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

[Synbios]

The classes mechanics, in my case. As others have said, I'd also welcome BC's mechanics with open arms. It goes downhill really fast after that.

[Accendor]

Mechanics for me.

[Netherblood]

I'm sick of seeing this posted and tired of having to rewrite the defense I've used 100 times as to why the "wildstar failed because it was HARD!" thing is unequivocally false, but suffice to say... you're wrong. Do some research on the issue if you're actually curious as to why it failed.

Also, I'm interested in beating the raids I never got a chance to when they were relevant. I enjoy the systems somewhat, but I hate that I either have to heal as the class I love or roll a different class to get the community acceptance I need to up my chances of raiding with the types of people I like (elitists who are definitely going to be blowing through raids at the pace they release) but ultimately I'm here to down all the raids.

I played Wildstar and the reason I quit and a lot of other I knew did was not because it was hard, it was however for same problems that still exist in classic. Now I mostly played for pvp but I did do all the dungeons on gold for attunements, etc.

Class balance was trash especially in pvp. Spellslingers were 1 shotting people basically, some classes because they were harder to play due to inability to cast while moving like espers were considered bad and it was quickly difficult to find a group on non meta class.

In pvp community a huge complaint was that you needed pve gear to do well in pvp. And then from pve side the complaint was that PVP weapons of highest rank are BiS for raiding.

Also the super long grind to unlock all your "talent" points of doing dailies. It would take like months to unlock all your skill points unless you bought the unlock items from top PVPers.

A lot of these issues will exist in classic. Class balance in classic is even worse than it was in wildstar, at least wildstar had fun and fluid combat. Most vanilla classes are boring 1-2 button snooze fests.

Sure later on the game got neglected and there was no new content or raids, etc. But it started dying and people were quitting way before that. A lot of people quit a few months in.

[Perkunas]

I played Wildstar and the reason I quit and a lot of other I knew did was not because it was hard, it was however for same problems that still exist in classic. Now I mostly played for pvp but I did do all the dungeons on gold for attunements, etc.

Class balance was trash especially in pvp. Spellslingers were 1 shotting people basically, some classes because they were harder to play due to inability to cast while moving like espers were considered bad and it was quickly difficult to find a group on non meta class.

In pvp community a huge complaint was that you needed pve gear to do well in pvp. And then from pve side the complaint was that PVP weapons of highest rank are BiS for raiding.

Also the super long grind to unlock all your "talent" points of doing dailies. It would take like months to unlock all your skill points unless you bought the unlock items from top PVPers.

A lot of these issues will exist in classic. Class balance in classic is even worse than it was in wildstar, at least wildstar had fun and fluid combat. Most vanilla classes are boring 1-2 button snooze fests.

Sure later on the game got neglected and there was no new content or raids, etc. But it started dying and people were quitting way before that. A lot of people quit a few months in.

Most people quit within the first 3 months. Shit, I think the amount of people that subscribed beyond the first month were like 1/3 of the boxes sold. That game needed another year in the oven before it was ready, but this is what this market has come to. SWTOR needed another 8 months in beta to hammer out the bugs and build enough content for the end game. EA forced them to release it way before it was ready and had the devs tell half-truths to the media that there was an "internal build" where most of the major issues were addressed and we were not playing the release client when in reality we were. Wildstar and SWTOR really upset me because both could have been fantastic games if they were just allowed to finish before releasing.

[Teri]

I just want the mechanics, already played Vanilla content at a high level back then (Rank 13 pvp / most of Naxx / killing World bosses and guild was the one that opened AQ gates on my server, so it doesn't hype me much.

Sure, there's at least some content left, or different classes (even tho I had alts with exalted ZG and blue pvp gear and some tier1/2), but starting right away in 1.12, even with gating, won't be the same.

Current WoW doesn't interest me much with all the multiple versions of the same bosses, items and flexible raid sizes and cross-realm pve.

TBC was my peak enjoyment of WoW, actually having decent ranking compared to the rest of US for tier 4/5/6 and then played through it all again after rerolling my account from US to EU in late 2.4.

