It feels like classic is a new game that was never released before

[Vampiregenesis]

I'm 55 currently and I feel like I play this game for the first time. People are VERY active in world pvp especially in blackrock mountain and thorium point, it's like they never did that before. People are also hungry for loot, they will do these anger runs for hoj like mad. People are very kind and endure a lot of wipes and corpse runs which doesn't happen often in retail. The servers are extremely active for a retro game. Literally this feels like a new game and it's already one of the best games out there if not the best.

Is this a gaming phenomenon? I don't think something like this happened again in gaming. Release the same game with a delay of 15 years and still having the same success with it. Blizzard teach us that originality and new content means nothing, when something is great, it will always be great no matter how many times you repeat it. It's as they say a market fit product that cannot be surpassed even by the company itself.

[Frozenbeef]

Guess it's down to personal taste, to me it's a grindy boring mess, to others like you its fun, different people to different things.

Good that people who enjoy that sort of gameplay have a home in the warcraft family though.

[CerealLord]

I don't think it is a phenomenon. It is a successful game because there is still a rabid fanbase for this type of MMO that is not seen currently.

[horbindr]

lots of remasters/rereleases are successful. who doesn't want to play their childhood games again without having to be traumatized by 640*480 resolutions and the like?

not so sure that great once means always great though, there are plenty of games that really really don't age well too.

e.g. when i tried the starcraft remaster, it really took a while to get used to some of the archaic systems that game has that they (intentionally) didn't modernize. don't think i would have put up with that if it wasn't for the nostalgia factor.

[Nzx]

Is this a gaming phenomenon?

Have fucking mercy. This circlejerk is out of control.

[Xemioza]

Oh classic so good /fap /fap /fap ...

Just enjoy and play :P

Played it since 1.9 and enjoying retail atm or Wotlk, Pandaria, Wod, Legion way better than classic.

[Dead Moose Fandango]

Feels like a fence that was put up, but it's too short to keep the damn wolves out.

[Ange]

People are VERY active in world pvp especially in blackrock mountain and thorium point, it's like they never did that before. People are also hungry for loot, they will do these anger runs for hoj like mad. People are very kind and endure a lot of wipes and corpse runs which doesn't happen often in retail.

Did you miss the first months of BfA? OPTIONAL WPVP was a hot topic for months. Farming dungeons like mad? People do 3000-6000 dungeon runs for loot and ranking in mythic+ and the main goal is to go as fast and hard as possible, meaning you wipe a lot, before you manage the insane pulls and speed of the run.

New start after a gear reset is allways fun and it is obviously a different story when you start 12+ months after release.

Same success is a bit to much circle jerking. Vanilla had endless growth, classic is allready at a heavy decline, so no, not the same success.

[unbound]

I'm 55 currently and I feel like I play this game for the first time. People are VERY active in world pvp especially in blackrock mountain and thorium point, it's like they never did that before. People are also hungry for loot, they will do these anger runs for hoj like mad. People are very kind and endure a lot of wipes and corpse runs which doesn't happen often in retail. The servers are extremely active for a retro game. Literally this feels like a new game and it's already one of the best games out there if not the best.

Is this a gaming phenomenon? I don't think something like this happened again in gaming. Release the same game with a delay of 15 years and still having the same success with it. Blizzard teach us that originality and new content means nothing, when something is great, it will always be great no matter how many times you repeat it. It's as they say a market fit product that cannot be surpassed even by the company itself.

Not really a phenomenon, but more of a reflection of how far Retail has changed from Vanilla. The games are far apart in very important ways that they really feel like two different games that happen to share a general theme.

For those of us who enjoy Classic, we recognize that a major issue with Retail is that it is extremely boring due to various decisions such as homogenization to such a degree that there are really only 4 classes in Retail at this point (tank, heal, rdps, mdps) and that the difference between a frost mage and a destro lock has more to do with animations anymore since they are all capable of doing the same thing anymore.

It also doesn't help that Blizz has been so much cheaper with the more recent expansions than initially. BC and Wrath were great in part because there was so much to them...more than twice as many dungeons and raids that were designed to be enjoyed, not designed to be raced through (literally in the case of Retail and M+).

Those are just a couple of many examples that can be provided in the differences between Vanilla and Retail. Basically, Blizz lost their way a long time ago, and Classic being such a success demonstrates that those of us pointing that out for years were absolutely right.

[Muajin76]

I'm 55 currently and I feel like I play this game for the first time. People are VERY active in world pvp especially in blackrock mountain and thorium point, it's like they never did that before. People are also hungry for loot, they will do these anger runs for hoj like mad. People are very kind and endure a lot of wipes and corpse runs which doesn't happen often in retail. The servers are extremely active for a retro game. Literally this feels like a new game and it's already one of the best games out there if not the best.

Is this a gaming phenomenon? I don't think something like this happened again in gaming. Release the same game with a delay of 15 years and still having the same success with it. Blizzard teach us that originality and new content means nothing, when something is great, it will always be great no matter how many times you repeat it. It's as they say a market fit product that cannot be surpassed even by the company itself.

many of us have played all that stuff when it was current, thus dont feel like grinding all that shit out again.
vanilla took longer in most aspects. it was fun when it was new and nobody had a dang idea what was going on. I'm personally not attracted to classic cause i been there, along with many others.

[kaintk]

Tbh, the majority of peoples you see are the ones who played on private server, so yeah, they are hyped to play vanilla

[Thage]

They kind of recaptured lightning in a bottle. There's not really any MMORPGs except EVE Online catering to the demographic old-school MMOs like EverQuest did; modern EverQuest is a far cry from what it once was, and with EQNext cancelled, there was a hole in the MMO market just waiting to be plugged. Bringing out official Classic servers when they did (filling that market niche to an extent, and coming in just when mid-aughts gaming nostalgia is starting to really heat up) was a smart plan, and it seems as of Q3 Classic is continuing to have a strong presence; time will tell if it was a flash in the pan or history repeating.

[Nathasil]

Blizzard teach us that originality and new content means nothing, when something is great, it will always be great no matter how many times you repeat it.

Have you been to a cinema in the last ~20 years? Almost all movies are remakes. Also...Terminator Dark Fate is basically a remake of T2...and it still flopped. So no, what was great back then will not always be great again.
And that is not even a modern development. The roots of most themes used in our arts date back thousands of years. Even the bible combined older stories that predated it.

What Blizzard did much more clever than most movie-companies, though, is that you were not legally able to actually play Classic for the last 12 years. They simply forbade it. And now they allow you to play it again. Imagine if Nintendo forbade players to play "Zelda 3: A Link to the Past" since 1995 and now they would allow players to play it again...the hype would be unreal.
Also, Blizzard did not invest hundreds of millions of dollars into an expensive reboot - they just had a small team port the game over to current hardware. I would bet that WoW:Classic has a better return/investment ratio than even mobile games. And that is indeed awesome - if you are a shareholder. If it is good for gamers when companies see that they can make loads of money by preventing you from playing their most successful games 2-3 years in and some years later sell you the exact same product again is a different story.

And one last point: Blizzard was never extremely creative...they were just incredibly good at combining the best ideas of others and put out games with a level of polish that made the rest of the industry blush. I would argue that modern Blizzard does not live up to that legacy anymore.

[Mayia]

I don't think it is a phenomenon. It is a successful game because there is still a rabid fanbase for this type of MMO that is not seen currently.

I do think its because most games are trying to give you a weekly/monthly quota system based on the free to play methods to keep players engaged.. but it backfires on certain people who like the old mmo.. which is a couple of million people.

[Wild]

I agree with you OP
I am currently in lvl 54 getting my way to 60. so far it has been great and a lot of fun!
I also love the activity of the players, the community, the interactions and the surprising kindness of the people.
It really does feel like a different game from retail. I remember when playing retail, the only thing I wrote/read all night was „Hi“ (and not even that sometimes) and GG.
In classic, ppl talk, make jokes, explain thing to ppl who dont know. Its crazy how much more I feel like a real MMORPG.
I would never bash retail though, I also liked it a lot, but classic just feels so much more like „home“.

[oplawlz]

I don't think it is a phenomenon. It is a successful game because there is still a rabid fanbase for this type of MMO that is not seen currently.

I do think its because most games are trying to give you a weekly/monthly quota system based on the free to play methods to keep players engaged.. but it backfires on certain people who like the old mmo.. which is a couple of million people.

Agreed here. Not everyone likes that older style of mmo certainly, and I'm glad they have games that better suit their preferences - but classic wow and runescape have taught us that there is lots of demand for that type of mmo still.

There are plenty of improvements that I agree with in retail wow; I just think they went too far from the original formula for some of us.

I'm eager to play BC or WotLK servers once they're available - but anything after that prolly not. To me Cata is where they stopped doing additive expansions and started taking things away.

[Aggrophobic]

I'm 55 currently and I feel like I play this game for the first time. People are VERY active in world pvp especially in blackrock mountain and thorium point, it's like they never did that before. People are also hungry for loot, they will do these anger runs for hoj like mad. People are very kind and endure a lot of wipes and corpse runs which doesn't happen often in retail. The servers are extremely active for a retro game. Literally this feels like a new game and it's already one of the best games out there if not the best.

Is this a gaming phenomenon? I don't think something like this happened again in gaming. Release the same game with a delay of 15 years and still having the same success with it. Blizzard teach us that originality and new content means nothing, when something is great, it will always be great no matter how many times you repeat it. It's as they say a market fit product that cannot be surpassed even by the company itself.

No. Most servers are already dead and it's just the same old game that you played 15 years ago.
Only you have better games to pick from these days.

[Aradur]

No it doesn't. It stil feels like a circlejerk of unbalanced, boring mess.

[Appelgren]

No it doesn't. It stil feels like a circlejerk of unbalanced, boring mess.

Pretty much this. It was fun for a week or two when it came but when the nostalgia cleared it was painfully obvious how inferior it is to retail.
It actually made me appreciate BfA even more and gave me a boost of joy playing BfA again. Im really looking forward to Shadowlands tho since im pretty much done with all I want to do in BfA at this point.

But hey. Who am I to decide what other people should like or not. To each his own or whatever the saying is...

[Specialka]

Not really a phenomenon, but more of a reflection of how far Retail has changed from Vanilla. The games are far apart in very important ways that they really feel like two different games that happen to share a general theme.

For those of us who enjoy Classic, we recognize that a major issue with Retail is that it is extremely boring due to various decisions such as homogenization to such a degree that there are really only 4 classes in Retail at this point (tank, heal, rdps, mdps) and that the difference between a frost mage and a destro lock has more to do with animations anymore since they are all capable of doing the same thing anymore.

It also doesn't help that Blizz has been so much cheaper with the more recent expansions than initially. BC and Wrath were great in part because there was so much to them...more than twice as many dungeons and raids that were designed to be enjoyed, not designed to be raced through (literally in the case of Retail and M+).

Those are just a couple of many examples that can be provided in the differences between Vanilla and Retail. Basically, Blizz lost their way a long time ago, and Classic being such a success demonstrates that those of us pointing that out for years were absolutely right.

Classic "success" just proves that a ton of ppl have shit tastes. A frost mage same as destrolock? How much more biaised can you become?