Is it REALLY vanilla WoW that people want or just the mechanics?

[Apexis]

Wildstar failed because it wasn't WoW and was targeting WoW customers.

To a lesser degree the same will be true with classic. It won't fail, but it will certainly fall to a niche part of the total player base. Vanilla wasn't a boom, Lich King was the boom player base wise. The majority of ex WoW players are Wrath Babies and they aren't gonna stick around with antiquated ass classic mechanics as they started playing the game when blizzard started drifting towards more QoL.

The people that actually want classic, played classic and properly remember classic are the ones who will stick around. That my friends is called a niche.

While I do not consider myself a Wrath baby, because I started mid-TBC. That said, I agree, Classic will be for those that loved the hell out of it. The many that started to the game after Vanilla will simply not want to endure the far slower pace and nonsense that got refined over time. This also said, I don't really care for where Blizzard has chosen to go with this game, but I do understand and chose to adapt to what Blizzard has done, but I still play the game the way I first started to play the game, which is not really all that different from how many tend to approach Classic or Vanilla WoW. To me WoW, is always going to be a journey type of mentality. I always explore the zones and content before ever starting to quest. I like to get the full immersion and feel of the landscape first and foremost. I have leveled so many characters since I first started playing this game and I never start playing any of those characters in the same manner or start in the starting zones for that particular race. I rotate around so I can recapture the feel of the various places I have not visited for many moons.

Many seem to complain that the game at it most basic levels has changed over time. When in fact it is the person that has chosen to change the way they choose to play the game over time. I still do the same things I always have done, no matter what changes Blizzard has chosen to make. I still see this game from expansion to expansion as a journey that will unfolded over the course of the time I spend in the content. I am a purist when it comes to new content and always approach that content in the same manner as I first had done with my warlock some 11 plus years ago. People chose on their own to change how and what they do in this game.

I continue to play like I did from the first moment I logged in and created my warlock. I still interact with people that are worth the time to interact with. That too has changed over time, now there are far more jerks than people that literally want to give their shirts off their own backs. I still go out of my way, even if I am in the middle of doing something to go help another player that is asking for help or assistance. The game has changed over time, the way I approach and chose to play the game has never changed for me. So the people whining about everything under the sun that made Vanilla great or more social interaction and sense of community are the people who changed over time. Blizzard in many ways was forced into rolling with those changes. In my opinion, Blizzard went to far and should have let the dust settle a bit, especially during and after Wrath to see where the player base itself was going to go before forcing the player base to go in certain directions.

This current expansion is like taking the approach of throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the base without really making many work for just about much of anything. I get the game has gone far more casual over time, but people still need to be given some semblance and incentive to want to go into content. Not continue to dangle carrots in their faces so they go into the content. It is nice to get an occasional mount or pet, but this expansion see like if you do this you simply get a prize for bothering to participate in this content.

There is nothing, pets, mounts, gear, or whatever that Blizzard to throw in my face to get me to do an expedition at any level. I simply think those expeditions are a complete waste of my time that I could be spending doing something else far more engaging. Expeditions are like the Darkmoon Fair, but then that is not really fair to the DM Fair at all, but the same level of mentality actually applies to a lesser extent. Do this and you simply get a carrot, whether you wanted the carrot or not does not matter, you receive the carrot just the same.

[Escepticus]

Vanilla wasn't a boom, Lich King was the boom player base wise.

Wait, what? Vanilla WAS the boom, it took by surprise even the developers, who..."were not prepared". Vanilla went from thousands to millions in only months, reaching around 7.5 millions when BC went out. BC took that number to 11+ millions, and finally WotLK reached 12+ millions (yes, the most succesful expansion in terms of numbers is TBC). Anyway, yes, Vanilla was the "boooooom!"

[Dergiab]

It's telling that pre-sales were anemic for Wildstar when everyone on the team was advertising in every way they could that Wildstar was a return to the kind of MMO that people loved with WoW. People weren't buying it. That's more telling than anything that came after launch. Wildstar was the MMO that was going to be a great success from day 1 because it was a return to the principles of game design that made WoW popular in 2005. Didn't happen.

