The myths about Classic that have fallen apart

[exochaft]

I just wanted to focus on point #4, aka the socialization aspect, because it certainly is a generational thing. I can pretty much guarantee most people in these forums never grew up in a time without PC's and the internet, so you don't really have the perspective of what it was like before then. Because you didn't have a computer screen to hide behind, you had to have face-to-face contact with other people all the time with no way to weasel out of it. It forced many people into having interactions because there was no other way to do it. Even a telephone call is more personal and exposing than internet interactions. But why does this matter in WoW? It's because there was a generation of people who grew up w/o computers playing vanilla, and the younger generations (while exposed to the internet to some capacity) still had remnants and tendencies of the older generations when it came to socializing.

Fast forward to today, I can guarantee the WoW population has very few of the older generation, and it affects the social aspects of the game to where people forget or didn't experience how things were when you didn't get to hide behind an avatar. I've even seen it in my own kid, where he'll behave completely different sometimes when interacting with people in person versus Discord. I have to remind my kid constantly that there's a human on the other side of the conversation, and to treat them as such. Sure, there are dicks in every generation, but being a dick in-person is way harder than hiding behind an avatar and helps curb such negative interactions.

I suppose I could use my family as an example of how the classic experience is very generational. My wife, who is just slightly younger than me and also grew up without computers/internet, hates retail yet loves classic. She feels that retail is very impersonal and that everything caters to the rushed and selfish mentality that's pretty prevalent nowadays, while classic is more designed around being personable with no need to rush or log in everyday. My kid hates classic and loves retail, because (verbatim) "classic is too hard, and I have to actually group up with people I don't know" while retail he can just solo everything starting at lvl 1 while never interacting with another person. Completely blew him away on one of his quests early in the leveling process that it was available to him and he couldn't solo it, and he'd rather not play than ask someone else for help. He's also one of those kids who would put on god mode in a solo shooter game then complain the game is too easy.... still working on him.

[mrlowrider]

I think the last time in retail I needed to group up for a leveling quest was Cataclysm.

[Soluna]

I will actually contribute to this.

X. People complain about Titanforged loot, saying you never feel satisfied. Classic was all about getting that 'bis' gearset and you knew that once the piece dropped, it'd be your bis for sure. That's fucking bullshit. While it's not for all pieces, my pre raid BiS gearset as a holy paladin lists as the best option a cape that has a chance to be a 'random enchantment' out of literally a dozen enchantments, and it's stronger than ANYTHING in Molten Core. A few more pieces are the same for Holy Paladin and many other classes.
So yeah, whoever complains about Titanforged loot, but likes this masochistic shit, can go frog themselves.

[AeneasBK]

?

"naxx had a bunch of mechanics that stopped you from saving yourself and forced others to save you in 2-3 seconds or you died

that's HARD, it's not tedious. nowadays we'll have DBM scream at us so it's easier, but things that kill you if you react too slowly is the definition of hard/difficult"

That is your post and I asked if you had some of your MM logs where you cleared such content since it seems you find it easy to do.

IF it helps I assume he meant "Naxx will be easy NOW, because DBM will scream at us" rather than "contemporary raids are easy because DBM" - on the assumption that most people or a lot of people weren't using a DBM style addon when fighting in Naxx.

Not that I should be answering for him but when I read your initial reply to him I was thinking "What has mythic got to do with anything he was talking about Naxx then and Naxx now (or at least when it releases in Classic)?"

[Bethrezen]

Still more fun than BFA/retail.

[WowClassic]

The myth that it wouldn't be a roaring success!

Dem queues though:

[Powerogue]

1) So Mc would harder for method than mythic eternal palace was for them?

I meant for players like me, obviously. Who either haven't done Rag in over 10 years or never got to it at all before BC came out.

[Dch48]

what an odd "failure" it is, having 20+ servers in the US alone that hit High / Full every single day

It failed for the people that gave it a shot and then moved on. Server numbers mean nothing to those people. Sure some people like it, God knows why, but many others do not.

[Terongor]

I meant for players like me, obviously. Who either haven't done Rag in over 10 years or never got to it at all before BC came out.

So you would wipe on as many times as you would in mythic azshara as you would in ragnaros?

