A dose of anti-nostalgia.

[Phasma]

You can pay Blizz to level you a toon?

Well, let's see: 2 days or less to get from 1-80 with RaF, instantly 80 with SoR, or 1 week + (that's being totally generous) for normal leveling. Hmmm... decisions...

[Durandro]

Predictable butthurt responces from people pretending those aren't negatives.

If they came back, no matter what you say knowing they won't, you'd hate it. Gaurenteed.

[Faroth]

Well, let's see: 2 days or less to get from 1-80 with RaF, instantly 80 with SoR, or 1 week + (that's being totally generous) for normal leveling. Hmmm... decisions...

I wish I was at home to check my /played

Pretty sure some of my characters have less than 3 days total at 85.

---------- Post added 2013-06-21 at 06:57 PM ----------

Predictable butthurt responces from people pretending those aren't negatives.

If they came back, no matter what you say knowing they won't, you'd hate it. Gaurenteed.

Someone disagrees and that makes them butthurt?

No, it's just genuine preference for different styles of MMO design, nothing more.

[Phasma]

I wish I was at home to check my /played

Pretty sure some of my characters have less than 3 days total at 85.

---------- Post added 2013-06-21 at 06:57 PM ----------



Someone disagrees and that makes them butthurt?

No, it's just genuine preference for different styles of MMO design, nothing more.

I'm talking 2 days real time. Probably less than 1 day /played.

[Katchii]

I agree. Looking at that list, I think maybe 10 are justified, and even then of those most are just minor complaints of a spoiled child that's catered to by today's everything gets handed to you ways.

It's actually more of a complaint coming from people with jobs, families, friends and essentially...lives....outside of WoW and want to play the game and experience the world but don't want to have to choose between playing WoW or going out with friends life to experience it. You can't honestly argue that having to spend 5+ hours nearly every night to experience the Vanilla end-game wasn't a little ridiculous....

[Drithien]

Nostalgia is chic. Nostalgia is in. We like to glamorize the way things were the moment after they happen. It’s fun to exalt our experiences as existing in a unique moment in time, never to be repeated. The fact that we were having a lot of fun once upon a time means that whatever we were having fun with was the cause.

There's one problem with that point of view: it's usually wrong. Selective memory has many a trick to play on us. Some anti-nostalgia is in order. Let's turn some sacred cows into hamburger.

Here are some reasons, in no particular order, that vanilla WoW was terrible...

Here is one reason why vanilla was amazing, the vast majority of players, those dreadful casuals, that don't even visit MMO-Champion or the official forums, (MMOC members= 370k, active MMOC members=39k, active World of WarCraft subscribers=8 million+) much less write in them: they had fun. And that's how the game had its greatest growth in percentage, and the community was at its most lively. Except "pro" players, and wannabe be "pros", that complained about class balance, itemization, and most of the "facts" on your post.

Because casuals in their majority don;t give a damn about balance, itemization, etc, or even raiding (gasp!). They just came to the game to play an open-world role-playing game, like Zelda or Elder Scrolls. Not become "elite raiders". And when Blizzard catered to raiders, again and again and again, by focusing on instanced content instead of open-world, when the tenths of zones of vanilla became... seven-and-a-dailies'-zone in Crusade, they started getting bored. Epic quality gear, first in the form of "welfare" PVP gear, then easy-raiding gear, achievements and easy-alts kept their attention for some time. But only some. The problem was still there and it never went away= severe lack of open-world role-playing content!

What is more the developers, so as to appease to the meager (what is it now 10%?) ratio of "awesome players" has made the game into a borefest by removing increasingly more of its unique elements. Homogenisation has trumpled excitement. Itemisation has done away with innovation. Fuck fun is what the developers decided, so that a vocal minority can feel good about themselves.

You think whoever enjoyed the game in the past is merely nostalgic? Oh how deluded you seem to be dear poster. And how ironic that you would try to find fault in someone else's opinion, when you can;t take your figurative head out of the sand and face facts= an open-world role-playing game with tenths of zones, mulitple campaigns, class quests, massive group-dungeons, sandbox gameplay; all the things casual players like and kept them in the game, has been reduced to a "safe" game, drowning in streamlining, boredom, absence of excitement, and too little content. I suggest you take your uneducated in game-design glasses off and throw them in the can before thinking you can "correct" us poor things.

[Mawnix]

I'm talking 2 days real time. Probably less than 1 day /played.

And yet people can choose to do this.

People, like me, immensely dislike leveling, so we choose to do that.

Your attempts to just bash blizzard because they offer optional services for those who want to take them is honestly kind of sad.

Inb4 called a fanboy

Inb4 snarky, sassy denial

[Nevor]

Nostalgia is chic. Nostalgia is in. We like to glamorize the way things were the moment after they happen. It’s fun to exalt our experiences as existing in a unique moment in time, never to be repeated. The fact that we were having a lot of fun once upon a time means that whatever we were having fun with was the cause.

