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Why Vanilla WoW was so good
ste2000
Member EpicPosts: 6,194
It's about someone that recently got to play Vanilla WoW (don't ask) and compares it with the new version.
This guy basically expresses my same feelings towards Vanilla WoW and all the Old School MMOs (EQ, DaoC, UO)
When people says that Old School is all about Nostalgia, don't really get it IMO.
The mechanics were definitely far more engaging and rewarding, it is not just a misguided perception based on old memories.
Here is what he has to say:
"Obviously, a lot has changed in the time between Vanilla and WOD. Now that I've had time to relive the glory, I've realized that there were things about WoW that I missed the most, some which I completely forgot about! Here are some of those (definitely not everything I've realized, but a good start):
1) Grouping. Not just instance groups. I'm talking any random little shit group. I had a guy invite me yesterday so I could help him kill a level 16 bear so he could pick an Earthroot. Jesus. BUT I LOVED IT.
2) A living, breathing trade chat in virtually every zone. I see LFG in the bottom left corner of my screen again. I missed that shit, I really missed that shit. And people who try to sell trash for way too much. But guess what, SOME DUMB SHIT WILL BUY IT.
3) The grind is REWARDING. In retail, I would get to 60 in roughly 1 weekend. Easy. No assembly required. I passed GO 20 times and collected all of King Midas' gold. I didn't give a shit. Now, it takes me one weekend to get from 1-20 MAYBE. It doesn't piss me off, it makes me feel determined for more. Every level, I look at my 13 cats and I'm like "I F*CKING DID THAT".
4) Greens are better than Green Jesus. If a green item drops from a mob, I literally lose my shit now. Getting gear is HARD, WHICH IS HOW IT SHOULD BE.
4.5) Gold MEANS SOMETHING. If I have 100g on my bank alt, I am literally the Great Gatsby. I could buy a Ferrari if they had them in-game. 100g in vanilla is like 200000 haircuts in WOD.
5) The leveling mindset. I've realized that over the years, I spend about 50% of the time leveling looking at my exp bar. I don't read the quests, I don't enjoy the scenery, hell I don't even loot the mobs. Now, it's all somewhat MANDATORY. I take the time to listen to this dumb shit NPC, I meet his family, I look at the f*cking clouds, hell I loot the mobs AND SKIN THEM. AND I LOVE EVERY SECOND OF IT DAMNIT. IT GETS ME GOIN.
6) The talent system was better in vanilla. It was more effective, you had to make REAL DECISIONS. Yeah, there were cookie cutter raid talents you HAD TO HAVE, but you weren't just one-dimensional in your talent tree. Hell, you can branch into all 3 if you're feeling frisky. Who gives a shit, it's your own damn fault if you do. Have fun spending 3 days grinding out the gold to respec.
I want to hear what everyone else has to say. Ultimately, I just love
that the game is hard again. I missed that, a lot. Please also tell me
what you DON'T LIKE about vanilla that has since been fixed. I'll tell
you I definitely don't like that my quest objectives aren't on my map.
That shit kills me."
I didn't take out the expletives hopefully is fine.
Anyway number 5 is what really is good about Old School mechanics.
Comments
I love the heck out of my early days in SWG. It does not equal me wanting that game back. Same with CoH. Because it was the moment that made it special and that is not something you really get back. Especially not in the long term.
Not sure what else to say... I do and always will hold Wrath up as a by all accounts bettre game than vanilla WoW and there is nothing that will sway that opinion. Why? Simple, it was at that point they included things in the game that i personally feel should be in a good game.
But it all comes down to personal preference, i for an example think that Football Manager is about as fun as watching continetal elevation shift in real time. But i have friends who love the living heck out of that game and can spend hours in it.
By the same token i fully understand if some people liked vanilla WoW more... I can never reconcile with their idea of "good" but i can understand why they feel that way. It does not make any opinion better or more right... just different.
This have been a good conversation
I am nostalgic of my teen days, but I cannot go back and check if those good memories were justified or I just chose to remember all the good stuff and remove the bad ons.
That is nostalgia.
The perception that the things happened in the past were much better than they really were, but you have no means to verify it, you have just memories left and you hold onto it.
But in this case, that guy is actually playing Vanilla WoW and he prefers it to the new version.
This are not just faded memories.
All the things he described are consequences of different mechanics that made the game more SOCIAL.
Modern mechanics do not allow that level of social experience, it is not nostalgic wanting to play a Social game, that shouldn't be something that belongs to the past, it should be always actual.