[tangers58]

Classic will soon be 3 weeks old and for many of us it's been a colossal experience in various different ways. On launch day, all my guildies and almost all my B-Net friends were desparately trying to get in, to have this old school experience. Many hours and days of gameplay have been devoted to Classic since then, and during that time we all verified the things we've been told over the months and years leading to the Classic launch ourselves. The hype train is slowing down and by now most people have quit the game already and I'm about to follow. So what about that hype we were being fed, mostly by influencers, streamers and youtubers turned out to be untrue?

1. Classic raids are very hard.

This has already been extensively discussed in other threads, but nonetheless I wanted to get this out of the way first. This was heavily pushed as one of the selling points of Classic. How many hours you have to spend on farming consumables, how many hours you have to spend on getting this and that...in the end it turned out that people below the level cap in greens are able to clear the raids. The only difficulty in clearing the raid is actually getting to level 60.

2. Old talent trees are better than the current ones

This is something that was advertised not only with Classic in mind, but in general in any discussion about the talent system in the current game. These initial weeks of people having access to Classic has shown that not only are those old talents not interesting (the vast majority of them just being +1% dmg on ability), but they also allow no options to pick at all, because resetting them costs a fortune. Depending on the class, about 2-4 talents in the whole tree actually make a difference in your gameplay. The rest is filler that doesn't give any tangible power up.

3. It’s about the journey, not the race to 60

Probably one of the most pushed ideas by all the veteran/elite players/streamers. What ended up happening was of course all those people who were pushing this idea went and grinded dungeons in raids with premade groups. Various excuses were employed, but in general the truth was laid bare for everyone to see. Turns out it’s not about the adventure in the zones, as that’s just boring grindfest of poorly balanced quests. It’s getting to the cap as fast as possible that is important, and people just playing normally are treated as some weirdos wasting their time. And for good reason - questing seems to be one of the worst possible ways to level up in Classic. Instance grinding, layer hopping, or just simple mob grinding in one spot are all faster.

4. Classic incentivizes player interaction, so everyone will suddenly become sociable and make friends

This just isn't the case. We can blame the current times and how people are in general these days, but I'm willing to bet it's been like that years ago too. People don't socialize. Sure, they do group up for quests, because those quests necessitate that. They sometimes say "hi", "bye" or "warrior taunt the mob" but usually nothing beyond that. There is absolutely nothing different about grouping in Classic in comparison to grouping through lfg-type systems in retail wow. People enter a party, they do the task, they leave, and never speak to each other again.

5. Getting into a dungeon group won't be a problem because there's no ilvl, r.io, achievements and armory.

False. Everyone and their mother spends their whole day on twitch now, and they already know the “leveling meta” for dungeons. Different class, or a spec without specific aoe abilities the party leader wants? No invite. And sure, I'm not saying you won't ever find a group for dungeon, and you can always make your own group, but about 80-90% of the groups advertised past level 40 are for specific classes and specific comps only. Yes, you will be able to do a dungeon run for quests while leveling, but it will take a long while looking through the "meta only" group advertisements to find one that just wants you as a player, not as an aoe mage. Other than that, thanks to loot options in Classic, most of the groups usually have a list of "reserved items" that you have to agree to pass on when you join the party. So which is worse, requiring a higher RIO, or asking that you pass on 10 items that you actually need?

6. Class quests, the holy grail of class fantasy

Class quests are the epitome of the antiquated game design. Not only are they fully skippable, which makes them horrible for people who are not playing the game on rails following a complete leveling guide for their class, but they often also require a group, and the ability to kill an enemy that is like 10 levels above your current level. For many of those quests you literally have to ask for boost, or you'll not complete them. Them being fully skippable also means that you may end up at a level cap while lacking skills essential to your class. Not only are those quests fully skippable, they also give no mention of the actual final reward in the game itself, so again, you have to follow 3rd party guides to even know what's coming.

7. Classic is a great game for casuals, much better than modern WoW

It is obviously not. In no way, shape, or form. Leveling is broken, imbalanced and just badly designed. Quests are few and far between, and you have to juggle 3-4 zones at once to even keep doing them. Otherwise you just have to grind mobs. As for the mobs themselves, you often die while fighting 1 mob that is on your level on lower. It's not even about everything taking long, it's about you wasting a lot of time if you don't know the proper route or not paying like 10$ for the proper questing addon that will take you through stuff you need to do. Leveling in Classic while not having any prior knowledge or memorized routes is just a pain. But okay - let's say you are a casual and you reach the level cap in a month or two. What can you do? You can level your professions, maybe farm some gold for an epic mount...content ends. You can always level an alt I guess, but why put yourself through that hell again? There is absolutely nothing to do in Classic if you don't plan to raid in it, which is why I personlally quit on level 42. The grind has become really tredious, and I would put myself through it if there was something waiting at the end - and there's not. I'm not afraid of long grinds, I've reached max overal level in the original Runescape 2 (the one osrs is based on) years back. And I'm grinding some stuff on retail wow for years now, on 30 characters. There needs to be an incentive though, and there is none in Classic.

