Onyxia Scale Cloak - Its the small things that made Vanilla

[Trend]

Im trying my best to understand what you are trying to say here but i cant quite grasp it my bad english probably

In my opinion WoW would be today in a better spot if it kept SOME of the old philosophies from Vanilla.
I wouldnt exactly say 20 million...but if BfA can have 3 million subscribers, in my opinion a Vanilla like expansion would have the same.

I don't think you understand the context in which WoW existed in 2004. It was a different time and few had the personal knowledge to compare WoW directly with any other game and for those who did, the comparison was with WoW being the much more casual offering. There is no way in hell 3 million people want to play a tedious MMO again. Clearly that's just my opinion, but I see absolutely no evidence for such a bold anticipation.

People love talking shit about how hard their lives used to be, walking up hill both directions and having to pull over to find a pay phone and all that nonsense such as this with Onyxia cloaks. Very few actually want to live through all that garbage again. It’s just the kind of thing that seems much cooler when you’re not actually slogging through it.

For example in TBC there was a automated tool to find random people to do a dungeon with.
The tool was hated by the entire community! To the point of almost no one today even knows that tool existed.
From the wowwiki: People didnt want to group with random people

Then mid/late wotlk came and LFD was implemented.
Now suddenly people want to group with random people? Out of nowhere?

I have no idea what you’re talking about and I would be interested if you can post the link - curious if it would ring any bells.

But in any case, you can’t compare something that is not built in to something that is built in. That’s apples versus oranges, not the same dynamic at all. Also, just because someone writes their opinion on wowwiki doesn’t make it true.

Again, you have to understand the context of the game at the time. The people who were excited about LFD coming in 3.3.0 were the people who simply did not get to do dungeons much (or at all) before then. And that type of player would not have been going to a fan site to learn about some tool (or anything else.) Hell, I was in a group in beta that had a plan in place for raid progression after retail launch and I don’t think I used fan sites all that much other than thottbot.

Just my two cents.

[Deleted]

I have no idea what you’re talking about and I would be interested if you can post the link - curious if it would ring any bells.

I want to reply to the rest of your post but first let me clarify this.

The LFG (looking for group) tool was implemented in TBC.
It looked like this.



From WoWWiki

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Dungeon_Finder

With the release of the Burning Crusade expansion and Patch 2.0.1 came the release of the new Looking For Group interface pane as well as the conversion of Meeting Stones from a queuing system to a summoning mechanism. At this time, the LookingForGroup channel was completely removed, since the interface was intended to replace it. Instead, players began to use the Trade channel for LFG, guild recruitment, and general global chat. Blizzard responded by hotfixing a rate limit of so many messages per minute. However, this was eventually lifted, and Trade channel continues to be a mixture of trade and other uses even today.

So as you can see people just continued using the chats ingame to recruit people. Almost no one used LFG.

Also from WoWwiki
http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/How_to.../LFM_interface

Turn off Auto Join in the Looking For Group tab and Auto Add Members in the Looking For More tab. Having these options on would put you in a group or add members automatically, like meeting stones used to do. Real people do not like being matched with strangers, they want to see who is joining or who they are joining.

No one wanted to group up with strangers in TBC.
The content was hard, therefore no one wanted to group up with strangers.

Flashforward to today, content is easy therefore they dont mind playing with strangers. (LFD and LFR)

What im trying to say is that the game itself shapes the community. Its the games fault if the mentality changed.
I dont believe in 2 years the whole mentality of the community changed from "not wanting to group with random people in TBC" to "Oh god plz yes, i like queuing with random people in WotlK"

[SirReal]

Tanks also need one each for the drake bosses since they breath Shadow Flame in the direction of their targets. It's easy to wipe on those if some numbskull pulls aggro from the tank.

Oh man, this. I was the MT and I raged so hard one night on my healers for why I kept dying on Flamegor. After the 3rd wipe, mid-rage, someone calmly ask "Dub, are you wearing your cloak?"

I wasn't. Sorry again to all Ascended - Arthas from the raid that night.

[Trend]

I want to reply to the rest of your post but first let me clarify this.

The LFG (looking for group) tool was implemented in TBC.
It looked like this.

Shows my lack of memory ... everything that long ago tends to run together in my mind. Technically speaking, this image is of the 3.1.0 interface (it's even specified in the file name of the image.) The Burning Crusade version did not allow you to set your role which reduced the usefulness. But yeah, I know what you're talking about now.

What im trying to say is that the game itself shapes the community. Its the games fault if the mentality changed.

Yeah so on that I could not disagree more. From my perspective, here in 2018 I don't see evidence of anything more than a couple hundred thousand players with a desire to play a tedious MMO. Personally, I think WoW would have seen its last expansion about 8 years ago had they held onto that philosophy. But hey, opinions are cool because everyone can have them.

