spam.
You always knew your realm was something... really big. Something really interesting.

And yeah, x-factor always was a thing. You could explore things, jump on things, find things, and it was interesting
Everything we have now > not bad, but... Community is > OQ>LFR>dead realms...
Nothing else
And yeah, our beautiful world :]

[jbombard]

They only had less than 500k subs for an eye blink. They blew past that in the first few months. The first year was the fastest period of growth WoW has ever seen. It felt alive people were coming in in droves, and they were having fun and they were staying because you couldn't level to max in a couple weeks like you can now. Also because their were always people around, and everything took time there wasn't much point into being in a rush so people stopped helped, grouped up and talked to each other more. When you speed everything up and streamline everything so much community gets thrown to the wayside.

[Powerogue]

That's the thing, tons more things to do , the game felt bigger...

It's not that the gameworld shrank. It's actually several continents larger at this point. It's the fact that you've been there, done that, and now you just don't feel like going back and re-doing that old raid again. The magic is lost because it has become familiar.

[hawtlol]

For those of you saying rose tinted glasses. Mind telling me why I can't even last 2 hours playing retail yet I've spent the past few months playing on a Vanilla private server playing close to as much as I used to play the game?

WoW was once a restraint but has turned into a fast-food chain. What's the point of an MMO when you don't have a community? The was of accessibility was a cool idea and thought it was going to be great making stuff so much easier but never thought of the impact it would make on the social aspect of the game which is what made the game so great for me in the first place.

[Deleted]

Because the world was smaller?

[Samaramon]

/shrug
I guess it's up to each person.

When I made my first char, I was a noob, yes, but I knew what other players were. And I remember I hadn't seen another player till I reached Stormwind (must have been like 15-20 lvl). I was so excited to see another one playing the game.

Compare that to now, where there's literally thousands of people to interact with and RP with, I'd have to disagree.

Then again, it's all personal experiences.

- - - Updated - - -

For those of you saying rose tinted glasses. Mind telling me why I can't even last 2 hours playing retail yet I've spent the past few months playing on a Vanilla private server playing close to as much as I used to play the game?

WoW was once a restraint but has turned into a fast-food chain. What's the point of an MMO when you don't have a community? The was of accessibility was a cool idea and thought it was going to be great making stuff so much easier but never thought of the impact it would make on the social aspect of the game which is what made the game so great for me in the first place.

How do we explain your personal preferences?

I've also tried vanilla servers, couldn't even last a day.

[Lochton]

Maybe better structured community on the server you were on?

Or generally because at lower subs ment more and more people started to join the game, seeing the world, running around the zones to play their characters.

I think that because it felt alive, is that reason, because so many others arrived to the game to play up the levels. Back then levelling didn't gear nearly as fast as today, that I miss, there's been many proving factors of levelling being a little too fast.

But back then, many saw it all for the first time, many had to go through hundreds of quests to reach their goals. People made many of the general chats alive, WTB's, WTS', LFG's for various things.

[Alan1187]

I remember starting WoW in Nov 2004 with a bunch of people I played SWG (star wars galaxies) with back in 2003/early 2004.

The world/game in general felt thriving and huge to me...even coming from another MMORPG..

I'd say this feeling lasted from 2004-2007

NOTE: I am not saying the game was BETTER OR WORSE, im just saying it felt more "alive", the game is far better now...to a gaming point of view...tons more things to do, tons more features....a lot more things fixed...many useless things now playable...i am not denying this fact

Now when I log into the game I just feel like im walking around in a museum or something....the game just feels dead...even though theres MILLIONs of more subscribers...I wish I could explain it better but I guess you sort of have to be around MMORPGs a long time.


I am not talking about inner guild communities...thats normal..im talking about the community as 1 entity...it seems dead. And please don't think your private raiding guild chatter/banter makes up for this....i am talking about server wide community here.

No flying & lots of crap to do in the world.

[Drakainen]

Because the game was less than a month old so everyone wanted to be online 24/7?

and

Simple. First, you had to walk everywhere, second the landmass was smaller, third there were far less servers to play on, so the ones that were around were packed for quite a while, and lastly, people had to congregate to do anything, since we lacked the social/queue systems the game now has.

These two pretty much sum up everything spot on.

[dope_danny]

OP does know mmo stands for "massively multiplayer online" right?

....right?

[Norjak]

WoW was once a restraint but has turned into a fast-food chain.

This is a good analogy. If you ask people in McDonalds where they like to go, of course they're going to mostly say McDonalds.
The level of detail and challenge in classic WoW is in many cases missing from the modern game. Different crowd of players coming through the door nowadays, that can't really be disputed but you can continue to argue 'why'.

[Asiel]

Because you no longer have much incentive to interact with the players around you.

