Raiding wasn't what made Vanilla fun

[Deleted]

*COUGH* bullshit! *COUGH*

I find it funny that you are absolutely convinced that you can psychoanalyze people over the Internet based on a few sentences.

You want to run around the open world of vanilla wow and have a nostalgia trip for a month, fine.

That's possible, and most likely true for many players. The experiences from people actually playing vanilla in recent times has shown that there is a significant number of people that simply enjoy the game design of vanilla more and will stick around for much longer. I find it likely that I'll be in that group.

Time will prove me right.

You should realize that precisely nobody on this planet, other than yourself, cares about you being right or wrong.

[Armourboy]

What's funny is I think more so now than back then raiding will mean even less to most people. Don't get me wrong, I suspect there will be a group that just thinks they gotta raid and that is what it is all about, but I think the vast majority may even be more casual than they were back then.

Keep in mind, most of us know the time commitment that Vanilla raiding can be, and most of us know going in whether we can do much of that or not. So I think for the vast majority that do play they won't be in any major hurry to get to max and get to raiding. I think most people will spend more time enjoying the journey, they will spend time doing those things they may not have done prior. I think people will spend much more time in low level instances just having a good time.

We know 75% of the player base then never even reached max level, let alone did any raiding. That alone tells us that for the vast majority of Vanilla players raiding isn't what made it fun for them, most of them never got there to begin with.

Can you unlearn everything you know so that it all completely fresh and so it will be exactly the same? Nope, but I suspect for lots of people that will be a good thing, they may actually get to see content they never got to originally.

I raided back then, and I'll probably do some again in Classic. I'm not going to be in a big hurry to do it though, been there done that.

[Morssoe]

Only classic wow has good zones imo.

[Helwinter]

Early Vanilla raids were extremely simplistic in content and execution. MC was gated with reputation. BWL was gated with gear checks and needing specific items defeat certain bosses.

The later raiding was much more well done. C'Thun is still one of my greatest gaming memories of all time. But the point I'm trying to make here is that people need to understand that what made Vanilla fun and entertaining for its whole existence was the things outside of raiding.

I encourage everyone who is thinking of getting into Classic, to not just do a mad dash to 60 to start gearing for raids. That is literally only a small portion of the game. The journey to 60 is one of the more enjoyable times you can experience in gaming. Get in a guild. Get to know your server. Run dungeons together. Group up for elite and class quests. Jump in to some open world PvP. Hunt rare spawns. Enjoy traveling all over the world just to get to Artisan level in your professions.

Once you hit 60, there is a lot to do before jumping into Molten Core. Do BRD, UBRS, LBRS, DM North, East, and West, Scolo, and Strath until you have all the gear you want. Grind reputations. Become an auction house tycoon. Make a name for yourself! Some of the best memories were when someone got in trade chat and told everyone that Ghengis had a group attacking Darkshire, and everyone knew who he was and mounted up to take the fight to him.

60 raiding is not all there is to do in Vanilla.

Nostalgia. Your nostalgia is what made it great.

Gotcha.

[Deleted]

Something that will happen is the huge split of the playerbase: A lot of players know vanilla good enough to efficiently level up, prepare for raiding in the best way and compete with each other in the same way guilds do in retail. Players that haven't done all these elite quests in the past, didn't get annoyed by weird and useless odysseys through dungeons and zones, haven't seen all aspects of pvp and know nothing is harder to beat than that top raid group after they finished raiding... these people will get left behind and will realize that their way to play the game isn't rewarded by the game itself. They will not have enough power to withstand ganking, not have the same amount of gold, not have the same possibilities to take on world bosses, arenas, class specific quests and so on.

And they will be a minority while chilling in the city hubs. At the beginning there might be that lucky one guy that got priority and drop luck within his raiding guild but after a couple of months there will be more shiny people than clowns. And instead many people admiring a few it will be more likely many people looking down on a few.

