It's not Nostalgia.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Subjective feelings are not really a good argument. Noone denies that there were people who liked certain things in the old days. The problem is the reasons you people give for why you liked them are mostly illogicial. You simply don't remember all the aspects that made you enjoy it more and blame the change of the game because it's easier to grasp rather than all those harder to remember aspects that were present back then and had little to do with the game design. We never really remember all the reasons for why we felt well about something many years ago - we only remember the fact of feeling well.

So really, social interaction is not worse than in Vanilla. The possibilities for social interaction are much greater than in Vanilla. The only difference is that you need to chose your way of interaction and look for people alike you to enjoy your gameplay to the fullest. The social interaction is fully in your hands now - the game won't do that for you. In fact in my oppinion it never did because forcing people to play together hardly makes real friendships - it's no different from real life interaction with random people you will most likely never see again in your life. And yes, that applied to Vanilla/TBC times as well - you couldn't possibly make friends with whole server.

But that argument could go both ways, couldn't it? Couldn't I just reverse it onto people who played during Vanilla and didn't like it? You simply don't remember all the aspects that made you dislike it. Not to mention I'm sure many naysayers didn't even play during Vanilla. This is why its a bad argument. I can say "I loved doing the group quests while leveling" and no Hue hue hue Nostalgia! Its really a valid argument AGAINST those quests existence. Its nothing but a straw man. You can dismiss my love for some old parts of the game just like I can dismiss your dislike for old parts of the game.

Sure, WoW was newer, but I don't think thats relevant to my enjoy of killing Elite Mode Araj the Summoner in Andorhal, or the old Darrowshire, or the Blightcaller. They have deleted all that sort of gameplay while leveling, but why? How was its existence a bad thing? Sure man, I love the new Isle as well. The group quests are great.

I don't buy your "forced social interaction" reasoning. You could pick and choose who to group with back in the day as well. You could start your own group and deny any jerks or ninjas from joining. If anything, what you said describes LFR, as you are either forced to leave, or suck it up when there is a jerk or afker in your group, or hope the other players will kick them.

Again, for the umpteenth time, I am not advocating that Blizzard revert all the changes they've made, I just feel they really need to question their reasoning for many things. Putting 5 Fps in one zone just promotes the feeling that the only important thing to do in WoW is get in raids so you can earn purples, which is a horrible attitude. It says leveling is unimportant, lets get through is asap, so threads that says DELETE LEVELING! pop up.

---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 06:54 AM ----------

Vanilla WoW would fail hard and fast if it came out today. The 100k people who'd love it wouldn't be enough to keep it afloat and it'd be F2P within a year.

Vanilla WoW had some good aspects and a lot of tedium, ever try that quest to summon Avatar of Hakkar in Sunken Temple?

1. Start Tanaris. Gain quest "Screecher Spirits"
2. Go to Feralas. Complete Quest.
3. Return to Tanaris. Hand in quest.
4. Pick Up new Quest. Do ZF. Hand in Quest.
5. Pick up new Quest. Go where? Oh, Hinterlands. Enjoy.
6. Get Egg in Hinterlands. Return all the f%%king way to Tanaris. Hand in Quest.
7. Pick up New Quest. Go where? Oh, Sunken Temple. Halfway across Azeroth again. Enjoy.
8. Run ST, Kill Hakkar, Loot Him, Return to Tanaris. Again.
9. Dude needs more tablets. Gain Quest to go to Eastern Plaguelands.
10. Go to EP for two rocks. Come back, hand in quest.
11. Oh yeah, more rocks. This time in Lower Blackrock Spire. Really Blizzard? Do I get Air Miles for all this travel?
12. Hand in quest. Finally a good reward. A Cloak. Now the next quest has you go to the dude across the street.
13. Now what? Oh, go to the troll island in Stranglethorn. Yay! More travel.

You want this shit back? Seriously?

Why is this a bad thing? This is certainly not how every quest is, you could easily skip that quest.

---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 06:57 AM ----------

I spend a lot of time WAITING and NOT playing

I'm just not sure what you call waiting in a queue though.

---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 06:58 AM ----------

Stupid! New things are always much better then the old things...

New Star wars > old Star wars (crappy special effects anyone lol!)
Justine Beiber > the beatles (shitty copycats music lol!)
Twilligt > dracula, do I even need to comment loooool

yea its probably nostalgia

Hahah I am so putting this in my signature.

[Chrno]

Hehe...I eventually abandoned that quest and then joined a ST run with guildies when we were already all in MC and BWL gear...and man..not for one minute did I regret that I never saw ST as current content. I loathed that place, I loathed the winding entry, the confusing setup...everything. I loathed it again when I went there at lv 80..don't ask me why, possibly for an achievement or Holiday event (Elders?)

My warlock mount quest was borderline what I could stomach and I hated having to impose on guildies and beg them to go AGAIN to freaking DM, which people were sick of. The Onyxia questline was another example...it would probably have been fine without the 5 man part, which is great if you do it with 4 people who are all on the same stage, but sucks badly if you feel "forced" to help others as your raid group has a constant fluctuation of people leaving and entereing..and the new guys ALWAYS still need that Onyxia attunement. And still you cannot fly...all groundmounts, travel to every place again and again on landmount. Oh yeah..and in some case wait for the poorer players who couldn't afford a mount and were STILL WALKING at lv 60. I spend a lot of time WAITING and NOT playing

Weird that I liked raiding when at the same time Classic WoW gave me a deep hatred of 5 mans which always were a pain to assemble, a pain to travel to and a pain to finish. Maybe it was because I already had a job and family back then...but the looooong afternoon in LBRS / UBRS eventually shattered all interest that would every have existed in dungeon crawls.

But hey...whoever loved it, more power to you. I still believe it worked because we had no comparison back then. I predict that a company who would release a game with the restriction of Classic WoW today might get the eternal love of some die-hard Old school gamers...but most likely not a commercial success.

The thing is, there was most def. comparison material out there. EQ serie, DaoC, FFXI, AC, lineage etc.
So the games were definately there but that doesn't change the fact that for MANY people WoW was their first MMO. WoW was more accesible and it was 'cool' to play. You saw it in commercials and read about it in the newspapers etc.

The grind, the dungeon crawling, leveling speed, gearing, attuning, the questing and so many other WoW features had all been done before in the games i listed above. WoW just did it better (opinion) and made those same feature 10x more player friendly and less time consuming.

This created a snowball effect we won't be seeing for a LOOOONG time resulting in 7mil people playing Classic. The MMO's i listed had about 200-500k subs and that was called a succes MMO.

MMO's had untill now always been for a 'special' kind of gamer, a small group. And i think that it will eventually go that route again in the next several years. Personally i prefer the more time consuming content, long leveling curve with the occasional grind and the long ass dungeon crawls. Many i'am wrong time will tell.

I agree with you that if Classic WoW would release today it would not be a commercial succes but that's not due to the restrictions but more how we've been fed with features from MMO's in the last few years. Classic WoW simply did not have those .

Wildstar is going to release with a more oldstyle endgame. It'll be interesting how that's going to turn out.

[Lilija]

For those who have played since classic to MoP.

If you cannot look back on your times in classic with fondness you don't have a heart (or have some serious Alzheimers)

If you cannot recognize how WoW has improved you don't have a brain (or see above).

Nostalgia isn't a bad thing. It's only detrimental when it makes us fail to see things rationally.

Actually quite well said I do remember the good things about early WoW. It did took over my life for a reason But I do remember that it's the freshness and then the people that kept me going. If not for my Vanilla/TBC guild I would have quit WoW long time ago in Vanilla because there were many things in the game design that annoyed me extremly to the point that I was close to quitting. But I stayed for my friends and just went to the forums expressing my oppinion of what would I like to change in the game. Many of those things did happen - plus many others that I never thought about but enjoy very much. I'm really glad that I have stayed because each expantion was for me a better experience than the previous one.

