Pretty much this.
The world was more open and free. There were far more RPG elements to the game as well. Everything today is on track and everything got phasing, because you don't need people anymore.
I so damn miss the class quests like Shaman totem quests, Warrior stance quests, Druid form quests, Warlock pet/mount quests, Paladin mount quest, etc.
The cool thing you could do with Zul'Farrak, by gathering the scepter from Hinterlands to summon an additional boss at the altar in Zul'Farrak. As well as Maraudon, doing the scepter quest to be able to open a portal to inner Maraudon.
The key quest from Blackrock Depths, you had to be dead to be able to pick it up.
Just stuff like that. The game just had so much more to it. A lot more soul.
TBC was the dullest point for me after Cata.
Now you see it. Now you don't.
But was where Dalaran?
I think you largely won the thread with this post.
People going back and trying vanilla or TBC again are forgetting that they've now become indoctrinated by the gaming paradigm where the designers tell you exactly what to do, and you do it. No more thinking, no more imagination, no more choice.
No more soul.
I never found BC really that fun. Better than Vanilla, but the fun faded real fast for me for some reason... probably all the emphasis on end-game raiding.
Now, Wrath I had a blast! Second closest to that would be Pandaria! ^_^
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Bullspit
Honestly I feel in Pandaria I've had more free thought, free will to play how I want, more imaginative and immersive roleplaying and WAAAAY more choices than I did in Vanilla.
Unless you've limited YOUR idea of "imagination/choices/thinking" to involve a tiny microcosm called 5-man dungeons and raids. If so, i offer you my sympathies and suggest broadening your horizons a bit.
I expected better of you than that, mvallas. You're a good poster, let's not dive into petty insults about sympathies, eh?
My point is that there's no choice in the individual activities you do anymore. None. Sure, there are more of them; but whether you want to choose professions, quests, dungeons, raids, the Brawler's Guild, scenarios... It makes no difference. "Depth", as an objective term, is the amount of ways in which you can do something successfully. Nowadays, there's no depth in the game - you either do what the designers have intended you to do or you don't succeed. At best, a hotfix will be applied to stop you doing whatever you were doing and, at worst, you'll be banned for deliberate exploiting.
Startlingly, the only part of the game nowadays that has any depth is probably pet battles. Perhaps that goes a long way to explaining why they've ended up so popular.
How do we accept the validity of your claim when you start your point with such an obvious exaggeration?
Are you saying for real that back in BC, when the devs made you jump through tiny hoops just to get into raids, that you had more choices back then in how to gear up? I think it is safe to say there were more hotfixes to exploits in BC and Vanilla than in any other time since. This is again more exaggerations. Notice I am purposely avoiding the word nostalgia just for you.Sure, there are more of them; but whether you want to choose professions, quests, dungeons, raids, the Brawler's Guild, scenarios... It makes no difference. "Depth", as an objective term, is the amount of ways in which you can do something successfully. Nowadays, there's no depth in the game - you either do what the designers have intended you to do or you don't succeed. At best, a hotfix will be applied to stop you doing whatever you were doing and, at worst, you'll be banned for deliberate exploiting.
Really?Startlingly, the only part of the game nowadays that has any depth is probably pet battles. Perhaps that goes a long way to explaining why they've ended up so popular.
Let’s not start with “we”. You’re asking for yourself, and not some group that you think agrees with you. And with that out of the way, let me put a little more meat on the bones of what I’m saying.
I’m saying that you need to look at the whole game a little more holistically, rather than talking about the number of exploit fixes. For example, talk about dungeons; in Outland, five-man content was substantially harder than it is now, which means that it lasted longer and was viable endgame for more people. In fact, we could argue that it was the default endgame during vanilla, what with the puzzle-solving aspects that went into places like Stratholme, the Scholomance, Blackrock Spire/Depths and Maraudon not forgetting the time required to actually complete such places.
Raids have also become far more akin to arcade games rather than problem-solving MMO encounters. Remember that “depth” is effectively the number of ways in which you can do something, but raid encounters are now designed with a very obvious plan in mind, and deviation from said plan simply isn’t viable any more – you either do the encounter the way the designers tell you, or you don’t complete it.
Putting a group together used to have depth. You could prioritize buffs and compositions depending on your better players, but now it’s simply a case of picking up a few classes to cover eight buffs and then getting on with it. It’s also worth noting that most encounters where groups have difficulty nowadays are almost always sorted out with more DPS. Not better or smarter healing, a different tanking strategy or better mechanic management, it’s literally “drop healers for more deeps and complete the gimmick”.
Challenging, yes, but no depth.
Professions are an obvious example. Specializations used to be a fun part of professions that allowed those who’d invested more time to develop high-quality gear, specific to them, that others couldn’t necessarily have. Sets with bonuses could be built, and much of it lasted a lot longer than blue gear does nowadays because it’s simply discarded and gotten rid of.
I could go on, but I’m already veering most verbose. Each individual activity in the game is being railed and having its depth removed because this team doesn’t really understand what “depth” is.
How about avoiding it because it’s utterly irrelevant? There were many, many different design philosophies in Outland compared to Pandaria. Arguing otherwise is objectively wrong.
Yes, really. Pet battles have done extremely well in Pandaria because players can access them in an almost limitless number of ways. If you have a favourite pet, you can almost always find a team to fit them into and the competitive nature of them means that you can always come up against players or teams that cause you to check what you’ve got and use what works.
Depth.
Ah, memories. Wrath of the Lich King was the last expansion when, after my guild would defeat a boss, our vent would erupt with cheers and nerd-screams. From Cataclysm forward, it's just "Damn, no good drops. Okay, what's this next guy do?". It also doesn't help that they've basically run out of ideas for boss encounters. Every new boss' moves are just a variation of an older boss, or a combination of two or three.
Last edited by Cute Chen; 2014-05-21 at 03:12 PM.