So these are the main ones I know about. If you have any other myths that were completely debunked by Classic's release feel free to post.

1. People were pretending they were hard?

2. The exact opposite has been proven, but ok bro.

3. That is just like, your opinion man. Most people seem to be quite about the journey, just a handful of neckbeards obsessed with their little race.

4. Again, something that only existed in your mind, no one expected it to happen that way.

5. Haven't had any trouble, sounds like you just have some personality issues that prevents you from getting along with others.

6. Was this one a joke? Class quests are easily one of the best parts.

7. And for a third time, another item on your list that only existed in your tiny, tiny brain.

[McNeil]

Most pointless thread I've seen in a while. I don't get why people keep bumping it..

[Powerogue]

So you would wipe on as many times as you would in mythic azshara as you would in ragnaros?

I'll probably never do mythic azshara because I'm a mediocre raider.

Why the hell do you keep jumping on this? Not everyone is Method. People who are not will still get an interesting challenge out of all this.

When I said "it would be harder" I did not even remotely imply "the hardest raiding has ever been" I meant "harder than it was for people who raided the same raid for 10 straight years on private servers, worked out the exact math of what to do to the 50th decimal point, and then poopsocked their way to victory in the first week."

Meanwhile I'm over here, playing a class I never played in classic, having never made it to actual raiding in classic before BC came out, will have a challenge.

[Terongor]

I'll probably never do mythic azshara because I'm a mediocre raider.

Why the hell do you keep jumping on this? Not everyone is Method. People who are not will still get an interesting challenge out of all this.

When I said "it would be harder" I did not even remotely imply "the hardest raiding has ever been" I meant "harder than it was for people who raided the same raid for 10 straight years on private servers, worked out the exact math of what to do to the 50th decimal point, and then poopsocked their way to victory in the first week."

If its not as hard as retails highest raid difficulty its trivial as even hc is trivial in difficulty level and isn't a challenge.

[LionSinMaikeru]

The hype train is slowing down and by now most people have quit the game already and I'm about to follow. So what about that hype we were being fed, mostly by influencers, streamers and youtubers turned out to be untrue?

Where are you getting your stats, buddy?

WoW is still one of the most viewed games on Twitch. A majority of the servers are High or Full, only a handful Medium population. Quests still take time to complete because of competition, etc. Not to mention census addons have gathered 4.5 million characters logged in over the past three weeks.

So from the jump I can tell you're a liar or severely misinformed.

1. Classic raids are very hard.

This has already been extensively discussed in other threads, but nonetheless I wanted to get this out of the way first. This was heavily pushed as one of the selling points of Classic. How many hours you have to spend on farming consumables, how many hours you have to spend on getting this and that...in the end it turned out that people below the level cap in greens are able to clear the raids. The only difficulty in clearing the raid is actually getting to level 60.

So have you completed the raids yet?

2. Old talent trees are better than the current ones

This is something that was advertised not only with Classic in mind, but in general in any discussion about the talent system in the current game. These initial weeks of people having access to Classic has shown that not only are those old talents not interesting (the vast majority of them just being +1% dmg on ability), but they also allow no options to pick at all, because resetting them costs a fortune. Depending on the class, about 2-4 talents in the whole tree actually make a difference in your gameplay. The rest is filler that doesn't give any tangible power up.

Wrong.

3. It’s about the journey, not the race to 60

Probably one of the most pushed ideas by all the veteran/elite players/streamers. What ended up happening was of course all those people who were pushing this idea went and grinded dungeons in raids with premade groups. Various excuses were employed, but in general the truth was laid bare for everyone to see. Turns out it’s not about the adventure in the zones, as that’s just boring grindfest of poorly balanced quests. It’s getting to the cap as fast as possible that is important, and people just playing normally are treated as some weirdos wasting their time. And for good reason - questing seems to be one of the worst possible ways to level up in Classic. Instance grinding, layer hopping, or just simple mob grinding in one spot are all faster.

