Do people really know what they are asking for?

[deniter]

Don't get me wrong guys, I'm all up for changes, and throwbacks, and stuff like that. And just like all of you I can't wait to log in the new "old servers" and be reminded how it was back then. But even I don't know for sure if I want to go through that again. I'm afraid that I will log for a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, and then just quit. And I am afraid it will be the same with many other players as well.

Everybody is talking about what we miss from Vanilla, and what was most fun in Vanilla, but I rarely see people discussing the negative things, and if we will be able to endure them as they were back then. Sure, I also have a lot of awesome memmories and things I miss from Vanilla, but there are also plenty of things I don't miss. Please allow me to remind you of a few:

1. Leveing to max (lvl60) back in Vanilla took approximately 2 months of active play.
2. Quests did not have any kind of indications on map, minimap, sidebar, whatsoever. You actually had to read the log so you could find out where you have to go, and what you have to do. And even after doing so, you would find out the text is full with riddles and references. Some of these were actually quite hard for me since English is not my mother language.
3. You get your first mount at level 40, at which point you don't really have the gold to afford it. Those mounts had 40% speed. After you hit 60 you had to farm for days so you could afford the 100% mount. The maximum amount of travel speed you could obtain was 120% through trinket and enchant which would increase your grount mount speed additionally. And last but not least, there were no flying mounts.
4. There were no group finders. You had to spam trade chats in capital cities - sometimes for hours if you play dps class. Then you find out your group consists of a bunch of undergeared people since you wipe 10 times at the 1st boss in BRD.
5. Spell-rank sifting. Spell-ranks were not united as they are now. In order to effectively use your mana pool you had to put a few ranks from the majority of your spells on your bars and activelly decide which one you need at any given moment.
6. Raid preparation included more consumables other than your regular flask, food and pot. There were stuff like mana runes, weapon oils, weapon grinders, etc. There were no food tables or flask cauldrons. Farming all that took a lot of time. I remember spending 2 hours before raid every single day, only to farm the mats for flasks and food, the special consumables and warlock shards.

I won't be making the list too long, but these are only a few, probably out of hundreds of things that were quite uncomfortable back in the day. It makes me wonder how much will the nowday WoW player (myself included) last in that environment.

What do you guys think?

1) Leveling was too fast rather than too slow. I guess you mean 2 months is a horribly long time, but i'd have made it 2 years instead.

2) Yes, a part of the gameplay was to read (and understand) quest texts. There was 3rd party websites like Thottbot you could use for guidance but figuring out the stuff was needed in order to get things done in vanilla. I see no problem here.

3) Mounts were luxury items you could buy if you were wealthy, not an item you could add in your collection. Again, works like intended.

4) And thank god for that. Bad players didn't get reward for showing up. If you wiped 10 times at the 1st boss you should have acknowledged there was something wrong in your group composition and leave.

5) That's not true. Only healers used different spell ranks for light, moderate and heavy heals (makes sense if you think about it). Other classes may have used some spells as rank 1 because of its effect (rank 1 frostbolt for slowing effect, or rank 1 earth shock for spell interrupt).

6) That's right, raids were quite hard in vanilla and you wanted to have all the possible buffs you could find before going in. That also gave you something to do when it wasn't a raid night. No 'instant action' button was available.

If these are the things you find uncomfortable then maybe this is not a game for you. Have fun in Legion or Bfa or w/e and forget WoW:Classic.

[hulkgor]

I don't understand how people keep coming up with this shit.

"What? You want vanilla? Do you even know what you're asking for?!"

Yes, we fucking do, that's why we've been adamant asking for an official vanilla server for the past 10 years. That's why multiple successful legacy private realms exist. That's why hundreds of thousands of players endure playing on private realms, that have no guarantee of uptime, eventually turn to the worst with shady admins, etc.

Yes, we know exactly what we're asking for, and we're EAGER for it.

Just because you don't like it or want it, don't question what we want, seriously.

