Ex-World of Warcraft dev Mark Kern explains why Blizzard open vanilla servers

[Slashnox]

speak for yourself,and only yourself. maybe not in game design but plenty of people know me and plenty of my opinions. sorry that you are some nobody feeling the need to be represented by some other nobody who stopped working for blizz and is sour and bitter since 2006

I wouldn't say me and Mark Kern are on the same level of nobody, I'm far lower. And that was my point nothing else to it really.

[Apology]

This interview hits the nail on the head in every conceivable way. Ive loved Legion, and Ill definitely be playing Battle for Azeroth, but he's 100% correct how the lack of community and the lack of any challenge (outside mythic raiding) has made a mess of what made vanilla through to 3.4 so special. Convenience and QOL do not necessarily make for a better experience, especially in a game that's meant to be an immersive fantasy world and is meant to be very social.

Dont really have anything to add to that. This guy just summed up every problem I've had with Wow since 3.4 perfectly.

[Queen of Hamsters]

So holding a gun to your head and forcing you to be my friend is what people want?

To socially inept people, that's the only way they'll make friends.

- - - Updated - - -

This interview hits the nail on the head in every conceivable way. Ive loved Legion, and Ill definitely be playing Battle for Azeroth, but he's 100% correct how the lack of community and the lack of any challenge (outside mythic raiding) has made a mess what made vanilla through to 3.4 so special. Convenience and QOL do not necessarily make for a better experience, especially in a game that's meant to be an immersive fantasy world and is meant to be very social.

Dont really have anything to add to that. This guy just summed up every problem I've had with Wow since 3.4 perfectly.

How you fail to have immersion and social interaction in this game since 3.4 is beyond me.
It's also hilarious how players seem to think that Mythic raiding is the only aspect of this game meant to test players, but then they refer to a time when "challenge" seemingly came from having to pull mobs 1 by 1 and taking 30 seconds to kill them and drinking between pulls.

What immense gaming prowess it took/takes... To others, it simply too patience and time.

[Serenais]

so you would disagree with this statement, which was what it originally referred to

"I disagree. You know what happens when you follow that mindset? You end up with the travesty that is LFR, or the Wrath version of Nax. LFR is so goddamned easy that people can clear the entire raid and never actually learn anything mechanically. If you want to raid, there should be a baseline level of skill and competency that needs to be met. LFR set that bar WAYYYY too low. Wrath Naxx is another example. There was a very good reason why only 1% of people playing vanilla ever experienced it: Because it was fucking hard. and when they updated it for Wrath, both the change in raid size and the absolute butchering of the mechanics made it a pale joke of it's former self. I mean, take thaddeus. 40 man thaddeus was a fucking nightmare, where a single person messing up the charges could easily end your raid in a heartbeat. 10 man thaddeus in the same room? A goddamned joke, where you could literally position your entire raid so that the entire fight could be done without ever needing to move. "

Is there really any room to argue that LFR and Naxx10 weren't too easy? The dang Devs themselves have said they were too freaking easy, thus the discussion of taking LFR back to at least an MoP level difficulty by the Devs.

