Classic WoW will be a lesson in nostaligia vs reality

[Specialka]

Newer does not mean necessary better, true. But the same can be said the other way around.

Ppl like older video games, great give them that, but do not say that is was better back then. It was different with a focus on something else than we have today.

I did play Vanilla in 2004, and I will never play it again. To each its own.

[Gungnir]

Newer does not mean necessary better, true. But the same can be said the other way around.

Ppl like older video games, great give them that, but do not say that is was better back then. It was different with a focus on something else than we have today.

I did play Vanilla in 2004, and I will never play it again. To each its own.

Aye, it definitely was different, and to each his own.
Some people like not having to use their brains at all, or put in any effort or time but wants to have an endorphine rush nonetheless and that's where a lot of modern games fit in.
Some people really enjoy constantly having to make minor decisions and actively think about what they're doing and what they want to achieve. That's where a lot of older games fit in.

[clownpenisfart]

When I look at WoW:BfA [...] I see decent storylines and video sequences.

Huh. Is there another game called wow:bfa or something?

Back in Vanilla you had to read quest texts to get a sense where you need to go because the quest texts contained very relevant information. Today if the quest helper doesn't provide me with right or sufficient information I have to check wowhead because the quest texts usually are just fluff...

I remember mostly skimming the quest texts because I can do without reading 3 pages of contrived explanations as to why the problem at hand will be resolved by collecting 10 bear's asses.

On the other hand vanilla story telling was better in a way: you only had to deal with the atrocious writing, and not also with awful voice acting performances on top of that.

[Specialka]

Aye, it definitely was different, and to each his own.
Some people like not having to use their brains at all, or put in any effort or time but wants to have an endorphine rush nonetheless and that's where a lot of modern games fit in.
Some people really enjoy constantly having to make minor decisions and actively think about what they're doing and what they want to achieve. That's where a lot of older games fit in.

You are starting it. Fine, I'll bite.

You did not use your brain back then. Dungeons with 0 mecanics, raids were piss easy, class had no rotation (spam frostbolt as a mage for top dps, woot!). The hard part, mmh, sorry the tedious part, was to find 40 ppl to do them. And to have the time to farm the consummables.

And I could go on like that for a long time, you should have not started it.

[Gungnir]

You are starting it. Fine, I'll bite.

You did not use your brain back then. Dungeons with 0 mecanics, raids were piss easy, class had no rotation (spam frostbolt as a mage for top dps, woot!). The hard part, mmh, sorry the tedious part, was to find 40 ppl to do them. And to have the time to farm the consummables.

Yeah, it was so much more braindead being in the open world while leveling compared to retail.
Gathering up 50 or so mobs on my Demon Hunter and pressing Eye Beam once takes a lot more thought and I feel a lot more rewarded for my stunning display of gameplay.

You also blatantly missed the point, as the statement I made was regarding game development nowadays versus game development back then. Back then you didn't have a flowchart of cashgrab lootbox and meaningless player retention protocols in order to maximize profit, they just made whatever they thought would be cool.
Which meant you got a lot of quirky shit, but that quirky shit had a lot more character in general and usually opened up a lot of interactions that you wouldn't find in nearly any game nowadays.


You're also making the mistake of thinking that raiding was the only thing that mattered in Vanilla.
They're completely different games with different values, and you were being actively a lot more engaged while leveling compared to retail as you were basically fucked when pulling more than 3 mobs. Just the pacing of the game naturally lent itself to a gameplay that's completely different from retail.
I'm not saying that's good, I'm not saying that's bad, I'm saying that it's different. Make no mistake though, when nothing poses any danger in the world, you're never actively engaged because you have no reason to be engaged while leveling in BfA, it's just finding the fastest route to 120 which is basically spamming Island Expeditions and Timewalking until your eyeballs fall out.


EDIT- Also I didn't start anything, I basically said "everyone has their preference" and you seemingly took that as both a challenge and a personal insult.
You need to work on your confidence my dude.

[clownpenisfart]

You're also making the mistake of thinking that raiding was the only thing that mattered in Vanilla.
They're completely different games with different values, and you were being actively a lot more engaged while leveling compared to retail as you were basically fucked when pulling more than 3 mobs. Just the pacing of the game naturally lent itself to a gameplay that's completely different from retail.
I'm not saying that's good, I'm not saying that's bad, I'm saying that it's different. Make no mistake though, when nothing poses any danger in the world, you're never actively engaged because you have no reason to be engaged while leveling in BfA, it's just finding the fastest route to 120 which is basically spamming Island Expeditions and Timewalking until your eyeballs fall out.

nothing posed any danger in the world in vanilla either. it was easy to avoid bad pulls, you just had to be slow and methodical. there was no danger, just the game punishing you whenever you tried to beat the tedium by making things go faster

but then again mmo players have always confused tedium for difficulty, and the ability to withstand tedium for skill

[joggerwearerlol]

lol reading quests text..

just wowhead the quest

[Specialka]

nothing posed any danger in the world in vanilla either. it was easy to avoid bad pulls, you just had to be slow and methodical. there was no danger, just the game punishing you whenever you tried to beat the tedium by making things go faster

but then again mmo players have always confused tedium for difficulty, and the ability to withstand tedium for skill

Shhh, let him believe that vanilla required skills.

