I agree with a lot you said here. WOW was an alive world because players wanted to be out into it. They didnt start making the game a gear treadmill until really WOTLK when they tried their hardest to make raiding for everyone. Thing is Raiding is not for everyone and thats what the ME ME ME players wanted and it caused WOW to be what it is today. A casual player like yourself was happy in Blues, I was happy in T1 in Vanilla and Kara Plus ZA gear in BC. The content was engaging and you WANTED to play. Yea I have less time now than I did years ago. BUT that does not mean LFG in its current designed is needed nor LFR is needed.
What they really needed was like FFXIV has in Party Finder, or the new group finder that WOW has. They also needed to keep servers locked for new players to create characters there OR move characters there. Blizzard needed to stick to their guns because they could have had a real good balance of players in WOW. But they tried to cater to everyone and thats why people are leaving. Yes its a 10 year old game, but like you said if they stuck to their code game people would have never left.
Top 10 reasons I left WOW
#1 AOE feast instances - I love TBC and Vanilla instances. They required teamwork plus some tactics to do. They were not mosh pit events. Yes there could be work done here.
#2 LFG - This killed the community period. Yes low pop servers sucked to be on but there should NEVER have been low pop servers. Blizzard spun up too many servers too fast.
#3 LFR Just like number 2 only this made the raider that had a casual schedule quit casual schedule raiding guilds that were progressing at an acceptable speed to the group, BUT it was faster to do /follow X player and go AFK content
#4 One class was exactly like the other. Yes I loved having a Pali who was weak with AOE heals, I loved Warriors who were great MTs and shitty OTs that couldnt hold aggro on more than 2 or 3 targets yet Palis had no issue. I hate that we cannot have classes that have strengths and weaknesses because some mage is bitching that a Rogue shuck up be hind him and mopped the floor which is ass. I am sorry, its an RPG not a MOBA
#5 No need for CC anymore. Yes it was a bit over used in Vanilla and TBC but since TBC CC is not even a useful ability for anything anymore.
#6 The push to get everyone raiding. Not everyone wants to raid and yes making Dungeon content where players could get Blues that are nearly but not as good as Raid gear is not a problem expect for people who feel entitled. Hell now some of them dont want to run LFR and just want a piece or two mailed to them
#7 Tanking became more of a game of rotations and keeping up cool-downs instead of using big powerful cool downs at key times as well as more of a DPS game. You no longer need to worry about aggro and coordinate big time DPS.
#8 healing also became more of a game of rotations and HPS than timing heals and knowing who is going to take damage when
#9 The Raid instance treadmill. Going from Normal to Heroic to Mythic in all the same raid. It gets fucking boring. Why cant we have 10 man raid instances be like ZA, ZG, AQ20, Kara and then have 20 man raid instances be like MC, or Gruuls, SCC. Have each their own path with different loot tables. Tier 1 and Tier 1.5 if that makes better sense.
#10 Too few instances from TBCs and on. Today I gotten bored of instances because they are easy and its always the same 5 to 8. 15+ is the key number because honestly you do the same instance too many times in a short period of time and you get bored.
I don't know, I still feel like it is the same game.
Like, today I finally hit 700 Jewelcrafting skill after weeks of creating Taladarite Crystals both using the profession abilities to make them, and in the Garrison. Then used those crystals, plus other materials I had farmed up (both in the open world, and in the Garrison mine) to craft my 3rd craftable epic for my offspec, and the +10 boost got me to 700.
Earlier this week, I hit 700 Fishing through a combination of the fishing daily quest, and grinding out catches for Cooking ingredients.
I've still got 2-3 more digsites to hit up before I will get to 700 Archaeology, and then 700 First Aid and Cooking is going to take a LOT of fishing and mob farming for the mats.
Meanwhile, I'm stockpiling Apyxsis Crystals (20k) to upgrade my 650 Baleful 2H (Rare) to 695 epic.