[khalltusk]

But that argument could go both ways, couldn't it? Couldn't I just reverse it onto people who played during Vanilla and didn't like it? You simply don't remember all the aspects that made you dislike it. Not to mention I'm sure many naysayers didn't even play during Vanilla. This is why its a bad argument. I can say "I loved doing the group quests while leveling" and no Hue hue hue Nostalgia! Its really a valid argument AGAINST those quests existence. Its nothing but a straw man. You can dismiss my love for some old parts of the game just like I can dismiss your dislike for old parts of the game.

Sure, WoW was newer, but I don't think thats relevant to my enjoy of killing Elite Mode Araj the Summoner in Andorhal, or the old Darrowshire, or the Blightcaller. They have deleted all that sort of gameplay while leveling, but why? How was its existence a bad thing? Sure man, I love the new Isle as well. The group quests are great.

I don't buy your "forced social interaction" reasoning. You could pick and choose who to group with back in the day as well. You could start your own group and deny any jerks or ninjas from joining. If anything, what you said describes LFR, as you are either forced to leave, or suck it up when there is a jerk or afker in your group, or hope the other players will kick them.

Again, for the umpteenth time, I am not advocating that Blizzard revert all the changes they've made, I just feel they really need to question their reasoning for many things. Putting 5 Fps in one zone just promotes the feeling that the only important thing to do in WoW is get in raids so you can earn purples, which is a horrible attitude. It says leveling is unimportant, lets get through is asap, so threads that says DELETE LEVELING! pop up.

---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 06:54 AM ----------



Why is this a bad thing? This is certainly not how every quest is, you could easily skip that quest.

---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 06:57 AM ----------



I'm just not sure what you call waiting in a queue though.

---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 06:58 AM ----------



Hahah I am so putting this in my signature.

I see where you are coming from. I myself hate leveling with a passion. I did enjoy some of the group quests and some of the very long quests the first time i did them. Doing them over and over on alts usually meant I either took a long time leveling alts (I do hate leveling) or skipping it. I think MOP had a pretty good way of dealing with it, the quests flowed well and they had long chains and linking to new quests. Maybe there could have been a few group quests that would have been nice. TOT has the treasure room which tests how good you are at doing small puzzles and timed events. There are also a few puzzle map quests too. So I think a few of those can be quite challenging and I hope in future they develop that further.

As for waiting in a queue or in a city in /trade chat etc. I much prefer waiting in a queue and going about anything in game (say a daily doing crafting mining etc) while waiting for a dungeon/raid is a lot better than trying to gather a pug or forming a group. Both of which still happen in trade chat, at least I have the choice now.

[Powell]

Nice to always see the brigher part of stuff, but pure optimism doesn't work that well either.

WoW in had ALOT of flaws in the past aswell. I mean ALOT. PvP ranking system as an example was complete garbage.

[Tomana]

So why not just skip Zul'Athor or whatever it was called? You could easily skip it if you wanted. So your minor annoyance took that away from me? That made a better game?

What's the point of keeping an elite zone if most people skip it? OTOH, if it is not an elite zone, you can make a nice quest chain there.
I might add, this change pre-dates Cata.

So the better alternative to dying a few times in mulgore, (probably if you pulled too many) is just making it to where doing 2 quests get you to level 5? That is better than anything else?

Please show me which 2 quests take you to level 5 these days.

Again, I haven't mentioned anything about the class design being better in Vanilla. They nerfed leveling when Cata came out. In wrath, were classes broken? Not really no. Quests were numerous enough if you looked for them. Vanilla did a bad job at specifically telling you where to go after you finish a zone, but asking often helped. 9OH NO! SOCIAL INTERACTIONS! =p)

Leveling was already different in Wrath. Mobs in "starter starter" zones were made neutral and XP needed for each level was reduced. And classes were less broken as you point out.
However, the quests were still not numerous enough, if you didn't go back and forth between EK and Kalimdor following a leveling guide.

[ValotheMudcrab]

This is my first post here, I started playing about a month into BC and I agree it isn't that the game is getting easier or more casual/less hardcore that argument should end, I think ToT is fairly challenging. Challenge modes, dailies, scenarios, and rbgs/arena the content is surely there the only real difference from my experience is the community with the addition of lfr and lfd, looking for a group wasn't that bad really and you didn't need to do as many dungeons as you do now with the point system, and gear from heroics lasted longer because there was no lfr another thing is blizzard has said they don't want to make all current tiers cross realm because it would hurt guilds but lfd and lfr have already hurt guild raiding and low/medium population servers from the 3 I've rerolled 90s on its impossible to pug even MSV not because of playerbase skill but because there is just no interest to pug anymore you use to be able to find people for your guild/raids a lot easier with the old system you shouldn't have to use third party websites for recruiting people or transfer to a high/full server and immersion is still possible they did that for me a bit by not allowing flying in pandaria until 90 you really get a feel of the zones.
One final thing everyone is so quick to insult each other these days it's really disappointing can't we have a conversation anymore?

[Tomana]

The problem is that the market changes. WoW wasn't intended to be played for 10 million people, it was intended to be played by around 200k players, we all know that

Please show me the business model document from Blizzard which mentions a target audience of 200K. Otherwise it's complete and utter bullshit.
You don't even understand how silly this remark is, because pre-WoW, several MMOs had players in the million range. So aiming for just 200K from one of the biggest gaming company in the world didn't make any sense.

It was launched for a kind of players, the MMORP gamers, people who, as you said, loved immersion role games. However, the game was so good that it called the attention of "a few" more players. TBC definitely proved that (and don't come up with "TBC was bad", because TBC was basically an extension of vanilla with huge improvements, at the same time than the first X-pack).

This is BS again. WoW was launched as far more casual than its competitors from the start on. This was their business model from day 1.

Only one kind of raid, like in BC, where ALL had a chance. People who wanted to put more effort and time were on the last tier raid, the rest were a tier lower, still having BiS loot (because tehre was no ilvl) and still fighting other guilds of their same level.

And there is one plain and simple thing you need to understand: that means that the last tier is developed (with costs in the millions of dollars) for a tiny percentage of the population. And the remaining 90+% effectively pay for that development with their subs. This is not defensible from neither financial or even moral point of view.

Personally I always said that the hardest raids should be DLCs. You want an exclusive raid? Poney up 30 more bucks, that will finance it. But no, all these people want the common populace to fund THEIR raids, which is frankly disgusting.

---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 01:38 PM ----------

If you cannot look back on your times in classic with fondness you don't have a heart (or have some serious Alzheimers)

If you cannot recognize how WoW has improved you don't have a brain (or see above).

Nostalgia isn't a bad thing. It's only detrimental when it makes us fail to see things rationally.

They have a brain, they're just blinded by irrationality. Like 95% of people in the world, I might add.

[Osmeric]

Because Blizzard themselves have fostered the idea that everyone who subs must see everything in the game.

I'm pretty sure Blizzard came around to this idea (perhaps without the absolutism there) because they figured out why a lot of people stopped sending them money. It's not something they did just to melt the special snowflakes.

---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 11:45 AM ----------

Wildstar is going to release with a more oldstyle endgame. It'll be interesting how that's going to turn out.

I need to track Wildstar more. Rift tried a more BC-like endgame, and it did not work out very well.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

What's the point of keeping an elite zone if most people skip it? OTOH, if it is not an elite zone, you can make a nice quest chain there.
I might add, this change pre-dates Cata.


Please show me which 2 quests take you to level 5 these days.


Leveling was already different in Wrath. Mobs in "starter starter" zones were made neutral and XP needed for each level was reduced. And classes were less broken as you point out.
However, the quests were still not numerous enough, if you didn't go back and forth between EK and Kalimdor following a leveling guide.