[Deleted]

Shows my lack of memory ... everything that long ago tends to run together in my mind. Technically speaking, this image is of the 3.1.0 interface (it's even specified in the file name of the image.) The Burning Crusade version did not allow you to set your role which reduced the usefulness. But yeah, I know what you're talking about now.



Yeah so on that I could not disagree more. From my perspective, here in 2018 I don't see evidence of anything more than a couple hundred thousand players with a desire to play a tedious MMO. Personally, I think WoW would have seen its last expansion about 8 years ago had they held onto that philosophy. But hey, opinions are cool because everyone can have them.

Every single RPG is this thing you call "tedious" though.
Tedious are all RPG's by nature.

You dont agree the game itself shapes the community? Your surroundings shape a person?

If content is easy, no one cares about anything. We become zombies doing mindless content. No building of character and no need to adapt. No epicness.

Every single time i open a new video of the dude from the OP i say, "man, this stuff was epic" because it had many RPG elements to it.
"Tedious" elements as you say.

IDK, we cant predict alternative futures but IMO WoW today would still be in a pretty good spot if it kept the vanilla philosophy.
And it would have a totally different community from today ofcourse.

[Aleks0410]

I wish they would bring back that type of attunement system. Maybe make it account wide at least

No, they should leave this as it was. As well as respec cost.

[Deleted]

From what I remember that tool wasn't an automatic LFG type thing. It was like the premade group finder thing is now. The reason nobody used it is because nobody else used it (because nobody else used it (etc)) so it was just faster to go through chat. There was no cross realm so the people you got from the tool (if you got any) were no more or less 'random' than the ones you got from chat because they were the same ones.

[jakeic]

Uhm...dafuq does Uldir have to do with "hahah you can't come if you're a fire mage or destro warlock on Al'Ar?" Christ almighty, at least ATTEMPT to stay on point.

Fire mage and destro locks are specs of a class and not classes themselves, plenty of mages and warlocks were involved on server firsts and raiding in general.

As far as being off point, I would suggest you look up the word analogy. In this case it made my point relatable to people who did not play vanilla WoW by using the current way the game is played to illustrate the type of people that would sit classes.

[thilicen]

Stand behind throne. Only place you could LoS the shadow flame.

Not true. Standing downstairs in the rooms where adds spawned from had the same effect.

[AeneasBK]

The thing is though that stuff like this had to go. First and foremost there's the access issue. Why can Blizzard spend all that time and money on raids if they're not accessible?

To be fair, things like the Onyxia attunement were *outside* raid content. It was character progression alongside "getting gear from doing end game 5 mans". I mean, clearly Blizzard agree that accessability was an issue for some of the playerbase; hence the design shift; but things like "Running UBRS for Finkles Skinner because I want to be able to skin Ony" is a kinda lateral progression that isn't pointless.

Making raid attunements require previous raid kills wasn't a "big" problem until the bosses required were Vash'j and Kael because those bosses (particularly Kael) were such a headache. Getting attuned to SSC needing a Gruul and Nightbane kill wasn't so bad. But it would make a lot more sense for them to be outside raids and therefore achievable on "off nights" or w/e; that way attunements in and of themselves aren't a terrible idea. Beats only having the gear grind once you level cap for PVE.

[caervek]

Still have mine in the bank, sadly it did nothing on Nef in Cataclysm (tried it on the off chance, would have been a cool easter egg).

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It's was utterly ridiculous - having MANDATORY items like this is not good in any way.

In fairness, if stuff like this or resist gear were still required, they wouldn't be needed in LFR so wouldn't hurt casuals anyway.

[Stormwolf64]

This is why Vanilla was Vanilla.

This was cool for the playerbase it had back then. But now, that playerbase has, for lack of better term, matured? And the newer people who haven't played Wrath, Cata, MoP, WoD, Legion are not used to that type of guild effort needed to progress bosses.

Will it be fun in Vanilla servers? Maybe.
Do I want to see it on Live? No. Nobody has time for that.

You have to be pretty damn delusional to think the playerbase has matured. Look for a more fitting word.

[jakeic]

Yeah so on that I could not disagree more. From my perspective, here in 2018 I don't see evidence of anything more than a couple hundred thousand players with a desire to play a tedious MMO. Personally, I think WoW would have seen its last expansion about 8 years ago had they held onto that philosophy. But hey, opinions are cool because everyone can have them.

Let's say a tedious MMO only has five hundred thousand playerbase, I think it would be safe to assume that these people would be committed to the point of paying a subscription of $15 a month as well as buying the game ($60). Such an MMO would generate $210 million dollars through the first two years of its life. I don't know what the margins are for game development, if we take a conservative guess of 1/4th, you're looking at the game being developed for $52.5 million which would put it among the most expensive games ever developed.