I just finished the first 2 phases of the Legendary Ring questline, so I'm currently on the 3rd phase doing my weekly Highmaul Raid LFR as well as some Shipyard missions to get the Ogre stones.
Also trying to level up more Followers to 100, start getting them armor and weapon sets, and all the while trying to maintain a healthy level of Garrison Resources and Oil to keep the mission flow going.
On top of THAT, trying to do my Tanaan Jungle quests and dailies, looking for more Baleful gear to supplement the LFR drops.
And once all of THAT is done and or made good progress on, I still need to hit up the Hellfire Citadel or whatever raid (the newer one) see what that is about.
Oh, and I want to go back and see how much of the Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria Raids I can solo for transmog gear.
Still feels like quite the world, lots to do, lots of group/public stuff, and yeah everything would be easier if I were more social and in a Guild, but I like how I can do my own thing and continue to progress.
Still feels like quite the world, lots to do, lots of group/public stuff, and yeah everything would be easier if I were more social and in a Guild, but I like how I can do my own thing and continue to progress.
Thats the exact problem. Its too much a single player based game now just like every other copy and paste MMOs out there. I am not saying WOW needs to be hard core group based, BUT Vanilla WOW and TBC had a great balance between Group and Solo based content. People like me leveled a lot in dungeons because I had the friend base and guild base. As for people like Tamanous he liked leveled a lot solo and liked that content. WOW didnt force one play style over the other like they do now. It pushed people to QUEUE and not wait for people. Not saying that grouping was not sometimes a pain in Vanilla and the TBC. A Party/Group Finder that are in WOW and FFXIV today are 100 times better than WOW wannabe browser was.
Problem is the game caters to people like you who dont care about playing with other people. That is why MMOs are trash now. Too focused on the SOLO game play and players who don't want to make friends.
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.
I would like to believe this also but Wow's success speaks for itself.
Despite what we might want as an individual millions of subscribers for
10+ says Blizzard gave the majority what they want. Most boast failure
to anything less with any other mmo these days. It's an entertainment
business you have to go with the flow. I do the same, when it doesn't entertain me anymore I move on.
This is exactly the problem with MMOs today. They focus on the BUSINESS and the BUSINESS MAKING LARGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY. Not on, he I want to make this game and I want to make money on it. Too much focus on making Millions and Billions of Dollars and no focus on making game play gamers want to play. That is why its a WOW COPY AND PASTE genera right now or has been.
If people want to make massive amounts of money games is not the place for that.
If wanting a game that allows a better Social interaction is being nostalgic, you are saying that being Social is a thing of the past and today it is irrelevant. 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.
Ok... are we talking about the past or the now.... Because i have no problem really understanding how you BACK IN THE DAY enjoyed Vanilla WoW... But that was 10 years ago. What i can not understand are the people who today still holds vanilla WoW as the "best". After all compared to other games the social options in WoW was a joke... Heck even CoH kicked it´s arse in that regard, not to mention SWG. And if we look at it contained within the game it self You are forgiving a massive amount of poor designs just because you could sit around at a stone... trading campfire stories and hoping for that last party member to wander by.
Do you know why modern MMO´s shy away from the sort of forced grouping that WoW used to have... .. . (also it is worth noting that WoW was accused of being way to casual with how it did grouping.. =P )
Because not even Blizzard with their hundreds of thousands of concurrent users could provide a good leveling experience once the peak was passed. Especially not on small servers like the one i played on (the venerable and tiny Kilrogg EU) So yes socialisation is good but only if you can back it up with support systems that actually let your paying customers play your game.
You said it your self... No players, no MMO.
In fact one of the best inventions put in to WoW when it came to social interactions was the LFG tool. Seeing how it freed you from the world hubs and the constant begging for groups that was the major cities. But people treated it like the plague because it took away having to hike out to a meeting stone... Solid logic.
Simply put the sort of system that keept the social side of vanilla WoW going can not be kept up, because the people who kept it going went away. They are now gone replaced by the X-Box generation who in turn will be replaced by the pad-natives.
