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
Yup, agreed! I sure miss all the broken skills and talents, horrible lag and server crashes, constant rollbacks, spending days just grinding mobs in a tiny area over and over and over and over again because there was no content, not finding quest objectives because the description was wrong, the even more mindless gear grind and attunements required to raid, spamming LFG for two hours because you need to run a dungeon, DKP systems, ninja looters, and so many more wonderful things!
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
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?"
You Prefer it because you never belong playing WOW in the first place. I can tell you that YOU are the reason you had problems in BRD. What it long? Yes it was. How many times did I do it in the 2 years, maybe 40+ times. Did I ever do it all in 1 run? Fuck no I knew it was a long ass run so my friends and I only did the parts that we needed, the game was not designed for people like you with ADD that cannot handle dedicated game play. Today this is EXACTLY why we have MMOs in the toliet and EXACTLY why we will never see a good game again. We have Kickstarters today which are going back to mechanics that sucked like Permadeath, and XP losses when you die, or even corpse runs or else you loose your gear. Its because of YOU these retarded mechanics are coming back. I played with hundreds of people I had a huge social network of people on my server for 40 man raids, 20 man raids and yes I will AGREE that getting that many people was a PAIN. BUT thats it, It could have been better with 10/20 man raids because it wouldnt have taken an ASS hole like myself to raid lead.
You bitch about having problems finding groups yet you FAIL to understand the simple rule of MMOS. SOCIAL CIRCLES MATTER and AUTOMATED GROUP FINDER TOOLS KILLED THAT. If you cannot or are not willing to make friends, GO PLAY A SINGLE PLAYER GAME. Because you wouldnt we have complete crap today for MMOS, we have to go to P2W because they are cheap on the content, so boring and mind numbingly easy because people like you wanted it. Well guess what that got us? Yep a bunch of CEOs and Marketing managers running the game to get people like you to part with your hard earned money for a pile of shit for a game. You should not be in an MMO if you are not going to work at playing with other people. Period end of story as much as you want to bitch about time, so do I. But guess what the future brings. Instead of MMOs with Depth we get MMOs that are either going to be nothing more than MOBAS OR Kickstarters that will be dead servers with moronic gimmicks like Permadeath but if you give us another $10s you can start your character over shit. Remember IS PEOPLE LIKE YOU THAT CAUSED IT.
Was Vanilla/TBC perfect? No. But it beats anything on the market with the release of WOTLK and on. Period you have 0 facts to back it that WOW today is better than the first 4 years. Just today in my FFXIV FC we talked about how Casuals who never belonged in MMOs has hurt this industry. ALL of us never touched Naxx 1.0, or Sunwell. Yet we loved ever bit of the content, the only consistent grip about the first 4 years of WOW is raids were a little too large, they could have done a little better tuning on CC in dungeons to the point you didnt need more than 3 at most BUT you would still need CC, and had a much better Group Finder tool that was like FFXIVs Party Tool or todays WOW Group Finder tool. You never needed LFD/LFR.
the OP answers his/her own question. Nostalgia. That's why anybody likes an old game. If WoW released today with it's vanilla content it would be shat on and everyone would hate it. It wasn't that good. It was just all there was.
Yea thats what you think. Thats why WOW is dying. Yes it will go up for the next Xpac but you know what it will be under 5 Million if not 4 Million about 6 to 9 months into the next Xpac. I called WOW being under 6 Million with WOD. Why? Because I played the beta and its the same bitchy players that dont want to lift a finger in the game for anything. Now they are bitching just to have gear mailed to them. Why? Because people like you think there is no room for a Vanillia LIKE MMO. Do we need large raids 21+ members NO. Do we need LFG tools? NO. Do we need instances that are like WOD where you are just mashing buttons as fast as possible? NO. Do we need Vanilla WOW or WildStar like Attunements? NOPE.
So what do people who want Vanilla or TBC WOW really want? Dungeons that are not like the new Legion dungeon in this video. Trash is just useless today, we should be CCing 2 to 3 mobs like In Vanilla which require a bit of TEAMWORK. Today its, CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK as fast as you possibly can. No real thought to the content.
We want Separate Content between 10 and 20 man raids NOT LFR RAID 1, NORMAL RAID 1, HEROIC RAID 1, MYTHIC RAID 1. Thats Boring as hell and is just designed to fail. you dont believe so then why is WOW Bleeding Subs? Why cant we have for example ZG, AQ, ZA, Kara all 10 man and MC, NAXX, SoO, 20? Why do we need to have 4 versions of the same raid. Again its boring and pointless.