Another example. I remember doing a Leather-working quest in Ferelas that allowed me to craft cloaks that had random enchants on it. Again, not everyone did it. I made a fortune selling those cloaks.....Well the ones with desirable enchants, but it made up for the crappy ones.
I moved to Tanaris early....Before I could actually do any quests. While still in the 30s, my hinter started killing the scorpions. I Leveled skinning and LW and by the time I hit 40, I was able to create the full set of mail crafted gear... Again, mode some good money doing LW, got a few levels to boot.
Cooking and Fishing: Yep they mattered. Cooking had some good buffs available, but to get to 300, as I recall, there were only 3 recipes that could take you there....All 3 required fishing. So I went to Azshara. I forget the actual fish, but I remember fishing for hours in Azshara bay on the island avoiding the giant while catching fish that I could sell for a fortune.
Furlbog Rep. Most people just wanted enough to get to non hostile so they cold pass through the cave. I grinded the rep. Gained an Awesome DPS mail LW belt recipe. Again, I made a lot of money selling those.
I have to stop with the example, I have so many more. But it mattered back then......to stop ans smell the roses. the little things along the way. Important details that made the game a better experience along the way. While leveling.
These just don't matter anymore. It's hurry up and level cap. None of the things along the way have any meaning anymore. Leveling is too fast. There's no meaning in the details anymore. One thing that the implementation of Death Knights proved was that all previous content was obsolete.
That being said, the mention of being SOCIAL by ste2000 made me flashback to the commanlands tunnel marketplace of Norrath.
*sigh* Those were good times.
not for financial gain just for ease of use, got hit in the
banwave and havent resubbed since.
A year or two ago I tried playing on Emerald Dragon Coast or something like that.
I wanted to experience the old grind but experience felt sped up from quest turn-ins.
Which killed the old school feeling for me. Plus every level 60 seemed to be head to toe in raid gear. For example it seemed like every level 60 priest was sporting benediction when originally only a handful had them per server.
So I quit because it all felt skewed and cheap.
If there is somewhere I can play and get that real vanilla experience again then someone point me in the right direction pls.
But if you read what someone posted on this page (assuming it doesn't get modded), google will provide you your answer.
But i go from your own narrative... So here it goes.
You are just feeling the nostalgia... Remembering all the good times. He might be living it (and we have no proof that he does not do this someplace that has smoothed out some of the kinks from vanilla.. and so on) but you are just remembering it.
Thusly it is nostalgia.
I also do not say that you can not enjoy Vanilla... Just that i have no ability to understand why you do it.
This have been a good conversation
Loved every second of it, but also almost lost my marriage.
RIP World of Warcraft.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Remember when you had to read the quests to figure out where you needed to go to find the mob/item you had to farm? And even that wasn't enough half the time...
Remember when you were in South Shore/TM fighting for control of the zone? Remember when the 50+'s would roll on scene and you thought "Damn! A level 55? How'd they do that!?"
Remember when you saw the head of Onyxia proudly displayed in your city?
I miss that shit.
Ok I get it you got older you got more commitment, maybe you enjoy to hop from game to game.
All of this is legitimate and on a personal level respectable.
But this shouldn't influence the whole industry (because believe it or not this is the same argument that publisher use to justify their decision not to make those kind of games)
But don't you think there are lots of people today that are in the same situation you were 10 years ago and would love playing something like that?
Newer generations that never got to try an Old School MMO or even veterans like me that have still the hunger for it?
On the other hand, if being Social is still relevant today (like I hope it is) then we should bring back those mechanisms that allowed more Social interaction in MMOs.
EQ and Vanilla WoW did it very well.
And it is not true you cannot understand why I enjoyed WoW Vanilla, I keep repeating it , it is the Social interaction with other players, that's why personally play MMO instead of single player games.
For me players are the biggest content of any MMO, if you don't have players, you don't have a MMO, in my personal opinion.
And in modern MMOs even though there are thousands of players around you, is like playing by yourself.
So technically they are Massively, but in fact they don't feel like it.
And having more Social interaction is something that can be artificially created if the game is built to allow that.
Modern MMO do not have those mechanism in place, older ones do.
If you want to know which mechanisms I am talking about I will have to make another thread, but if you are smart enough you can get a couple by reading the guy I quoted.
Today after everything I've played I could say I would hate vanilla if it launched. Oh and everyone talks about community back then but I blame today's crappy mmo communities on wow and that greedy gear grind mentality. I was old back then and having a piss punk (Hancock) rage on Vent during a raid more times than I can count yeah that's makes for a fun evening. Do I hate wow today, no i still play, I"m just aware of the ride I was sucked into.