We my friend, we are now the dinosaurs.
"but were is the fun in between?"
Because it is sooooo fun to have your entire raid evening destroyed by a bunch of alpha-male wannabees...? That sort of thinking is the very reason i never set a foot on a PvP server any more...
Still feels like quite the world, lots to do, lots of group/public stuff, and yeah everything would be easier if I were more social and in a Guild, but I like how I can do my own thing and continue to progress.
Thats the exact problem. Its too much a single player based game now just like every other copy and paste MMOs out there. I am not saying WOW needs to be hard core group based, BUT Vanilla WOW and TBC had a great balance between Group and Solo based content. People like me leveled a lot in dungeons because I had the friend base and guild base. As for people like Tamanous he liked leveled a lot solo and liked that content. WOW didnt force one play style over the other like they do now. It pushed people to QUEUE and not wait for people. Not saying that grouping was not sometimes a pain in Vanilla and the TBC. A Party/Group Finder that are in WOW and FFXIV today are 100 times better than WOW wannabe browser was.
Problem is the game caters to people like you who dont care about playing with other people. That is why MMOs are trash now. Too focused on the SOLO game play and players who don't want to make friends.
I'm 32, married, and I play games for fun. I've got a active, large guild I am the leader of in Destiny, but with WoW - it's nice I can do most of the stuff in the game without having to do all of that too.
Does that make it more casual?
Yeah, but you still need to do the EXACT same thing today to do higher end dungeons (Mythic) and raids (everything but LFR) and all of the group-based quests and dailies/weeklies etc....
Find and build your own groups, social networks, friends lists, etc.
So exactly what has changed?
More options for people now, more options and more balance for solo vs. group play, which is exactly what you said you wanted/the game had and needs, but yet it DOES.
See that's the thing.
At least with WoW, anyway, that all of that stuff from TBC/Vanilla/Wrath before LFG and the LFR in Cata...
All of that stuff is STILL in the game, and needed, if you want to do that level of content.
And you know what? You get better rewards for doing that level of content - for making that commitment.
I mean, you all seem to be saying that having MORE options and ways to play the game, more levels/difficulties of content is a bad thing...
And yet all of the "old" ways and things are still in the game pretty much exactly the same...
So if I understand this correctly, because the tools even exist to make life easier, and/or find people to play with automatically, at lower difficulties, it somehow takes away from your ability to ignore said tools, form your own communities and groups, and tackle challenging content?
I mean, I know tons of people that have never done LFR, and don't use the LFG tool to find dungeons, yet they are in big guilds and raid and do difficult dungeons etc. all of the time.
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.
I would like to believe this also but Wow's success speaks for itself.
Despite what we might want as an individual millions of subscribers for
10+ says Blizzard gave the majority what they want. Most boast failure
to anything less with any other mmo these days. It's an entertainment
business you have to go with the flow. I do the same, when it doesn't entertain me anymore I move on.
This is exactly the problem with MMOs today. They focus on the BUSINESS and the BUSINESS MAKING LARGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY. Not on, he I want to make this game and I want to make money on it. Too much focus on making Millions and Billions of Dollars and no focus on making game play gamers want to play. That is why its a WOW COPY AND PASTE genera right now or has been.
If people want to make massive amounts of money games is not the place for that.
I agree, this is true and not just with mmo's. On the flipside if I was to make a product and it sold like crazy hotcakes. Then made changes to this product good or bad but it still sold just as good, even better. In a companies eyes you're giving people what they want.
Take dailies same content done over with a 24hr clock. I swear I would slap the dev who made this up. The most laziest form of content developed, cause it wasn't lol. Yet people love it and eat it up. Now we have time walking dungeons same crap we paid for xpacs ago, lazy lazy lazy devs. My point is unless we as consumers stop eating this up it will continue.
Still feels like quite the world, lots to do, lots of group/public stuff, and yeah everything would be easier if I were more social and in a Guild, but I like how I can do my own thing and continue to progress.