Are you the same on restaurants? "Do you really know what you're asking for, by choosing sushi? 1) it's raw. 2) it's fish, eww 3) it's cold.". Holy hell.

- - - Updated - - -

That's what you think now, but when you are only lvl 30 after 1 week of playing, having to read quest logs for hours straight and walk everywhere on foot?

I really don't know...

lol, so reading quests is bad now? on a RPG? Seriously? Yea, a lot more immersive just going to the blue area on your map, super cool

[Jujudrood]

The thing is, most points the OP made the the things that people do want.
The difference, however, is that once they get it, some will drop off.
Some of these things, like longer leveling and quests that send you to both continents back and forth and back again might seem like they make the world big and alive, but really it turns into wasted time because you spend more time traveling.
You aren't seeing the sights for the first time all over again, you are seeing things of which you already have memories.
You are bypassing everything you once explored because you've been there and you've done that.
You are cursing when a mob hits you from behind and dismounts you, you are cursing when you pull too many at once and die just to do a ludicrous corpse run across a zone.
No in-game quest helper? It's fine, there are plenty of websites; you aren't immersed, you are tabbed out.
Gold hard to get? No. It was never hard to get, it was tedious as hell to get, because farming scarlets for their silver and cloth is neither fun nor engaging to me, and I'm sure others will feel the same, especially when 15 minutes into your farming, other people show up and tag mobs, effectively removing you from the equation.
Gear prestigious? Not really. Today's world is much more familiar with raiding, so you won't be a 1% snowflake in raid gear, but rather one of many who will try to get into it.
(Now, whether or not those who try to get in actually succeed is a totally different story...).

No, I think people know what they are asking for, and I do believe them when they say they want that pure classic feel, I just think some will find they don't quite like it as much as they thought they did and bail after a while so they can play new stuff.

[hyphnos]

I think that people know very well what they want when it comes to WoW Vanilla.

The following are one-month-old stats from a new Vanilla progressive-type server that started from patch 1.2 "Mysteries of Maraudon".



In the space of just one month we got 250,000 players. So yeah, I'd say people know what they want and love it.

In the meantime, the folks at Blizzard are fap... errr sleeping and losing money every hour. The clock is ticking, Blizzard.

I'm sure they are losing sleep over that 800 players that hit level cap. All those stats say to me is there are a lot of dabblers and this crap has little to no staying power.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I'm pretty sure they know, yeah. As colored as some opinions are by nostalgia, Classic servers have had a steady stream of players since Vanilla WoW ended. Even if many play because it's free and on servers giving QOL-changes, Blizzlike Classic servers have been the most hyped for a reason.

In the meantime, the folks at Blizzard are fap... errr sleeping and losing money every hour. The clock is ticking, Blizzard.

I don't think they're too worried considering the billion-dollar revenue they're already getting from the game. The clock isn't "ticking", people will come running the instant the official servers open up.

I'd love to see a similar graph made 6 months from now, or a year from now, from that same server.

[hulkgor]

I'm sure they are losing sleep over that 800 players that hit level cap. All those stats say to me is there are a lot of dabblers and this crap has little to no staying power.

It's more a testament on how long it takes to reach max level (that is from 1 month after launch), nothing to do with staying power.

[Wilian]

[*]Leveing to max (lvl60) back in Vanilla took approximately 2 months of active play.

There are quite a few factual errors here but I'll go with the first one; Fastest max level character was under 24 hours /played, which is far less than one hour played per day for a month.

[hulkgor]

There are quite a few factual errors here but I'll go with the first one; Fastest max level character was under 24 hours /played, which is far less than one hour played per day for a month.

That's so wrong it hurts.

Reaching level 60 on vanilla at release (not talking about legacy realms) took an average of 20d played on your first char, with following chars taking around 12-15d played. Even with full knowledge of the game today, it would NEVER take close to 24 hours, simply because of how the game was designed. Just the walking around part would make that impossible.