We also want more than 8 Dungeons. I am thinking like 16 normal for an expansion (This could be LFD but should still require at least 1 to 2 CCs for trash O and trash packs should be a lot fewer. More like a training dungeon) and 16 Heroics like TBC heroics with CC is a must BUT not as Hard as TBC was because some of the dungeons were hard. Maybe like Vanilla Dungeons were. And NO LFD tool here. If you want to use this as a gearing path then great find friends
I am Tired of you people not understanding what people are saying when they say they miss Vanilla and TBC WOW and thinking that was a terrible time. It was only Terrible for you because you refused to take responsibility for your own game time. I had good and bad times in this 4 year time frame. However its 100 times better than any time I had since WOTLK or and other game I played. The fact still remains that WOW is dying because people like you 2 that usher in players that want to play games like Farmville or Dragon Age and NOT an MMO. Because of that we have a SHITTY MMO future ahead of us at least for the next 2 to 3 years if not more.
You know, for someone who's on the other end of the argument, you keep telling me I'm partially the cause of all these issues that YOU hate in MMO's, as if that's somehow meant to be insulting. If anything, I'm going take that as a compliment. lol
It is still nostalgia... It does not have to a bad thing but it is still nostalgia.
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.
No its not still nostalgia, but I guess its nice to see you've moved onto simpler less demanding and mentally challenging game scenarios that play out for you and have adapted nicely, it appears.
I prefer games where choice matters, you can make bad choices, you cant do everything yourself, trade channels are necessary, grouping is necessary and finding your OWN group is part of the process.
The economy is driven by player to player transactions. Traveling and the hazards of traveling were part of the game. You have to ask the community how to do some things and where to find things, there are no bread crumbs, just mystery and the unknown. Unless your in an end game guild working your ass off your going to have greens a couple of blues but you wont have an epic. On and on and on.
What we have today is a pre- assembled puzzle that players think they assembled themselves.
I love reading these post though, and the responses.
What server are you guys playing on? Assuming it's a emu. 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.
You can't really ask this question here.....nor can it be answered. (TOS thing) But if you read what someone posted on this page (assuming it doesn't get modded), google will provide you your answer.
There is a really good vanilla server which is not the one you mentioned. It literally has thousands of players on, probably more populated than the official vanilla wow servers from 10 years ago. Google and you will find it, or check one or two posts above you, someone mentioned it it starts with N
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
The movie industry: “The earliest days of film were so much better; we really had fun and such a sense of adventure. We really had to work at understanding what was going on and those that couldn’t read the subtitles were just bad. We want special theaters that play only silent films (Vanilla), those were so awesome and we miss them so much. For those that want black and white “talkies” (BC) we can maybe have some that do those too, but no further. Technicolor (WotLK) is where the studios went wrong and this fancy Bullet-Time fx (Cata) junk is just taking the whole thing in the wrong direction…Blizz, fix it now! Give us our silent films back!”
The auto industry: We want our Model-T’s back (Vanilla)… Henry Ford’s stuff was so awesome (blah, blah)…We could support maybe the Mustang (BC), but no further (blah, blah)… Datsun’s 280Z (WotLK) is where it all went wrong (blah, blah)…Chrysler Minivans (Cata) are just too bad to deal with (blah, blah)…
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
Because it was new, everyone was a kid, and there was no other options
Exactly. It was a slow game with almost no end-game options. If released today, few would even care.
If it released today it still would be better than 90% of the crap games currently out there, including its current incarnation. Guess you had to be there.
WoW a good/solid game - absolutely; better than many others - absolutely.
If it released today though with a subscription and the paucity of updates that it now has - few would care a few months after launch
It is still nostalgia... It does not have to a bad thing but it is still nostalgia.
No its not still nostalgia, but I guess its nice to see you've moved onto simpler less demanding and mentally challenging game scenarios that play out for you and have adapted nicely, it appears.
I prefer games where choice matters, you can make bad choices, you cant do everything yourself, trade channels are necessary, grouping is necessary and finding your OWN group is part of the process.
The economy is driven by player to player transactions. Traveling and the hazards of traveling were part of the game. You have to ask the community how to do some things and where to find things, there are no bread crumbs, just mystery and the unknown. Unless your in an end game guild working your ass off your going to have greens a couple of blues but you wont have an epic. On and on and on.
