Will we live a second 2004 or?

[JohnnyMccrum]

Vanilla wow was a game.
It was a game. Whatever you feel about it. It was a game.

It's not just what I feel about it, but the 10 million + players that have cancelled their WoW subs because the game had abandonded it's roots.

These are the roots.

I hope you never play Classic, we don't want people like you ruining our game.

[JohnnyMccrum]

See you soon when you come moaning to the forums 'cause its not the pure, amazing experience you remember.

In the case Classic fails (Would be down to Blizzard's greed or incompetence, not listening to the community who has constructed things like polls)

We'd all just go back to other servers permanently, that ship would've sailed forever, and Blizzard would have ruined their only chance to have vanilla under their thumb rather than someone elses.

This is Blizzard's only chance to win back a community that has wanted them to produce a legitimate and official classic game, if they produce that game and it isn't done correctly, it will almost definitely fail. It's not like this wasn't ever on the table either, Blizzard has a bad track record, not a lot of the classic community really trusts Blizzard anymore, but they're all willing to see Blizzard give a genuine shot at it, injecting their passion and love for this game back into it for once.

[Usagi Senshi]

My christ, you have been making me cringe throughout this thread. You're talking like you're SO superior for having played vanilla, like today's players could never handle it. It's a goddamn game, it really wasn't ever that difficult. Wasn't Nostalrius Naxx cleared in like 2 days...

I reiterate the same point I always make. Vanilla wasn't hard; you were just bad at the time. The only difficulty that actually came out of vanilla was the fact that every little thing required eons of your time. Remember, this game killed people. You'll find that many from that era have grown up and don't have that sort of time to give to it.

And if you still CAN give that sort of time to it, then, wow, I'm worried for your health.

Pretty much, as I stated before, I had nearly 200 days plays in vanilla (and had fun tbh, won't lie), but it was carebear as fuck compared to FFXI and EQ1. The game finally got good for me with patch 2.3 in TBC and Wrath.

Older MMOs, unlike other older games (especially Japanese console games) do not age that well at all. Being a gamer for 35 years has taught me that some people will always be stubborn with shit no matter the reasons. I remember a 1999 argument about older console games when this one dipshit swore up and down that new Lunar:SSSC looked and played like shit compared to the Sega CD original. He also like Super Mario Bros over Super Mario Bros 3/World. /shrug

LOL, oh yeah, he also liked Croc for the Sega Saturn over the vastly superior Super Mario 64/Banja Kazooie on the N64. That one still kills me, lol.

[Siglius]

I'm here to protect and defend the honor of Classic lovers.

That guy is objectively an idiot though. Thats not being inflammatory, thats just being honest.

[Lazuli]

Pretty much, as I stated before, I had nearly 200 days plays in vanilla (and had fun tbh, won't lie), but it was carebear as fuck compared to FFXI and EQ1. The game finally got good for me with patch 2.3 in TBC and Wrath.

Older MMOs, unlike other older games (especially Japanese console games) do not age that well at all. Being a gamer for 35 years has taught me that some people will always be stubborn with shit no matter the reasons. I remember a 1999 argument about older console games when this one dipshit swore up and down that new Lunar:SSSC looked and played like shit compared to the Sega CD original. He also like Super Mario Bros over Super Mario Bros 3/World. /shrug

LOL, oh yeah, he also liked Croc for the Sega Saturn over the vastly superior Super Mario 64/Banja Kazooie on the N64. That one still kills me, lol.

FFXI and EQ sucked dick, you were a nobody scrub unless you played 24/7 and had no life, camped a certain mob for 3 weeks straight, farmed until your eyes bleed, shit and pissed in a bucket and told your pizza dealer to just walk inside to hand deliver that shit. They were games for losers, for kids without jobs and responsibilities.

WoW was god-tier BECAUSE it was 'carebear' aka realistically playable. I watched both my brothers and my cousins essentially lose their lives playing FFXI while I was still hanging with friends, going outside and still had time to play WoW and succeed in both pve and pvp.

