A playerbase divided

[Vofka]

Man, if only i could mine and sell salt from the internet discussions then this thread alone would make me a millionaire.

[MoanaLisa]

My apologies. I wasn't aware that snark was against the rules here.

It's not, but it's nice when it can be left behind and we treat each other with a little bit of respect and as acquaintances/friends instead of enemies. That's one reason why I don't think it's terribly necessary to stress about "divided players" and the rest. Both games can do well and we should be happy for that as it will encourage investment in both versions of the game. One doesn't need to be damaged to have the other be successful.

[Jastall]

The playerbase has been divided on this since even before that one server got popular then shut down. Classic's release will not change that at all, and might even worsen the scenario when some players feel vindicated and others feel cheated by it.

Personally I couldn't care less. I played and vanilla and would find it an extreme bore today (I couldn't even handle five minutes of these streams, yikes leveling anything but a warrior or rogue looks as fun as watching paint dry) but if people want to enjoy it, let them, they're not wrong. Still, I'd like to be able to discuss the current game without an endless steam of "retail is 100% dead when classic comes", "game was objectively better in vanilla" or "wow iz ded lulz me smart" types of posts but we all know that's purely wishful thinking.

And anyone that truly thinks any "side" of this debate is less toxic than the other is friggin delusional. Trolling has been at the heart of the classic debate since forever. Remember the Wall of No?

[Spazlord]

There's a lot of people that don't play retail that will play classic, and a few from retail that will too. I don't see any division, except for hyperbole peddlers on youtube and fan forums doing their usual hand waving.

Blah blah, emergency, catastrophe, wow is dead, wow is this/that/other gg etc.

Eh.

[Mixxy]

Clearly you didn't understand anything of what I've posted, as I was pointing out the most common arguments they employ, or the lack thereof.
Whereas, as I've posted quite literally several times in this very thread, the content of said argument is far more toxic when it's directed at the Classic fanbase.

I've also, never once, said that one side was blameless.
Overall, you're quite literally trying to imply that I've said something that I haven't, due to your own misunderstanding or just being obtuse and unable to discuss something like a normal person without filling it with fallacies.

Hm. Lemme just double-check my notes here...

I will say that I personally feel like the "retail crowd" as you've dubbed them are far more toxic in what they're saying.

The main arguments that I've seen being spouted over and over again are "IT'S JUST NOSTALGIA, STOP ENJOYING THINGS" and the opposite being "CLASSIC WILL KILL RETAIL".
Neither is obviously logical to any sane person, but there's a large difference in what's actually being said.
"Classic will kill retail" is a jab towards retail as a product, belittling or ridiculing the current state of the game.
"IT'S JUST NOSTALGIA, STOP ENJOYING THINGS" is outright belittling a person and their opinion.

I personally find the "it's just nostalgia" crowd to be a lot more toxic and petty than the other "side", but maybe that's just me.

However, there's a vast difference between a group of people saying "this version of the game will trump the other versions" and a group of people saying "classic is trash and your opinion is wrong".
...
Trust me, there's a fucking clear indicator of which side is more toxic.
Small hint, it's the one that continually shitposts in a subsection of a forum they don't belong in at all.

It's not that "Classic fans" are hostile, they're just tired of hearing "you think you do but you don't" at this point.

I frequent both sections and I have yet to find anyone being as obtrusive and abrasive as certain individuals in the Classic section.

Yes, because one side is actively toxic and demeaning to people in a subsection they don't belong in, while the other is demeaning to a product.
One of those things has emotions, the other doesn't.

Yep. Tooootally not putting all the blame on only one side. Toooooootally not saying that the other side is only targetting the game itself, not the people who play it.

Toooooooooooooooooootally man.

[De Lupe]

Why can't people who like classic play classic and people who don't carry on with retail.

Then everyone can shut up about this "fued"

Winner, winner.

[Tumile]

I don't know what kind of Classic you played... but from a rotational stand point I have to disagree, most rotations were very boring, this includes down-ranking which is not so much rocket-science as some tried to declare it to.

Especially the long walks and flight pathes are specifically engaging... I remember a Tauren Druid flying back from Moonglade to Thunderbluff will be tagged afk on arrival due to the long distance...