[Kithelle]

It's obvious that many didn't, they just wanted live but without the things they disliked.

[Zyrinx]

I think there are two major aspects when it comes down to WoW.

1. Your story as a character
Single player RPGs will work very well with you as the hero of story. You and a small group of followers will go out, explore the world and defeat the big bad guy at the end. The hero's journey is a very old way of telling the story but if told well is very successful. I think it's terrible for an MMORPG though. If every player in the world becomes the "chosen one" then everybody else doesn't matter. The Witcher is a very good game. But consider now that you have thousands of other Geralds running around in your world doing the very same story. Doesn't really work in a multiplayer setting, does it?

In Classic you were just a lowly adventurer, a nobody trying to earn some money while doing grunt work. It was still very similar in TBC. However the higher we got in terms of expansion and level the higher our status became. Look at where we are today with Legion and BFA. In Legion we were the highest champions of our respective class. But how can I be the representative of the warriors and Odin's champion if Ar4g0rnXx1 is the same? In an MMO it destroys any kind of immersion because players will perceive the whole story line as fake. When I'm just some lost soul running around in Feralas finding a robot chicken escorting it to an escape point to receive a reward for it from some random Goblin in Booty Bay it really feels like I just did some work as an adventurer. There was no world at stake or whatever else might happen in Azeroth. It's just about me earning some cash and items.

Classic may be simple in this regard throughout most leveling areas but it works. Every time I look the whole story in Cataclysm and beyond I just think "Here we go again with the shark jumping...". It's just to ridiculous.

2. The community aspect:
I'll say it as many times as necessary. LFG and the whole cross realm stuff killed the community aspect of the game. If you don't have to communicate with other people to accomplish specific goals, then a lot of people actually won't communicate. WotLK literally trained players en masse to become selfish a-holes. In classic and BC (for the most part) your reputation as a player was EXTREMELY relevant and fragile. Ninja looting, stealing, cheating (in terms of trades) was very much looked down upon. If a level 1 character was trying to sell you something you knew something fishy was going on because the player on the other side wasn't willing to show his/her real face.

Ninja looting or stealing stuff from a guild easily gave you a bad reputation so that no decent player willingly would invite you into a group. You're screwing with you PVP group to get to rank 14 first? Good look finding a new PVP group on that same server.

Today most players you encounter in a dungeon you'll never see again. Why do you think personal loot is a thing? It was implemented to counter douche bag behavior that was created by Blizzard's design decisions in the first place. Ask yourself how many players in current WoW you yourself actually care about (I don't want an answer). Do you care about your guild? Do you have real life friends in WoW or just a few random people on the internet that you may have had one or two conversations with? It was WotLK that created the foundation of what WoW is today.

I think your point 1 totally nails it, and is often overlooked in WoWs decline to where it is today with homogeneous heroes.

[Ahovv]

And rely on add-ons to tell you how to counter the vastly superior raid mechanics right....

Who are you talking about?

- - - Updated - - -

The fact that you think WoW is all about "raid mechanics" only proves my point.

Well, it's all about that because the rest of the content currently sucks. But guess what, vanilla isn't really better except for taking longer. There are much better ways to craft an MMO than Vanilla WoW, or any version of WoW.

[HavokHeart]

I mean, yeah, vanilla plays like an actual MMORPG, whereas retail is practically a 3rd person shooter lobby game with some very light RPG elements.

I want to play an MMORPG, not a 3rd person shooter.

And yeah, I do want Vanilla's content. It's a game where, even at max level, lower level zones are still relevant to an extent. And for raids, ALL of the raids are relevant throughout the game's life. Even when you're raiding Naxx, you can still do MC for Thunderfury/Accuria, BWL for nef weapons and trinkets like DFT/Rejuv Gem, AQ40 for C'thun loot and T2.5, ZG for mounts and head/leg enchants, and AQ20 for.......ah, admittedly, AQ20 is pretty much the one raid in vanilla that once you have the gear you need you don't really need to go back there. But this is still a massive upgrade over retail where, once a new raid is released, there's 0 reason to do older raids because ALL of the gear in the new raid is an upgrade to the previous raid's gear.