Are you sure? I thought they took them all out with the Cata overhaul. I know Wrath had many many many group quests. Dragonblight probably had 5-10 alone.

If people skip it, who cares? How is it hurting those people that skip it? Even in the recent Cata/MoP overhauls, people still skip many things. Should Blizzard delete anything that people skip?

Of course I was exaggerating about "2 quests," but its certainly not very many. If I were really stubborn, I would start a new toon and tally how many quests it does take, though I doubt it would change anyones mind, including you.

I remember grinding a bunch on my first toon, but that was literally because I didn't know any better or ask. After that I got Atlas, and it told you which zones were designed for which levels. If I ran out of quests in Arathi, I would go to STV instead. Following a guide would probably be more efficient, but it wasn't necessary, there WERE quests out there, just nothing said "Oh you are done in WPL? Here is a quest that tales you from the end of WPL to the start of EPL" ... you just kind of had to mosey into different areas to find where the quests were.

[Osmeric]

Hey people,

Why Blizzard don't put a button to pass the lvl 1-85 content? I mean, It's fast, u can chose to ignore that button and level if you want, but nowadays, the people want something faster than before. Like fly!! Then put a tool to skip leveling!!

That was a rhetorical question, but I think there are two reasons for leveling. First, some players' game style is simply to level one alt after another. Second, leveling gives a sense of investment in the character, leading to an irrational "sunk cost" aversion to leaving the game.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Nice to always see the brigher part of stuff, but pure optimism doesn't work that well either.

WoW in had ALOT of flaws in the past aswell. I mean ALOT. PvP ranking system as an example was complete garbage.

I'm not sure why you think that, on a faction balanced server, it was extremely competitive. (which was the point) You also knew who GMs', and a sort of fame would occur, which would spark rivalries and make even more competition. In my opinion, the worst thing about it was how cryptic the whole system was. I don;t think it mentioned anywhere in the game how it worked at all. But again! Good ole social interactions fixed that. All you had to do was ask.

---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 07:51 AM ----------

Which is actually not a bad idea and it doesn't take a genius or Blizzard to come up with it. I am not quite sure why we ever accepted the idea "back in the days" to pay money for a game where you might never see the end. Before the internet that is. Your game either got a walkthrough printed if it was hard or you never finished it. Yet...that was common in the 80s and 90s.

HOWEVER: At the end of the day...80% STILL don't get to see everything. I for one don't pvp, so I have not seen all BGs or arenas. And while LFR is popular and people treat it here as either a godsent or an abominaton out of 9 million people, it is probably only done by a third (during DS they released the number of 2 million ppl doing LFR...this number has most likely increads. Just a guess..if anyone has numbers I would love to see them)

Is that 80% of characters made, or 80% of unique human people?

[Osmeric]

PvP ranking system as an example was complete garbage.

I'm not sure why you think that

Please tell me you're not being serious.

It was garbage because the way you ranked up was poopsocking (or, more likely, account sharing), possibly combined with HK-trading. When winning at a game feature requires one to adopt aberrant play styles, the feature is badly designed.

[Tarx]

The vanilla wow was boring in some parts and it want dedication a lot of time. The MoP want less time to be better. IF you want to collect vanity gear pets achievements of curse it is hard because you have to do many dailies run dugeons and farm gold, etc. The game got less travel time(exploretion) ,wasted time and more action

[khalltusk]

[QUOTE=Lemonpartyfan;20969729]

Nice to always see the brigher part of stuff, but pure optimism doesn't work that well either.

WoW in had ALOT of flaws in the past aswell. I mean ALOT. PvP ranking system as an example was complete garbage.[/QUOTE]

I'm not sure why you think that, on a faction balanced server, it was extremely competitive. (which was the point) You also knew who GMs', and a sort of fame would occur, which would spark rivalries and make even more competition. In my opinion, the worst thing about it was how cryptic the whole system was. I don;t think it mentioned anywhere in the game how it worked at all. But again! Good ole social interactions fixed that. All you had to do was ask.