Imagine saying a rotation is what defines the difficulty of a game, if that is the case, then retail is literally the EXACT same difficulty, we both know that isn't true. BFA resto shaman is literally Chain heal, and Healing rain on CD. Resto druid, Rejuv, Wildgrowth on CD. Fury warrior, literally just mash 3 buttons as they come off a cooldown (wow that almost sounds like a dumbed down version of Hunter DPS in Vanilla? :thinking 1 button Demon hunter? Hello Shadow bolt Locks.

People keep talking about the rotation, the rotation this, Warlocks only pressing SB, bla bla bla, and it honestly makes me wonder just how little they thought it through before they opened their big fat stupid mouths.

most speccs are very similar in difficulty of Rotation, some are definitely harder on Retail, like Feral druids, but what about rogues? they are faster sure, but is it harder to press 1,1,1,2, 1,1,1,2 at 10 APM or 35 APM? not really no. Wows difficulty has NEVER been tied to a rotation, its something extremely bad casual players think. it's about executing a rotation with a plan in mind. planning ur damage windows to the encounter. reading damage patterns to min/max your healing. all while also doing the mechanics of the encounter at the same time. This is why gear makes a fight a lot easier, u no longer have to push ur DPS as hard, u can make mistakes and still make the damage threshold, the increased max health mixed with nerfs to the bosses allows truly terrible window licking, crayon eating, glue sniffing, aboriginal, doo doo brains to kill bosses, any boss kill in BFA that is lower than WR 200 is a joke compared to the people above. Wow has NEVER been mechanically challenging. the mechanical difficulty of wow is a joke compared to other games out there, it is a mystery to me how people can fuck up on mythic Jaina, I raid lead Mythic Jaina, and i Truly could never fathom how people could mess anything up on that fight while i was holding their hand the entire way. I fucked up myself and straight up had no excuse, it was just a plain fuckup once in over 300 wipes. that is while playing Rshammy, a class i levelled and geared 2 weeks prior to taking it to Jaina. it had fuck all gear. so Low geared shaman, 1½ weeks of playtime previous to getting to Jaina, while making strats for Jaina which meant i barely played the shaman, running a guild takes a lot of time, Raid leading, And i messed up the mechanics of the fight and ran into a ball during intermission Once, and managed to get a 100 percentile. with shit gear, a level 38 neck, being new to the class, and raid leading.

That may sound like a weird flex, but wait, theres more.

I'm a Failed Semi pro CSGO player. I wasn't good enough. the game was too hard for me to even make it anywhere relevant. won a few small tourneys but that was it, got to 3k ELO on Faceit and A rank on ESEA, no more.

I'm a failed League player, made it fairly high during the long Beta, rank 17 in EU. but in the end im a failiure. the game was too difficult.

I'm a failed Dota player, Original WC3 dota, played Dota League, never made it to the top 10 in all my years playing.

Wow is a fucking joke. I handicapped myself in every way possible, and yet I struggle to find people who can outperform me.

You do not understand what difficulty is. wow's difficulty has to do with putting in TIME in the game in order to LEARN. the game has a lot of depth, but close to zero mechanical difficulty. while CSGO and League also Require time, most of the time is put into polishing your mechanical skill set.

You don't see people putting in 10k+´hours on the training dummy to "practise their rotation" do you? but u see people putting in way more than that to practise their CSGO aim.

WoW is About Knowledge. once you know something, you can understand it. Once you understand it you can visualize it, once you can visualize it, you can execute it.

Example: Why do you think its so easy to re-kill a boss that just took you 100 pulls last reset? did ur overall Raid Ilvl just explode? no.

The Majority of your raid team never visualized killing the boss, because they never truly understood it. they didn't know all the weird overlaps of different mechanics etc, it required Time, because they had to See it first. If every raid member spent time studying the fight like a high end raid leader, they could understand the boss before even pulling it. and it would only take a couple of pulls at most for them to visualize it, and after that they can all execute it.

Once the boss has died they have all visualized it. that is why it dies so fucking fast. and quite honestly, 99% of even top 20 world raiders are fucking trash. the fact that people arent studying method streams and able to already understand the fight from that makes them a joke. Wow has NEVER been difficult. Rotations have NOTHING to do with difficulty eaither, Rotations are the BARE MINIMUM required to play the game. The Harder the foundation is to execute, the more it multiplies the difficulty everytime u lay a layer ontop, such as a boss mechanic. executing a rotation is the same as being able to move your crosshair in CSGO, and move your character at the same time.

