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[CHC]

Absolutely. It was fun and there was a certain charm, but it's also incredibly outdated. People put up with that at the time because it was good for the time.

Nowadays if you make a game and people can't queue for random groups on their own time? Yeah, good luck selling copies of that. It'll tank. It's just the evolution of games, sometimes too much convenience becomes the status quo, but that's just how it is.

I certainly don't think WoW could ever go back to the no-LFG-tool days, but I don't think its correct to say that a game without a queue system would fail. I think if there are enough compelling features and an enjoyable community, people like taking their time in a world and just journeying to get to their destination. Part of the problem with WoW and it's "lack of content" is really just the speed with which queues and ports to the dungeon allow you to burn through the world. There is actually plenty to do, but if you can knock out 10 dungeons in a night, then it's not going to last very long.

People become more addicted when they can accomplish slightly less and have things to look forward to.

 

[strafer]

Tell the truth, strafer, which one was/are you?

it's not even my picture. I just Googled Barrens Chat. >.<

 

[Robin64]

92% on a legendary naval mission and I fail, losing two epic ships. I hate this fucking metagame.

 

[Tacitus_]

I'd be curious about classic servers and I would certainly pay for a legitimate and functional one, but I'm not sure if Blizzard would ever go for it. Things like the newly announced mercenary mode, however, do sort of go to prove that nothing is sacred anymore though.

They would be neat for a few weeks, but then people would get fed up with the class imbalances, only warriors being able to tank, practically every class that's able to heal being forced to heal, quest lines that are "go talk to this NPC on the other continent and then come back here", no summoning stones for instances, etc...

 

[Draxal]

Vanilla Wow would not take off today, it just hit at a perfect time when there was no competition (not from other MMO RPGS, but things like Lol/Dota 2 and while Dota 1 did exist it's nowhere as big as the other 2).

 

[Data West]

'Challenging vanilla WoW' like that private server that had Rag beaten in the first month it was out due to how easy it is now by comparison to current WoW stuff.

 

[Semper88]

I'm an old Vanilla / TBC player as well. Reinstalled WoW a month ago after 8 years. First thing I noticed that as stated above, its all about skipping content and rushing to 100. It has lost its charm but to be fair, life is different now, I don't have that luxury to play all day anymore.

Doing 45 hours a week and having a fam would not go well with vanilla WoW. But it did have its charm and it was the right time.

We moved on, and it will never be perfect because the community always finds something they don't like and needs to be changed.

 

[Draxal]

'Challenging vanilla WoW' like that private server that had Rag beaten in the first month it was out due to how easy it is now by comparison to current WoW stuff.

Challenging Vanilla Wow was finding 40 people with enough stable connections.

 

[Fjordson]

I'd bet vanilla servers would lose their appeal for most people after a while. I've always been of the opinion that WoW has continued to get better and better over the years. I fell off the train pretty hard with WoD, but that was more just the new content / needing a break, rather than the overall structure or systems of the game (Ashran was meh, dungeons, etc.).

Played a decent amount this past weekend because of a random free week Blizzard gave me. Made me miss the game a lot, but I still don't think I can justify resubbing right now. Hopefully we do get a new expansion announcement, though.

edit: also in regards to the community being negative, I really have to wonder how serious some people are on the forums lol. Some of the discussion just makes no sense to me. Like this topic on the front page right now "What do you miss in WoW?". Some of the responses are crazy

• The pet loyalty system.
• Pre-Deathwing quests
• Feeding your pet to maintain its happiness.
• Walking to a BG to queue
• Learning your abilities directly from trainers.
• Necessary food and drink.
• Reagents for abilities.
• Attunements
• Quivers, ammo, reagents, soul shards

I mean there are certainly some things I miss in WoW, but a lot of the stuff I see people complain about on the official forums is dull, outdated crap.

