Why would any one play Vanilla ...

[Deleted]

Numbers talk, retards like you don't.

15 mill to 5 mil in what? A few years? Think that says everything tbhh

How can People who use the sub Numbers as an example of how bad retail is never take into Account that the Game is 14 years old and that MMOs may not cater to the younger audiences as much as they do to us, who played WoW for more than a decade?

Do you guys really think that Classic, an even more grindy Game than retail, will put WoW back to Wotlk Numbers?

Not trying to step on anyones feet, but please be real to yourself

[Deleted]

How can People who use the sub Numbers as an example of how bad retail is never take into Account that the Game is 14 years old and that MMOs may not cater to the younger audiences as much as they do to us, who played WoW for more than a decade?

Do you guys really think that Classic, an even more grindy Game than retail, will put WoW back to Wotlk Numbers?

Not trying to step on anyones feet, but please be real to yourself

Younger audiences deserve acid thrown in their faces imo

[Guardian Bob]

How can People who use the sub Numbers as an example of how bad retail is never take into Account that the Game is 14 years old and that MMOs may not cater to the younger audiences as much as they do to us, who played WoW for more than a decade?

An older game isn't an excuse for the lack of sub numbers. Lots of old games that retain their player base, like Team Fortress 2 is from 2007 which is still the most played game on Steam. Counter Strike is from 2000 and is still one of the most played games of all time.

WoW went to hell after Catacylsm was released for many good reasons, and continued to drop for even worse ones.

Do you guys really think that Classic, an even more grindy Game than retail, will put WoW back to Wotlk Numbers?

You really think Classic was more grindy? Especially compared to Legions artifacts or even Azerite with BfA? Like I've said in other posts, in Vanilla the grinding stops at some point, after which you just farm for what you need in raids. Up until BfA ends you will probably be always farming Azerite.

Not trying to step on anyones feet, but please be real to yourself

The thing to take from this is that BfA doesn't take skill, while Vanilla does. BfA confuses players that time = skill, while Vanilla rewards players who use skill. And that pisses off Blizzard cause after a while the skill aspect of WoW was slowly removed in favor of time. It doesn't take skill to log in everyday to do your dailies, while it does take skill to pull more than two trash mobs in Vanilla. Turning off War Mode in BfA to avoid PvP to go about your business doesn't take skill, while running around Felwood looking to herbs while dealing with gankers does take skill. Grouping with players and not being terrible in dungeons takes real skill, while using LFG to get teleported to the dungeon does not.

By BfA, WoW has become so casual that people don't wanna sink their time into a game that doesn't take effort.

[Eapoe]

Sure you didn't

Don’t get it, does this count as a rebuttal these days?
As stated, I’ve never seen a retail fanboy claim Classic is shit. I’ve seen people who play retail go into forums and talk about how Classic isn’t as good as everyone remembers, and how people look at it with rose tinted glasses. How Classic isn’t as great as everyone remembers. I’ve never seen anyone openly claim Vanilla was shit though.
On the flip side, I’ve seen plenty of people who have never even played retail come in and discuss on forums as well as create new ones, about the current xpac being bad, the “fall of WoW,” and how Classic is just oh so much better.
I’m not saying either side is correct as most is personal opinion, it being objectively honest, I have seen much more straight up bashing of retail and retail players as opposed to seeing people bash Classic. (Stating something isn’t as good as remembered is tbashkng a product before you try using that arguement).

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An older game isn't an excuse for the lack of sub numbers. Lots of old games that retain their player base, like Team Fortress 2 is from 2007 which is still the most played game on Steam. Counter Strike is from 2000 and is still one of the most played games of all time.

WoW went to hell after Catacylsm was released for many good reasons, and continued to drop for even worse ones.

You really think Classic was more grindy? Especially compared to Legions artifacts or even Azerite with BfA? Like I've said in other posts, in Vanilla the grinding stops at some point, after which you just farm for what you need in raids. Up until BfA ends you will probably be always farming Azerite.