[Mirishka]

Early Vanilla raids were extremely simplistic in content and execution. MC was gated with reputation. BWL was gated with gear checks and needing specific items defeat certain bosses.

The later raiding was much more well done. C'Thun is still one of my greatest gaming memories of all time. But the point I'm trying to make here is that people need to understand that what made Vanilla fun and entertaining for its whole existence was the things outside of raiding.

I encourage everyone who is thinking of getting into Classic, to not just do a mad dash to 60 to start gearing for raids. That is literally only a small portion of the game. The journey to 60 is one of the more enjoyable times you can experience in gaming. Get in a guild. Get to know your server. Run dungeons together. Group up for elite and class quests. Jump in to some open world PvP. Hunt rare spawns. Enjoy traveling all over the world just to get to Artisan level in your professions.

Once you hit 60, there is a lot to do before jumping into Molten Core. Do BRD, UBRS, LBRS, DM North, East, and West, Scolo, and Strath until you have all the gear you want. Grind reputations. Become an auction house tycoon. Make a name for yourself! Some of the best memories were when someone got in trade chat and told everyone that Ghengis had a group attacking Darkshire, and everyone knew who he was and mounted up to take the fight to him.

60 raiding is not all there is to do in Vanilla.

You don't get to declare what was or was not fun for anyone besides yourself. For some people raiding was irrelevant, for others it was the only thing that mattered - with pretty much every variation in between.

Yes, there were other things to do. Anyone that is excited about classic servers likely realizes that. But your preferences aren't everyone's, and that makes topics like this one a bit irritating.

[bash the fash]

Let's compare incomparable! That's the way to go! That's a constructive discussion.
So all of the people who play old games are simply clinging to the past? Interesting how many psychiatrist we have on this forum. Next you're going to tell me that I play Morrowind for like god knows what time now is a mental disorder, or something.

Did I say all 'old games'? No, I said World of Warcraft.

And yeah, a lot of the time our experiences are inextricably bound up with our perception of what's 'good' or 'better'. That doesn't mean those things are actually good or better, but they were better, to us, because of positive memories and experiences. That's why the whole 'GREAT COMMUNITY' argument about vanilla wow is a massive fallacy, because 'great community' experiences were not universal, nor were they actually related to the quality of the game design itself.

My most positive WoW 'community experience' came making friends during MoP and raiding with friends in Wrath. All of my 'community experiences' in vanilla were garbage, so the argument is pretty meaningless.

[MardestyGSOG]

Agreed. A mad dash to 60 is the worst way you can play vanilla, you'll burn yourself out before you cap. But forming relationships, running dungeons with guildies and friends, getting all the best gear in your bg bracket and doing some pvp at every X9 level, leveling profs, auctioning regularly, doing some world pvp(not griefing or camping though, that makes you a dickhead), partnering up to do the hard quests instead of skipping them because you might be able to grind it out instead, farming a second set if you're a hybrid class, if you have the good for it you can change your build sometimes to add some flavor(like swapping to blizzard spec, or going 1h+shield as a sham instead of 2h, or going sub spec for the half-hp ambush crits and ninja like gameplay). All of this makes for a very immersive and adventurous kind of experience, and it's what vanilla is all about. Really it's such a different game from retail and it has to be treated differently to be enjoyed. You wouldn't go playing skyrim and rushing through the dragonborn quest line without trying out different gameplay mods and side quests would you?

[Deleted]

these people will get left behind and will realize that their way to play the game isn't rewarded by the game itself. They will not have enough power to withstand ganking, not have the same amount of gold, not have the same possibilities to take on world bosses, arenas, class specific quests and so on.

I will be one of those people and I can't wait to get to play Classic. I didn't raid in vanilla, and I have no interest in raiding in WoW Classic. I'm not being "left behind" nor do I expect to get all the same things as people that are more dedicated and skilled than me. I'll play the game the way I enjoy it, and I will not be bothered whatsoever by the people that rush to raiding.