 

[Gentleman Jack]

Still plenty of challenge left in WoW, but Blizzard has put itself into the unsustainable position of needing to placate a bunch of weekend warriors who want the supercasual stuff that the Garrison represents while spending the same amount of resources on making sure Mythic raiding is good enough for the Methods and Paragons of the world. They're trying to make the game everything to everyone and it's become apparent that they can't/aren't willing to do that on the scale they achieved back in Wrath, where the balance between casual and hardcore playstyles overlapped enough to cause the friction that exists today, but there was still so much content that the grumbling was kept to a minimum.

 

[Not Spaceghost]

I think vanilla servers would be massively over crowded for a week then their interest would wane heavily. But I think you'd probably get enough people for one vanilla server to be at high pop that were actively interested in playing. Especially when you consider how populated some of the vanilla private servers are. But I kinda totally get why blizz doesnt wanna do em.

WoW isn't something I can see myself playing past WoD. While a lot of the game might be mechanically better, the implementation of a lot of things has just become drastically less fun, especially pvp which has been the thing that has gotten ruined the most over the ages. I yearn for the times when healers weren't unkillable in pvp, I miss being able to actually pull off a 5v1 in BG's, it wasn't even that long ago I was able to pull this off on my ret pally in Cata.

My relationship with WoW has always been "come for the pve, stay for the pvp". When the pvp just doesn't work well it's just not gonna work out.

 

[strafer]

Learning the abilities at trainers I do miss to be honest.

There was something about dinging and then fly to the city and train.

But that's just me I guess.

 

[Robin64]

Nah, that was cool. Really, why does my paladin suddenly know how to shield himself just because I collected a certain amount of boar asses?

I don't feel like WoW has the RPG bit of MMORPG anymore.

 

[davepoobond]

92% on a legendary naval mission and I fail, losing two epic ships. I hate this fucking metagame.

ugh. i really dont want to send any of my shit out that isnt at 100%

is that even possible? is it engineered for you to lose ships otherwise you dont progress?

 

[Fjordson]

I didn't have a problem with trainers or anything, but like...if that's what is killing the game for someone then I don't know what to say.

I just think Blizzard has to nail new content. To add on to what they have successfully. People acting like those little changes would turn things around for their personal enjoyment would probably just be better off playing something else.

 

[Gentleman Jack]

Nah, that was cool. Really, why does my paladin suddenly know how to shield himself just because I collected a certain amount of boar asses?

I don't feel like WoW has the RPG bit of MMORPG anymore.

I think this has been abandoned by a lot of RPGs, where learning new abilities 'in the field' is a player QOL issue more than anything else. The other end of the extreme is having players to group with who don't have their fundamental abilities learned over the last 10 levels because of dumbass reasons like they didn't have the gold, or were in a rush to level so now you have a gimped dps/tank/healer to carry through your goals. That definitely happened a lot in Vanilla/TBC.

I do miss the class quests though, they provided a lot of flavor. Questing for epic, class specific weapons definitely needs to make a comeback.

 

[hellmonkey]

I don't know if Id be burnt out on WoW or not without my relentless mount farming. I am nearing the end though. In MoP was was lfr+ geared on 3 characters though. Now, Im only raiding on 1, but I think a large part of that is having a family and working 2 jobs. My main is 691 and Ive only been into HFC lfr once. All my other characters are 660-670.

 

[Not Spaceghost]

Nah, that was cool. Really, why does my paladin suddenly know how to shield himself just because I collected a certain amount of boar asses?

I don't feel like WoW has the RPG bit of MMORPG anymore.

As much as I agree with this I feel like learning skills on level up is very important for the over all pacing of the experience in todays WoW. Going back to train wasn't so bad before because the pace was a lot slower, today's turbo speed leveling process is so out of control fast that going back to train would be so frequent it'd be a legitimate annoyance rather than something to look forward to.

That being said I think blizz could have maybe done something interesting with it. Perhaps letting a player choose what skills they unlock from a pool of all their skills, at 100 you fill it out but it might make leveling more interesting.

 

[Robin64]

Yeah, I agree with the mechanical reasons behind learning abilities in the field, but it is a flavor loss.

