Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Arrowset]

Ghost town SW? What crappy ass server are you playing on? Moon Guard and Wyrmrest Accord are crowded as hell.

Makes sense that RP servers would still be doing well- RP is one aspect of the game Blizzard can't ruin since the players themselves produce the content and don't rely upon well-designed classes and the like to have fun.

[Marakesh]

Hard in what way...? So if someone who tackles say, Mythic raiding and played Classic whilst current, was to enter Classic, he'd struggle? Because most accounts I see are "You died if you overpulled"...Ok, that's countered by not pulling like a moron. "Mobs hit harder so you had to drink or eat or wait between each mob"...Ok, see point 1. "It required you to read text quest"...Ok, I wouldn't call that a challenge since I managed to do so as a new n00b without a clue.

Also, how about when people did it the second time? Were they still as "challenged" by it? Was learning how to play not a thing back then which meant doing the same content for the oompht-time didn't bring with it any increased "skill" and know-how?

Any bad decision can be countered by not playing like a moron, since that's a subjective way of saying you messed up. Its hard enough that you have to pay attention or you can die. That at least creates some stimulus while playing. I could go on a whole page about things I rediscovered playing on Nost. Someone really needs to make an mmo on those original vanilla game principles.

Mostly, you're talking about as if the only thing is challenge. If that were true, then we should all be playing a different game genre. The main point is, when there is no challenge it is a boring clickfest and leveling becomes very tedious, even if the time to complete it is shorter.

Leveling in early mmo's like vanilla is much more about steering a ship. You get a lot of different scenarios and you have to deal with them as they are. There's some overall strategy to how to go about it. You need to figure out how to keep your life and mana up with as little down time as possible. The mobs have patrol patterns and you don't want to get a 2nd or 3rd mob while you're fighting the 1st. That part is a lot of what draws you in, its not just that it requires awareness and some strategy but they way they did it vanilla really made the world have its own reality. A lot of animals like wolves could see you further away or could spot you in stealth. The whole thing where they'd stop and look your way has great dramatic effect as well as requiring you to think on the fly sometimes. Then there's having a plan to get some money while you're leveling and the whole professions thing.

Its a much, much better casual pve experience than any mmo has produced before or since. Before playing on Nost I had forgotten a lot of that, and just dismissed the idea of vanilla as only being about nostalgia, but its not. Its the gameplay.

[arcaneshot]

And I don't remember those Heroics in Cata being hard. They took CC which isn't hard if you're even remotely coordinated. I felt sorry for healers in pugs though.

A lot of the difficulty came in the form of pass/fail mechanics where people just flat-out died if they failed them. Third boss of Grim Batol it was fairly common. MoP avoided using those mechanics on nearly all the bosses, but some still exist.

[Queen of Hamsters]

On Nostalrius, bosses that on Vanilla took months to die, were being killed on 1-2 days. Most guilds had BWL cleared on the first 3 weeks from release. The raid dps was higher on BWL than what was needed to kill Patch on Naxx... So yea, the player base evolved A LOT.

I don't doubt it, and that's because (and Blizzard said so themselves) the fact that so many never saw certain bosses and they took so long to down wasn't due to the bosses being so mechanically complex, but because there was a wall of 1-60, low access to gear, tuning, logistical hurdles and time restraints. And of course, players were new.

[Baconeggcheese]

And yet, they had problems finding people to pay for 300€/month for the hardware... You are failing to see that the majority of Nostalrius players would not pay 12€ to play the game. They would find another private server to play while crying that Blizzard are greedy bastards.

Nost was non-profit and you could only donate to their server hosting company. Not exactly mind blowing that they weren't raking in money.

People pay if you give them a reason to or not, I used to dev on a private server for a different game had a faaaaaaarrrrr smaller community and the server was consistently generating money just from the unique aesthetic items we would make and sell on there.

