"Its just nostalgia"

[Deathpath]

This is a weak statement spouted by a lot of people in the WoW community who argue against vanilla servers. This statement is usually supported by an argument along the lines of "You think you do, but you don't". However they seem to disregard the fact that for the past few years we have had a large chain of vanilla private servers that were massively successful, IE Nostalrius, Kronos, Elysium, and a few others. Thus giving the people who have been advocating for vanilla servers an avenue to fulfill this desire. So what has come of it?

A strengthened and more justified stance for the original desire to play vanilla by vanilla advocating players. Is it the same game as live? No. Does it have the same quality of life changes as live? No. Does it have the same balance? No shit Sherlock. These are some of the reasons why we love it!

So at this point can you still say "Its just nostalgia, you're looking at it through rose tinted glasses!" Even after the past few years of many people playing vanilla private servers?

[Pull My Finger]

It's just nostalgia.

Playing on private servers also was and is just nostalgia. You do it out of nothing else but nostalgia.

So, to answer your question: yes, it's just nostalgia. Why won't you leave us be with your nostalgia?

[Deathpath]

It's just nostalgia.

Playing on private servers also was and is just nostalgia. You do it out of nothing else but nostalgia.

So, to answer your question: yes, it's just nostalgia. Why won't you leave us be with your nostalgia?

Would it just be nostalgia thousands of players leveled to 60, raided, pvp'ed and grinded rep? It takes on average around, give or take, 11 days worth of play time to reach 60. And many more to even get a full tier set. It takes many hours of grinding to afford an epic mount and weeks to reach an officer rank in pvp. Could anyone, let alone tens to hundreds of thousands of players, do that out of pure nostalgia? I know many of people who did such a thing and never even played vanilla, myself included.

[Not Againnn]

its like when u go to chuck ee cheese when ur 30 years old. it just isnt the same as when u were 10.

its nostalgia.

[socialmaker]

Doesn't matter what it is if enough people are into it. I don't go pointing people out for playing with plushy unicorns when they're 30+ but that's a thing.

[Deleted]

Meh I'm probably gonna drop in and level a bit for nostalgia reasons.

There's really not much wrong with nostalgia. If it's fun for you it's fun for you.

[Polarthief]

It's just nostalgia.

Playing on private servers also was and is just nostalgia. You do it out of nothing else but nostalgia.

So, to answer your question: yes, it's just nostalgia. Why won't you leave us be with your nostalgia?

So when I go back to my SNES games and I love them again, way more than the AAA garbage we're fed nowadays, is that still nostalgia? Maybe they were just better games. Maybe some people just like Vanilla better. Is that so hard to comprehend?

[Pull My Finger]

Would it just be nostalgia thousands of players leveled to 60, raided, pvp'ed and grinded rep? It takes on average around, give or take, 11 days worth of play time to reach 60. And many more to even get a full tier set. It takes many hours of grinding to afford an epic mount and weeks to reach an officer rank in pvp. Could anyone, let alone tens to hundreds of thousands of players, do that out of pure nostalgia? I know many of people who did such a thing and never even played vanilla, myself included.

Yes, it's nostalgia. People don't go to 70ies parties just once. People don't do historic reenactment only once. Some people are just stuck in something and have this need to relive it over and over again, or dream themselves away into something their mind has symbolically labeled as better times or circumstances. It's a kind of a mental safe space.

It mostly goes hand in hand with issues these people have with something else. A lot of WoW players have a massively unhealthy relationship with the game, and gaming in general. Many, many threads on this forum are the irefultable proof of this. Most "vanilla" people are like that. It's a bit of a neurosis. No flaming, that's my honest analysis. It's nostalgia and nostalgia by proxy through cultural assimilation.

[taliey]

The nostalgia argument is basically a blanket statement is meant to encompass a variety of reasons why people advocate for classic servers and attempt to argue over the objective merits against classic servers.

And I also have to note, the number of people subscribing and the quality and the content available at the time of being subbed are completely unrelated non seqiturs. The same argument is often used for WOTLK and most people would retort, 'just because it's popular doesn't mean its good.' Same retort for a completely different overlayed argument (switch WOTLK with classic).

[Koward]

I don't think anyone but obvious trolls still believe it's just nostalgia. You have mechanics clearly different from Live that appeal you to Classic, and they would also draw you to other games with similar game design. It happens with harder modern games too, they also get a part of this audience that wants a more rewarding experience. A game does not need to be old and create nostalgia to do that, it just needs to have these hard-to-describe slow pace and systems WoW Classic has.
People who will go just for nostalgia are not expected to stay on the classic servers according to Blizzard's vice-president, which IMO implies they know enough people don't like Vanilla just for that.

