You just contradicted yourself. Is it unique ACCOUNTS, or unique characters? Because 3.7 million unique ACCOUNTS is much more impressive than characters.
The people still playing live wow tend to be alt type players and a lot of that is probably just alt #6 running it again for gear.
10 alts all with 10 ids. So 10 characters count 10 times instead of 1. See what i mean? Not that impressive
Eh. To be honest, most of those "techniques" WERE quite foreign back then. Sure, LoS was a thing against any ranged group, but it took a while for it to be a more "widespread" practice amongst the average gaming population - Not that it's practiced by the general public now. But I only did LoS pulls on pulls that "needed" it otherwise wipe, and I never, EVER kited, primarily because there weren't many mechanics, if any at all, that required kiting (I feel like I remember that elites moved faster then players, and a large number were immune to slows. But it's been a long time for me).
Interupts were sparse in Vanilla - Paladins, Priests, Druids, and Hunters didn't have interupts, and that's nearly half the classes! Warriors, Mages, Warlocks, Rogues, and Shamans did, but all of them were on the GCD back then - And most casts you had to interupt were fast, <1.5 second casts, so if your GCD was up, forget about interupting. Also, Rogues/Warriors interupts costed energy/rage, Mage/Warlock interupts were on an even longer CD then current, and alliance didn't even have shamans! Plus they generated additional threat! The good news was interupts (Except Shaman's Earth Shock) lasted much longer - 2 rogues or 2 warriors were generally enough to keep a mob spell-locked forever. (Or 3 mages. You didn't want Shaman's on an interupt rotation, because they WOULD eventually overtake the tank in threat due to the high threat generation of Earth Shock). Stuns were slightly more common, but not by much.
WOW was most peoples first MMO. It was new and they didn’t understand the mechanics. Since then, we have had so many mmos and rpgs that have similar mechanics that going back to vanilla is going back to the basics. Its like graduating college, then going back to first grade. First grade was difficult when you experienced it for the first time, but now it is childs play.
RIP Genn Greymane, Permabanned on 8.22.18
Your name will carry on through generations, and will never be forgotten.
"Everyone"
It's just private server players who have no idea what they're talking about that are creating false reports like this. Most of them didn't even play vanilla. Leave this to the professionals kids.
It's more so majority of people I talk to about classic, including myself, were 12-13 when we played vanilla. Also general gaming culture and mindset was a bit different back then in mmos.
People weren't drooling but level of play at top end and has gone up a lot since Vanilla. General level of play probably has gone up a bit too. This is not unique to WoW either, League of Legends is same, and not only at professional level. If you watch old video from Season 2 play at like Gold mmr level and at same mmr right now, you'll see a huge difference in game knowledge and mechanical skill.
People in general improve as things get harder, they rise to the challenge. This happens in any pvp game because you are trying to be better than others and other people are trying to be better than you so you both improve. Same thing happened in pve though, as raids got more mechanics and rotations for a lot of classes got more complex than 1 button and people just played more, they improved their general level of play.
It's hyperbole of course, but it's not without a grain of truth. You have to understand that no one really knew anything - the developers included. They designed with a lot of heart and not a maximum of forethought, which is fine - after all it's been over a decade of refinement now and there's still some issues left.
Today's WoW is mathed out, inundated with guides, and played by people who've already been at it for a few years - or who, at the very least, have some experience with games or even MMORPGs. That wasn't the audience back then. People hadn't grown up playing games online. There weren't 20,000 titles on Steam to choose from at the flick of a finger, and people hadn't played 100 games before that taught them all sorts of industry-standard expectations.
You could go into WoW wide-eyed and without any deeper knowledge of mechanics, and still have fun - because it was designed with those kinds of players in mind. If you put that in the hand of TODAY'S players, it's no surprise everything looks simple and plain. We know better. We know more than a decade better. Not because we're more intelligent, but because we're more experienced - but as so often, a lack of experience is conflated with a lack of intelligence. Hence the whole drooling idiot meme.
Vanilla wow was VERY basic, the only thing that added difficulty was lack of information (as in - it's easier to get it first-hand, than find a resource on the net).
Nowadays you have multiple reliable sources of information, people of various skill levels are exposed to each other (LFG/LFD), streams and videos of other players performing, so the "bar" of "accepted" skill level inevitably rises.
I want to repeat that vanilla was very basic, it didn't demand much from you as a player, the most complicated job was a job of a tank in a dungeon - that's literally it. Anybody could just "rise to the challenge" but they choose not to (naturally, as players don't do that, this was already proven multiple times in various games). People improve only when they want to improve. As things get harder people tend to just stick to easier stuff and/or leave.
WoW is not a "pvp game", it's a mmorpg, it's not just "click play button, get a match, perform". "In PvE" it works the other way, as even blizzard admitted with cataclysm - when people hit a wall of "hard" they just fucking quit or stop doing that content.
Originally Posted by Urban Dictionary