Nostalgia - Fact or Fiction in wow

[ShadowCrafter]

Hi MMO,

Please excuse me but my main language is not english but its ok.

This is my first post and would like to take the time to discuss what 13 of us decided to do 3 months back after we did everything we wanted out of patch 4.3

First I personally started off in WOTLK (Yes Wrath baby right here) so I never got to experience vanilla or tbc how it was supposed to be, I have read a lot of posts dicussing which was better and to me it just seemed like old grumpy players esp from TBC just trying to make others jealous because we never experienced the content.

2 of the main things that keep getting brought up about TBC is that it was more challenging and a lot more content.

So instead of being someone who would write something about a topic I didn't know, 13 of us decided to join a Private TBC server that was scripted to pre patch 3.0, So this meant we did have all the end game heroic badge loot available to us when hitting 70. As some of you might have experienced private servers levelling is shortened by 5 times so all of us getting to 70 didn't take much time.

So before hitting the heroic dungeons we decided to do the normal versions which was rated 68-70, OMG did we get our first hit of reality, we even wiped a few times in some of the NORMAL dungeons. So after gearing up a bit we decided to hit heroic dungeons and all I can say is that the start of cata had nothing on shattered halls, magisters terrace , Arcatraz etc. As a casual player this is something we would love in todays wow, to be challenged outside of raiding content.

After gearing up with heroics and getting badge gear that wasn't available to others at the start of TBC we decided to try Kara out, obv before we levelled we made sure people were playing classes they were currently playing except for a dk that went holy paladin. All I can say for a entry raid not only is Kara beautiful but it was challenging. The raid designer has to be given props for the passsion that was put into this instance. We wiped a lot just getting to curator over a 3 week period but we thorougly enjoyed Maroes and opera event when you not facerolling it. After 2 months we were able to clear Kara and it goes without saying one of the best raid experienced I have ever had. Yes we could of done it in quicker time and yes progression was made easier due to us having better gear available to us.

So Final thoughts:
As a group we wished we could of experienced wow in this era, yes in some classes like hunters and paladins your rotations were simplified but that was more then made up for the challenge the content presented. I can imagine the buzz at the time when this content was live and guilds were pushing to be the best.

However besides the challenge and the amount of content one thing that never gets mentioned about burning crusade endgame is the care, passsion and soul that was put into raids like Kara, I've only experienced the other BC content at 80 and 85 so it was trivialised but all I can say is I understand why some players are unhappy with the way the game has gone, ignorance is bliss as they say and I personally wish I didn't try BC content because I can never respect wow the way I did before even though I will most likely play mop I am done with the rewardless heroic raiding that we have now.

[Omgarsh]

Nostalgia is a total fact in WoW. I personally don't miss TBC at all and I started playing the game in December of 2004. Some of the content was kind of cool back in the day, but the gameplay was always really bad and boring. Virtually everything was just finding your optimal button/spell for your spec and hitting that repeatedly, unless you were a warrior/rogue as they actually had some variety. I never found myself challenged as a player until WotLK, where fights might have been easy but you had to execute rotations and press more buttons. In almost all of classic WoW/TBC fights felt like RNG and pressing maybe one button over and over again for my warlock/shaman. The biggest challenge in classic/TBC WoW wasn't my own personal performance, it was having people pay attention to stuff going on around them and not being stupid and wiping us by standing in fire and so on. Or terrible RNG (possibly badly geared tanks) causing them to get killed faster than they could get healed.

I mean anyone who played at launch remembers that DPS in particular was agonizing in raids because you were always threat capped/had to worry about threat, which is why stuff like Soulshatter was added in TBC.

The PVP was better, even though it was horribly unbalanced. It has nothing to do with server communities and everything to do with resilience. Resilience was a bad idea implemented to keep raiders from dominating PVP with gear that heavily outclassed any skilled player that went up against them.

[Deleted]

I run 3 different 40-man raids on classic pserver and 5 25-man raids on tbc pservers with standards stats and no powerups back some months.

People who played with me got bored for how easy it was compared to heroic icc or firelands/ds.

Sad truth.

[DreamCast]

Well said OP, but I am affraid the above posters must make some financial gain out of wow being a success in it's current state, so you won't get many agreeing with you here despite the 3 million sub loss in cata.

The best you will get is the game is old.

[Asmodian]

BC sucked, end of story.

[Deleted]

agree with op, but i guess it is also related to me starting raiding in tbc. the big failure of cata for me was ds. I liked the first raids, but ds just didnt have any feeling in it.

[vesseblah]

13 of us decided to join a Private TBC server that was scripted to pre patch 3.0, So this meant we did have all the end game heroic badge loot available to us when hitting 70.

ignorance is bliss as they say and I personally wish I didn't try BC content because

Also nostalgia is ignorance. And you didn't actually try TBC content, just some imitation in a private realm. Should've stopped reading there but wanted to see what bullshit was coming up in the rest of the post.

we even wiped a few times in some of the NORMAL dungeons.

Wow, you must've sucked really badly, as the badge epics of patch 2.4.2 were about five tiers higher gear than what we actually used to clear that content.

After 2 months we were able to clear Kara and it goes without saying one of the best raid experienced I have ever had.

In 2.4.2 badge gear the norm was clearing whole Karazhan in bit over two hours on alts. After all nerfs and with four tiers higher gear it was pale shadow of the original tuning and no harder than WLK Naxxramas.


I have no clue wtf you were playing or are describing now, but it isn't TBC, that one is absolutely certain. And claiming how TBC was better than the game today based on some private server crap is one of the many reasons why threads like these exist. Those who want TBC back the loudest never actually played through any of it.

[Deleted]

I started early vanilla and while i have fond memories of the times back then i think most of it is just rose tinted nostalgia

If i was suddenly able to play vanilla again i would probably find it incredibly dull if not downright unplayable compared to how the game is today

[treehugsyou]

a) Removing attunements
b) Releasing badge gear

Around the same time these two things happened is around the same time my enjoyment from wow started to rapidly decline.

They could have made attunements guildwide or have it so you needed 2/3 of the group to be attuned, but when they removed them completely was when all the people who refused to get better started demanding that the content be nerfed so that they could steamroll it.

They could have made badge gear require badges from content that dropped the same ilvl equivalent, instead you could sleep with your face on the keyboard in steamvents and walk out one step closer to gear that was better than the stuff outta black temple.

Nerfing kael'thas and vash right before they removed attunements was enough, the nerf was needed at the time, but they didn't need to remove the attunements completely at the same time. Those two fights are still probably my favorite fights that blizz has put out, and very few players actually attempted them when they were still fun, which is a shame.

[Derpyhooves]

Oh good lets have another thread full of people arguing about something that is a matter of personal taste and opinion.

Tune in next week for the great debate... which colour is better red or blue?!??

[Primernova]

Nostalgia is not a fact. WoW had a formula and they deviated from it after Ulduar. Many things were tweaked during the period between launch and Ulduar but the basic formula remained intact, easy to learn but hard to master. ToC-MoP is the "New Coke" of WoW, this is the point where everyone starts with the arguments of, "It just got old" or, "Vanilla/TBC sucked, you just have nostalgia" It's BS perpetuated by blind followers that were never there, or baddies that love the new free ride they have carved out for themsleves.

No one that loves or has ever loved WoW, or gaming in general, would be happy with where it has gone.

[Deleted]

Nostalgia is not a fact. WoW had a formula and they deviated from it after Ulduar. Many things were tweaked during the period between launch and Ulduar but the basic formula remained intact, easy to learn but hard to master. ToC-MoP is the "New Coke" of WoW, this is the point where everyone starts with the arguments of, "It just got old" or, "Vanilla/TBC sucked, you just have nostalgia" It's BS perpetuated by blind followers that were never there, or baddies that love the new free ride they have carved out for themsleves.

No one that loves or has ever loved WoW, or gaming in general, would be happy with where it has gone.

Where as your post is stating facts and not full of sweeping generalizations or logical fallacies...

I was a hardcore raider in vanilla and like current wow better

[TequilaFlavor]

BC sucked, end of story.

