Knowing Changed Classic

[Mosha]

If you weren't a New/bad player, you knew things in Vanilla anyway. It's not like they hid the information.

Just because you know things doesn’t mean you know what to do with it. Everyone and their dog knew about world buffs, man even noobies did when they randomly got it. But there wasn’t really a ‘world buff’ meta until tbc when guilds were pushing for server firsts and finally put 2 and 2 together. That’s when it got changed, if they would have used these earlier I almost guarantee they would have nerfed them on the spot.

[Thunderball]

Getting better at what exactly? The content is trivialized to the point many/most playing today don't even know what the different phases of a boss fight look like.

At playing their class, obviously. Playing your character to the minimum required to kill the boss is terribly boring, not to mention it takes a shitload of time.

- - - Updated - - -

And that is exactly the point, the game was enjoyed by defeating content together with friends (emphases on the social/role playing). Now, with world buffs the content represents such a low challenge bar, people invented a new game in the form of who can hit the loot-pinata faster loool

It was always easy. Also, if you assume that people speedrun to do all the content in 2 hours and log off for a week you're completely wrong and will never have any fun enjoying classic. Not to mention that it's stupid to assume that raiding gets less social if done faster. You just get more time to do other stuff.

EDIT: A lot of people that have never played private servers assumed that the Nost audience was trying to bring back vanilla, which was wrong from the beginning. People were trying to bring in official private servers that would have everything working, proper talent/item/content progression, support, etc. That didnt work out but at least we got an official private server that Blizzard is not trying to actively close down. I never expected vanilla, I knew what happened on private servers and it was clear that Classic would be the same or worse. I was totally ready for it.

Classic didnt end up being what idealists expected of Blizzard (Blizzard is not the same, unfortunately) but it's exactly what they expected. If you expected anything else your expectations were unrealistic in the first place.

[Queen of Hamsters]

No-Shit-Sunday right there.

It was clear to everyone but the most deluded fans, whom never played Vanilla nor PS and just listened to streamers, that it wasn't going to be the same.

[ONCHEhap]

I would say that more than the knowledge,the community view of that knowledge is the real issue.

There are plenty of people who weren't there for vanilla,don't know the meta,or just don't want to know the meta. Yet the community will force them to follow the meta,it has become a requirement to be optimal in the eye of so many people.
In other words,the community holds efficiency in higher regard than fun,which is as ridiculous as it sounds

[Tojara]

Video is pointless honestly. Anybody with a brain concluded that far before Classic was even released.

It's been hardwired to seek out any power gain you can possibly get in WoW for well over a decade now, so seeing people use every single consumable and 'abusing' world buffs shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. If you look at any logs (which didn't exist back then) it's not hard to derive how much of your player power comes solely from consumables and world buffs.

People followed a 'meta' 15 years ago too based on the knowledge they had. It was far more feel craft oriented, but I can assure you that the amount of hybrids running around in the majority of raids back then was just as rare as it was today. Regardless of knowledge, people knew retribution, balance and things like enhancement shaman fucking sucked in PvE content. You can just outright confirm it these days and the only reason you might see more of them these days is simply because people are willing to let a few of them slide if they don't take this super easy content too seriously.

World buff 'abuse' existed in Vanilla but not until the very end. Coordinating drops among your server basically didn't happen (random pugs were rare, and 99% of guilds were progressing at something), and the only guilds I knew that actually world buffed were those that were doing the last few bosses in Naxxaramas (when it was on farm mostly). I was on a server with guilds who beat Naxxaramas and afaik, they only really used world buffs on their second raid night once KT was on farm so they would have an easier time killing Loatheb/Sapphiron/KT.

The conclusion is self-explanatory. We live in an age where getting information is super easy combined with the fact that it's a re-release of a game most have played before, or at the very least, are familiar with the franchise as they've played various expansions through it's 16 year life span. Even if you never played Vanilla WoW before, I'd probably wager that most people who played Classic WoW have played some version of WoW.

[chrisnumbers]

That's pretty cool but can we talk about the great reset?

[Thunderball]

Yet the community will force them to follow the meta,it has become a requirement to be optimal in the eye of so many people.
In other words,the community holds efficiency in higher regard than fun,which is as ridiculous as it sounds

This has always been the case in vanilla among the groups that had achieved something. The problem was (and still is) that you just dont have time to figure out how any given person is going to perform with a fringe build. He could be fine, but since all the groups activities are so large scale in vanilla you just dont have time to figure out every single player. Still holds true for random dungeons/raids to this day.

You can still go out and wipe with your friends while having a good time, but chances are you're not going to have a lot of people to sign in for that given how well groups that follow the meta do, and also given the consumable costs. Yea, that doesnt let you have your "fun" in large scale activities, but it's also incredibly selfish to have fun at the expense of a lot of people. I know you're going to say that one person playing a suboptimal build wont change anything, but here's the deal: as long as someone is allowed to play a "fun" build other people would want to do it, and some people would stop coming to play with you, because you're having fun at their expense.