The myths about Classic that have fallen apart

[Demolished]

Another person claiming (without evidence) that "most people have quit".

The evidence is obvious that people have quit, most is a broad claim, but take twitch for instance, classic had over a million people on launch day, hundreds of thousands the week after, one hundred thousand now. This is proof that there is a decline.

Realms that had queue times, no longer have them. Realms that were high, are medium. More proof of a decline.

What more do you need?

[Angrie]

I think you missed a big point. Being behind the bell curve in levels.

I had a very busy life for the last 2 months - bought a new house, reno'd said house, working OT at work, constant home projects, time with the wife - and I'm only level 24 because of it. Would be great but ALL of my friends i play with are in the 40s or 50s. I can't play with them.

The issue gets worse everyday: My realm has a queue every night. So i log on at like 8:30pm, i get in the game at like 9:10. By the time i fly to where i need to go, it's 9:30. Cool. I play to 10:30 and if i get ganked, am in an overpopulated area, etc, nothing gets done. Meanwhile, my friends log in instantly at 5:30/6pm and play to midnight without ever missing a beat. They make groups instantly and get right into the action.

IT FUCKING SUCKS.

I loved vanilla. LOVED IT. Classic was fun at the start, really not having fun being stuck at level 23-24 for 8 days while everyone else is blitzing to 60.
If you know me, i HATE... HATEEEEEEEEEE being carried through anything, so when i hit 60, probably 3 months from now, my friends will carry me through stuff making the game not a game, but a television show.

Will probably just quit this week and save myself the misery, at least if i play retail i can outgear all of them when they come back.

[Oakshana]

Dude, it was never a "thing" being said Classic raids were hard. Never. Stop this bullcrap trying to say otherwise.

Actually a lot of people did say this. All over the place. The truth is, they don't really become difficult until mid-AQ. And it's not that the raids themselves are mechanically complicated... because they simply aren't... it's about resource management. It will be cake for the people who have raided this before. For people who have never experienced Vanilla raiding, it will take a little bit for them to wrap their brain around it. Because it just isn't difficult. But there are different things you need to be mindful of instead of whether or not you are standing in the poo or cleave field.

Point 2, Talents.
Classic talents are 100% better than retails. By a HUGE amount. Not even close.
Specially rogue, the talent choices affect your gameplay by 100% compared to other talent trees.
Not even close.

Bullshit. All they did with the Cata changes to talent trees was to back in all of the +hit/crit/dmg bonuses everyone took anyway. The get added on the backend as you level. There just isn't a +1 to click on. And the talents you used to take from the Vanilla - Wrath trees like Mutilate, Mortal Strike, Shadow Form, Boomkin, etc etc etc... all became baseline to the class or specs. They just gave you more passives and actives to actually choose from.

[Heeresman]

Amazing analysis.

How do you do it?

[FelPlague]

I'd love to see you find my opinion on live negative or positive. I'm having more fun on classic right now, so I'm playing that more. I still raid 3 nights/week on live, and enjoy that too. Keep your generalizations to yourself.

I love seeing these comments. because the same people who make these alot of the time are people who do nothing but talk shit about live... then people say this, and they get made fun of...

key words mate. didnt say you, just ive been seeing alot of classic people begin saying this, while also shitting on retail and anyone who likes it.

[AeneasBK]

Almost none of what you wrote is correct, especially 2, 3, and 7.

If he wasn't deliberately writing something completely false in the first line of each paragraph he did very well 'by accident'.

I really hope it was copypasted rather than spending that much time typing it all up.

[Big Thanks]

Bullshit. All they did with the Cata changes to talent trees was to back in all of the +hit/crit/dmg bonuses everyone took anyway. The get added on the backend as you level. There just isn't a +1 to click on. And the talents you used to take from the Vanilla - Wrath trees like Mutilate, Mortal Strike, Shadow Form, Boomkin, etc etc etc... all became baseline to the class or specs. They just gave you more passives and actives to actually choose from.

Wrath talents were absolute perfection
Classic talents...still better than BfA by a mile

[Underverse]

Still having fun, still sitting in queues.

The major difference from retail that I've noticed is that I appreciate rewards SO much more. Especially knowing that my progress won't be entirely overidden in 3 months with the next content patch...it's a nice feeling.

[Exkrementor]

1. everyone who thought classic raids were hard was either lying or a moron.

2. both have their up and downsides

3. different people play the game differently. some people want to level as fast as possible and some want to have fun.

4. it does. people talk in general chat and /s and are looking for people to do hard quests with.

5. thats just wrong. yeah, there are ae grinding groups but there are also normal groups out there. every class can get a slot. just dont expect some dps spots if you are druid, priest or paladin. do your fucking job and heal or tank.

