Onyxia Scale Cloak - Its the small things that made Vanilla

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

There was no filter for bullshit and toxic people. There only seems to be more now because there is a lot more opportunities to content. Want to do a dungeon in Vanilla? For the majority, lets spend an hour or two getting a group set up plus 20 mins travel time. Today it takes 10 mins to find a group. You can literally do 6 times the content in the same amount of time. People can be dicks and you see them more often today (because of the increase in content you can do) but it is just being dishonest to say that there was some sort of "community" that was in any way better than today.

You mean just like it does to get a decent high mythic + group together?
I had my entire friends list filled up with tanks, healers and dps that I enjoyed playing with and when I was looking for groups I whispered them or they whispered me. That's also how I ended up in my first proper guild back in Vanilla. People that behaved badly, ninja looted, ninja pulled and such didn't get groups or guilds to play with. Even if you go on some of the big private servers today you'll end up meeting people that has good behavior and are helpful, because that's how you build a community around you.

Was there toxic people in Vanilla? Yeah but you could very easily avoid them.

[Deleted]

While personally I absolutely LOVED the raid attunement requirements, it would not be feasible any more in today's WoW. Players have become older, most have a job now and possible a family, so available game time is much more limited than back when it came out.

To be honest: This is even one of the things that I would bet money on will cause or accelerate the "Vanilla curve" as I call it: Massive spike in the first month, Empty servers after 3-5 months. People don't even know how good they have it in today's WoW and won't adapt quickly to the old things.

[Tome]

This is why Vanilla was Vanilla.

This was cool for the playerbase it had back then. But now, that playerbase has, for lack of better term, matured? And the newer people who haven't played Wrath, Cata, MoP, WoD, Legion are not used to that type of guild effort needed to progress bosses.

Will it be fun in Vanilla servers? Maybe.
Do I want to see it on Live? No. Nobody has time for that.

Isn't the point to make it worthwhile, and make it worth to spend time on? Rather than funneling everyone instantly to the end-game content without resistance or preperation?

Instead of gating behind Table Mission content.

[Underwolf]

This made me smile. Yep, these little things back than made the game feel alive and interesting.

[Deleted]

This made me smile. Yep, these little things back than made the game feel alive and interesting.

Im addicted to MadSeasonShow youtube videos now so many things i didnt know about

[Scrysis]

Stand behind throne. Only place you could LoS the shadow flame.

Not true. You could hide in the back of the pits where the wyrms would spawn and that would work as well.

[Projectmars]

The playerbase didn't mature, they just got lazy.

Just the playerbase?

[Teri]

Someone made a post about needing Shadow resist gear in BT. Going to the AH, dropping golf on shit greens so you can hit a % of SR was one of the dumbest things. Rather have the boss be overtuned then ever have to do something like that again.

At least TBC had crafted Shadow resist gear (and other resistances for tanks, including casters on other encounters)

Vanilla didn't have much crafted Nature resist gear at all for AQ40, so people went to maraudon and such

Of course the epic TBC resist gear needed materials from the raid itself, as did Vanilla Fire/Frost gear so it still meant the raid wasn't instantly geared.

[Kaeth]

These kinds of long, drawn out raid attunements were really awesome in TBC when top guilds would poach members from mid-tier guilds, leaving the latter to devote a not-insignificant amount of time to repeatedly doing attunement runs for new recruits.

And then raiders would get irritated by all of the time spent catching up newcomers and apply to other, more-progressed guilds. And the cycle of being stuck as a mid-tier guild would continue.

This is not a system I miss in the slightest.

[Pachycrocuta]

Im addicted to MadSeasonShow youtube videos now so many things i didnt know about

I enjoy his videos. His voice reminds me of Jeff Anderson (played Randal Graves on Clerks).

[korijenkins]

I think the game was best when it was somewhere in between the shitty free loot systems we have now and the overly complicated systems of vanilla.