/thread

[yjmark]

WoW seemed more active back in a Vanilla -> mid TBC because people were not doing much instanced content. Most people were still questing and leveling. Around mid-TBC, most people were starting to do end game content (heroics and raids). So as people migrate more to endgame, leveling zones emptied out. The world, in general seemed empty because people were spending more time in instances content, where you don't see them.

At least, that was my deduction from what I experienced back then.

[Deleted]

For those of you saying rose tinted glasses. Mind telling me why I can't even last 2 hours playing retail yet I've spent the past few months playing on a Vanilla private server playing close to as much as I used to play the game?

WoW was once a restraint but has turned into a fast-food chain. What's the point of an MMO when you don't have a community? The was of accessibility was a cool idea and thought it was going to be great making stuff so much easier but never thought of the impact it would make on the social aspect of the game which is what made the game so great for me in the first place.

This is where people usually make a mistake.

Other people can't understand what you prefer and what you want, and instantly says it's nostalgia-glasses.

I have played many, many hours on Classic realms, and enjoyed it loads. The game was really like an RPG back then, a true MMORPG. The game today is just an MMOLobby.

[Gimlix]

Also the game is like 2-3x as big now as it used to be, and the population might have gone up, but server size remained same.

[Forsedar]

I think its mostly nostalgia and the 'new' factor of WoW that made it feel more lively.

For a lot of people, WoW was their first MMO. I know it was mine. It was amazing running around, getting gear, seeing other people doing the same thing. It had a larger impact on me than it does now. Its expected to see other people.

Now, also back then you had to travel to instances which made things appear to be more interactive. I honestly wouldn't prefer it that way anymore especially with the size of the game.

Ontop of all of this, you also had a real server community. You had to actually interact with everyone, be nice, respectable, etc. If you were an asshole or a troll, it would become increasingly harder to find groups. Now you can transfer servers, do group finders, use OQ/OpenRaid which makes it so no matter how much your server ends up hating you- you have other options. There is no server community, at least not like it used to be. Just like another forum member posted, its become an MMOLobby. A server just hosts players and no longer really acts as a home.

[freighttrain]

I remember starting WoW in Nov 2004 with a bunch of people I played SWG (star wars galaxies) with back in 2003/early 2004.

The world/game in general felt thriving and huge to me...even coming from another MMORPG..

I'd say this feeling lasted from 2004-2007

NOTE: I am not saying the game was BETTER OR WORSE, im just saying it felt more "alive", the game is far better now...to a gaming point of view...tons more things to do, tons more features....a lot more things fixed...many useless things now playable...i am not denying this fact

Now when I log into the game I just feel like im walking around in a museum or something....the game just feels dead...even though theres MILLIONs of more subscribers...I wish I could explain it better but I guess you sort of have to be around MMORPGs a long time.


I am not talking about inner guild communities...thats normal..im talking about the community as 1 entity...it seems dead. And please don't think your private raiding guild chatter/banter makes up for this....i am talking about server wide community here.

First off under 500k subs lasted only a few months. The game world was smaller, there were a lot less servers. The game was new so people did not know where to go and what to do. Most of the players today know what to do and where to go so everything is more efficient. Not to mention in the last 10 years game play trends are about getting the max for less time spent playing and WoW has followed what players have trended to.

[hakujinbakasama]

Also the game is like 2-3x as big now as it used to be, and the population might have gone up, but server size remained same.

This isn't actually the issue/reason.

It's been commented or touched on a few times.

The effect or illusion is completely dependent on Player/Character interaction. That interaction is and has been stifled due to Cross Realm features as well as prolonged life time. There are fewer low and mid ranged character. Similarly, much of Cata and MoP has been done using "Phased" zones/areas. This leads to only the most recent content ever being "alive" and even then it is dependent on that content not being phase progressive.

[freighttrain]

This isn't actually the issue/reason.

It's been commented or touched on a few times.

The effect or illusion is completely dependent on Player/Character interaction. That interaction is and has been stifled due to Cross Realm features as well as prolonged life time. There are fewer low and mid ranged character. Similarly, much of Cata and MoP has been done using "Phased" zones/areas. This leads to only the most recent content ever being "alive" and even then it is dependent on that content not being phase progressive.

I don't believe it ffor a second. People used to sit in cities spamming trade or lfg to be able to from a group. Since LFD and CR BG queues, people are allowed to get out of the cities and do whatever while waiting for a group to from. The amount of people sitting in cities is probably the same as it was back then. The biggest reason is the lesser amount of servers, the spreading of the WoW subs beyond US/NA regions so there is people to interact along with it is far easier to level alts in recent years you do not need to spend nearly as much time in the world as you did prior to WotLK.

[walkingtall]

For the same reason that your parents look back at the "whatevers" as the best time.