Thats the exact problem. Its too much a single player based game now just like every other copy and paste MMOs out there. I am not saying WOW needs to be hard core group based, BUT Vanilla WOW and TBC had a great balance between Group and Solo based content. People like me leveled a lot in dungeons because I had the friend base and guild base. As for people like Tamanous he liked leveled a lot solo and liked that content. WOW didnt force one play style over the other like they do now. It pushed people to QUEUE and not wait for people. Not saying that grouping was not sometimes a pain in Vanilla and the TBC. A Party/Group Finder that are in WOW and FFXIV today are 100 times better than WOW wannabe browser was.
Problem is the game caters to people like you who dont care about playing with other people. That is why MMOs are trash now. Too focused on the SOLO game play and players who don't want to make friends.
I'm 32, married, and I play games for fun. I've got a active, large guild I am the leader of in Destiny, but with WoW - it's nice I can do most of the stuff in the game without having to do all of that too.
Does that make it more casual?
Yeah, but you still need to do the EXACT same thing today to do higher end dungeons (Mythic) and raids (everything but LFR) and all of the group-based quests and dailies/weeklies etc....
Find and build your own groups, social networks, friends lists, etc.
So exactly what has changed?
More options for people now, more options and more balance for solo vs. group play, which is exactly what you said you wanted/the game had and needs, but yet it DOES.
See that's the thing.
At least with WoW, anyway, that all of that stuff from TBC/Vanilla/Wrath before LFG and the LFR in Cata...
All of that stuff is STILL in the game, and needed, if you want to do that level of content.
And you know what? You get better rewards for doing that level of content - for making that commitment.
SO, again, what is the problem? What is missing?
I'm confused.
No the game is not the same. Sorry try again. And I too am married have kids the whole 9 yards. A game does not need to be like TODAY's WOW to work. Sorry the game is shit now. No Soloing should not be a big part of any MMO. It should be there so people dont have to wait for groups for hours. BUT if you cannot build a social network in a game and set times to play with your friends then why not play Dragon Age? Its more suited to that game play which is why MMOs are dying. Why do you think MOBAs and other games like that are coming around? Easy to make no dept and fast game play. That is not a formula to MMORPGs
No the game is not the same. Sorry try again. And I too am married have kids the whole 9 yards. A game does not need to be like TODAY's WOW to work. Sorry the game is shit now. No Soloing should not be a big part of any MMO. It should be there so people dont have to wait for groups for hours. BUT if you cannot build a social network in a game and set times to play with your friends then why not play Dragon Age? Its more suited to that game play which is why MMOs are dying. Why do you think MOBAs and other games like that are coming around? Easy to make no dept and fast game play. That is not a formula to MMORPGs
I mean, you all seem to be saying that having MORE options and ways to play the game, more levels/difficulties of content is a bad thing...
And yet all of the "old" ways and things are still in the game pretty much exactly the same...
So if I understand this correctly, because the tools even exist to make life easier, and/or find people to play with automatically, at lower difficulties, it somehow takes away from your ability to ignore said tools, form your own communities and groups, and tackle challenging content?
I mean, I know tons of people that have never done LFR, and don't use the LFG tool to find dungeons, yet they are in big guilds and raid and do difficult dungeons etc. all of the time.
And you could ALWAYS solo your way to the level cap in WoW. Or you could ALWAYS grind your way to the level cap in dungeons.
So, again, what has changed? Because you have options, more options now, there are... less options? And it sucks because of the new options, even though the old options haven't changed?
That guy nailed it. Every thing he said only made it more clear that it was gameplay, not nostalgia, that made older MMOs more enjoyable. Also to note, the aspects of the game he liked so much were mainly derived from EQ.
People use the nostalgia to shutdown the conversation. Essentially saying it isn't real.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
With all due respect the game is not the same, it's a very different game today. In the past a dungeon was a two hour affair, it was much more difficult and challenging, I enjoyed that. I enjoyed the lengthy leveling game. Its very much a different game today and that's ok. It's just not for me anymore and for me that's a shame because I really loved the game at one time.