---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 07:51 AM ----------



Is that 80% of characters made, or 80% of unique human people?

I can tell you as a pretty damn hardcore pvper (I stopped at blood gaurd because of this system and that a huge pve guild wanted me to join) it was biased and broken.

You basically knew who was going for highwarlord and worked out a deal you get it for x amount of time and then this person gets it. You would often find a lot of people logging onto the same persons account and grinding honour for them. It was a silly silly system. believe me while it was cool to be such a close knit group the way it worked and the grind involved was stupid.

Our team which had a few highwarlords in it would STOMP the other side in over 90% of our matches, which was quite fun since then I rarely PVP. I did prefer the way you used to play AV though ironically. perhaps with some changes they could reach a happy middle ground with that.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Please tell me you're not being serious.

It was garbage because the way you ranked up was poopsocking (or, more likely, account sharing), possibly combined with HK-trading. When winning at a game feature requires one to adopt aberrant play styles, the feature is badly designed.

It didn't require it, no. But just like in todays pvp, people cheat to keep up with other cheaters. Its really no different in that regard.

---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 08:03 AM ----------

I can tell you as a pretty damn hardcore pvper (I stopped at blood gaurd because of this system and that a huge pve guild wanted me to join) it was biased and broken.

You basically knew who was going for highwarlord and worked out a deal you get it for x amount of time and then this person gets it. You would often find a lot of people logging onto the same persons account and grinding honour for them. It was a silly silly system. believe me while it was cool to be such a close knit group the way it worked and the grind involved was stupid.

Our team which had a few highwarlords in it would STOMP the other side in over 90% of our matches, which was quite fun since then I rarely PVP. I did prefer the way you used to play AV though ironically. perhaps with some changes they could reach a happy middle ground with that.

I played during that system as well man. I am aware, but that kind of stuff STILL happens. Win trading STILL happens. So you can;t really judge the system by how people cheat it in this discussion.

[brirrspliff]

The MMORPG genre wasn't about every single person being shuffled through the content to make sure they see everything and get every item they wanted. It was, "Here's the world, go do whatever you will do. Good luck not getting your ass kicked."

yep, that's the culprit. today games are being designed different (sadly so). they are designed to "make sure you see everything and get every item you wanted". wow lately even works to lose it's "MM" part of "MMORPG" as you can do everything alone and be a anonymous player silently rushing through LFR content.

wow was much more "social" and "massive" back in the days.

[Horizon]

Hehe...so I suppose you don't have a mobile and in fact keep one of those old phones with a round dial around, because old is clearly better. You also enjoy travelling by horsewagon and visit a dentist that uses old fashioned pliers.

And while we travel that road..why even play Classic WoW..Eve, Everquest and Ultima being older, are naturally vastly superior and you should be playing them.

I don’t think you understood me, this wasn’t a response to indicate that everything older is better, but rather just because its newer doesn’t mean it's better. You're responding with technical improvement equals better overall product (cell phones, cars) and in some cases this is definitely true but in other areas its not, a book isn’t bad because its old and it isn’t good because its new. The remake of “The thing”(also a remake) isn’t better then the -82 version even thought it has almost 30 years on the old thing. Was Heroes of might and magic 4 better then 3? not int my opinion.

I would say that vanilla wow and mop is A Lot different, in some aspects current wow is better and in some areas vanilla was better, a game is more then graphics however, it has music, lore, and what might be most important and at the same time most difficult to explain “feel”.

In the end people who don't see how people could like vanilla better are silly, in fact just as silly as the ones who don’t see how someone can like mop better. Me? I liked vanilla better to me it felt more like a world filled with adventures, rather then one filled with chores. Just my opinion though.

[nekobaka]

I'd get a kick out of getting in a time machine, going back 9 years, and showing vanilla players a snapshot of what the game is like today. I wonder what most of the reactions would be.

I would have saved myself by quitting. I was primarily focused on PVP in Classic and the start of BC.

[Iseeyou]

I cant agree more with OP.