Agree, disagree, depends on which part. LFR is easy for a reason - if you create content only very few select ones can see, you can not longterm justify that content's creation - it is, pure and simple, a waste of money. Akin to an arena one could play in only if you reached 2.4k rating, or a 5man instance that required m+17 cleared on time to enter. If your raids end up being seen by 1% of people, that is not a case of content well designed. Naxx40 was overblown in this aspect. I mean. There was less than 8 and a bit of month of 1.11 and above before 2.0.3. During that time, less than 1% of the playerbase could actually manage to enter without being roflstomped by everything in there - as in, you needed gear from AQ40 (which itself required substantial gearing), and there was no way to catch up without farming previous tiers. That ALSO was an entry barrier, quite a solid one, because keeping a 40man group stable over that time is next to impossible. Did your tank leave mid AQ40? Well, tough luck getting to Naxx. Did you start late (and thus can't find enough people with the right class and gear)? Tough luck getting to Naxx. Does your group keep getting shaman gear? Tough luck getting to Naxx.
That is not hard, that is ridiculous. It is a classic example of BAD DESIGN.
Now, that doesn't mean that I have just said that raids should be instaccessible and doable with autorun and autoattack (which was likely assumed of me anyway). What I say is that what you apparently think of as a sign of quality is definitelly not.
Building on that, LFR is not the entry point. If you wait for LFR, you are late for the tier. Let's review the schedule for Antorus, shall we?
November 28: Normal and Heroic difficulties
December 5: Mythic difficulty and Raid Finder wing 1
December 19: Raid Finder wing 2
January 2: Raid Finder wing 3
January 16: Raid Finder wing 4
So, basically, when you are done with LFR at least once, large number of progression guilds are already very likely done with heroic. LFR is a way to see content, that is all there is to it. If you fish for your raiders per LFR experience, you are doing it wrong.
On top of that, LFR gear will get you exactly nowhere, unless you want to start with normal (and even then probably not). Guilds looking for raid members these days are looking for people with gear that won't drop in Antorus LFR (per WoWhead, ilvl855), and you can just forget about PuGging, unless you get REALLY lucky. In fact, if you try to do anything relevant, you will get asked for ilvl920 and above, and unless you are either farming Argus like crazy, or really, really lucky with Relinquished gear, you will barely get to that gear level.
All in all. Sure, LFR is quite easy nowadays (but still not zergable - try zerging KJ LFR). It is also completely irrelevant, and trying to get straight from LFR to raiding is not going to work. Naxx10 effectively filled the very same role. Sure, it was the first raid, and it was easy (and even then people failed the safety dance, I've seen that), but the progression above that, to Naxx25, Sarth3D, Malygos - or outright to Ulduar was definitelly not a pushover.
So. I disagree with the premise that LFR is a sufficient baseline for raiding nowadays. It is not, and it demonstrably can't be used to get into raiding on its own.

[Quincey]

Can we please stop pushing this lie. Vanilla was not and will never be hard. Spending 30+ sec on 1 mob is not difficulty, it's a time sink.

Can you stop pushing THAT lie. Pulling more than one mob at a time WAS dangerous. Fighting humanoid mobs that ran off at low health WAS dangerous. Not being able to one shot your way through content WAS more of a challenge than your single player wow as it is now.

Personally I still love WoW:Legion but pretending it wasn't more difficult back then is just bullshit at best. I'm stoked for the challenge of classic.

[Kyanion]

This interview hits the nail on the head in every conceivable way. Ive loved Legion, and Ill definitely be playing Battle for Azeroth, but he's 100% correct how the lack of community and the lack of any challenge (outside mythic raiding) has made a mess of what made vanilla through to 3.4 so special. Convenience and QOL do not necessarily make for a better experience, especially in a game that's meant to be an immersive fantasy world and is meant to be very social.

Dont really have anything to add to that. This guy just summed up every problem I've had with Wow since 3.4 perfectly.

So someone else who NEVER dies to heroic bosses and their guild full clears the raid in 90 mins once the raid is launched, right? Man if heroic raiding was so easy I guess the wowprogress stats would reflect that...oh..wait..

[Queen of Hamsters]

Can you stop pushing THAT lie. Pulling more than one mob at a time WAS dangerous. Fighting humanoid mobs that ran off at low health WAS dangerous. Not being able to one shot your way through content WAS more of a challenge than your single player wow as it is now.

Personally I still love WoW:Legion but pretending it wasn't more difficult back then is just bullshit at best. I'm stoked for the challenge of classic.

Plenty of areas in Legion, for example, didn't allow players to pull all willy nilly. Suramar Elite areas, Isle of the Watchers, Argus elite areas/areas with many mobs that fear players etc etc. And guess what: You can't even outlevel Legion mobs.

