Will WoW ever be what it once was?

[Deleted]

I know rite? Especially since 8 million people joined during Vanilla and 3 million more joined during TBC. Those people are dumbs. We showed them by losing ~2 million subs in 6 months!!! Better yet Bliz expects more losses before MoP's end, that's why the golden age is now!

/sarcasm

You are absolutely correct. The local Burger joint also clearly is way better than that dumb french restaurant ... because there are way more customers there!

[Duronos]

It all depends on your perspective. I have a close knit group of friend I've been playing with for a long, long time. We usually have more than 5 people online, sometimes we don't. When we don't, we can instantly fill in whatever role we need with LFD. In vanilla, we'd be twiddling our thumbs hoping to find someone.

I'd rather have LFD and not always need it, than not have LFD, and log off because we can't find the players we need to fill a group.

All large games have toxic elements of their communities, wow is no different. Take off the rose colored glasses and admit to yourself that wow's systems are improvements over vanilla. If you want to talk about the community, that's a different discussion.

Vanilla

Dungeons and Raids
- Dungeon mobs putting debuffs on you for 10+ minutes. Extremely prevalent in instances like Scholomance, Stratholme, etc.
- Paladin Blessings lasting 5 minutes. By the time you were done blessing the 40th player in your raid, the first person's buff ran out.
- Paladins going 31 points in Ret to pick up Kings, and healing raids.
- 8 debuff limit on mobs. Increased to 16 when AQ came out. (3 patches later)
- Losing your rolling Ignite or Deep Wounds due to debuff limit.
- No summoning stones.
- Warlocks using their entire bag space for soul shards to summon with.
- Warlocks running out of soul shards to summon.
- People whose sole duty was to ressurect people and stay out of combat.
- Creating a 15-man raid for UBRS, and discovering that noone had the key.
- Disbanding the 15-man raid for UBRS because noone had the key.
- Farming resistance gear when you were walled by bosses (Ragnaros, Vaelastrasz, Triple Drakes, Sapphiron)
- Farming mats to give people gear like Onyxia Scale Cloak.
- Having people with Onyxia Scale Cloaks quit raiding, and farming more mats to give new people gear like Onyxia Scale Cloak.
- Boss mechanics that involved you DYING ~ Baron Geddon, Vaelastrasz.
- Running back after wiping for weeks on Twin Emps.
- Running back redux on C'thun.
- New recruits running back on Twin Emps and C'thun without the bug mounts.
- Trash on the way to Twin Emps.
- Trash on the way to C'thun.
- Not having enough mages for Viscidus.
- Farming mats for raiding gear for weeks and weeks in Felwood.
- Druids, Priests, Shaman, and Paladins only heal.
- No dual-spec.
- Babysitting perfect group compositions - Warrior, Rogue, Rogue, Rogue, Shaman.
- Faction imbalance with Windfury for Horde, and Salvation for Alliance.
- Server crashes crashing the raid as well, including soft-resetting all the trash. This happened. A lot.

PvP
- Raiding players dominating the PvP scene - warriors with Ashkandi/Dark Edge of Insanity and 3 Priests cruising through 20+ players.
- Organized groups of honor farmers with no in-game system to match them against other organized groups. Complete pubstomps in AB and WSG every 5 games or so.
- Being in that organized group and playing 8+ hours a day to keep up with weekly cap and getting ranked up.
- Honor being awarded only on Tuesday maintanance - no real-time update.
- Free Action Potions.
- Engineering Grenades - AoE 5-second disorient.
- Shadowmeld Aimed Shot.