That might be more related to the cartoonish style than the content itself. Most people do in fact judge a book by it's cover.

[Qnubi]

I want design philosophy of Classic WoW, indeed. That design is so good, that I am willing to play a 14 year old game. WoW was never improved in my eyes, it was made worse, slowly, consistently and nobody at blizzard ever realized it.

Blizzard... no... the gaming WORLD will be shocked when Classic launches and will question everything. It will be the revival of the golden age of gaming.

[A Chozo]

Maybe both. Bunch of different players want Classic for several reasons. I want it because Old Kalimdor + EK got deleted with Cataclysm.

The most annoying ones are those who think that Classic is the stepping stone that Blizzard will use to expand on it using the Classic's "principles". They say they want Classic+, but in reality they want Blizzard to make WoW: My Way.

People have this utopic dream that Blizzard will suddenly expand on design philosophy of 15 years ago.

[Tech614]

Wait, what? Vanilla WAS the boom

Sure if you want to keep believing this you can go right ahead, but vanilla WoW wasn't even the top selling PC game in 2004-2006 and PC gaming was in shambles during that time, and using subscriber numbers that have always been propped up by pay by the hour cafes in Asia has always been a bad way to analyze the success of WoW.

Lich King was when the game became main stream. Classic WoW was simply the largest MMO, which was a niche market until the game actually exploded years later.

[Bodonius]

I have talked to other player apart from in my guild more in 1 week then on 5 years in retail. People asking for water, people asking want to do that dungeon

[owbu]

What I like about Classic is the familiarity. A new MMO with 15 year old mechanics would just be that: an outdated game.

I would like to see a new MMO with the same philosophy, though (not every class is equal. Not all content is on a perfectly balanced difficulty curve that you cant escape from and so on).

[Kolvarg]

subscriber numbers that have always been propped up by pay by the hour cafes in Asia has always been a bad way to analyze the success of WoW.
Lich King was when the game became main stream. Classic WoW was simply the largest MMO, which was a niche market until the game actually exploded years later.

And what exactly is a better metric to analyze the success of WoW, your "feeling" of when it became mainstream?

It's just factually incorrect. Subscription-wise WotLK was when WoW stagnated. And the inflation from pay by the hour cafes influences the game at all times - if anything it influences it more in WotLK as iirc the game was released a bit later in some Asian markets.

If you want to disregard subscriptions fine, look at searches in google:
https://trends.google.pt/trends/expl...=%2Fm%2F021dvx

Interest actually started declining soon after WotLK hits. You can even filter to only show data for the USA and the result is the same.
The only reason WoW was "mainstream" by the WotLK era was that it had such a big growth previously.

[turlockmike]

I would like to do classic content for a while, but really I just want classic mechanics and design.

1. No LFG and LFR. LFG killed community.
2. Too much streamlining of stats. I'm not sure I like hit/resist, but primary stats matter way too much and allow for no gameplay flexibility.
3. Investment into your character. Classic wow does a good job balancing investment into your character (changing specs is not something you do too often) vs flexibility.
4. Gear should be rare, not drop like rain.
5. We only need 1 difficulty mode, but allow for things like activated hard mode, and bonus bosses (think ulduar)
6. Raid tiers shouldn't really exist, you should be able to farm for good items from any raid almost the whole expansion. Maybe one raid has more crit gear or certain slots, or certain set pieces/legendaries. This will keep all raids fresh for a long time.
7. Not everyone likes badge gear, but I think some badge gear is appropriate as long as the gear is lower tier than raids and is just balanced gear. (to help people soften the blow from getting unlucky in raids).
8. Master looter
9. No flying

A lot of things in classic are not fun (hit, expertise, resist), but as long as they aren't overemphasized, it should be fine.

