There's significantly more freedom for hybrid classes now than there ever was in vanilla. If you played a shaman, druid, or pally in any serious content in vanilla, you were relegated to healing. Tanking was almost exclusive to warriors. Paladins were mostly sitting in the back, re-buffing their ridiculously short duration blessings and healing. Sure in 5 mans you could do a little bit of everything with a hybrid build, but it wasn't enough of any one role to be worth it. WoW was never built around having a true support class.
I never found that to be the case in Vanilla. I think the only raid was molten core and Black Rock Depths. I always was able to switch to do a little of each with my Paladin and things generally worked out. Most of the content in Vanilla WoW was small group content and I actually prefer it that way. You feel you are contributing more in a small group.
BRD was a dungeon. Classic WoW raids were:
- Molten Core - Zul'Gurub - Blackwing Lair - Onyxia's Lair - AQ 20 - AQ 40 - Naxx.
I see that when I do a lookup on Google, but I was there and I'm fairly certain the only raid in the original game was Molten Core. Zul'Gurub was definitely not added until later on. The others I'm not as certain. I would have to go through them and see what they were. I believe I did most of Blackrock Depths solo, but wasn't Blackrock Spire for raiding? I could be mistaken on this, but perhaps classic WoW is not the same as original WoW?
Those raids weren't all there at launch, but they were added over the course of Vanilla, with all of them being available before Burning Crusade released. Lower Blackrock Spire and Upper Blackrock Spire weren't true raids but people often ran them in groups larger than 5. Blackrock Depths was huge and was often run because it was part of the attunement for Molten Core.
There's significantly more freedom for hybrid classes now than there ever was in vanilla. If you played a shaman, druid, or pally in any serious content in vanilla, you were relegated to healing. Tanking was almost exclusive to warriors. Paladins were mostly sitting in the back, re-buffing their ridiculously short duration blessings and healing. Sure in 5 mans you could do a little bit of everything with a hybrid build, but it wasn't enough of any one role to be worth it. WoW was never built around having a true support class.
I never found that to be the case in Vanilla. I think the only raid was molten core and Black Rock Depths. I always was able to switch to do a little of each with my Paladin and things generally worked out. Most of the content in Vanilla WoW was small group content and I actually prefer it that way. You feel you are contributing more in a small group.
BRD was a dungeon. Classic WoW raids were:
- Molten Core - Zul'Gurub - Blackwing Lair - Onyxia's Lair - AQ 20 - AQ 40 - Naxx.
I see that when I do a lookup on Google, but I was there and I'm fairly certain the only raid in the original game was Molten Core. Zul'Gurub was definitely not added until later on. The others I'm not as certain. I would have to go through them and see what they were. I believe I did most of Blackrock Depths solo, but wasn't Blackrock Spire for raiding? I could be mistaken on this, but perhaps classic WoW is not the same as original WoW?
They were gradually released towards TBC Naxx being the last one. That's why most of us never had a chance to see the original Naxxramas.
I wish Blizzard had started their crusade for accessibility already in vanilla, but instead of making everything super easy they could have made those raids for 10 players and with tight gear requirements. Everyone seems to agree the raids never were too difficult, it was just way too hard to find 40 players to play at the same time.
There's significantly more freedom for hybrid classes now than there ever was in vanilla. If you played a shaman, druid, or pally in any serious content in vanilla, you were relegated to healing. Tanking was almost exclusive to warriors. Paladins were mostly sitting in the back, re-buffing their ridiculously short duration blessings and healing. Sure in 5 mans you could do a little bit of everything with a hybrid build, but it wasn't enough of any one role to be worth it. WoW was never built around having a true support class.
I never found that to be the case in Vanilla. I think the only raid was molten core and Black Rock Depths. I always was able to switch to do a little of each with my Paladin and things generally worked out. Most of the content in Vanilla WoW was small group content and I actually prefer it that way. You feel you are contributing more in a small group.
BRD was a dungeon. Classic WoW raids were:
- Molten Core - Zul'Gurub - Blackwing Lair - Onyxia's Lair - AQ 20 - AQ 40 - Naxx.
I see that when I do a lookup on Google, but I was there and I'm fairly certain the only raid in the original game was Molten Core. Zul'Gurub was definitely not added until later on. The others I'm not as certain. I would have to go through them and see what they were. I believe I did most of Blackrock Depths solo, but wasn't Blackrock Spire for raiding? I could be mistaken on this, but perhaps classic WoW is not the same as original WoW?
Those raids weren't all there at launch, but they were added over the course of Vanilla, with all of them being available before Burning Crusade released. Lower Blackrock Spire and Upper Blackrock Spire weren't true raids but people often ran them in groups larger than 5. Blackrock Depths was huge and was often run because it was part of the attunement for Molten Core.
Thanks for the information.
If that is the case I prefer the original game vs the classic. I'm not a huge fan of raiding and I enjoy being able to switch roles in a party on the fly.
I like the cross-server stuff they added. It makes WoW much larger than Vanilla, when it was just the 3-4k people on your server and that was it. I remember waiting hours by the meeting stone to try to get a dungeon group together, or shouting in Ironforge/Stormwind channels: LFD makes that so much better.
That being said, I do miss the fact that you would often group with the same people, and that you earned your own reputation in the smaller population setting. There were fewer asshats, because people would remember and blacklist you. When your one of Millions, that isn't an effective deterrent any longer.
Those two paragraphs are at odds with each other, I full realize that. I'm not saying I have a perfect solution either, but I applaud Blizzard for working to find the right mix there.