The thing to take from this is that BfA doesn't take skill, while Vanilla does. BfA confuses players that time = skill, while Vanilla rewards players who use skill. And that pisses off Blizzard cause after a while the skill aspect of WoW was slowly removed in favor of time. It doesn't take skill to log in everyday to do your dailies, while it does take skill to pull more than two trash mobs in Vanilla. Turning off War Mode in BfA to avoid PvP to go about your business doesn't take skill, while running around Felwood looking to herbs while dealing with gankers does take skill. Grouping with players and not being terrible in dungeons takes real skill, while using LFG to get teleported to the dungeon does not.

By BfA, WoW has become so casual that people don't wanna sink their time into a game that doesn't take effort.

This just made my day. The personal anecdotes, the opinion stated as fact, the overall misunderstanding of things. Thank you.

[chrisnumbers]

An older game isn't an excuse for the lack of sub numbers.

tf are you talking about? There is no lack of sub numbers. Millions of people play. No other MMO comes close, and very few games this old of any genre come close.

[Mirishka]

Man some people get so salty about the choices other people make with a video game. If you choose vanilla than play vanilla. If you like BFA than play BFA. If you are like me and will play both then go for it. Just a video game... if mine has more players than yours is a driving factor in why you play it than you likely need to examine life choices. Both will be fine in their own right. BFA will go on living and when the next expansion comes out it will be fine too. When vanilla comes out it will find its place too. If its 20 full servers or just 1 than it has its place. I don't understand why it really matters to people all that much?

I couldn't agree more. If I lived to be 120 years old, I would still never understand the childish obsession some people have with how other people spend their time.

[kyoloco]

xmog system

i wouldnt even log in to current wow if xmogs werent a thing

[skannerz22]

we have had our bfa talents for 8 years and i want to play the original vanilla talents that existed for 6 years which RIOT games stole and put in league of legends

[Guardian Bob]

This just made my day. The personal anecdotes, the opinion stated as fact, the overall misunderstanding of things. Thank you.

Ah, I see you're one of those people who think statistics aren't fact. Though if you add up all the Counter-Strikes then they are still the most played game on Steam. Also the highest player count for WoW was something like 12 million, while these games that are old as shit are enjoying millions of players. I'm sure BfA has something less than 12 million, cause otherwise Blizzard would report it. Not only does age not matter in games, but Blizzard's subscription model certainly seems to hinder it, as these games on Steam don't have a subscription model. Ask why Fortnite is the reason why a significant amount of people are divorcing. Blizzard's business model for WoW is rather dated.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/...ands-of-games/

Team Fortress 2 50,191,347 <---Old ass game
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 46,305,966 <---Old ass game
PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS 36,604,134
Unturned 27,381,399
Left 4 Dead 2 23,143,723
PAYDAY 2 18,643,807
Garry's Mod 18,576,379 <---Old ass game
Warframe 16,332,217
Counter-Strike: Source 15,001,876 <---Old ass game

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tf are you talking about? There is no lack of sub numbers. Millions of people play. No other MMO comes close, and very few games this old of any genre come close.

Oh yea? What are the sub numbers? That's right, you don't know. Nobody knows cause it got so bad that Blizzard stopped reporting it. According to WoW Census, it's about 3 million give or take.

[chrisnumbers]

Oh yea? What are the sub numbers? That's right, you don't know. Nobody knows cause it got so bad that Blizzard stopped reporting it. According to WoW Census, it's about 3 million give or take.

3 million is totally lacking. lol.

[kiramon]

Eq2 has their “vanilla” server - well it was but essentially is a gated way to reintroduce expansions in a much more truncated fashion.

However, what they have is a slower version of the same game on live with the new content being years behind.

People really like it there tho.

I however think it’s pointless and slow.

[schwarzkopf]

Same reason I rewatch Babylon 5.

[bearlolzx]

no way blizz is gonna release vanilla in its 2005/2006 state its just economic suicide once ppl see the boxed 480p pixelated dwarf beard its over

[Deleted]

Because I wouldn't even play retail for free, to answer the OP. I understand a lot of people would, though. If Vanilla came bundled with retail, I wouldn't touch the newer expansions.

