How long until people notice that Classic was 90% leveling and stop playing?

[Mirishka]

It took me about 8 months of on and off leveling to hit 60. I only got one other character to 60 within vanilla. It was painful. Some people like that though.

Level 40ish to 50ish (maybe like 36-46, something like that) I literally just killed gorillas in STV. Around level 55 there weren't enough quests and I ended up just grinding mobs in EPL and Winterspring.

I grinded mobs in Felwoods/Winterspring (IIRC) for most of 56-60 on my hunter. Good times.

[Jonnusthegreat]

You must have been a pretty bad player if you actually believe the only way to make gold was by playing a DPS class.

A dps player could always make more than a healer player, same skillset.

[Mirishka]

Why do all these doomsayers infest these forums? Let people form their own opinion of the game.

"Stop liking what I don't like" is a meme for a reason.

[Triptych]

YEt I found the leveling experience to be one of the poorest laid out, lack of true story in the quest, felt clumsy. It had dead zones if you could not find and instance group or you would have to spend 45 minutes to travel somewhere to find out there is 6 quests that are your level and you have out leveled the zone already.....these were all vanilla leveling issues. And yes with most MMO's the real game begins at max level, look at why SWTOR died the end game was a mess and PVP became boring.

I guess it's just a matter of what you find enjoyable.

Many people describe the quests as "poorly laid out", but to me, that was what made them so good. Rather than having a quest giver send you to deliver an item to the guy at the other end of the street, you instead had a guy send you from Darkshire to talk to someone in Menethil Harbor. Or to get one item from a hippogryph in Feralas, one item from an ogre in Dustwallow, and one item from a naga in STV. Stuff like that made it feel more like an adventure. Sure, it's absolutely not efficient, but I never cared for efficiency.

I never faced a "dead zone" during the leveling experience, probably because I was always quite inefficient. If I needed to kill 20 troggs for the quest objective, I'd inevitably end up killing two or three times that number, just because I was wandering around and trying to get at some tin deposits while in the area. So where other players reached a point where they found themselves having to grind XP, my "grinding" was sort of naturally absorbed into the experience instead of being a specific, soulless, activity.

So yeah. I'm not refuting your points, I'm just saying that I see it differently. And I've never viewed Endgame as the be-all and end-all. I still don't, not with SWTOR, and not even in the current retail WoW environment.

[Hctaz]

Ever since BC came out I can vividly remember many people complaining about leveling and just wanting to get max level, so they can start the 'real' game. I'm seeing complaints about it pop up every single day, and most of the discussions in the Classic forum also seem to be about max level content. So I was wondering - how long will it take people to realize that Classic basically WAS leveling and not much else?

Reading the forums you really get the impression that people rushed to max level and started raiding as soon as possible. But in reality most people never did anything other than level. 1-60 was the main content of the game that most players experienced. And people loved it, which is why WoW blew up in the first place. It wasn't about rushing to 60 and farming gear - it was about the journey. But nowadays it seems like everyone sees leveling as a chore, so I really wonder how long this will last.

The problem nowadays is that the game shifted away from leveling and RPG elements to end game content. Arenas, raids, heroic dungeons... they all became THE thing. Plus, everybody wants to experience the new content. The complaints came in once BC came out probably for multiple reasons, especially if you wanted to make a Belf pally or Draenei Shaman. Gotta level all the way through that Vanilla just to join your friends in the BC content.

Leveling isn't designed to be the game anymore. I legitimately hate leveling in current WoW, but I would gladly do so again in Classic... and I know from... recent... experience
>.>
<.<
..shhh. Got bored of Legion a little.

[Nenavn]

I think that's a part of why people want to go back and play WoW Classic.

[Mauthe]

Have played on several different private (classic) servers, have done the grind several times in the past few years. 6-7 days /played is generally what it takes. In the current game, maybe 2.5-3ish days /played? Not a tremendous difference.

I think the problem with Blizzard-classic is: the reliving-classic "scene" has played itself out on private servers already. Those who were really interested in it already banged it out on Nostalrius, and Kronos etc. At this point I'm pretty nostalgia'd out. Part of what fueled it was the stagnancy of the market during MoP and WoD and those expansions being more than mediocre after cataclysm sucking balls. The environment that made replaying classic compelling has deteriorated and continues to depreciate as the current game improves and new games enter the market.

