Do you think Nostalgia is BS?

[Phood]

It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia
-Frank Zappa

[Duridi]

I voted both.

I think nostalgia is bullshit when all you see is the good things.

I think nostalgia is correct if you are able to seperate the bad from the good.

[ComputerNerd]

I wish that word would be banned from discussions here.
Personally, I had the best experience of WoW during TBC. That's my own experience, and a lot of people have had a completely different one, and a lot of people never got to try it. Just because someone prefer a different version of the game then you, doesn't mean their memories are distorted or biased.

What really annoys me is when people bring up factual game design differences, and claim the old one was better, people just shout "nostalgia" and suddenly the discussion is invalid.

I wish people could exchange actual arguments or at least reasons for their opinions instead of jumping on the "lol nostalgia" bandwagon.




It's really not. There is no "truth" to accept. What makes a game good is entirely subjective, not a matter of right or wrong.
I preferred the design philosophy of TBC over MoP. You don't. Both those statements are true. If you honestly think there's one universal "truth" when it comes to opinion, then what are you doing on a discussion forum?

Oh, I also preferred TBC over Vanilla (raided in both), how does that work? opposite nostalgia?

Whether or not game design shapes the community is another discussion, but stating that it doesn't, as if it were facts, is just ignorant.

The truth I am referring to is that the environment in the early game is not entirely down to the game itself.
The truth is that the community played a large part, and so anyone who whines about how it was destroyed by blizzard is quite simply an idiot.
The design of a game can break a community, but it will never make it on its own.
That is a fact.

You can take a horse to water, but cannot make it drink.
No game will ever make a community, at best supporting or encouraging it.
Community isn't simply playing together out of necessity or convenience.
But because you really want to.

[Duridi]

In that light, yeah, nostalgia is BS, because it prevents you from remembering how things actually were.

Nostalgia doesn't work like this for everyone.

I am sorry that it is clouding your vision, but it doesn't do this to everyone. Actually, it doesn't even do so entirely for you either, judging by your desciption. Maybe right as it hits you, but you are clearly capable of remembering what was bad aswell(though perhaps a little black and white, as you seem to either feel it's either all crap, or all awesome).

Others are capable of feeling nostalgic about features and events, while at the same time remembering the same features and events as being either good or bad. You can have a good memory of something, while remembering that it's something you consider improved later. You can also have a good memory of something, and it actually being a good feature, or it being a feature you liked, but a feature that you realise had negative effects on other players.

I'll provide you an example. I am a very "organized" person in real life. I hate chaos, and struggle to stay focused if there is too many distractions. Less is more, and it better be tidy. I bring this with me into games. I truly loved the TBC raiding model. It provided a direct path for me personally, as I were there from the start of the expansion. Gear upgrades didn't happen as often, which meant I got a break between each gem and enchant I had to provide for my gear. We progressed through the tiers directly. No skipping of lower tiers, making the patch predictable for my alts. Encounters were also more tidy, as they weren't as complex. I would quickly memorize the mechanics of the encounters. I also had a smaller toolbox. It felt clean and direct. I felt within my comfortzone, as it was less to keep track of. Clean and tidy. Less is more. The downsides how everr, affected a lot of other players. Guilhopping was a problem. People using lesser guilds to gear up for more progressed ones. Guild starting later, could quickly suffer from simply getting nowhere as they were stuck it lower tiers. Then you had the problem of difficulty and raid size. We needed 25 people to raid. There was only one difficulty. The difficulty was tuned fine for my taste. Some bosses felt more right, and vice versa. However, a lot of others wasn't comfortable with the difficulty, be it those who wanted more, or those who wanted less. That was yet another downside.

I liked vanilla, but it's a shadow in comparison to TBC. I liked it because the game was new and exiting, but truth is, a lot of it's content didn't quite fit me. TBC took the good elements out of vanilla and made the game better. For me.

WotLK brought it down again. I tried, but WotLK didn't fit me. I hated the difficulty of the T7 content in general, but I loved the Sartharion 3D fight on 25 man. That suited my playstyle. The Ulduar system was a pile of bullshit. It provided a terrible experience. Activating hardmodes mid-fight? What a mess! I can say a lot of neagtive about the systems provided with WotLK, but I this is already starting to get a bit long. What I did like about WotLK however, is the leveling experience. It's one of the best I have had so far in this game. In fact, while at it, TBC leveling wasn't particulary interesting. I never liked Outlands, I just happened to love my characters, the raid and 5 man systems. So, where is my nostalgia over WotLK? Or vanilla? Vanilla is mostly a memory of meeting people and making friends, which can't be much negative, but that's it.