Wrong again.

4. Classic incentivizes player interaction, so everyone will suddenly become sociable and make friends

This just isn't the case. We can blame the current times and how people are in general these days, but I'm willing to bet it's been like that years ago too. People don't socialize. Sure, they do group up for quests, because those quests necessitate that. They sometimes say "hi", "bye" or "warrior taunt the mob" but usually nothing beyond that. There is absolutely nothing different about grouping in Classic in comparison to grouping through lfg-type systems in retail wow. People enter a party, they do the task, they leave, and never speak to each other again.

Also wrong. You see the chat filled with "LFG for X" X being random quests. And dungeons.

5. Getting into a dungeon group won't be a problem because there's no ilvl, r.io, achievements and armory.

False. Everyone and their mother spends their whole day on twitch now, and they already know the “leveling meta” for dungeons. Different class, or a spec without specific aoe abilities the party leader wants? No invite.

Proof?

6. Class quests, the holy grail of class fantasy

Class quests are the epitome of the antiquated game design. Not only are they fully skippable, which makes them horrible for people who are not playing the game on rails following a complete leveling guide for their class, but they often also require a group, and the ability to kill an enemy that is like 10 levels above your current level. For many of those quests you literally have to ask for boost, or you'll not complete them. Them being fully skippable also means that you may end up at a level cap while lacking skills essential to your class. Not only are those quests fully skippable, they also give no mention of the actual final reward in the game itself, so again, you have to follow 3rd party guides to even know what's coming.

If you're skipping Class quests or think they're "fully skippable" (which for the record encompass Hunter pet learning, Warlock demon learning, Paladin abilities, Priest abilities, etc etc) then you're purposely gimping yourself.

7. Classic is a great game for casuals, much better than modern WoW

It is obviously not. In no way, shape, or form. Leveling is broken, imbalanced and just badly designed. Quests are few and far between, and you have to juggle 3-4 zones at once to even keep doing them. Otherwise you just have to grind mobs. As for the mobs themselves, you often die while fighting 1 mob that is on your level on lower. It's not even about everything taking long, it's about you wasting a lot of time if you don't know the proper route or not paying like 10$ for the proper questing addon that will take you through stuff you need to do.

So these are the main ones I know about. If you have any other myths that were completely debunked by Classic's release feel free to post.

All wrong. Your post is entirely wrong.

[Specialka]

Where are you getting your stats, buddy?

WoW is still one of the most viewed games on Twitch. A majority of the servers are High or Full, only a handful Medium population. Quests still take time to complete because of competition, etc. Not to mention census addons have gathered 4.5 million characters logged in over the past three weeks.

So from the jump I can tell you're a liar or severely misinformed.






So have you completed the raids yet?





Wrong.




Wrong again.




Also wrong. You see the chat filled with "LFG for X" X being random quests. And dungeons.



Proof?




If you're skipping Class quests or think they're "fully skippable" (which for the record encompass Hunter pet learning, Warlock demon learning, Paladin abilities, Priest abilities, etc etc) then you're purposely gimping yourself.



All wrong. Your post is entirely wrong.

Wrong in your opinion.

[LionSinMaikeru]

You're wrong. Difficulty: a thing that is hard to accomplish, deal with, or understand.

Regardless of WHY it was difficult (Lag, less knowledge, poor computers, overtuned, people were bad, whatever), those are the exact reasons Vanilla raiding was difficult. You can't hand wave difficulty because the thing doesn't exist NOW and use it as why it wasn't difficult THEN. It WAS hard BECAUSE of those things.

"Lol, getting food in the 1200's wasn't difficult, they just didn't have McDonalds yet."

Best response to that dumb argument I've ever seen.

+100 upvotes if I could.

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Wrong in your opinion.

No, wrong in general.

[Ghostile]

No, wrong in general.

You might want to provide other than "because I say so"

[Kolvarg]

1. Classic raids are very hard.

Apart from a handful of people this was never relaly a thing. The majority of (reasonable) people, if anything, argued that they were harder than the easiest setting in current WoW (meaning you'd actually have to input some effort to see the raid content instead of just pushing a button and getting handed a run through the raid.

I don't recall ever seeing anyone describing classic raids as "very hard" for today's standards and conditions, certainly not MC or Onyxia, but Busted I guess =P

2. Old talent trees are better than the current ones

It wasn't right on anyone to claim they are better in any objective way, and for the same reason it isn't right of you to claim the opposite is true.

Both systems have pros and cons, it comes down to personal preference. I prefer the Classic talents, they make leveling more interesting and rewarding, as well help me make invested in a character. Yes they are generally "weak" by themselves, but it adds up, and when your character is weak in a dangerous world every little bit helps.

I will agree that the increasing respec cost is not great, it would be nice if it was a bit more forgiving or at least if the cost came down fast, to incetivize actually trying out different things, but it's not a dealbreaker for me. It actually makes me think more which ones I want to go for since it will be tough to respec.

3. It’s about the journey, not the race to 60

There are lot of people "min-maxing" experience gain, certainly a lot more than in Vanilla. They are probably not the majority.

That doesn't invalidate the point that Classic as a game simply does indeed do a much better job at immersing people in the world, and making leveling feel relevant and rewarding - even if you're just doing dungeons/grinding/whatever.

Obviously you can crap on the "journey", but that doesn't mean it isn't there in a much greater presence than in Live.

4. Classic incentivizes player interaction, so everyone will suddenly become sociable and make friends

It certainly has been the case for me so far, as well as earlier times when I tried private servers. I've seen plenty of other people sharing the same experience, as well.

It's also true that Classic's systems do objectively incentivize player interaction more. It doesn't mean you can't ignore it, it doesn't mean everyone will be sociable. But it does mean it's more likely to have sociable experinces in the game.

5. Getting into a dungeon group won't be a problem because there's no ilvl, r.io, achievements and armory.

Again minority of people from my experience. The large majority of people aren't farming AoE runs, and as such the large majority of runs I see don't ask for any specific requirements other than tank heal or dps.

Also haven't experienced any reserved items yet either.

6. Class quests, the holy grail of class fantasy

I wouldn't say Def Stance or Berserker Stance quests are that much "skippable" Although others are. Generally they do have some good rewards afaik, and they certainly feel awesome to complete regardless.

I don't see how them being "skippable" is necessarily a bad thing. Almost everything in the game is "skippable". I mean in Live you can even level up from 1 to max level just by picking herbs.

Quests requiring a group, I will agree that might not be the best design for a class quest. But it's by no means a big issue.

7. Classic is a great game for casuals, much better than modern WoW

Wether it's great for casuals or not depends greatly on the player's specific taste. The max level content will probably not be great for anyone who can't have some larger periods of gaming, sure. But leveling can be quite great. Sure, you will reach a slow point where you will need several sessions as a Casual to level up, but there is some steady deterministic progress there for those interested.

With that said, personally I'd just say a MMORPG just isn't supposed to be aimed at people who have very little time to play. Especially a subscription based one, just be exactly the reverse.

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Wrong in your opinion.

As much as OP's statement that those Classic "myths" have fallen apart is just his opinion.

[Armakus]

Thanks for the conjectural blog post

This, most of your points are outright opinion and not based in any fact whatsoever OP.

[LionSinMaikeru]

You might want to provide other than "because I say so"

I provided some and several others have already gone through his points and given enough to show how he was wrong.

But if you need a full breakdown.


1. He's wrong because he's using "people below the level cap in greens are able to clear the raids" as proof that Classic raids aren't difficult. Chances are, he himself didn't complete any of the raids and is using the achievements of guilds like APES as the basis for his point. That would be like me, someone who has never performed surgery, saying that surgery is easy because a trained surgeon can do it. Just because someone can do something doesn't mean *everyone* can.

2. Old talent trees are much better than the current ones. They help make the leveling experience better. This point has been done to death but I don't think it's a coincidence people on Retail have complained about leveling being so boring and feeling unrewarding after they gutted the talent tree. It's because there's no incentive to level. No growth of your character except once every 15 levels.

3. A majority of classic is about the journey to 60. I don't care if some streamers power-leveled to endgame. That doesn't change the fact that the majority of players never reached endgame (only like 3% originally?) and a majority of your time will be spent leveling and interacting out in the world.

4. There has been a ton of socialization in game.

5. I've had no problems getting into any dungeon groups. And since I see them being run quite often, I imagine this isn't the case for most people and OP is pulling it out of his behind.

6. The majority of class quests are certainly not skippable.

7. The only point that could even be considered not entirely false. But even then, WoW was designed as a more casual MMO than predecessors. There's plenty to do for the casual player. Leveling alts is a LOT more fun on Classic than Retail.