My biggest issue with Blizzard was always that WoW seemed like three games rolled into one, and they don't necessarily mesh well together: There's the casual scene, the Raiding PVE scene, and the PVP scene. Every time Blizzard would make a change for one group, it would hurt the other two.
My biggest issue with WoW is the toxic community: once it went global, there really is no recourse for people who are not fun to play with - they can troll with impunity. Not everyone is bad, far from it, but there are enough that don't care that it ruins the PUG scene for me.
I come back to WoW every little bit. I find it fun while I'm in it. But to keep me there, the game has to get me invested with the community. I find I have more fun while I'm playing because of the global servers now, but I stick around for less time because it's harder to find a good group of people or guild to get involved with.
Once I get caught up to the content, I get about to the point of LFR, that's when I get more or less stuck without a steady group to progress further. My lifestyle now is such that I can't commit as much time as the raiding guilds require, and that's about where I drop my sub and wait for another expansion or two to come out.
I agree with pretty much all posters in one form or the other in this thread, but one thing I simply can not agree with, is the perception of the LFG and LFR tools and now also premade finder these days.
To me those tools are constantly being used as a scapegoat to explain why the population is not in current times, the same way as it was during Vanilla or in games dating back further than WoW.
Of course the tools have their upsides and their downsides, but ultimately the behavior of people is not! determined by whether they meet the same person or not again. People might use this excuse to act poorly towards others, but A-holes are just A-holes, they will act poorly regardless and as they see fit.
Its kind of like claiming that people are only lawful because there is a punishment linked to committing crime. So by that logic by removing the LFG tools, we would suddenly see all these A-holes behave nicely? That wont be the case.
A-holes are not controlled by fear of getting a bad rep, they dont care, cause they are by nature simply just A-holes, they dont care, wont care, does not matter if there are LFG tools or not.
But even the A-holes will use the LFG tools as an openly vocal explanation of their behavior, which is simply just a way to avoid responsibility. It is not the tool that make! them behave poorly, it is a conscious choice they make each and every time they decide to pick a fight and find some form of fix via the satisfaction of making another players game a miserable experience.
LFG tools wont change these things.
By removing the LFG tools Id pose a theory that servers would be even more vulnerable to these packs of gaming trolls, cause they have no morals or anything that stands in the way of hurting well behaved people with false accusations, cause this is the! fun to A-holes.
So stop playing the victim card, as if LFG tools has magically ruined gaming. If anything it gave well behaved people a chance to not become the prey of Lord of the flies on each and every server in modern times.
I agree with pretty much all posters in one form or the other in this thread, but one thing I simply can not agree with, is the perception of the LFG and LFR tools and now also premade finder these days.
To me those tools are constantly being used as a scapegoat to explain why the population is not in current times, the same way as it was during Vanilla or in games dating back further than WoW.
Of course the tools have their upsides and their downsides, but ultimately the behavior of people is not! determined by whether they meet the same person or not again. People might use this excuse to act poorly towards others, but A-holes are just A-holes, they will act poorly regardless and as they see fit.
Its kind of like claiming that people are only lawful because there is a punishment linked to committing crime. So by that logic by removing the LFG tools, we would suddenly see all these A-holes behave nicely? That wont be the case.
A-holes are not controlled by fear of getting a bad rep, they dont care, cause they are by nature simply just A-holes, they dont care, wont care, does not matter if there are LFG tools or not.
But even the A-holes will use the LFG tools as an openly vocal explanation of their behavior, which is simply just a way to avoid responsibility. It is not the tool that make! them behave poorly, it is a conscious choice they make each and every time they decide to pick a fight and find some form of fix via the satisfaction of making another players game a miserable experience.
LFG tools wont change these things.
By removing the LFG tools Id pose a theory that servers would be even more vulnerable to these packs of gaming trolls, cause they have no morals or anything that stands in the way of hurting well behaved people with false accusations, cause this is the! fun to A-holes.
So stop playing the victim card, as if LFG tools has magically ruined gaming. If anything it gave well behaved people a chance to not become the prey of Lord of the flies on each and every server in modern times.
What you say is correct in many ways, but part of living in a fantasy world or part of the appeal IMO is that lawless escape from societies pressures. In real life, you have to act nice to people. You also can't kill, steal, or do other things that are criminal. Many of these things are allowed in game. Without some type of fighting and treachery, you have a lot of boring game content. That is about it. Players are the ones that make the interesting content in game. Usually, that is through some kind of disputes in game or some type of mischief (I am thinking Loki from norse mythology). What we are seeing in society now is everyone acting like robots. They all adhere to the rules and just go through the motions. Emotions of anger, fear, aggression, jealousy are suppressed. I'm not certain why having people act like people would in a fantasy game without law is such a big deal to people. It is a fantasy and doesn't affect people in real life. It seems to me everyone is trying to play policeman in this day and age. That is what is stripping the fun out of games in general IMO. I often feel like I'm alone in this. It is less about being an ahole and more about being free from societies imposed regulations for a bit.
I agree with pretty much all posters in one form or the other in this thread, but one thing I simply can not agree with, is the perception of the LFG and LFR tools and now also premade finder these days.
To me those tools are constantly being used as a scapegoat to explain why the population is not in current times, the same way as it was during Vanilla or in games dating back further than WoW.
Of course the tools have their upsides and their downsides, but ultimately the behavior of people is not! determined by whether they meet the same person or not again. People might use this excuse to act poorly towards others, but A-holes are just A-holes, they will act poorly regardless and as they see fit.
Its kind of like claiming that people are only lawful because there is a punishment linked to committing crime. So by that logic by removing the LFG tools, we would suddenly see all these A-holes behave nicely? That wont be the case.