What we have today is a pre- assembled puzzle that players think they assembled themselves.
I love reading these post though, and the responses.
So... nostalgia...?
Because most of that is still there in one form or another. You still have the trade chat that is usefull to find the rare materials and the best deals... You still have the need for a group to take on the tougher mobs (or you can just wait and outlevel them... but that was always a option) and you still need to find your own groups.. heck now a days more so than ever.. if you want quality people to run content with.
The traveling in both mists and warlords is done by foot or by taxi all the way up to max level. Only after you reach that can you actually get flying. So there was still a lot of exploration and danger.
I agree it is much easier to get quests done today as a questing UI is built in... But i also remember that it was one of the most complained about things in early WoW´s history... So while you liked wandering aimless for hours, most did not.
And trust me... To get the best gear in the game... You still need a really serious guild backing you up. Sure they have four levels of purple these days... But that does not say that all purples are equal.
Also the storytelling in the game is... well... eons ahead of what it was in vanilla. Now you are actually told a story as you play the game... Not just read a story told through quest text.
The thing is.. and here is where we differ you and i... I do not accept poor game design just because that is what i grew up with. I do not think that one should hold on to broken mechanics just because having mastered them give me a bigger e-peen.
Now correct me if i am wrong...
But do you really want the time back when most classes where type-casted in to one role (or in the case of the druid... one spell).
Where a unlucky night landed you stepping away from the game because you had to have a group to progress.
Where a social misstep pretty much meant re-rolling on a new server.
Where guild drama could paralyze an entire server.
Because if you do... I feel really sorry for you and i wonder what the heck went wrong in your life. Because that is pretty sad.
The movie industry: “The earliest days of film were so much better; we really had fun and such a sense of adventure. We really had to work at understanding what was going on and those that couldn’t read the subtitles were just bad. We want special theaters that play only silent films (Vanilla), those were so awesome and we miss them so much. For those that want black and white “talkies” (BC) we can maybe have some that do those too, but no further. Technicolor (WotLK) is where the studios went wrong and this fancy Bullet-Time fx (Cata) junk is just taking the whole thing in the wrong direction…Blizz, fix it now! Give us our silent films back!”
The auto industry: We want our Model-T’s back (Vanilla)… Henry Ford’s stuff was so awesome (blah, blah)…We could support maybe the Mustang (BC), but no further (blah, blah)… Datsun’s 280Z (WotLK) is where it all went wrong (blah, blah)…Chrysler Minivans (Cata) are just too bad to deal with (blah, blah)…
Trust me. when every car is auto there will be people wanting to drive a car by them self. And im one of them. Now driving a car is kinda like a game. its awesome to be able to get into a car and it drives you home by it self. But would you get into a auto drive car because you love to drive cars.
The movie industry: “The earliest days of film were so much better; we really had fun and such a sense of adventure. We really had to work at understanding what was going on and those that couldn’t read the subtitles were just bad. We want special theaters that play only silent films (Vanilla), those were so awesome and we miss them so much. For those that want black and white “talkies” (BC) we can maybe have some that do those too, but no further. Technicolor (WotLK) is where the studios went wrong and this fancy Bullet-Time fx (Cata) junk is just taking the whole thing in the wrong direction…Blizz, fix it now! Give us our silent films back!”
The auto industry: We want our Model-T’s back (Vanilla)… Henry Ford’s stuff was so awesome (blah, blah)…We could support maybe the Mustang (BC), but no further (blah, blah)… Datsun’s 280Z (WotLK) is where it all went wrong (blah, blah)…Chrysler Minivans (Cata) are just too bad to deal with (blah, blah)…
Trust me. when every car is auto there will be people wanting to drive a car by them self. And im one of them. Now driving a car is kinda like a game. its awesome to be able to get into a car and it drives you home by it self. But would you get into a auto drive car because you love to drive cars.
There will probably come a time when all cars are automated, and to drive one yourself you will probably have to go to a designated track/area to do so, it may even be illegal to try to drive a car without the automated systems in place, and while i do enjoy driving, truth is, most accidents are human error related, or the driver not having the skill to avoid having an accident, if removing humans from the equation makes the roads safer for everyone, then so be it. Life is understanding wanting something, is not the same as needing it.
Being a Vanilla WoW player, my views are a bit different to yours. You mention all the cool things you could do and the prestige that went with it. Granted, that was the case. But, what made the game great was the sense of community. Now days, people are scared to talk to one another and only have a self-invested interest to their progress and enjoyment.
Being a Night Elf, I would spend hours each day duelling outside of Iron Forge, or capital city raiding, or attacking Cross Roads or Defending South Shore. We would chat and converse as we had the Lock summon people to the dungeons. We took our time with encounters, they required communication, does the rogue have improved sap for example? What will be the Cc targets?
Another example is that you would go to UBRS to get the fire buff of that controlled minion to better perform in Molten Core. You spent hours in there, slowly edging forward. The gear jumps weren't massive either, they were more sideways steps, you went for the resist gear, the fire resist for MC the nature resist for AQ etc.
What made the game great was always the people. The game could pump in so much content into the game, make it as hard as you could fathom but if the community isn't there then people leave after they've done their bits. This is where WoW is now, each xpac is a means for people just to get their characters up to speed, then they bugger off until the next update.
Bliz knows that people have varying skill levels and that making things easier makes the entry gate better and they get more money. But if they cared about the product as much as they did as proft they could of really maintained the community interaction as they upgraded. Would of taken them a bit longer to get where they are... but green wins in the day and that was not a FTH reference.
Three reason: 1 - Warcraft RTS. It was immensely popular, so making another game based on the lore was an easy sell. 2 - Timing. Around that time, MMOs were still fairly niche-y, ready for a breakout. 3 - Copying. Why risk failure when you can just copy the successes of others? Innovation is for chumps.
Three reason: 1 - Warcraft RTS. It was immensely popular, so making another game based on the lore was an easy sell. 2 - Timing. Around that time, MMOs were still fairly niche-y, ready for a breakout. 3 - Copying. Why risk failure when you can just copy the successes of others? Innovation is for chumps.
Also it was the easiest game on the block. Say what you will but the games that existed in the time of WoW were a lot harder. There is nothing hardcore about wow. Never was.
Because it was new, everyone was a kid, and there was no other options
Exactly.
It was a slow game with almost no end-game options. If released today, few would even care.
If it released today it still would be better than 90% of the crap games currently out there, including its current incarnation.
Guess you had to be there.
I was there.
One of the major reasons why newer MMOs struggle, is their lack of end game options at release. And most of these have more than Vanilla WoW had. Vanilla end game was a few battlegrounds, a couple of dungeons, and a few raids that less than a VERY small minority did (common estimate was that less than 1% did raids).
Some of you would undoubtly start playing again if a Vanilla server was offered. I doubt many of you would actually stay for long after reaching lvl 60. I suspect Blizzard shares that point of view, because if they believed there was a good market option here, classic servers would have opened long ago.
I'm a big lover of Vanilla/TBC as well. WotLK turned me off the game and now I probably don't have the time to play it anyway so it was probably for the best.
The reason I liked it though hasn't been touched on much in this thread (at least through skimming it). I wasn't really one for the journey. I raced to 60 as quick as I could and I think it took me 13 days of game time, which wasn't bad back in the day. I never read the quests and I spent many an hour grinding to avoid zones if possible.
Where the game shined for me was end-game, Onyxia attunements, UBRS/LBRS runs, server firsts. I was lucky enough to be in a progression guild that didn't take itself serious, so while we rarely got servers firsts, we would get there 2-3 weeks later which was still better than 90% of the server.
The epicness of the dungeons has surely been lost. Someone mentioned earlier that they found BRD boring. I found exploring it to be probably my best time in WoW. I loved how you came in with varying objectives and the place was so big that you worked out shortcuts to get to the bit you wanted. Then there were also rare bosses, so occasionally you'd come across one of those and get some gimmicky item. Brilliant!
There was something about working together and getting good loot. I remember I'd be standing around in the bank and someone would say "Holy shit! Where'd you get all your purples?" I'd be like, "Molten Core" and you'd think I'd told them I was the 2nd coming of christ. Then the devs went down this track of making content for everyone to see. While I understood the concept of it the game was up to something like 11M players before they did that. While I was rolling through AQ40 and Nax, others were getting their groove on in ZG and Molten core. If you couldn't organize 40 man raids there was still ZG and AQ20. Everyone had something to aspire to. Sure some people felt like they were missing out, but in the end almost no-one saw all the content. Moist of the whingers were just jealous.
I also think that Youtube has kind of wrecked it now as well. One of the best things about content back then was figuring it out for yourself. We debated for hours on the best methods for tanking Onyxia or clearing the adds of Ragnaros. Now you just get up to a new boss and go watch some semi-professional nerds tell you how to do it. /snore.
You know most people never enjoyed BRD in the early day as they where still leveling their toons.. and when they finally got to play it, overgeared raiders made the content feel like it was allready easy...
I have been playing WoW again, for a few months now, playing it with a totally different mindset shows that there is so much good content (i do read every quest) while the true endgame is still exclusive...
To be honest modern days WoW still leads the pack for a reason.. It adapted. An 11 year old game with ove 5M players is still considered a miracle in my eyes.... They evolved the game into something that is still fun.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I recently watched my brother play Vanilla WoW on a private server and it brought back some really good memories. I'm actually tempted to go back and play it but I think the nostalgia factor would only last for so long and I'd be bored with it after a while. But there are some things I miss about vanilla WoW that I wish were still present in the game today and even in other MMO's. Here's a few of them:
1) Gear & Gold - I remember the first time getting a green in WoW, then the excitement when my first blue dropped and then the damn near orgasm when I got a purple in Un'Goro Crater from those swamp creatures. Finding rare gear meant something back then....it wasn't handed to you like in today's games. They hand out epics(purples) left and right in WoW and you really don't care when a blue or purple drops in the game world. It usually ends up being vendored or dusted.
It's pretty much the same with gold. It was a challenge to make money and have enough for skills, your mount, and sometimes gear upgrades. You had to get creative and either make money from crafting, selling resources on the AH or just flat out grind.
2) Class builds/skills - More and more I see games removing choice from the players. The devs dictate to the player how they should play their class. In vanilla WoW I could play a combat rogue and still be different from other combat rogues depending on which weapon I specialized in. Not everyone chose the same path and it gave players the freedom of choice and how they wanted to play their class. Now it's all about making things easier for the players and removing anything that may require them to think.
3) Challenge - There were quite a few times I died in WoW and it forced me to either re-think my strategy or find others to help me. I mean dungeons you couldn't complete solo but there were encounters I'd come across in the world that were difficult and required me to seek help from others. Aside from high end raid content, MMO's today aren't challenging. Everything is made so that its easy for the player to level and complete 90% of the content solo. This is probably my biggest problem with MMO's today....why are we taking away things that require us to group and make it easier for players to solo content? This is an MMO, not a single player RPG, it make absolutely no sense to me.
Kyleran said: Evolution is fine if we are really moving forward, but I question that making everything more simple and casual is moving the genre forward, in fact MMORPGs appear to have almost died off.
"The style of MMORPG I enjoyed has almost died off."
Yes, the past is the past. You, personally, may be marginalized by the evolution, because it's in a direction you don't like.
But MOBAs are booming, PVP is arguably far better than it's ever been.
And all of those "zomg it's not an mmo" titles that everyone screams about are raking in the cash.
They don't make Model A's any more. If you define cars as "just like Model A's," then automobiles died off in 1931.
But it would be foolish to argue that the auto industry is dead.
Gaming, as a whole, is vastly different from 1985. But the gaming industry is still growing, even if no one makes 8-bit games any more. No one makes side-scrolling shooters or Mortal Kombat clones or Asteroids ripoffs. Woe is me.
I miss arcade games, but when arcades went away, I moved on. Saved a lot of quarters, that did.
while World of Warcraft was an epic game, it was the right timing that turned it into a huge success. here are the examples of the perfect timing it had:
1. there was no big MMORPG with a famous IP before World of Warcraft. they all paved the path but didn't have the right bait and back then the genre was a niche so a real bait was a necessity. World of Warcraft had the IP appeal so for most people, it was their first MMORPG. 2. it came after Warcraft 3, one of the best RTS games of all time.for many Warcraft 3 is their first warcraft game. it wouldn't work as well if they released WoW after Warcraft 2. 3. it came closely after Everquest 2, giving it not much room to breathe. 4. back in 2004 people didn't think about whether a game is p2p or not or whether it's hardcore or casual. most just rolled with anything they could play and were thankful that it exists as long as it was good.
so, having the IP advantage, lead to attracting a whole new crowd that never played other MMORPGs, which gave them even a bigger advantage and so, began the final years of good old Blizzard. RiP 1991-2011 and i am being generous.
my top MMOs: UO,DAOC,WoW,GW2
most of my posts are just my opinions they are not facts,it is the same for you too.
Because it was new, everyone was a kid, and there was no other options
Exactly. It was a slow game with almost no end-game options. If released today, few would even care.
If it released today it still would be better than 90% of the crap games currently out there, including its current incarnation. Guess you had to be there.
WoW a good/solid game - absolutely; better than many others - absolutely.
If it released today though with a subscription and the paucity of updates that it now has - few would care a few months after launch
WoW had tons of updates back in the vanilla days. There was a big major patch every 2-3 months. So I would't call that few updates. Actually running out of content is one of the things you never had to worry about in vanilla. I never ran out of things to do. Only way that could happen if you were a no lifer who played 30-40+ a week.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
WoW a good/solid game - absolutely; better than many others - absolutely.
If it released today though with a subscription and the paucity of updates that it now has - few would care a few months after launch
WoW had tons of updates back in the vanilla days. There was a big major patch every 2-3 months. So I would't call that few updates. Actually running out of content is one of the things you never had to worry about in vanilla. I never ran out of things to do. Only way that could happen if you were a no lifer who played 30-40+ a week
To repeat what I said earlier in this thread Blizzard released a major content update every 2 months for 2 years (12 patches) which I believe helped keep it fresh. We agree.
If vanilla launched today though and was followed by one content patch after 7 months and then announced that there would be no more planned for over a year - Blizzard themselves said 5.1 shouldn't have been called a patch - I think WoW would have seen the "typical" post launch population drop.
And for anyone who parrots the line "they don't have the resource, working on WoD" they produced BC at the same time as making the 12 patches. It comes down to money. Back then subscription revenue (simplistically) paid for resource to create patches whilst the box price covered the cost of BC. Not the case today.
I've left WOW more times than I can actually recall and am not currently subscribed, yet there are certain things that tug at me even after all these years.
I have seen on this site it mentioned many many times how WOW brought nothing new to the table, only adding polish to others ideas. I won't debate that but not in agreement with that sentiment at all.
Every time I hear some of the soundtracks that I favored, it calls to me. It was first class and added to the immersion and I never grew bored with it.
WOW is the only game that I could roll characters over and over, going through that same early content and finding it ..........fun..........time and time again.
I have yet to experience another MMO that has the fluidity of movement and precision that connected you so perfectly with your character.
The world of Vanilla Azeroth was well balanced with places populated with danger as well as a rich environment without danger, where exploration, role-play, and whatever one could imagine could be implemented. The second point is something I always miss in games that are wall to wall mobs with nary a particule where one could find relaxation.
I agree wholeheartedly with Kyleran, if it released today it would be better than 90% of anything out there including itself.
There are things I miss I suppose that no other game has been able to wholly fill.
Would I give a go to a Blizz controlled Vanilla server?
Ayup no doubt.
It has about as good of a chance happening as Turbine redoing AC right
I miss it a lot , I think vanilla servers would be great since a lot of players want them but for me I think it just wouldn't be the same vanilla wow without the vanilla community just wouldn't be the same these new wow kids would ruin it for me tbh
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"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
Oh wait, no I don't.
No, I really, really don't.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
I love old AV. Turning into a 15 minute run stank.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
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?"
No its not still nostalgia, but I guess its nice to see you've moved onto simpler less demanding and mentally challenging game scenarios that play out for you and have adapted nicely, it appears.
I prefer games where choice matters, you can make bad choices, you cant do everything yourself, trade channels are necessary, grouping is necessary and finding your OWN group is part of the process.
The economy is driven by player to player transactions. Traveling and the hazards of traveling were part of the game. You have to ask the community how to do some things and where to find things, there are no bread crumbs, just mystery and the unknown. Unless your in an end game guild working your ass off your going to have greens a couple of blues but you wont have an epic. On and on and on.
What we have today is a pre- assembled puzzle that players think they assembled themselves.
I love reading these post though, and the responses.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20042845138#3
I will quote a few analogy he wrote :
The movie industry:
“The earliest days of film were so much better; we really had fun and such a sense of adventure. We really had to work at understanding what was going on and those that couldn’t read the subtitles were just bad. We want special theaters that play only silent films (Vanilla), those were so awesome and we miss them so much. For those that want black and white “talkies” (BC) we can maybe have some that do those too, but no further. Technicolor (WotLK) is where the studios went wrong and this fancy Bullet-Time fx (Cata) junk is just taking the whole thing in the wrong direction…Blizz, fix it now! Give us our silent films back!”
The auto industry:
We want our Model-T’s back (Vanilla)… Henry Ford’s stuff was so awesome (blah, blah)…We could support maybe the Mustang (BC), but no further (blah, blah)… Datsun’s 280Z (WotLK) is where it all went wrong (blah, blah)…Chrysler Minivans (Cata) are just too bad to deal with (blah, blah)…
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
If it released today though with a subscription and the paucity of updates that it now has - few would care a few months after launch
So... nostalgia...?
Because most of that is still there in one form or another. You still have the trade chat that is usefull to find the rare materials and the best deals... You still have the need for a group to take on the tougher mobs (or you can just wait and outlevel them... but that was always a option) and you still need to find your own groups.. heck now a days more so than ever.. if you want quality people to run content with.
The traveling in both mists and warlords is done by foot or by taxi all the way up to max level. Only after you reach that can you actually get flying. So there was still a lot of exploration and danger.
I agree it is much easier to get quests done today as a questing UI is built in... But i also remember that it was one of the most complained about things in early WoW´s history... So while you liked wandering aimless for hours, most did not.
And trust me... To get the best gear in the game... You still need a really serious guild backing you up. Sure they have four levels of purple these days... But that does not say that all purples are equal.
Also the storytelling in the game is... well... eons ahead of what it was in vanilla. Now you are actually told a story as you play the game... Not just read a story told through quest text.
The thing is.. and here is where we differ you and i... I do not accept poor game design just because that is what i grew up with. I do not think that one should hold on to broken mechanics just because having mastered them give me a bigger e-peen.
Now correct me if i am wrong...
But do you really want the time back when most classes where type-casted in to one role (or in the case of the druid... one spell).
Where a unlucky night landed you stepping away from the game because you had to have a group to progress.
Where a social misstep pretty much meant re-rolling on a new server.
Where guild drama could paralyze an entire server.
Because if you do... I feel really sorry for you and i wonder what the heck went wrong in your life. Because that is pretty sad.
This have been a good conversation
And im one of them. Now driving a car is kinda like a game.
its awesome to be able to get into a car and it drives you home by it self.
But would you get into a auto drive car because you love to drive cars.
Being a Night Elf, I would spend hours each day duelling outside of Iron Forge, or capital city raiding, or attacking Cross Roads or Defending South Shore. We would chat and converse as we had the Lock summon people to the dungeons. We took our time with encounters, they required communication, does the rogue have improved sap for example? What will be the Cc targets?
Another example is that you would go to UBRS to get the fire buff of that controlled minion to better perform in Molten Core. You spent hours in there, slowly edging forward. The gear jumps weren't massive either, they were more sideways steps, you went for the resist gear, the fire resist for MC the nature resist for AQ etc.
What made the game great was always the people. The game could pump in so much content into the game, make it as hard as you could fathom but if the community isn't there then people leave after they've done their bits. This is where WoW is now, each xpac is a means for people just to get their characters up to speed, then they bugger off until the next update.
Bliz knows that people have varying skill levels and that making things easier makes the entry gate better and they get more money. But if they cared about the product as much as they did as proft they could of really maintained the community interaction as they upgraded. Would of taken them a bit longer to get where they are... but green wins in the day and that was not a FTH reference.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
1 - Warcraft RTS. It was immensely popular, so making another game based on the lore was an easy sell.
2 - Timing. Around that time, MMOs were still fairly niche-y, ready for a breakout.
3 - Copying. Why risk failure when you can just copy the successes of others? Innovation is for chumps.
Also it was the easiest game on the block. Say what you will but the games that existed in the time of WoW were a lot harder. There is nothing hardcore about wow. Never was.
I was there.
One of the major reasons why newer MMOs struggle, is their lack of end game options at release. And most of these have more than Vanilla WoW had. Vanilla end game was a few battlegrounds, a couple of dungeons, and a few raids that less than a VERY small minority did (common estimate was that less than 1% did raids).
Some of you would undoubtly start playing again if a Vanilla server was offered. I doubt many of you would actually stay for long after reaching lvl 60. I suspect Blizzard shares that point of view, because if they believed there was a good market option here, classic servers would have opened long ago.
I have been playing WoW again, for a few months now, playing it with a totally different mindset shows that there is so much good content (i do read every quest) while the true endgame is still exclusive...
To be honest modern days WoW still leads the pack for a reason.. It adapted. An 11 year old game with ove 5M players is still considered a miracle in my eyes.... They evolved the game into something that is still fun.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
1) Gear & Gold - I remember the first time getting a green in WoW, then the excitement when my first blue dropped and then the damn near orgasm when I got a purple in Un'Goro Crater from those swamp creatures. Finding rare gear meant something back then....it wasn't handed to you like in today's games. They hand out epics(purples) left and right in WoW and you really don't care when a blue or purple drops in the game world. It usually ends up being vendored or dusted.
It's pretty much the same with gold. It was a challenge to make money and have enough for skills, your mount, and sometimes gear upgrades. You had to get creative and either make money from crafting, selling resources on the AH or just flat out grind.
2) Class builds/skills - More and more I see games removing choice from the players. The devs dictate to the player how they should play their class. In vanilla WoW I could play a combat rogue and still be different from other combat rogues depending on which weapon I specialized in. Not everyone chose the same path and it gave players the freedom of choice and how they wanted to play their class. Now it's all about making things easier for the players and removing anything that may require them to think.
3) Challenge - There were quite a few times I died in WoW and it forced me to either re-think my strategy or find others to help me. I mean dungeons you couldn't complete solo but there were encounters I'd come across in the world that were difficult and required me to seek help from others. Aside from high end raid content, MMO's today aren't challenging. Everything is made so that its easy for the player to level and complete 90% of the content solo. This is probably my biggest problem with MMO's today....why are we taking away things that require us to group and make it easier for players to solo content? This is an MMO, not a single player RPG, it make absolutely no sense to me.
Yes, the past is the past. You, personally, may be marginalized by the evolution, because it's in a direction you don't like.
But MOBAs are booming, PVP is arguably far better than it's ever been.
And all of those "zomg it's not an mmo" titles that everyone screams about are raking in the cash.
They don't make Model A's any more. If you define cars as "just like Model A's," then automobiles died off in 1931.
But it would be foolish to argue that the auto industry is dead.
Gaming, as a whole, is vastly different from 1985. But the gaming industry is still growing, even if no one makes 8-bit games any more. No one makes side-scrolling shooters or Mortal Kombat clones or Asteroids ripoffs. Woe is me.
I miss arcade games, but when arcades went away, I moved on. Saved a lot of quarters, that did.
1. there was no big MMORPG with a famous IP before World of Warcraft. they all paved the path but didn't have the right bait and back then the genre was a niche so a real bait was a necessity. World of Warcraft had the IP appeal so for most people, it was their first MMORPG.
2. it came after Warcraft 3, one of the best RTS games of all time.for many Warcraft 3 is their first warcraft game. it wouldn't work as well if they released WoW after Warcraft 2.
3. it came closely after Everquest 2, giving it not much room to breathe.
4. back in 2004 people didn't think about whether a game is p2p or not or whether it's hardcore or casual. most just rolled with anything they could play and were thankful that it exists as long as it was good.
so, having the IP advantage, lead to attracting a whole new crowd that never played other MMORPGs, which gave them even a bigger advantage and so, began the final years of good old Blizzard. RiP 1991-2011 and i am being generous.
my top MMOs: UO,DAOC,WoW,GW2
most of my posts are just my opinions they are not facts,it is the same for you too.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
If vanilla launched today though and was followed by one content patch after 7 months and then announced that there would be no more planned for over a year - Blizzard themselves said 5.1 shouldn't have been called a patch - I think WoW would have seen the "typical" post launch population drop.
And for anyone who parrots the line "they don't have the resource, working on WoD" they produced BC at the same time as making the 12 patches. It comes down to money. Back then subscription revenue (simplistically) paid for resource to create patches whilst the box price covered the cost of BC. Not the case today.
I have seen on this site it mentioned many many times how WOW brought nothing new to the table, only adding polish to others ideas. I won't debate that but not in agreement with that sentiment at all.
Every time I hear some of the soundtracks that I favored, it calls to me. It was first class and added to the immersion and I never grew bored with it.
WOW is the only game that I could roll characters over and over, going through that same early content and finding it ..........fun..........time and time again.
I have yet to experience another MMO that has the fluidity of movement and precision that connected you so perfectly with your character.
The world of Vanilla Azeroth was well balanced with places populated with danger as well as a rich environment without danger, where exploration, role-play, and whatever one could imagine could be implemented. The second point is something I always miss in games that are wall to wall mobs with nary a particule where one could find relaxation.
I agree wholeheartedly with Kyleran, if it released today it would be better than 90% of anything out there including itself.
There are things I miss I suppose that no other game has been able to wholly fill.
Would I give a go to a Blizz controlled Vanilla server?
Ayup no doubt.
It has about as good of a chance happening as Turbine redoing AC right