Originally Posted by
Cringecaller
I really can't get behind this idea that Classic is entirely about nostalgia, or that Classic 'failed' because it's inherently a bad game or w/e.
I'm not 100% on forum rules so I'll try to be vague and not advertise anything naughty, but I played a private server before classic launched. Or more accurately I played a poor quality private server for a little bit and later restarted on another. I no-lifed on that server from the day it launched for months and only took a real break(pun) when I broke my left arm some time during AQ. I stopped playing very much a bit after Naxx launched partly because of IRL, partly because my guild at that stage couldn't be arsed with Naxx, but also because I was considering starting again on a fresh server, then Classic was announced so I didn't bother. Honestly I felt a little guilty playing on a private server, especially if Blizz was going to offer a legit option.
Anyway the point is playing on that server was some of the best gaming I've had. I genuinely had a few friends from all over the world and we'd say "hey man how's it going" when they logged on even if you didn't want anything out of them. I was acquainted with a few of the "Big Men on Campus", even if I wasn't one of them. There was maybe 2 pinnacle guilds on either faction, and then a pretty wide tier of serious but not maniacal guilds below them, and you generally knew who they were. People would heal or tank your Scholo just for the sake of it; This other pally and I teamed up for a week or two and ran Scholo day-in-day-out trying to finish that tanking set, and whoever wasn't specced prot that run would pass on the roll. We were pals until he got conscripted (apparently). World PvP actually happened organically, and sometimes you'd even get the "lets camp Splinter Tree for a bit, see who turns up". I think the only real problem I had was 300-350 base ping. There were some bots, but mainly for leveling I think. Ratio was maybe 53H/47A.
Classic was totally different. The first week or so was pretty spectacular, but it became obvious after a while, and when the herd thinned quite a bit, that people behaved very differently. It was really common to have someone invite me to group without saying a word while questing, farm the mobs silently, and drop group within seconds of that last mob dying. Sometimes they'd even realise they forgot something and wander back over and silently invite you again. The meta-slavery was off the charts, and never really reduced before I quick. Some people wouldn't add you to RFC/VC because of your class.
Phase 2 or whenever PvP launched as Alliance was ridiculous. Lots of people quit within days. I weathered it for a while but you'd get instagibbed at chillwind. Ok try SS, nope camped as well. Menethil had been camped since forever, especially the boats. So many of us didn't log again until BGs came out, at which point World PvP effectively went extinct. That then lead into the whole cluster around AV, min/maxing honor, "AV pre-mades" blah blah blah. One of the few memorable occurences was teaming up with a couple other hunters trying to do the Silithus Rhok'delar demon (without exploits. Shocker, I know), which morphed into an ongoing battle against about 5 farming horde for a while. That netted me an invite to their B-tier guild, but it quickly became apparent you had to do the whole raidlogging raidbuff thing, so I quit a day or two later. I'd read people saying that you should seek out other casuals if you want to play casual; "no one's stopping you", but by this point the chats were nothing but bots/gdkp/gold sellers and endless god damn boosters. How is it even worth your time to sell a stocks boost for like 50 silver? I distinctly remember hopping on my mid-level alt in SW and it was so bleak: impossible to get a legit dungeon run because chat is booster spam, and the image of a sea of human fury warriors and aoe-farming mage alts in front of the bank. It might have been a few weeks after BWL that I quit Classic outright. The one major upside of Classic was having 30ms ping.
TL;DR - My contention is that the main problem with Classic was the community, as my experience on a Vanilla private server was amazing and might have been the peak gaming experience of my life had I had local latency. Classic was like pulling teeth from almost start to finish. I could give you at least 10 names from the private server that I remember, and maybe another 40 distinct descriptions. I just spent way too long trying to remember the name "Timecop".
...Hell, I can even remember at least one name from retail Vanilla: a Troll mage I met in Tarren Mill called Getafix, which lead to us spending half an hour talking about Asterix. Or the UD Warlock called "Waerloga" that we chewed out because he came to MC in Robes of Arugal. We christened him "water logger" and implied we needed to flush the toilet to get rid of him. But he got his revenge by gquitting, and when they made pvp gear buyable with honor points pre-tbc launch, he grinded BGs like a machine and put all us 15yo to shame with his purps.
I don't remember a single name or even description from Classic, except 1 hunter I did the Silithus demon with had Ashjre'thul. After I joined that guys guild, someone else told me they were a dad from Perth.
That's it.