[crusadernero]

I don't mind the change and I adapt to it but I can't stand those who pretend that if they play classic they will be less wankers than they are now. The same guy who brings disease to the game by asking for 960+ and curve to do a normal shitrun thus excluding alts etc from going places is the same wanker that will bring his corpse in classic and make it bad for others (again).

So I won't accept anyone who says classic will be full of roses because simply enough those days are gone and those players are gone. And I put myself in the gone category too. I was different in classic and Im different now. Who I am now can't resemble who I was then. Not by a long shot. Im better and Im worse. But Im not that guy. Noone is.

In classic people will just make you come to the raid leader who will inspect you, then decide if you can get invite or not. It's always been like that but it took off when Gearscore came around and ilevel was a thing.


Classic will never really be the same though. Its the same zones we have seen over 14 years. Ok, cata changed the zones up, but not so much that we dont recognice them. So nothing new there.

I would expect alot more people will play classic now than back in 2004 and with that, alot more toxic people to. Maybe after some time and the first hype is gone, it will end up with something good at max level. Who knows.

[Blamblam41]

FFXI and EQ sucked dick, you were a nobody scrub unless you played 24/7 and had no life, camped a certain mob for 3 weeks straight, farmed until your eyes bleed, shit and pissed in a bucket and told your pizza dealer to just walk inside to hand deliver that shit. They were games for losers, for kids without jobs and responsibilities.

WoW was god-tier BECAUSE it was 'carebear' aka realistically playable. I watched both my brothers and my cousins essentially lose their lives playing FFXI while I was still hanging with friends, going outside and still had time to play WoW and succeed in both pve and pvp.

It's almost funny because realistic playability certainly isn't in modern Blizzard's crosshairs.

And uh. Before you keep tooting your own horn there, you're still a loser child even if you think having friends, going outside and having "responsibility" made you an adult. You play World of Fucking Warcraft.

[Gavll]

I've leveled around 10 level 60s in the past 3 years on private servers and I'm not talking about level 60 dungeons lol. I'm talking about all those elites in the world that you almost never find groups for them. Or the low level dungeons, that btw are not even worth doing for xp. So you have to find not only people, but people that want to do those dungeons for fun.

Of course I didn't play on Nost PvP, because 10k population is retarded and not blizzlike at all, with 10k population I'm pretty sure it's much easier to find groups. But on a server with 2k population, when most people are close to 60 after several months it's shit.

I have no idea why the fuck are you talking about instant gratification, I'm just talking about how the game actually does not fit the year 2018 player mentality and why it won't be any "2004" again. You seem to have no idea what this thread is about, well it's not about instant gratification, CRZ and people needing to suck it up, it's about will the people still play it like it was 2004. And the answer is: no fucking way.

So it's not ME wanting "instant gratification", I'm actually pretty much against any changes to the game, it's about the vast majority of people. Without people playing the game and then actually staying in the game for more than 1 month, it will end up like before, server imbalances, people raging for merges and all that shit. I don't really care, I look at this classic WoW like some kind of museum, I don't want to relive and re-experience things from the past, that's just not possible. There was a remake of Psycho a while back, with the same camera movement and editing, but was it better than the original? Or even close? Nope.

Well I don't know what PS you've been playing on but on mine I've found the difficulty of getting groups to be no different to what I recall from when classic was current retail. So in my experience you will get the 2004 atmosphere back.

[Usagi Senshi]

FFXI and EQ sucked dick, you were a nobody scrub unless you played 24/7 and had no life, camped a certain mob for 3 weeks straight, farmed until your eyes bleed, shit and pissed in a bucket and told your pizza dealer to just walk inside to hand deliver that shit. They were games for losers, for kids without jobs and responsibilities.

WoW was god-tier BECAUSE it was 'carebear' aka realistically playable. I watched both my brothers and my cousins essentially lose their lives playing FFXI while I was still hanging with friends, going outside and still had time to play WoW and succeed in both pve and pvp.

Holy shit, were you fucking videotaping me or something? Gosh, don't be a creeper, that's creepy, yo!

LOL, if you were pvping and raiding successfully in vanilla, you had less of a life than I did playing FFXI (one of the best MMOs ever made, your loss), WoW, and GW1 at the same time in 2005, while playing a bunch of console games.

[Guffnat]

Well I don't know what PS you've been playing on but on mine I've found the difficulty of getting groups to be no different to what I recall from when classic was current retail. So in my experience you will get the 2004 atmosphere back.

QFT. I play on a low-pop (~1000-1300 during primetime) PS and grouping has never been an issue. It is as close to 2004 as it can get.

[Sylvaeres]

Classic will fail.

This. People will play it for a week and then quickly realize how shitty Vanilla wow is. Same people who proclaim it's greatness are now the same people who cried about grinding AP for more than one weapon

- - - Updated - - -

In the case Classic fails (Would be down to Blizzard's greed or incompetence, not listening to the community who has constructed things like polls)

We'd all just go back to other servers permanently, that ship would've sailed forever, and Blizzard would have ruined their only chance to have vanilla under their thumb rather than someone elses.

This is Blizzard's only chance to win back a community that has wanted them to produce a legitimate and official classic game, if they produce that game and it isn't done correctly, it will almost definitely fail. It's not like this wasn't ever on the table either, Blizzard has a bad track record, not a lot of the classic community really trusts Blizzard anymore, but they're all willing to see Blizzard give a genuine shot at it, injecting their passion and love for this game back into it for once.

This is such a bunch of idiotic nonsense. Blame Blizzard wahhhhh. You don't know what you're talking about. You're one of the people I described in the above post

[crusadernero]

I doubt we will ever get the feeling we had back in 2004. When we all started out with the very first character. I to this day still remember walking up to Stormwind or especially Ironforge. The journey from zone to zone, never know what to expect, cause you havent seen any of it. There wasnt that much stuff online either about it like its now. What talents to pick? How many for a red quest? Where should I level? Millions of questions and wondering first time around - but 14 years later? We know everything.

Just look at how BfA is consumed now. People will pretty much have seen and many done everything in BfAs beta. If you dont play alpha/beta, you most likely have seen each and every zone and raid on youtube or twitch.

But hey, im gonna test classic out for sure :P

[Lazuli]

It's almost funny because realistic playability certainly isn't in modern Blizzard's crosshairs.

And uh. Before you keep tooting your own horn there, you're still a loser child even if you think having friends, going outside and having "responsibility" made you an adult. You play World of Fucking Warcraft.

I see I've triggered someone, and you can stop putting words in my posts cuz I never said that you're also pretty dumb for thinking playing a video game somehow removes the fact that I'm an adult, so GG bro hehe get some friends.

Holy shit, were you fucking videotaping me or something? Gosh, don't be a creeper, that's creepy, yo!

LOL, if you were pvping and raiding successfully in vanilla, you had less of a life than I did playing FFXI (one of the best MMOs ever made, your loss), WoW, and GW1 at the same time in 2005, while playing a bunch of console games.

hahaha *confused*

[ifrah]

I doubt we will ever get the feeling we had back in 2004. When we all started out with the very first character. I to this day still remember walking up to Stormwind or especially Ironforge. The journey from zone to zone, never know what to expect, cause you havent seen any of it. There wasnt that much stuff online either about it like its now. What talents to pick? How many for a red quest? Where should I level? Millions of questions and wondering first time around - but 14 years later? We know everything.

Just look at how BfA is consumed now. People will pretty much have seen and many done everything in BfAs beta. If you dont play alpha/beta, you most likely have seen each and every zone and raid on youtube or twitch.