I can't even follow a storyline in the game without totally out-leveling it.
Vanilla WoW to me was the high point of MMOs. I believe it combined what made early MMOs great (open world, unique classes, epic quests, unique items, difficulty), and got rid of a lot of the crap that existed in early MMOs, like camping, massive downtime, a month of grinding to gain one level, terrible UI, sluggish combat system, etc.
It also avoided what I can't stand about more modern MMOs, that being hub based instance grinding.
Because it was new, everyone was a kid, and there was no other options
I keep seeing this and it makes no fucking sense. What makes you think "everyone was a kid"? When me and many of my friends started playing wow when it finally came out we were all grown ass men with full time jobs. Personally, I was 26 in a serious relationship and was working my ass off. Most of the people in my guild were of a similar age +/- a few years. Show me any data that everyone (majority) playing WOW in '04 was a kid.
And no other options? By 2004 there were a lot of different quality options when it came to MMORPGs. The genre was definitely not in the state of stagnation it has been in for so long, but to say "there was not other options" is nuts.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Because it was new, everyone was a kid, and there was no other options
I keep seeing this and it makes no fucking sense. What makes you think "everyone was a kid"? When me and many of my friends started playing wow when it finally came out we were all grown ass men with full time jobs. Personally, I was 26 in a serious relationship and was working my ass off. Most of the people in my guild were of a similar age +/- a few years. Show me any data that everyone (majority) playing WOW in '04 was a kid.
And no other options? By 2004 there were a lot of different quality options when it came to MMORPGs. The genre was definitely not in the state of stagnation it has been in for so long, but to say "there was not other options" is nuts.
I was 40 when Wow released and the amount of time I spent with it for the next couple years almost got me a divorce. That was my foray into the hardcore raiding scene. Only thing missing was a poopsock lol
The game was better but it's still not what I would call a great MMO. It's still a solo-centric questing game. Just because it was a little harder and slower in vanilla doesn't make it great.
It certainly would not make me so ecstatic as the OP just for things most MMOs do all the time- like gear or levels that actually mean something.
If it was released today I sure as hell wouldn't play it. I'm looking for basically anything BUT WoW and WoW-clones, vanilla or not.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Because not even Blizzard with their hundreds of thousands of concurrent users could provide a good leveling experience once the peak was passed. Especially not on small servers like the one i played on (the venerable and tiny Kilrogg EU) So yes socialisation is good but only if you can back it up with support systems that actually let your paying customers play your game.
You said it your self... No players, no MMO.
You are getting somewhere. The point is not if a more Social game was more fun to play than the current lot, the issue is how do you solve the problems that a game depending so much on players interaction might have when population on a particular server is not so healthy.
Instead of building on the Social mechanic foundation and try to correct these inherited flaws this system brings with it, Blizzard and the rest of the industry chose the lazy way, they created the so called Themepark. And it is called Themepark for a reason, people pick and choose what they like and ignore the rest the game has to offer and still have some fun, like in a real Thempark where you can ride on the Rollercoaster the whole day and ignore the other 99 amusement rides.
So we went from a game where people pulled together to achieve a common goal, to a game where people play alone the bit of the game they like with very little interest in taking part in other activities with other players.
Now that the market is saturated with Themeparks is the right time for developers to try something different. Why not looking back at what made Old Schoool MMO so addictive for many of us and try to bring them up to modern standards fixing those flaws that made them less appealing to players and therefore businesses?
We have already hundreds of Themeparks, do we really need more?
Your taste in music tends to be set by the first music you buy for yourself.
It shouldn't be surprising that most people tend to favor the features of the first game they really enjoyed.
But what's good for [Billy Joe Bob] may not be good for the [MMO Genre]. And if too many Billys are still living in the last century, the genre may find it difficult to evolve.
Your taste in music tends to be set by the first music you buy for yourself.
It shouldn't be surprising that most people tend to favor the features of the first game they really enjoyed.
