Raiding wasn't what made Vanilla fun

[SirCowdog]

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.

I'm going to try and be as civil as possible so we can all get away from the blatant insults and namecalling, alright? And I'm going to try and clarify so people can stop taking this so damn personally.

Classic WoW was a cultural phenomenon DURING ITS TIME. I do not dispute that! But that time is not now. Right now it's 13 years later, and the context for Vanilla has changed completely, in terms of the community and the technology. The idea that simply releasing a version of WoW that was from 13 years ago is going to magically re-create the "glory" of the game is just false.

What you're describing is a scenario filtered through a dense haze of nostalgia. And I don't disagree that an official release of a vanilla server will be popular for a short while. But that popularity will VERY quickly wear out as the higher standards of today reveal the game for just how bad it really is.

Are some people still going to play it, despite that? Sure. But they're going to be the exception, not the rule.

[Akka]

I'm going to try and be as civil as possible so we can all get away from the blatant insults and namecalling, alright?

Wow, when you act all condescending and tell people you know better than them what they think and that their taste is shit and they are too dumb to agree with you is your behavirour when you try to be civil and polite ?
Holy cow.

[Deleted]

Right now it's 13 years later, and the context for Vanilla has changed completely, in terms of the community and the technology.

But the context has not changed in any meaningful way.

What you're describing is a scenario filtered through a dense haze of nostalgia.

Nostalgia only makes the game even better. Nostalgia does not mean that the game is automatically garbage, that is an obvious (although often repeated) fallacy.

But that popularity will VERY quickly wear out as the higher standards of today reveal the game for just how bad it really is.

The standards of today are much lower. So low in fact that I'm not touching the modern garbage that is being put out. For example, modern WoW is dumbed down to a ridiculous level (e.g., no threat, no real talent choices, no complex economy, no nothing).

The fact that you keep trying dodge is that people have actually played vanilla recently and enjoyed it for being a good game, not just nostalgia.

[Deleted]

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.

You didn't read my post?! My point is, not raiding and randomly playing the game, "being casual" will be shrink a lot - maybe become a minority compared to people who efficiently play the game and strife to finish PVE and go hardcore PVP.

[SirCowdog]

But the context has not changed in any meaningful way.

You don't think that phasing, group-finder, LFR, flex raid tech, normal/heroic/mythic, mythic+, flight, dual-spec, a new talent system, daily quests, level scaling tech, addons, and 13 years of learning how to play the game.....has changed the context in any meaningful way? All the changes between then and now haven't changed the way people perceive the game, or what they expect from it?

Nostalgia only makes the game even better. Nostalgia does not mean that the game is automatically garbage, that is an obvious (although often repeated) fallacy.

Please clarify. Nostalgia is a filter that clouds the judgement and glosses over all the negative parts of the game that an objective viewpoint would see. People tend to only remember "the good ol days" of vanilla, and not the terrible bad parts of it.

The standards of today are much lower. So low in fact that I'm not touching the modern garbage that is being put out. For example, modern WoW is dumbed down to a ridiculous level (e.g., no threat, no real talent choices, no complex economy, no nothing).

Didn't you literally just say that the context has not changed in any meaningful way, though?

The standards of today are based on 13 years of changes to the game to improve things which needed to be changed. Vanilla WoW was burdened with a lot of clunky and unweildy systems which didn't really make a lot of sense in retrospect. There are some things which I wouldn't mind seeing put back in the game, but for the most part, the changes to vanilla were all done for good reason.

The fact that you keep trying dodge is that people have actually played vanilla recently and enjoyed it for being a good game, not just nostalgia.

Played a free server run by a 3rd party, without official endorsement or updates, often being highly modified. What people in these forums are asking for is a straight up unmodified version of Vanilla that will very likely be charged monthly for.

I'm fully aware of the major private servers(which can't be named due to MMO-champ's policy) which had been running for the previous couple of years. I've seen the stats, and even assuming the accounts weren't rampant bots and trials that got less than a couple weeks of play, they are still only a tiny fraction of the total WoW player base.

I've already conceded that some people will play Vanilla despite its flaws. But if Blizzard releases vanilla in an unchanged state, the vast majority of players will try it out, see just how terrible it really is once the nostalgia wears off, and never go back.