BC was really amazing for someone like me, who is into raiding and knows a lot of Warcraft lore - the main "problems" some people had with BC was that they either weren't dedicated to raiding and therefore hadn't enough to do otherwise, or that they didn't like the "outlandish" environments that I personally totally loved as a breath of fresh air.

[Orby]

Oh good lets have another thread full of people arguing about something that is a matter of personal taste and opinion.

Tune in next week for the great debate... which colour is better red or blue?!??

think you'll find thats what forums are for, (except replace "arguing" with "debating") you don't have to reply here if you don't like the subject matter.

[ShadowCrafter]

Also nostalgia is ignorance. And you didn't actually try TBC content, just some imitation in a private realm. Should've stopped reading there but wanted to see what bullshit was coming up in the rest of the post.



Wow, you must've sucked really badly, as the badge epics of patch 2.4.2 were about five tiers higher gear than what we actually used to clear that content.



In 2.4.2 badge gear the norm was clearing whole Karazhan in bit over two hours on alts. After all nerfs and with four tiers higher gear it was pale shadow of the original tuning and no harder than WLK Naxxramas.


I have no clue wtf you were playing or are describing now, but it isn't TBC, that one is absolutely certain. And claiming how TBC was better than the game today based on some private server crap is one of the many reasons why threads like these exist. Those who want TBC back the loudest never actually played through any of it.

Just like to point out if you read my post properly you would see we were levelling 5 times faster then normal and our gear was really bad hitting 70 when we went into the normal dungeons, i think saying goes read between the lines or else i have make the post longer and boring to explain everything, using normal dungeon gear initially heroics were extremely hard, the pvp encounter in magisters terrace is probably hardest heroic encounter I have done. Shattered halls timed hardest overall.

We chose this private server as it came recommended being exactly how it was before with the altered levelling.

We didn't dedicate all our time to BC, a lot of us still played diablo 3, so 2 months but not so much in time because as I say we better gear available with badges. We only raided weekends.

[Raunchy]

I loved bc back then and still prefer it now, even with its (few) faults simply put

[Shadylol]

TBC was about equal to Wrath. It was a little better than Cataclysm, but not remarkably so

Pre-BC was the only time when I think WoW was actually a good game

[Derpyhooves]

think you'll find thats what forums are for, (except replace "arguing" with "debating") you don't have to reply here if you don't like the subject matter.

You can't debate someones preference. If I prefer coke over pepsi it's not something thats open for discussion. Some people liked wow how it used to be some people like it now. Get over it.

I don't have to reply here just like people don't have to keep making the same unconstructive threads over and over. There are literally dozens of "wow used to be better" threads open already.

[Armourboy]

I've been playing since Vanilla, and yes most of it is nostalgia. Don't get me wrong, TBC was awesome at the time, and I would of much rather played it than Cata, but people tend to either forget or just kind of skip over some of the more annoying parts.

The best thing about TBC that we don't have today its the difficult and progression of the 5 mans. You needed the gear out of those normals if you wanted any remote chance of getting a heroic boss or Kara bosses down ( well at least for those of us in non-Uber guilds) and odds are you got some Kara bosses down first. It really gave casual gamers something to do and gave Blizzard time to get things like Dailies put in.

Oh another thing I like from then is the Rep grinds still meant something. They were better than Vanilla, but still a PITA. The grind was worth it though because the gear was actually useful ( not to mention you need it to unlock the heroics.

One of the things people tend to gloss over is the fact ( at least early on) you were forced to do Arena to get good weapons if you were certain specs. Its the reason most BS's were Weaponsmith.

[TJ]

You can't debate someones preference. If I prefer coke over pepsi it's not something thats open for discussion. Some people liked wow how it used to be some people like it now. Get over it.

You can actually debate in a civilised manner, "I preferred this in TBC, but disliked this in Wrath" "I liked this change in Wrath but disliked blah blah in TBC", but we all know that never happens in this forum. All you get is "Wrath baby casual noob" "hardcore special snowflake" and insults about how if anyone liked Vanilla it was nostalgia, sad truth.