The World first dude took around 10-11 days (real time) to reach level 60. Release was November 23 and he reached 60 on the 3rd or 4th of December... with massive hours played per day, there were even suspicions that they had account sharing since it was claimed it was on 24/7 for the entire 2 weeks (close to it). Dude was named Xenif, a Troll Rogue on Stormreaver server if you're curious.

What's your source for 24 hours played for max level? Your ass?

[Queen of Hamsters]

Or everyone will leave Batfa for vanilla because batfa is too casual and they want a challenge for a change.


.

Haha, funny joke!

Shit taking a long-ass time does not a modern Hardcore player make. For reference, see W1st racers and how they play.
- - - Updated - - -

There are quite a few factual errors here but I'll go with the first one; Fastest max level character was under 24 hours /played, which is far less than one hour played per day for a month.

The record I've seen was 4 days 23 hours or something /played.

[Deleted]

This debate is getting old.

* The people saying vanilla will suck and the vanilla fans don't know what they're asking for are wrong.
* The people saying vanilla is the only true way and that Blizzard are losing money for not making it sooner and, to quote someone earlier in this thread, the only reason you might not want to play vanilla is if you're a "retail pussy" are also wrong.

There are a ton of things in vanilla that are just tedium for the sake of increasing time required to do meaningful content. I had 150 or so days /played in vanilla and at least a good 50 of them were spent at max level farming herbs so my guild could have flasks. I remember in my guild and several others had people who didn't get raid spots go and farm herbs for the duration of the raid. Also miners having to spam BRD to get dark iron for fire resist gear, having to farm Argent Dawn rep for says upon days of /played time.

I didn't enjoy that then, and I wouldn't enjoy it now. I like being able to log in and know that I'm doing meaningful content straight away, rather than spending up to 3 hours farming for every 1 hour I actually play the content I want to. It's not about instant gratification, and it's not because I'm a "retail pussy" who just wants free stuff with no effort put in. For a long time when I was raiding nighthold I spent 9hrs/day on average working to improve my guild's chances in raids by farming m+, doing LFR/Normal/HC raids, looking at logs and theorycrafting with the other officers in my guild etc. etc. - It's not that I don't want to work for my success, it's that I'd rather work for it by doing things I enjoy doing.

But I realise that some people -do- enjoy all the tedium, and they prefer the simpler, more time consuming gameplay where more of the challenge came from putting in effort consistently over a long time with a lot of other people. And power to them. I'm getting to play the game the way I enjoy by staying with Legion, and next year BfA, and they'll get to play the game they enjoy on classic servers. And if they don't end up enjoying it, then they'll move on to something else or come back to the normal servers. It's not a big deal lol, you can enjoy one or the other, or you can enjoy both. Just play w/e you want and stop trying to put other people down for not agreeing with you.

[Torrasque]

Masochists will be masochists. So long as they pay full price and the monthly sub to support their game and never bother the rest of the community with their toxicity yet again, then I'll allow them to dwell in their den of iniquity. As a investor in Activision/Blizzard, however, this choice has me concerned for the future of the company. While announcing it in light of the new expansion was a good idea to their investors, since legacy realms are an awful business model, if BfA cannot handle the debt incurred by Classic, then I will voice my opinion by once again removing my shares in their corporation.

[hulkgor]

Masochists will be masochists. So long as they pay full price and the monthly sub to support their game and never bother the rest of the community with their toxicity yet again, then I'll allow them to dwell in their den of iniquity. As a investor in Activision/Blizzard, however, this choice has me concerned for the future of the company. While announcing it in light of the new expansion was a good idea to their investors, since legacy realms are an awful business model, if BfA cannot handle the debt incurred by Classic, then I will voice my opinion by once again removing my shares in their corporation.

Pay full price? I already bought vanilla buddy. No problem with it having a sub though.

"Bother the rest of the community with their toxicity"... you actually just proved the opposite. Holy hell, thanks for "allowing us to dwell in their den of iniquity". Please, never set foot on classic, keep that attitude and behavior on Legion\BFA.

[Torrasque]

The record I've seen was 4 days 23 hours or something /played.