[Bodonius]

I like the no x-realm and you get to know people. You trust some you block some and they are all people not a random just blinking in and out

[MoanaLisa]

I think it's false to reduce the success of a game down to a certain principle, that whether makes or breaks the game.

I think that's false as well which is why I restricted my comments to pre-sales and how the game was pushed prior to launch. Bad pre-sales can mean a number of things but given the unanimity with which the developers were selling the game as something as a return to those design principles that created Blizzard's greatest success, the fact that they didn't come close to expectations is telling. This strategy to sell a mass-market MMO in this way didn't work. People weren't overly interested. There may have been other reasons. Others have noted that the graphic style was a turn-off for many. The point is, though, that this notion of Wildstar returning to Vanilla WoW design principles wasn't that much of a draw.

They were even less interested with the Genesis Key attunement that Wildstar required at first for raids. Telling, again, that it was nerfed into oblivion.

Blizzard fell for this too in Cataclysm. They really thought that increasing the difficulty in popular sections of the game--primarily heroic dungeons--would be a winning thing. They admitted later that they had thought that a large portion of the playing population agreed with their bias toward hard = engaging. GC wrote a passionate blog post trying to make the point. It wasn't true in either case.

I'm not someone who believes that Vanilla WoW was overly difficult. More so than now? Sure. But mainly it was slow and took patience. We'll have to see how that plays out. If it really was that difficult I think it would be in trouble.

[Escepticus]

And what exactly is a better metric to analyze the success of WoW, your "feeling" of when it became mainstream?

It's just factually incorrect. Subscription-wise WotLK was when WoW stagnated. And the inflation from pay by the hour cafes influences the game at all times - if anything it influences it more in WotLK as iirc the game was released a bit later in some Asian markets.

If you want to disregard subscriptions fine, look at searches in google:
https://trends.google.pt/trends/expl...=%2Fm%2F021dvx

Interest actually started declining soon after WotLK hits. You can even filter to only show data for the USA and the result is the same.
The only reason WoW was "mainstream" by the WotLK era was that it had such a big growth previously.

Yep. Here is another well known chart (and remember, back then Blizzard did inform of numbers!):

[Molis]

Doesnt even need to be a new MMO

An open world RPG with some player grouping would suit me just fine

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

We want the community and pacing back, we want to be part of a world where we're just adventurers trying to get by- not "heroes" that destroy anything and everything we look at for 3 seconds.

[MoanaLisa]

Yep. Here is another well known chart (and remember, back then Blizzard did inform of numbers!):

Posts that don't take into account things we don't know like how many people were signing up as new accounts, people leaving temporarily, people leaving permanently, in other words population churn are meaningless and don't explain anything at all.

People signing up as new accounts is a metric that's bound to decline over time. People leaving the game for whatever reason is a metric that would generally be expected to increase over time. Not everyone is going to be in to play a video game for 10 years no matter how good it is.

How those things play together is the real story and only Blizzard knows that. For years this entire argument has been about that graphic which doesn't really explain anything. If a million people sign up and a million leave in some calendar period then you would show as flat. If in some other calendar period the same number of people leave and only 300,000 sign up that's a decline of 700,000. That might be more a sign of the game's age than anything. But no one knows this and speculating about it as "evidence" isn't useful.

[Redecle]

There's also a flaw in the concept, it's not the rpg part of classic they miss, it's the mmo part.
I haven't seen anyone actually rp'ing in the beta. All people do is what they do in bfa. They level, quest run dungeons and pvp.
Nobody roleplays as you should in an rpg. It's just stats and gearing up. Everyone plays the same role, starting adventurer, where as in bfa everyone is savior of the world a high level adventurer. Where are the soldiers? cooks? barbers? pirates? mercenaries? farmers? fisherman? criminals? lawmen? researchers? nobles? lumberjacks? prostitutes? (right they are in goldshire in on rp realms, only existing role players in wow).