But what's good for [Billy Joe Bob] may not be good for the [MMO Genre]. And if too many Billys are still living in the last century, the genre may find it difficult to evolve.
I just had to comment on how well your forum handle and avatar match your comment
Comments
I agree with a lot you said here. WOW was an alive world because players wanted to be out into it. They didnt start making the game a gear treadmill until really WOTLK when they tried their hardest to make raiding for everyone. Thing is Raiding is not for everyone and thats what the ME ME ME players wanted and it caused WOW to be what it is today. A casual player like yourself was happy in Blues, I was happy in T1 in Vanilla and Kara Plus ZA gear in BC. The content was engaging and you WANTED to play. Yea I have less time now than I did years ago. BUT that does not mean LFG in its current designed is needed nor LFR is needed.
What they really needed was like FFXIV has in Party Finder, or the new group finder that WOW has. They also needed to keep servers locked for new players to create characters there OR move characters there. Blizzard needed to stick to their guns because they could have had a real good balance of players in WOW. But they tried to cater to everyone and thats why people are leaving. Yes its a 10 year old game, but like you said if they stuck to their code game people would have never left.
Top 10 reasons I left WOW
#1 AOE feast instances - I love TBC and Vanilla instances. They required teamwork plus some tactics to do. They were not mosh pit events. Yes there could be work done here.
#2 LFG - This killed the community period. Yes low pop servers sucked to be on but there should NEVER have been low pop servers. Blizzard spun up too many servers too fast.
#3 LFR Just like number 2 only this made the raider that had a casual schedule quit casual schedule raiding guilds that were progressing at an acceptable speed to the group, BUT it was faster to do /follow X player and go AFK content
#4 One class was exactly like the other. Yes I loved having a Pali who was weak with AOE heals, I loved Warriors who were great MTs and shitty OTs that couldnt hold aggro on more than 2 or 3 targets yet Palis had no issue. I hate that we cannot have classes that have strengths and weaknesses because some mage is bitching that a Rogue shuck up be hind him and mopped the floor which is ass. I am sorry, its an RPG not a MOBA
#5 No need for CC anymore. Yes it was a bit over used in Vanilla and TBC but since TBC CC is not even a useful ability for anything anymore.
#6 The push to get everyone raiding. Not everyone wants to raid and yes making Dungeon content where players could get Blues that are nearly but not as good as Raid gear is not a problem expect for people who feel entitled. Hell now some of them dont want to run LFR and just want a piece or two mailed to them
#7 Tanking became more of a game of rotations and keeping up cool-downs instead of using big powerful cool downs at key times as well as more of a DPS game. You no longer need to worry about aggro and coordinate big time DPS.
#8 healing also became more of a game of rotations and HPS than timing heals and knowing who is going to take damage when
#9 The Raid instance treadmill. Going from Normal to Heroic to Mythic in all the same raid. It gets fucking boring. Why cant we have 10 man raid instances be like ZA, ZG, AQ20, Kara and then have 20 man raid instances be like MC, or Gruuls, SCC. Have each their own path with different loot tables. Tier 1 and Tier 1.5 if that makes better sense.
#10 Too few instances from TBCs and on. Today I gotten bored of instances because they are easy and its always the same 5 to 8. 15+ is the key number because honestly you do the same instance too many times in a short period of time and you get bored.
Like, today I finally hit 700 Jewelcrafting skill after weeks of creating Taladarite Crystals both using the profession abilities to make them, and in the Garrison. Then used those crystals, plus other materials I had farmed up (both in the open world, and in the Garrison mine) to craft my 3rd craftable epic for my offspec, and the +10 boost got me to 700.
Earlier this week, I hit 700 Fishing through a combination of the fishing daily quest, and grinding out catches for Cooking ingredients.
I've still got 2-3 more digsites to hit up before I will get to 700 Archaeology, and then 700 First Aid and Cooking is going to take a LOT of fishing and mob farming for the mats.