[pateuvasiliu]

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.

The only dumbfuck bosses were in MC. BWL, AQ and Naxx aren't easy. Sure the mechanics are not as complex but you need mastery of your reflexes and role to win.

[Armourboy]

You didn't read my post?! My point is, not raiding and randomly playing the game, "being casual" will be shrink a lot - maybe become a minority compared to people who efficiently play the game and strife to finish PVE and go hardcore PVP.

I seriously doubt it. I think people are seriously overestimating how many people actually plan to play classic and raid or do serious PvP. Yeah given 3-4 years it probably break down into mostly serious raiders and pvpers still playing, but that will take a while.

[Nomads]

I seriously doubt it. I think people are seriously overestimating how many people actually plan to play classic and raid or do serious PvP. Yeah given 3-4 years it probably break down into mostly serious raiders and pvpers still playing, but that will take a while.

The number of players on Private Servers say otherwise.

[Dilbon]

The number of players on Private Servers say otherwise.

Because private servers are free.

[hulkgor]

Because private servers are free.

Other, recent games are also free. Yet people still decide to play a 13 old game, with outdated graphics, and a 'better' version available as Legion, where minimal time investment allows you to play for free, using blizzard bucks via gold.

Go figure.

I have wow subbed for like a year even if i haven't played in around 4 months, around 3 million gold (which allows for 10 more months of sub), lots of battle.net balance, yet i would prefer to play classic, even if paid, than Legion or BFA.

[Armourboy]

The number of players on Private Servers say otherwise.

I wasn't arguing the number of players, my argument was that most of those playing classic, especially early will be fairly casual.

Just like people tend to forget that raiding itself was only done by a relatively small percentage of players, and that number gets even smaller when you start talking about hardcore raid guilds.

The number of people doing serious raiding or PvP on classic won't be much different than live was. Heck it may even be less of a thing considering many of us that did that then and plan to play it simply won't have that kind of time now.

[Nomads]

Because private servers are free.

If that is the only reason, then why are there no Legion private servers?

[cparle87]

Exactly. If you asked anyone in vanilla if they wanted to go to a raid, 95% would've said yes immediately (that 5% would be the really harcore PVPers doing WSG and AB over and over), even if they couldn't really go to a raid, for any of the reasons you stated (gear, consumables, rep). It was that one goal that was tedious to achieve but in the back of everyone's minds.

So how do you explain single digit raid participation all the way until Wrath when we got multiple difficulty and size raids?

[Deleted]

You don't think that phasing, group-finder, LFR, flex raid tech, normal/heroic/mythic, mythic+, flight, dual-spec, a new talent system, daily quests, level scaling tech, addons, and 13 years of learning how to play the game.....has changed the context in any meaningful way?

You will need to define "context" if that's what you think. To me context are all the things around the game. The things you listed are the game itself. The game has obviously changed so much that modern WoW and vanilla are entirely different games with very little in common. Vanilla WoW was a classic RPG, the modern game is more like an action arcade game.

Please clarify. Nostalgia is a filter that clouds the judgement and glosses over all the negative parts of the game that an objective viewpoint would see. People tend to only remember "the good ol days" of vanilla, and not the terrible bad parts of it.

That "filter" does not change the game design. The game design worked great in vanilla (it had more players than modern WoW), it has worked recently, and it is most likely to keep working in WoW Classic. Nostalgia is just going to make the experience of playing the game again even better, because of all the memories people have of it. You get the enjoyment from great game design and enjoyment from nostalgia.

The standards of today are based on 13 years of changes to the game to improve things which needed to be changed...
I've already conceded that some people will play Vanilla despite its flaws.

That is your subjective opinion. For me the changes have been completely unnecessary and made the game bad to a point where I got no enjoyment out of it anymore and quit. If you think those things are improvements then great, you can keep playing retail. Blizzard explicitly said WoW Classic is for people like me that "prefer vanilla". What you don't seem to understand is that those things you think are "flaws" are actually things that made the game enjoyable for other people.

