I never expected Vanilla WoW to be that good

[SoulSoBreezy]

I focused on the emotional attachment as opposed to the opinions of which gameplay systems were superior, but this video essay is relevant enough to put here (and not relevant enough to start another thread):

[McNeil]

Vanilla >is< shit.
it was good for its Time.
lets pretend WoW was never released, and suddenly Blizzard decides to Release Vanilla WoW in 2016.
Nobody. will. play. it. besides the heavy WC3 Fanboys.
Wanna know why?
it gets heavily outclassed by other MMORPGS on the Market.
its a fact that Vanilla was bad in Gameplay terms. really bad.
The only good thing that Vanilla had, was the Open World System. besides that, most of the good stuff from Vanilla was community based.

Honestly, if Legion came out today as a brand new game I doubt that it would perform that well either. The game is still thriving because of its succes in the past, mostly contributed by how good TBC and WotLK are, and a lot of people have spended so much time towards their characters that they can't just leave them behind that easily. But if it was brand new in todays standards, people would already get turned off by its dated graphics and gameplay.

Yeah they are both different games, but there's no ''better'' game unless you only go for the technical aspect.

[Deleted]

Honestly, if Legion came out today as a brand new game I doubt that it would perform that well either. The game is still thriving because of its succes in the past, mostly contributed by how good TBC and WotLK are, and a lot of people have spended so much time towards their characters that they can't just leave them behind that easily. But if it was brand new in todays standards, people would already get turned off by its dated graphics and gameplay.

Yeah they are both different games, but there's no ''better'' game unless you only go for the technical aspect.

idd. Legion is also heavily driven by the old subscribers from back then, the difference is Legion is more...."2016 like", sounds stupid, but you get the idea.

[Inukenshin]

idd. Legion is also heavily driven by the old subscribers from back then, the difference is Legion is more...."2016 like", sounds stupid, but you get the idea.

The problem with going back to Vanilla is that the people that drove this game back then are older now, have jobs and families, etc. Hard to keep that Vanilla level drive like.

The biggest mistake Blizzard ever made was:

Flying mounts
Being able to fly everywhere destroyed your day-to-day encounters with people. At least they took a step in the right direction and limiting that in WoD and Legion.

Cross-realm
Everyone lost the sense of identity that used to exist on servers. Who you were used to matter in your day-to-day. "So and so rogue is ganking here, so and so guild is over there." Now its basically "insert random person you'll never see again here".

[Akka]

Given that its growth couldn't be that much higher and Vanilla premiered around the time most flat adsl connection became common, I'd say that the peak is still good.
What's more, those were active numbers. There's no decline in them.

WoW HAD its peak during WotLK. There's no denying it. The expansion might not have any growth, but stability isn't bad given that after 4 years the same generational exchange that's happening right now might have hit some players during that time aswell.

This entire argument could have been copy-pasted all the years during which Vanilla and TBC lasted. In fact, they have. Yet it's WotLK in which sub stopped growing, and it's also the moment where they made a 180° on the design.
Correlation is not causation, so it's not a "hard" proof, I'm aware. Still, I find the coincidence significant, and at least more believable than the contrived attempt to claim there was something magical about the number of years WoW had at the time which explain why suddendly it stopped growing despite supposedly becoming so much better.

And if we do want to find a common ground, Wrath might not have been the very peak, but it sure as hell wasn't the decline.

Warning : the following is a personal analysis, based on personal and empirical experience. I'm fully aware it's not statistically significant, but I'm convinced it paints a somewhat real picture of what happened.

I see WotLK at the moment veterans left massively, to be replaced by the new generation of WoW players - those who are interested in more action, more instant gratification and so on. WotLK had a massive publicity campaign, and I encountered countless people who never played TBC when I was playing - yet the sub stayed stagnant. WotLK was the peak only because it caused, at least indirectly, the fall.

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Thats great, I played it to level 14 (undead mage) a couple of weeks ago and was bored shitless.
Thats how opinion work, now you need to start understanding that your whole post is YOUR opinion that means absolutely nothing to me or the people you are talking to.

In my opinion Vanilla WoW is the most boring, slow and imbalanced piece of shit and I really do not understand HOW I was playing it back then. Probably because I did not know any better.

=>
I'm sorry, but which group is telling the other that they "think they do, but they don't" ? One group says "I love Vanilla", the other says "no you don't, you're just nostalgic", who is trying to shove their opinions down the throat of others ?

It's the other group which is claiming that it's not up to opinion, that they are absolutely right, and even claiming they know better than others what these others like. You're barking up the wrong tree here.

[Fallakin]

I remember everyone who used to laugh at our paladin tank early tbc, by the end of tbc you had to be a paladin tank, or /lolohgod.

As a Warrior Tank up til Ulduar, that's not true at all.

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Honestly, if Legion came out today as a brand new game I doubt that it would perform that well either. The game is still thriving because of its succes in the past, mostly contributed by how good TBC and WotLK are, and a lot of people have spended so much time towards their characters that they can't just leave them behind that easily. But if it was brand new in todays standards, people would already get turned off by its dated graphics and gameplay.

Yeah they are both different games, but there's no ''better'' game unless you only go for the technical aspect.

Also, remember what came before WoW? Everquest. Remember how stale that shit was in 2004?

[Deleted]

Given that its growth couldn't be that much higher and Vanilla premiered around the time most flat adsl connection became common, I'd say that the peak is still good.
What's more, those were active numbers. There's no decline in them.

WoW HAD its peak during WotLK. There's no denying it. The expansion might not have any growth, but stability isn't bad given that after 4 years the same generational exchange that's happening right now might have hit some players during that time aswell.
This entire argument could have been copy-pasted all the years during which Vanilla and TBC lasted. In fact, they have. Yet it's WotLK in which sub stopped growing, and it's also the moment where they made a 180° on the design.
Correlation is not causation, so it's not a "hard" proof, I'm aware. Still, I find the coincidence significant, and at least more believable than the contrived attempt to claim there was something magical about the number of years WoW had at the time which explain why suddendly it stopped growing despite supposedly becoming so much better.

Every evidences point toward that 180° design change to be the point at which the MMORPG genre started to decline (most MMORPG released after 2009 follow the same design philosophy as wow), as shown by google trends. This design change occurred at the 3.0 patch and the decline starts right during the same month.

https://www.google.com/trends/explor...x,%2Fm%2F01mw1

[Lochton]

Nostalgia? I never played the official vanilla.Read again

So, you didn't experience the real experience, but are just projecting the remnant of it?

[mistahwilshire]

So, you didn't experience the real experience, but are just projecting the remnant of it?

Why are you so defensive and offended that someone enjoys an old version of a game? Gross behavior.

[Kithelle]

So, you didn't experience the real experience, but are just projecting the remnant of it?

Thread created in February...accounted created in February.

Just another Vanilla fanboi who created a account just to preach Vanilla...just like that bogus petition that went around that didn't IP block after it was already signed once.

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Why are you so defensive and offended that someone enjoys an old version of a game? Gross behavior.

Because it's just another fanboi making multiple accounts and posts just to keep *vanilla* on top to make it look like it's a relevant topic.

[MonksPerSecond]

I always preferred Vanilla and Chocolate twist.....mmmmmmm