Just dosent feel the same anymore.

[Fogkin]

I've been saying it since the LFD system came out for cross server, that killed the community of servers IMO. The dungeon finder added in BC worked fine. You knew people on your server, made friends and bonds with people. Now it's just, click button, sit in que for 40 minutes then run dungeon with 4 random people I will never see again since they aren't on my server.

Spamming LFG chat for a group might of seemed like a crap method back in the day. But I know I never spent 40 minutes looking for a H SP group in BC. The only thing I think the LFD helps now is those who are leveling up for the first time, it gives them a chance to actually find a group for low instances.

[Agallochh]

If you think he actually said BC was more polished then you didn't read his post at all...

He meant that BC was better, possibly because it was less polished....

Less commercial...

Less Balanced... And to be honest, I agree. Everyone says its just Nostalgia, but it is not, BC was more fun. Peroid. Back before GC and activision. Not everything was cut and dry like it is now. It was more exciting.

Not that cata is terrible or anything. I am having fun, but its not the same. And anyone who actually played BC knows it.

I skimmed because I can't be asked to put forth the time and effort to read the entire thing if the OP doesn't take the time and effort to make paragraphs.

That being said, it's exactly what nostalgia entails.

Its become Log in do daily, if its tues/thurs raid if its sat arena. Thats it. Thats all it is to me anymore. I really really miss the days of Halaa and the epic hellfire tower pvp. Not only did BC have more inbetween stuff to keep me busy, but it had more "for fun" rewards through reputations such as the mounts in nagrand or the tabards that were EXALTED ONLY (God i miss thoes) Not to mention the Aldor/Scyr Quests/lore.

That's all the game has ever been after getting to level cap/raid ready. How is it different now than when you were working on quests to get heroic keys so you can do your Kara key quest? How is that any different than today, when I'll log in after work, do TB dailies and then raid? It's not different at all. Mag'har rep Talbulks? What about Ramkahen rep Camels? Sure, there aren't as many to choose from, but the incentive is still there. After farming Mag'har to exalted once I was good off doing that ever again. Also, your factions Tol Barad rep has a mount too. Do you have all that stuff finished too? Also, Halaa was a failed attempt at what Wintergrasp and Tol Barad brought. There was hardly any action going on there on my server.

[philefluxx]

Spamming LFG chat for a group might of seemed like a crap method back in the day. But I know I never spent 40 minutes looking for a H SP group in BC. The only thing I think the LFD helps now is those who are leveling up for the first time, it gives them a chance to actually find a group for low instances.

Especially when they came out with the Heroic Daily and Badges, man you could get into a heroic group in less than 5 min at peak time. Thats still 10 times faster than the LFD tool now....

[Preau]

That's all the game has ever been after getting to level cap/raid ready. How is it different now than when you were working on quests to get heroic keys so you can do your Kara key quest? How is that any different than today, when I'll log in after work, do TB dailies and then raid? It's not different at all. Mag'har rep Talbulks? What about Ramkahen rep Camels? Sure, there aren't as many to choose from, but the incentive is still there. After farming Mag'har to exalted once I was good off doing that ever again. Also, your factions Tol Barad rep has a mount too. Do you have all that stuff finished too? Also, Halaa was a failed attempt at what Wintergrasp and Tol Barad brought. There was hardly any action going on there on my server. - agallochh

While Halaa was not as fine tuned as WG/TB i feel both of these so called outdoor pvp zones have become nothing more then larger BG's, how can they even be considered world pvp, you QUE for them. Thats how they are diffrent. Also, no. BC had more stuff to do in between for sure. You comparing 2 camels vs a ton of ground mounts the netherwing chain the sky gaurd chain ect. There was a lot more to do in BC honestly. Aslo to get rep with any of the Cata reps i basicly have to instance grind. where as before i could do dailies.

[Tantric]

I skimmed because I can't be asked to put forth the time and effort to read the entire thing if the OP doesn't take the time and effort to make paragraphs.

That being said, it's exactly what nostalgia entails.



That's all the game has ever been after getting to level cap/raid ready. How is it different now than when you were working on quests to get heroic keys so you can do your Kara key quest? How is that any different than today, when I'll log in after work, do TB dailies and then raid? It's not different at all. Mag'har rep Talbulks? What about Ramkahen rep Camels? Sure, there aren't as many to choose from, but the incentive is still there. After farming Mag'har to exalted once I was good off doing that ever again. Also, your factions Tol Barad rep has a mount too. Do you have all that stuff finished too? Also, Halaa was a failed attempt at what Wintergrasp and Tol Barad brought. There was hardly any action going on there on my server.