This was one long winded rant, but I've seen so many shitty players sit there and preach about difficulty and then resort to Rotation as the example. spreading their warped misunderstanding of how video games function on a basic level to other people, who the regurgitate the same bullshit somewhere else.

I played the Classic where I was the only warrior i ever personally met who understood that Spirit was ur BiS stat for levelling. The Classic where people all these years later Still make fun of Icemail Jerkin for being the "worst BoE Epic" for having 24 Spirit on a mail item. when it is ur BiS levelling chest on a warrior all the way to 60. The Classic where people still don't know about aggro ranges and leashes, and refuse it use and abuse them to their own advantage instead of fighting mobs 2 at a time. or the classic where veterans like Sodapoppin level by killing mobs that are 3+ levels above him, not realizing how horribly XP inefficient that is. The depth and Knowledge of Classic FAR outweigh BFA. I think it was Tips who made a video on how streamlined and brain dead Retail is, with abilities like Distract.

Distract makes u face a certain direction. You cannot cast spells on people who are behind you. Distract at the end of a cast and the cast will not go off. its basically a ranged interrupt... In BFA you cannot distract in Combat. So when that mage has u in a Nova, and is about to shatter your ass, in retail Creative thinking and Knowledge about the game, game mechanics, and Abilities could save you and make a difference I sure as hell call that a more difficult game, when the main difficulty of the game is Understanding the game mechanics and abilities. Having Less options makes the game simpler by default.

Distract wasn't the only spell, Shadow word Death and Bloodrage are other great examples that most people know about. damage urself with these abilities to break a polymorph, this is more mechanically difficult than almost anything else in BFA. especially when used against a Blind. finding items in the game with similar effect like Skull of Doom, Game knowledge is required. Putting on a shield and Shield slamming a druid to remove his buffs, to get ready for his Natures Grasp, so you can Shield slam it and dispel it, again is about game knowledge.

"scientia potentia est" Knowledge Is Power - Francis Bacon.

[Appelgren]

I predict nostalgia purists a.k.a special snowflakes will remain on classic realms because they think they achieved something in their little heads.

This pretty much! Most people will return to retail within months when theyve come to terms with themselves that vanilla is shitl
We will have all of them back crying about wow before we know it

[Tumile]

Hm. Lemme just double-check my notes here...







Yep. Tooootally not putting all the blame on only one side. Toooooootally not saying that the other side is only targetting the game itself, not the people who play it.

Toooooooooooooooooootally man.

he said Blameless, is reading difficult for you, or do you just like to pull Logical fallacies out of your arse?

- - - Updated - - -

The playerbase has been divided on this since even before that one server got popular then shut down. Classic's release will not change that at all, and might even worsen the scenario when some players feel vindicated and others feel cheated by it.

Personally I couldn't care less. I played and vanilla and would find it an extreme bore today (I couldn't even handle five minutes of these streams, yikes leveling anything but a warrior or rogue looks as fun as watching paint dry) but if people want to enjoy it, let them, they're not wrong. Still, I'd like to be able to discuss the current game without an endless steam of "retail is 100% dead when classic comes", "game was objectively better in vanilla" or "wow iz ded lulz me smart" types of posts but we all know that's purely wishful thinking.

And anyone that truly thinks any "side" of this debate is less toxic than the other is friggin delusional. Trolling has been at the heart of the classic debate since forever. Remember the Wall of No?

Trolling =/= Toxic, nice try though.

- - - Updated - - -

No, but someone who doesn't like retail. I wouldn't put all of them in the classic box of course. It's the sense that WoW was way better before, but now it's trash, people who says it's trash takes classic as the glory of WoW and quit in WotLK, and managing to spout out that BfA is the worst ever without even trying it. Or BfA is the biggest shit ever, and liking WoW today and BfA spesifically makes you a shill, white-knight or just trash. That kind of mentality.

Your story there is just spot on isn't it.

- - - Updated - - -


The latter post was more that I am just explaining why I made you as an example in the first place. But I get what you are saying, so once again, sorry for putting you on the spot

I hardcore raided in BFA, was top 20 World, i played PVP in BFA, actually didnt hate BFA season 1, but then the incompetent devs decided to add some PVP trinkets and killed it with fire. I played the living shit out of BFA, it lined up with my work allowing me to do so, I probably played it more during the first month than u have all xpac. And I'll still say BFA is the most unholy abomination of Incompetense and Literally 90% of the issues with BFA wouldn't have happened / Would've been fixed within a month or two if anyone somewhat competent was in at the helm. I have 0 Experience working in the field, and I wouldn't have made pretty much any of the mistakes they did? It's garbage. Absolute trash. cudos to the art team that worked on the world design, but please fire the art team working on character assets such as gear. fire every game dev at a management position or higher, and we have a recipe for Success for the next expansion

Also Vanilla wow kinda was better in every way, but ofc that depends on the person. If you truly want to play casually, (not referring to game time) You don't want to delve into the game, and explore as much as you can, but just want something easy to pick up and play once in a while, then maybe an MMORPG isn't the genre you should be playing? Vanilla wow had short comings, and a lot of them. but most of the "bad things" aren't bad, they are oldschool game design that did it's job. Travel time taking a long time wasn't a "oh, our bad, lets fix that" it was there for a reason, it encouraged social interaction. Difficult quests and quest levels and positions encouraged grouping up and helping eachother out. the slowed down gameplay allowed for you to talk to people. a large part of an MMO-RPG is the Social part. by speeding up gameplay with QoL features such as a whistle, 57 hearthstones, no cooldown on TP's and Portal EVERYWHERE, and speeding up group content such as dungeons, you don't have time to smell the roses. you Could, but most people won't, because the game isn't deisnged to encourage you to do so, unlike Vanilla.

[Alex86el]

hey, i dont much play retail, and i will play classic for good.
but yes, many are just nostalgic purists to the point of insanity.

like "omg that type of mustache was not in classic!!!!!! #NOCHANGES"
and "why did you fix that bug that was not supposed to be there in the first place!!!! give me back the buggg!!!! #NOCHANGES"

it is mostly them who bring some division among us all.

[bufferunderrun]

So as I'm sure many people are aware after browsing this site and others, the WoW Classic beta has begun to a great deal of fanfare.

However, I can't be the only one to have noticed the massive increase in hostilities between the retail and classic crowd? You have both sides creating pejorative terms to describe the others, such as "retail babies" or "nostalgia purists".

So I suppose my question and the point of this thread is to ask how do you predict this will all turn out?

I personally believe the community is fractured beyond belief and it's sad that so many who once shared a favourite pass time are now attacking each other over what essentially amounts to their personal preference.

that is just the pre release hype, peoples will play both wow isn't diablo or sc those game had a replayability that wow don't have once months after the release passed and every dog is decked in t3 what they do? Will blizzard load BC and advance?

[Doffen]

I hardcore raided in BFA, was top 20 World, i played PVP in BFA, actually didnt hate BFA season 1, but then the incompetent devs decided to add some PVP trinkets and killed it with fire. I played the living shit out of BFA, it lined up with my work allowing me to do so, I probably played it more during the first month than u have all xpac. And I'll still say BFA is the most unholy abomination of Incompetense and Literally 90% of the issues with BFA wouldn't have happened / Would've been fixed within a month or two if anyone somewhat competent was in at the helm. I have 0 Experience working in the field, and I wouldn't have made pretty much any of the mistakes they did? It's garbage. Absolute trash. cudos to the art team that worked on the world design, but please fire the art team working on character assets such as gear. fire every game dev at a management position or higher, and we have a recipe for Success for the next expansion

Also Vanilla wow kinda was better in every way, but ofc that depends on the person. If you truly want to play casually, (not referring to game time) You don't want to delve into the game, and explore as much as you can, but just want something easy to pick up and play once in a while, then maybe an MMORPG isn't the genre you should be playing? Vanilla wow had short comings, and a lot of them. but most of the "bad things" aren't bad, they are oldschool game design that did it's job. Travel time taking a long time wasn't a "oh, our bad, lets fix that" it was there for a reason, it encouraged social interaction. Difficult quests and quest levels and positions encouraged grouping up and helping eachother out. the slowed down gameplay allowed for you to talk to people. a large part of an MMO-RPG is the Social part. by speeding up gameplay with QoL features such as a whistle, 57 hearthstones, no cooldown on TP's and Portal EVERYWHERE, and speeding up group content such as dungeons, you don't have time to smell the roses. you Could, but most people won't, because the game isn't deisnged to encourage you to do so, unlike Vanilla.

I do understand that people think BfA isn't a good expansion, and the points you are making about vanilla being better is something I certainly agree on. Not the whole idea of vanilla, because I think it was slow, slower than BfA even when it comes to classes and so I can't see why it was better then. Some do, and of course we all think different. But the whole idea of delving into the game, use time to progress your character and so on is something I miss. That's why I think Legion was way better than BfA, but also WoD, MoP, Cata and WotLK because in Legion it required you to use time and effort to progress.

I do miss the old times, but for me it's The Burning Crusade. Vanilla had it's good days, and travelling, long dungeons, exploring was something I truly enjoyed. I think that TBC took away some of the very slow things with vanilla and focused more on content, even though it wasn't as much content it is in "modern" WoW. It's some nostalgia here though, so I am a little biased since I had so much fun in TBC.

BfA got problems, no doubt. I think it is too easy. Character progression that is. Azerite system is just there, it doesn't require you to do an effort to be done with it. Gear comes from too many sources, I read that the devs think so too, but hey, we'll see it when it happens right

BfA is the first expansion I have enjoyed PvP since TBC, and world PvP is something that has been an eye-opener for me. It started with changing main to Demon Hunter(hey, one flaw with vanilla, no Demon Hunters!) then it just came off on my other chars and I think it's really fun. I am a casual when it comes to PvP though, so if the systems are shit or not compared to other expansions/seasons, I can't really say. I do have fun however, and that might encourage me to do more.

And no, I played shit ton in BfA so far too :P

[niztheundead87]

people that cry about time gating and grinding will get a rude awakening in classic

[Doffen]

At least my hunter will be in better shape for classic than it ever will be in BfA, I went onto the PTR yesterday as I refuse to sub to BFA and yep MM Hunter was still eff'd up to crappy levels.

Yeah, they destroyed MM in BfA, I had two max level hunter that raided in Legion, was super fun. Was supposed to be main spec for me this expansion, but then I went survival instead, and now I added Demon to my race-name.

Now MM plays like a ranged ret paladin. The horror.

[mauserr]

I predict nostalgia purists a.k.a special snowflakes will remain on classic realms because they think they achieved something in their little heads.

When you can't clear current content that is actually hard on Mythic difficulty, you gotta go back to Classic, to content that playing characters with 1-2 button rotations that is easily facerolled by pretty much anybody that raided norma/heroic nowadays. Gotta keep that ego inflated!

[Aggrophobic]

So as I'm sure many people are aware after browsing this site and others, the WoW Classic beta has begun to a great deal of fanfare.

However, I can't be the only one to have noticed the massive increase in hostilities between the retail and classic crowd? You have both sides creating pejorative terms to describe the others, such as "retail babies" or "nostalgia purists".

So I suppose my question and the point of this thread is to ask how do you predict this will all turn out?

I personally believe the community is fractured beyond belief and it's sad that so many who once shared a favourite pass time are now attacking each other over what essentially amounts to their personal preference.

Sure. And this is one of the many reasosn why Blizzard did not want classic servers. They had to give in due to all the negative press but in the end, this is only going to be bad for the game in the long run.

[niztheundead87]

Yeah, they destroyed MM in BfA, I had two max level hunter that raided in Legion, was super fun. Was supposed to be main spec for me this expansion, but then I went survival instead, and now I added Demon to my race-name.

Now MM plays like a ranged ret paladin. The horror.

you forget one basic thing : classic hunter had dead zone , aka if a melee comes to you , you are dead meat
how many people will handle this

[Doffen]

you forget one basic thing : classic hunter had dead zone , aka if a melee comes to you , you are dead meat
how many people will handle this

Oh I meant from Legion. But yeah, dead zone ftw right :P

[Pheraz]

I think the classic-again crowd is just pretty loud on the forums. I think that when the new expansion drops in classic servers will be very empty.
I think those who played classic (with raiding and prepping and farming) will not play it again (ofc there are exceptions).
Just relax.

[Gungnir]

Hm. Lemme just double-check my notes here...


Yep. Tooootally not putting all the blame on only one side. Toooooootally not saying that the other side is only targetting the game itself, not the people who play it.

Toooooooooooooooooootally man.

You do realize that I said, specifically, that neither side was blameless.
I really don't think your reading comprehension is much to brag about.