I don't see classic servers attracting a large portion of the current playerbase for various reasons, and I really don't believe its going to make a huge population resub and play just for classic. I feel like it's a pretty big mistake of blizzard to invest much man-power into it, and will overall, hurt the current retail game.

Legion was a big upswing in the quality, player-base and attention to the game regardless of what people say around here. How are they going to launch something thats going to compete and detract from the live version? It's just not going to work. I wouldn't be surprised that like a year into BFA you'll get,''Uh, well... we're not going to launch classic. Yada yada, conflict of interest, unable to recreate what we're happy with, we tried, sorry,''.

[Memefarce]

any news on when classic is actually going to happen?

[HavokHeart]

You must have been a pretty bad player if you actually believe the only way to make gold was by playing a DPS class.

As a tank or healer I usually organized live strat runs and reserved righteous orb drops. They sold for at least 50g each and I got 2 or 3 most runs. Easily making 100's of gold per day. Easily had enough gold to buy anything I wanted.

[Guardian Bob]

As a tank or healer I usually organized live strat runs and reserved righteous orb drops. They sold for at least 50g each and I got 2 or 3 most runs. Easily making 100's of gold per day. Easily had enough gold to buy anything I wanted.

Herbalist and Alchemy make easy gold. Any other progression is for the guild, or have engineering for PVP.

any news on when classic is actually going to happen?

Not anytime soon. My guess is that it's around after when Battle For Azeroth has the last content patch released. Blizzard devs are afraid of the truth that people may like the older Classic WoW better than retail WoW, so they won't have something like BFA compete with Classic. When BFA has a lull is when they'll release Classic.

[Morbownz]

As a tank or healer I usually organized live strat runs and reserved righteous orb drops. They sold for at least 50g each and I got 2 or 3 most runs. Easily making 100's of gold per day. Easily had enough gold to buy anything I wanted.

Exactly. It's about utilising the strong points of your class/role which is what anybody with any sense would do.

[kronides]

I don't know about other people or what they'll do, but leveling / the world is all I care about in Classic. I don't plan to play end game again, and anyway I think that won't be the easiest thing in the world to do, how many 40-man guilds will there be? Certainly not as many as there were then. These days it's hard to get even 10-20 people all together on the same page, unless you're a Top 100 guild or similar.

[iamthedevil]

I grinded mobs in Felwoods/Winterspring (IIRC) for most of 56-60 on my hunter. Good times.

Now that I think about it, I even did Silithus grinding for a bit. The undead night elves town. I got a epic Lifestone drop that i sold for 400g! Thats the best thing to ever come out of silithus lol.

[Guardian Bob]

I don't know about other people or what they'll do, but leveling / the world is all I care about in Classic. I don't plan to play end game again, and anyway I think that won't be the easiest thing in the world to do, how many 40-man guilds will there be? Certainly not as many as there were then. These days it's hard to get even 10-20 people all together on the same page, unless you're a Top 100 guild or similar.

Remember WoW isn't one big server where everyone plays at the same time. You have realms like Windrunner or Light's Hope, and etc. So I'd imagine that you won't find a lack of people running around Classic. And if Blizzard does it right and doesn't screw up, there's a ton of people playing Vanilla on private servers who are planning to bring their friends over to make a 40 man raiding guild.

From my experience with private servers, when a new realm is made that is fresh, people jump on it like crazy. People don't have a problem raiding MC, BWL, and ZG. Its when AQ is released is when people stop raiding, cause that's when raiding gets hardcore. In my opinion, that's when raiding gets fun.

This thread was started to pock fun on Vanilla, cause there's a lot of people who believe that retail WoW is the best WoW. But Battle for Azeroth seems like just another Cataclysm slash Warlords of Draenor combined into one expansion. Better question is, how long until people notice that BFA is just Cata with WoD flavoring?

[Nomads]

Remember WoW isn't one big server where everyone plays at the same time. You have realms like Windrunner or Light's Hope, and etc. So I'd imagine that you won't find a lack of people running around Classic. And if Blizzard does it right and doesn't screw up, there's a ton of people playing Vanilla on private servers who are planning to bring their friends over to make a 40 man raiding guild.

