Extreme nostalgia is one of the biggest thing hurting the game.

[Gilian]

I'm sick of people calling out nostalgia when it is so clear that some older mechanics/systems were much better.

And how is this game being hurt by nostalgia? The game is completely different now than 5 years ago.

---------- Post added 2012-11-14 at 01:54 PM ----------

People who whine about LFR/LFD/whatever need to realize that those things had to be made for a reason: Not a lot of people was actually doing that content. Just because you, and the people you knew were, doesn't mean everyone was. Hardcore players live in their own warped little world. Even a lot of people who call themselves casual are kind of warped. I've seen people who say they do normal raids with a guild, and claim to be casual. You're not. You're doing content that a very small amount of the player base ever does.

What the top 20% of players think WoW is, what Blizzard thinks WoW is, what the huge middle of the playerbase think WoW is, what the lower player base thinks WoW is, and what WoW ACTUALLY is, is all in direct conflict with one another, and THAT, my friends, is the biggest problem in WoW.

Why can't you be casual when you raid normal modes? I've seen plenty of 'casuals' spending way more time online than me. "I'm in a casual guild, I am a casual but I am online every single day for 4 hours." But when I raid three evenings a week three hours per evening I am not casual because only a small part of the player base does that?

[Otimus]

I'm sick of people calling out nostalgia when it is so clear that some older mechanics/systems were much better.

And how is this game being hurt by nostalgia? The game is completely different now than 5 years ago.

---------- Post added 2012-11-14 at 01:54 PM ----------



Why can't you be casual when you raid normal modes? I've seen plenty of 'casuals' spending way more time online than me. "I'm in a casual guild, I am a casual but I am online every single day for 4 hours." But when I raid three evenings a week three hours per evening I am not casual because only a small part of the player base does that?

It depends on which way you mean "casual". If you mean you play casually, sure. But you're not "<i>a</a>" casual. Those people aren't even level 90 yet. The game wants to placate casuals, but halfway does it. It wants to placate the hardcore, but halfway does it. It wants to be multiple things that it isn't, and no one sees a problem with this except the people at the top and the people at the bottom, who bear the biggest burdens from it, with all of the people in the middle probably not giving a crap about any high end apsect of the game at all.

[Cerebrate]

I didn't join until Wrath and I complain when things are changed for the worse. But I equally complement the changes I enjoy. People just don't normally come to the forums to post about everything they love, they come to talk about what they would like to see changed.

But the nostalgia is actually driving my guild to put together a retro-raiders group. We are going to level up and turn off xp for awhile at 60 then 70, etc and do raids at appropriate levels. It won't be quite the same, but fun none the less. It will give someone like me who joined in wrath to see the content in a better environment then face rolling it on my 90.

[Azaael]

I always felt there was some truth to rose-tinted goggles, but at the same time, it's a phrase that gets WAY overused.

For example, if someone prefers Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past(SNES) over Skyward Sword(more recent), I don't necessarily think they're wearing goggles. Maybe they just really like the game? Just because someone prefers older games or older iterations of games does not mean that they are wearing rose-tinted goggles.

In other words, I do think the whole concept of rose-tinted goggles in and of itself is sound, but at the same time it became a phrase thrown around by people who accuse people who like anything not recent of being blind to changes. Maybe the changes genuinely don't sit well with people, or in some cases, maybe they're fine with newer games but simply *prefer* older ones. There's nothing wrong with that, IMO.

[Yig]

I think to be more specific it's burn out and nostalgia together. Too many people are burned out from doing the same thing for too long, and as they burn out more and more, they fixate on that loss of a spark and try to figure out what changed in the game if they're no longer feeling that special feeling the game used to give them. Instead of realizing it's the fact they can't do the same thing forever, they make lists of things that are different and try to use that to blame for loss of enjoyment.

[Deleted]

I think to be more specific it's burn out and nostalgia together. Too many people are burned out from doing the same thing for too long, and as they burn out more and more, they fixate on that loss of a spark and try to figure out what changed in the game if they're no longer feeling that special feeling the game used to give them. Instead of realizing it's the fact they can't do the same thing forever, they make lists of things that are different and try to use that to blame for loss of enjoyment.

As someone who has played since release in vanilla, I agree with this statement totally.

People do get burned out and looking at my own history this was true as well. People may look back now and say how great it was "back then" but the truth is people still chewed the content and got burned out on it and complained.

Right now things have changed to be more casual friendly and I can see why they have done this, wow's population is ageing. Like it or not majority of the people still playing now have played for a few expansions in now, those people now have families, jobs and responsibilities they didn't have in the past.

I used to raid 5 times a week during vanilla and right now I can barely manage one night. A lot of people say things like "it was better back in TBC/Vanilla" but when such mechanics get reintroduced it is bad for subs. The "dunegons are hard" fiasco in cata showed this to be true when they tried to make them like TBC instances, and right now in MOP we have the same issue with Dailies and rep.

The rose tinted glasses need to come off and we need to accept that while things were fun back then things have also improved and changed since then and it might not work now.

[McNeil]

Not EVERYONE looks with rose colored glasses at older expansions, just about 3 out of 10 people or something. There are plenty of today's games where their 90's version is still better than their current gen version. Is it because of nostalgia? No, but they can judge how good the game was FOR THEIR TIME

[Byniri]

Well to be fair after the abomination that was Cataclysm how can you blame people for having a bit of nostalgia, going from a completely insane game to complete shite speaks for itself.

I think this is one of the reasons that Cataclysm 'failed' in the eyes of the majority of the community.