[Pull My Finger]

So when I go back to my SNES games and I love them again, way more than the AAA garbage we're fed nowadays, is that still nostalgia? Maybe they were just better games. Maybe some people just like Vanilla better. Is that so hard to comprehend?

They like it better out of nostalgia.

I too love my SNES games out of nostalgia.

[Zuben]

I'm not denying Classic to be legit fun for people, but it's hard for me to see how someone could stay interested in Classic content for long. WoW has always been about exhausting content then moving on to new patches. Classic won't work that way, it'll always be as it is. Some longevity can be reached by releasing Classic era content patches instead of making them all available from the start, but once Naxx is there, that's it.

The Classic team can technically conjure new non-canon alternate timeline content, but would it be Classic anymore then?

[Corvus]

Nostalgia tells me that the 80s was the best decade. Best music. Best movies. Best games. Best fashion. And then the 90s came along and destroyed it all.

Other people disagree. They are wrong but they are entitled to that opinion.

Nostalgia is highly subjective.

[Deathpath]

I'm not denying Classic to be legit fun for people, but it's hard for me to see how someone could stay interested in Classic content for long. WoW has always been about exhausting content then moving on to new patches. Classic won't work that way, it'll always be as it is. Some longevity can be reached by releasing Classic era content patches instead of making them all available from the start, but once Naxx is there, that's it.

The Classic team can technically conjure new non-canon alternate timeline content, but would it be Classic anymore then?

The solution to this problem is to release the next expansion. What they can do is release BC as a server and have the option of transferring your vanilla character to the BC server. Blizzard doesn't have to release all the vanilla patches within the same time frame they did in vanilla, they can wait longer to release them or release them at an accelerated pace.

And to anyone who can't conceive of how Blizzard would release vanilla, look at Nostalrius. They started from an early patch and slowly released each separately. They wont release vanilla servers at naxx.

[Belisaurio]

I believe it's not just nostalgia, but the design behind vanilla wow (see Jeff Kaplan interview to learn more).
I mean, vanilla had alot of problems (imbalance, bugs, etc...), but at the same time, it had some "features" that made the game less streamlined than today (hard to explain, english is not my main language, sorry). Some people said that it was hard, others that it was tedious, but the point is "some" people loved the design behind it, and was lost after... <everybody has their opinion, for me, after 1.12.1>.
The design behind the game changed, so did it the audience (some people continued and accepted the new design, others just unsubed, the new ones don't count for my explanation). Well, people that accepted the new design (but still loved the old one) and people that unsubed had one thing in common: they both loved (and still love) vanilla's design.
Nostalgia enters the scene overcoming all vanilla's handicaps that we talked about before.

[Pull My Finger]

In the end, does it really matter why people choose to spend hundreds or even thousands on hours on something. If they enjoy doing it who the hell cares?

Never said it matters. It's the OP who gets hung up on it that much.

[HuxNeva]

No it isn't just nostalgia.
There are 11 different type of players in this debate

[Heathy]

pretty sure its nostalgia for me, theres no fore or against anything with me, only what has the potential to be interesting, classic wow a second time around, doesn't have that potential with me, probably because I just don't have time for it, i'm sure its still somewhat fun to play, but when it comes right down to it, my good memories betray me, I know what it was like in the end, that amount of idling doesn't interest me any more. I think unless you were raiding every single day in classic, ppl are forgetting how much standing around doing nothing there actually was. but it doesn't really matter because ppl will get to experience it first hand themselves.

[Perkunas]

its like when u go to chuck ee cheese when ur 30 years old. it just isnt the same as when u were 10.

its nostalgia.

I'd akin it to those of us loading up emulators and playing an NES or SNES game. To me Megaman X is still one of the best games of all-time. Call it anything you want.

[procne]

Yes, it's nostalgia. And also out of nostalgia I resubbed in Legion. Because of nostalgia WoW is the only MMO I can play. Because of nostalgia I kept checking this forum through the couple of years that I didn't play the game. If I hadn't played in vanilla / TBC / WotLK I wouldn't even look at WoW now and for sure I wouldn't start playing it now. Even more, without nostalgia for Warcraft 2 and Warcraft 3 I wouldn't be interested in WoW 13 years ago.