A-holes are not controlled by fear of getting a bad rep, they dont care, cause they are by nature simply just A-holes, they dont care, wont care, does not matter if there are LFG tools or not.
But even the A-holes will use the LFG tools as an openly vocal explanation of their behavior, which is simply just a way to avoid responsibility. It is not the tool that make! them behave poorly, it is a conscious choice they make each and every time they decide to pick a fight and find some form of fix via the satisfaction of making another players game a miserable experience.
LFG tools wont change these things.
By removing the LFG tools Id pose a theory that servers would be even more vulnerable to these packs of gaming trolls, cause they have no morals or anything that stands in the way of hurting well behaved people with false accusations, cause this is the! fun to A-holes.
So stop playing the victim card, as if LFG tools has magically ruined gaming. If anything it gave well behaved people a chance to not become the prey of Lord of the flies on each and every server in modern times.
What you say is correct in many ways, but part of living in a fantasy world or part of the appeal IMO is that lawless escape from societies pressures. In real life, you have to act nice to people. You also can't kill, steal, or do other things that are criminal. Many of these things are allowed in game. Without some type of fighting and treachery, you have a lot of boring game content. That is about it. Players are the ones that make the interesting content in game. Usually, that is through some kind of disputes in game or some type of mischief (I am thinking Loki from norse mythology). What we are seeing in society now is everyone acting like robots. They all adhere to the rules and just go through the motions. Emotions of anger, fear, aggression, jealousy are suppressed. I'm not certain why having people act like people would in a fantasy game without law is such a big deal to people. It is a fantasy and doesn't affect people in real life. It seems to me everyone is trying to play policeman in this day and age. That is what is stripping the fun out of games in general IMO. I often feel like I'm alone in this. It is less about being an ahole and more about being free from societies imposed regulations for a bit.
I dont disagree.
I think you are right when you say that negative emotions, that are only really deemed negative and unwanted by a collective cultural decision, that varies in content depending on where you live in the world, is in fact a strong chain to conform to for a lot of freedom loving people.
However each person, including the A-holes, would very much enjoy if they have their freedom to shape their life with happiness and benefits. To be able to ensure that each individual will have acces to this potential to gain these things, we have to collectively decide what rules to follow, so we take away that freedom from each other at a bare minimum.
It just so happens that some people find great pleasure in hurting others or at least in some way disrupt other peoples chances of reaching their goals and in turn happiness.
And often enough the people you see as policemen, are just as often people who have found a new way to establish superiority, which is what A-holes want.
That said, I see the opposite of you. I see that the newer generations are very much able to express everything and with a volume and intensity that rarely seem proportioned with the actual situation they are in.
And imposed regulations, if people learned why the regulations are a part of being raised or should be, got the insight to the protective nature of these social rules we establish, then yeah if they dont gain that knowledge, these people will often see them as imposing.
Everybody can in theory act entirely how they want, a lot of people already do. But stability of our world societys lay in the hands of those who understand why its important to respect other people.
And none of us want war, some think they do, but once the casualties starts rolling in, the song of honor and glory turns into screaming nations.
People just have to learn to understand the value of shared peace, before they will find themselves comfortable with it.
Personally I dont need infighting in games, some random will always lose that fight, usually somebody who did not want the fight in the first place, but who was dragged into a situation by the people who did.
At the end of the day, not many people want drama. Restlessness, boredom and other personal issues just tend to make some people unaware or simply not care who they need to pick a fight with to release themselves from those chaining emotions that brings them pain.
I agree with pretty much all posters in one form or the other in this thread, but one thing I simply can not agree with, is the perception of the LFG and LFR tools and now also premade finder these days.
To me those tools are constantly being used as a scapegoat to explain why the population is not in current times, the same way as it was during Vanilla or in games dating back further than WoW.
Of course the tools have their upsides and their downsides, but ultimately the behavior of people is not! determined by whether they meet the same person or not again. People might use this excuse to act poorly towards others, but A-holes are just A-holes, they will act poorly regardless and as they see fit.
Its kind of like claiming that people are only lawful because there is a punishment linked to committing crime. So by that logic by removing the LFG tools, we would suddenly see all these A-holes behave nicely? That wont be the case.
A-holes are not controlled by fear of getting a bad rep, they dont care, cause they are by nature simply just A-holes, they dont care, wont care, does not matter if there are LFG tools or not.
But even the A-holes will use the LFG tools as an openly vocal explanation of their behavior, which is simply just a way to avoid responsibility. It is not the tool that make! them behave poorly, it is a conscious choice they make each and every time they decide to pick a fight and find some form of fix via the satisfaction of making another players game a miserable experience.
LFG tools wont change these things.
By removing the LFG tools Id pose a theory that servers would be even more vulnerable to these packs of gaming trolls, cause they have no morals or anything that stands in the way of hurting well behaved people with false accusations, cause this is the! fun to A-holes.
So stop playing the victim card, as if LFG tools has magically ruined gaming. If anything it gave well behaved people a chance to not become the prey of Lord of the flies on each and every server in modern times.
What you say is correct in many ways, but part of living in a fantasy world or part of the appeal IMO is that lawless escape from societies pressures. In real life, you have to act nice to people. You also can't kill, steal, or do other things that are criminal. Many of these things are allowed in game. Without some type of fighting and treachery, you have a lot of boring game content. That is about it. Players are the ones that make the interesting content in game. Usually, that is through some kind of disputes in game or some type of mischief (I am thinking Loki from norse mythology). What we are seeing in society now is everyone acting like robots. They all adhere to the rules and just go through the motions. Emotions of anger, fear, aggression, jealousy are suppressed. I'm not certain why having people act like people would in a fantasy game without law is such a big deal to people. It is a fantasy and doesn't affect people in real life. It seems to me everyone is trying to play policeman in this day and age. That is what is stripping the fun out of games in general IMO. I often feel like I'm alone in this. It is less about being an ahole and more about being free from societies imposed regulations for a bit.