Maybe they could figure a different reason for people to visit class trainer. A simple quest every 10 levels or something, for a nice class themed item. The game has two left (level 20 and level 50, sending you to Shadowfang Keep and Sunken Temple), so some solo out-in-the-world ones wouldn't hurt. I actually love the reward my tauren paladin got and I'm keeping it for transmog as it's strictly a Sunwalker thing.

 

[Floridian]

Does anyone here have any twink accounts? I'm mainly doing 29s and it can be fun at times when I don't have to deal with broken comps.

 

[Gentleman Jack]

Let's face it the real reason those quests are gone is heirlooms. By the time you finished the quest for your level 20 class specific weapon you'd be level 30 thanks to all the exp bonuses.

 

[Robin64]

Let's face it the real reason those quests are gone is heirlooms. By the time you finished the quest for your level 20 class specific weapon you'd be level 30 thanks to all the exp bonuses.

Heh yeah. Even without heirlooms, you completely outlevel zones. Entering at the appropriate level means all the quests are green or even grey before you leave, especially if you do that zone's dungeon. It's just insane.

 

[strafer]

Perhaps Blizz is making the game easier to players so they wont go and play another MMO.

 

[davepoobond]

Let's face it the real reason those quests are gone is heirlooms. By the time you finished the quest for your level 20 class specific weapon you'd be level 30 thanks to all the exp bonuses.

those quests granting heirlooms would probably solve that issue

 

[Tacitus_]

Let's face it the real reason those quests are gone is heirlooms. By the time you finished the quest for your level 20 class specific weapon you'd be level 30 thanks to all the exp bonuses.

Nah, they've slashed the exp requirements for leveling multiple times for older content so leveling to max takes about the same time. Heirlooms are just the cherry on top.

 

[Not Spaceghost]

Perhaps Blizz is making the game easier to players so they wont go and play another MMO.

It's funny because if you plot "accessibility to new players" and "subscription numbers" it would suggest making the game more open to new players kills the sub fees.

The game had it's biggest growth spurt when it was undoubtedly at it's most difficult and unwelcoming - The Burning Crusade.

 

[Gentleman Jack]

those quests granting heirlooms would probably solve that issue

I like this idea. TBH they should have never extended heirlooms past level 85. They wrecked new content as well as old.

Nah, they've slashed the exp requirements for leveling multiple times for older content so leveling to max takes about the same time. Heirlooms are just the cherry on top.

Yeah it's a big factor. There's also zero value to experience points once you've capped out, so people never even finish existing SP content or group to do the content that used to grant gobs of exp (Icecrown 5-man quest chains). I wonder if Blizzard has the balls to bring back the alternative advancement system. "Hey look a ladder to climb that doesn't involve gear and that you need to grind exp to advance!."

 

[Robin64]

I don't know much about EQ's AA system, but would it be fair to say that Path of the Titans would've been WoW's AA system?

 

[jaundicejuice]

Heroic Tier 11.

*snip*

It looks pretty dope on a Belf in the wowhead modelviewer too.

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll add that to my goal checklist with this Belf Fire Mage. Farm Ashes of Al'ar, earn the Firelord title, and get some sick looking fire weapons. Molten Core had some neat looking stuff.

 

[Gentleman Jack]

I don't know much about EQ's AA system, but would it be fair to say that Path of the Titans would've been WoW's AA system?

It's a pretty apt comparison. Unlock new class perks by grinding shit out old school.

It would completely imbalance the game in favor of long-term players, but it's not like WoW is attracting new players anyway.

 

[Enter the Dragon Punch]

http://marlamin.com/armory/status.php

WoW beta servers are up

Gamescom expansion announcement incoming?

 

[JORMBO]

http://marlamin.com/armory/status.php

WoW beta servers are up

Gamescom expansion announcement incoming?

damn no beta invite for me again!

 

[Entropia]

I'd bet vanilla servers would lose their appeal for most people after a while. I've always been of the opinion that WoW has continued to get better and better over the years. I fell off the train pretty hard with WoD, but that was more just the new content / needing a break, rather than the overall structure or systems of the game (Ashran was meh, dungeons, etc.).