6. yeah class quests are boring. better get everything for free. that is what is killing retail

7. never understood that argument either. everything in classic takes longer.

[Jeina]

The evidence is obvious that people have quit, most is a broad claim, but take twitch for instance, classic had over a million people on launch day, hundreds of thousands the week after, one hundred thousand now. This is proof that there is a decline.

Realms that had queue times, no longer have them. Realms that were high, are medium. More proof of a decline.

What more do you need?

Yes, a decline in the number of people watching other people play the game. Nothing indicates fewer people actually playing the game.

Realm queues are down because Blizzard increased the population cap, opened new realms, and handed out free transfers.

People have certainly quit. I'm not denying that, but there's no actual evidence as to the amount of people.

[Themerlin]

I have an opinion.

Hear me ROAR!



Notice me roaring in the video, and the rest of you being the bird.

That final look I give you... is what I think of this post.

[Seiklis]

1. Yes agreed though C'thun and 4H will take a couple resets prolly
2.Nope
3. Definitely Nope
4. I'll stop here cause it's obvious you aren't playing classic

[Greevir]

I put forth the motion to change MMO-Champion to Blog-Champion ASAP. It's been long overdue!

[FelPlague]

Another person claiming (without evidence) that "most people have quit".

but many people have... you can see this in the server populations...

[derpkitteh]

class quests and talents are the only good things about classic.

only insipid zoomer mongrels dislike class quests. you should have to do a quest line to learn every spell you get.

[david0925]

While I think a lot of the sentiment towards classic is really forced at best, I don't understand why there are repeated attempts post trying to summarize why they hate classic or retail. There are plenty of threads about these topics already.

A lot of things about classic/vanilla is that they are not reward driven in the form of gear. Some people will write that off as being inefficient, others will just do it to see it. I think this is the fundamental difference between the two sides as far as "not the destination, but the journey" goes.

As far as end game goes, the talents since MoP is much better for customization but while leveling up, that extra reward, even when it is just 1% crit or 1% hit, makes people feel good. Even if you bake that 1% crit/hit into leveling up, letting people click that point makes them feel good. But this is not retail's inherent fault, there are simply too many levels right now due to many expansions.

[Deadwhisper]

As somebody who played durring Vanilla, I can say that this is absolutely true. The only socialization you really got was if you joined a guild, and even then it's just the odd response here and there... unless you had Ventrillo or whatever the one was before that (I forget, it's been a while! :P)

But in truth, you're right. Nobody really socializes much IRL and definitely really not much at all in the game. It only happens IRL if you're at a party - where the whole POINT is to socialize there! You're not going into a RL party to form a merry possé to effectively strategize out a way to defeat the Pinyata boss! :P

It's like those doinks who claim that Cell Phones make kids socialize less and that people talked to eachother on the train. They didn't - they read books, listened to music or read a magazine/newspaper.

Where are you dorks from that people "Don't socialize"?

People not socializing with YOU does not mean people have become anti-social.

[FelPlague]

I have literally never seen anyone anywhere ever claim this.

i have seen a fair few people say this, can agree.
even i beelived it for abit "no need to log on every single day... no need to worry about your dailies or weeklies..."

[InTheEnd]

And I cringe when people think a company like Blizzard isn't capable of working on two (or more) projects at the same time, with different teams.

Ah, the good old "multiple teams" myth. Haven't heard that one in a while. Here, let me make it simple for you: Blizzard has a limited number of resources. When utilising multiple teams, it means each individual project has fewer resources allocated to it. Therefore, the quality of each individual project takes a hit. Can't argue with that logic.

[hulkgor]

Classic will soon be 3 weeks old and for many of us it's been a colossal experience in various different ways. On launch day, all my guildies and almost all my B-Net friends were desparately trying to get in, to have this old school experience. Many hours and days of gameplay have been devoted to Classic since then, and during that time we all verified the things we've been told over the months and years leading to the Classic launch ourselves. The hype train is slowing down and by now most people have quit the game already and I'm about to follow. So what about that hype we were being fed, mostly by influencers, streamers and youtubers turned out to be untrue?

1. Classic raids are very hard.

This has already been extensively discussed in other threads, but nonetheless I wanted to get this out of the way first. This was heavily pushed as one of the selling points of Classic. How many hours you have to spend on farming consumables, how many hours you have to spend on getting this and that...in the end it turned out that people below the level cap in greens are able to clear the raids. The only difficulty in clearing the raid is actually getting to level 60.