[chronia]

Though if you add up all the Counter-Strikes then they are still the most played game on Steam. Also the highest player count for WoW was something like 12 million, while these games that are old as shit are enjoying millions of players.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/...ands-of-games/

Team Fortress 2 50,191,347 <---Old ass game
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 46,305,966 <---Old ass game
PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS 36,604,134
Unturned 27,381,399
Left 4 Dead 2 23,143,723
PAYDAY 2 18,643,807
Garry's Mod 18,576,379 <---Old ass game
Warframe 16,332,217
Counter-Strike: Source 15,001,876 <---Old ass game
[/url]

Those numbers say nothing about the number of concurrent players playing the game actively at this moment though (WoW's record is 12 million of unique accounts being subbed in the same financial quarter). Its the number of unique players (i wouldn't use unique players but unique accounts, but thats me) that have player the game atleast once in the lifetime of the game.

As your source says:

The following table represents a small selection of the top games with Achievements on Steam, as ranked by number of total unique players (i.e. the number of Steam users who have played the game at least once) as of July 1, 2018

WoW had 100.000.000 unique players already in december 2013 (+-twice as much as the top runner in your list, and thats measured more than 4.5 years later), see http://media.wow-europe.com/infograp...fographic.html

The thing to take from this is that BfA doesn't take skill, while Vanilla does. BfA confuses players that time = skill, while Vanilla rewards players who use skill. And that pisses off Blizzard cause after a while the skill aspect of WoW was slowly removed in favor of time. It doesn't take skill to log in everyday to do your dailies, while it does take skill to pull more than two trash mobs in Vanilla. Turning off War Mode in BfA to avoid PvP to go about your business doesn't take skill, while running around Felwood looking to herbs while dealing with gankers does take skill. Grouping with players and not being terrible in dungeons takes real skill, while using LFG to get teleported to the dungeon does not.

This is kind of exactly the opposite. Most of Vanilla is made of huge time sinks (travel, attunements, reputations, professions e.t.c.), while newer expansions, including BFA, lets you do stuff in less time, but the higher end content is alot harder (and thus takes more skill), stuff like Mythic raids, high M+, high level PVP takes alot more skill than the vanilla equivalents (raiding with one button specs, much skillfull). And let me say thing, walking to a dingeon in Vanilla takes as much skill as queueing up in LFG (both doesn't take any skill), and if in BFA you are terrible at playing the dungeon, you will get kicked, and way earlier than you would be in Vanilla, since getting a replacement in Vanilla is a huge time sink again so groups were usually pretty hesitant to outright kick ppl. Same as your PVP / Warmode example, if you didn't want to PVP or get ganked in Vanilla , you rolled PVE in Vanilla, didn't take skill either. You can say alot about Vanilla, but that it took more skill than current WoW is imho not really one of those things.

[Hottage]

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/...ands-of-games/

Team Fortress 2 50,191,347 <---Old ass game
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 46,305,966 <---Old ass game
PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS 36,604,134
Unturned 27,381,399
Left 4 Dead 2 23,143,723
PAYDAY 2 18,643,807
Garry's Mod 18,576,379 <---Old ass game
Warframe 16,332,217
Counter-Strike: Source 15,001,876 <---Old ass game

While I agree with the sentiment that there is definitely an audience for retro games, these numbers are somewhat misleading.

Especially given that CS:GO is hardly "old ass" and Team Fortress 2 is still under active development / commercial exploitation by Valve.

[Guardian Bob]

no way blizz is gonna release vanilla in its 2005/2006 state its just economic suicide once ppl see the boxed 480p pixelated dwarf beard its over

That 2006 game engine actually runs 1080p widescreen for me. Wasn't it until WoD when they finally redid the models? That wasn't long ago.