The same would be true for WoW, if it were to only have those fans that you attribute to enjoying tedious gameplay, it would still generate $210 million every expansion cycle from subscriptions and game purchases, which would still be wildly successful even if it were a smaller playerbase. I honestly doubt there could have been any design path not deemed ludicrous that would have stopped WoW expansions.

I also find it funny that you choose the time WoW expanded, vanilla and tbc, to say the game would be dead if Blizzard had remained faithful to the philosophies used during that time. No other era has resided over growth of the WoW playerbase, WotLK stayed flat, cata declined, MoP declined, WoD declined, Legion declined, and I am skeptical that BfA will result in growth.

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It really didn't, because the conversation was ABOUT VANILLA and how it was different than modern day raiding. So using a modern raiding "analogy" falls flat because current raids have no attunements or specs that get sidelined.

PS: switching from fire to frost or arcane was a major undertaking back in the day, and extremely expensive. So yes, certain players DID get sidelined or forced into playing specs they didn't like becuz "BOSS IMMUNITIES IZ GEWD 4 LORE". Removing the immunities and idiotic "use this shadow gear for one fight and then never again" BS was one of the smartest things Blizzard ever did.

You seem to have no reading comprehension and just want to be angry about a game no one is forcing you to play or talk about. A spec is not a class, and it simply cost gold for you to change your talents, it was not a lengthy process in the slightest. I think the handful of players who were sat on Naxx progression for world firsts really appreciate you going to bat for them 12 years later.

You are far more likely to be sidelined now in modern WoW for your spec than you were in vanilla for your class. So, feel free to be angry and wrong, I will not respond back.

[Crudence]

There were some great rpg elements in the early versions of wow lost today. It is kinda incredible how different wow today is from its original itteration. Gotta say I enjoy both new and old stuff though. Wonder how a true mix between old and new systems would work. Could be amazeballs. Or stinky blueballs.

[Tekkommo]

These things were cool at the time, still have mine in my bank. Kinda glad they are gone now.

I never found the attunements tedious or w/e, what I found tedious was the amount of slackers who put minimal effort into doing them.

Nef was always fun when your MT forgot to equip his cloak.

[jakeic]

It's was utterly ridiculous - having MANDATORY items like this is not good in any way.

I disagree. Having a hard gear check is just a different type of gating which can allow for boss fights that are less tedious.

[Deleted]

people say this was so great, are the first ones crying about "MAKE SIEGE OF BORALUS DUNGEON UNLOCK ACCOUNT WIDE"

even if there is one scenarion ingame, people want to skip it.

[valax]

I just came across a video on youtube explaining this item called Onyxia Scale Cloak and it made me realize even further why Vanilla was so awesome and i wanted to share with you guys

Onyxia Scale Cloak: Protects the wearer from being fully engulfed by Shadow Flame.

Basically this cloak is needed to fight Nefarian in Blackwing Lair otherwise you are one shotted by a boss mechanic that hits the entire raid.
And how do you get it?
Well, you need a leatherworker to craft it for the raid.
You also need a skinner to skin Onyxia to make this cloak
But you needed skinner profession to be at level 315...and the max was 300 at the time.
So you needed 1 of 2 weapons that drop in raids that give +10 to skinning and an enchant to reach the 315 level needed to skin Onyxia.

LOL

So...to recap:
-To beat Nefarian the raid needed this cloak on several people
-To have the cloak you need a leatherworker
-The leatherworker needed to skin Onyxia
-To skin Onyxia you needed skinning at level 315
-to have skinning at level 315 you needed 1 of 2 possible weapons who dropped in raids
-To have access to this raids you needed to be attuned to them
...

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It was the small things like this that made Vanilla in my opinion What do you guys think?

Props to MadSeasonShow's video where i got this information:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLrNaE5pNfI&t=3m16s

that was when wow was an MMORPG , today it's still an MMO , but a theme park MMO the RPG component has been dropped hard

[Deleted]

I remember, it was a real guild effort to craft the 40 cloacks and was a big time when i got mine.

And yes, those things made wow magical. But as others said, i don't thing the acutal wow playerbase can handle or want that. Can't wait for classic and hoping for a good community.

[valax]

It's was utterly ridiculous - having MANDATORY items like this is not good in any way.

it made sense at the time , in tbc you couldn't do heroics without the dungeon keys and you couldn't open Karazhan gates without attuning through heroic dungeons quests .
We must not forget that raid access changed as well , before patch 3.2 in order to succesfully raid the highest tier you went through all the previous content .
For example to raid Black temple the "ILVL" (to better understand us) difference between heroic dungeon gear and BT gear was enormous , you had to get T4 first and T5 after , no jumping directly at the endgame content , no catchups.
To some this kind of requirements were what made the game feel good , killing Illidan or KJ was meaningful , your group worked hard to get there . Nowdays LFR heroes with titanforged gear can jump into heroic and succesfully clear the latest raid with total strangers from different servers , you are playing a theme park MMO not an RPG