Will Classic bring back player communication?

[Savagedragn]

I joined a group as healer last night. Got bumped off a ledge and accidentally made a few extra pulls, but healed through it and we survived. Quipped a few jokes, apologized, literally nothing from the other four players.

After a couple bosses I pulled some extra packs while we were clearing. Nobodies health was dropping, we were aoe dpsing anyway, and we were all sub 120. Still no issues clearing, but tank starts complaining and other dps start yelling at me and talking about how stupid I am, special needs, etc etc. Then I’m like “this is the first time you guys say anything and it’s this?” Some complaints about state of the game, and they kick me.

We were almost at the last boss at this point. The group knows they can easily pick up another healer from LFD. They don’t give two shits about my time lost missing out on the final bonus exp and it doesn’t hurt them at all.

Will we ACTUALLY get back to people communicating with each other in Classic?

Groups will be harder to form and replacements will take travel time not to mention just finding someone. These same people would probably have preferred to work it out with me instead of kicking. Hell, I didn’t pull anymore after they said stop. I was just discussing why I thought the extra pulls made sense and they kicked me...

You could argue that these people would never have grouped with me in the first place but forget that argument. Suppose they DID group with me and same scenario came up.

I think either Classic DOES bring back tighter community that’s more willing to engage meaningfully with each other or it ends up falling flat and becoming just another desolate playground for those happy to piddle around with original wow either solo or with a tight group of friends.

[Waffen]

Years ago my friend was a Warlock for a Uldaman Group. Details of the event are obscure today, but something happened and he was either kicked/left the group. A few minutes later, they reinvite him, apologize for being jerks, and let him in. They start clearing the dungeon when their "healer" left and they asked him to summon a new one. What they didn't tell him was that he was summoning his replacement. Their old healer was waiting outside of the dungeon. As soon as he summoned their friend, they kicked him, called him vulgar names, and started the dungeon without him.

Why am I telling you this story? Everyone has their opinions about group finder. It won't be a magical "cure-all" for social interaction. Jerk off players are going to be out there, they'll be vindictive, and when stories like yours and my buddy's occur. You're going to find that you've wasted significantly more time trying to do what you want because of trolls. Not going to say classic WoW, player communication, and no dungeon finder will be the "be all, end all". Do understand though, in your story you might've been kicked from the dungeon, but as a healer, you can requeue in dungeon finder and get regrouped quickly. In Classic WoW you've just wasted a good chunk of your time trying to do something for naught.

[kronides]

The game will be an older version of the game, but the community will not be an older version of the community (the "better community" of vanilla is largely mythical, anyway). You'd better believe there will be lots of min-maxers who want to zerg through everything ASAP. And people WERE kicked from groups in vanilla for perceived incompetence, etc.

Of course, not everybody will be like that. But everybody isn't like that now in BfA.

[Koward]

In my opinion it will. The game makes the community, not the opposite.
While there was a time when it was subject to debate, servers-who-cannot-be-named pretty much showed that interactions happen even with a modern playerbase.

Although as @Waffen said, "player interactions" mean both good and bad, friends and enemies, but that's part of what makes a good social MMO.

[ablib]

Yes. I say this because the private server community is almost just like it was back then.

Your experience wouldn't have happened in Vanilla, because there are consequences for being a douche when you're all neighbors.

Also, the type of player who has little patience for the type of run you had in Retail, likely wouldn't make it in Vanilla. What you described is a normal run in Vanilla, lol. But it was still great fun.

[Stockers]

I don't remember the old stand in town for an hour looking for a group of players to be an amazing experience like some seem to think it was. I think with the way social aspects of the game have developed, many people will likely already be ready to go in a guild, and will likely have arranged/will arrange their premade groups well in advance.

Back in vanilla I started as a solo player, and was pretty much that way till late 20's early 30's, which the way I played the game was a few months. Even then, never really did many dungeons, and simply made my way levelling up, and gathering herbs and an alchemist, and that's how I found fun in the game.

I think this time around, with people expecting to be 60 in a few days and clearing MC within a week, the burnout will be fast! And the community will suck just as much as it does now.

