one of my fondest wow memories was just playing the game on my rogue, around 30-50. I remember getting my two swords from RFK and SM:Cath, spending a 2 hour long solo run climbing up the troll "castle" to get the item to summon the hydra in ZF, roaming around BRD for an hour because it was fun and exploring. Noone will have any real memories like that anymore, noone will remember what they did in this game and have a real connection to it. the game has turned from an immersive adventure that you can lose yourself in an amazing world, into a race to the end for pixels.
I honestly feel bad for those who have not been able to experience this, and noone ever will be able to in this game anymore. there's no more adventure or thrill, just numbers and queues. how long has it been since you've gone into the world and just thought "Wow..." and been absolutely speechless in your adventures?
exactly this.
It has nothing to do with nostalgia. Its how you prefer your game.
And if that old "formula" wouldn't make it in todays light in terms of sales. Then so be it. I rather have a good game that ends at a certain point then to get some sort of game that is a shadow of itself (in terms of fun for ME).
You took the crap things that were there in the game, with the good. You accepted it. But you truly loved or obsessed over the rest of the game that was awesome.
And again: it has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact you were a teenager. I was 25 and some of my guildmates were in their 50s. They still claim that Vanilla/TBC (and the start of Cata btw including raid tier 11) were the best they ever experienced. WOTLK was mostly good because of the Lich King story and Ulduar.
Nothing really, there was little to no storyline and the few questlines that actually had a resemblance of a story was a clusterfuck that had you jumping between EK and Kalimdor for hours and usually ending with a shitty quest reward not worth the time spend at all.
Of course that doesn't mean I thought it was bad when i started playing but thats because i was 13 and it was my first real MMO, if vanilla wasn't vanilla but a new expansion I'd say Blizzard lost their way, the fond memories i have from vanilla are the memories of an easily impressed 13 year old boy, these days it takes alot more to impress me.
As for TBC it was really only marginally better than Vanilla, The biggest memories I have from TBC was being cannibalized left and right resolving in never finishing the raid content because after having to rebuild the raid time for the 7th time I couldn't be bothered with that shit.
And general story was still pretty dogshit not to mention i fucking hated the zones with the exception of Nagrand and Netherstorm, but I was 14-15 years old so if you want to discredit my opinion based on the fact that I was a kid then by all means go ahead.
Last edited by Donald Hellscream; 2014-07-09 at 08:21 AM.
Vanilla: over 7 million subs before TBC.
TBC: over 10 million subs before WotLK.
Yep, they were bad. And yes, so much people played the game because they didn't know it better. /sarcasm
// .... time warp.... //
MoP: Easy questing, easy dungeons, easy faction grind, easy raidmodes (LFR / Flex), easy rewards, easy everything (except hc raids and competitive pvp), challenge modes, petbattles, catchup mechanics for gear / professions, legendary for everyone and his grandma, improvements in terms of gfx and mechanics to stay updated, CRZ, Battlenet Functions, ingame questhelper, instant 90s, 4 difficulty levels, flattened pvp progression, pruned talent trees, loot specialization option, bonusrolls and so on.... but still, subs are dropping....
I know, the game is old.... for everything another lame excuse.
It's high noon.
Personality: INTJ
For me vanilla and TBC model felt meaningful while the current model is meaningless. Clearing Kara, or just making progress in Kara was meaningful because you knew you had to clear it to progress to the next tier. Drops were meaningful because you know you needed those drops to be able to clear the following content to get you the next drop.
Today everything is meaningless. It doesn't matter if you clear a tier because you will get to the next tier in the next patch anyway. It doesn't matter if you get a piece of gear because next patch you'll be handed new gear anyway. It's just a completely different model, you can't really even call vanilla/TBC and MoP the same game, the systems and experience are just so completely different. Personally I loved the vanilla/TBC model both as a super casual in vanilla, and as a raider in TBC. I completely dislike MoP both as a casual and a raider, there just isn't anything interesting or meaningful there.
Vanilla wow had a world to explore and everything was mysterious. I believe the game would be alot better if wowhead or any database would not exist.
Man I shit you not, there were still soo many "LFM"s for Kara all the way up to Wrath release. Even after clearing T5-6, having the Heroic Dungeons and T4 req to progress alts gave the constant change of raid setting. Giving Raids different levels of difficulty and making it stupid easy to gear was one of the worse moves Blizzard has made.
It was better when raids had difficulty level, people had to start from first raid. Old raid model retained importance of old content.
The game was new and refreshing then anf you didn't have the sense to rush things, because you couldn't really.
Game would still have adventurous feeling if there wasnt wowhead.
Oh I have unsubbed a few months already. I am also very unhappy I already bought WoD on battlenet. Oh well... I'll see how that works out.
But you know how it goes. You play a game for near 10 years and it sticks with you. Like it is a part of you somehow. I still seem to care about the game even though I don't play it. Not sure that makes any sense.
I have to say there are two things for me that made Vanilla and The Burning Crusade stand out... and that is nice memories and realm-community.
What I miss today even though I can understand the convenience for grinding rep and what not, is that you had to get a group through talking to ppl in order to go dungeons. I played a healer and I often got placed on friendslists and I placed many more players that I liked to play with on my friendslist compare to today. Every time I logged on I got a whisper saying "hi want to heal shattered halls hc?". Nowadays you use dungeonfinder and you do not even have to talk to players, which is rather weird in a mmo. In vanilla there was even lists of players having rare recipes like the molten core ones who you could contact if you wanted something special. That is what I mean with realm-community.
An important sidenote though... nowadays I do not have the time to play as much as I did back in Vanilla and TBC. Work and family occupies my time much more these days so I am happy that World of Warcraft moves towards a more efficient gameplay, now I mostly just raid 3 days per week on a hc level and even though I love the memories i had doing BRD 5 hours runs
Idk I really liked the raid model where raiding felt extremely rewarding (compared to today).
No catch ups. No short cuts. Progression in its truest form. Once you showed your worth in T4 you had the gear to move into T5 and then T6 after.
WotLK reduced that model to a waiting game. Oh you cannot kill teh current raid tier? Just wait till the next catch-up comes out and get easy epics to make it a joke.
Cata afterwards even removed the waiting part. LFR is giving free full clears in the first few weeks for EVERYONE (since MoP it even rewards you with determination you when you die, very conveniant).
Nobody is exited about anything anymore. Everyone has seen and cleared the new content themselves as soon as it comes out.
Oh and today you can get everything done by yourself. In BC you were forced to interact with people (even for questing, the most solitary part of WoW). If you were a jerk in BC you made the game much harder for yourself so most people were respectful and enjoyed symbiotic relationships with the realm community.
TL;DR:
Raid content half life got reduced to ~5 weeks (for everyone).
Nobody interacts with strangers anymore (because they don't have to).
Last edited by mmocb100f50513; 2014-07-09 at 11:19 AM.
The point of the game is still the same and that's grinding things to no end untill a new expansion hits so you can do the whole thing again in a different environment with different looking gear that does the exact same thing as the tier before except the numbers are higher. Player damage in basic gear doesn't change the true nature of the game.
well you can define the 'true nature' to exclude any difference I mention, but to me a game where I kill multiple things in a few buttons with no risk to myself vs a game I need to carefully premediate certain types of pulls, and possibly run away if i end up with 2 mobs on me or threat of more, and where i DIE sometimes outside in world, are qualitatively 2 different game experiences.
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