Burning Crusade

Dungeons and Raids
- Farming resistance gear when you were walled by bosses (Hydross, Solarian, Mother Shazzrah, Illidan, etc).
- Wiping in Hyjal to a boss and having to do the entire trash wave again.
- Being walled by bosses that didn't meet your DPS checks, with literally 2 mechanics ~ Brutallus, Kaz'rogal.
- Boss mechanics that involved you DYING ~ Teron Gorefiend, Azgalor.
- Warlocks going Shadow Mastery/Sacrifice and spamming Shadow Bolt.
- Babysitting perfect group compositions - Shaman, Warlock, Warlock, Warlock, Mage.
- A large amount of buffs being group-only, including Heroism/Bloodlust.
- Protection Paladins being downright necessary for Hyjal Trash, Shattered Halls.
- Protection Paladins being downright useless for anything else.
- No dual-spec.
- Replenishment implemented, only available from 2 Specs - Ret Paladins and Shadow Priests. Later added to Survival Hunters, Destruction Locks (lol), and Frost Mages (double lol).
- Race-specific abilities with negative effects: Orc Blood Fury inflicting Mortal Strike on self, Troll Berserking more effective at lower max health.


PvP
- Unkillable Soul Link / Shadow Mastery (SS/SM) Warlocks.
- Unkillable Resto Druids.
- Soul Link / Shadow Mastery (SS/SM) Warlocks and Unkillable Resto Druids together.
- Arena games that lasted hours when the above Comp faced a mirror.
- "Welfare epics" by playing 10 games a week and getting arena points for it.
- Getting arena points in chunks, once a week, on Tuesday maintainance.
- Rogues with Warglaives in Arena.
- Gearing for arena with 5/5 PvP gear and 3/8 Sunwell gear.
- Holy Paladins could only use PvE gear to be competitive.


Yeah, golden age.

I'll say that the 5 minutes on Paladin buffs were a bit small, 10 would have been more appropriate but you talk about all the other things in there like they were bad things. Basically you just said that you had to work to get things in an MMO, well gee wiliker mister, isn't that part of an RPG?

---------- Post added 2013-05-21 at 07:46 PM ----------

You are absolutely correct. The local Burger joint also clearly is way better than that dumb french restaurant ... because there are way more customers there!

What is with these horrible analogies, video games are not restaurants. Just about anyone can afford WoW... fuck.

[Deleted]

What is with these horrible analogies, video games are not restaurants. Just about anyone can afford WoW... fuck.

I wanted to point out that relating popularity to quality is not a good idea.

[Fagatronics]

You are absolutely correct. The local Burger joint also clearly is way better than that dumb french restaurant ... because there are way more customers there!

I agree. TBC was jammed with so much bloated content. It was a huge menu of things to do to satisfy the masses needs. MoP was slimmed down significantly to few but great choices.

Anyone want to play Sarcastaball?

[ciggy]

You can't go home again.

So much truth in that statement.

[Duronos]

I wanted to point out that relating popularity to quality is not a good idea.

Well here's the problem, anyone can afford WoW not everyone can afford a luxurious French restaurant. Subs are an indication of WoW going downhill, the problem is community and Blizzard took it away from the game in many ways, the only reason a lot played and played for such a long time is because of the people the played with and the news ones they met, it's kind of been going downhill for a while there.

---------- Post added 2013-05-21 at 07:50 PM ----------

I agree. TBC was jammed with so much bloated content. It was a huge menu of things to do to satisfy the masses needs. MoP was slimmed down significantly to few but great choices.

Anyone want to play Sarcastaball?

That episode was amazing!!!

[Snakehead]

No, never.

The fun in wow died when they launched the ToC and the idiotic social killing lfd tool.

Wow is nothing more than a single player lobby game with a group feature

[Deleted]

I agree. TBC was jammed with so much bloated content. It was a huge menu of things to do to satisfy the masses needs. MoP was slimmed down significantly to few but great choices.

Anyone want to play Sarcastaball?

I'm always in for a good round of Sarcastaball, but i've run out of fairy dust :-\

My point is: the masses were quite easy to satisfy back at the time ... lots of people used the game just as an immersive chat client that offered some activities that promised long term rewards. In scale, quality and accessability (in regard to an immersive chat client) wow was pretty much unique at that time. Then Facebook hit.