Meanwhile, I'm stockpiling Apyxsis Crystals (20k) to upgrade my 650 Baleful 2H (Rare) to 695 epic.
I just finished the first 2 phases of the Legendary Ring questline, so I'm currently on the 3rd phase doing my weekly Highmaul Raid LFR as well as some Shipyard missions to get the Ogre stones.
Also trying to level up more Followers to 100, start getting them armor and weapon sets, and all the while trying to maintain a healthy level of Garrison Resources and Oil to keep the mission flow going.
On top of THAT, trying to do my Tanaan Jungle quests and dailies, looking for more Baleful gear to supplement the LFR drops.
And once all of THAT is done and or made good progress on, I still need to hit up the Hellfire Citadel or whatever raid (the newer one) see what that is about.
Oh, and I want to go back and see how much of the Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria Raids I can solo for transmog gear.
Still feels like quite the world, lots to do, lots of group/public stuff, and yeah everything would be easier if I were more social and in a Guild, but I like how I can do my own thing and continue to progress.
Problem is the game caters to people like you who dont care about playing with other people. That is why MMOs are trash now. Too focused on the SOLO game play and players who don't want to make friends.
If people want to make massive amounts of money games is not the place for that.
WoD? The selfie - we shouldn't have called it a patch - after 4 months; 6.2 after 8 months; over and out.
Vanilla stayed "fresh" for much longer as a result.
Ok... are we talking about the past or the now.... Because i have no problem really understanding how you BACK IN THE DAY enjoyed Vanilla WoW... But that was 10 years ago. What i can not understand are the people who today still holds vanilla WoW as the "best". After all compared to other games the social options in WoW was a joke... Heck even CoH kicked it´s arse in that regard, not to mention SWG. And if we look at it contained within the game it self You are forgiving a massive amount of poor designs just because you could sit around at a stone... trading campfire stories and hoping for that last party member to wander by.
Do you know why modern MMO´s shy away from the sort of forced grouping that WoW used to have... .. .
(also it is worth noting that WoW was accused of being way to casual with how it did grouping.. =P )
Because not even Blizzard with their hundreds of thousands of concurrent users could provide a good leveling experience once the peak was passed. Especially not on small servers like the one i played on (the venerable and tiny Kilrogg EU) So yes socialisation is good but only if you can back it up with support systems that actually let your paying customers play your game.
You said it your self... No players, no MMO.
In fact one of the best inventions put in to WoW when it came to social interactions was the LFG tool. Seeing how it freed you from the world hubs and the constant begging for groups that was the major cities. But people treated it like the plague because it took away having to hike out to a meeting stone... Solid logic.
Simply put the sort of system that keept the social side of vanilla WoW going can not be kept up, because the people who kept it going went away. They are now gone replaced by the X-Box generation who in turn will be replaced by the pad-natives.
We my friend, we are now the dinosaurs.
"but were is the fun in between?"
Because it is sooooo fun to have your entire raid evening destroyed by a bunch of alpha-male wannabees...? That sort of thinking is the very reason i never set a foot on a PvP server any more...
This have been a good conversation
Does that make it more casual?
Yeah, but you still need to do the EXACT same thing today to do higher end dungeons (Mythic) and raids (everything but LFR) and all of the group-based quests and dailies/weeklies etc....
Find and build your own groups, social networks, friends lists, etc.
So exactly what has changed?
More options for people now, more options and more balance for solo vs. group play, which is exactly what you said you wanted/the game had and needs, but yet it DOES.
See that's the thing.
At least with WoW, anyway, that all of that stuff from TBC/Vanilla/Wrath before LFG and the LFR in Cata...
All of that stuff is STILL in the game, and needed, if you want to do that level of content.
And you know what? You get better rewards for doing that level of content - for making that commitment.
SO, again, what is the problem? What is missing?
I'm confused.
And yet all of the "old" ways and things are still in the game pretty much exactly the same...