This is kind of exactly the opposite. Most of Vanilla is made of huge time sinks (travel, attunements, reputations, professions e.t.c.), while newer expansions, including BFA, lets you do stuff in less time, but the higher end content is alot harder (and thus takes more skill), stuff like Mythic raids, high M+, high level PVP takes alot more skill than the vanilla equivalents (raiding with one button specs, much skillfull). And let me say thing, walking to a dingeon in Vanilla takes as much skill as queueing up in LFG (both doesn't take any skill), and if in BFA you are terrible at playing the dungeon, you will get kicked, and way earlier than you would be in Vanilla, since getting a replacement in Vanilla is a huge time sink again so groups were usually pretty hesitant to outright kick ppl. Same as your PVP / Warmode example, if you didn't want to PVP or get ganked in Vanilla , you rolled PVE in Vanilla, didn't take skill either. You can say alot about Vanilla, but that it took more skill than current WoW is imho not really one of those things.

I've played both Vanilla and WoD relatively recently in both high end raiding guilds and here's my take.

Firstly, Vanilla dungeons end. At some point you don't need to step back into a 5 man dungeon ever again. You get your gear, and that's it. No need to farm "insert new currency here". No need to do daily dungeon rewards. The same applies to raids. You don't need to do Heroic or normal or god forbid LFR to get geared to do Mythic raids. If you're in a high level raiding guild, that's what you did cause you wanted to progress. In Vanilla you set a day for ZG or BWL when you're progressing AQ40 or even Naxx and that's it. No need to do the same raid three times in a week.

Secondly, there are no daily quests. No need to log in everyday to do some daily to advance either in reputation or some resource that allows you to get better gear. In Vanilla if I wanted to advance in reputation I just killed things a lot. I didn't have to wait until tomorrow to kill things to get rep. I've actually worked with my guild leader in farming dungeons with players to get their rep high enough so they could enter Naxx. Of course there are no attunements in modern WoW, but whatever. Point is if I want to sit down and put on some music and kill something for rep, I can do that. Modern WoW I have to force myself to log in everyday otherwise I'll take me another day later to achieve what I want to achieve. How long did it take people to farm for their legendary rings in Mists Of Pandaria? You have to wait months, no ifs ands or buts. That pissed a lot of people off.

Finally, you farm for resources in Vanilla. Yes, I farmed for food and herbs and ore cause I needed the matts to raid. You also do that in modern WoW, plus artifacts or Azerite. Profession leveling is a pain in Vanilla, but it does what it's suppose to do and that's make gold for your character cause gold mattered in Vanilla. Now gold is how you pay for your subscription, or did they do away with that?

I don't exactly see how Vanilla WoW had you farm more than modern WoW? The only difference is time, in that in Vanilla you could spend all day farming, where modern WoW has a time limit which could result in weeks or months of farming.

While I agree with the sentiment that there is definitely an audience for retro games, these numbers are somewhat misleading.

Especially given that CS:GO is hardly "old ass" and Team Fortress 2 is still under active development / commercial exploitation by Valve.

Team Fortress 2 is based on Team Fortress, an old Quake mod game from 1996. Nothing much has changed there except for character models. Counter Strike even had less changes from 1.6 to Source to GO. The modern versions of these games mostly benefit from graphics upgrades and nothing more. In other words, age doesn't matter when it comes to game popularity. Sure they added maps and tweaked the game mechanics, but it is the same game from decades ago. Rocket jumping was invented in Team Fortress Mod, as was de_dust in CounterStrike 1.6. You still rocket jump in TF2, and you still have de_dust in Global Offensive. You can't say the same things about Classic WoW to BfA. They are two entirely different games. Nobody here wants to admit that Blizzard screwed up over the years and just built a worse game.

[Hottage]

Team Fortress 2 is based on Team Fortress, an old Quake mod game from 1996. Nothing much has changed there except for character models.

Outrageously inaccurate, Team Fortress 2 has the entire gear system to set it apart from TF. You can drastically change how your character is played/balanced with different loadouts.

On top of that there are entirely new maps and mechanics from the original. TF didn't even have the concept of the Payload.

[Hastis]

if you wanna play just play if you dont just play retail why people are thinking that if they dont want classic then noone wants ...

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

they're just saying that to sound hard.

classic is going to suck and then die. all these people are gonna be like "huahua i forgot, im 35 now and without my teenage blinders on this is a shit game!"

Ill play classic pvp didn't actually suck like bfa or legion which are straight garbage outside of 3v3. You literally do nothing but hit the things that light up.