Page 1 of 2
1
2
LastLast
  1. #1

    What people actually want from classic

    People don't want vanilla WOW. They want the feeling they had when they played vanilla WOW. What was that feeling? It was the feeling of exploring a brand new world that seemed to have limitless possibilities. It was diving into a completely unexplored world and uncovering its mysteries. WOW Classic is the opposite of that. It's already been fully explored. There's nothing new. Even if you weren't a vanilla player but play modern WOW, the game is still fundamentally the same, so there isn't going to be any true discovery there.

    What people actually want is a new experience. They want a new MMO that makes them feel like they felt when they played vanilla WOW for the first time. They don't literally want vanilla WOW again in 2019.

    Activision doesn't want to admit it or actually invest any real money or effort into PC games anymore, but the truth is that WOW has simply got stale. We need a brand new engine with brand new capabilities with a brand new world that feels completely alien and is begging to be learned anew.

  2. #2
    This theory certainly does explain all the people currently playing WoW Classic and loving every minute of it... Oh wait, no it doesn't.

    While I agree a new MMO developed by people who understand why people love MMOs would be great (and not this crowd-funded garbage), the appeal of Classic is not some mystery. Nostalgia plays a large part, but it's not the only thing. There are a few things:

    1. Community. This is currently manifesting as 75% game design and 25% camaraderie from "persecution" (i.e., all the people who struggled for years asking for Classic and now finally getting it). But... it's mostly game design. Everquest, in my opinion, was awesome because there was very little you could do by yourself. Sure it made it annoying when you wanted to just play for a bit and couldn't find a group, but that pain was FAR outweighed by the times where you got a group and had tons of fun with other folks. Here's the thing. MMOs are shitty single-player games. By design, they can never be as great as a game like Skyrim or Zelda. But all modern MMOs are designed to be shitty single-player games hoping to allure millions of players, instead of being EPIC multi-player games that only caters to a few hundred thousand players.

    2. Slower pace. This is not a matter of old versus new. It's a matter of design. I always scratched my head when people disparaged "tab-target" when a new MMO came out as if action combat was "the future" of MMOs. No ... they are just two different choices. It's not a matter of old tech versus new tech. A lot of people actually enjoy the slower nature of combat.

    3. RPG elements. Adventure and Quality of Life cannot co-exist. Or they can, but they live on a spectrum. Adventure on one end and QoL on the other. The more QoL elements you add (e.g., removing ammo and reagents), the less of an adventure you get. Frodo could have been given some QoL things, like a flying mount, but that would have made the adventure really lame. “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” - GK Chesterton

  3. #3
    the feeling not being the same is honestly the biggest reason i'm considering not playing. don't want to ruin my memories.

    but on the other hand, a lot of people who said that are now playing every day having a blast.

  4. #4
    i dont care about the feeling i had when i first started and i know i will never have that again, i just want a good mmo. so yes, people literally do just want to play vanilla.

    i guess you don't watch twitch much, people in the beta have been pretty much unanimous talking about how they thought it was all nostalgia and wanting those old feelings back but then they have all admitted they were wrong, and it's just a better mmo than anything out today. i usually try to stay away from saying "your opinion is wrong," but your opinion is wrong.

  5. #5
    For Azeroth!
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Azeroth
    Posts
    5,220
    Things like multiple versions of bosses/items/titanforging and so much cross-realm PvE/zoning turned the game away more and more from it's RPG roots.

    Best thing about Vanilla and TBC were the bosses were the same for everyone, and PvE and zones were just-realm only.

    However I already played through both and I rather just get a new game based off those "older" systems.
    Last edited by Teri; 2019-06-02 at 10:36 AM.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Jibjub View Post
    This theory certainly does explain all the people currently playing WoW Classic and loving every minute of it... Oh wait, no it doesn't.

    While I agree a new MMO developed by people who understand why people love MMOs would be great (and not this crowd-funded garbage), the appeal of Classic is not some mystery. Nostalgia plays a large part, but it's not the only thing. There are a few things:

    1. Community. This is currently manifesting as 75% game design and 25% camaraderie from "persecution" (i.e., all the people who struggled for years asking for Classic and now finally getting it). But... it's mostly game design. Everquest, in my opinion, was awesome because there was very little you could do by yourself. Sure it made it annoying when you wanted to just play for a bit and couldn't find a group, but that pain was FAR outweighed by the times where you got a group and had tons of fun with other folks. Here's the thing. MMOs are shitty single-player games. By design, they can never be as great as a game like Skyrim or Zelda. But all modern MMOs are designed to be shitty single-player games hoping to allure millions of players, instead of being EPIC multi-player games that only caters to a few hundred thousand players.