[Savagedragn]

Yes. I say this because the private server community is almost just like it was back then.

Your experience wouldn't have happened in Vanilla, because there are consequences for being a douche when you're all neighbors.

Also, the type of player who has little patience for the type of run you had in Retail, likely wouldn't make it in Vanilla. What you described is a normal run in Vanilla, lol. But it was still great fun.

This is what I’m thinking. I believe people have forgotten what it’s like to play on the actual same server as others. Also that convenience DOES come at a cost, even if it’s hard to see. Convenience enables this type of behavior, even with other examples of it happening before and the example that the healer can just require.

[deniter]

I expect to see lots of current retail players, especially at the early levels. There will be tanks who honestly believe dealing lots of damage is the way to tank, mages and warlocks trying to aoe on every fight, etc.

One of the harder things to learn after years and years of retail gameplay is the pacing in dungeons. I see tanks on private servers who don't watch healer's mana or even if all group members are alive before they pull. At first there will be lots of trying to speed run instances like they do on retail realms and lots of of wipes can be expected.

A group of experienced vanilla WoW players don't need much communication. I've been in some groups where barely a word was spoken, and they have been the most efficient, fluid and most solid dungeon runs in my whole life. As long as everyone knows what to do and when the useless chit-chat only slows the group down.

In Classic, lots of people new to vanilla gameplay will need to learn to communicate. Asking questions and having a proper answer is the only way to get things done in PvE groups. People unwilling to communicate won't get very far in game unless they have an entire guild full of RL friends. Back in 2005-2006 you constantly bumped into players with level 60 characters bought from eBay who were clueless of what they were doing in groups. They had never learnt how to play and it showed.

Will Classic bring back player communication? For sure it will. It has to. Dungeon runs take more than an hour so people need to go to bathroom, they get some snacks, make coffee/tea etc. which gives others plenty of time to socialize and get to know each others. That's how you make friends in an MMO. You add the nicest people to your friends list while the asocial, toxic and uncooperative individuals will go to your ignore list and you can only hope you won't see them ever again.

[Unholyground]

I am playing on a private server and you have to communicate like a boss on there.

[Volitar]

Yep. I spent a couple years on a private (Burning Crusade) server and it was deff closer to what I remember a server being like before CRZ. I knew pretty much everyone who was in an endgame guild. There were infamous gankers and pvpers. Felt like an actual community instead of random people you will never see again.

Will be fun as heck.

[Nnyco]

Yep. I spent a couple years on a private (Burning Crusade) server and it was deff closer to what I remember a server being like before CRZ. I knew pretty much everyone who was in an endgame guild. There were infamous gankers and pvpers. Felt like an actual community instead of random people you will never see again.

Will be fun as heck.

Thats because pservers only have a tiny fraction of players compared to real one, ofc you know half the servers when theres only like 50 people active.

[Volitar]

Thats because pservers only have a tiny fraction of players compared to real one, ofc you know half the servers when theres only like 50 people active.

The private servers I played on had more than my retail BC and WOTLK server which was pretty good size.

[MoanaLisa]

Interesting question. I suspect not. There's a theory that software drives behavior which implies that personal responsibility has little to do with it. I think that's completely wrong.

Social gaming at this scale was a relatively new thing in 2005. Everyone was essentially terrible at the game and finding their way. So many reached out. Today, social gaming is a swamp of hostility, trolling and bad behavior unless it's very firmly controlled (which it will not be if Blizzard's history means anything). Classic will have today's "Grow a thicker skin, it's the Internet" audience, not the audience of 2005.

Good community will still mean guilds or friends. You'll need one or both if you want to avoid the swamp.

[deniter]

Thats because pservers only have a tiny fraction of players compared to real one, ofc you know half the servers when theres only like 50 people active.

The official vanilla/TBC realms used to have 2500-3000 concurrent players and people still knew each others mostly. You knew who the best raiders were, who you didn't want to engage in PvP, who was going to gank you while questing, etc.

That's all but gone now. You see faceless and nameless people around you but there's no reason to even talk to them. Can't say private servers are any better atm. The best ones have 10k+ players online. You seldom run a dungeon with the same people as on previous night, and that's a real shame.