[Flurryfang]

Well, you are right in one thing: Classic will be a lesson in nostalgia vs reality, but more about what will actually win?

Some things talk for it, since relaunching old products with a new coat of paint, have shown to be very sucessful. Just look at the remasters of Skyrim, the new Crash and Spyro remakes and the entire nostalgia about Star Wars.
But some things also talks against it. You can do nostalgia wrong, where the consumerbase goes completly against the product and which can leave permanent damage on an entire francise(again look at Star Wars and Fallout 76).


I think it is very unclear if a product, based upon a subscription, can be successful if it sells itself purely on nostalgia. Classic can really go both ways and it will be a huge lesson for the industry about how we should interact with products in the future.

[Gungnir]

nothing posed any danger in the world in vanilla either. it was easy to avoid bad pulls, you just had to be slow and methodical. there was no danger, just the game punishing you whenever you tried to beat the tedium by making things go faster

but then again mmo players have always confused tedium for difficulty, and the ability to withstand tedium for skill

Therein lies my point that the previous person seemed to miss as my original point was the fact that you're being actively engaged to think more about what you're doing because you have a higher chance of being fucked in the ass if you make a mistake.
And yes of course, nothing poses danger if you play properly and avoid bad pulls. Water is also wet. That's the main difference though, there's actually something there programmed to punish you if you're being obtuse.

That shit doesn't even exist in retail since WotLK pretty much, thus leveling turned into a brainless slog where you could genocide a planet without thinking about health or mana.
Which is partly due to tuning but also due to heirlooms. You can try to twist my words or do whatever you want, but it's hard to deny that leveling on retail has lost nearly all interaction value over the years, since the focus has slowly shifted to the game only being endgame raids over the years.

Shhh, let him believe that vanilla required skills.

So instead of reading my post where I had valid points to be discussed, including the fact that I pointed out that you misunderstood my initial post in the first place, you reduce yourself to a fallacy-spewing troglodyte.

I can't say I'm surprised, but I am a bit disappointed.

[Dergiab]

nothing posed any danger in the world in vanilla either. it was easy to avoid bad pulls, you just had to be slow and methodical. there was no danger, just the game punishing you whenever you tried to beat the tedium by making things go faster

but then again mmo players have always confused tedium for difficulty, and the ability to withstand tedium for skill

With that logic, Dark Souls is a piss easy game. All you need to learn is to be good at dodging and you will win every fight.

[Gungnir]

With that logic, Dark Souls is a piss easy game. All you need to learn is to be good at dodging and you will win every fight.

Can confirm, the logic is sound.
I have about 2500 hours in the Dark Souls series and nothing poses a challenge.

But of course, that doesn't change the fact that if I fuck up, I'll get ripped a new one.

[Aphrel]

snip.

3days into bfa there was litterary nothing left for me to do. I had done all the mythic dungeons, heroic dungs offered no more direct upgrades barring wf/tf procs. Islands was useless due to the system being rigged with a weekly 30% buff making all ap farming useless in the start.
I had cleared the 3 zones the alliance got of every single existing quest aswell as cleaned the worldmap of wqs.
No arena opend, no m+, no warfronts, no invasions or paragon rep farming, no raids.


In vanilla (or in the upcoming classic) by day 3 i will be around lvl 30-40 probobly running around like a headless chicken in stv trying not to step on a gnome rogue ready to slice me up into pieces.

So content wise atleast vanilla wow is way ahead of bfa.

As for bfa having better content.. Ive also played wow for 14years since its release, and sofar vanilla is the only content where quests actually feels like an adventure. In tbc and onward all questing has had this "on rails" feeling to them. Like a carefully planned themepark ride. In vanilla, questing was complete chaos and the world felt like it wasnt specificly made to fit your needs. And thats what made it feel like an adventure. To find your own way instead of folloing the rails of our later expansions questing.

[clownpenisfart]

Therein lies my point that the previous person seemed to miss as my original point was the fact that you're being actively engaged to think more about what you're doing because you have a higher chance of being fucked in the ass if you make a mistake.
And yes of course, nothing poses danger if you play properly and avoid bad pulls.
Water is also wet. That's the main difference though, there's actually something there programmed to punish you if you're being obtuse.

But the thing is avoiding punishment was never hard. The mobs are super simplistic and predictable. And during the fight proper they just stand there being ineffective while you spam attack abilities to kill them. And I'm not talking about vanilla, or about bfa here, I'm talking about wow for the entirety of its 15 years of existence.

Compared to almost any other game, wow is overly simplistic and not very engaging. Except when it comes to pvp, but there a robust core gameplay is ruined by bad class design and by the fact that gear is only really available through the boring part of the game (pve).