Cataclysm. I loved the first 6 months. It gave me back my TBC experience. It felt just as good the first tier. I was able to pretend there was only one mode for raiding for a long time, and with 5 mans and normal raiding providing what I would call a reasonable difficulty, I loved the game again. Tables turned the month Firelands were released. The game felt like a complete mess again, and I had to leave. Normal mode was destroyed by a 30% nerf, and I cannot handle multiple difficulties. It's messy. It makes me feel like I am taking a step backwards.

MoP is great, but perhaps not entirely for my taste. I can see it's appeal to many other players however. I love several elements of it, but again, the raid system doesn't work for me at all. I cannot block out all the modes and difficulties, but I certainly see why they are good for the game. It's just suck that it comes at the cost of my experience.

Crap, I wrote way more than I needed, and could have written a whole lot more, but yeah. As I voted in the poll... Nostalgia is a bit of both. If you can't seperate the negatives from the positives, or atleast try to have an objective view of it, it's bad. If you can, it can actually be very valid. Doesn't mean the game would be better off with what you personally miss though.

[Zka]

I recently purchased several classic old games via gog.com. Stuff like M&M 4+5, Dungeon Keeper, etc. I loved them back in the old days, I feel very nostalgic about them. I could keep playing M&M for about 3 nights. These games are still excellent but very dated now. 320x200 kills my eyes, the stupid clunky controls make me frustrated. That pretty much proves that nostalgia is... just nostalgia. The good old days of fun just won't return and stay.

[Zangeiti]

Some times when I do Heroics I think about the good ol days

[Duridi]

I recently purchased several classic old games via gog.com. Stuff like M&M 4+5, Dungeon Keeper, etc. I loved them back in the old days, I feel very nostalgic about them. I could keep playing M&M for about 3 nights. These games are still excellent but very dated now. 320x200 kills my eyes, the stupid clunky controls make me frustrated. That pretty much proves that nostalgia is... just nostalgia. The good old days of fun just won't return and stay.

I'd say it depends on what you focus on.

Is it the features the games provided(which can easily improve over time), or is it a gameplay element that can be used in any game regardless of age?

I mean... to provide a simple game as an example. I like Tetris. I liked Tetris when I was a child aswell. I like the elements of certain very simple games. It doesn't grow old, and new people keep enjoying things like this all the time. It's a gameplay element that doesn't grow old. Same could be said for leveling, or general progression related bars in WoW. People find it exciting looking to fill that bar. It may cause nostalgia, but that nostalgia may still be relevant as something you enjoy if you get represented with it again at a later point.

[Aethrysa]

I don't think so. There's nothing wrong with getting a little nostalgic, as long as you're not wearing rose-tinted glasses i.e. only focusing on the good bits of (insert name of expac of yesteryear) and allowing nostalgia to cloud your judgement of the game in its present state.

[yjmark]

Nostalgia is great. Good memories. I love it.

I'm also glad Blizzard ignores it to progress the game forward instead of backwards. Trying to force a recreation of a memory rarely works as intended.

[Deleted]

I don't have nostalgia-like feelings for everything that lies many years in the past. And I know what I enjoyed and I also know that those things that I remember in a good way really were that good. That Nostalgia-crap seems like a pathetic response to people that don't like a change to their favorite (or used-to-be favorite) game.

[Deleted]

Depends.

Nostalgia can be great,but it becomes pure BS when you start wearing rose-tinted glasses and let the "feelings" cloud your vision of actual events. Not to mention that it can naturally change the interpretation of certain things to make them more appealing. So in a moderate dose,no,its not.

[Raiju]

Not that much different from the people who claim that literally everything back in the old days were better?

Find me a single person who believes literally everything (your words) was better back then. Literally. Everything.

If you do, I'll find you 5x as many people acting the opposite from this forum alone. I don't believe you will though since I've never seen it from anyone who wasn't trolling.

[Airwaves]

Yes. I fu*king hate the idea. Open your fucking eyes with out the goggles on.

Especasily with wow. I am convinced most people that say vanilla was good never even played it. Compared to today's wow it was a broken mess. It was terrible looking back at it. Fun at the time but fucking move on people!

[Raiju]

Yes. I fu*k hate the idea. Open your fucking eyes with out the goggles on.

Especasily with wow. I am convinced most people that say vanilla was good never even played it. Compared to today's wow it was a broken mess. It was terrible looking back at it. Fun at the time but fucking move on people!

And yet there are 100000's who play on private servers frozen in these times. It's clear THEY enjoy that version of the game more even seeing it compared to todays side by side. Their opinion is just as valid as yours, although people who say it's all rose tinted glasses and nostalgia just because you have a different opinion of enjoyable to them is just a joke, really.

[Nachturnal]

Nostalgia is cool and all. Nostalgia becomes a problem when it starts being treated as a fact.

[dokilar]

i think nostalgia is at best, subjective from person to person.

each and every expansion has had its flaws but for me personally, and for just about everyone in my guild, we had the most fun in BC. we all played from vanilla, til about mid way thru Cata at which point we all stopped playing and havent been back since.

people label it as nostalgia but i simply just dont buy it. i remember the flaws of bc, i remember that as a warlock i was really not doing myself any favors by being stubborn and arena'ing as a full demo specc'd. for pretty much the entirety of s1 and somewhat of s2 the sl/sl spec was extremely effective but it didnt stop me from getting 2100 rating in 2s with a holy priest and 2100 in 3s with the same holy priest and hunter.

we ran kara more times than i care to remember, and id say about half the time we did it, no one needed ANYTHING, we did it to have fun. as a small guild we didnt get to experience a lot of the 25 man content so the heroic 5 mans proved to be challenging enough to keep all of us busy well into 3/4's of the expansions life cycle. a majority of us did get to experience SSC and TK later on in the expansion as pve guilds gearing their alts would sometimes bring us a long if they were short. this sated our more pve oriented members.

so no, even with its flaws i dont consider my liking to BC to be from nostalgia or rose tinted glasses. it was a favorable period in WoW for our guild, Wrath did offer us more raiding options but towards the end of it we started getting discouraged with the game. we figured/hoped that a new expansion, Cata, might re-invigorate us but about half way thru the expansion we realized the game had run its course.

tldr - nostalgia differs from person to person, i believe some people do remember more of the good than the bad but i remember all of it and it still remains my favorite time period

[Spastic_Dreamer]

Having started in very late TBC and mostly played since WotLK, a genuine question: what about TBC was good and is now lost, design-wise? Try to make it simple for me, just 2-3 specifics (if possible). And, do you think that with the changes to some core game systems and to things like e.g. raids, could some of this good design be reinstated?

-I preferred the old talent system.

-Classes were less homogenized and actually had niches.

-Better community. People were less inclined to act like asshats because if they did, they'd run the risk of being blacklisted.

-More effort put in than current content.

-Better looking gear (I know most of it was rehashed from vanilla but even rehashing gear/recoloring is better than awful new designs)

[Deleted]

Nostalgia is dangerous, no one should ever refer to nostalgic moments when comparing something (objectively anyway). For a long time i was all nostalgic about BC/WoTlk, so I went on the arena tournaments and was reminded by how ridiculously stupid some abilities/classes were back then (echem Brutal Mages spring to mind), since i joined them my memories or "nostalgia" of bc and wotlk pvp is much more different and a lot less "oh it was perfect!"

Thats not to say they were bad, I would trade mop/cata pvp for wotlk any day but you have to look at the whole picture and nostalgia triggers the good memories.

[Deficineiron]

I'm defensive because you keep repeating that my opinion is invalid because my memories are either distorted or plain missing.

I call this the old coke/new coke argument. There are lots of folks who say they liked old coke better. This is the equivalent of telling them its just nostalgia.

tbc/classic were completely different games in many respects. its quite interesting to see how personal some folks get in order to say you cannot have liked them better.

[Revi]

The truth I am referring to is that the environment in the early game is not entirely down to the game itself.
The truth is that the community played a large part, and so anyone who whines about how it was destroyed by blizzard is quite simply an idiot.
The design of a game can break a community, but it will never make it on its own.
That is a fact.

I don't think anyone is saying that the community didn't have anything to do with it. On the contrary, most people I see say the community was the best part of vanilla/tbc.
Which is why i don't understand what you meant by "Nostalgia isn't an excuse, but a very valid criticism against people who are unwilling to accept the truth." That "truth" is the exact thing people call nostalgic.

But just because the community played a big part, doesn't mean blizzard didn't change it. vanilla/tbc was to current game as real life is to the internet. In first (early game/real life), you are held accountable for your actions, and misbehavior is punished by people not wanting to help/cooperate with you. In the latter (current game/the internet) you don't depends on anyone else, and you're anonymous, so misbehavior has no lasting consequences, no social impact.

As you said yourself, the design of a game can break a community, and that's exactly what happened. So when people say they personally preferred early wow, why is "nostalgia" a valid criticism? Are you wrong to prefer a better community?