But hey, im gonna test classic out for sure :P

And there is the summary of the whole classic/vanilla thing for many people. Although I enjoyed vanilla, especially the raiding all the way from MC to Naxx, thinking purely objectively the whole raiding was utter garbage compared to today's standards. Spending (almost(?), didn't count) more time farming consumables or idiotic resistance gears than doing the actual encounters. That's the hallmark of a good game, right? But it didn't matter for many of us back then, because it was all new experience. And that shaped the server communities as they were, which in my opinion what compensated the retrospectively looking, rather poor game design all the way.
In the later expansions the encounter design, including the massive (and massively better) overhaul in the consumable system is light years ahead. Community, not quite the same any more. You can blame the game and Blizzard for ruining it all you want, but I would strongly disagree on this. It's hard to re-invent the game while keeping it the same. So we, the community, get bored and frustrated and blame the game being shit because we're not reliving "the 2004 experience." It's like blaming the world we're not having the childhood years playing in the yard over and over again. Vanilla, or insert any old game here, was a blast back in days, but the old times don't come back, no matter what.

[ossyc]

It will be even better this time, imo.

Wow at launch only had around a 250,000 - 500,000, which clearly escalated very quickly.

This time around they have a player pool of potentially 25 million, in addition to those that may try after viewing it on Battle.net.

How many players will play on launch day? Millions.

How many after a few months? Certainly a healthy amount will continue playing due to the enormous player pool.

I can tell you this much: the numbers on launch day will be off the charts.

[Awelon]

Perhaps a first few months will be quite queue-heavy, just like in back old days! But I think that after all the hype and dust settles down, the regular classic players will be measured in tens of thousands. I think somewhere between 70000 - 90000 active players might be a realistic bet. That's because we can only imagine all the bitching and whining dominating the forums here and on Battle.net.

[crusadernero]

And there is the summary of the whole classic/vanilla thing for many people. Although I enjoyed vanilla, especially the raiding all the way from MC to Naxx, thinking purely objectively the whole raiding was utter garbage compared to today's standards. Spending (almost(?), didn't count) more time farming consumables or idiotic resistance gears than doing the actual encounters. That's the hallmark of a good game, right? But it didn't matter for many of us back then, because it was all new experience. And that shaped the server communities as they were, which in my opinion what compensated the retrospectively looking, rather poor game design all the way.
In the later expansions the encounter design, including the massive (and massively better) overhaul in the consumable system is light years ahead. Community, not quite the same any more. You can blame the game and Blizzard for ruining it all you want, but I would strongly disagree on this. It's hard to re-invent the game while keeping it the same. So we, the community, get bored and frustrated and blame the game being shit because we're not reliving "the 2004 experience." It's like blaming the world we're not having the childhood years playing in the yard over and over again. Vanilla, or insert any old game here, was a blast back in days, but the old times don't come back, no matter what.

Correct. Just as I would spend hours upon hours playing mario on my nintendo and I think back on that as a awesome time and great game, I dont have the same feeling when I play it today. Sure its fun, but it does not feel the same.


Now in classic we will experience each and every zone that everyone knows about. There is nothing in classic that people will experience for the first time. Everything has been said, seen and done.

Also, we cant "force" ourself to feel the same when playing old games we really care about. Does not work that way. Just as pretty much everything in this world, we move along.

[Deleted]

Classic will fail.

It will fail if it cost something. There are alternatives and i cant See a difference to 2004 when i use em

[Celarent]

Why do you think I've been calling it a museum? It has no prospering future, just visit and relax.

This, more or less.

Classic has potential to retain a customer segment that Activision-Blizzard's losing through changes in the market until Blizzard can figure out how to capitalize on it again. My interest is to play Classic regularly but judiciously because its pace is slow and its content lacks peer pressure from immediacy. That's a step up from my current investment in Blizzard titles, which is none. (Although I really like my investment in ATVI stock. Dang!)

[Deleted]

I think in the first month classic servers will be very popular and then when all casuals are remembered what playtime they have to offer for getting a mount for example they will stop playing

At least I think this is what will happen to me