Played a decent amount this past weekend because of a random free week Blizzard gave me. Made me miss the game a lot, but I still don't think I can justify resubbing right now. Hopefully we do get a new expansion announcement, though.

edit: also in regards to the community being negative, I really have to wonder how serious some people are on the forums lol. Some of the discussion just makes no sense to me. Like this topic on the front page right now "What do you miss in WoW?". Some of the responses are crazy

• The pet loyalty system.
• Pre-Deathwing quests
• Feeding your pet to maintain its happiness.
• Walking to a BG to queue
• Learning your abilities directly from trainers.
• Necessary food and drink.
• Reagents for abilities.
• Attunements
• Quivers, ammo, reagents, soul shards

I mean there are certainly some things I miss in WoW, but a lot of the stuff I see people complain about on the official forums is dull, outdated crap.

Similar question up on the /r/wow sub-reddit: WoW reverts back to Classic. You're allowed to bring back ONE thing from Modern WoW back to Classic with you. What is it?

Lots of interesting answers. Dual talents, AOE Looting, Gold, Rep grind, collection tabs, updated character models

 

[Tacitus_]

Yeah it's a big factor. There's also zero value to experience points once you've capped out, so people never even finish existing SP content or group to do the content that used to grant gobs of exp (Icecrown 5-man quest chains).

Not technically true, XP gets converted to gold at max level. I remember when they added that in late vanilla.
(unless you meant something else by capping xp)

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

2 things today. Got my Pandaren Firework Launcher after 8+ kills. Also tamed Ban'thalos (instead of killing him).

Only rare spirit beasts left are Loque and the bear. Loque I've been searching for for month now to no avail. Bear less often since he's on the other side of Northrend.

 

[Fjordson]

Similar question up on the /r/wow sub-reddit: WoW reverts back to Classic. You're allowed to bring back ONE thing from Modern WoW back to Classic with you. What is it?

Lots of interesting answers. Dual talents, AOE Looting, Gold, Rep grind, collection tabs, updated character models

That's a much more interesting question.

Dual talents would be crazy. Or all my gold I have now lmao. I was broke as hell in vanilla.

 

[Not Spaceghost]

Similar question up on the /r/wow sub-reddit: WoW reverts back to Classic. You're allowed to bring back ONE thing from Modern WoW back to Classic with you. What is it?

Lots of interesting answers. Dual talents, AOE Looting, Gold, Rep grind, collection tabs, updated character models

I think the only thing I'd bring back with me to vanilla would be the current quest helper system that's built in where it marks exactly where quests take place and what to do.

If I could bring back two things the other would be the current macro scripting, it's a lot more robust and user friendly than what it was back then.

 

[Gentleman Jack]

Not technically true, XP gets converted to gold at max level. I remember when they added that in late vanilla.
(unless you meant something else by capping xp)

Fair point. I was more bellyaching the fact that Blizzard doesn't incentivize actually finishing out the storylines once a player has reached max level. I'd love to get statistics on how many people actually finished off every storyline in every zone. Most of my current guild is like 'what, Garrosh died?' and 'What are these robots and Arakkoa doing in Hellfire?' The meager gold rewards are not incentive enough to go back and finish off the Single Player content. Part of that is how the Garrison remains a 'good enough' source of gold income that other sources are less optimal by comparison, the other part of that is the lack of reward from the kill grind inherent in WoW's quest structure. Flying in Draenor is about to make that slightly worse.

 

[Robin64]

Well you need Draenor Loremaster to fly in 6.2.1, at least.

 

[Gentleman Jack]

Well you need Draenor Loremaster to fly in 6.2.1, at least.

Yeah that's a fantastic prerequisite.

That reminds me I should do the Tanaan shit, I'm still on the first quest lol.

 

[Not Spaceghost]

Fair point. I was more bellyaching the fact that Blizzard doesn't incentivize actually finishing out the storylines once a player has reached max level. I'd love to get statistics on how many people actually finished off every storyline in every zone. Most of my current guild is like 'what, Garrosh died?' and 'What are these robots and Arakkoa doing in Hellfire?' The meager gold rewards are not incentive enough to go back and finish off the Single Player content. Part of that is how the Garrison remains a 'good enough' source of gold income that other sources are less optimal by comparison, the other part of that is the lack of reward from the kill grind inherent in WoW's quest structure. Flying in Draenor is about to make that slightly worse.

