Originally Posted by
Azerate
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.
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