There needs to be SOME thought and SOME knowledge required for an MMO. They've streamlined the game to a point where guides are basically worthless aside from the occasional easter egg hunt type stuff like Waist of Time.

[jakeic]

Grinding resist gear and forcing certain classes to be sidelined added to lore...how, exactly?

I did every raid in Vanilla, cleared everything through AQ40 and finished six bosses in Naxx, we never sat any classes. We did struggle to find people who played certain classes, but never told anyone they could not come because they played 'x' instead of 'y'. Perhaps there were cutting edge guilds that did this, but unless you're the kind of person that has already finished mythic Uldir, then this should be no concern of yours, and if you are that guy then you're used to there being weird demands being placed upon you.

[Grimtoons]

All of that would happen naturally if you played the game as it was intended, i.e. join a guild that did raids. Nowadays everyone wants to cherry pick content or even worse, just log on for minimum time for maximum loots.

[LionSinMaikeru]

Just the playerbase?

Lol, fair, fair.

[Deleted]

I keep wondering what that "playerbase" is. What defines it? The 8 million in Classic? They all decided like a hivemind to "get lazy"? Also, they are a solid thing that never changes, never new influx of players?.

Its hard for me to believe Blizzard changed the game as a consequence of the audience getting lazy as time went by.

I just think...they kept changing the game to a newer audience or something. IDK

[keyboardshinobi]

The thing that made Vanilla great for me, was experiencing the world, finding secrets and discovering new zones that i had only heard about in books and the RTS game. I will never get that again so I am just not in the group that is excited for all the other things to come back.

[Deleted]

That implies they knew a "newer" audience was out there just waiting to completely exchange the current audience. Like the 8 million that played Classic where not among the 12 million that played WotLK. It is indeed a big fat "IDK" and makes no sense.

If you read interviews, their devs played EQ and stuff...and thought it would be great to bring this kind of game to a broader audience. Now they do that and find: The part we sink most resources in..like raids..is the part that the least people see. Naxx...an awesome setting. Entry barred behind a rep grind or a hefty fee to enter and then barely anyone sees it. That is squandering the money of your loyal subscribers.

So you make things more accessible again.

Whatever you want to believe...I see it as a fluctuation. A constant monitoring what activities people engage in and the throw out new bits...see how they stick.

If anticipating what players want is so easy...then why do so many MMOs fail and why does none of them out there capture WoW audiences?

And that is before times change and people move to other genres. Before Diablo, RPGs were considered dead. Before Overwatch, people thought the FPS market is cornered...no chance for a new competitor.

You know...people going on about LFR killing "the community". well community..if you had such an ironclad awesome thing going on and all was great..why did you change and accept something so much worse and let you get corrupted by such bad shit?

Because there is no community and no "playerbase". You could have all ignored it like you ignored the selfie cam and Voice Chat if it is such a pile of shite

But some changes made no sense for the argument "the game changed because the community changed"

For example in TBC there was a automated tool to find random people to do a dungeon with.
The tool was hated by the entire community! To the point of almost no one today even knows that tool existed.
From the wowwiki: People didnt want to group with random people

Then mid/late wotlk came and LFD was implemented.
Now suddenly people want to group with random people? Out of nowhere?

What happened is that in WotlK content was so easy that people didnt mind grouping with random people.

In TBC this made no sense because content was incredibly hard.

Community changed? Or the game changed, therefore a new community was created?

[Deleted]

So..a new community was "created"..snap of a finger. How? That one tool failed and 2 years later it worked? I am back to my original question...do you think there were 12 million people who looked at Classic and were all "meh"...and the they see LFR is in and 8 million Classic players go "I am out of here" and the 12 million on the sideline go "Fuck, we will join"?

Im trying my best to understand what you are trying to say here but i cant quite grasp it my bad english probably

In my opinion WoW would be today in a better spot if it kept SOME of the old philosophies from Vanilla.
I wouldnt exactly say 20 million...but if BfA can have 3 million subscribers, in my opinion a Vanilla like expansion would have the same.

[Zoldor]

These kinds of long, drawn out raid attunements were really awesome in TBC when top guilds would poach members from mid-tier guilds, leaving the latter to devote a not-insignificant amount of time to repeatedly doing attunement runs for new recruits.

And then raiders would get irritated by all of the time spent catching up newcomers and apply to other, more-progressed guilds. And the cycle of being stuck as a mid-tier guild would continue.

This is not a system I miss in the slightest.

This, this is one of the major problems with a lot of these "fun" attunements and gear requirements. Was it neat, sure, did the community just get a long all happy because they "needed" each other? Hell fucking no. Vanilla and TBC were super toxic. Guilds hated each other, people poached, people went out of their way to sabotage runs, and the community was super Elitist. They were helpful if they liked you for whatever reason, being nice not the major one, and for gold. Mostly for gold. Nothing says fun like standing around in Trade spamming for someone to do an enchant or craft something only for them to be total assholes about it despite all they had to do was click a button and get some gold.

There is a lot of I bet this happened, but the reality was it was as toxic or more toxic than it is now. Granted some groups stayed together and had a great time, but there was a shitload of inside faction guild hate and stonewalling that went on.

AH monsters that could soak up all the important mats and either list them at insane prices or keep people from obtaining what they needed for runs. We did it with Lotus all the time. Force buying lotus from the individual at inflated rates etc. Trust me it seems nice, but have you met the average player. Hell we barely get along in the real world, you think that wouldn't seep over in to the world of autonomy.

Who cares if you are a total asshole if you are in one of the top guilds, have gold and got patterns. You could be a dick. The power vaccum was real, this is from someone in on it and who suffered from it early on. You think it sucks to have the loot council veto your gear now, imagine when it was when 4 pieces dropped for 40 people and the new "buddy" gets the drop despite your DKP. There were always players begging to get into raids and since skill wasn't all that important during Vanilla, seriously go look at the fights from a DPS perspective, who cares if someone ragequit. They'd either come back or you'd replace them with the next person who could get shit on.

I loved Vanilla and TBC, but to pretend it was carebear love and friendship....L.O.L. THe main theorycraft site was literally called Elitist Jerks and it wasn't some ironic name.

[Revak]

Personally I enjoyed attunements. Were they a pain in the ass? Yes. But I'd rather grind out some fire/shadow resist gear and open up a dungeon/raid with my efforts (as it's needed for that place) than hit a magical gear score number and now I can run all dungeons.

This game has no community and there is almost no RPG to it any more.

I didn't raid a ton in vanilla as I didn't reach max until maybe half way through it. But I did get to see MC (a lot), Ony (a lot), ZG, etc. before TBC ever hit. I raided a ton in TBC.

Building up a character with reps/gear/mats/etc. and finally getting into that raid made the entire experience very enjoyable to me. It was something to strive towards. I saw others who were a raid tier above me and it got me interested in progressing my character so I could reach that level. Not logging on and doing 20 world quests so I can buy a mount. Rinse and repeat. By the time I got to a raid I had invested so much in it that I wanted to do whatever I could to help us down the next boss. Then the next boss. Wipe on one for weeks and the guild would work it out to make adjustments and better each other to get past it the next time. We wanted to down bosses, get gear, and see the full dungeon/raid.

Unless I want to be cutting edge, I don't need to do any of that now. It's a 1-month old expansion and I hit 120 on my 2nd toon this past weekend and am already running mythic+ dungeons and am at 340 ilvl. I'm a casual player who has been a GM of a guild that's roots were in vanilla and formed in TBC. What kind of satisfaction can this game provide when it's that easy to gear up a character and see content that quickly?

I wish they would bring back that type of attunement system. Maybe make it account wide at least but give players something to shoot for again other than higher ilvl and more mounts.

The rehashed vanilla from Blizz can't come soon enough for me.