A dose of anti-nostalgia.

[Faroth]

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

I got my fourth to 90 and I'm done. Would like to get the others up, but no real motivation to do so.

Honestly, I like playing alts until they have a Transmog set that looks bad ass on character select screen, then I'm not motivated to play them. I'm so vain.

Each expansion I have 2 characters I get up. Third onward generally happen just because I'm poking around and playing with them.

My druid is leveling solely on Molten Front dailies because I want a vanity item for him. He's a little ways into 86 now!

[shise]

No matter waht some peopel say, WoW was a better game back on the days, why? because it was a pure RP game where you had a hard time t do basic things.


That's the point.

[Black Rider]

This thread made me chuckle
Good thread indeed

[StationaryHawk]

MoP

1. Blizzard nickel-and-diming you.

Fastest way to level? Pay for it. Best battle pets? Pay for it. Complete mount collection? Pay for it.

... and you were saying?

I think the only way to level is to pay for it.

Hahaha.

But really. Most of the things you listed, people will remember fondly, because back then we didn't have all of the features we do now to compare it to.

[Thage]

In all fairness, I look back on stuff like that, and rolling on rogue leather in BC on my fury warrior, with fondness much the same way you talk about how utterly, unfathomably stupid your dog can be. Doesn't mean for a second I would want to go back to it, but I can remember all the things that made me throw my keyboard and go "Heh. Man, I was fuckin' terrible back then." (as opposed to only being moderately-terrible nowadays).

---------- Post added 2013-06-21 at 03:34 PM ----------

No matter waht some peopel say, WoW was a better game back on the days, why? because it was a pure RP game where you had a hard time t do basic things.


That's the point.

By that logic, the first Tomb Raider is an objectively better game than the reboot because of clunky mechanics, bad AI, and more glitches than I can shake Lara's polygonal booty at. Genres change and evolve over time, WoW just happens to have been in the game long enough to either pioneer or iterate on those changes much like the new Tomb Raider is basically the culmination of 20 years' worth of action-adventure games.

[secondgate]

That's an odd thread, OP.

My first relationship was not particularly "good," if I think back to it. Doesn't mean it wasn't great, or that I shouldn't think fondly about it once in a while. Similarly, I think most of us aren't blind fools who need to be educated as to why our memory of WoW is "wrong."

Even that aside, looking through your list,

4. Tarren Mill-Southshore zerg constituting "end game PvP".
--not quite. I remember world PvP being fun. I don't care for instanced PvP a whole lot. So I'd argue that WoW hasn't gone that far in terms of PvP I find enjoyable.
16. "Hunter weapon!"
--Oh come on!

Many of these are legitimate, but many others are relatively minor inconveniences; some are even things some player would argue for (e.g., resistances).

[Raintola]

TLDR for everyone who has sense to ignore the OP.

"Your opinions are wrong and im right, lololo vanilla fags"

Enjoy MoP, I sure as fuck dont.

I think it's more like "from a purely gameplay perspective, Vanilla was terrible."

It's pretty hard to argue otherwise.

Yeah, it takes more skill and all that to ride a horse, but a motorized veyhicle, while being mass produced and cheap, is still a better form of transportation for the majority. You may enjoy riding a horse, but there's probably way more people that don't.

TLDR: WoW is this way, deal with it.

[melodramocracy]

That's not really a dose of anti-nostalgia, OP.

That's simply proof that a lot of technical issues can and will be overlooked when folks are presented with something that excites them.

Not to mention that a good amount of your points are things I'd view as better than what's currently presented in this child proofed, no consequences to any decisions, paint by numbers version of an MMO.

[brunnor]

By that logic, the first Tomb Raider is an objectively better game than the reboot because of clunky mechanics, bad AI, and more glitches than I can shake Lara's polygonal booty at. Genres change and evolve over time, WoW just happens to have been in the game long enough to either pioneer or iterate on those changes much like the new Tomb Raider is basically the culmination of 20 years' worth of action-adventure games.

It could be. I never played any of them but just because a game is older and has more clunky things doesn't mean the new one is superior just based on that. Wow has made tons of good changes over the years, I don't think anyone is saying anything to the alternative. What people are saying is that the bad changes WoW has made outweigh the good changes they've made.

I agree that many things were an issue in vanilla but I feel there are much bigger problems now than there was then.

[melodramocracy]

But really. Most of the things you listed, people will remember fondly, because back then we didn't have all of the features we do now to compare it to.

And conversely, if you gave vanilla wow players a crystal ball in 2004, and showed them where the game would be in nearly 10 years, they'd probably keel over laughing in disbelief.

[Drithien]

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.

Actually, you pretty much missed my entire point: most of the casual players enjoyed the open-world content of the game, not the instanced that the developers tried to shoe-horn them in, for the sake of cheaper development costs and easier development. They tried to bribe us with gear, then distract us with achievements
and easy-to-level-up alts. Anything but actual content like in Classic. Then just came to a dead-end. All the while the game got increasingly boring from its streamlining and balancing process that benefitted almost exclusively "pro" players. Most casual players couldn't care less if a retribution paladin was 5% behind damage, or rogue had one-too-many crowd-control tools compared to other classes. The vast majority of changes to the game have been implemented to appease to a tiny minority of high-performance players, while making the game worse for most of the rest through dumping it down, streamlining it, and taking away its flavour.