It's called paying the "devs" for a level adjustment, then claiming that you "worked" for it.

[Deleted]

"If those idiots just stay the fuck away and don't insult me then I don't mind their stupid opinions and it won't bother me that they're a bunch of toxic assholes"

[Torrasque]

Pay full price? I already bought vanilla buddy. No problem with it having a sub though.

"Bother the rest of the community with their toxicity"... you actually just proved the opposite. Holy hell, thanks for "allowing us to dwell in their den of iniquity". Please, never set foot on classic, keep that attitude and behavior on Legion\BFA.

Classic is a different product "buddy." If you want a product you will have to "pay" for it just like everything else in the real world. So, get a job.

[Wilian]

That's so wrong it hurts.

Reaching level 60 on vanilla at release (not talking about legacy realms) took an average of 20d played on your first char, with following chars taking around 12-15d played. Even with full knowledge of the game today, it would NEVER take close to 24 hours, simply because of how the game was designed. Just the walking around part would make that impossible.

The World first dude took around 10-11 days (real time) to reach level 60. Release was November 23 and he reached 60 on the 3rd or 4th of December... with massive hours played per day, there were even suspicions that they had account sharing since it was claimed it was on 24/7 for the entire 2 weeks (close to it). Dude was named Xenif, a Troll Rogue on Stormreaver server if you're curious.

What's your source for 24 hours played for max level? Your ass?

A video in Youtube, admittably during TBC BUT before any XP nerfs that happened later. The record was 24 hours to level 70, so the level 60 took far less. Mages, warlocks and other methods were used for ease of access. I know you'll now get brain anyerism but leveling til mid-to late TBC during vanilla areas was exact vanilla experience in terms of time taken and player power.

Anyhow, your 12-15d played is kind of silly because that assumes that rather than leveling you also kept up with professions at rate of your level rather than just plain level when we can reduce it easily down to around 4-5 days /played

I quite like how you bring up the whole private server ordeal while clearly having no clue yourself on the matter beyond 'muh feels'.

The record I've seen was 4 days 23 hours or something /played.

Yeah, probably solo effort. With the above mentioned team effort you could shave off quite some hours.

[Specialka]

I remember that the first lvl 60 on EU server was 9 days after release. I do not know how many /played tough, but I do know they did it by sharing account.

[hulkgor]

A video in Youtube, admittably during TBC BUT before any XP nerfs that happened later. The record was 24 hours to level 70, so the level 60 took far less. Mages, warlocks and other methods were used for ease of access. I know you'll now get brain anyerism but leveling til mid-to late TBC during vanilla areas was exact vanilla experience in terms of time taken and player power.

Anyhow, your 12-15d played is kind of silly because that assumes that rather than leveling you also kept up with professions at rate of your level rather than just plain level when we can reduce it easily down to around 4-5 days /played

I quite like how you bring up the whole private server ordeal while clearly having no clue yourself on the matter beyond 'muh feels'..

You are actually spewing random bullshit with no ounce of accuracy, but i'm the one without any clue beyond "muh feels" by stating actual play times from the actual release.

Even one of the most popular speed racers, Joana (with a lot of speed run leveling guides had very close to 5d playtime after numerous attempts, with massive testing and multiple attempts - https://www.furiouspaul.com/pc/wow/ or http://www.joanasworld.com/ ). But yea, 24 hours is completely 'real'. Laughable.

Go figure. Proven to be innacurate, you have to resort to insults or nonsense. Typical buddy, no worries.

[Wilian]

You are actually spewing random bullshit with no ounce of accuracy, but i'm the one without any clue beyond "muh feels" by stating actual play times from the actual release.

Go figure. Proven to be innacurate, you have to resort to insults or nonsense. Typical buddy, no worries.

Did you have discussion with a mirror all while ignoring the text?

[Draknalor186]

That's what you think now, but when you are only lvl 30 after 1 week of playing, having to read quest logs for hours straight and walk everywhere on foot?

I really don't know...

are you saying that you don't know every quest by heart?