It's mostly just gear, stats, talents, progress. That's vanilla and bfa BOTH.
No one has a backstory, no one speaks in character, it's all thunderfury this and that, lol smiley face, LFM for this and that. Or in vanilla's case the same old jokes about mankriks wife.
It's not about Blizzards game systems, how difficult the mobs are, who's the fastest in m+ or who gets the world first Whirlwind axe in classic..
Where's all the RP in the mmoRPg?
Classic isn't anymore of an rpg than bfa if the community doesn't actually do the rp.
I don't see Asmongold, Tips out or any of the vocal guys driving for classic doing that.
Instead some of them they actually make fun of the few roleplayers left in the game.
"It's all about community." Community of what? Fart jokes and bad puns on decade old famous comments.

I don't see why classic community is going to be any better than bfa.
Nobody is interested in storytelling and the best part of an mmo, world building together.
Exploring the world and creating tales based on that.
It's all about who's getting the yellow banana suit or who ganked who in stv.
Why the group wiped in BRD and took 11 hours to complete it and wow how challenging that is.
I've been wiping the past hour in mythic Aggramar at 120 for crying out loud, people don't know how to mechanically play the game and they won't know that in classic. It's not challenging group content that i miss or the groups cause this is the majority of them. And there ain't nothing to tell about that afterwards. No interesting tale, no story, no character development (except you might get a green or purple item if someone actually counts that as character development).
And all that is happening with the existing players behind the characters, not the actual characters as the personalities.

[Itori]

I wouldnt say the mechanics are what i miss, if you look at wow from a gameplay and difficulty standpoint the game really isnt all that special, but at the time it was fresh, it was new, and its what we all wanted or didnt know we wanted.

Looking at it now though i think a lot of us just want the old feel back, the long grind, the time you spent finding friends and making memories with and achieving things that take months to do or just plain having good fun while chatting it up with the guild.

[LanceOmikron]

Me personally, I just want to go back to where it all began in order to both compare how far the game as come as well as see how the recreation of Vanilla matches up to my own memories of it.

Plus, there are some activities that can only really truly be done properly in a version of WoW that's closer to Vanilla (such as the Iron Man challenge).

[Kolvarg]

*snip*

The chart was not posted in an attempt to justify an opinion of quality on any state of the game. It was posted in the context of refuting @Tech614's claim that WoW's "boom" was WotLK and not Vanilla.


But I agree, we can't really use sub numbers or other metrics to compare the quality or even popularity of two very different states of the game, because well they're fairly different things in very different situations, there are simply far too many variables, and unless we invent a way of "peeking" into alternate universes, we'll never know wether any given path in design decisions in the lifetime of WoW would have led to it being more or less popular/relevant/successful today. For all we know, even if one concedes that modern WoW is a worse experience than Classic (which is impossible since it's very subjective), for all we know the game would have died out by now if it hadn't changed in this direction.

Potentially the success, stagnation or failure of Classic will tell us in some way how good it actually is and how some of its design can still be popular - but even that is heavily clouded as it's heavily mixed with nostalgia and familiarity - which are not necessarily bad things, it just means that even if Classic is greatly successful, it's not necessarily true that a new game with Classic's "vibe" but that's not WoW will be successful as well.

- - - Updated - - -

I wouldnt say the mechanics are what i miss, if you look at wow from a gameplay and difficulty standpoint the game really isnt all that special, but at the time it was fresh, it was new, and its what we all wanted or didnt know we wanted.

Looking at it now though i think a lot of us just want the old feel back, the long grind, the time you spent finding friends and making memories with and achieving things that take months to do or just plain having good fun while chatting it up with the guild.

It's also important to remember that for a lot of people WoW was the first MMORPG they played. This means that they started playing without or with little expectations, and playing WoW created expectations for every future game (particularly MMORPGs) they play in the future.

With that said, so far the Beta for me really brought to light (apart from the social aspect) is how different the feeling of playing Classic is (compared to modern WoW) when it comes to how character power and growth feels, where it becomes far more satisfying and meaningful to play when every level and piece of gear you acquire actually feels impactful even while leveling.