This. The whole fanbase clamoring for the classic experience is imho entirely fueled by rose-colored glasses. Vanilla was awesome because everything was new; both the game and the players. Now it’s both old, which leaves just all the annoying crap that got rightfully removed over the years.
Crap like this. Sure raiding was awesome when it worked, but the hours spend standing around waiting for buffs, rezzs or everyone to stop being afk… yeah no thanks.
This take is :fire:.
Remember paladin blessings in vanilla? Each player needed to be individually buffed, and the buffs lasted 5 minutes.
And, EQ was the only real competition, with DAOC a sort of second. Any game that at least used lube was an improvement over EQ’s mechanisms.
I remember when mobs in Silithus had no loot tables.
I want an MMO with the challenge of vanilla wow and the quality of life improvements since then. Now it’s all quality of life and no challenge.
I do not agree. “All the annoying crap” actually helped create meaning and purpose in the old game. Ninja items? You would find yourself unable to get a group because people knew each other. Levels felt like an accomplishment. Getting a mount was an epic achievement. Skill mattered as much as gear. Pulling mobs was an art and woe be to anyone who tried to AOE them down. There was actually a challenge to the game and it did not just come from the latest instance or raid. It came with every quest, every zone, every level. It came with a scarcity of health, mana and gold.
Are there things that I do not miss? Sure. I do not miss making the long runs in the Barrens. I do not miss coordinating 40 man raids. I do not look forward to scrounging for a green weapon at level 20.
The modern WoW has little sense of community or accomplishment and I miss those far more. I miss not knowing who I am going to adventure with in an instance. I miss taking the time to really explore and develop strategies to get through a dungeon. I miss having any challenge in leveling or even a sense of accomplishment. I miss the camaraderie that came with being in an active guild. I miss the epic PvP battles in Tarren Mill and the Barrens.
Sounds like you’ll be one of the <50k playing Classic. That’s great, I hope you enjoy it.
There’s clearly a real audience for vanilla WoW, as player-run private servers were extremely popular. For private servers, of course, not compared to the global WoW population.
I may give it a shot. I really enjoyed the leveling experience the first time around and only quit when constantly hounded by farmers monopolizing content after hitting level 60 after a few months.
I never really did go back seriously ever again, although I did play briefly with Wrath.
I happily play much older games than WoW, so the idea of a 2004 title being primitive doesn’t really matter to me one way or another.
I may dive in for awhile for the nostalgia hit. I can’t play long term just because I now have a family and it would be preposterous for me to try to put in the time I could back in 2006.
From Blizzard’s standpoint as long as the number of dedicated players is enough to justify the cost of the team keeping it alive, I guess it’s a win. From my standpoint, I always like to be able to play old games and it makes me sad that MMOs, with their infrastructure requirements and constant evolution, tend to be exempted from the otherwise increasingly-wide availability of old titles. So on those grounds alone I am interested in this.
It’s primitive in a very unfriendly MMO type way. Uniquely frustrating. But hey, you might like it.
I am very curious how they incorporate any new QoL features. Everquest did it very well on their recent progression servers with no corpse runs, instanced dungeons, out of combat regen rate improvements, raids available for each guild when they want them, Origin spell for all classes at level 5 to gate home, etc.
There won’t be any QoL features to start. Their target is WoW as of 2005.
If they launch and players drop below a certain threshold, I’m sure they’ll start experimenting. Progression servers would be really cool.
Not quite true. For example, they will have loot trading for soulbound drops with eligible players, which wasn’t introduced until much later. Their explanation is that back in Vanilla you could petition a GM and after a wait (sometimes as long as three days) they would likely transfer the loot to the other person anyway.
But they’ve already said there will be no group finder/raid finder/summon stones and other obvious things that would “sully” the Classic experience.
And they certainly won’t invent any new QoL things for Classic.
True, that’s because they can’t afford the CS costs.
I think you mean they don’t want to pay for the CS costs. Blizzard can “afford” just about anything.
Yes, thank you for the necessary correction.
I was trying to remember when meeting stones started letting you summon players and found this interesting (it was patch 2.0.1) - WoW Archivist: The rocky history of meeting stones
I’m looking forward to people needing to use /assist, and having to CC targets, instead of the mindless run in, AOE everything, and move on that most of WoW ended up as. I think WoW was at its best when it was basically an EQ rip off. Value is created in games like this via difficulty and scarcity. WoW got progressively more boring over the years due to the constant caving in by the devs to make the game more solo friendly.
This will be a niche audience for sure, but so what? I may actually resub for this, as the idea of an actual community where you get to know people is pretty appealing. To me, the MMO experience is completely gutted when you’re just running instances with people you will never see again, with zero conversation.
I miss cooperation, I miss strategy, I miss coordination in groups, I miss having a server reputation matter, I miss having a gear drop matter. This seems like it fulfills a lot of that, so should be interesting to try it out.
Everquest still exists…you could have been playing that for the last 15 years but weren’t for some reason.