What made classic wow better than current?

[Deleted]

Please Blizzard, in order to bring the game back to its true greatness you must bring back:
Keys that take bag space.
Mounts that take bag space.
Remove xmog.
Bring back 40 man raids as the only option.
Bring back spell ranks and remove 3/4 of our spells.
Bring back warriors being the only real tanking class.
Bring back hybrids as lesser dps specs.
Bring back heroism/bloodlust from shamans only.
Shamans just for the Horde.
Old graphics where better!
Months of leveling! lets face it, the journey to max level alone should take a year.
Remove particle effects from quest objectives, if I have to click a tiny brown object in the ground I want that experience to be realistic!
No AoE Looting! I want to loot each corpse individually damn it!

Well, the list is long and the joke looses its appeal.

I honestly think the game has gotten better over the years. I began playing in BC and I have no fondness for it, even back then there was a lot of things I found to be "bad" that they have removed over the years. But we are all entittled to our opinion so I will respectfully disagree with Vanilla being better and move on.

Vanilla classes had more abilities than they do in Legion. Number of abilities peaked in WotlK. Legion and WoD are by far the worst expansions for class homogenization.

[TheRightWay]

Nothing, it was just less accessible for people.

- - - Updated - - -

This would be great!

[Demithio]

Two different games. One is a social MMO role-playing and adventure game and the other one is a solo-queueing faceroll action game.

True, although the basic overall framework is the same. Unfortunately, Blizzard decided it was more profitable to mutilate WoW beyond being recognizable.

[Kallisto]

Vanilla/TBC/WOTLK and WoW today are contrasting, they almost really aren't comparable because they are so different with a completely different audience. WoW has become very corporatized over the last few years and is very different than the original mindset of making the game glimmer first and then profiting.

Not really at the core they are still the same game with a couple of differences within them that doesn't change the overall aspect of it. People who say otherwise are deluding themselves.

There is nothing that you can do now that you couldn't do back then. You grinded quests to level, did dungeons, then raided. Today you grind quests to level, do dungeons and raid.

[randomnamegenerator16]

Vanilla classes had more abilities than they do in Legion.

And most of them weren't too useful, and majority wasn't bought during leveling because not only were they useless but also were not worth wasting gold.

[Eleccybubb]

And most of them weren't too useful, and majority wasn't bought during leveling because not only were they useless but also were not worth wasting gold.

This. Survival Hunter is the prime example. An unfinished broken melee spec that even when having it's end talent replaced in 1.7 was still not worth playing.

[iNUKE]

Theres no better or worse, every wow expansion has been good or bad in your personal opinion.
All expansions were equally good in their times, or else millions of people wouldnt be playing every single one of them.

To put it in prespective if classic wow was created today, I wouldnt play it.. graphics, the inormous boring grinding, etc etc etc.. it wouldnt fit the 2017 video games times.

[MrHappy]

rose tinted glasses and memories of a time, biased and selective, of all the good moments.. disregarding 95% of what was actually there and how horrible it actually was.

[Heathy]

I think the only thing that i really miss in any capacity is the 5 mans, at least the length of them, not to mention the fact that they were raidable for a while all of them, thinking back to it we basically did have casual raids the first time i did stratholme it was in a 15 man raid. the size of strath/scholo and brs were great if you wanted to do a full clear it would take hours, they don't do them like that any more. but the '5mans' felt more like adventures i think, more time spent wandering around a massive instance, eventually they became boring because you ran those 3 dungeons over and over again. most dungeons now are just short bite sized ones that don't really have that same feeling, either they are too linear or they are just too short.

[Deleted]

Oh yes, I remember, I had sentry totem, windfury totem, rockbiter weapon, flametongue weapon, frostbrand and water breathing. You know, the really complex stuff that was never used cause my rotation conisted of Earth Shock and StormsStrike and the advanced rotation was Flamshcok then ES and SS.

The game had alot of empty spells back then my friend and if you cant even admit that then theres no point in talking here.

Sentry Totem is the only spell you listed there that had such niche value that it was almost never used in any situation. All the other spells listed added depth to the game in certain scenarios such as PvP, dungeons, soloing and buffing your raid. The post I'm quoting illustrates that you only care about PvE raiding rotations (which is fair enough), something which has grown to dominate class design to the detriment of what the game used to be.

My opinion on the matter of ability pruning is that they've made one aspect of the game more engaging at the expense of all the others. I'm not bothered if you agree or disagree, just thought I'd put it out there.

[Vorecien]

People tend to favor the point of the game that they arrived on. I started in The Burning Crusade, and it happens to be my favorite point of the game.

I don't think Classic (Vanilla) is better than the game today. I don't think that you can really compare the two. The reason I put it this way is because that game was what the developers and designers at the time felt was right and that could be released, and it was great, I bet. Nothing like that would be released today, and nothing like Legion would have been released back then. Do you understand where I'm coming from?

Although everything is under the title of World of Warcraft, each expansion is sort of an evolution of the game. Each expansion is an attempt to incorporate "lessons learned" on a much larger scale. It's a similar concept to bands. Each album is usually in response to how the band feels as a whole at that time. (A band that is sad probably won't release a happy album.)

Again, I don't believe Vanilla is better than now. I don't believe now is better than Vanilla. It's definitely better than other games now, and it was definitely better than other games then.

Just my two cents.

[CaptainV]

There were alot of things that made classic bad, really, really bad which is part of the reason modern wow is alot cleaner compared to its counterpart.

But in a way that old Vanillia charm was its own thing, and there were things that made that charm good.

Leveling actually felt meaningful:
The first time, maybe second and third you dared to level a char from 1 to 60 it took alot of time, investment and effort. Though it was possible for diehard mmo players back in the day comming fresh out of Everquest, Lineage 2 and FF11 to go straight into leveling to 60 in no time... it wasnt easy to do for people that had never touched a proper mmo before.

But this also made the actual value of leveling so much more important, your first real main really mattered as committing to that one character was important in order to actually progress "to" the end game. Leveling from 1 to 60 rewarded you alot of new gear, access to areas you couldnt reach, mounts and epic mounts, dungeons, raids, pvp, these things were locked away until a point you could enter them.


Content was Relevent Too:
People would always say they'd try deadmines at level 15 but in truth alot of people didnt even touch it until at least 18-22. Alot of new players then were fresh to WoW and unsure what contributed as a challenge, the first real dungeon felt like a genuine challenge but it was an exciting, and fresh experience back then.

Dungeons were a specially new medium for alot of people, because you literally couldnt do them without other people. The MMO required you to socialize and meet people to get into content, group content was impossible without friends, and dungeons were even more so. Fortunatley, since the world was new, and fresh, alot of people always advertised for groups and needed constant help finding the right ones to do the job.

It was exceptionally rare to get douched about a group quest because everyone needed to do it, not just you, so most people would activly go do it, plus doing dungeon quests lumped a TON of XP back then which was a BIG deal, making people doing dungeons important for progression.

PvP while never giving any actual XP was also quite a big deal when it first came out as BG's, with some AV matches lasting 72 hours worth of length because of how tug of war AV was, AV was much closer to Ashran in its first form, with 500 times the NPC's and much harder encounters to deal with. It was not puggable, and it was impossible to zerg your way to victory as sheer masses of npc+pc enemies would just overwhelm you, forcing strategic thinking to even take one flag.

WSG never really changed much, but it was back then alot fresher meaning people were generally alot more unused to doing it, this actually made warsong gulch even crapper than it was now because most people didnt even care about the flag and because there was no time limit that could make matches last AGES.

AB was a pretty nice balance, a genuine game type where it was literally impossible for one side and another to have a permanent stalemate, generally in early vanillia it was an Alliance heavy BG since there was a vastly larger number of players Alliance side prior to blood elves being introduced to the Horde (Which was one of the primary reasons they added them in the first place).


Gear mattered, especially for encounters:

Gear these days while it matters is far less relevent than before. You can effectivly have 1 player short of the best equipment get more or less carried by his mates whlie back in Vanillia that literally wasnt an option. Some bosses literally has specific elemental ressistances, that also meant damaging them via certain dps was impossible, fire mages had a hell of a nightmarish time during MC since most bosses took no damage from fire as did destuction warlocks. Likewise, you needed the fire ressistance to survive those same bosses or it was likely going to end badly for you.


Loot was a genuine reward, not an RNG based chore:

Back in the day part of the joy was not just the experience of farming a boss, but the 100% guarentee that there'd be something useful dropping from nearly every boss in the game. Loot tables were chaotic and nobody was too sure what stats were good and bad, but it was an accepted fact that seeing Rogues with + Int gear wasnt that unlogical back then because any stat was progressive since every stat had a use back then for every class.

This made getting loot relevent, and enjoying the experience of earning it even more so. It was quite common to see warriors running around with defias swords because though they had agi stats they were pretty snazzy but also because they were surpisingly useful at low levels because agility increased critical chance.

Part of that joy has been heavily lost with the marginalized statistics of Legion and more recent expansions removing any real sense of free customization. It wasnt really until Cata they killed that, but back in Vanillia to Wrath, yes, it was possible to see plate users running around in agility gear.


Yeah, Vanillia had its ups, sometimes, not many of them my fondest memories but it did have some amazing stuff.

Speaking of which:

Questing Gave a sense of Worldly Exploration:

Alot of Quests wer enot just a case of go kill 50 wolves though that was OFTEN the case there were many that also ivnolved having to go from an entire zone to an entire continent away's worth of content just to progress forwards. This made the world feel larger, and your progression feel better as a result. You genuinely felt like you were "exploring" this world when you found a new zone you'd never seen before and the questing fluidly promoted this.

Ah the memories of Vanillia were not so bad despite their faults ill admit.

[Vineri]

As this thread has continued to be, it's about the individual, not the masses.

I could not continue to play WoW in it's current state. I choose to play WoW in it's older state, a time period for Blizzard rich with creativity and longevity.

Blizzard still entertains the idea, via their official website:
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20749678358

I'd pay for playing the older game. Where the new game is concerned, I have better things to do. Call it nostalgia, rose-tinted glasses, whatever. It was the game that was fun. It's currently being played, whether or not Blizzard would like to monetize it. The overall PR flavor of Blizzard is currently bad IMO. The games being released for all genre's by Blizzard are not of the same dedication and cutting edge creative quality of the 1990's. Blizzard used to be a household brand.

[Deleted]

The thing that made Vanilla better than any other expansion is of course, the fact that we didn't have people talking about how vanilla was better than the latest expansion.

Although the everquest stuff was still annoying.

[ThunderTaco]

It was new and we were young. That's pretty much the only advantages of "classic wow.

I choose to play WoW in it's older state, a time period for Blizzard rich with creativity and longevity.

Blizzard is known for taking concepts from other games and making them accessible to the masses, not exactly creating new things.

[Eleccybubb]

You would think, wouldn't you? Truth is we had like 4 different "weapon buffs" that all spec had access to but none of them did anything for resto or elemental. Enhancement, the buff spec, used windfury and just windfury. Same thing went with most totems, water totems did next to nothing for ele and enh.

People like to say that all this spells added depth to the game but in truth they where filler at best and at worst they where sort of "traps" for uninformed players. If you played enhancement and didnt do winfury on both weapons you where just wrong, forget about everything else.

Dont confuse depth with obtuseness.

I bet some of these people considered SV Hunter a playable spec as well.

[Deleted]

2 differences one unavoidable: the scale of things . Vanilla wow was a new game whereas expansions are simply additional content to the original game. I don't have the numbers in front of me but I would say that it would require 3 maybe 4 expansions to reach the initial number of quests/zones/factions/story the original game had and that's something that shows the difference in scale of things.
However I would defo argue that I favoured instanced pve content (being 5 man or bigger) back in vanilla or tbc : Vanilla 5man were by far the best , even the attuning process was nice and the need to carefully do every pull or get done with a boss for the mobs not to respawn was what made the game so annoyingly addictive. Tbc 5man content was more linear but again the gameplay didn't change much and raids still retained some of the nonlinear progression way. And it was nice when trashpacks needed some handling instead of having them just aggroed and cleaved down. (remember that MC panic on that dog pack when they brought it back as an event ??)
Today's instanced content is much more linear the areas are much smaller the mobs are retardedly easy to handle, they don't respawn on a timer and even higher difficulties just have some additional damage or timer or a couple of mechanics.
Turning point I think was the idea to make all the content accessible to loosely attached groups of people. Whereas u would probably need a party leader to actually lead the way even in guildie groups now u just want a leader to form the group . the rest are easy to handle. And this is where the second difference comes in : the mmo part of it is almost dead : Most of the time I feel like I am playing with bots instead with other players.

[Gnomorepuns]

Simply put, one was forced interaction hat required teamwork, social attitudes, and a non emphasis on end content.

The other is clicking a button to queue for something with people you don't know or care to know. And only focusing on end game content. Ergo majority solo.

Both different types of games. I personally prefer the former because it is more of a time sink and I can enjoy the journey. But that's just my opinion. Hence why in my opinion, BC/classic wow was better. Again my opinion.

[Dormie]

Class balance isn't really an argument for or against an expansion. Class balance is something that's continuously changing regardless of the expansion.

[Deleted]

The major change is that in the past when doing group content it felt like doing it with other players whereas now you feel like you do it with bots