[Queen of Hamsters]

A lot of the difficulty came in the form of pass/fail mechanics where people just flat-out died if they failed them. Third boss of Grim Batol it was fairly common.

Think people die to him still today in timewalking.
Not to mention the first boss in Pit of Saron..."Please, move behind the rock to clear the debuff...". That's not a challenging mechanic, it's just people dying to it because they ignore it.

[Deleted]

TL;DR I'm not a thief..Bliz fine print says if its illegal they can't hold you to it even if you agree...section 109 U.S copyright act, you bought it, its legally yours and no one can take that from you...section B sub A states this doesn't apply for computer programs...section B subsection b(ii) states video games are an exception to section B sub A.

The problem is not with your side of the game (despite that the law you mentioned its a US law, other countries might have it differently)... The problem is with the server side of the game that interacts with your side of the game. Thats the part and the process that was shut down by blizzard.

[Ghier]

Whole concepts strange to me, think it more of a pride thing.

Pride or delusion, or both. People have been asking for legacy servers for years and Blizzard snubs them every time. The video with the dev telling the guy "You don't want that either, you think you do, but you don't" is current Blizzard in a nutshell. "You are too stupid to know what you want, you need us to decide that for you. We are supreme beings and you are mere peasants." You see it in other places as well. Like when they say they don't put much weight on subscriber numbers, because it isn't a good measure of player happiness. Like when they say no one wants flying in the current game, and then look retarded when they receive massive backlash, and THEN when they do bring it back; you have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get it. Blizzard needs some major changes in their WoW leadership.

[Tuesdays]

900 wipes in HFC Mythic by the best players of the world, with all their preparation and skill and Mythic gear from previous tier.
The gear means a power creep, it doesn't mean you can bypass challenge. By the time you can fully outgear the mechanics, the content is outdated and there's new content to tackle. The bypassing of challenge, especially on a boss such as Mythic Gorefiend, comes from the players getting so good that it becomes a farm, and even then I've seen groups that have killed him 10+ times die on him...

I don't mean you instantly bypass it, but you do indeed bypass it over time.

Challenge + upgrades = less challenge.

If everyone had to be 100%, carries wouldn't exist.

[Deleted]

Nost was non-profit and you could only donate to their server hosting company. Not exactly mind blowing that they weren't raking in money.

People pay if you give them a reason to or not, I used to dev on a private server for a different game had a faaaaaaarrrrr smaller community and the server was consistently generating money just from the unique aesthetic items we would make and sell on there.

Still, if people were willing to pay, it wouldn't be that hard to find 300€ per month on 150000 players...

And about the donations, when i stated to play on Nostalrius, they had a big "Donations" button on the site. They removed it (or hide it) a few months ago, but they were receiving donations when i started to play there.

[MouseD]

While many us older players would love to have a legal Vanilla server its up to Blizzard.....private servers running copies of Blizzard legally owned game is illegal plain and simple...its stealing and yes its stealing even though that private server wasn't charging real money to play on it...

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Then why haven't heroic dungeons been hard since cata? I mean the whole point of them was to offer more challenging content to already existing instances and yet we now need a whole new mythic level? And some keystone to replay those mythic dungeons? 9 to 1 they'll nerf it and then promise some new titan mode next expac.

Um.... yeah, Heroic also was just an excuse to repeat dungeons.

And the Keystone actually is pretty hard.

[Marakesh]

And yet, they had problems finding people to pay for 300€/month for the hardware... You are failing to see that the majority of Nostalrius players would not pay 12€ to play the game. They would find another private server to play while crying that Blizzard are greedy bastards.

The fact that your side needs to lie about this is sad. The servers were paid till June 29th. On the reddit AMA they said they turned away donations. Blizzard shut them down, period. Its their legal right to do so, but you need to face that fact and ask why this private server when there have been dozens of sleazy, crappy ones over the years that they ignored.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I don't mean you instantly bypass it, but you do indeed bypass it over time.

Challenge + upgrades = less challenge.