Lol I hit 100 at the very early stages of nagrand, I actually went back to finish the story...but only because it was still early in the expansion and there wasn't much else to do outside of heroic dungeons so I was finishing it up in my "downtime"...also for dat achievement.

I doubt many players even touch traditional quests after hitting max level.

 

[ampere]

I certainly don't think WoW could ever go back to the no-LFG-tool days, but I don't think its correct to say that a game without a queue system would fail. I think if there are enough compelling features and an enjoyable community, people like taking their time in a world and just journeying to get to their destination.

I disagree. I think we've gotten to a point where people expect convenience in games and they wouldn't tolerate it. Maybe if a game was marketed so that it was never going to appeal to a huge audience or have a huge sub number... the quite hardcore EVE Online still does well for what it is, but for a WoW-style MMO I think it's pretty near impossible to go back to the no-queue/no-fast travel world.

Part of the problem with WoW and it's "lack of content" is really just the speed with which queues and ports to the dungeon allow you to burn through the world. There is actually plenty to do, but if you can knock out 10 dungeons in a night, then it's not going to last very long.

People become more addicted when they can accomplish slightly less and have things to look forward to.

Solid point. Dungeons in Vanilla/BC/early WotLK did require a good bit more time just to organize and that does slow content consumption. It's like fast food vs fine dining, even if both menus had the same number of items it's pretty likely the fast food place would feel boring faster.

But I'll still argue that there isn't enough stuff to do in WoD. I'm not going to count stuff like Archaeology and the rep grinds as stuff to do because they are, by the admission of the WoW team, boring and last minute tack ons. Don't even get me started about Garrisons... I never wanted player housing to begin with.

 

[Robin64]

Reason I want flying the most is so I can get back in Archaeology a bit. I actually find it nice to do, but it needs flight. Don't really care about flying for anything else, questing has been great without it.

 

[CHC]

I disagree. I think we've gotten to a point where people expect convenience in games and they wouldn't tolerate it. Maybe if a game was marketed so that it was never going to appeal to a huge audience or have a huge sub number... the quite hardcore EVE Online still does well for what it is, but for a WoW-style MMO I think it's pretty near impossible to go back to the no-queue/no-fast travel world.

Yeah I certainly agree that a game that made no concessions to the player would have a hard time taking off. But by the same token, I think people are pretty quick to get behind the mechanics of a game if a) the community is there and is passionate b) the ground rules are set early.

If a game simply copied the WoW formula and hit the set without a dungeon tool, yeah it would fail. But if something else came along that was fresh enough in other areas that it was seen as something new rather than an imitator, audiences would probably go along with a certain degree of inconvenience. It's almost like training an animal or something - if the game tells you early on and consistenty "this is a slower game, not everything you want is obtainable in an hour" then that is OK.

So yeah I definitely feel ya when you say a "WoW style MMO" because that carries the connotation of WoW (obviously) and all its "pandering" features like dungeon queues, teleports, transmogs, etc. But if something came along that was a paradigm shift, I definitely think people could get into that.

The fact really is that if you're a WoW player, there is just no reason to leave for another MMO. Everything else out there with a respectably sized player base is just a copy, and if you've got your roots in WoW, then that's home and it's not easy to move from your home.

 

[davepoobond]

http://marlamin.com/armory/status.php

WoW beta servers are up

Gamescom expansion announcement incoming?

they have like 3 months or so until blizzcon, they'll probably have the next expansion playable if they are testing the beta servers now

 

[Tacitus_]

Solid point. Dungeons in Vanilla/BC/early WotLK did require a good bit more time just to organize and that does slow content consumption. It's like fast food vs fine dining, even if both menus had the same number of items it's pretty likely the fast food place would feel boring faster.