They took one of the biggest parts of veteran nostalgia (the old world) and completely redid it, and did it fairly poorly (IMO) in some parts.

[Azaael]

I think another aspect that can hit people a bit worse in MMOs is that they always continue changing, unlike the old school console or PC games. Sites like GoG.com and things like the Wii Virtual Console, PSN, XBLA, and the like(and hell, some folks still have old working systems), being able to go back to these old favorites is easy-it's a matter of grabbing the game and playing.

In MMOs, going back to original iterations of the games only happen if the devs want it to happen. Now, EQ did this-they have classic servers. But they didn't come until over ten years after the game was released; WoW is younger than EQ despite it also being an older MMO. EQ's playerbase is also small these days(though the impact the game had on the genre was huge, and before WoW, the game pretty much was the top of it's league.) So someone who genuinely did like aspects of the older game/expansions has no real way to scratch that itch like fans of old console or other PC games do; this can lead to perhaps a sort of annoyance with it, and annoyance can lead to sometimes more 'cranky grognard' style phrasings ''Games back in the day were better bar none, AND they were more brutal AND WE LIKED IT!'' A console grognard who loves their Super Mario and the like(hey, I love me some retro gaming) can basically play to their heart's content; a Vanilla or TBC fan just can't.

[Mawnix]

I think this is one of the reasons that Cataclysm 'failed' in the eyes of the majority of the community.

They took one of the biggest parts of veteran nostalgia (the old world) and completely redid it, and did it fairly poorly (IMO) in some parts.

Cata wasn't even that bad..

[YouAreAllWrong]

How is nostalgia hurting the game?
Blizzard is changing the game constantly. They never seem to care or cater people who want things like they used to be. The game is evolving.
Creating threads to bush nostalgia lovers is not really much better than whine-threads.

[Kantoro]

Disagree with OP. Wows biggest problem is Ghostcrawler.

[Faroth]

As the changes were made, the game went more and more maintstream, which invited the "X-Box Live" crowd. Honestly, in Classic and TBC I really didn't run into near as much vile hatred in BGs and certainly didn't see "teabagging" too often.

It's not just nostalgia, it's that there are aspects of Classic and TBC that have been abandoned that genuinely gave WoW some identity which has been lost. That's not to say every change has been bad or made the game worse in any way and most people who prefer the model of TBC would agree many changes have been fantastic.

I honestly and truly believe if Wrath of the Lich King had been identical in design to The Burning Crusade with the implementation of LFR, things would be in a much better place. We didn't need faster, easier access to badges to buy raid gear and the players weren't requesting that at the time. The badge gear was meant to fill in gaps where RNG wasn't kind to you. Players simply wanted to be able to access and see the raid content stories unfold without having to dedicate the commitment to raiding. LFR accomplishes that and had it been introduced in Wrath, we wouldn't need the random bonuses.

Think if LFG was introduced as a faster method to run heroics to get gear to drop with the lockout remaining in place and LFR accessible at max level. You'd have TBC pacing with the convenient accessibility of LFG/LFR.

Blizzard has a habit of putting a band aid on a problem until the solution can be implemented. By that point the band aids are expected and, compounded with the solution, result in a new problem.

[Sole-Warrior]

Nostalgia, Every time someone says some bullshit like "Wow is dead vanilla/bc crap was so much better"
I face palmed. Wow has so much more today than it used to offer.
More raids and dungeons classes, flying mounts, transmogrification, and LFR just to name a few.

[Kujako]

Remember when nostalgia wasn't hurting the game? Those where the days.

[GeordieMagpie]

The technology? It's better.
The Essence of Exploring and Coordination? Unless you're in top 10 guilds, It's way worse.

That's the issue.

[Mawnix]

The technology? It's better.
The Essence of Exploring and Coordination? Unless you're in top 10 guilds, It's way worse.

That's the issue.

My guild is fine. We're not in the top tier 0_o.

[mvaliz]

You'll see the true insanity of nostalgia if/when the next expansion involves the return of the Burning Legion.

As soon as they reveal screens/art of demons - the entire mass of BC-Babies are going to march onto the forums cheering that Burning Crusade style gameplay is coming back... when in reality all they saw was graphics of demons slapped on top of today's distinctly VERY non-BC game engine. :P

[GnomercyBeastmaster]

Everyone sees their game through Rose Colored Goggles. I've played since roughly Nov 2005. I've leveled and killed more alts than most casual subscribers. I remember things like walking til lvl 40, and only having 4 usable 14 slot bags as a hunter. Running out of ammo and having to do melee. I remember when a stack of Thorium Ore (the highest level ore in the game) was outrageously expensive at 25g a stack. Back before dailies when you could make easy money. Back when 2K DPS was boss. But also long before the days of flying mounts. When you had to level all your weapons and unarmed skill in order to increase your hit chance, and not just reforge into Hit.

This game has changed 90% from what it was. Some for better, some not so much. All in all, it has been a wonderful ride. Even though I love some aspects about the "good ole days", I think I would rather just remember them for what they were and keep right on moving

[Jaroko]

my nostalgia actually is all about WotLK for all different reasons than people expect it may be. Simply the story and interaction. I loved how involved i were. So story point wise and lore wise. wrath of the lich king is my fave, everything else i played through and cata had its moments, as did bc and so far as does mop. but just my player experience negating game dynamics. wotlk was my peak

Mine too, I loved WotLK i even bought a new account and twinked 3 80's on it. My guild is nice and run me into all the Heroics raids every week. So all my toons have top gear lol.