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

[nodlimax]

vanilla was "balanced" and fun. Not the thempark we have nowadays

This kind of comment makes me chuckle.

Vanilla was so NOT balanced. And if you look at WoW objectively it was always designed as a theme park. Even back then the "rides" you had in WoW were pretty much:
1. Dungeons
2. Raids
3. Quests
4. Battlegrounds (they were released in Vanilla)

Everything else you did was pretty just there to earn yourself the permission to enter the rides. The basic 4 rides still exist in WoW to this day. They've just added new ones and re-designed elements of the 4 basic ones that we had from the start. Even back then WoW was declared a theme-park MMO. The other type which is the sandbox has quite different aspects. EVE Online is a sand box. It has some theme park elements but it mostly is a sandbox.

Btw. don't get me wrong, I'm not defending BFA in any way. I just find confused comments like the one I quoted really "interesting"...

[Amerissis]

And then they discover it wasn't as hard as they thought or remembered

- Heal a dungeon without ever drinking or going oom
- just chainpull everything and never have to cc
- Shaman tank dungeons
- Void Walker tank dungeons

Classic wasn’t difficult at all, just slow. And it was easy compared to other MMOs at the time. Still, millenials are not the ones raised on easy games

[Zafire]

Really? I'm not trying to shit on you, can you just explain why? leveling as a warrior honestly made me want to cry... I fought through the pain for the fun of being 60 and well geared. I got into beta and quit by like level 10... I didn't like WoW at first. The FIRST time it was ok because it was new and I was exploring, and had a friend to level with. The 2nd time (Warrior again but I wanted to be alliance at my horde friends quit the week I hit 60 and I wanted to be alliance in the first place....) I was in agony. I just fought through the pain for end game content. Level 60 pvp/raiding was a blast. I never made an alt until WOTLK and that was because DK started at 55.

I actually find grinding a very pleasurable experience in MMO's if the content isn't repetitive. For me it's mostly about exploring areas I didn't before, or do things differently than I did before.

For Vanilla, the leveling experience is fun because I like the quest system. You do all the quests in the zone, you get rewarded with a dungeon quest which forces you to find a party to complete it. You have to communicate and make an effort to get it done. There isn't just one zone either, there are several starting areas and places you can explore that doesn't really follow the traditional journey. This system is enjoyable to me.

Then you have questlines like "The Legend of Stalvan" and that quest that sends you to Scarlet Monastery but starts all the way over in Desolace and rewards a weapon that's good for almost 15 levels. I look forward to doing the class quests again, which were immersive. Rogues actually sending you on a quest to learn to lockpick, make poisons, and pickpocket.

TLDR; I look forward to being in the world again and having to communicate with others. It's something that's been absent in MMO's lately.

[Caliph]

If they would just make wow hard while keeping all of the modern crap it would be a good game. But it's too fuckin easy. Waste of time.

[mehow2g]

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

The amazing thing about this chart how much hype Blizzard was rolling with during the Vanilla-BC release, when BC hit legitimately 60% of the people on my friends list quit and many guilds disbanded and quit because they disliked the direction of the game.

[HuxNeva]

I actually find grinding a very pleasurable experience in MMO's if the content isn't repetitive. For me it's mostly about exploring areas I didn't before, or do things differently than I did before.

For Vanilla, the leveling experience is fun because I like the quest system. You do all the quests in the zone, you get rewarded with a dungeon quest which forces you to find a party to complete it. You have to communicate and make an effort to get it done. There isn't just one zone either, there are several starting areas and places you can explore that doesn't really follow the traditional journey. This system is enjoyable to me.

Then you have questlines like "The Legend of Stalvan" and that quest that sends you to Scarlet Monastery but starts all the way over in Desolace and rewards a weapon that's good for almost 15 levels. I look forward to doing the class quests again, which were immersive. Rogues actually sending you on a quest to learn to lockpick, make poisons, and pickpocket.

TLDR; I look forward to being in the world again and having to communicate with others. It's something that's been absent in MMO's lately.

If communication is something that you think is solved by forcing it upon people, then you are in for a nasty surprise

[peepthetech]

This kind of comment makes me chuckle.

Vanilla was so NOT balanced. And if you look at WoW objectively it was always designed as a theme park. Even back then the "rides" you had in WoW were pretty much:
1. Dungeons
2. Raids
3. Quests
4. Battlegrounds (they were released in Vanilla)

Everything else you did was pretty just there to earn yourself the permission to enter the rides. The basic 4 rides still exist in WoW to this day. They've just added new ones and re-designed elements of the 4 basic ones that we had from the start. Even back then WoW was declared a theme-park MMO. The other type which is the sandbox has quite different aspects. EVE Online is a sand box. It has some theme park elements but it mostly is a sandbox.

Btw. don't get me wrong, I'm not defending BFA in any way. I just find confused comments like the one I quoted really "interesting"...

balanced was in quotations. People want to discover an unknown world. They don't want to know everything and meta the shit out of it. The word discovery is key here. the unknown.

Your reply makes me laugh because you miss the point entirely. Get off your donkey

[Triceron]

People want to discover an unknown world

Hrm, but what exactly is unknown about Classic? We know everything about it, down to the nitty gritty exploits that let you clip under Stormwind.

[Zafire]

If communication is something that you think is solved by forcing it upon people, then you are in for a nasty surprise

I played Final Fantasy XI from 2004 until 2012 with very few breaks for other games. The reason I missed Vanilla is because I was playing FFXI instead of WoW. If you've ever played Final Fantasy XI, it was literally the EPITOME of forced communication. You couldn't even level past 12-13 without five other people to kill monsters with. You could solo very little content, and almost everything required friends. Even in Abyssea, when the game started to get more casual, you still needed 3-4 people to do things efficiently. Hell, you couldn't even break level caps of 50,55,60,65,70,75 (You had to do a quest to break level caps) without getting help from someone because the content was much higher level.

So no, I'm not in for a surprise.

[Cruor]

I actually find grinding a very pleasurable experience in MMO's if the content isn't repetitive. For me it's mostly about exploring areas I didn't before, or do things differently than I did before.

For Vanilla, the leveling experience is fun because I like the quest system. You do all the quests in the zone, you get rewarded with a dungeon quest which forces you to find a party to complete it. You have to communicate and make an effort to get it done. There isn't just one zone either, there are several starting areas and places you can explore that doesn't really follow the traditional journey. This system is enjoyable to me.

Then you have questlines like "The Legend of Stalvan" and that quest that sends you to Scarlet Monastery but starts all the way over in Desolace and rewards a weapon that's good for almost 15 levels. I look forward to doing the class quests again, which were immersive. Rogues actually sending you on a quest to learn to lockpick, make poisons, and pickpocket.

TLDR; I look forward to being in the world again and having to communicate with others. It's something that's been absent in MMO's lately.

I agree with the idea of what you said. One thing I miss was pvp and knowing the enemy horde and alliance on my team. There was even a horde mage on Laughing Skull (yes I was there before the dumb Leroy thing, and in a better guild than pals...) who I'd work with... he would kill alliance and I'd kill horde so we could farm in peace.. lol. I miss that stuff. But reality is like take the whirl wind axe... it's like several item levels lower than the boss you need to kill... you can barely hit the enemy if you want the axe when the quest is first doable (30 was it?) I dont mind if it takes a group to kill.. But if I cant HIT him because he is too high.. Not fun. Basically I love the idea but not the implementation. As a warrior is just auto attack and miss taunt resist etc. I have to get through the pain for the pleasure of 60 and well geared.

[Thatfire]

Just the mechanics for me. If we could take the classes, gear itemization, and dual-spec from Burning Crusade and put them into vanilla I would be in heaven. Most people say then why don't you play Burning Crusade. Well that's because of flying mounts, portal stones in front of instances, and pvp gear. The first 2 killed world PvP in burning crusade and the PvP gear killed raiding for PvPers. Oh and they reduced the raids to 20 man sucked.

[HuxNeva]

I played Final Fantasy XI from 2004 until 2012 with very few breaks for other games. The reason I missed Vanilla is because I was playing FFXI instead of WoW. If you've ever played Final Fantasy XI, it was literally the EPITOME of forced communication. You couldn't even level past 12-13 without five other people to kill monsters with. You could solo very little content, and almost everything required friends. Even in Abyssea, when the game started to get more casual, you still needed 3-4 people to do things efficiently. Hell, you couldn't even break level caps of 50,55,60,65,70,75 (You had to do a quest to break level caps) without getting help from someone because the content was much higher level.

So no, I'm not in for a surprise.

So what do you think the majority of people that for whatever reason do not want to be social or communicate did when they hit the solo wall (which btw, is not existent in WoW, neither Retail nor Classic)? Did most overcome their reluctance, did they just stop playing or did people already know and just never started playing the game? Maybe one of the things underlying WoW's success is indeed it's accommodation of the solo player.

[nodlimax]

balanced was in quotations. People want to discover an unknown world. They don't want to know everything and meta the shit out of it. The word discovery is key here. the unknown.

Your reply makes me laugh because you miss the point entirely. Get off your donkey

So what's the point of your post then? The current as well as the previous one are both extremely stupid.

People don't want to meta the shit out of everything? Don't make me even laugh. The Elitistjerks site started back in Vanilla in early 2005 and they went through every mechanic that existed back then to "science" the shit out of it and find the best optimal builds and class approaches. Even back then there were guides related on how much hit chance makes sense for a melee and when you should focus more on crit and AP and so on.

And Thottbot was a thing as well providing information to most pieces of content. There were pet guides for hunters on where to find them and what abilities they had as well as their attack speed and various other details. Don't act as if Vanilla/Classic is a giant mysterious world. There will be people that will just enjoy the leveling experience and other content but there also are going to be quite a few that will "meta the shit out of everything".

[Selah]

I feel like people aren't necessarily interested in replaying classic WoW for the content but more for HOW the content played..

This is all you need to say, the rest of your stuff is... strange.

I want the best aspects of an MMORPG that it can offer, the community and the RPG elements. I don't want a single player game that simulates and RPG.

[Zafire]

So what do you think the majority of people that for whatever reason do not want to be social or communicate did when they hit the solo wall (which btw, is not existent in WoW, neither Retail nor Classic)? Did most overcome their reluctance, did they just stop playing or did people already know and just never started playing the game? Maybe one of the things underlying WoW's success is indeed it's accommodation of the solo player.

...Okay? So some players will still be communicating to get things done. That's not really changing my point at all.

[Mendzia]

Classic is popular now because it's new.

How can 15 yo game be new?

I still say the majority of people who play it quit by 40.

No. They will quit much, much earlier.

Blizz doesn't, and shouldn't, use Vanilla as a blueprint to create a 2020 MMO.

Blizz should and will use Vanilla as a blueprint to create a 2020 MMO.

The hard ship sailed when Wildstar shut down.

How is other game important here?

Now that said, I do think from browsing the forums long enough this beta, a whole lotta people didn't ask for what they wanted. They played Private Servers and it tainted their memories of Classic. So when they wanted a game like Nost, they asked for Classic when what they wanted was Mythic Difficulty WoW.

Uhh...

[Nizah]

well classic feels like a super big world you have to explore as in retail with all the continents every expansions added feels super mega tiny like OPs dick

[Specialka]

The only thing I would like from Vanilla is the no flying, but that's me. I do understand why ppl like flying mounts.

Also a mythic difficulty for world content but that's it. Everything else is totally a mess in Vanilla.

[kassy]

most people want the classic experience, not classic gameplay. the whole new fresh feel of a concept and world you've never explored before. they're not gonna get that, and classic population will drop pretty fast and stay low. it's just gonna be a few "hardcore" guilds who work to get new "world firsts" all over and their qiraji battle tanks, even tho they will know how it all works and get through it in no-time. it's not gonna be remotely as good as people think just because it's something they've all been through already. and that's the problem with new wow expacs aswell, even tho it's new continents, dungeons and raids, it's still the same thing you've been doing for 15 years, just with new make-up. the people who are so hyped for classic are actually just wanting a fresh mmo, which is not what they'll get

[Charge me Doctor]

most people want the classic experience, not classic gameplay. the whole new fresh feel of a concept and world you've never explored before. they're not gonna get that, and classic population will drop pretty fast and stay low.

They are going to get that if they didn't experienced it in the first place. Someone who actually played through vanilla (emphasis on through) aren't going to get this "vanilla experience", because they already had it (and also that classic is quite different from what "vanilla experience" used to be, as i've mentioned it numerous times - you aren't going to forget everything, and blizzard aren't going to emulate all bug fixes and changes they rolled out through the vanilla wow, they are settling at 1.12 version. No old one-handers/normalisation, no old talent trees, no T1 being utter garbage).
So, plenty of people will get this "fresh feel" from classic wow anyways.