And if YOU play WoW as a single-player game, that's your problem. Don't pretend it's a requirement.

The "challenge" of Classic leveling is not really challenging to even halfway decent players with awareness of their surroundings whilst playing the game. I can see why so many long for a time when you were considered MLG for simply reaching max level though...

[Deleted]

Danke Blizz, endlich mehr Geisterserver um Alts abzustellen

[Swalload]

Come to a private server and play for 3 days.

First what happnes: You probably get a whisper with an invitation to a leveling guild.
2. People link stuff they're giving away in guildchat if anyone needs before AH/vendoring (things like mats, bags, enchants)
3. People runs dungeons constantly so it will be easy to get into the dungeons.
4. You get lots of friends on your list because people say "this was fun, add me so we can group up later"
5. Everywhere you run people will buff you running by. Heck, some guy traded me elixirs and health pots while I had downtime during questing.
6. You feel like helping out, because everyone is just so fucking nice to you all the time.

I don't find anything like this on retail. It's like singleplayer, every man for em selves. I approached retail as I did vanilla, but really quick I understod that this is not how the game is played anymore. Community feeling is gone.

Please don't forget the hundreds and most likely thousands of people who complain in chat about how things are tedious, annoying, too slow, too clunky.
Don't forget that in 3 days he will meet about 50 people that he will play with, 40 or 45 of them will quit before the week is over because the game is nowhere near their embellished memories of vanilla.

[Varitok]

Yeah, the guy is an absolute asshat and just wants some time in the spotlight or maybe a job.

Not sure why people bother with him at all.

Still salty I see. He's an asshat for trying to help players get what they want?

[Apology]

So someone else who NEVER dies to heroic bosses and their guild full clears the raid in 90 mins once the raid is launched, right? Man if heroic raiding was so easy I guess the wowprogress stats would reflect that...oh..wait..

1) You know nothing about me.
2) You can literally PUG H TOS.
3) The point is that content OUTSIDE of high end raiding in vanilla was satisfying. It required patience, forethought, and some level of skill. Just killing the Defias Pillager in Moonbrooke felt like an accomplishment because you couldn't just run in and one shot it. Nowadays you don't get that feeling outside of whatever raid is out at the time at the highest difficulties. The one and only time I've felt like I've achieved something worthwhile in Wow in recent memory is getting my Mage Tower appearances. Once upon a time, just questing in the open world was just as satisfying.

[Resentless]

Exactly what WoW is now. Sit in a que, do your chores, log off.

For you perhaps, not for all of us.

I agree though, adding QoL features is great, but NOT having them FORCES people into making a community, else they cant play the game. WoW is much older and its not new and flashy anymore, so adding these QoL features makes sense with an ageing player base who will be less interested in forming a community to do basic things, and no one should expect it to stay that way forever, but for those that would like to be forced into being part of a community rather than trying to do it themselves (like me now with my guild in Legion and the durotar community (dueling and bragging and whatnot) of the server cluster im on) then this vanilla experience will be great!

[Aggrophobic]

This interview hits the nail on the head in every conceivable way. Ive loved Legion, and Ill definitely be playing Battle for Azeroth, but he's 100% correct how the lack of community and the lack of any challenge (outside mythic raiding) has made a mess of what made vanilla through to 3.4 so special. Convenience and QOL do not necessarily make for a better experience, especially in a game that's meant to be an immersive fantasy world and is meant to be very social.

Dont really have anything to add to that. This guy just summed up every problem I've had with Wow since 3.4 perfectly.

Thing is, there was no challenge in vanilla either.
Things took long to do but they were not hard. Not at all.
The raids will be cleared the same day they are released on these "classic" servers and the community you think will be there will be composed of the same people that play retail today. It won't be better. The same community playing a buggy, unbalanced game with very little content. The amount of crying is going to be insane.

And again, Mark Kern is an absolute asshat and anything he says should be taken with a grain of salt or better yet, not listend to at all.