[Armourboy]

Something that will happen is the huge split of the playerbase: A lot of players know vanilla good enough to efficiently level up, prepare for raiding in the best way and compete with each other in the same way guilds do in retail. Players that haven't done all these elite quests in the past, didn't get annoyed by weird and useless odysseys through dungeons and zones, haven't seen all aspects of pvp and know nothing is harder to beat than that top raid group after they finished raiding... these people will get left behind and will realize that their way to play the game isn't rewarded by the game itself. They will not have enough power to withstand ganking, not have the same amount of gold, not have the same possibilities to take on world bosses, arenas, class specific quests and so on.

And they will be a minority while chilling in the city hubs. At the beginning there might be that lucky one guy that got priority and drop luck within his raiding guild but after a couple of months there will be more shiny people than clowns. And instead many people admiring a few it will be more likely many people looking down on a few.

You do realize what you are explaining is pretty much exactly as vanilla was? Lol

Very few people raided compared to the overall millions that played. Classic being split into have and have nots is exactly as it was. It's the reason things like the Tier .5 quest line was added later into Vanilla.

[Akka]

Classic Servers arent going to bring back whatever fun you think that you remember. Im sure you will have some fun times but what you had before isnt going to be the same now or when Classic starts. Everything back then was new, you were learning so many things. Messing up and finding out what you were doing wrong. Taking advantage of players that didnt know better. New fights, new zones, new lore. Those things will all be gone. And for most, those were the best parts of WoW that they remember.

You realize that for many people it'll actually BE new (all the people who never got to play Vanilla), and for many others they have been playing Vanilla for a few years RIGHT NOW and have a pretty good idea of exactly what they are getting ?

- - - Updated - - -

*COUGH* bullshit! *COUGH*

You might say that, but there's no way you can simply turn off the filter of your experiences with the game between then and now. Because this will happen as a result:

"I play Classic for a month and go back to not playing WoW at all."

Someone has some psychological trouble about not being the center and definition of the world it seems.

[Auxora]

The leveling experience is really a large part of what made vanilla fun. Elite quest mobs that were actually a bit difficult to kill, you had to pay attention to what you were doing since you could actually die from things like extra pulls, healing classes were much more difficult to level, and you had to use a bit of strategy even for smaller things like which skills to buy and professions mattered. End-game raiding during vanilla was fairly flawed. BC did raiding much better since 25's still were a bit too big but at least were somewhat manageable. 40-person groups were too large to lead. With that many people there was always someone DC'ing or going afk, you'd have 10 out of 40 not show up for a raid and take forever to fill.

It was a difficult design choice probably in hindsight around wotlk when wow had been out for a few years. Games at the time didn't stay popular for as long as wow has, it's been the benchmark for that. So they opted to make leveling much easier to push playing alts in end-game to keep people interested. The problem is it made leveling mind-numbingly boring because there is virtually no chance of dying while leveling unless you get ganked on a pvp realm or accidentally fall off a cliff. I've leveled alts where I wasn't even trying to do an ironman challenge and just never picked up new gear after level 20 (or even spells when you had to visit a trainer) and didn't die until I goofed on something in the mid-80's. Not having any chance of dying, which more importantly means no penalty for not focusing while playing, just absolutely killed the fun. Then all you have left is reading quest text and getting into the story, which I do enjoy, but I did that when too when leveling was difficult and by itself isn't quite enough to keep most people engaged.

TLDR: I'm more interested in classic leveling than end-game raiding.

[SirCowdog]

Someone has some psychological trouble about not being the center and definition of the world it seems.

And someone doesn't have any argument to make, so resorts instead to throwing insults.

The point I was making is that there's no way for someone to just forget what they've learned about the game between Vanilla and now, and that claiming their expectations for vanilla haven't changed because of that IS bullshit. Because that's not how the human mind works.