World of WarCraft was released unfinished, buggy, and at times even broken. It was a mess of a game; the result of Blizzard rushing it through the gates just in time for WarCraft's 10th anniversary. But it was fun. And even the mess in the game made for fun times. And its vast quantity of content is what kept most players. They could have changed it for the better. Made weak specialisations stronger, add campaigns for the poor gnomes and trolls, and so on. But they should have never decreased the amount of actual content for casual players, all the zones, campaigns, class quests, sandbox elements, uniqueness of classes, the very flavour of the game and source of excitement and fun for all these people. Just because it was cheaper and easier to shoe-horn everyone in instances, and because it would be less hussle for the developers overall, and more money for the investors. Their mistake was that they opted to create a massive game, that required continuous care and addition of content, on a similar massive scale, yet tried to sidestep this with parlour tricks and carrots-on-sticks.

This about the game starting as an open-world role-playing game and ending up as a sort of battle-arena one is not an opinion by the way. Just look at it. It is supposed to be an open-world game, yet most of its content is placed in instances. It's not that far off from being a sort of expensive DOTA anymore, just the dailies make it different now.

[Archangel Tyrael]

You realize one could also do this for all of the expansions.

All of them.

I play TBC on a private server and I still have more fun than I did during Cata.

---------- Post added 2013-06-21 at 07:55 PM ----------

That's not really a dose of anti-nostalgia, OP.

That's simply proof that a lot of technical issues can and will be overlooked when folks are presented with something that excites them.

Not to mention that a good amount of your points are things I'd view as better than what's currently presented in this child proofed, no consequences to any decisions, paint by numbers version of an MMO.

Also this.

Your post is bad OP, and you should feel bad.

[Azrile]

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

)

We all had fun. And we all know that at the time, WOW was miles ahead of it´s competition, which is why it grew so fast.

But I think what the OP is saying is that WOW is much better now than it was then (as far as gameplay).

I remember the whole Uldum-enchanting thing... it was a freaking nightmare on a low population server trying to get a group together to do that instance with the old /2 spam. I had 4 or 5 alts with max professions, yet my main was stuck at 150 enchanting for probably 4 months.

And class and spec balance was an absolute joke. Right now, people fly off the wall if a spec is 10% less than another spec on a single boss fight. Back in Vanilla, it would be 200% at times... and most specs were not even developed to raid. Moonkin? ha.. arms/fury ha. And each pure class had 1 choice in spec.. and it wasn´t like now where you would flip back and forth to gain 5%. Locks, Rogues and Mages literally had 100% difference in dps of specs.... and then on top of it, lets have an entire raid where one mage spec did 0 dps.

---------- Post added 2013-06-21 at 08:03 PM ----------

MoP

1. Blizzard nickel-and-diming you.

Fastest way to level? Pay for it. Best battle pets? Pay for it. Complete mount collection? Pay for it.

... and you were saying?

No idea what you are talking about. The ten most used battlepets are wild capture pets. The store-pets have very mediocre abilities that are easily found many other places. Unless I missed where you could buy a crow or kun-lai runt in the store...

[Thatwsntmilk]

Even though most of the points are not relevant there may be some that could have used improvement.

But there were terrible things added after 3.0 and there are people that would prefer the advantages/disadvantages of earlier stages of the game to the ones we have now.

Simply accept the fact and do not try to make old WoW look worse than it was and do not try to make current WoW better than it is. Thank you.

[Deleted]

Funny how like 10 points in your list can be summed as "OMG server infrastructure in 2004 was worse than it is in 2013, mind blown" You're also repeating yourself in many points like 35 and 50 being about threat.

[Pendragon]

Thanks for the memories. I loved and still love it. A lot of people do, which is why those private vanilla servers are still so popular. Strange, uh? Anyway, I see 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 30, 35, 40, 48, 52 as mostly positives.

Vanilla wasn't perfect, but it wasn't terrible.

Oh, and let me predict some of the items on your BC list:
1. Attunements (too hard)
2. Reputation farming (too hard)
3. Heroics (too hard)
4. Flying (cost too much, only able to fly in Outland)
5. Leveling (too hard, took too long, no heirlooms or other XP boosts)

[Demithio]

Trying to explain why people preferred WoW back in the day is pointless. The current generation of instant gratification kiddies cant and will never understand it.

[Thatwsntmilk]

Trying to explain why people preferred WoW back in the day is pointless. The current generation of instant gratification kiddies cant and will never understand it.

Very short yet very accurate description of the entire thing.

[brickerz]

It wasn't, necessarily, the pristine sterile condition the game was in vanilla that made it good. The current WoW is very sterile and makes playing it very dry and boring, and has generally less favorable views from those who started in vanilla or tbc. In fact, what people perceive as flaws are actually things that made the game exponentially more interesting. That's not to say it was perfect, but it was a far cry from the rote, stale, plain environment where the homogeneous blob of class, race, and structure many have been protesting so loudly about since end of tbc to now is actually being realized.

[Daos]

In general, I have very fond memories of Classic and BC, but those memories are tempered by all the really stupid things I hated about the game, mostly having to due with what I was playing. Night Elf priest (I chose race... poorly) when you didn't much care for healing tards and shadow was pretty crap prior to 2.0, what with all the running OOM in under 60s of sustained casting (and I'm probably being generous). Protection Paladin in BC was better, but not by a great deal, since while heroic 5-mans and Hyjal were completely faceroll, they were pretty much inferior to Warriors and Druids in every way that wasn't AoE threat. Also, more running OOM if you weren't taking boatloads of damage.

So I generally liked Classic and BC, but only for the content, which was quite good for the time. The classes (at least the ones I made the mistake of playing at that time) were pretty horrible and I would never ever want to return to that.