Elite mobs were to be taken seriously until there mechanics were understood.
World drops from average mobs could make you smile for days.
Getting your first mount an event that had meaning both monetarily, and as to your status.
How many of you remember borrowing gold at 40 to get that initial mount, that is unless you were a Paladin or Warlock who had a quest for you mount a long drawn out affair that made you feel special when it was all over.
Ste2000 and DKano.
You are both right and both wrong.
Ste,
Kano is right in the fact that what worked 10+ years ago just will not work again today. For example Kano and I both played ArcheAge, different servers we didn’t play together. But ArcheAge was trying to be a new age Sandbox with risk vs reward with some new age F2P tactics and all. Well in ArcheAge we found out fast or at least I did, that trips to Freedrich was a waste of time. Often times you would have several hundred pirates waiting for people to take someone’s trade pack. Well after a while with no hope of success people stopped taking trade packs to Freedrich. People don’t have time for several hours of making trade packs only to have people who do not want to spend that time making trade packs themselves; kill someone for it. It was much easier and more time effective to become a pirate and join the overwhelming force. What was an old idea failed because in Today’s games players are too focused on how fast do I get X Y and Z. Not the journey.
I hate to say this but WOW killed the Journey because they wanted an expansion every 2 years. They didn’t need it when less than 5% of the player base ever entered MC. Another 2 years you might have seen a larger player base in MC. I am saying that based on how long it took my raid team (6+ Months) just to gear up for BWL.
Kano,
What Ste is getting at is todays MMOs just are copy and paste games with new skins. This is why players like him and to some extent myself hate many of today’s MMOs. My biggest thing is I want MMOs where not all the classes are homogenized and play EXACTLY the same. I also don’t like instances where it is tank go pull as many packs as you can and we will AOE shit down. This is why I miss Vanilla and BC WOW is an RPG game needs to have classes that have strengths and weaknesses. We need to have Support roles because if its DPS DPS and DPS then the content is just smash face just like Diablo 3 is.
There are lessons that can be taken from older MMOs and Vanilla WOW. The thing is we need to make sure we don’t go to the Nostalgia side. Like, Corps runs made you a better player? No it didn’t you just think it did and you had a few fun times with it. Problem is for most of today’s gamers you MUST look at something that would not be that foolish. Yes we can have 3 Tanks all that have strengths and weaknesses, without making a game to the point that if you don’t have a WOW Pali in your group to AOE tank everything you are fine. The reason I like Vanilla and TBC WOW was simple, it required some tactics and thought to pulls. Can we do this without having a Shadowlabs “If you don’t have a Mage you wipe here and fail the dungeon?” Yes we can we just have to think past what if I don’t have X Y and Z CC abilities.
Everything is about balance and Vanilla WOW and TBC WOW had that. That’s why the game was so successful. If you were not a hardcore raider you could still progress your gear with instances, quest, even casual raid instances like ZG, ZA, AQ20, Kara. That is what I miss. Having a game that is well balanced and it didn’t feel like a big god dam treadmill like today’s games are.
It is not a debate over how many bugs or systems needed fixing. It was core game design that does not exist any more in Wow's current state nor in many other mmos today.
What Wow could have been today, if the original game design was strictly adhered to, is almost beyond imagining. One does not need to play it the same way as they once did. When I played Vanilla Wow nearly none of my friends had epics. We had very rare blues from incredibly fun, difficult and complex non-raid dungeons and were completely happy. Simply traveling to an instance without ports offered game play experiences that cannot be duplicated otherwise (especially on pvp servers). It made the world feel alive and important.
Wow offered virtual world experience by design which created it's original player base instead of the player base creating change. Blizzard forgot this and lost touch with their game and who they developed it for. Developers have scrambled to duplicate the EVE model for player retention yet Bliz had it right there in Wow.
Blizzard had a game with the strongest player retention of any mmo ever created and tossed the baby out with the bathwater trying to attract a different audience. Wow would have been remembered as the all time classic without the venom that exists now on forums by sustaining half it's peak player base but successfully sustaining a stronger community. The glitter of gold corrupts and Blizzard fell victim to it. They call it Fools Gold for a reason.
You stay sassy!
Long travels to reach places, PvP bottleneck areas, epic fights............the game felt alive.
Now is just one hit of a button to get teleported in the dungeon, you finish it in 15 minutes with people not talking and ignoring each other.
Yeah, you got your precious shiny in the end, but were is the fun in between?