There's one problem with that point of view: it's usually wrong. Selective memory has many a trick to play on us. Some anti-nostalgia is in order. Let's turn some sacred cows into hamburger.

so how is your post different from the "selective memory" you complain about in first place?
it doesn't make sense to just list some "negative" points to prove classic was bad.

playing classic wow was still a much more enjoyable time for me cause the positive things (e.g. the close-knit community and tight relations you had) were much more important for me than to worry about a dozen not-so-good things...

getting rid of these "negative" things and making stuff "easier" and "better" over the years killed a huge part of this social community, experience and other points classic was really good in. so in the end... many of the "negative" things classic had really had a "positive" impact after all.

[Faroth]

I'm talking 2 days real time. Probably less than 1 day /played.

Ahh, understood!

[Orkwuzhere]

Nostalgia is chic. Nostalgia is in. We like to glamorize the way things were the moment after they happen. It’s fun to exalt our experiences as existing in a unique moment in time, never to be repeated. The fact that we were having a lot of fun once upon a time means that whatever we were having fun with was the cause.

Your list missed stuff about Hunters (besides wepons), and tanks knowing jack shit how to tank until BC. Other than that, you hit the nail on the spot.

I hope your BC invovles Ikiss, or how dungeons like Shadow Halls just weren't fun even with the right group set up.

[Mawnix]

Here is one reason why vanilla was amazing, the vast majority of players, those dreadful casuals, that don't even visit MMO-Champion or the official forums, (MMOC members= 370k, active MMOC members=39k, active World of WarCraft subscribers=8 million+) much less write in them: they had fun. And that's how the game had its greatest growth in percentage, and the community was at its most lively. Except "pro" players, and wannabe be "pros", that complained about calss balance, itemization, and most of the "facts" on your post.

Because casuals in their majority don;t give a damn about balance, itemization, etc, or even raiding (gasp!). They just came to the game to play an open-world role-playing game, like Zelda or Elder Scrolls. Not become "elite raiders". And when Blizzard catered to raiders, again and again and again, by focusing on instanced content instead of open-world, when the tenths of zones of vanilla became... seven-and-a-dailies'-zone in Crusade, they started getting bored. Epic quality gear, first in the form of "welfare" PVP gear, then easy-raiding gear, achievements and easy-alts kept their attention for some time. But only some. The problem was still there and it never went away= severe lack of open-world role-playing content!

What is more the developers, so as to appease to the meager (what is it now 10%?) ratio of "awesome players" has made the game into a borefest by removing increasingly more of its unique elements. Homogenisation has trumpled excitement. Itemisation has done away with innovation. Fuck fun is what the developers decided, so that a vocal minority can feel good about themselves.

You think whoever enjoyed the game in the past is merely nostalgic? Oh how deluded you seem to be dear poster. And how ironic that you would try to find fault in someone else's opinion, when you can;t take your figurative head out of the sand and face facts= an open-world role-playing game with tenths of zones, mulitple campaigns, class quests, massive group-dungeons, sandbox gameplay; all the things casual players like and kept them in the game, has been reduced to a "safe" game, drowning in streamlining, boredom, absence of excitement, and too little content. I suggest you take your uneducated in game-design glasses off and throw them in the can before thinking you can "correct" us poor things.

Actually, and this is a fact, amazing is subjective and opinionated.

So, basically what this means is that everything you said is just how you see the game.

Besides, and just to throw this in there, being a Heroic Raider and havin played since Vanilla, I vastly prefer the current game over how it was in the past.

I don't understand why people persecute casuals, either.

They wanna play the game but can't play as often as we can.

Blizzard made content for them along with us. Each set of content is optional for both sides.

Don't know why the concerns of casuals should be your concern.

It hasn't ruined a single aspect of the game.

It opened it up for more to play, this more profit for Blizzard, thus more enjoyable content for the players.

[crakerjack]

So you want to game to be faceroll and easy? Why don't you like challenges? Half the the complaints you mentioned were fixed/removed before vanilla was even over with.

[Faroth]

It's actually more of a complaint coming from people with jobs, families, friends and essentially...lives....outside of WoW and want to play the game and experience the world but don't want to have to choose between playing WoW or going out with friends life to experience it. You can't honestly argue that having to spend 5+ hours nearly every night to experience the Vanilla end-game wasn't a little ridiculous....

Flip side of this, ironically, is those people complaining about all that......often also comment on leveling their 5th+ alt and getting them geared for LFR.

WoW has gone way too "casual" in my opinion. I use quotations because I don't think it's adjusted for the casual gamer with limited time. WoW was always trumpeted as a casual game, its big draw was you could log in and play for an hour without a group and progress in leveling or whatever else you were working on.