That shit doesn't even exist in retail since WotLK pretty much, thus leveling turned into a brainless slog where you could genocide a planet without thinking about health or mana.
Which is partly due to tuning but also due to heirlooms. You can try to twist my words or do whatever you want, but it's hard to deny that leveling on retail has lost nearly all interaction value over the years, since the focus has slowly shifted to the game only being endgame raids over the years.

ever since I started playing in vanilla, and all the way to now, the only times I ever had any fun during leveling was when world pvp was involved. I have never found the stories engaging, I have never found the characters engaging, I have never found the repetitive game mechanics engaging. You say it lost its interaction value over the years but I never found that it had any in the first place.

If the story telling was any good, it could perhaps redeem the boring pve gameplay, but both are awful.

[PelinalWhitestrake]

Newer does not mean necessary better, true. But the same can be said the other way around.

Ppl like older video games, great give them that, but do not say that is was better back then. It was different with a focus on something else than we have today.

I did play Vanilla in 2004, and I will never play it again. To each its own.

Morrowind had Everything that classic had, and people still play it nowadays for being a true RPG game and mostly because they have a Strong and United Community.

People will play classic for the same reason, RPG + Community.

Modern wow itself cant be even be called an RPG, since its a gatcha mount simulator game dressed instead of Online Roleplaying game from the likes of the Original Neverwinter Nights, BG1 and 2 Multiplayer servers, and even WoW predecessors like Star Wars Galaxies, FF9MP, ULTIMA Online, Runescape, Asheron's call and Everquest, said games who put more Emphasis on the RPG and Community than modern wow post cataclysm.

Even the End game itself is a boredom fest moved by the illusion that you're making progress, when you're not, Classic and even other MMO's like FF14 and ESO has a true sense of Progress during the endgame.

I even thought that classic would flop for a long time, im still holding my breath on it. But then i saw the streams, and it was 2005 all over again, the sense of community, the PVP, the Emphasis on the word Roleplaying Game, something that blizzard forgot in 2010 with cataclysm.

[Big Thanks]

I would change the title of the thread to.

"Classic will be a lesson of Oldschoold VS NewSchool MMORPG fans in 2019"

This is the true information we will get with Classic.
Does the oldschool fundamentals still hold players in TODAYS day and age?

Find out on the next episode.

[Kaver]

Classic/Vanilla rewards you for the effort you put in. A lot of people are attracted to that.

[Gungnir]

But the thing is avoiding punishment was never hard. The mobs are super simplistic and predictable. And during the fight proper they just stand there being ineffective while you spam attack abilities to kill them. And I'm not talking about vanilla, or about bfa here, I'm talking about wow for the entirety of its 15 years of existence.

Compared to almost any other game, wow is overly simplistic and not very engaging. Except when it comes to pvp, but there a robust core gameplay is ruined by bad class design and by the fact that gear is only really available through the boring part of the game (pve).

I don't disagree with that at all, WoW is very stale and unengaging by design compared to certain things, I was simply arguing that Vanilla had more engaging leveling due to the fact that it was a lot less forgiving when moving about in the world.

But you did also bring up a point that I think strengthens the leveling experience for Vanilla more; you have a higher incentive to actually utilize CC and stuns as it drastically cuts down on your downtime and risk of death, which basically ties in to what you said earlier about the game was slower and more methodical.
The way the game was designed back then naturally lends itself towards having to be engaged and learning how to play properly.

ever since I started playing in vanilla, and all the way to now, the only times I ever had any fun during leveling was when world pvp was involved. I have never found the stories engaging, I have never found the characters engaging, I have never found the repetitive game mechanics engaging. You say it lost its interaction value over the years but I never found that it had any in the first place.

If the story telling was any good, it could perhaps redeem the boring pve gameplay, but both are awful.

Well, that is highly subjective but I'm also somewhat in the same camp. I've always lived and died by world PvP, it's by far my favourite aspect of WoW and the reason why it took the spotlight for me over so many other MMO's.
I can also appreciate leveling sessions if I have to read quest texts for example and have to navigate to far away places, though I suspect that's thanks to my D&D pen and paper experience.

Spontaneous world PvP is one of the biggest reasons as to why I'm pretty excited to play Classic.

[PelinalWhitestrake]

Classic/Vanilla rewards you for the effort you put in. A lot of people are attracted to that.

Something that Modern WoW Forgot after the Argent Tournament Patch

[Kaver]

Something that Modern WoW Forgot after the Argent Tournament Patch

Now you can (maybe) get a mount as a reward for your effort as a high-end raider.. it is just not enough.

I would actually also argue that Vanilla was better for casuals because the small things mattered more. Like levelling for example. Getting to level 40 felt like a huge achievement and gave casuals a lot of satisfaction.

In live WoW casual get a lot of high ilvl gear, but it doesn’t really help them because they still can’t get into raids because of curve or m+ because of rio.