It's called being realistic, not self-centered.

Now, you might be perfectly able to claim that you still want to try enjoy Vanilla wow, or that you like certain aspects of Vanilla wow. That's a separate issue that I don't have any problems with. But, objectively speaking, Vanilla WoW as a whole was a bad game that we mostly only accepted because we didn't know any better, and didn't have the same perspective we have now. Saying that vanilla wow will still be good by today's standards is, quite honestly, also bullshit.

[schwank05]

There was always a lot of world pvp going on, even after battlemasters were added in major cities. This is what I really look forward to. Going on the hunt to get revenge for an opportunistic gank or doing the same, either of which had a good chance of erupting into a much larger fight lasting a while, and spawning more fights through the map.

I loved the Randomness of when and where World PVP battles happened, it wasn't just in places where Horde and Alliance Territories were close together. I remember a massive battle just randomly popping up right in Westfall, because Why not. I also remember how great Barrens world PVP was it was gigantic and amazing and epic. I never even reached 60 before BC hit and I started playing in January 2005. I would just PVP on my Rogue and Hunter all day and both ended up at 41 and 43 when BC hit.

[Akka]

And someone doesn't have any argument to make, so resorts instead to throwing insults.

Stop projecting. You're the one who come and claim that you hold the truth (despite being factually wrong) other condescending opinions.

The point I was making is that there's no way for someone to just forget what they've learned about the game between Vanilla and now, and that claiming their expectations for vanilla haven't changed because of that is bullshit.

It's called being realistic.

No, it's called, as above, projecting yourself on others. Some people are very aware of what they learned and what they know about Vanilla and have adequate expectations. You aren't able to do this, that's your problem, not everyone's.

[SirCowdog]

No, it's called, as above, projecting yourself on others. Some people are very aware of what they learned and what they know about Vanilla and have adequate expectations. You aren't able to do this, that's your problem, not everyone's.

Some people honest to god like fast-food, even though they know exactly what it is. That doesn't make it good.

[Akka]

Some people honest to god like fast-food, even though they know exactly what it is. That doesn't make it good.

Yeah, and some people like Legion despite it being a pile of shit. It's still their opinion, and it can be terrible taste but I'm not going to tell them "you don't enjoy it". They know better than me if they do enjoy it or not.

[Nomads]

Some people honest to god like fast-food, even though they know exactly what it is. That doesn't make it good.

Youre essentially the asshole who plays retail wow today. Nevermind the FACT that retail currently has the lowest number of players in WoW history... it's clearly a superior game, right.

If you pull your head out of your ass for 2 minutes you might see that retail is shittier than wow has ever been, amd Classic is an attempt to regain Blizzards lost glory.

I mean Classic WoW was a cultural phenomenon. Virtually an entire generation of gamers played it. It was so mainstream that celebrities like Mila Kunis and Vin diesel played it extensively.

Who plays WoW now? A couple thousand die hard fans who can't let go of their characters and collections.

[Deleted]

I loved Vanilla when it was something completely new. Now I play WoW to raid, and I want to raid on a class that has more than 2 buttons to press and bosses that have more than 1 mechanic.

[Deleted]

The point I was making is that there's no way for someone to just forget what they've learned about the game between Vanilla and now, and that claiming their expectations for vanilla haven't changed because of that IS bullshit.

This is completely misguided. First, the game has evolved into a completely different game from vanilla, so what you've learned is not applicable in vanilla. In fact, for someone who has started recently will have to learn a whole lot before being able to play vanilla effectively, e.g., how to deal with threat, and pull carefully one thing at a time, how to use utility abilities in solo content to not get wasted, how to contribute to the economy (i.e., make gold), etc. Second, people were not clueless idiots in vanilla. People learned everything important there was to know about the game very quickly. Third, claiming that you know better what people's expectations are than they themselves (including people that have played vanilla recently) is just hilariously egoistic of you.