From my experience with private servers, when a new realm is made that is fresh, people jump on it like crazy. People don't have a problem raiding MC, BWL, and ZG. Its when AQ is released is when people stop raiding, cause that's when raiding gets hardcore. In my opinion, that's when raiding gets fun.

This thread was started to pock fun on Vanilla, cause there's a lot of people who believe that retail WoW is the best WoW. But Battle for Azeroth seems like just another Cataclysm slash Warlords of Draenor combined into one expansion. Better question is, how long until people notice that BFA is just Cata with WoD flavoring?

The BWL gear is probably the coolest looking too. Dunno if that has anything to do with it. Dragon-themed loot is always my transmog in retail.

[LionSinMaikeru]

Ever since BC came out I can vividly remember many people complaining about leveling and just wanting to get max level, so they can start the 'real' game. I'm seeing complaints about it pop up every single day, and most of the discussions in the Classic forum also seem to be about max level content. So I was wondering - how long will it take people to realize that Classic basically WAS leveling and not much else?

Reading the forums you really get the impression that people rushed to max level and started raiding as soon as possible. But in reality most people never did anything other than level. 1-60 was the main content of the game that most players experienced. And people loved it, which is why WoW blew up in the first place. It wasn't about rushing to 60 and farming gear - it was about the journey. But nowadays it seems like everyone sees leveling as a chore, so I really wonder how long this will last.

I don't know anyone who complained about this.

The "real" game was the whole game.

People like to talk big about endgame but very few people actually raided successfully in Vanilla or did high end PvP. The "real" game for most people was leveling, and making alts, and just existing in the world.

And that's why I'm personally looking forward to Vanilla because I miss the experience of leveling a character in the world. Whatever is in the game today cannot be called "leveling a character" because the immersion and customization and charm have all been throttled to hell and back. It's a shell of what it used to be. And also because I'm excited to actually progress and do raids like C'thun when they're relevant. In Vanilla I only managed to do the base raids.

[klepp0906]

who wants to tell em that leveling is what mmorpgs are about?

i mean, theme park games did a number on the kids these days but... I personally look forward to pantheon and it taking like 6 months to reach cap if your hardcore.

[Kilee25]

Ever since BC came out I can vividly remember many people complaining about leveling and just wanting to get max level, so they can start the 'real' game. I'm seeing complaints about it pop up every single day, and most of the discussions in the Classic forum also seem to be about max level content. So I was wondering - how long will it take people to realize that Classic basically WAS leveling and not much else?

Reading the forums you really get the impression that people rushed to max level and started raiding as soon as possible. But in reality most people never did anything other than level. 1-60 was the main content of the game that most players experienced. And people loved it, which is why WoW blew up in the first place. It wasn't about rushing to 60 and farming gear - it was about the journey. But nowadays it seems like everyone sees leveling as a chore, so I really wonder how long this will last.

I had some friends who'd come over from everquest, and they rushed to 60. It was my first MMO, so I did not realize there was an "end game" per se. I thought that like other RPGs that I had played in the past, the point of the game was to play through the story, but that once I hit 60, I would eventually run out of story and simply need to start a new character if I wanted a different experience.

The concept of doing raid content, and that it would last YEARS trying to gather gear and make it through them, was completely foreign to me. I think that if I were playing Vanilla these days, knowing what I know now, I would probably chew through the content much faster than I did previously. I would also be much less patient with players who didn't play well, than I was originally. I now know how easy it is to DPS with most of the DPS classes, and I would probably lose my mind waiting for some people to master simple cast rotations. Back when I was first playing Vanilla, I had no idea what was going on or what other people were doing, or not doing as the case may have been.

[Kokolums]

There was more than raiding. Some people played in Alterac valley all day. Some did AV, WSG, AB all day. Some people were in PvP guilds working on Rank 14. Some people were farmers amassing gold. Many people were just in it for the vibrant in-game social community and we're there to hang out chat and have fun with friends first and maybe run a dungeon second. Some we're in it just to roll a new toon on new servers that opened once per month and level race others to 60. (that actually became a thing on its own and started to expand the meaning and meta of the level game).

[Nyel]

lololol the title is so so so so so wrong

Classic max level endgame was a lot more challenging, enticing and tedious than it was in any expansion.