[Dug]

From my experience on private servers it brings it back a bit but nothing like I remember it. Especially with pugs its mostly the same.

[Exol]

Even if the game is the same as it was back then, its not going to be remotely close to the same experience. Simply because of how the culture of the internet has changed, and how's its affected gaming. And I'm not even talking just about WoW, this literally applies to every game out there. Yea I'm being super broad and general but the things that made vanilla what is was, was the generation/culture behind it.

Internet was slow, so we were used to waiting for things. Online gaming was relatively new (for the mass public), people were excited that they could communicate with other people and were more tolerant. But with fast internet, we don't like waiting for things, I used to be okay with waiting for videos to load/download for hours, but now if my video pauses once or twice because of buffering, I try it again at a much later time, or simply just watch something else.

I'm not trying to shit on vanilla or anything. I'm actually excited for Classic, because I never got to try it, back then my days started at 7am and ended at 10pm. But anyone pretending like the release of Classic is going to bring back those experiences is highly delusional. You can bring back the game, but you can't bring back the era it came out in, and that's what made it special.

[Savagedragn]

Thats because pservers only have a tiny fraction of players compared to real one, ofc you know half the servers when theres only like 50 people active.

Did you play Vanilla? It was like that for me too. I played since day 1 and it was like that for me on my server: Azjol-Nerub

Not a mega server, but none of the day one servers were absolute baby servers. You knew who the epic PvP people were on both sides. You checked names at the start of a battle ground. You recognize names of people in chat that aren’t part of your guild. You know who guild leaders are of top guilds on your server, etc etc.

The conveniences of modern wow have moved us away from much of this. I’m curious how much Classic will be able to grab hold of that bottled lightning again or dissipate like most lightning =)

[Dhrizzle]

Communication will come back as we'll have downtime on flightpaths, mana breaks, corpse runs etc.

[Savagedragn]

I appreciate all the thoughtful responses here =)

Thanks!

[mvaliz]

The game will be an older version of the game, but the community will not be an older version of the community (the "better community" of vanilla is largely mythical, anyway). You'd better believe there will be lots of min-maxers who want to zerg through everything ASAP. And people WERE kicked from groups in vanilla for perceived incompetence, etc.

Of course, not everybody will be like that. But everybody isn't like that now in BfA.

Oh man, i remember my Vanilla PUG days. /shudder

Honestly, LFG made me LOVE 5 mans again. I swore them off several months before it happened just because of the stupidity.

One of my most traumatic moments was with one particular douchebag who not only criticized everybody, but he was the group leader and demanded ALL chainmail/mythril mining nodes in the dungeon belonged to him.

"Why didn't you just leave and join another group then?"

In Vanilla? Pffft... took you an hour just to GET a group together! You ran with whatever you got because a group was harder to find than gold! >_<

oh, and did you also forget you couldn't reset dungeons with the push of a button back then? ;P

- - - Updated - - -

Years ago my friend was a Warlock for a Uldaman Group. Details of the event are obscure today, but something happened and he was either kicked/left the group. A few minutes later, they reinvite him, apologize for being jerks, and let him in. They start clearing the dungeon when their "healer" left and they asked him to summon a new one. What they didn't tell him was that he was summoning his replacement. Their old healer was waiting outside of the dungeon. As soon as he summoned their friend, they kicked him, called him vulgar names, and started the dungeon without him.

Why am I telling you this story? Everyone has their opinions about group finder. It won't be a magical "cure-all" for social interaction. Jerk off players are going to be out there, they'll be vindictive, and when stories like yours and my buddy's occur. You're going to find that you've wasted significantly more time trying to do what you want because of trolls. Not going to say classic WoW, player communication, and no dungeon finder will be the "be all, end all". Do understand though, in your story you might've been kicked from the dungeon, but as a healer, you can requeue in dungeon finder and get regrouped quickly. In Classic WoW you've just wasted a good chunk of your time trying to do something for naught.

That's a huge thing right there that people forget.

When you've spent an hour spamming in trade chat/guild chat and FINALY you get a group, spend 20+ minutes getting everybody out there only to find that it's an aweful group? You're done for the day >_<