[ls-]

Oh look, it's that PoS Mark Kern again. Does he need to PR his new project or something? That's the only reason why he'd remind about his existence.

[Kyanion]

1) You know nothing about me.
2) You can literally PUG H TOS.
3) The point is that content OUTSIDE of high end raiding in vanilla was satisfying. It required patience, forethought, and some level of skill. Just killing the Defias Pillager in Moonbrooke felt like an accomplishment because you couldn't just run in and one shot it. Nowadays you don't get that feeling outside of whatever raid is out at the time at the highest difficulties. The one and only time I've felt like I've achieved something worthwhile in Wow in recent memory is getting my Mage Tower appearances. Once upon a time, just questing in the open world was just as satisfying.

1) I don't need to know anything about you when it comes to a person making blanket statements about the state of the game.
2) So these pugs form on day one of a heroic raid opening and clear it? Suuuuuurrrreeee they do. And of course you can pug the raid after it has been out for a time.
3) WHAT content in Vanilla outside of raiding? PvP? Dungeons? Dungeons in Vanilla didn't scale to you so once you outgeared the shit out of them, that was it. Oh you mean the tedious level-grind from 1-60 as 'content'. Youk know, that thing people rush to get through with as fast as they can so they can get to the interesting parts. You know what has changed in the past 13 years? People don't take the time to stop and smell the roses, they want to rush to the 'end game'.

[Queen of Hamsters]

1) You know nothing about me.
2) You can literally PUG H TOS.
3) The point is that content OUTSIDE of high end raiding in vanilla was satisfying. It required patience, forethought, and some level of skill. Just killing the Defias Pillager in Moonbrooke felt like an accomplishment because you couldn't just run in and one shot it. Nowadays you don't get that feeling outside of whatever raid is out at the time at the highest difficulties. The one and only time I've felt like I've achieved something worthwhile in Wow in recent memory is getting my Mage Tower appearances. Once upon a time, just questing in the open world was just as satisfying.

That's because what the player considered to be a testament to skill and dedication shifted from "Lul I got max level and killed that level 30 mob!!" to how someone tackles the content MADE to be the most difficult. Player behaviour shaped this game.

And as for raids, you could literally see bosses go down at a reliable pace whilst carrying 15+ mouthbreathers, and having tanks with AFK-macros.

[Kyanion]

That's because what the player considered to be a testament to skill and dedication shifted from "Lul I got max level and killed that level 30 mob!!" to how someone tackles the content MADE to be the most difficult.

Don't worry though. He can pug the content and clear it after it has been out for a long time.

[anon5123]

There is no community in the game if YOU don't do anything about it. People have changed the last 10 years. If you want to have a community in the game, then join a guild, say hi when you enter a lfg and so on, its all up to you.

You say "hi" when you enter an LFD and you will maybe get a "hi" back and then silence for the rest of the run.

There's no reason to communicate. Especially with random people from other servers that you will never see again after the 15 minute AoEfest ends.

Vanilla won't change the community one bit.

Try getting to 60 on a vanilla server and you'll see why you're wrong. I'm not saying that just to shut you up, I'm saying that because it's what I experienced myself, going from silent no-socialization retail, to playing vanilla and TBC servers. It was like night and day.

[Kyanion]

Oh look, it's that PoS Mark Kern again. Does he need to PR his new project or something? That's the only reason why he'd remind about his existence.

It is just a repost of the stuff he said last year. I don't even know why this needed a new thread.

[Eleccybubb]

Still salty I see. He's an asshat for trying to help players get what they want?

Oh please he jumped on the bandwagon for attention because his own MMO was crashing and burning. Which it has now since Firefall shut down this year and is going to be getting a garbage mobile port. Not to mention his own company board also voted him out.

He didn't do it for you guys at all. He did it for his 15 minutes of fame. So let's not pretend he cares.

And yes someone who ruined what could have been a good game by ignoring any other design decisions than their own which essentially halted any form of progress the game got is an asshat in my book. And an arrogant one at that.