    2. Slower pace. This is not a matter of old versus new. It's a matter of design. I always scratched my head when people disparaged "tab-target" when a new MMO came out as if action combat was "the future" of MMOs. No ... they are just two different choices. It's not a matter of old tech versus new tech. A lot of people actually enjoy the slower nature of combat.

    3. RPG elements. Adventure and Quality of Life cannot co-exist. Or they can, but they live on a spectrum. Adventure on one end and QoL on the other. The more QoL elements you add (e.g., removing ammo and reagents), the less of an adventure you get. Frodo could have been given some QoL things, like a flying mount, but that would have made the adventure really lame. “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” - GK Chesterton
    There are litterally just a few dedicated players playing the beta right now. The vast majority of players didn't get an invite after all. So "all the people currently playing WoW Classic" is just a few and the problem is not getting players to actually play classic but to actually get them to stay. Or rather, I doubt Blizzard is stupid enough to plan for more than a few staying after a few month or so but the project does give them a bit of good will from players so it might be worth it overall.

  7. #7
    We best get on to them and tell them to pull classic this person clearly speaks for us all .....not

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Aggrophobic View Post
    There are litterally just a few dedicated players playing the beta right now. The vast majority of players didn't get an invite after all. So "all the people currently playing WoW Classic" is just a few and the problem is not getting players to actually play classic but to actually get them to stay. Or rather, I doubt Blizzard is stupid enough to plan for more than a few staying after a few month or so but the project does give them a bit of good will from players so it might be worth it overall.
    Who cares so much about beta for classic? Played it live and I know what to expect . Most people just level and dont even help report bugs, then they cry about having to start again

  8. #8
    This topic has been done to death and they all miss one very important point... It's not simply noetalgia, if it was the vanilla private server community would have died years ago, but it's all most a decade old now. People want to play vanilla wow because it's a good game and progression feels like an earned thing rather than a gift. Modern wow is like call or duty with hacks... It's great to feel like a god, but it's get very boring very quickly.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Stocksy View Post
    We best get on to them and tell them to pull classic this person clearly speaks for us all .....not

    - - - Updated - - -



    Who cares so much about beta for classic? Played it live and I know what to expect . Most people just level and dont even help report bugs, then they cry about having to start again
    He said that a lot of players play it and enjoy it right now when that is litteraly not true.

  10. #10
    The feeling I had when first explored Vanilla was fantastic. If I can that feeling back, I dont know, probably not in this game. However the feeling I was left With after Vanilla... unfinished buisness and other failures, left a stake in my heart. And it was there for years. Exploring private servers, pulled that stake out, Vanilla always have a special Place in my heart, where the stake used to be.

  11. #11
    I always dream of them releasing WoW 2 some day, but because Blizzard is a pussy company nowadays they will never risk it since if they make WoW 2 great WoW will becomes obsolete and they will lose their favorite cash cow.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Yatagarasu View Post
    I always dream of them releasing WoW 2 some day, but because Blizzard is a pussy company nowadays they will never risk it since if they make WoW 2 great WoW will becomes obsolete and they will lose their favorite cash cow.
    The reality is once wow dies there will be nothing quite as good as that ever again! . Retail isn't even the same anymore people are just buying into the new xpacs in the hope of it returning to a better time.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Teri View Post
    Things like multiple versions of bosses/items/titanforging and so much cross-realm PvE/zoning turned the game away more and more from it's RPG roots.
    The points you seem to dislike are the better solutions for even worse problems. (raid-OR-die / dead-servers / fixed BiS gear)

    After 14+ years and with over 1300d+ /played I saw the pro/cons for every change in the game, so I don't really get the classic hype that much. Classic will be a great addition to the game, just like timewalking is allready one but it would be surprising for me if players would not see its flaws after a few days of playing. The knowledge advantage over vanilla players might be just a big meme here, so it might just take a few extra days for noobs to get it.

    I don't believe anyone who likes classic and hates retail or vice versa. Its the same game and as for the community, there are allways enough niches to find your spot and play with people what you like in this game. No version gona change or help you with that.
    -

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by ohholygeezus View Post
    They don't literally want vanilla WOW again in 2019.
    Yes, yes i do. I really really do.

    Why? Because it's a better MMORPG than anything out there, especially the cancer that is BFA (wich really doesnt fit the MMORPG genre anymore, it's closer to a mobile game at this point).

  15. #15
    I havnt read much about classic I'm just planning on jumping right into it on release, one thing I plan on doing if it's in the game is pvping more for the ranks, I got to stone guard back then and I would like to take that a few gears in classic if it's an option to do that is

  16. #16
    I am Murloc!
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
    Location
    Poland
    Posts
    5,457
    They want a differently paced game where you aren't instantly launched into newest content with dozens of shortcuts - which are exactly the same as before but now magically award gear that's much better. They want long term investment that isn't just patch-to-patch and being a part of single server community. Some of them want to feel superior to "retailers" by playing a (supposedly) much harder game that doesn't have easy modes - although it also doesn't have any hard modes, either.

    'Course, at the same time, it's entirely possible that they only remember the best parts of vanilla and have this idealized game in their mind. We can already see this in the official "it's not a bug, it's a feature" threads, where it turns out that people's memory from 15 years ago is quite flawed. Where dungeons and levelling wasn't this insane challenge that would instantly break any "casual" in half. Where ninjas and assholes still existed and not everyone was actually all that eager to communicate with others.

    It's debatble how much of that desire is genuinely about wanting to play Classic and how much is about hating BFA and believing that anything else would be ten times better. Some people will love it, some might be for a rude awakening once they play it for more than few days.

  17. #17

  18. #18
    The Lightbringer Battlebeard's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jul 2012
    Location
    Europe
    Posts
    3,527
    Quote Originally Posted by ohholygeezus View Post
    People don't want vanilla WOW. They want the feeling they had when they played vanilla WOW. What was that feeling? It was the feeling of exploring a brand new world that seemed to have limitless possibilities. It was diving into a completely unexplored world and uncovering its mysteries. WOW Classic is the opposite of that. It's already been fully explored. There's nothing new. Even if you weren't a vanilla player but play modern WOW, the game is still fundamentally the same, so there isn't going to be any true discovery there.

    What people actually want is a new experience. They want a new MMO that makes them feel like they felt when they played vanilla WOW for the first time. They don't literally want vanilla WOW again in 2019.

    Activision doesn't want to admit it or actually invest any real money or effort into PC games anymore, but the truth is that WOW has simply got stale. We need a brand new engine with brand new capabilities with a brand new world that feels completely alien and is begging to be learned anew.

    Yes, this is no secret, it's 100% true. I KNOW that objectively, Classic WoW is an outdated game and I predict many rage moments when I play it. Just the fact that you will need Wowhead for 90% of all quests to know where to go, will prolly drive me half insane.

    Classic isn't that great objectively, but I will play it and I will enjoy it for the nostalgia, and ofc the broken pvp, it's fun to dominate others :P

  19. #19
    I too, look forward to the slower pace and bigger challenge. Anyone who says it was easy is miss-remembering. I agree with some folks who say a lot of players will play for about 3 weeks and realize it's really tough to kill mobs and quit. I look forward to the LFG channel, seeing someone I've grouped with looking for others and joining when I want with a group of players I know. I look forward to the long quest chains that take you all over the world. I played a rogue and raided with a mage and priest. I look forward to maybe doing that with other classes if I get to raiding. It takes only about 30 minutes a day to maintain my toons in BFA for my three times a week raid. The rest of the time I'll be in Classic.

  20. #20
    Thanks for telling me what I want. I falsely thought I enjoyed leveling in beta, but now I know it wasn't real.

    Seriously speaking, you are right that many people actually want the feeling of a new adventure which they won't find in Classic. Doesn't mean that everyone is looking for that.

    Also I think that many people expect too much from Classic. Yes, it's going to be fun, but I know I will not get the same epic feeling when I saw thunder bluff or thrall or ragnaros or anything else epic for the first time. Now I pretty much just follow a path that is already laid, I know which items to hunt for, where all major quest hubs are etc.
    Last edited by facefist; 2019-06-02 at 01:20 PM.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •