I miss the old days

[marathal]

Of course I miss the old Shadowpriest days, but what I mean is I miss the old days of forum activity, I miss that desire to log into SP.com to read up on Kilee's discussion thread, the days when I would go read Elitist Jerks, would come here to find answers, even WoW's forums. Things change I guess, it's a different game than when many of us started playing. I'm still around even though I mostly lurk.

Any good impressions of what is coming, or where they may look to design us in the future?

[october breeze]

Yes, it is called CLASSIC :P

[marathal]

Fair enough. LOL

[krl]

Discussion still happens like in EJs days but now it's on streams and specs Discords. The days of blogs and forums are long gone.

[Biomega]

Thanks to Discord, there's arguably MORE discussion now than ever before. I strongly recommend checking out the ones pertinent to your classes/specs, including the Priest one (which is excellent).

[LichCorp]

Classic is ramping up, hype is strong. Check out Discord to see all the rising guilds and stay engaged

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Yup, as others have pointed out, these conversations still happen in a much more active way on streams and especially in discords.

The people talking about Classic are ironic to me, because there will be essentially no mystery to theorycraft over or even discuss at this point.

I miss the old days of forums being the go-to, but those days are just over, and playing Classic in 2019 isn't going to bring them back.

For me, I do regret their passing, but find the current conversations much more natural and engaging.
Being able to discuss these things real time in the various methods is much more natural than leaving a post on a thread one at a time.

[marathal]

Not a fan of the Discords, but that's just me. I'm old

- - - Updated - - -

Not a fan of the Discords, but that's just me. I'm old. Same with everything being on Twitter. While the old days may be gone, there was more to be said for in depth conversations and blogs.

[Kanariya]

It's gone forever. Discord has replaced all "discussion", which means nothing, because if you're not there when it happens then you miss whatever discussion went on and you cannot add onto it.

[Biomega]

It's gone forever. Discord has replaced all "discussion", which means nothing, because if you're not there when it happens then you miss whatever discussion went on and you cannot add onto it.

That's only partially true. It does lead to a more stringent consideration of what's relevant, but it doesn't mean you can't participate in a discussion - it just works a little differently. If you come up with something you think needs to be addressed, mention it and people will respond. It's kind of like taking something that was said in a forum thread 10 pages ago and bringing it up again - if it's worth talking about the discussion will continue, if it's not then bringing it up served little purpose in either case. Yes, the time frame is a more real-time in Discord, but the purpose isn't having a chat per se, it's coming up with a useful primer on whatever the subject is. And that's a process that goes beyond discrete moments of debate. You can contribute over longer periods of time without much issue, and many Discords will have channels specifically for that (to post data and analyses or whatever).

And that's for people who are highly involved in the theory behind a spec.

For regular people just looking for info, Discord is a much better platform. Nobody wants to see a forum thread where all the basic questions repeat every 5 pages, but you can easily hop into Discord, ask some beginner stuff off the cuff, and usually receive either a quick and informative answer, or a pointer to where you can find it. The majority of players will benefit more from that sort of information network than from some huge discussion thread.

[Spicymemer]

Yes, it is called CLASSIC :P

Shadow doesnt exist in Classic PvE.

[Kilee25]

Hi Marathol.

It does seem that times have changed dramatically.

From a personal standpoint, I miss WoW, but I'm no longer in a position in life where I am able to play it. When I was younger, I never imagined a time in my life where I wouldn't have enough space where I was living to have a desktop PC, but as my family has grown and we've had to make compromises with our living conditions for the sake of space and room for family members, any semblance of a desk area has long since gone away. Along with the loss of the desktop PC, and a quiet place to focus on the game, my desire to play PC games has gone down dramatically. It's difficult to explain in words, but it's similar to something like having a flying mount and then having to go back to walking everywhere. It's just so much worse of an experience, that it sort of kills the game for me to go back to playing on a mobile laptop on a coffee or kitchen table.

As I've gotten older, I've also gotten less and less of a tolerance for farming/grinding games where the primary gameplay involves being put on a treadmill for months on end in order to get a slightly better version of an item that you already have. In video games, I'm often driven by the story and to have a sense of completion. I still enjoy playing through the storyline and seeing the boss fights and things, but I can't enjoy the group and raiding aspects of it any more, and that puts the game in direct competition with a lot of other very good single player experiences. Over the past year, I've bought a Nintendo Switch, and have been playing through a lot of the good first party single player games on that system. I also have a few mobile games that I've been playing, which scratch a similar itch that wow used to.

I still keep in contact with a lot of my old guildmates and my closest friends in WoW, but it's difficult to find things to talk about these days. A lot of my friends who are still playing have said this is the "most boring" expansion that they've experienced, and that a lot of them are thinking of quitting (or already have).

The last expansion that I played (WoD), I started having some health issues related to exhaustion and a lack of sleep and exercise. I'm not in massively better shape now, but I've lost quite a bit of weight since I stopped playing, and I think that I was having more and more difficulty striking a balance in my life as my real world responsibilities ramped up, and I had less and less time for sleep and taking care of myself.

I do find it a bit sad that all of the old forums have seemingly died since BFA (or were in the process of doing so in Legion). I do have Discord, as my old guild now uses it, and I have tried a few times to join in the discussions and conversations there, but I have honestly found it to be about the same as the old MIRC channels that used to be "popular" when I was back in college. The main issue I have with them is that in order to make friends and join in on the discussions, you basically have to be "tethered" to the discord server, either through your phone or computer, in such a way that you're basically always present. I find this aspect of Discord to feel like handcuffs, or some or of slave collar. Most jobs don't allow you to have discord up on another screen while you're at work, and I've worked at some pretty lenient places over the years. Discord is just taking things a bit too far. Historically, I did most of my forum posting and reading while I was at work. I would typically have the forums up on a second monitor while I worked, and I could check it a few times a day. "Conversations" were more like e-mails, where you could read them at your leisure and respond at your convenience. Discord is more instant and in the moment, and if you aren't present when the conversation is happening, it feels pointless to join in a few hours later, because the people you want to talk to don't really come back to read your responses. It feels less "permanent" and consequentially has less meaning, at least to me.

I also can't seriously believe that people are using Discord to chat MIRC-style much, even though I've been told the servers are very busy. The handful of times that I've visited the priest server, the only active chats I see are the equivalent of kids just hanging out making jokes at each other and talking nonsense - don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that. But I just don't see any value in that unless I know the people personally, or there's some opportunity for me to make some long term friends. I don't like just talking to random people about nothing in particular as a form of passing the time. I have other things I'd rather be doing.

My "hunch" is that discord is actually being used less for the typing chat functionality, and instead is being used as bascally a sort of voice type server, where people can avoid typing altogether. My experience over the years is that every generation that has come behind me has been less and less interested in typing or reading, to the point that they get a big angry if they are forced to read or type anything longer than a few broken sentences. I recently had a job where I was a mid-level software engineer, and there was a person fresh out of college who joined us. I've traditionally learned programming by reading manuals and keeping a library, or reading through stack overflow and various internet forums, ec... The fresh recruit we got had graduated college with good grades, and could code well enough, but his grammar and reading comprehension was practically elementary school level. I and my other co-workers were pretty shocked. I had the benefit of working next to him for about a year, and I watched how he learned and worked. Everything was done with visual and speaking aids - mostly youtube training videos. If he couldn't find a youtube video showing him how to do something, it would take ages for him to learn a new skill. I'm not trying to pick on him, but it basically seemed like a metaphor for how the generations behind us are changing as the world changes.

I have children of my own, and I see the same trends in them as well. Their classes have computers and will show training videos occasionally. If my children can find a way to do something without having to read and write, they will do it even if it's inconvenient or they have to go out of their way. It's been an insane challenge as a parent to instill any sort of love for reading and writing in them.

I think if you extrapolate this out to WoW, and account for the fact that we've had 2-3 generational gaps between Vanilla and now, it's no wonder that forums have basically died out. Nobody wants to read anymore. Searching a few posts down for an answer to a question is too much effort, and if you open the thread and get presented with a guide that several pages long, that's like "the worst thing ever." People want to just ask a question and get a simple, direct response. Ideally, they would like to just ask the question and get a vocal answer, or watch someone doing it on youtube or some streaming service.

I think that's basically what's going on and why forums are dying. I could be wrong though. I mean, I don't actually really play anymore, and most of my friends who play wow are like me, so that's no help. You'd think someone might see this thread and lay it all out what's happened with the culture shift, but I'm not sure they read this far before getting bored... so ... haha yeah.

Hope you are doing well man.

[marathal]

Well you just pointed out a Discord flaw, that would have taken 4 posts. Lol. I see the difference here, and even in the Priest forums. It use to be if a few hours went by a topic would be 9 or 10 pages in. My guild does use Discord, mostly as an extension of guild chat, and in place of having to pay for a Vent server. It also helps the raiders share videos quickly without having to search. I get what you mean though, if you’re not checking continuously you will miss a topic. I know if checked at lunch time and seen over 50 comments to something, and the discussion has gone from an initial comment to something completely different three times over. I’ve often thought over the past year or so, what if I had bought SP.com when it was offered, or taken them up on the offer to be the admin. Would it have made a difference, would things have stayed closer to the way they were. If anything, I have a lot of great memories having discussions with some of the best in the game, and fond memories of getting a few whispers in game saying thank you, the advice you gave me helped so much. It was a different time, we were all younger, things weren’t quite as complex, and we didn’t have things like Weak Auras playing the game for us. There was a level of intuition that you developed. You learned to deal with input latency, having a high uptime was the goal, now it’s all about complexity, and one mistake means your numbers plummet.

Like you mentioned, the old forum allowed someone to pose a question, maybe explain their line of thinking, and people got more than a “go read the guide” “post your logs”. It allowed us to sit and think about what was being asked, and sometimes we helped others understand.

And I know what you mean about getting older. It dawned on my that in 3 1/2 years I’ll be 60.

[Grumpy Old Man]

Any good impressions of what is coming, or where they may look to design us in the future?

The only real scrap of information we have is too little to speculate. Basically Ion's last video where he talks about undoing "too much pruning" and having done "spec identity" at the cost of "class identity". Video for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCSkBsvW7l0

But, again, we can only speculate. The way he talks makes me think about priests pre-Legion, and even pre-WoD, when we had "more buttons" and most of them were available to all specs (even if a spec rarely used it).

[Dawon]

Yes, it is called CLASSIC :P

Nah mate, it's called dead... :/ Classic wont save shit!

[ceall]

yeah, i also miss the days of multiple priest threads per day here.

right now it seems like there's 1 per month.

to me, discord (and other non-forum alternatives) are too chaotic. i liked being able to start a thread/come to a thread to ask/discuss sth.
i think that if i went to the SP discord, there'd be 80% meme'ing, 19% spam and just 1% actual discussion.

[Biomega]

i think that if i went to the SP discord, there'd be 80% meme'ing, 19% spam and just 1% actual discussion.

This has not been my experience AT ALL. I've been regularly checking at least three class Discords for quite some time now, and whenever someone comes in with a genuine (non-troll) question or discussion, everyone has been super courteous about it;; even if it's a "stupid" question, you don't get toxic replies but simply things like "just look in the sticky" or "please read the FAQ" or whatever.

And it's not like forum threads have been immune from drama.

[marathal]

Starting to wonder if too many years of Blizzard allowing more and more outside sources to flourish over dedicating some resources into its own forums has been a detriment to the game. We have become so fragmented, even with Discord and it's multitude of possible groups that there is no longer a handful of places to talk about things. Now instead of maintained guides in 2 or 3 locations updated by knowledgeable people, it has become all to common to just have links, and as mentioned, replies to go read the stickied notes. I did the moderator gig for a time, it was not as difficult as some have pointed out over the years, and when I saw questions unanswered I would try my best to give a solution or to give a better idea of where to look beyond, go look at the guides. Too much focus was placed on elevating our information to be targeted at the best in the game, and how to rise up to that level. Too many that were looking for just a little help, maybe a kind word or encouragement, that were left feeling left out, and they have moved on. It's a shame to see the state of the game now, compared to 5+ years ago.

Thank you all that have been contributing to this talk, its nice to see people just discussing things.

[Yvaelle]

Just chiming in to say Kilee's post was fantastic and sort of reflects my growth too.

I'm 33 now, my life has changed since when I started playing WoW (19), or EverQuest (14). I do still have an office, and I do still game sometimes - but it's often Overwatch and League now. I raid log in WoW, on the weeks I attend (until the tier is on comfortable farm).

I also really struggle to find the passion I had for Shadow in past iterations. I played Shadow from the 2.0 announcement onward. Being a mana battery was thrilling to me. WotLK Shadow was thrilling to me. Cata Shadow was thrilling to me. MoP Shadow was thrilling to me. Even Draenor Shadow was thrilling to me. Legion Shadow wasn't my thing personally, but it was fairly cohesive design that was ~fun gameplay.

I don't enjoy BFA Shadow. Some of that is almost certainly my tired old list of thematic and design problems we're covering up lately. Some of it is that I'd rather be playing Evelynn, Morgana, or Sombra even when I'm on my Spriest. Then slap on that all my original WoW friends have quit WoW now, and my wife quit at BFA launch.

I feel the same reflection and rembrance Marathal - that's why I'm still logging in - that's what I'm still waiting to relive. I think I need to accept though - that my experiences with WoW and Shadow are lost to time now. They live on in our memories forever, but this is someone else's game now.

[marathal]

Yeah, good times, great memories. Was it a talent choice or glyph that gave us the extra 5 yards on Mind Sear? I remember the first time in ICC on the catwalk, Moar DoTs, Mind Sear, Muahaha, this is glorious, I am a god!!!

I have to agree though. Legion changes started my disillusionment with the design. Not a fan of the void form play. Unfortunately it’s all or nothing, so I’m doing nothing except logging in a few hours a week.

Oh, and Yvaelle, I think I can speak for Kilee too,

Get off our lawn.