What happened to all of the Vanilla purists?

[Froggy]

They went back to private servers. Classic being stuck at naxx patch with everyone in teir 3 is boring.

This is me. Awaiting the launch (soon) of a promising looking private server that has made just enough changes to make me excited to play Vanilla again.

TBC just doesn't really interest me, I play Vanilla or Retail, the in-betweens aren't my thing.

[dragnipur]

And I imagine hardly anybody is in reality if that's the case. What percent of people enjoy the grind of 1-60 enough to wipe their toon and restart completely? Not a lot I would guess, not a lot at all

But why is it necessary to wipe the progress? Keep the servers in one mega cluster and just open one new Fresh realm. All who want a new start will switch to it. Once that fresh realm goes through all the phases connect it to the rest and open a new Fresh server. This is the cycle.
Also I can give you Diablo's seasons as an example or its Hardcore mode. There clearly is a demographic which enjoys such play style. And in my opinion it is more than enough for Blizzard to consider it.

[Prag]

Have one pve, one PvP, one RP and then one seasonal server of each. Allow “copy” from seasonal to era and restart the seasonal with tight phasing every 9 months.

[Velerios]

if classic+ content would have come i would choice it over tbc, the main issue is content.

Until WotLK comes out i don't expect ANY kind of classic+.

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wrath was trash and everyone not a wrathbaby blinded by bias and nostalgia knows it

3.0 and 3.1 were perfect, it went downhill after the much too early release of 3.2. And that's actually the fault of cataclysm too, since they already were so extremely behind the schedule so that they couldn't create more content for wrath because of cata.

[Echo of Soul]

those people never wanted to play an eternal vanila,those people have a serious boner for constant resets,they either restart on new private servers or in the case of smarter devs play on servers with an constant reseting realm+a token permanent one

its the same reason why diablo 3 still is popular,seasons

That kinda goes against the whole point of a MMORPG, then again so does being stuck on the same patch for eternity.

Maybe that's why FFXIV is growing so much. WoW has just gotten worse and worse over the years but FFXIV seems to get better and better so people are actually excited to play the latest stuff.

[cparle87]

I actually wanted a complete remaster with modern graphics and maybe some coveinience GUI updates that wont affect the gameplay. The way how blizzard deliberately recreated every flaw was a spit on everyone's face, except the hardcore vanilloids waited such spit with their tongue out

And that's why I was against "classic" from the beginning. Everyone has their own little perfect version and everyone was going to be let down.

[Lashiec]

And that's why I was against "classic" from the beginning. Everyone has their own little perfect version and everyone was going to be let down.

It was a huge success, so much so that Blizzard came back for Round 2, but yeah I'm sure you're right.

[deenman]

That kinda goes against the whole point of a MMORPG, then again so does being stuck on the same patch for eternity.

Maybe that's why FFXIV is growing so much. WoW has just gotten worse and worse over the years but FFXIV seems to get better and better so people are actually excited to play the latest stuff.

the fact that an mmo all about playing dress up is potentialy the biggest mmo says a lot about the deplorable state of the genre

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3.0 and 3.1 were perfect, it went downhill after the much too early release of 3.2. And that's actually the fault of cataclysm too, since they already were so extremely behind the schedule so that they couldn't create more content for wrath because of cata.

LOL,i hope this is some kind of sarcasm,the early patches were the worst

the ammount of crazy unbalance was insane...prot warrior 1 shoting people,arcane barage doing almost as much dmg as a pyro,ret pala 1 shoting,dk being a literal god

the pve content getting cleared in day 1 of release,there has never been a more joke of a day 1 release for an expansion

[GreenJesus]

WotLK is MVP and everyone knows it. Servers, history of AT and game itself. Can't bloody wait!

Naxx 2.0 and trial of the crusader, ruby sanctum (doesn't really count). Wotlk basicslly only had 2 raid tiers. Wrath also started giving out free welfare epics. I like wrath for the cool factor, but honestly it's pretty over rated simply because Arthas and DK class is cool.

[Echo of Soul]

dk being a literal god

The first half of wrath was so much fun from a character customization perspective if you were playing a DK. So many different fun and interesting builds but of course Blizzard had to stomp all of them into the ground because we weren't playing the class the way that they wanted us to.
I really wish that they would've embraced that and made it a design philosophy for all the classes going forward but it's been like this at Blizzard for a very long time now, they have a very clear path of how they want us to play their game and if we deviate from that path they smack us on the head and put us back on track.

[tru]

If they have the technology worked out to bring back old files to make it a live game again... Copy paste bug fix profit. Why wouldn't they? Hell they could do seasons with vanilla down the road give out base template character here ya go. If they have already got the hard stuff figured out their time vs capital gained they'd be stupid not to milk it.

[Velerios]

LOL,i hope this is some kind of sarcasm,the early patches were the worst

the ammount of crazy unbalance was insane...prot warrior 1 shoting people,arcane barage doing almost as much dmg as a pyro,ret pala 1 shoting,dk being a literal god

There are people who care about PvP, and people who don't; i'm clearly one of the ones who doesn't care at all.

the pve content getting cleared in day 1 of release,there has never been a more joke of a day 1 release for an expansion

Yep, Naxx was rehashed; but many people didn't had the chance to play naxx in the vanilla days back then and 3.1 had one of the best raids blizzard ever created. Oh yes, and Malygos... ok, this was absolute shit!

[cparle87]

It was a huge success, so much so that Blizzard came back for Round 2, but yeah I'm sure you're right.

Yeah, just look at all the talk. "It would've been tough but they used the 1.12 talents, this isn't real vanilla." "They used <insert patch here> for Alterac Valley, this isn't real vanilla." So on and so forth.

[Fmr]

Vanilla is like a graveyard now. This after years and years of people either playing illegally on private servers (because it was so much more fun than retail) and/or demanding that Vanilla be re-released. I for sure thought they would play Vanilla forever. I guess 2 years was enough to satisfy the decade-long controversy.

This is like you saying that Super Mario World is a great game and I ask you why you don't play it everyday. Most people get burned out by games and it takes a few weeks or months to reignite the interest or passion again

[Prozach]

This is like you saying that Super Mario World is a great game and I ask you why you don't play it everyday. Most people get burned out by games and it takes a few weeks or months to reignite the interest or passion again

This analogy is horrible on so many levels. But, just to focus on the most obvious, there wasn't a 100k+ petition for Nintendo to re-release Super Mario World on current consoles. Because, well...it already is. And has been on pretty much every Nintendo console. And isn't an MMORPG. And people weren't forced to break the law in order to play it. Ok, I mentioned more than one but you get the point (hopefully). The reason WoW Classic exists is because so many people alleged that there were *not* "burned out by it".

[Farora]

Still waiting on classic fresh.

[Marxman]

3.0 and 3.1 were perfect, it went downhill after the much too early release of 3.2. And that's actually the fault of cataclysm too, since they already were so extremely behind the schedule so that they couldn't create more content for wrath because of cata.

Even as a Wrath fanboy, this is an absurd statement. 3.0 was *woefully* undertuned, to the point that it was a joke even for the most casual groups. Private servers have literally buffed 3.0 raid and dungeon content by 200+% and it's still a cakewalk. It was so easy that it's almost insulting to the intelligence of the playerbase, especially coming out of TBC which was tuned quite tightly for the most part, even if it was still easy content.

3.1 was a lot better, but still undertuned.

If WotLK Classic launches with 3.3.5 classes and tuning and doesn't buff T7 content by at least 75%, it will be a fucking stomp, maybe even more than Vanilla Classic was.

Source: Am currently playing heavily buffed T7 on a very popular pserver. It's still a joke that we full clear in 2 hours.

[Mister K]

Naxx 2.0 and trial of the crusader, ruby sanctum (doesn't really count). Wotlk basicslly only had 2 raid tiers. Wrath also started giving out free welfare epics. I like wrath for the cool factor, but honestly it's pretty over rated simply because Arthas and DK class is cool.

Naxx was lazy but a nice throwback to those who did not experience it. It wasn't that difficult.
ToGC was a boring raid however it was hard. Majority of guilds did not complete 25HC with no deaths and max attempts.
TBC started giving away welfare epics too, Wrath just made it that much easier. This "welfare epics" argument is a joke.
People do not like Wrath and rate it as the best expansion (and it is, clearly, the stats show it whether you like it or not) because of DKs and Arthas. The raids were generally better, harder, more interesting, achievements and hardmodes made the longevity of the game better. Additionally professions had a decent meta, PVP was WAY more balanced and fun.

Sure it was a beginning of the end with LFG but outside of that, the game was great.

[Velerios]

Even as a Wrath fanboy, this is an absurd statement. 3.0 was *woefully* undertuned, to the point that it was a joke even for the most casual groups. Private servers have literally buffed 3.0 raid and dungeon content by 200+% and it's still a cakewalk. It was so easy that it's almost insulting to the intelligence of the playerbase, especially coming out of TBC which was tuned quite tightly for the most part, even if it was still easy content.

You mean like MC was totally undertuned? Yes, it is, but it is the first raid of the expansion. Don't forget that you can't compare it to anything after Vanilla and TBC, because it was back then.

More off that TBC was totally overtuned, but back then, TBC had in it's first patch 2 1/2 Tier dungeons already implemented; so the balancing back then was totally different.

That said, yes, 3.3.5 classes are probably too strong (with the exception of DKs are no longer as OP as they were in 3.0);

3.1 was a lot better, but still undertuned.

Nah, now you think like a retailer. To say it simple: NOTHING IN CLASSIC IS NOT UNDERTUNED: MC-NAXX were undertuned, KARA-SUNWELL will be undertuned. While you were probably a bit right in 3.0, 3.1 has a perfectly reasonable difficult-level; because don't forget that nobody managed either to defeat Lich King with 0% buff or while it was the most recent content also Yogg'saron with 0 Keepers.

If WotLK Classic launches with 3.3.5 classes and tuning and doesn't buff T7 content by at least 75%, it will be a fucking stomp, maybe even more than Vanilla Classic was.

Yes, it will be, but that's Classic: the skill players have nowadays is so much higher, PCs became better (that also makes a huge difference), internet connections became faster, snappier and so on. There's a reason why spell batching existed and there's one why it was removed for example.

Still: yes i think blizzard needs to give everything an tuning patch: it's good that they did it in TBC, but i think there needs to be more done in WotLK.

Source: Am currently playing heavily buffed T7 on a very popular pserver. It's still a joke that we full clear in 2 hours.

Sorry, but Numbers of Private Servers are numbers of Private Servers: nothing worth. Since many calculations are server side and people there simply guess how it should have been, you can't compare anything that happens there to the official ones: will there be a huge gap: surely not, but still you can't compare them.

In the end i think that if one expansions needs some classic+ content, then it's WotLK for sure. While i loved it, blizzard also did some awkward changes back then, for example the argent tournament. It was stupid to have this in icecrown and not in Crystalsong forest where it was supposed to be; but back then it was necessary because of Dalaran; that would not be the case nowadays; not just because we have much better computers, but because they could easily use some phasing or sharding technology there to go around this issues.

And don't forget Azjol Nerub, that was also completely cut and made in just 2 dungeons. That they stomped the whole nerubian lore out of Northrend was a very bad move. This was similar bad as was to cut out Farahlon in WoD

And for 3.3 content that seems to be totally cut i would love to see the siege of icecrown, but that's probably will never happen.

[Zergin8r]

I don't get what was so great about Arthas in WOTLK though... he was like Dr Claw... showing up, could have killed is next time, only to say he would get us later. His character was not a real threat and was not handled well at all.