To keep those masses the game clearly had to cater them - and Blizzard has done a good job on that. And dont get me wrong - quality in almost every aspect of wow has improved. But i gripe the fact that i no longer have to adapt to the rules of the game. A little patience and those rules will change to please more people

[Deleted]

Well, it could be. But 90% of you would stop playing than.

[Snakehead]

Well, it could be. But 90% of you would stop playing than.

I would resub and I know about 100 people from my old guild that quit in cata always said if it was similar to early wotlk they would all come back.

Believe it or not but wow has lost many players due to the dumbing down of the game.

[fromis]

The guy in this video explains what made the previous expansions (mainly vanilla and TBC) so magical and mysterious. Personally I've been playing since vanilla and couldn't agree more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rd0-zVIBVo

[Duronos]

I believe my post count is too low to post links, but you may look up Kynes on Tichondrius, for your reference on player history.

To think its a good or a bad thing is entirely up to the reader's interpretation. I am from the time where using Avenger's Shield meant you had to cast it for 1.5 seconds. I raided with my Warlock (Abryn on Tichondrius) and alt-raided with my Paladin tank since TBC and loved all 6 nights of the week per character I raided in the past (4 on main, 2 on alt). I made that post to emphasize the point however, that this is not everyone's idea of a life. To be successful with WoW in the past, it meant you had to raid. A lot.

Now, I raid 2 nights a week. I am happy with this new direction and have no regrets in previous expansions. But to think everything back then should still be the case now will never be the ultimate truth. The game was great, but only if thats all you did. I feel that to live a balanced life and successfully play WoW, today is the golden age.

Whatever you say is fine but I played casually in Vanilla and had a blast, I can't do that in MoP.

[killidan]

Is the golden age of WoW truly gone? Days that are never coming back?

What do you guys think?

Launch = Vanilla
Rise = TBC
Stagnation = Wrath
Decline = Cata + MOP
Collapse = ???

[Seefer]

I think that WoW will never be what it once was, thank God! The game itself is better than ever, there are tons more things to do, the ONLY downside is that the community that has become a bit less open and friendly than it used to be. But that's not the fault of the game itself.

Yeah it kinda is, I mean LFD/LFR opened the flood gates to people not caring because.........

1) You don't need a guild or friends to do anything anymore

2) You never see the people in LFD/LFR again after you leave the queue

While it isn't 100% the games fault I put it about 90% Blizzards fault for not thinking of the consequences (or caring whichever) of implementing such things.

[Duronos]

MOP may be a subs decline, but absolutely in NO way is a quality decline. I would nt put it with collapseaclysm. (The nicknames for cata just keep coming!)

I would, Cataclysm practically fucked this expansion.

[Youarefired]

Get some friends, play on a private one, enjoy the good old days.

[Coldkil]

"golden age" is a completely personal opinion and most of the times flawd by nostalgia.

The game has changed, the people playing it has changed (a lot). End.

[Kendrel]

"golden age" is a completely personal opinion and most of the times flawd by nostalgia.

The game has changed, the people playing it has changed (a lot). End.

Kind of. Whilst the best times of the game are largely personal and subject to your own motives and desires, you can generally determine when a game was at its peak by things like subscriber numbers. Not just when they were highest, but when they were increasing and how quickly. A game in its 'Golden Age' will generally see exponential growth in subscribers/players and maintain those figures.

[Duronos]

"golden age" is a completely personal opinion and most of the times flawd by nostalgia.

The game has changed, the people playing it has changed (a lot). End.

That's for shizzle-dizzle sure.

[Detheavn]

Is the golden age of WoW truly gone? Days that are never coming back?

What do you guys think?

Thank fuck, no!
As much as I love the time I spent since vanilla, as much as I loved the game being a new adventure at the time, I would not trade what we have now for the buggy and laggy dung-heap with 2/3 (mileage may vary per class) non-viable specs that we had back then.