In the pursuit of supposedly appealing to "casual" gamers (again, I'm not sure the definition is properly applied), the game has become more and more focused on self sufficiency through alts and easily obtaining everything with minimal time invested.

To me, a casual play schedule would be able to obtain something, though it may take them 6 weeks to do it while a hardcore play schedule would take 1 week. That's the direction I think of when you bring up casual gaming, not the idea that everything should take 30 minutes or less.

An MMO should be about more than just max level raiding and epics. Classic was just as much about playing from 1 to 59 as it was running dungeons and raids at 60, and that's the aspect I do miss.

If you spend 6 months leveling from 1-60 and you have fun playing with others, exploring new areas, finding new things, is it 6 months wasted because you aren't raiding and getting uber epics? No, in fact it may be more of an enriching experience because you enjoyed it and perhaps enjoyed it with others.

But to some extent, the game's design and design changes isn't the problem so much as we, the players, are the problem. We've grown familiar with the game, we've grown comfortable with the convenience, and we've seen the wizard behind the curtain. Nostalgia can't be regained simply because of this fact; the awe and wonder of the wizard can't be regained once you know the truth behind the trick.

[Mawnix]

So you want to game to be faceroll and easy? Why don't you like challenges? Half the the complaints you mentioned were fixed/removed before vanilla was even over with.

The game has a multitude of challenges still in it.

There are even more challenges than there used to be.

And, yet, the game is currently labelle as "easy".

Le sigh.

The player base will never be happy.

[Phasma]

And yet people can choose to do this.

People, like me, immensely dislike leveling, so we choose to do that.

Your attempts to just bash blizzard because they offer optional services for those who want to take them is honestly kind of sad.

Inb4 called a fanboy

Inb4 snarky, sassy denial

I'm not one of those. No matter how you put it, those "optional services" are game breaking. You are not going to sway me on that.

[Aquamonkey]

24. Two loot drops per raid boss. Forty man raids.

They dropped more than 2 pieces, it's just that the other pieces were blue.

27. The infamous "in-game voice chat" patch.

This was patch 2.2.

[Ellesarr]

And yet I still had fun. Continue your attempts at being clever though.

He never said it wasnt fun, but please continyue your attempt at being clever though

(you're not)

[Tsuna]

Flip side of this, ironically, is those people complaining about all that......often also comment on leveling their 5th+ alt and getting them geared for LFR.

I have several friends on my server with 11 90s /yudothistoyourself

But seriously, this thread can lead only to tears and rage. Nostalgia isn't something that should be discussed on a forum dedicated to housing the most pressing news on gaming content, but should be used instead when talking about the gaming world to people who just haven't experienced it before.

Just remember

If you can't remember classic fondly, you're probably a soulless husk
If you can't recognize where classic sucked donkey nuts, you're probably a brainless one.

[Mawnix]

I got a full 510 gearset without ever having to move out of any kind of fire. Within a few weeks. Whilst I steamrolled the brawlers guild and got my title. With every fight taking roughly 1 or 2 tries. It was fun, but dont tell me its hard. The only hard thing is making the enrage timers on the new bosses, which is mathematically impossible if your not in high tier gear.

And this PvE gear is good enough for me to snipe folk in PvP.

I'm not saying LFR is hard in the slightest.

I'm saying the challenge is there for those who want it.

PVP, normal modes, heroic raids, challenge modes, and even heroic scenarios to an extent, not to mention Brawler's Guild.

Vanilla had smaller raids that had their set of challenges, dungeons, and PVP.

Am I missing anything? :P

[Deleted]

I miss Vanilla too, but it's come and gone, the game has improved and I wouldn't want it back. Would you really want the crap content we had back then? Think of it now, end game raiding? You're stuck with a 40man raid, of which half are probably AFK, DCing, lagging so bad they can't do anything anyway or just terrible. Loot distribution was just laughable - Yay Shaman loot! Oh wait we're Alliance, we don't have Shamans. If you were a Lock you were farming shards the whole time you were in-game. If you were a pally, enjoy standing outside ready to buff. If you were a hybrid, enjoy healing. If you weren't a Warrior you weren't a tank. Exceptions aside, that's just how it was and it was silly


PvP? Lol. Naked X killing other fully geared classes, infinite CC chains, no balance effort at all. World PvP was fun I agree with that.

Opinions are opinions of course, but nobody can deny the game has improved in pretty much every way besides how the community is run.

I think it was the Mallet of Zul'Farrak quest?

To be honest I do remember seeing paladin tanks in some instances where was lot of undeads like Scholo and strat 10mans.
Also there was always 1 enha shaman to boost rogue dps 1 disc priest to give spirit buff 1 balance to give 3% crit for mages and warlocks and so on