But I'll still argue that there isn't enough stuff to do in WoD. I'm not going to count stuff like Archaeology and the rep grinds as stuff to do because they are, by the admission of the WoW team, boring and last minute tack ons. Don't even get me started about Garrisons... I never wanted player housing to begin with.

They also added a bunch more stuff in big batches.

Spoiler

Well, most of the time, anyone remember the VOIP patch? Or rather, does anyone know that WoW has integrated VOIP?

Stuff like dungeons or daily quest hubs. While Tanaan technically has a shitload of content... most of it is shit. I haven't felt like "oh thank fuck I'm (mostly) done with that place" in a while in WoW.

At least the raid is great, but I kinda want something else to do outside of raiding and playing a facebook game in my garrison.

 

[ZenaxPure]

Solid point. Dungeons in Vanilla/BC/early WotLK did require a good bit more time just to organize and that does slow content consumption. It's like fast food vs fine dining, even if both menus had the same number of items it's pretty likely the fast food place would feel boring faster.

Ehhh, people really let nostalgia cloud their vision on this stuff. Not really singling you out here but the notion that content consumption was slower in those times compared to now is really glossing over a lot of the facts. Like anyone who joined a competent guild was not really going to experience these problems. We talk about how fast things are now but at least personally the TBC launch may as well just be the WoD launch in terms of speed. I spent the first few days hitting max level, I ran dungeons with my guildies to get some gear and attunements (which was not as time consuming as people like to make it out to be considering you could just clear a 5 man once and cycle out people to come in and pick up the item or talk to the NPC you needed) and then we headed off to Kara.

This blanket statement that the game used to be so slow because there was no LFG has always caused me to roll my eyes because of how easy it was to avoid. All LFG really did was let people who refused to join an active guild find groups faster.

 

[ampere]

Ehhh, people really let nostalgia cloud their vision on this stuff. Not really singling you out here but the notion that content consumption was slower in those times compared to now is really glossing over a lot of the facts. Like anyone who joined a competent guild was not really going to experience these problems. We talk about how fast things are now but at least personally the TBC launch may as well just be the WoD launch in terms of speed. I spent the first few days hitting max level, I ran dungeons with my guildies to get some gear and attunements (which was not as time consuming as people like to make it out to be considering you could just clear a 5 man once and cycle out people to come in and pick up the item or talk to the NPC you needed) and then we headed off to Kara.

This blanket statement that the game used to be so slow because there was no LFG has always caused me to roll my eyes because of how easy it was to avoid. All LFG really did was let people who refused to join an active guild find groups faster.

Heh. I'll take this L. I actually didn't have a stable raiding guild until ICC so this is probably a true misconception in my case. If you got rid of the queue system for WoD, my guild still would have blown through the dungeons nearly as fast. Hell, we had to fly to them for daily CM versions anyway.

edit: Though I will say this is still a useful angle for discussion, because a large portion of the playerbase does not have a strong guild they do activities with. For better or for worse WoW has to cater to this as well.

 

[Wavebossa]

Ehhh, people really let nostalgia cloud their vision on this stuff. Not really singling you out here but the notion that content consumption was slower in those times compared to now is really glossing over a lot of the facts. Like anyone who joined a competent guild was not really going to experience these problems. We talk about how fast things are now but at least personally the TBC launch may as well just be the WoD launch in terms of speed. I spent the first few days hitting max level, I ran dungeons with my guildies to get some gear and attunements (which was not as time consuming as people like to make it out to be considering you could just clear a 5 man once and cycle out people to come in and pick up the item or talk to the NPC you needed) and then we headed off to Kara.

This blanket statement that the game used to be so slow because there was no LFG has always caused me to roll my eyes because of how easy it was to avoid. All LFG really did was let people who refused to join an active guild find groups faster.

heh, Kara level 68 carry, Didn't even hit 100, my guild had my back.

Playing this game wihout a competent guild is truly the crux of most of the issues people face today.

 

[StMeph]

A bit late to the transmog show, but I'm pretty happy finally getting everything together:

2x Hungering Cold/Slayer of the Lifeless with Battlemaster illusion enchants for DW Frost.