I think that there's a difference between being an a-hole and being free from society's norms, though. Some great examples might be:
1) tagging all targets in an area continuously and simply never killing them 2) Blind vote-to-kick mechanics. I love reasons that pop up like "pulled a mob", "not fast enough", "doing less DPS than the tank", etc. 3) Being up-front and still getting booted. "Hey, FYI, this is my first time he...." -> "You've been booted" 4) Corpse camping, especially of a lowbie (anybody you can 1-shot) 5) See #4 and then crying to your CO when that guy you're camping happens to have a maxed ALT, flies out to you and then corpse camps you. LOL. True story.
I TOTALLY agree that games are meant to take us away from our everyday lives and give us an opportunity to be something we're not. However, I don't think that gives us an excuse to be an asshole, either. In fact, if you're someone who finds satisfaction in making others feel bad about themselves then maybe there are some deeper-rooted issues there that a game isn't the proper therapy for.
See, here's the big problem, we DON'T live in this environment. So by enabling people in any environment, to act badly, isn't necessarily being therapeutic, but it can justify them in acting out in the same way outside the game. Take a look at the entire MOBA genre, for instance. That entire community has already regressed from in-game hostility and is one step away from real-world hostility. Same can be said for swatting and other things of that nature. Luckily, companies are beginning to enforce rules on players. Most recently the Madden Bowl 2017 champ was docked league points and cash from his winnings after behaving badly on social media following his win.
I find it sad that there is such a push to hold publishers, developers, etc. accountable, yet players want to be given free reign to act how they like. That's not a direct response to your post, but commentary on certain parts of the community as a whole.
I think you are right when you say that negative emotions, that are only really deemed negative and unwanted by a collective cultural decision, that varies in content depending on where you live in the world, is in fact a strong chain to conform to for a lot of freedom loving people.
However each person, including the A-holes, would very much enjoy if they have their freedom to shape their life with happiness and benefits. To be able to ensure that each individual will have acces to this potential to gain these things, we have to collectively decide what rules to follow, so we take away that freedom from each other at a bare minimum.
It just so happens that some people find great pleasure in hurting others or at least in some way disrupt other peoples chances of reaching their goals and in turn happiness.
And often enough the people you see as policemen, are just as often people who have found a new way to establish superiority, which is what A-holes want.
That said, I see the opposite of you. I see that the newer generations are very much able to express everything and with a volume and intensity that rarely seem proportioned with the actual situation they are in.
And imposed regulations, if people learned why the regulations are a part of being raised or should be, got the insight to the protective nature of these social rules we establish, then yeah if they dont gain that knowledge, these people will often see them as imposing.
Everybody can in theory act entirely how they want, a lot of people already do. But stability of our world societys lay in the hands of those who understand why its important to respect other people.
And none of us want war, some think they do, but once the casualties starts rolling in, the song of honor and glory turns into screaming nations.
People just have to learn to understand the value of shared peace, before they will find themselves comfortable with it.
Personally I dont need infighting in games, some random will always lose that fight, usually somebody who did not want the fight in the first place, but who was dragged into a situation by the people who did.
At the end of the day, not many people want drama. Restlessness, boredom and other personal issues just tend to make some people unaware or simply not care who they need to pick a fight with to release themselves from those above chaining emotions that brings them pain.
I understand what you are saying, but I don't entirely agree with it. Especially in game.
I don't want to insult the new generation. They are coming up with a lot of nice improvements. I do think they are too polite and I also believe they are more a product of their parents than they are of themselves. Say what you will about some of the generations of the past that were quite rowdy and impolite, but they had their own identity. They often grew up with little supervision and had to come up with their own ideas and regulations. That is not much different from what we saw in early MMOs. It was actually quite a lot more enjoyable than today's games which are very restrictive. A good example would be music. Almost every generation of music leading up to the 90s had its own distinct identity. Modern music is just pop that sounds fairly lifeless and is fairly similar across the board. I would love to see kids today fight back and stand up to their parents even if they are wrong. All I see in today's generation is people trying to please others. That rarely leads to creativity as what they are doing is not something they actually would enjoy themselves.
I would again point out the stories fantasies are based upon. There are always evil characters or at least characters who are mischievous. The drama is actually what games are movies are about (or used to be). Just like in old stories from our ancestors we are usually captivated by these types of stories. They can't be enacted by scripts written by a developer IMO. It's always fun to have drama in life when there are no consequences. On the other hand in real life, it isn't so fun. I can see people wanting to cut it our of real life. Perhaps I might suggest people are to caught up in behaving nice to people and looking down on drama in this day and age. Especially when we are talking about something completely fake that no one really gets hurt by.
A few fast points before I start: - I'm asking this question as a pub topic because Blizzard changed direction many years ago, because of this the player base split and many don't visit the World of Warcraft forums. A poll in the WoW forums would be biased by mostly current players. - I have my opinion, however I'll try and keep this question as fair as possible.
The original World of Warcraft was a much harder life (not comparing it to any other mmo). I'm sure we can all agree on that.
It had an arguable flaw of getting groups together as with all mmos of its time 2004-2006. Players never took advantage of the social panel that every mmo set in place that made bring people together so much easer. It had simple grinding quest of kill ten rats and bring the tails back, but again 2004-2006 standards.
Putting aside a few design flaws and I'm sure you could add your own, Blizzard DRASTICLY CHANGED DIRECTION !.... This is not a secret or an opinion, I'm sure we could all agree. Cross server LFG, much easer content for both solo and groups, video cinematics and personal stories and private garrisons.
Lets pretend: If World of Warcraft stayed true to it's Vanilla would you play, would you come back, would you stay. Do you feel it would bring back a more robust population or do more harm than good.
If Blizzard had taken a different approach to group based content other than the Cross server LFG tool. And kept the game harder and more challenging. Would you have a better opinion of how you view the game ?
If Blizzard maintained its ORGINAL STYLE only to intelligently enhance the questing system to a more modern style. How would you view the game ?
It seems I have to add this because some go off on a tangent of marketing research findings and what people like charts...No !...This is what you like !... Not an impossible equation that can't be charted.
You're making a lot of assumptions with nothing backing it up, hoping we'd all see things your way. As someone who has been playing MMO's before WoW and watched WoW crash the scene, WoW never changed direction. Blizzard always intended and has always strived for WoW to be the most accessible MMO on the market. The need for more accessibility has grown as newer and newer people have joined the genre. You see a change in direction around Wrath probably, while I see a change in the genre after 2004 and whether it's TBC, Wrath, or Legion, it's all the same game to me. WoW is just a more enjoyable solo experience these days compared to the past and a less enjoyable group experience. That has everything to do with the toxic community though, and not the changes in how to form a group.
I understand what you are saying, but I don't entirely agree with it. Especially in game.
I don't want to insult the new generation. They are coming up with a lot of nice improvements. I do think they are too polite and I also believe they are more a product of their parents than they are of themselves. Say what you will about some of the generations of the past that were quite rowdy and impolite, but they had their own identity. They often grew up with little supervision and had to come up with their own ideas and regulations. That is not much different from what we saw in early MMOs. It was actually quite a lot more enjoyable than today's games which are very restrictive. A good example would be music. Almost every generation of music leading up to the 90s had its own distinct identity. Modern music is just pop that sounds fairly lifeless and is fairly similar across the board. I would love to see kids today fight back and stand up to their parents even if they are wrong. All I see in today's generation is people trying to please others. That rarely leads to creativity as what they are doing is not something they actually would enjoy themselves.
I would again point out the stories fantasies are based upon. There are always evil characters or at least characters who are mischievous. The drama is actually what games are movies are about (or used to be). Just like in old stories from our ancestors we are usually captivated by these types of stories. They can't be enacted by scripts written by a developer IMO. It's always fun to have drama in life when there are no consequences. On the other hand in real life, it isn't so fun. I can see people wanting to cut it our of real life. Perhaps I might suggest people are to caught up in behaving nice to people and looking down on drama in this day and age. Especially when we are talking about something completely fake that no one really gets hurt by.
I am unsure what you consider "completely fake that no one really gets hurt by".
In MMORPGs, what Id consider an A-hole behavior for example is when two, typically two young bored boys, decides that at the very last boss in a 20 min long dungeon, that people have spent maybe 10 mins to an hour queueing for, they will kick some random guy from the group.
This releases them from boredom and they will giggle like little girls at their ingenious actions.
What then happens is that they will go to the forum and wait for the kicked guy to make a post, then laugh in the unlucky persons face and or proceed to make a long elaborated post about how it must have been the kicked persons own fault and or they will make posts about how anonymity on the internet is the bane of all evil and that LFG tools should be removed.
And why do these bored boys want the tools removed?
There are probably many answers to that, but one of them is that they actually want to be stopped, they dont want to be able to just do what they do, cause they want to be restricted in their "evil" ways.
Basically every single time some butt hole breaks the unspoken or spoken rules, they are the first to scream for regulations.
They want to be stopped, cause they can not stop themselves.
I dont think the issue is that people dont have freedom, part of what we see, is an issue about people discovering how much freedom they have and they feel its very strange there is nobody to stop them from doing what they want. To the point where they will demand action from the developers.
Its basically the same as when some bored players starts acting out in a public channel asking people to report them so they will get banned from the game. They typically express how they hate the game, but they can not leave by themselves, so they need assistance to stop.
People who do things to others, that they are well aware are poor behavior, they are often enough not as bad as people think, they just perceive the world differently. Waiting for someone to force them to stop, rather than figure out how to stop themselves.
Basically I think, with a maybe, that a lot of people are simply scared about living in a world that basically has no boundaries. So they kick up a fuzz, till someone will stop them, till they meet that boundary, but it will never happen in the way they imagine it.
I would like to open it up more. Get it so that not everything is aimed toward raiding and the gear treadmill. It would be cool to...make it more of a sandbox. There, I said it. The antithesis of what WoW actually is.
Imagine if there was housing, farming, the ability to build boats and ships, to explore the world. If there were reasons to explore, to collect, to craft, to build...Like ArcheAge only done right. But that will never happen, so doesn't matter.
Now if they did a whole new WoW reboot with next gen graphics and made it a more multi-dimensional game, that would be awesome. But these days, I think it would be designed from the ground up with sub plus microtransactions in mind.
LOLs inc...
they would get a year sub out of me for WoW as a sandbox! lol
The thing is. Blizzard chose the direction of WoW with what the vast majority of WoW players wanted. They never woke up and went "hey, one guy wants this. Lets ruin it for everyone else!"...
no they went "people LOVE these changes, while some don't like it, the vast majority like the direction we've taken and are taking the game"
If WoW was still like vanilla, WoW wouldn't be nearly as popular (even though vanilla WoW still has its fans, but a vast majority only like it because they play for free (free servers), some rose colored glasses and then a smaller portion actually DO like it)
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
outside of removing the old carrot on the stick that is gear , WoW is going to be "meh" , i dont mind grinding AP for my weapon , but chasing gear , and more gear , and more gear , gets boring after what 5 expansions....and is the only thing u have going for it ....a more horizontal progression system , more solo challenges (loved the artifact quests) , and raids yeah sure why not , but im tired of it , i like raiding for the fun of it , not because it rewards me +200 str when i have 180....yay 2 ilvl more ......and gained some dmg....boooring....
At launch, you had Upper Blackrock Spire considered as 10 man raid (Lower was 5 man balanced), and Onyxia's Lair and Molten core which were both 40 man raids. You had Stratholme and Scholomance which had a 10 man limit too.
As much as I like to knock WoW I enjoyed the Vanilla experience a lot. I just got tired of the quests. It was fun to do all the various different 5 man dungeons. As much as I enjoyed the complexity of Everquest's dungeons and how they were not instanced I was often never committed to putting in the time to complete them in a group. I always was a bit stressed out in group as I felt obligated to stick around. On the other hand, when I soloed I felt more relaxed as I could stop whenever I wanted to stop. I still played a lot more than I should have. In WoWs 5 man dungeons I felt fairly free to jump in and accomplish what I wanted. I never liked the things that were added to the game after Vanilla. It wasn't all that hard to find a group in the original game. I got groups for every dungeon. Even dungeons that were for the opposite faction. It was far more fun to walk to them IMO. It was also more fun to explore and find places than to have map markers and guides IMO. It had a fair amount of elite mobs in the outside world originally. You could solo them for some challenge with the right classes.
Thanks for the information. It sounds about right in terms of the different dungeons I did in the original game.
I still believe that the game would become boring for me quickly due to the quest structure. I've already been through WoW and I would know a lot of the dungeons and what's in them. The exploration would be a bit hollow. It also lacks the more social community of games like Everquest where people were dependent on each other outside of combat for things like teleportation, buffs, and help with locating things.
I am unsure what you consider "completely fake that no one really gets hurt by".
In MMORPGs, what Id consider an A-hole behavior for example is when two, typically two young bored boys, decides that at the very last boss in a 20 min long dungeon, that people have spent maybe 10 mins to an hour queueing for, they will kick some random guy from the group.
This releases them from boredom and they will giggle like little girls at their ingenious actions.
What then happens is that they will go to the forum and wait for the kicked guy to make a post, then laugh in the unlucky persons face and or proceed to make a long elaborated post about how it must have been the kicked persons own fault and or they will make posts about how anonymity on the internet is the bane of all evil and that LFG tools should be removed.
And why do these bored boys want the tools removed?
There are probably many answers to that, but one of them is that they actually want to be stopped, they dont want to be able to just do what they do, cause they want to be restricted in their "evil" ways.
Basically every single time some butt hole breaks the unspoken or spoken rules, they are the first to scream for regulations.
They want to be stopped, cause they can not stop themselves.
I dont think the issue is that people dont have freedom, part of what we see, is an issue about people discovering how much freedom they have and they feel its very strange there is nobody to stop them from doing what they want. To the point where they will demand action from the developers.
Its basically the same as when some bored players starts acting out in a public channel asking people to report them so they will get banned from the game. They typically express how they hate the game, but they can not leave by themselves, so they need assistance to stop.
People who do things to others, that they are well aware are poor behavior, they are often enough not as bad as people think, they just perceive the world differently. Waiting for someone to force them to stop, rather than figure out how to stop themselves.
Basically I think, with a maybe, that a lot of people are simply scared about living in a world that basically has no boundaries. So they kick up a fuzz, till someone will stop them, till they meet that boundary, but it will never happen in the way they imagine it.
I am thinking more along the lines of various different things that happen in game. For instance, things like kill stealing, ninja looting, undercutting someone in price, and in general doing things to gain and edge in the game through underhanded means. In the example you provide it sounds like someone is not doing something just get and edge. They are doing it to just hurt the person in general. I am not really referring to that sort of instance. Most people seem to complain about things like the ones I pointed out. To me, those are just mischief and someone that would be likely to happen in a fantasy world which is largely lawless. It is part of what makes it fun and interesting. I would point out Loki again in various Norse tales. Without him, the stories would be rather dull to listen too IMO.
I'll answer both of the substantial options in your poll: -
Vanilla Original
I enjoyed vanilla and played it for endless hours back in 2005. This is my favourite iteration of WOW, by far. Would I return to it if Blizzard made an about turn and returned to the core game? No. I'm not the same person I was 12 years ago; I have different demands on my time and different interests.
Existing Path
I stopped playing WOW during WotLK (which is when the growth levelled off), because it was going in directions I no longer enjoyed. It was becoming more solo-orientated, the open world was lost in favour of quest hubs, the hamster wheel was becoming palpable, the difficulty and challenge was reduced. Would I return to this version of WOW? No, it never interested me in the first place.
Conclusion
There is probably nothing that would bring me back to WOW at this time.
Comments
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I wish Blizzard had started their crusade for accessibility already in vanilla, but instead of making everything super easy they could have made those raids for 10 players and with tight gear requirements. Everyone seems to agree the raids never were too difficult, it was just way too hard to find 40 players to play at the same time.
If that is the case I prefer the original game vs the classic. I'm not a huge fan of raiding and I enjoy being able to switch roles in a party on the fly.
I like the cross-server stuff they added. It makes WoW much larger than Vanilla, when it was just the 3-4k people on your server and that was it. I remember waiting hours by the meeting stone to try to get a dungeon group together, or shouting in Ironforge/Stormwind channels: LFD makes that so much better.
That being said, I do miss the fact that you would often group with the same people, and that you earned your own reputation in the smaller population setting. There were fewer asshats, because people would remember and blacklist you. When your one of Millions, that isn't an effective deterrent any longer.
Those two paragraphs are at odds with each other, I full realize that. I'm not saying I have a perfect solution either, but I applaud Blizzard for working to find the right mix there.
My biggest issue with Blizzard was always that WoW seemed like three games rolled into one, and they don't necessarily mesh well together: There's the casual scene, the Raiding PVE scene, and the PVP scene. Every time Blizzard would make a change for one group, it would hurt the other two.
My biggest issue with WoW is the toxic community: once it went global, there really is no recourse for people who are not fun to play with - they can troll with impunity. Not everyone is bad, far from it, but there are enough that don't care that it ruins the PUG scene for me.
I come back to WoW every little bit. I find it fun while I'm in it. But to keep me there, the game has to get me invested with the community. I find I have more fun while I'm playing because of the global servers now, but I stick around for less time because it's harder to find a good group of people or guild to get involved with.
Once I get caught up to the content, I get about to the point of LFR, that's when I get more or less stuck without a steady group to progress further. My lifestyle now is such that I can't commit as much time as the raiding guilds require, and that's about where I drop my sub and wait for another expansion or two to come out.
To me those tools are constantly being used as a scapegoat to explain why the population is not in current times, the same way as it was during Vanilla or in games dating back further than WoW.
Of course the tools have their upsides and their downsides, but ultimately the behavior of people is not! determined by whether they meet the same person or not again.
People might use this excuse to act poorly towards others, but A-holes are just A-holes, they will act poorly regardless and as they see fit.
Its kind of like claiming that people are only lawful because there is a punishment linked to committing crime.
So by that logic by removing the LFG tools, we would suddenly see all these A-holes behave nicely?
That wont be the case.
A-holes are not controlled by fear of getting a bad rep, they dont care, cause they are by nature simply just A-holes, they dont care, wont care, does not matter if there are LFG tools or not.
But even the A-holes will use the LFG tools as an openly vocal explanation of their behavior, which is simply just a way to avoid responsibility. It is not the tool that make! them behave poorly, it is a conscious choice they make each and every time they decide to pick a fight and find some form of fix via the satisfaction of making another players game a miserable experience.
LFG tools wont change these things.
By removing the LFG tools Id pose a theory that servers would be even more vulnerable to these packs of gaming trolls, cause they have no morals or anything that stands in the way of hurting well behaved people with false accusations, cause this is the! fun to A-holes.
So stop playing the victim card, as if LFG tools has magically ruined gaming. If anything it gave well behaved people a chance to not become the prey of Lord of the flies on each and every server in modern times.
What you say is correct in many ways, but part of living in a fantasy world or part of the appeal IMO is that lawless escape from societies pressures. In real life, you have to act nice to people. You also can't kill, steal, or do other things that are criminal. Many of these things are allowed in game. Without some type of fighting and treachery, you have a lot of boring game content. That is about it. Players are the ones that make the interesting content in game. Usually, that is through some kind of disputes in game or some type of mischief (I am thinking Loki from norse mythology). What we are seeing in society now is everyone acting like robots. They all adhere to the rules and just go through the motions. Emotions of anger, fear, aggression, jealousy are suppressed. I'm not certain why having people act like people would in a fantasy game without law is such a big deal to people. It is a fantasy and doesn't affect people in real life. It seems to me everyone is trying to play policeman in this day and age. That is what is stripping the fun out of games in general IMO. I often feel like I'm alone in this. It is less about being an ahole and more about being free from societies imposed regulations for a bit.
I dont disagree.
I think you are right when you say that negative emotions, that are only really deemed negative and unwanted by a collective cultural decision, that varies in content depending on where you live in the world, is in fact a strong chain to conform to for a lot of freedom loving people.
However each person, including the A-holes, would very much enjoy if they have their freedom to shape their life with happiness and benefits.
To be able to ensure that each individual will have acces to this potential to gain these things, we have to collectively decide what rules to follow, so we take away that freedom from each other at a bare minimum.
It just so happens that some people find great pleasure in hurting others or at least in some way disrupt other peoples chances of reaching their goals and in turn happiness.
And often enough the people you see as policemen, are just as often people who have found a new way to establish superiority, which is what A-holes want.
That said, I see the opposite of you. I see that the newer generations are very much able to express everything and with a volume and intensity that rarely seem proportioned with the actual situation they are in.
And imposed regulations, if people learned why the regulations are a part of being raised or should be, got the insight to the protective nature of these social rules we establish, then yeah if they dont gain that knowledge, these people will often see them as imposing.
Everybody can in theory act entirely how they want, a lot of people already do. But stability of our world societys lay in the hands of those who understand why its important to respect other people.
And none of us want war, some think they do, but once the casualties starts rolling in, the song of honor and glory turns into screaming nations.
People just have to learn to understand the value of shared peace, before they will find themselves comfortable with it.
Personally I dont need infighting in games, some random will always lose that fight, usually somebody who did not want the fight in the first place, but who was dragged into a situation by the people who did.
At the end of the day, not many people want drama. Restlessness, boredom and other personal issues just tend to make some people unaware or simply not care who they need to pick a fight with to release themselves from those chaining emotions that brings them pain.
I think that there's a difference between being an a-hole and being free from society's norms, though. Some great examples might be:
1) tagging all targets in an area continuously and simply never killing them
2) Blind vote-to-kick mechanics. I love reasons that pop up like "pulled a mob", "not fast enough", "doing less DPS than the tank", etc.
3) Being up-front and still getting booted. "Hey, FYI, this is my first time he...." -> "You've been booted"
4) Corpse camping, especially of a lowbie (anybody you can 1-shot)
5) See #4 and then crying to your CO when that guy you're camping happens to have a maxed ALT, flies out to you and then corpse camps you. LOL. True story.
I TOTALLY agree that games are meant to take us away from our everyday lives and give us an opportunity to be something we're not. However, I don't think that gives us an excuse to be an asshole, either. In fact, if you're someone who finds satisfaction in making others feel bad about themselves then maybe there are some deeper-rooted issues there that a game isn't the proper therapy for.
See, here's the big problem, we DON'T live in this environment. So by enabling people in any environment, to act badly, isn't necessarily being therapeutic, but it can justify them in acting out in the same way outside the game. Take a look at the entire MOBA genre, for instance. That entire community has already regressed from in-game hostility and is one step away from real-world hostility. Same can be said for swatting and other things of that nature. Luckily, companies are beginning to enforce rules on players. Most recently the Madden Bowl 2017 champ was docked league points and cash from his winnings after behaving badly on social media following his win.
I find it sad that there is such a push to hold publishers, developers, etc. accountable, yet players want to be given free reign to act how they like. That's not a direct response to your post, but commentary on certain parts of the community as a whole.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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I don't want to insult the new generation. They are coming up with a lot of nice improvements. I do think they are too polite and I also believe they are more a product of their parents than they are of themselves. Say what you will about some of the generations of the past that were quite rowdy and impolite, but they had their own identity. They often grew up with little supervision and had to come up with their own ideas and regulations. That is not much different from what we saw in early MMOs. It was actually quite a lot more enjoyable than today's games which are very restrictive. A good example would be music. Almost every generation of music leading up to the 90s had its own distinct identity. Modern music is just pop that sounds fairly lifeless and is fairly similar across the board. I would love to see kids today fight back and stand up to their parents even if they are wrong. All I see in today's generation is people trying to please others. That rarely leads to creativity as what they are doing is not something they actually would enjoy themselves.
I would again point out the stories fantasies are based upon. There are always evil characters or at least characters who are mischievous. The drama is actually what games are movies are about (or used to be). Just like in old stories from our ancestors we are usually captivated by these types of stories. They can't be enacted by scripts written by a developer IMO. It's always fun to have drama in life when there are no consequences. On the other hand in real life, it isn't so fun. I can see people wanting to cut it our of real life. Perhaps I might suggest people are to caught up in behaving nice to people and looking down on drama in this day and age. Especially when we are talking about something completely fake that no one really gets hurt by.
Vanilla is highly overrated...
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 am unsure what you consider "completely fake that no one really gets hurt by".
In MMORPGs, what Id consider an A-hole behavior for example is when two, typically two young bored boys, decides that at the very last boss in a 20 min long dungeon, that people have spent maybe 10 mins to an hour queueing for, they will kick some random guy from the group.
This releases them from boredom and they will giggle like little girls at their ingenious actions.
What then happens is that they will go to the forum and wait for the kicked guy to make a post, then laugh in the unlucky persons face and or proceed to make a long elaborated post about how it must have been the kicked persons own fault and or they will make posts about how anonymity on the internet is the bane of all evil and that LFG tools should be removed.
And why do these bored boys want the tools removed?
There are probably many answers to that, but one of them is that they actually want to be stopped, they dont want to be able to just do what they do, cause they want to be restricted in their "evil" ways.
Basically every single time some butt hole breaks the unspoken or spoken rules, they are the first to scream for regulations.
They want to be stopped, cause they can not stop themselves.
I dont think the issue is that people dont have freedom, part of what we see, is an issue about people discovering how much freedom they have and they feel its very strange there is nobody to stop them from doing what they want. To the point where they will demand action from the developers.
Its basically the same as when some bored players starts acting out in a public channel asking people to report them so they will get banned from the game. They typically express how they hate the game, but they can not leave by themselves, so they need assistance to stop.
People who do things to others, that they are well aware are poor behavior, they are often enough not as bad as people think, they just perceive the world differently. Waiting for someone to force them to stop, rather than figure out how to stop themselves.
Basically I think, with a maybe, that a lot of people are simply scared about living in a world that basically has no boundaries.
So they kick up a fuzz, till someone will stop them, till they meet that boundary, but it will never happen in the way they imagine it.
no they went "people LOVE these changes, while some don't like it, the vast majority like the direction we've taken and are taking the game"
If WoW was still like vanilla, WoW wouldn't be nearly as popular (even though vanilla WoW still has its fans, but a vast majority only like it because they play for free (free servers), some rose colored glasses and then a smaller portion actually DO like it)
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
but that not gonna happen ever
Thanks for the information. It sounds about right in terms of the different dungeons I did in the original game.
I still believe that the game would become boring for me quickly due to the quest structure. I've already been through WoW and I would know a lot of the dungeons and what's in them. The exploration would be a bit hollow. It also lacks the more social community of games like Everquest where people were dependent on each other outside of combat for things like teleportation, buffs, and help with locating things.
Vanilla Original
I enjoyed vanilla and played it for endless hours back in 2005. This is my favourite iteration of WOW, by far.
Would I return to it if Blizzard made an about turn and returned to the core game? No. I'm not the same person I was 12 years ago; I have different demands on my time and different interests.
Existing Path
I stopped playing WOW during WotLK (which is when the growth levelled off), because it was going in directions I no longer enjoyed. It was becoming more solo-orientated, the open world was lost in favour of quest hubs, the hamster wheel was becoming palpable, the difficulty and challenge was reduced.
Would I return to this version of WOW? No, it never interested me in the first place.
Conclusion
There is probably nothing that would bring me back to WOW at this time.