If everyone had to be 100%, carries wouldn't exist.

And that's perfectly fine in my book, really. Most of the "bypassing" whilst the content is current still comes from player ability and awareness going up with each attempt and after a kill.

- - - Updated - - -

The fact that your side needs to lie about this is sad. The servers were paid till June 29th. On the reddit AMA they said they turned away donations. Blizzard shut them down, period. Its their legal right to do so, but you need to face that fact and ask why this private server when there have been dozens of sleazy, crappy ones over the years that they ignored.

"Your side"...hasn't it been announced by the Nos team themselves?

[Baconeggcheese]

Still, if people were willing to pay, it wouldn't be that hard to find 300€ per month on 150000 players...

And about the donations, when i stated to play on Nostalrius, they had a big "Donations" button on the site. They removed it (or hide it) a few months ago, but they were receiving donations when i started to play there.

The donations went to their hosting company...

I'm not sure where you're getting this *they had money problems* from.

[Gadzooks]

I don't doubt it, and that's because (and Blizzard said so themselves) the fact that so many never saw certain bosses and they took so long to down wasn't due to the bosses being so mechanically complex, but because there was a wall of 1-60, low access to gear, tuning, logistical hurdles and time restraints. And of course, players were new.

Don't forget that in vanilla, raiding guilds that cleared all the bosses also often had ridiculous hoops to jump through to join - applications, interviews, trial runs, etc. I was lucky to get into a guild that didn't do that, and it was an outlier on my server (one of the original high pop servers). If you wanted to take down Rags, getting into a guild capable of doing it was an enormous amount of work, unless you were lucky enough to have an in with friends. The majority of guilds were farm teams for the top guilds to cherry pick from, and that's where most players were stuck.That had a lot to do with very few players seeing C'Thun or any of Naxx.

[Tuesdays]

Well I feel the few things that blizzard have evolved with WOW are:

Graphics
Combat&Smoothness
Raid mechanics
Dungeon bosses
A few good ideas like acheivs and transmogs

But everything else is kinda crap, and the WORST issue is complete lack of content coming far too slow and ilevel loot all over the place. I know what I want it's just unlikely they will actually listen, they only listened to beta feedback and implemented some player ideas as things to do, they are completely deaf concerning gameplay.

I haven't played alpha/beta, I really haven't seen much game-play past new skills, rotations, killing training dummies and a few dungeons.

Outside of that it's just a lot of good feedback, and bad feedback; however a lot of the meat is unknown.

[Deleted]

The fact that your side needs to lie about this is sad. The servers were paid till June 29th. On the reddit AMA they said they turned away donations. Blizzard shut them down, period. Its their legal right to do so, but you need to face that fact and ask why this private server when there have been dozens of sleazy, crappy ones over the years that they ignored.

Tell me were am i lying?!

Because there was a post on the forums asking for people to pay the server upgrade (which was about 360€ per month). They asked for people to pay directly to the hosting company.

Inform yourself before insulting others!

Plus, i'm not on any side. I'm a retail player and i was playing Nostalrius at least until Legion. But i understand why Blizzard did, it was no shock and i'm aware of the reality of the vanilla wow. I loved it, i loved the experience, but it was a major pain in the ass.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Um.... yeah, Heroic also was just an excuse to repeat dungeons.

And the Keystone actually is pretty hard.

I'm really looking forward to the Keystone system. Whilst I did CM's (especially in MoP), the time restraints weren't all that demanding once you learned all the tricks and had done the runs a few times. Gonna be fun to tackle new mechanics with each keystone level!

[arcaneshot]

The fact that your side needs to lie about this is sad. The servers were paid till June 29th. On the reddit AMA they said they turned away donations. Blizzard shut them down, period. Its their legal right to do so, but you need to face that fact and ask why this private server when there have been dozens of sleazy, crappy ones over the years that they ignored.

Hate to break it to you, but "everyone else is doing it" isn't a real excuse.