Maybe you just had a bad BC experience. I am not saying BC was the best thing ever. But the game was different. From the items, to the professions... if you can not see the difference, I can not explain it to you. Its something that I just feel. Obviously the game is not the same and it never will be.

The more I think about it, the more I realize, maybe its ourselves that have changed. But I will always look back at BC as my favorite expansion.

[Gharld]

While Halaa was not as fine tuned as WG/TB i feel both of these so called outdoor pvp zones have become nothing more then larger BG's, how can they even be considered world pvp, you QUE for them. Thats how they are diffrent. Also, no. BC had more stuff to do in between for sure. You comparing 2 camels vs a ton of ground mounts the netherwing chain the sky gaurd chain ect. There was a lot more to do in BC honestly. Aslo to get rep with any of the Cata reps i basicly have to instance grind. where as before i could do dailies.

Oh right forgot how many Hellfire dailys there were. Oh wait. You did dungeon grinding to get rep, at a much slower pace may I add. Sky Guard was not even with the release of BC if I'm not mistaken, and Netherwing was yet another grind for a mount that looks like what happens when a Ghost, a Dragon, and a turkey are all invited to an orgy.

Not to mention WG and TB are way better than Halaa and Hellfire towers due to the fact that you could just have a server that has unbalanced numbers of ally to horde ratios and have one side having the objective...ALWAYS. And with little to no incentive to get these pvp objectives (besides Talbucks from Halaa...which involved GRINDING shitloads of dust), what point was there to even trying to attempt these wannabe pvp sites?

On a side note, the game has been out for just about 2 months now...more stuff will come...so seriously stop comparing a fresh expansion to a FULL expansion that had plenty of added content over its run

[Preau]

Oh right forgot how many Hellfire dailys there were. Oh wait. You did dungeon grinding to get rep, at a much slower pace may I add. Sky Guard was not even with the release of BC if I'm not mistaken, and Netherwing was yet another grind for a mount that looks like what happens when a Ghost, a Dragon, and a turkey are all invited to an orgy.

Not to mention WG and TB are way better than Halaa and Hellfire towers due to the fact that you could just have a server that has unbalanced numbers of ally to horde ratios and have one side having the objective...ALWAYS. And with little to no incentive to get these pvp objectives (besides Talbucks from Halaa...which involved GRINDING shitloads of dust), what point was there to even trying to attempt these wannabe pvp sites?

Its got a little off topic. The threads about the community not about grinding for mounts.

[Agallochh]

Maybe you just had a bad BC experience. I am not saying BC was the best thing ever. But the game was different. From the items, to the professions... if you can not see the difference, I can not explain it to you. Its something that I just feel. Obviously the game is not the same and it never will be.

The more I think about it, the more I realize, maybe its ourselves that have changed. But I will always look back at BC as my favorite expansion.

I had a great BC experience, actually. I had some of my most memorable moments in the game during BC, I enjoyed the raids (Reliquary of Souls was one of my favorite fights). But just like Vanilla, i'm glad it's over. It was fun while it lasted, I enjoyed every last bit of it, yet I'm extremely happy with the improvements that have been added to the game and overall burned out of the BC moment. Now instead of putting a group together myself which was hit or miss and took anywhere between 10minutes to 2 hours, I can simply queue into a dungeon and get a full group + be inside the instance ready to go at the maximum of 30 minutes. No more fighting over which 2 people want to go to the summoning stone, no more waiting for AFK's to accept their summons, only to ninja log and leave us with an empty spot.

And in BC, just like now, I had more than my fair share of groups that weren't competent enough to pull off a heroic. The game is the essentially the same.

I'm not saying I disagree with you. I think the gear alone looked heaps and bounds better than anything that came out prior. I remember when I finally got my t6 helm/shoulders on my priest, which was one of my favorite looking sets. Actually, collectively I think t6 was the best looking gear, followed closely by t2 across all classes.

And because I do realize this entire post is off-topic, i'll add this; The community has not changed, it's just grown. In Vanilla there were the same snobby people that there will be in any online game. The elitists and jerks will never leave WoW, and it's up to you to be able to shut it out. It's unfortunate if you based the entire game on the community, because if you do that in most games you'll end up disappointed.

[Dambala]

My eyes really hurt looking at that let alone reading it. Modify it into clear paragraphs and I may read it.

How the hell do you read text books? You think this is a wall of text, try reading mass media law...

[Agallochh]

How the hell do you read text books? You think this is a wall of text, try reading mass media law...

The fact of the matter is this is a forum and not a mass media law textbook.

[Gharld]

Its got a little off topic. The threads about the community not about grinding for mounts.

You keep saying its about the community yet I have yet to see you really post one thing about the community. All I really see is "oh BC had this and Cata doesnt".

If what you are hinting at is the game has become more uniform rather than a game where you can just travel to places for no reason and still have fun because its all new and exciting etc, thats because you arent a noob anymore. The game always seems unique and different from the start, but as the years pass you learn many if not all aspects of the game and its no longer logging on to discover something new, but rather logging on day by day to be faced with the same daily routine. The same routine that has always existed in this game, but due to being new to the game, you dont realize this until you are no longer yourself a noob.

Going to Outlands for the first time? Holy shit its huge and has flying mounts and Fel Reaver ganking! But hey heres Wrath now, with...more flying and big zones and Storm Giant ganking. And...heres Cata with...more flying.....and big zones.....and Deathchin ganking. But lets change it up a bit, a player who started in Wrath. Omg Northrend with flying mounts and huge epic zones and awesome questlines. But hey Catas out with...more flying..some cool zones...and omg Deathwing!

Its a matter of becoming used to some of the certain elements of the game that have already existed, and once you do, the next expansion afterwards seems more and more bland due to repetitive elements, such as giving above, flying and big new zones. Futhermore, now that the old world has been changed, a noob to Cata will have a very nice lower lvl experience, and then hit up BC with all its purple and aliens, and then Northrend with its zombies and snow...and finally Cata with its....elements and dragons. Its a build up of past experiences that makes the next one seem less shiney, and now that you can just zoom past BC it seems like a mere stepping stone more than the "omfg new content yey!".

[Preau]

You keep saying its about the community yet I have yet to see you really post one thing about the community. All I really see is "oh BC had this and Cata doesnt".

If what you are hinting at is the game has become more uniform rather than a game where you can just travel to places for no reason and still have fun because its all new and exciting etc, thats because you arent a noob anymore. The game always seems unique and different from the start, but as the years pass you learn many if not all aspects of the game and its no longer logging on to discover something new, but rather logging on day by day to be faced with the same daily routine. The same routine that has always existed in this game, but due to being new to the game, you dont realize this until you are no longer yourself a noob.

Going to Outlands for the first time? Holy shit its huge and has flying mounts and Fel Reaver ganking! But hey heres Wrath now, with...more flying and big zones and Storm Giant ganking. And...heres Cata with...more flying.....and big zones.....and Deathchin ganking. But lets change it up a bit, a player who started in Wrath. Omg Northrend with flying mounts and huge epic zones and awesome questlines. But hey Catas out with...more flying..some cool zones...and omg Deathwing!

Its a matter of becoming used to some of the certain elements of the game that have already existed, and once you do the next expansion afterwards seems more and more bland due to repetitive elements, such as giving above, flying and big new zones. Futhermore, now that the old world has been changed, a noob to Cata will have a very nice lower lvl experience, and then hit up BC with all its purple and aliens, and then Northrend withs its zombies and snow...and finally Cata with is....elements and dragons. Its a build up of past experiences that makes the next one seem less shiney, and now that you can just zoom past BC it seems like a mere stepping stone more than the "omfg new content yey!".

I agree with what your saying to a point, and i agree the origional post seemed to compare the two expansions but this was not intended. what i wanted to get across in my thread was, do you as a player regardless of Noob omg experiances, feel that as a result of Blizzard making the game more linier, and a lot more cross server stuff. do you feel it is killing the server community? Because at the end of the day, thats what can make/break an mmo. Content aside,if i were to make a graph displaying the expansion to community ratio does the trend go up or down?

[HitAndMiss]

When I started up tBC 36 hours after it's release, I played non-stop through the expansion.
When i started up Cataclysm 36 hours after it's release, I played til raiding and turned off my account.

Call it game burnout, call it a sore disappointment with the xpac, whichever makes you feel right about your opinion. The fact of the matter is that after months of playing vanilla, tBC made me love WoW again. After a half year hiatus in Wrath, the Cataclysm expansion failed to do the same. The "new expansion" experience is completely different, and it placed all the nails in the coffin for my account.

That's the trick with opinions... they are vastly different from person to person.
And for me, Blizzard failed to deliver. All that remains is memories I share with my guild mates on Facebook as we wait for the next raiding MMORPG to arrive.

[kovaras]

why is it that when ever any1 says the game isnt as good any more and compares it to a better time vinalla or tbc it boils down to nostalgia. oh wait the blue post from along time ago from bliz that i carnt be bothered to find refering to people who preffered vanilla with nostalgia. and then every mindless sheep on the internet copyied and pasted the idea into every post plee-ing for a return to a better time. Not all progression is good, sometimes backwards is the right path. If vanilla was so bad how the hell did wow get so big? the truth is it was a very good enjoyable game... and blizzard expanded on that and where alot of it was good(cross realm bgs/dungeon finder) just as much has been bad. world pvp died out, 40 man raids(rule of mmorpgs bigger is better) the game was about having fun not the color gear you was wearing. Attunement quests like ony line. it may have been daunhting at the start but you felt good when you finished and more importantly you was taking part in the story, world bosses was a real option.

People used to be out on about doing things in vanilla. no just sat in town using bg/dun finder or waiting for a raid, or waiting for a summon. But this is what people wanted. But this level of lazy play has a very bad effect. The fact that people had to run around rather than get a summon created a chance for world pvp. the fact that people used to have to grind rep for diffeernt instances/gear etc created a chance for world pvp. and becuase it was single realm it got personal, you was likely to run into these poeple again, you went out looking for revenge. Where as these days it seams like every effort is been made to avoid world pvp. no real point doing world bosses, for warps to dungeons, flying mounts mean you run into less people

to days wow and vanilla are 2 differnt games, you will prefer 1 or the other by far, both apeal to a difernt type of player. But for the people who shout nostalgia when others say vanilla was a better game its not... just an opion diffent from you own

[Deleted]

Gotta agree with this. As soon as I saw that giant wall of text with no break points until the bottom, I went meh and deemed it not worth a read. Break it up and I may.

Just because of this, don't break it up into paragraphs. Keep it as is.

Also, you won't be able to get that feeling back because part of experiencing the game like that is rooted in your sense of wonder. Most of the WoW community has lost that sense during Wrath because there was just epic piled on epic piled on epic. Now they're trying to create a bit of that sense of wonder again, but it's a lot like replacing the car you lost your virginity in; the new one's just not the same. You've probably just been around for too long and instead of running around IF getting pumped about seeing random ppl with gear you're seeing previews on WoWhead and MMOC with loot tables, raid gear and pvp stats all figured out. I don't know if I can offer any advice that'll put that sense of wonder back in, maybe shunning preview content is a way?

[Gharld]

I agree with what your saying to a point, and i agree the origional post seemed to compare the two expansions but this was not intended. what i wanted to get across in my thread was, do you as a player regardless of Noob omg experiances, feel that as a result of Blizzard making the game more linier, and a lot more cross server stuff. do you feel it is killing the server community? Because at the end of the day, thats what can make/break an mmo. Content aside,if i were to make a graph displaying the expansion to community ratio does the trend go up or down?

If by linier you mean more in-order and more accessable in a busy MMORPG market to a newcomer, then I would agree. Things overall became easier to do in Wrath, which brought in alot of new players, dubbed "Wrath-babies" due to the common additude of doing some easy work and getting free epics and end game gear out of this. Over Wrath these players have become embeded within the community as a more or less permanant part of it. Then comes Cata, which Blizz used to correct this mistake of "lolfreebies" by making content much, much harder. So this in some sence hurts the community by repeling the Wrath-babies. But at the same time the more "hardcore" players have found a much accepted concept to this approach. So for any Wrath-Baby who left, WoW more than likely gained another seeking the "hardcore" that Cata brings, thus cancling out w/e loss or gain would be present there. So then all you can really do from there is look at the numbers.

WoW's numbers still rise at a steady rate, Cata broke Wrath's record of games selling, and if Blizz is "killing" WoW in anyways, neither of those would have happened. LFD does group you with idiots at times, but this pushes the "Go with your guild" envelope that in my opinion is a good concept due to the fact that this is a MMORPG, as in not really the best for solo play. So if anything it provokes unity within a guild. The Cross Server issues on the otherhand really only effect PvE and PvP, and quite frankly pvp isnt an issue, and as stated above PvE is a game of chance, and if you dont like to gamble you better get in a decent guild then, which is also a key part to end game PvE. And it all falls into place from there.

Oh and a side note, not calling everyone who joined in Wrath a Wrath-baby, just the ones who expect epics for not doing jack shit

[Mordaren]

I agree... I miss those days, I miss my first and second account, but I always start playing like the first time.

I know I will leave again, but I will enjoy this account.

[staticflare]

The fact of the matter is this is a forum and not a mass media law textbook.

Your point? Stop being little QQ babies and just read the post. It may be a little ticky to your eye's but it's not really that big of a deal. If it is that big of a deal then you should go get your eyes checked out.

[Agallochh]

do you feel it is killing the server community? Because at the end of the day, thats what can make/break an mmo. Content aside,if i were to make a graph displaying the expansion to community ratio does the trend go up or down?

I say nay. While I may not recognize a single person I am in a BG with, I hardly recognized them in Vanilla before OR after x-server BG's first rolled out. As I've said about dungeons, I don't have a small pool of people to select from anymore, but I can if I choose to. I may never see these people again, but that's a fair trade off to making the dungeons more accessible to everyone. Of course, this is my opinion and yours may differ, I just don't see any huge differences in the game rather than higher health and more moves.

---------- Post added 2011-01-28 at 10:25 PM ----------

Your point? Stop being little QQ babies and just read the post. It may be a little ticky to your eye's but it's not really that big of a deal. If it is that big of a deal then you should go get your eyes checked out.

I read the post, doesn't mean I can't comment on the poor structure of it. If you're not going to say anything on topic don't say anything at all.

[noahjam326]

If you think he actually said BC was more polished then you didn't read his post at all...

He meant that BC was better, possibly because it was less polished....

Less commercial...

Less Balanced... And to be honest, I agree. Everyone says its just Nostalgia, but it is not, BC was more fun. Peroid. Back before GC and activision. Not everything was cut and dry like it is now. It was more exciting.

Not that cata is terrible or anything. I am having fun, but its not the same. And anyone who actually played BC knows it.

These are my exact feelings as well. I don't think there's enough just "fun" things at the end-game. For the most part, everyone is correct in that "it's just always been this way" but the problem is, Blizzard was good at hiding it in previous expansions. While the game has always been this way, there were lots of fun little things the experience interesting and it was well hidden. With Cataclysm I feel like they stopped trying to hide it. I'll give some examples of what I mean.

Burning Crusade had factions like Netherwing, Ogri'la, Skyguard, Shattered Sun, ect. to do when not raiding/dungeons. I loved doing all these fun little things in between raids and dungeons. While also finishing all the quests in the zones (before loremaster). Cataclysm has none of these.

Wrath of the Lich King had the Wolvar/Oracles. The "main" factions (like Wyrmrest) also had fun items. I enjoyed getting my Red Drake from them. I enjoyed managing my money to get things like the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, the Chopper, ect. While the Cataclysm dungeons and raids are much better designed, WoTLK had a much better factions.

Cataclysm has none of the fluff of the previous expansions. While WotLK dungeons sucked royally (something Cataclysm vastly improved on) it lacks a lot of the fun WotLK and TBC had. There's very little "fluff." The fluff content is what keeps the game interesting outside of the dungeon grinds. The only faction with any fluff in Cataclysm is Tol Barad. I have a lot of issues with Tol Barad. No, I'm not talking about the Battleground, I'm talking about the questing zone. I loved the graphical work of this island, I thought it looked amazing. But the area feels so slapped together in terms of story, quest, and rep. There is no lore at all for this island. The backstory of the zone is also very shaky. None of the quests in the zone tell you anything. Why are Rustbeg Villagers insane and practicing blood magic, what happened at the Shipyard, what happend at Farson Keep? None of this is even touched upon. Immersion is a very important part of gameplay to me personally, and Tol Barad has no immersion (while Wintergrasp had plenty, and wasn't even a questing zone). The only faction in the game with any fluff items is Tol Barad. So you have to farm this place (not enjoyable at all) for the fun stuff. This is in comparison to the fluff items of previous expansions which I found very fun to farm.

Summery:
1. Cataclysm has far less immersion than TBC or Wrath.
2. Cataclysm has significantly less fluff than TBC or Wrath.
3. Cataclysm doesn't hide "how it's always been" as well as the previous expansions.

That is my main point. Cataclysm nailed dungeons (where Wrath missed) but missed on everything Wrath actually did well.

I'll refer to the person I quoted.

Less commercial...