There were some pretty nifty skill books/enchants that came form aq20. Was definitely worth running for a while.

[Loeko]

Personally, it is definitely the mechanics. Actually, I am not looking forward to Classic to play Classic, even though I'll do and enjoy it. I am looking forward to Classic hoping it'll be successful so that Blizzard finally undertstands what they're doing wrong. They already got incredible feedback thanks to the huge positive returns of the beta regarding game design, progression, difficulty and so on, and I hope that Classic will be successful and confirm that. However, I can't say that I'm confident about Blizzard listening to the community as they've been insanely blind over the past years.

Anyway, I'll definitely play Classic but more than anything, I hope it will be an opportunity for Blizzard, and other MMO studios, to realize what makes a good MMORPG.

[Nerovar]

I agree. Personally, I'm pretty much only interested in the increased focus on actual RPG mechanics instead of the content. Nostalgia doesn't play any role whatsoever for me.

Of course I'd prefer if they did a 180 turn with modern WoW to return it to the gameplay roots that made it great in the first place but seeing that this is most likely not going to happen, we'll just have to play a 15 years old game instead.

[Nestoras]

The game needs to be something more than the sum of its mechanics to make the people wanna play it.
Vanilla WoW had that "something", defined the genre and left a mark in the gaming industry for ever.

[WowClassic]

This entire point falls flat because Classic is being made for people who have already played vanilla and know what it's like.

Yet another talking point thrown around by people doomsaying that Classic is going to """"fail"""".

I'd like to think it's made for people who experienced the original trilogy. I mean I only started at the beginning of Wrath but Classic is clearly far closer to what I experienced back then than the abomination that retail is now.

[tankbug]

Which kinda sucks because millenials have grown up on ezmode basically and like their games dumbed down to the point where you barely have to play them.

Millenials have grown up with basically all the video games that exist, so I have no idea what you're talking about.

[Perkunas]

Millenials have grown up with basically all the video games that exist, so I have no idea what you're talking about.

I think this person like millions of other people think the Gen-Z folks are Millennials. The youngest of gen Y is like 25 and the oldest is like 39. People are stupid.

[Osmeric]

I think what people want is their memories. They're going to be disappointed.

[Foxhoundn]

Nostalgia is one helluva drug.

[InTheEnd]

What they actually want is a memory-wipe of their experiences after playing WOW for the first time, so it can feel new and fresh like it back in Vanilla. They are in for a rude awakening when they realize such a thing is not possible, no matter how much you want Blizzard to pull it off. There are going to be LOTS of disappointed players when the nostalgia-fever wears off.

[meekus]

I want the old animations/models and a world without dks, dhs and monks.

[Kaver]

I feel like people aren't necessarily interested in replaying classic WoW for the content but more for HOW the content played. Playing through the same dungeons, raids, etc. as they did 14 years ago will be a hollow experience. But if they (or someone) created an MMORPG around Starcraft or another popular franchise, it'd be a golden opportunity for Blizzard to apply what they've learned from WoW over the past decade.

I actually think another top-tier MMORPG is inevitable. The other half-assed ones, including WoW, all need to go away first, though, and the new title needs to be one that somehow applies to huge age demographic ranges. From teens to 40+. Which kinda sucks because millenials have grown up on ezmode basically and like their games dumbed down to the point where you barely have to play them.

Personally, I think the bottom line is that people are going to enjoy Classic WoW and find it engaging and fun. That's what matters the most.

If a modern MMORPG was developed that was build on the same principles as Classic, then that would be great. But I don't think Blizzard will be able to create that anymore. They seem to focus a lot on "functionality" and seem to forget the core values of what makes a game engaging. Therefore, I am satisfied with a complete replica of Vanilla, because I know I'm going to have a good time. And in the end, if we are having fun then that is all that matters