2. Old talent trees are better than the current ones

This is something that was advertised not only with Classic in mind, but in general in any discussion about the talent system in the current game. These initial weeks of people having access to Classic has shown that not only are those old talents not interesting (the vast majority of them just being +1% dmg on ability), but they also allow no options to pick at all, because resetting them costs a fortune. Depending on the class, about 2-4 talents in the whole tree actually make a difference in your gameplay. The rest is filler that doesn't give any tangible power up.

3. It’s about the journey, not the race to 60

Probably one of the most pushed ideas by all the veteran/elite players/streamers. What ended up happening was of course all those people who were pushing this idea went and grinded dungeons in raids with premade groups. Various excuses were employed, but in general the truth was laid bare for everyone to see. Turns out it’s not about the adventure in the zones, as that’s just boring grindfest of poorly balanced quests. It’s getting to the cap as fast as possible that is important, and people just playing normally are treated as some weirdos wasting their time. And for good reason - questing seems to be one of the worst possible ways to level up in Classic. Instance grinding, layer hopping, or just simple mob grinding in one spot are all faster.

4. Classic incentivizes player interaction, so everyone will suddenly become sociable and make friends

This just isn't the case. We can blame the current times and how people are in general these days, but I'm willing to bet it's been like that years ago too. People don't socialize. Sure, they do group up for quests, because those quests necessitate that. They sometimes say "hi", "bye" or "warrior taunt the mob" but usually nothing beyond that. There is absolutely nothing different about grouping in Classic in comparison to grouping through lfg-type systems in retail wow. People enter a party, they do the task, they leave, and never speak to each other again.

5. Getting into a dungeon group won't be a problem because there's no ilvl, r.io, achievements and armory.

False. Everyone and their mother spends their whole day on twitch now, and they already know the “leveling meta” for dungeons. Different class, or a spec without specific aoe abilities the party leader wants? No invite. And sure, I'm not saying you won't ever find a group for dungeon, and you can always make your own group, but about 80-90% of the groups advertised past level 40 are for specific classes and specific comps only. Yes, you will be able to do a dungeon run for quests while leveling, but it will take a long while looking through the "meta only" group advertisements to find one that just wants you as a player, not as an aoe mage. Other than that, thanks to loot options in Classic, most of the groups usually have a list of "reserved items" that you have to agree to pass on when you join the party. So which is worse, requiring a higher RIO, or asking that you pass on 10 items that you actually need?

6. Class quests, the holy grail of class fantasy

Class quests are the epitome of the antiquated game design. Not only are they fully skippable, which makes them horrible for people who are not playing the game on rails following a complete leveling guide for their class, but they often also require a group, and the ability to kill an enemy that is like 10 levels above your current level. For many of those quests you literally have to ask for boost, or you'll not complete them. Them being fully skippable also means that you may end up at a level cap while lacking skills essential to your class. Not only are those quests fully skippable, they also give no mention of the actual final reward in the game itself, so again, you have to follow 3rd party guides to even know what's coming.

7. Classic is a great game for casuals, much better than modern WoW

It is obviously not. In no way, shape, or form. Leveling is broken, imbalanced and just badly designed. Quests are few and far between, and you have to juggle 3-4 zones at once to even keep doing them. Otherwise you just have to grind mobs. As for the mobs themselves, you often die while fighting 1 mob that is on your level on lower. It's not even about everything taking long, it's about you wasting a lot of time if you don't know the proper route or not paying like 10$ for the proper questing addon that will take you through stuff you need to do. Leveling in Classic while not having any prior knowledge or memorized routes is just a pain. But okay - let's say you are a casual and you reach the level cap in a month or two. What can you do? You can level your professions, maybe farm some gold for an epic mount...content ends. You can always level an alt I guess, but why put yourself through that hell again? There is absolutely nothing to do in Classic if you don't plan to raid in it, which is why I personlally quit on level 42. The grind has become really tredious, and I would put myself through it if there was something waiting at the end - and there's not. I'm not afraid of long grinds, I've reached max overal level in the original Runescape 2 (the one osrs is based on) years back. And I'm grinding some stuff on retail wow for years now, on 30 characters. There needs to be an incentive though, and there is none in Classic.

So these are the main ones I know about. If you have any other myths that were completely debunked by Classic's release feel free to post.

Appreciate the blog post, i guess, yet i completely disagree with every single one of your bullet points except 1, although even 1 is arguably incorrect since it was never a myth (the myth seems to be people claiming others said it... which i don't find to be true), and it was very clear from the get go that the raids were not difficult at all (talking specifically about Molten Core and Onyxia, the ones available now).

So yea, this post was nonsense.

Cheers.

Also, you should look up the definition of 'opinion', and not consider your subjective views on the subject as 'fact' or 'correct'.