Played a free server run by a 3rd party, without official endorsement or updates, often being highly modified. What people in these forums are asking for is a straight up unmodified version of Vanilla that will very likely be charged monthly for.

That is not convincing whatsoever. Hundreds of thousands of people played vanilla that was made to be as close to the original as possible, and it was growing to a point where it had to be shut down by Blizzard. And many players stuck with it. Even though it was a hacked together, unauthorized server with outdated clients and a risk of being shut down at any moment. The same thing happened with RuneScape. All the actual evidence we have is squarely against your argument, and all you seem to be basing your views on are your own flawed intuitions.

[Deleted]

The only dumbfuck bosses were in MC. BWL, AQ and Naxx aren't easy. Sure the mechanics are not as complex but you need mastery of your reflexes and role to win.

Of course they were not "easy" but Thaddeus was one of the harder bosses in Vanilla, and his mechanic was the split mechanic from Maiden. Without anything else. You just had to stand on one side of the boss with correct debuff and then switch sides.

This is easier than Maiden on LFR difficulty. Now, it's only easier mechanicly. It was tuned really hard and the tank damage was insane, so of course the fight was hard. But just imagining doing a fight like that with only 1 button to press makes me fall asleep with boredom.

[Specialka]

In 2004, there was less choice of games than now, so ppl played to Vanilla Wow, even as flawed as it was. In 2017, the MMO game type is dying, you should have realized that.

Not much ppl have a lot of time to spend in a game, even less in Vanilla where the real difficulty was that everything took time, despite the game being quite easy (Boss had no mecanics whatsoever for exemple, most specs were simplistic when they worked, etc...).

[Aggrophobic]

No, the endgame and specifically raiding was what made vanilla fun. FOr me at least.
Leveling was always boring as heck.

[Nomads]

No, the endgame and specifically raiding was what made vanilla fun. FOr me at least.
Leveling was always boring as heck.

I'd wager it wasn't the going in and killing the same bosses week after week that made it fun. It was more likely the social aspect of 40 man raids, where you got to laugh, joke, and generally fuck around with a bunch of other players while you enjoyed beers in front of your desk. I was the main raid leader for my guild through AQ40, and it was fun... but the raids themselves weren't what made it fun.

Personally, I think leveling is as fun as you make it. I plan to make 5 Dwarf characters all at 60 once Classic goes live. And I'm fairly certain I will have a blast doing it.

[Deleted]

Tbf in 7.3.5 they're making low level questing non-trivial again and as far as I hear it's basically delivering an experience similar to old school questing, only much more polished.

I'd wager it wasn't the going in and killing the same bosses week after week that made it fun. It was more likely the social aspect of 40 man raids, where you got to laugh, joke, and generally fuck around with a bunch of other players while you enjoyed beers in front of your desk. I was the main raid leader for my guild through AQ40, and it was fun... but the raids themselves weren't what made it fun.

Personally, I think leveling is as fun as you make it. I plan to make 5 Dwarf characters all at 60 once Classic goes live. And I'm fairly certain I will have a blast doing it.

Imo 20 man mythic raids gets your group much more closely knit. There were people in my Vanilla guild that showed up to every single raid and I never spoke a single word to them. It's personal preference ofc - but when I raided mythic in the first half of Legion (EN-NH) I felt the 20 man raid size meant there was room for everyone to join in on the social aspect, since with 40 people sharing a single voip server, usually you would have a good portion of the group that wouldn't really be able to talk at all.

[Deleted]

Now, it's only easier mechanicly. It was tuned really hard and the tank damage was insane, so of course the fight was hard.

This is how it has always been, how it is today, and how it will always be in WoW. Nothing in WoW is "mechanically" hard. All the fights boil down to a simple set of actions for each player. If you tune down the numbers, every fight becomes trivial (see LFR). WoW is just not a game that can provide "mechanical" difficulty orthogonal to the tuning of the numbers.

This sounds awfully like the Cata-era 10/25 arguments. So many 10-man heroic guilds thought what they did was "equivalent" to 25-man heroic—all the way until they tried to merge/scale to 25-man and got completely wiped out. That's when you learn that the difficulty of high level WoW does not come primarily from the boss mechanics.