So if I understand this correctly, because the tools even exist to make life easier, and/or find people to play with automatically, at lower difficulties, it somehow takes away from your ability to ignore said tools, form your own communities and groups, and tackle challenging content?
I mean, I know tons of people that have never done LFR, and don't use the LFG tool to find dungeons, yet they are in big guilds and raid and do difficult dungeons etc. all of the time.
I agree, this is true and not just with mmo's. On the flipside if I was to make a product and it sold like crazy hotcakes. Then made changes to this product good or bad but it still sold just as good, even better. In a companies eyes you're giving people what they want.
Take dailies same content done over with a 24hr clock. I swear I would slap the dev who made this up. The most laziest form of content developed, cause it wasn't lol. Yet people love it and eat it up. Now we have time walking dungeons same crap we paid for xpacs ago, lazy lazy lazy devs. My point is unless we as consumers stop eating this up it will continue.
And yet all of the "old" ways and things are still in the game pretty much exactly the same...
So if I understand this correctly, because the tools even exist to make life easier, and/or find people to play with automatically, at lower difficulties, it somehow takes away from your ability to ignore said tools, form your own communities and groups, and tackle challenging content?
I mean, I know tons of people that have never done LFR, and don't use the LFG tool to find dungeons, yet they are in big guilds and raid and do difficult dungeons etc. all of the time.
And you could ALWAYS solo your way to the level cap in WoW. Or you could ALWAYS grind your way to the level cap in dungeons.
So, again, what has changed? Because you have options, more options now, there are... less options? And it sucks because of the new options, even though the old options haven't changed?
Your argument is very, very weak.
People use the nostalgia to shutdown the conversation. Essentially saying it isn't real.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
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Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
With all due respect the game is not the same, it's a very different game today. In the past a dungeon was a two hour affair, it was much more difficult and challenging, I enjoyed that. I enjoyed the lengthy leveling game. Its very much a different game today and that's ok. It's just not for me anymore and for me that's a shame because I really loved the game at one time.
I can't even follow a storyline in the game without totally out-leveling it.
It's very much a different game than it was.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Exactly.
It was a slow game with almost no end-game options. If released today, few would even care.
But isn't that exactly what the old school MMORPGs were built for?
I'm good with that.
It also avoided what I can't stand about more modern MMOs, that being hub based instance grinding.
And no other options? By 2004 there were a lot of different quality options when it came to MMORPGs. The genre was definitely not in the state of stagnation it has been in for so long, but to say "there was not other options" is nuts.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
It certainly would not make me so ecstatic as the OP just for things most MMOs do all the time- like gear or levels that actually mean something.
If it was released today I sure as hell wouldn't play it. I'm looking for basically anything BUT WoW and WoW-clones, vanilla or not.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Guess you had to be there.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The point is not if a more Social game was more fun to play than the current lot, the issue is how do you solve the problems that a game depending so much on players interaction might have when population on a particular server is not so healthy.
Instead of building on the Social mechanic foundation and try to correct these inherited flaws this system brings with it, Blizzard and the rest of the industry chose the lazy way, they created the so called Themepark.
And it is called Themepark for a reason, people pick and choose what they like and ignore the rest the game has to offer and still have some fun, like in a real Thempark where you can ride on the Rollercoaster the whole day and ignore the other 99 amusement rides.
So we went from a game where people pulled together to achieve a common goal, to a game where people play alone the bit of the game they like with very little interest in taking part in other activities with other players.
Now that the market is saturated with Themeparks is the right time for developers to try something different.
Why not looking back at what made Old Schoool MMO so addictive for many of us and try to bring them up to modern standards fixing those flaws that made them less appealing to players and therefore businesses?
We have already hundreds of Themeparks, do we really need more?
It shouldn't be surprising that most people tend to favor the features of the first game they really enjoyed.
But what's good for [Billy Joe Bob] may not be good for the [MMO Genre]. And if too many Billys are still living in the last century, the genre may find it difficult to evolve.
Stasis is never good for an industry.
All in good fun
cheers
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee