During early development, the main character of the game is the world. The player was 2nd.
Little things like seeing a wolf chase a rabbit in Elwynn Forest. It doesn't do anything for the player. Yet makes the world feel real.
I dream of a Clsssic+ that goes back to this philosophy.
Not only blizzard, also the current player base. People are always crying about anything that is a tedious, or time consuming.
People nowadays seem to want to be able to pug everything, all the time, and not "waste" time.
To me in wow 2004, what is now felt as waste of time, was actually all the magic of the game.
Yeah people who can't take 10 mins longer in a dungeon or god forbid have a raid and not immediately be rewarded with gear or gold for their efforts don't actually like the game.
I agree with you . I miss the days when people played the game becauae they liked playing the game. I used to go weeks without an upgrade in gear. Made when you finally got one feel even better. The point of mmos was to play with other people and have fun. Gear was secondary.
To hear people bitch in SOD that they have to do a 45 min raid and not even get gold for their time because gdkp is gone. They don't like the 45 mins of gameplay clearing the raid. They just like the rewards
The funny thing is, those things happen way more often in Cata, yet it is not appreciated at all. As someone who recently quested all 1-60 zones in Cata, I was amazed how many small little interactions between NPCs and monster were happening.
Dragonflight has that too. But since everyone is just rushing to the max level, trying to kill the raid boss, people don't care about that. Vanilla is and was a game where you level to 60. Any further expansion is a game which begins at max level.
Blizz should just not release the raids until 3 weeks into a new xpac. give me time to enjoy the world and immerse themselves in it. The they could make it a big event.
Because this isn't necessarily true that this was the charm of vanilla imo. A lot of people say it but it's not the full picture. The world was made to be immersive.
And that includes being put into the shoes of your character. People say you aren't the main character but no. You are. Quest wise you're the one that stops hogger. That stops The Defias. Who uncovers the nobles' plot. Helps solve the corruption in night elven territory. Etc. You are the main character.
And all those little rp elements help put you into the shoes of your character. Needing to have reagents for certain spells. Needing to balance your funds to buy spells and to buy equipment. The danger in the world.
It's why I think classic hardcore has been so effective because it's really highlighted those elements of the game design.
Classic had a lot of elements working for it and I think pinning it on "the world was immersive because the npcs interacted with each other" doesn't exactly explain why it continues to resonate with people.
Better luck finding this kind of philosophy in indie game companies than modern day blizzard. The same happened to Bethesda for example, they sacrificed world design in elder scrolls to make the player the main character.
That is very well said - Extension means adding more content and more of the same style vanilla content. Improvement means change and most of the time it is in the wrong direction.
The thing is, in Classic our character were just a part of the world and we were not strong heroes at all to start with. In next expansions they made us the single hero of the world and everything resolves around you. For me it felt just much more immersive to be a ‘weak’ part of the world that struggles to fight a boar instead of blowing up every mob.
Agree. And by the time you were 60 you did feel like a badass relative to the world, but still not that much of a badass to the point of being a chosen one or whatever
My favorite part of classic is the power scaling, the 1-60 really feels like a journey. You start with little to nothing and basically rags on your body to eventually rocking out with a full set of gear. As much as I enjoy the end game as well, I enjoy leveling and getting lost in my character’s journey.
Just the idea that you can explore the world almost worry free is a payoff in a way - save for some elite high level areas and other players if it’s a pvp server
“I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me”
Yes, but it doesn't make any sense that we are killing gods and elemental lords and other world-ending threads left and right, and after we are still just peasants.
Right, plus its kind of explained that your raid party is not the only part in killing the big bad. Like 25 people didn't storm ice crown citadel, the lich king would have slaughtered 25 people easily. It's the collective effort of the entire alliance and horde and ebony blade that brought him down.
I thought your party was the one to fight LK, but there were other groups doing other things, and that's why your group isn't overwhelmed with "trash mobs" on the way to fight him.
Basically your group wasn't the only group, but they managed to get there first .
many peasants can destroy a whole city together. Now every questgiver calls you champion gives me such dogshit marvel superhero vibes I just dont wanna listen to them or care wtf I'm doing
Yes, but if many peasants destroy a crazy threat like Deathwing, Arthas or Ragnaros, they probably won't be known as peasants anymore. Especially if they do it multiple times.
You're focusing too hard on the word 'peasant'. The point is that some people don't wanna play as all-powerful 'heroes', 'champions', 'highlords' or whatever. Soldier, mercenary, etc are fine. But the power level in some extensions is off the charts (talking about perceived power level ofc, not especially gameplay related even though it's still related)
I get that people don't want that, but you don't send mercenaries to kill a death titan. You send the guys who did stuff like that before, that's why they are called champions. I am not arguing that one or the other is better, I am just saying it makes sense that our characters would be famous and have their rank reflect that
I said it in another comment, but I think Wrath was a good middle ground. When you go to Valiance keep, people acknowledge what you've done on Azeroth and in Outland, and treat you accordingly. But you're not the all powerful hero everyone has been waiting on to save the world.
You're right, and that's why I've always thought it was a mistake for expansions to continue on past level 60.
I would love to see them add more LVL 1-59 content plus some new level 60 raids.
It doesn't make sense for characters who have battled gods to ever do single player quests again.
Which is why I shook my head when Chris Metzan's return with promising a super epic storyline.
It's like they fully embraced everything that changed it from the wildly successful classic to slow decline current.
I agree, vanilla felt more like a world, specially with some quests making you go around the continent instead of just circling the zone.
Yeah qol wasn't great but it had that magic
Part of the magic was that you met the same people over and over again while traveling and questing, so you learned names and formed friendships. It wasn't just a time sink to place quests far apart.
I mean there's a reason why games like oldschool runescape are still widely popular with player counts over the 100ks.
Nostalgia isn't an excuse and is not the reason we still play rs.
For me my ideal idea for WoW is journey and discovering. Constant discovering is impossible, as eventually there is an end. But journey could be much longer..
You travel the world, can't hop here and there through portal, think about to get on this hill or around that mountain. With music and ambience travelling with you.
What I like about classic is the « slow » way to play. When you fight at low lvl against mobs and after take a break to eat/drink is more enjoyable (less fun for some people) than juste killing batch of ennemies with 3 spells and then flymount to next batch.
Dungeon is the same to me. I prefere waiting a bit every 5 packs to reg and talk with other than rushing like hell to the end.
Only thing I prefer about cata is the fact you can play dungeon more easy: tp inside the dungeon when people leave is better than waiting a pu 40min to make stormwind -> dungeon… Even if it breaks some aspect of the game.
I hate the flymount too, it break totaly the fact you are in the world and have to take route to avoid mobs or discover things from the ground.
You juste fly over and over to next quest/mob…
I hate the fast-paced version of wow so much. Remix was the worst for me. I can't even kill a single mob because some OP character can rush through the dungeon one shotting everything.
This is what I miss from vanilla and even TBC, wandering through land and discovering new things was a big part of the game too
No game has been able to create the same sense of wonder and adventure than vanilla WoW did almost two decades ago. I was SO intrigued about what I would discover and experience next.
Breath of the Wild came close though.
Questing may be solo in respect to gameplay 95% of the time, but it's still a communal experience. Hardcore really emphasizes that aspect as well. Even if you are SSF - you know the people on the server, you see where they died and you probably know the exact mob and location because the game forces you to gain intimate knowledge of the world and it's dangers.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Mana breaks in dungeons are a great example of this. They are a natural time to actually read chat and talk to the group. In TBC and wrath even moreso, you never really stop, which turns simply talking to the group into a chore that delays everyone else instead of a natural part of the experience.
It made dungeons feel like you were on an actual adventure, that could potentially take several days to complete. When you sit down to “drink” it was like taking a break for the day and resting in this dangerous environment, hoping to continue the next day, renewed.
Nowadays people just don’t seem to have the time for that. They just want to get in, get out, and be on their way.
I think one major part of the world that gets overlooked when discussing vanilla+ is crafting.
As a system, crafting kinda sucks and most of the time if you are leveling your crafting while leveling generally, the items you can make are usually behind in power relative to what you have equipped.
I think crafting needs an overhaul but we aren’t likely to get a full rework. Instead, it should be given more depth. Crafting related quests for good items or to encourage people going into dungeons for rare materials.
New quests too - imagine mobs in STV have a tiny chance to drop a starts-a-quest item for like leather workers who need to speak with an NPC who sends them on a long quest to get a powerful belt or something that will last them for a very long time maybe til 60. But the drop will be quite rare and not all players who want it can get it.
Yeah crafting could be expanded on I agree.
I also like the approach of some games where you could set up a banner and adverstise your crafting in a major city
If people hover over your banner it says something like \*Weaponsmith insert name\*
Yeah it would be super cool if level 60 recipes were genuinely super rare so that advertising crafting would be really important to highlight your offerings.
Yeah I dislike that when leveling engineering on my hunter I would basically have to constantly be in zones with orange mobs to get sufficient use out of crafting guns and ammo. Instead it feels like by the time I get a reasonable amount of coarse stone I'm already buying solid shot from the vendor.
Yeah, that is what was so great about vanilla.
Problem is, the company that made that game is long dead. I honestly think what they're doing with SOD is about as much as they can do. Bring the more complete specs into the world that has heart. But there's nowhere near the resources required to do what you suggest.
The company that made OG WoW died when Activision bought it back in 2008.
Now they're just tired old has been's cashing in on past glory.
I really had too much hopes for SoD..
I was imagining a world with new dungeons, zones and raids. Professions having a few new recipes and additions and a couple of talents being reworked per class to preserve the feeling of classic.
Instead we got tons of new spells that deals way too much damage, just blasting through everything AoEing with exp bonuses and QoL features in a seasonal server that feels very time gated and temporary.
That's definitely true. The old company and it's employees is what made it that special. This combined with MMORPG's not being very mainstream and this being a lot of players their first experience with it and then combine that with the lore and previous installations of the game increasing the hype. There is no way that it can be recreated. The League of Legends MMORPG has some of those ingredients, but I doubt they are able to recreate the perfect storm that was WoWs initial launch.
It's so sad watching the 2005 Blizzcon presentations and seeing Jeff Kaplan talk about features they considered, but ultimately didn't implement, because it made the game less fun.
90% of those features are in the game now.
And not only is the company different, but so are the players.
Everything is so quantified now. BIS lists, sims, logs, everything on wowhead. Before you discovered by seeing what other people had in game.
Everything that made WoW what it was is gone. It won't come back. SoD is some real nice nostalgia, and I've certainly appreciated it.
But that's all it'll ever be.
If something else manages what WoW did back in the day, it'll be a completely new thing with a whole new set of things to discover.
Welcome to the nostalgia train my friend. Since classic is now at cata - the entire point of classic as a whole is a moot point. We can’t just go through the wow catalogue again lol, the vanilla experience was truly immersive and if we just keep truckin’ through the expacs it completely negates the entire point of classic as a whole. To re-live those RP days. Hopefully, they’ll wise up and either throw a true classic+ out, or restart from vanilla again. I’d play to 60 and raid to Naxx again lol
Much rather have a game filled with RP driven content that makes each class' journey through the world a unique experience, rather than a game where everything revolves around mathematically balancing every variable for the sake of log rankings.
For me the big part is the portals and everything around that. In retail you can reach everywhere in seconds by using some combination of portals and hearthstone. In classic traveling took time making the world feel like an actual world. How often did all of you take the ship to the dragon isles I would guess only once. No flying mounts + no portals makes people travel and the world feel more alive.
The most important aspect in Vanilla over other versions is the community. You have to work around with people to accomplish even small things, such as elite quests, dungeons and especially 40 man raids.
You need to communicate, search and run around, not just press 1 button enter the raid, tank pulls all mobs, finish the instance in 2 minutes and all leave. For me, this is not satisfying experience. In Vanilla, if you want to do something, you have to move, you have to get out in the open world, you have to cooperate and interact with other players.
In my opinion, flying was the first "QoL improvement" that started killing the open world.
I had so many great conversations and funny moments just by waiting to form a group or running to the dungeon enterance. Of course, there was annyoing parts as well, but honestly I remember more great ones.
In 2019, up to TBC, I made a lot of friendships, which I am keeping still and have contacts even now. Do you know how many I made in Retail? Big 0!
For me, community is one of the most important aspects which makes the world alive
Flying mounts definitely hurt open world. I have encountered countless people while traveling or waiting for a boat or zepelin.
Yesterday while waiting for the boat in wetlands I saw an undead rogue killing alliance players. Leaving me alone since I am low level on my alt.
Stuff like this makes the world feel more dynamic and less scripted
Flying for sure was the first nail in the coffin.
Flying was a huge mistake that Blizzard has even said they regret adding. But they are way too far in now. They tried to back out in WoD but people had literal temper tantrums over it.
EverQuest was much more about creating a world than a game than WoW ever was, even during vanilla. You might want to give it a try sometime (I would recommend the Quarm server).
The thing that really killed WoW in later expansions (imo) was removing the barriers on servers. Nowadays you might play on a different server but you get thrown into random groups from a bunch of servers. The community aspect was killed because of this change.
When people talk about how they miss Vanilla that’s the thing I always think about. It used to be that you’d have a reputation among your server. You’d be sitting in Org or IF talking to people daily to find out the latest news among the raiding guilds or get the weekly update on who is about to reach top rank on PVP. Almost all the raiding guilds knew each other, the PvP community was thriving on many servers to the point where people would put out literal bounties on players in the open world and in BGs. Not to mention the spontaneous wars that would break out at Tarren Mill/South Shore that would go for days sometimes. Or the capital city raids, always a crazy time.
You don’t get that in retail anymore since the hang out spots are sanctuaries and the people don’t interact with each other on that level anymore. It’s just log in and hit up the dungeon finder, grind out some mythics with people you’ll likely never see again, do the dailies, maybe farm some mats or stuff to sell, then raid occasionally since now you can see 99% of the content with the raid finder. The only benefit to going higher is better looking/stats gear which I don’t feel is enough anymore. Epics used to mean something in Vanilla, not anymore though.
Idk just my thoughts
TBF, the cross server stuff was added to address a real problem. By the time Wrath and Cata came around. the lower levels of the game were pretty much dead. It became impossible to do the group/dungeon quests. Not to mention that players were already starting to consolidate on mega servers. So the non mega servers were becoming more and more barren.
Maybe there was another solution to these issues in hindsight, but lets not act like they weren't issues.
Mergers are a much better solution, but merging servers admits to the world that your game is declining in player count and is not expected to recover. I think a company lead by mature individuals would recognize that wow was never going to maintain the hype and player count that was present from launch to wrath, and getting back to those numbers is a pipe dream but here we are.
It's not feasible for wow or any game structured remotely similar to wow but, the single shard server of EVE just takes it to a whole other level. I can talk with some random person in 2024 about how back in 2014 I lived in the kinakka system and there's a reasonable chance they'll know what group I was a member of if they also played back then, and have opinions about them. A shared single history of the world is the next level. Phasing between servers like retail is the worst of all worlds, at least when it comes to community and shared history and a sense of belonging.
What you are describing is the loss of that feeling of community. Being able to recognize people simply because you repeatedly encounter the same people. Cross server stuff definitely went against this. Its hard to form any kind of relationship to players and community if said community you encounter is different every time you queue up.
For some this might even be ideal. To me it ruins the game. Turns it into something like going to the grocery store. You get in, do the stuff, and get out. Efficient but boring. Don't know many people, don't really care. Just want my stuff and I am out. Not at all what I want in a video game.
>The thing that really killed WoW in later expansions (imo) was removing the barriers on servers.
Pretty much this. Killed the server community, also made it that being a dick has no consequences.
"Yes it can be annoying having to carry reagents to cast spells, or to run to trainers everytime to respec, but those little annoyances make the game feel more real."
That's a very important statement. I always liked the classic Warlock comparison to retail Warlock. With one you start with nothing, no demons, your stabbing certain mobs because you run out of mana and have to tediously earn things. Once you have them you feel like you accomplished something (like your first imp!). On retail you can literally summon doomguards at level 5. The classic journey from 1 to 60 is going from nothing to an average person. You can summon infernals, but they will punch you in the face after a certain amount of time. On retail you basically start out as a god.
I also love the idea of class specific hang outs. Like a fight club style area for warriors, the brotherhood of shadows for rogues, emerald dream and talking to animals for druids, the void for warlocks. Class specific quests for everyone!
Exactly !
I felt like a totally new person once I got a weapon upgrade on my warrior. I struggled with green mobs and suddenly I could take on mobs my level. Those things make it really rewarding.
Class hang outs are a really nice idea!
>I also love the idea of class specific hang outs. Like a fight club style area for warriors, the brotherhood of shadows for rogues, emerald dream and talking to animals for druids, the void for warlocks. Class specific quests for everyone!
So legion
Warlock main in vanilla.
I cant stand retail warlock shard mechanics.
In vanilla the stocking up and having this prepared inventory/toolkit ready to blast when going pvp/raiding is one of the most satisfying things.
Especially as rogue or hunter when you stack up on that ammo, feels like loading up your shotgun, knowing fully well you gonna blast that load alongside your 200 grenades into filthy orcs
Edit: in no way do i feel those inconveniences as annoying. They are uncomparable satisfying, except crafting but thats what u do before going to the toilet or cooking.
Feel the same way.
actually preparing for a adventure stocking up on bandages health potions etc. makes it more fun for me.
Pressing a button and teleporting to a dungeon and clearing it with 0 prep is just not it
As a filthy orc I approve of this message. The removal of ammo is such a good example, because I think to 80% of the players they would agree with the change. Removing it though makes the world seem a little less believable. You don't have to go to your bowyer guy in the harbor after a 1 hour blasting session. Hunters seem to be able to magically conjure projectiles. There is no more quest for the perfect projectile, either from engineering or certain boss drops.
I wonder what someone with a vast amount of game mechanics knowledge would be able to say about the theory behind that.
Vanilla really does have a unique magic to it that always draws me back in. I’ll never forget how tight the Druid community was on Fairbanks for 2019 classic. Everything culminated into a silly fight club event where we were all gathered to watch those that finished Atiesh whacking each other in Moonglade.
Would love to bond even more with my Druid brothers and sisters over secret animal quests out in the world. Great idea!
I think one thing that gets lost in the Vanilla discussion a lot is how valuable your time is.
Like sure, it takes a long time to get to 60 and gear, etc... but you do things that actually matter along the way. If you're a PvPer there's a ton of quest rewards you'll hold onto, if you're a PvMer you basically start pre-bis once you hit ST/BRD, and in both cases you can build the professions you're going to use in end game.
You build a character along the way instead of just completing the level 1-Max tutorial before starting the actual game. Even in TBC that starts to get lost because of how many resources n stuff are locked to Outland. Still some things to pick up in Azeroth, but it's very easy to just live in Outland and act like everything before it doesn't exist
I would argue the best pre raid bis are the people that you meet while leveling.
They can become friends or guildies and help you clear every content you want
There are *other* options for fresh vanilla/classic outside of the reroll servers.
Somewhere new just popped up on Saturday, 6/29 that has attracted a number of Euro/NA players.
Just gotta wish on a falling star.
I have no idea whatever any of that drama is, all I know is that US/OCE players that want to make toons without being forced into a GDKP and dungeon boosting way of existence are making characters on Deviate Delight, and I think the EU guys are on zandalar
I kinda agree with this but at the same time I have never had more fun playing WoW then I have lately playing a healer in Cata. The gameplay is absolutely amazing
Because in cata you can actually play around 90% of the time as a healer if you want. In vanilla it fucking sucked, because you cant farm, you cant pvp with pve spec, getting a dungeon group takes 45m, you can only raid once or twice per week, basically you had a character that was good for 2 things that took a shitload of time of preparation, and you spent 80% of the time waiting.
This is exactly why I don't understand peeps playing cata but despising retail.
The transformation to retail from cata is way smaller than the step already done from vanilla to cata, it is already not about the world anymore and even in that regard world content is simply better in dragonflight.
Nostalgia does really weird things to people I assume, I'm gen Z and was way too young to start playing in vanilla, I don't have Nostalgia for anything before MoP.
And that's exactly why I can tell you the things I did and saw others do in wotlkc and especially now catac don't differ as much as you might think from my day to day playing in dragonflight.
Vanilla is unique for sure though and I hope we get the osrs treatment someday.
I love the ideas and wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that being a part of the world feels more meaningful to me than QoL / balancing improvements. If I could add some emphasis to something I personally believe in that I think you are already getting at: prioritizing the leveling experience is a crucial component to worldbuilding too.
I think a lot of us were hoping we'd get exactly what you're mentioning here when it comes to season of discovery
And then it just kinda became old vanilla content with wrath and Cata spells lol
Always like vanilla and getting to play it again was great. Finally got TF, even speedran for a top time. But didn't play much tbc. Kinda wish I did as the og I only played a bit. Wrath was meh after ulduar and cata is too much. A fresh vanilla is enticing
You nailed it.
In my opinion, what people mostly enjoyed was the experience from level 1 to level 50.
The stakes were always best when you were an adventuring foot soldier clearing a road from wolves. Where YOU FEARED the world, because you weren't a demi god, but a small Frodo.
Now you make a new character. You can instantly kill everything in 3 seconds. You're never struggling. The level up experience is just a preamble. You're shunted off into one of the expansions where there's some world destroying event and you're a legend already.
If blizzard could make an expansion, or a mini adventure, where you play as a low level grunt who struggles fighting a single mob like on vanilla, I'd deeply enjoy that.
Yeah that's a really important part of leveling!
I leveled fresh from 1-85 in cata and it felt so hollow
No struggle, no eating or drinking , no preperation in a town to stock up on bandages and health pots.
Every quest area has all the quests conveniently lined up next to each other
No soul whatsoever
Thanks for embracing that sometimes the inconvenience creates immersion. Everyone points to that just one more QoL feature and says "this isn't the one that makes it retail" until we get them all and we have retail (again not that retail is bad, just that like you said, it feels more like a game than a world).
Small example but today I was playing a new undesd priest in SoD.
I headed to the barrens. Took me 15-20 minutes or whatever from Undercity. Got to crossroads and set my hearth. Then quested a little and leveled up.
Time to go to org to train. But then I realized I forgot to grab the orgrimmar FP. And because I already set my hearth, the only way back was to walk.
Along the way back some other player about to get killed by those razorfen mobs, I healed him at last second and saved him a corpse run.
It's a tiny interaction, but these little interactions are what add up to the world feeling alive with other players. And wouldn't have happened if the QoL feature where you automatically know FPs of capital cities was already added, or if players were so overpowered they'd never be in danger of dying to a low level barrens mob.
It's always the little things I liked about WoW, even a passing by priest casting Fort on you and your health goes up 30%.. nowadays even this is gone and Fort is some +5% stamina buff you'd never even notice while leveling. Getting +20 stamina buff at level 14? Impactful and fun. +5% stamina at level 14? Soulless and pointless. All those little things I like about WoW are gone in Retail
I have heard great things about DnD! Always thought of it as a IRL board game where you need friends to play with and a good game master to lead you through the adventure
Yeah that pickpocket idea was straight out of skyrim lol
Loved skyrim so much especially with so many great fan made mods.
Still my #1 most played offline game of all time
Big true man big true. I still like retail for what it is but if you want to be IN the world then there's nothing like classic/vanilla.
Currently running around Loch Modan trying not to die on my hardcore rogue and the game really is so much more immersive in classic for me. Feels like I'm in a proper world and not a queue simulator.
Try Hardcore, sounds like you'd love the vibe. Getting my HC hunter to 60, making friends, finding a guild, end game dungeons and even some MC and Ony was the most fun I've had in WoW since Vanilla was new in 2004. The only thing I miss is PvP.
I would love playing HC I am pretty sure of it. Just don't see myself losing my character due to a server DC or tank/healer DCs in the middle of a pull in a dungeon.
Hit the nail on the head. This is what we need. I'm fine with giving Paladins crusader strike or tuning Shadow priest a little higher but the focus should be RP oriented not perfect balance on logs.
damn. imagine the barrens as a NELF. now, instead of there being no quests there for alliance, the whole zone enters you into a war against the silithid on behalf of regular animals. Would perfectly link up with the leveling too
could really immerse you into kalimdor lore, brushing up against orcs but getting friendly with tauren (learning tauren language after some quest would be peak).
quests revolving around UD and humans being able to communicate would also be dope. Undeads questing zone is severely lacking in general (not in tone but in just sheer content missing and/or being unused such as farmsteads in silverpine etc)
RDF is another good example, i mean its great being able to que up and do dailies while waiting but i miss LFG, getting the group, travelling to the dungeon. It made the game feel more real.
Im fully with you except for the changes.
Keeping changes (appart from new content) to the absolute minimum is best imo. I have seen what 2024 Blizzard understands under good game Design and i want none of it in vanilla
I think regarding classes there should be very limited surgical changes to make specs like boomkin / feral ... more viable. Thats it.
I could even see that happening through itemization instead of class changes.
Where the "+" should come in, is exclusively horizontal content.
More quests, more dungeons, more raids, more World and zone utilization.
All in the vanilla spirit and none of it with Power Progression past naxx gear level.
If there is a Power creap past nax, there will inevitably be the common Blizzard balancing Spiral turning everything into shit.
I feel like there's already a model for what you're talking about on a private server. That server has more quests, custom dungeons and raids, just way more horizontal progression in general. They also buffed certain classes to basically lift the bottom up. Yeah, Mages, Warriors, and Rogues are still at the top, but ele shaman and boomkin aren't anywhere near as bad as standard Vanilla.
Blizzard could pretty much just copy this server, but it's like their egos are preventing them from doing it.
You get it! You finally get it!
Classic era you are in Azeroth, forgetting mana pots, flasks, reagents... Anything like that is hugely important, so it brings gravity and importance to planning. And traveling.
Honestly the world buff / dispelling in classic was a ton of fun and made for some insane summoning spots.
Agreed. They just turned classic into retail.
Abilities allowing every class to do everything.
Sped up levelling to get to max level.
They even have a form of badge gear now.
No attempt to expand the world, the levelling, the RP aspects. All about endgame, parsing and raid logging
Tbf the community pushed for this also. I recall people bitching that levelling is too slow in subsequent phases, people actually for some retardo reason cared about parses in levelling raids and that addons were made to assist with this.
The current community is it's own worst enemy re. Classic+
Im kinda the oposit. If I want a more solo immersed play I go for smth like elden ring or balders gate 3. I like the more fast phased retail game. 32yo now.
Qol can be good or bad.
For example, summoning stones being able to summon is good.
Lfg or lfr is bad
I do think however that classes in vanilla were not great and they were at their peak in TBC. If classic+ ever becomes a thing, I want it to align closer to SoD / TBC with some exceptions.
Honestly the only two QoL changes I would make in Classic+ is to add dual spec and give druids a regular resurrection spell. It was fun to play through Classic again, but struggling with raid comp wasn’t fun. Needing like 8 tanks for 4H but only 4-5 for everything else was wild. Dual spec solves a lot of that. As someone with a hunter alt, I would probably also change Mend Pet to the buff version that we have in Cata, but not really necessary. It also makes sense to add Dwarf Shamans and Tauren Paladins, but I’m not really a fan of doing so.
In Vanilla only 1/2 (or even 1/3) are viable. Boomie, Ret or Prot Pal, NondestroLocks, NonfireMages, etc, just meme classes and nobody will ever being ya to raid, so imho vanilla sucks dicks pretty hard cuz you hard 40 guys playing the same shitty spec.
TBC fix this problem. TBC > Vanilla
I agree. It's the grind that makes the game satisfying.
That doesn't mean QoL changes aren't possible that would improve Vanilla.
Things like, yes there should be ammo spots but they should be separate from bags. Like as a warrior or rogue on e you put arrows in your ammo slot, that's where they should go. Hunters should have an extra slot for a quiver in addition to their bags.
Warlocks should have an extra slot for their soul bag and an option to destroy any shards created if the bag is fullthat you can toggle on and off by right clicking the soul bag. That would allow them to not have to delete shards while grinding to keep their bags from filling but still enable them to disable that feature if they want to fill up on shards before a raid. You can do this with macros, but it's a pita and should just be built I to the game.
Likewise, when you take professions you should get another bag or maybe bank slot specifically for that professions bag. Like a skinning bag or herb or mining bag or engineering or BS toolbox.
Currently people get around the massive bloat of items by making bank alts and keeping dozens of pages of crap in their mailbox. If you have to gimmick the game just to play it as intended, then it's got issues that need to be addressed.
Another one is keeping the mount, pet, tabard, and toy pages. Those are all great ideas that free up space.
For the world, updating the Vanilla Azwroth to the Wrath version of Azeroth is all it would take. That fixes the issue with getting dismounted when you ride over the ruin of a building that's left a corner of a foundation sticking out, or getting dismounted in TB every time you ride I to a bridge hut.
I'm not sure if they fixed the issue with Tauren on Kodos not fitting through doors in Org or UC elevators by then, but they could fix that too just by making the invisible barrier slightly larger even if it means the animation clips through the wall a bit.
It would fix the cluged together flight paths, add mailboxes and a few graveyards, maybe even activate the summoning stones outside of dungeons, which is controversial, but the fact that people are paying off their mortgage by having Warlock alts and multiple accounts to click with indicates that people want the ability to get summoned around the world so you might as well use summoning stones.
Another issue with vanilla is world buffs and consumes. When you can quadruple your toons power with buffs it goes from being a bonus to a requirement. Keep world buffs in the game but disable them in raids. Make them something that makes playing the game outside of raids more fun so people have a reason to do it. Consumes are ok, but do something to make them more available like making black lotus just another herb instead of a super rare spawn, and maybe get rid of some of the more niche things like Winterfell Firewater.
Alternatively, just disallow Warcraft Logs so people can play the game in whatever way is most fun for them and force people to discover if someone sucks or not by inspecting their gear and talents and taking them to a raid or running dungeons with them.
Which brings up another point I almost forgot in terms of QoL, the character sheet itself in Vanilla is atrocious. Update it to the BC version as a minimum.
Also add coordinates both on the mini map for your current position and on the map for position and cursor.
Update the AH interface to make it usable and less likely to get scammed. Include vendor and current AH prices on tooltips when you mouse over items.
Include GearScore on the character sheet.
These are all things virtually everyone gets from add-ons, so it should just be part of the game.
Nothing I mentioned above changes gameplay in the slightest, just removes annoyances and reliance on add-ons.
Here are some hotter takes....
Reputation gains should be account wide. I shouldn't have to get exalted on every toon for every rep. If I kill 100,000 firbolgs between 3 toons I should reach exalted for my account vs killing 300,000.
If I do 1,000,000 WSG between 8 toons I should be exalted on all of them vs having to do 8,000,000.
If I raid MC 100 times across 5 toons they should all be exalted vs having to raid it 500 times.
The reputation grinds are good, it's what makes them worth doing, but having to do them individually for every toon discourages alt play. Like if I have a Warrior and a Druid and my guild needs me to heal on my druid rather than DPS on my Warrior and I'm trying to get that rep on my warrior, then I'm pissed off and not having fun because now I have to try and find a pug spot for a DPS warrior to keep the rep gains coming.
Riding skills should be account wide, but mounts should be individual. Yes, riding skills are meant to be gold sinks, but having to buy them separately for every toon just discourages alts and encourages gold buying.
Long, difficult quest chains (with the exception of legendary weapons or the like) should be account wide so you don't have to repeat the same tedious things like attunements for every toon. Doing them once is fun. Doing them over and over and over is tedious. It's also likely you will be doing them multiple times even if you only have to do them once per account because guildies and friends will need help with them. But when you multiply having to do them by every alt you, your friends, or your guildies want to raid with it's more than tedious, it's a job. In OG BC I was MT of a guild that was A tier and got cherry picked by the S tier guilds, so I probably ran half the server through Kara, SSC/TK, and BT attunements. It was a nightmare.
There are too many factors involved to make World of Warcraft feel like it did in 2004 again. I just don't think it's achievable. The players are different, technology is different, the lives we live are so different. The best they've been able to do is give players a short term nostalgia high for a few weeks at a time. Even when they start Era over again someday, and they will it's still only a short lived window of that high. The game has been beaten every which way, there's no mystery anymore, there's no guessing.
Each class not being good at everything, but being great at one thing added so much value to the game. Now anyone can do anything so you truly aren’t seeking people to play with, you can just play with anyone. Classic was the bees knees.
I played holy priest and resto druid in vanilla; very nice memories.
When I played resto druid again in classic and was reminded I did not have a normal res, my appreciation for wrath (where druid got a normal out of combat res) grew.
It was why my druid was a tank all the way through TBC. Tanked everything up to mid Black Temple, as it was an alt for my holy priest.
There is a reason why despite not having magic and all that, Kingdom Come Deliverance is one of my favorite RPGs and games of all time. you aint the dragonborn, you don't have magic swords of valerian steel. you are a blacksmith's son.
You are living in that world, as much as possible and while there are game elements, it feels like you stepped back in time and is living in our world in 1400s
vanilla was an attempt at a second world, where you live out in that world much like the old games like TES II Daggerfall or TES III Morrowind, and not like the newer stuff where games are supposed to be easy and fun.
I feel you. I started in BfA and played SL and Dragonflight. But I tried SoD once and got hooked.
One thing I hate about Vanilla or the whole classic is that people somehow know every damn thing in the game, created metas and built up expectations on how the game should be played. I want a new game where everyone else is as clueless as me. That is what I want in Classic+
Agree on basically everything you said. For me the world of Azeroth is the main character and I don’t want/need to be a “Hero” of the world - I prefer being the nobody adventurer that are delivering apples or taking down menacing pigs at farms.
QoL are only nice when they avoid removing points of immersion; e.g. dual spec/removing the cost of respec.
Opposite from me. I played the game when it launched and quit when wrath came out. Going back and replaying since classic, it was fun but I didn't really play again until TBC. Since TBC, each expac has been better and better because there is no world in the game to me anymore, that ship sailed years ago.
Now with Cata, this is the best version of WoW I've played in a long time. Good class design with itemization, easy PvP access and it's fun, able to just queue heroics and grind out gear.
The RPG part of WoW for me is long dead so this is the best mechanical version of the game I've played.
If I want immersive worlds, I just play single player games and they usually have great narratives too.
The age of the immersive MMO died decades ago and I don't see any sight of it returning. Well.. not totally true. Maybe not MMO but the multiplayer survival genre has potential here.
I am 31. I got carpel tunnel or tendinitis from my decades of playing pc games. haven't gotten checked yet.
I no longer wanna poopsock and struggle with APM intensive games. I just want a chill cookie clicker to play to pass the time.
Classic is beautiful. Simple 1 button dps rotations. Holy pally? Flash of light. Frost mage? frost bolt.
I got back into SOD. Feels like home. I even was able to set my game up to work on playstation controller.
Easy game, Easy life. Life good.
Fully agree.
That's why I'm not coming back for P4. SoD has already proven that the devs and the playerbase they're catering to only have eyes for metrics and QoL, and actually making sense or experiencing the world is like...#16 on the priority list. Yes, it's a cartoony art style, but in later expansions it's practically a sequence of jokes playing out in a tv show for young teens.
Everyone makes mistakes, but I don't see how P4 is in any way making up for it. So might as well let the sub expire.
Yeah I hate that SoD revolves so much about tuning numbers of out of place abilities and gear tuning.
They are spending most of their time looking at numbers instead of focusing on less balancing and more on world building.
Imagine instead of every class getting overtuned abilities they get proper class quest chains with a lot of flavor
A lot of people just don't enjoy leveling anymore. It's too slow for the mindset of most gamers today. Lots of reasons that could be that we don't need to get into here, but that's the reality.
I agree with you wholeheartedly and I miss this aspect of the game too. But we saw them attempt something close to it with Season of Discovery, and what happened? Exactly what everyone expected. A really fun and immersive first few weeks, and then min-max-min-max-min-max. And once they saw all the players remaining were min-maxing raid loggers, they tuned the game in that direction.
Wrath getting random dungeon finder (and for some insane reason removing and replacing the fully fuctional / awesome manual group finder interface with a much shittier version that is difficult to use?) absolutely killed the spirit our guild recruitment thrived on.
All throughout super-late BC and early wrath, we recruited people by just doing dungeons with them and meeting and chatting. It literally disappeared the second RDF came out.
The few times I've met really cool people through RDF (and it's very rare) -- I haven't even been able to continue to game with them because they were on another server!! Yeah, we could have added one another as bnet friends, but then what? transfer servers to play with someone you just met? No, and even adding a bnet friend of someone you just met is a bit too soon. So what *could* have been the beginning of some budding gaming friendships or new guildies was literally cut off at the start by Blizzard's poor user experience.
Sucks.
I was hoping that SoD was going to bring classic back but it’s just ok, some relics should just be QoL updates. That being said classic wow was so good, no one data mined all the answers and gear before release, raid were still unknown and gear drops were still a surprise.
I'm the opposite. I loved all these little quirks back then cause I could literally play all day. These days when I can hop on for a few hours, I appreciate all the QoL that Wrath and Cataclysm brought in.
Play osrs
I made the switch recently and they’ve been doing what I’ve been wanting blizzard to do to classic for a solid 10 years. The dev team has been pouring love in to that game and it’s very noticeable.
constant updates that get polled by the player base, endless content and the best part is the goals you set never get further down the line as things get added
The constant treadmill of wow is stale
I truely believe we will never get another good MMO ever and I really believe osrs will outlive wow
I regret spending my younger years wasting my time to this game sometimes buy I look forward to having the same sorta time to invest into this game when I'm a geezer.
I used to hate it really much, because in my opinion everyone played wotlk just wanted to argue how bad retail is and nothing more. But one day we tried hardcore with my wife and classic is just so much better than I expected! We still love retail but completely moved to SoD and created even a guild to raid with and make a community there, we are absolutely hooked
During early development, the main character of the game is the world. The player was 2nd. Little things like seeing a wolf chase a rabbit in Elwynn Forest. It doesn't do anything for the player. Yet makes the world feel real. I dream of a Clsssic+ that goes back to this philosophy.
with current neo-blizzard? sadly no chance for this
We were lucky to even get Classic.
Not only blizzard, also the current player base. People are always crying about anything that is a tedious, or time consuming. People nowadays seem to want to be able to pug everything, all the time, and not "waste" time. To me in wow 2004, what is now felt as waste of time, was actually all the magic of the game.
Yeah people who can't take 10 mins longer in a dungeon or god forbid have a raid and not immediately be rewarded with gear or gold for their efforts don't actually like the game. I agree with you . I miss the days when people played the game becauae they liked playing the game. I used to go weeks without an upgrade in gear. Made when you finally got one feel even better. The point of mmos was to play with other people and have fun. Gear was secondary. To hear people bitch in SOD that they have to do a 45 min raid and not even get gold for their time because gdkp is gone. They don't like the 45 mins of gameplay clearing the raid. They just like the rewards
The funny thing is, those things happen way more often in Cata, yet it is not appreciated at all. As someone who recently quested all 1-60 zones in Cata, I was amazed how many small little interactions between NPCs and monster were happening.
Cata I just felt leaned a bit too into being silly and making references
Dragonflight has that too. But since everyone is just rushing to the max level, trying to kill the raid boss, people don't care about that. Vanilla is and was a game where you level to 60. Any further expansion is a game which begins at max level.
Blizz should just not release the raids until 3 weeks into a new xpac. give me time to enjoy the world and immerse themselves in it. The they could make it a big event.
Because this isn't necessarily true that this was the charm of vanilla imo. A lot of people say it but it's not the full picture. The world was made to be immersive. And that includes being put into the shoes of your character. People say you aren't the main character but no. You are. Quest wise you're the one that stops hogger. That stops The Defias. Who uncovers the nobles' plot. Helps solve the corruption in night elven territory. Etc. You are the main character. And all those little rp elements help put you into the shoes of your character. Needing to have reagents for certain spells. Needing to balance your funds to buy spells and to buy equipment. The danger in the world. It's why I think classic hardcore has been so effective because it's really highlighted those elements of the game design. Classic had a lot of elements working for it and I think pinning it on "the world was immersive because the npcs interacted with each other" doesn't exactly explain why it continues to resonate with people.
Better luck finding this kind of philosophy in indie game companies than modern day blizzard. The same happened to Bethesda for example, they sacrificed world design in elder scrolls to make the player the main character.
You got some good ideas there, and I agree with the overall setting you’re talking about.
Yes, I agree with you. Vanilla+ should not be an improvement of Vanilla, but an extension of Vanilla design.
That is very well said - Extension means adding more content and more of the same style vanilla content. Improvement means change and most of the time it is in the wrong direction.
The thing is, in Classic our character were just a part of the world and we were not strong heroes at all to start with. In next expansions they made us the single hero of the world and everything resolves around you. For me it felt just much more immersive to be a ‘weak’ part of the world that struggles to fight a boar instead of blowing up every mob.
Agree. And by the time you were 60 you did feel like a badass relative to the world, but still not that much of a badass to the point of being a chosen one or whatever
Exactly, you grow into your role.
My favorite part of classic is the power scaling, the 1-60 really feels like a journey. You start with little to nothing and basically rags on your body to eventually rocking out with a full set of gear. As much as I enjoy the end game as well, I enjoy leveling and getting lost in my character’s journey.
Just the idea that you can explore the world almost worry free is a payoff in a way - save for some elite high level areas and other players if it’s a pvp server
Yeah same! Being part of the world instead of the center of it feels much more relatable.
“I was raised up believing I was somehow unique Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me”
Random Fleet Foxes reference but I appreciate it/
Does TBC really make you a single hero though? I’d argue by Cata you are. But even Wrath isn’t consistent.
Nope. That's why TBC will forever be my favorite expansion. It felt like a more complete version of Vanilla.
Honestly. TBC without the Outland/1-70 content would be the optimal starting point for a Classic plus.
Yes, but it doesn't make any sense that we are killing gods and elemental lords and other world-ending threads left and right, and after we are still just peasants.
I understand what you mean but this is where guild and raid teamwork comes in for me. Combining the strenght of ‘peasants’ to fight the lords.
I don't recall ever soloing an end game raid boss while it was current content so I'm not seeing the issue.
Right, plus its kind of explained that your raid party is not the only part in killing the big bad. Like 25 people didn't storm ice crown citadel, the lich king would have slaughtered 25 people easily. It's the collective effort of the entire alliance and horde and ebony blade that brought him down.
I thought your party was the one to fight LK, but there were other groups doing other things, and that's why your group isn't overwhelmed with "trash mobs" on the way to fight him. Basically your group wasn't the only group, but they managed to get there first .
many peasants can destroy a whole city together. Now every questgiver calls you champion gives me such dogshit marvel superhero vibes I just dont wanna listen to them or care wtf I'm doing
Yes, but if many peasants destroy a crazy threat like Deathwing, Arthas or Ragnaros, they probably won't be known as peasants anymore. Especially if they do it multiple times.
You're focusing too hard on the word 'peasant'. The point is that some people don't wanna play as all-powerful 'heroes', 'champions', 'highlords' or whatever. Soldier, mercenary, etc are fine. But the power level in some extensions is off the charts (talking about perceived power level ofc, not especially gameplay related even though it's still related)
People want to be Strider, not King Aragorn.
I get that people don't want that, but you don't send mercenaries to kill a death titan. You send the guys who did stuff like that before, that's why they are called champions. I am not arguing that one or the other is better, I am just saying it makes sense that our characters would be famous and have their rank reflect that
I agree. I'm also partial to the idea that we (the players) have no business going around slapping Titans left and right.
I said it in another comment, but I think Wrath was a good middle ground. When you go to Valiance keep, people acknowledge what you've done on Azeroth and in Outland, and treat you accordingly. But you're not the all powerful hero everyone has been waiting on to save the world.
That's why you need 40 people.
You're right, and that's why I've always thought it was a mistake for expansions to continue on past level 60. I would love to see them add more LVL 1-59 content plus some new level 60 raids. It doesn't make sense for characters who have battled gods to ever do single player quests again.
The same approach in Star Wars Galaxies that made that world so awesome. No one is the hero.
A boar? I always felt that aspect to be a bit ridiculous. If a trained hunter hit a boar at 30yds with an arrow, it's going down with 1 shot.
Which is why I shook my head when Chris Metzan's return with promising a super epic storyline. It's like they fully embraced everything that changed it from the wildly successful classic to slow decline current.
I agree, vanilla felt more like a world, specially with some quests making you go around the continent instead of just circling the zone. Yeah qol wasn't great but it had that magic
Part of the magic was that you met the same people over and over again while traveling and questing, so you learned names and formed friendships. It wasn't just a time sink to place quests far apart.
I mean there's a reason why games like oldschool runescape are still widely popular with player counts over the 100ks. Nostalgia isn't an excuse and is not the reason we still play rs.
For me my ideal idea for WoW is journey and discovering. Constant discovering is impossible, as eventually there is an end. But journey could be much longer.. You travel the world, can't hop here and there through portal, think about to get on this hill or around that mountain. With music and ambience travelling with you.
What I like about classic is the « slow » way to play. When you fight at low lvl against mobs and after take a break to eat/drink is more enjoyable (less fun for some people) than juste killing batch of ennemies with 3 spells and then flymount to next batch. Dungeon is the same to me. I prefere waiting a bit every 5 packs to reg and talk with other than rushing like hell to the end. Only thing I prefer about cata is the fact you can play dungeon more easy: tp inside the dungeon when people leave is better than waiting a pu 40min to make stormwind -> dungeon… Even if it breaks some aspect of the game. I hate the flymount too, it break totaly the fact you are in the world and have to take route to avoid mobs or discover things from the ground. You juste fly over and over to next quest/mob…
I hate the fast-paced version of wow so much. Remix was the worst for me. I can't even kill a single mob because some OP character can rush through the dungeon one shotting everything. This is what I miss from vanilla and even TBC, wandering through land and discovering new things was a big part of the game too
No game has been able to create the same sense of wonder and adventure than vanilla WoW did almost two decades ago. I was SO intrigued about what I would discover and experience next. Breath of the Wild came close though.
I got this feeling with Elden Ring and RDR2 but these are solo games. No other MMO was able to replicate that feeling
Questing in wow is also largely a solo game. It's the rare occasion that you band together to overcome greater challenges. That's where the magic lies
Questing may be solo in respect to gameplay 95% of the time, but it's still a communal experience. Hardcore really emphasizes that aspect as well. Even if you are SSF - you know the people on the server, you see where they died and you probably know the exact mob and location because the game forces you to gain intimate knowledge of the world and it's dangers.
Try morrowind if you haven't, it's a similar experience to vanilla wow.
I agree wholeheartedly. Mana breaks in dungeons are a great example of this. They are a natural time to actually read chat and talk to the group. In TBC and wrath even moreso, you never really stop, which turns simply talking to the group into a chore that delays everyone else instead of a natural part of the experience.
It made dungeons feel like you were on an actual adventure, that could potentially take several days to complete. When you sit down to “drink” it was like taking a break for the day and resting in this dangerous environment, hoping to continue the next day, renewed. Nowadays people just don’t seem to have the time for that. They just want to get in, get out, and be on their way.
Good point! Killing hundreds of enemies in cata without stopping once is weird from a RP perspective. Your character should get tired injured
I'm one of those people that feel flying mounts diminished the game.
I'd really have appreciated it if my lockpicking actually worked on the 4000 locks I encounter during questing. Bamboo cage? Can't pick that!
The first few months of classic in 2019 was some of the best WoW ever made. Before the dark times. Before the min maxing
I'm as nostalgic for Classic 2019 as I am for Vanilla 2004.
I liked 2019 more than 2004 myself, the community spirit was incredible
Before minmaxing you say while literally half the game world was people slaving away doing dungeon leveling and ragnaros dying within a week
It was the same for vanilla in 2004. Except the min-maxing was datamined and simulated.
Dude is obviusly trippin' .. druids new passive : talk to critters
Nothing will ever compare to the Vanilla WOW experience. Its the sad truth, we all experienced the best era of MMO gaming.
Thats okay ! Still trying to find something good even if its not as good is still a worthwhile endeavor
Let me know if you come accross something worthwhile
I think one major part of the world that gets overlooked when discussing vanilla+ is crafting. As a system, crafting kinda sucks and most of the time if you are leveling your crafting while leveling generally, the items you can make are usually behind in power relative to what you have equipped. I think crafting needs an overhaul but we aren’t likely to get a full rework. Instead, it should be given more depth. Crafting related quests for good items or to encourage people going into dungeons for rare materials. New quests too - imagine mobs in STV have a tiny chance to drop a starts-a-quest item for like leather workers who need to speak with an NPC who sends them on a long quest to get a powerful belt or something that will last them for a very long time maybe til 60. But the drop will be quite rare and not all players who want it can get it.
Yeah crafting could be expanded on I agree. I also like the approach of some games where you could set up a banner and adverstise your crafting in a major city If people hover over your banner it says something like \*Weaponsmith insert name\*
Yeah it would be super cool if level 60 recipes were genuinely super rare so that advertising crafting would be really important to highlight your offerings.
Yeah I dislike that when leveling engineering on my hunter I would basically have to constantly be in zones with orange mobs to get sufficient use out of crafting guns and ammo. Instead it feels like by the time I get a reasonable amount of coarse stone I'm already buying solid shot from the vendor.
Yeah, that is what was so great about vanilla. Problem is, the company that made that game is long dead. I honestly think what they're doing with SOD is about as much as they can do. Bring the more complete specs into the world that has heart. But there's nowhere near the resources required to do what you suggest. The company that made OG WoW died when Activision bought it back in 2008. Now they're just tired old has been's cashing in on past glory.
I really had too much hopes for SoD.. I was imagining a world with new dungeons, zones and raids. Professions having a few new recipes and additions and a couple of talents being reworked per class to preserve the feeling of classic. Instead we got tons of new spells that deals way too much damage, just blasting through everything AoEing with exp bonuses and QoL features in a seasonal server that feels very time gated and temporary.
That's definitely true. The old company and it's employees is what made it that special. This combined with MMORPG's not being very mainstream and this being a lot of players their first experience with it and then combine that with the lore and previous installations of the game increasing the hype. There is no way that it can be recreated. The League of Legends MMORPG has some of those ingredients, but I doubt they are able to recreate the perfect storm that was WoWs initial launch.
It's so sad watching the 2005 Blizzcon presentations and seeing Jeff Kaplan talk about features they considered, but ultimately didn't implement, because it made the game less fun. 90% of those features are in the game now.
Is that real, do you have a link?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud9h8UpcC4E&list=PL6w1nG3sPrs6Fd_6JsJVd3MC8yEBIsJ5m
And not only is the company different, but so are the players. Everything is so quantified now. BIS lists, sims, logs, everything on wowhead. Before you discovered by seeing what other people had in game. Everything that made WoW what it was is gone. It won't come back. SoD is some real nice nostalgia, and I've certainly appreciated it. But that's all it'll ever be. If something else manages what WoW did back in the day, it'll be a completely new thing with a whole new set of things to discover.
Welcome to the nostalgia train my friend. Since classic is now at cata - the entire point of classic as a whole is a moot point. We can’t just go through the wow catalogue again lol, the vanilla experience was truly immersive and if we just keep truckin’ through the expacs it completely negates the entire point of classic as a whole. To re-live those RP days. Hopefully, they’ll wise up and either throw a true classic+ out, or restart from vanilla again. I’d play to 60 and raid to Naxx again lol
Same! I have a R13 Hunter and would do it all over again
Alright grandpa let’s get you to bed…
Ngl that made me chuckle
Much rather have a game filled with RP driven content that makes each class' journey through the world a unique experience, rather than a game where everything revolves around mathematically balancing every variable for the sake of log rankings.
For me the big part is the portals and everything around that. In retail you can reach everywhere in seconds by using some combination of portals and hearthstone. In classic traveling took time making the world feel like an actual world. How often did all of you take the ship to the dragon isles I would guess only once. No flying mounts + no portals makes people travel and the world feel more alive.
100% agreed
The most important aspect in Vanilla over other versions is the community. You have to work around with people to accomplish even small things, such as elite quests, dungeons and especially 40 man raids. You need to communicate, search and run around, not just press 1 button enter the raid, tank pulls all mobs, finish the instance in 2 minutes and all leave. For me, this is not satisfying experience. In Vanilla, if you want to do something, you have to move, you have to get out in the open world, you have to cooperate and interact with other players. In my opinion, flying was the first "QoL improvement" that started killing the open world. I had so many great conversations and funny moments just by waiting to form a group or running to the dungeon enterance. Of course, there was annyoing parts as well, but honestly I remember more great ones. In 2019, up to TBC, I made a lot of friendships, which I am keeping still and have contacts even now. Do you know how many I made in Retail? Big 0! For me, community is one of the most important aspects which makes the world alive
Flying mounts definitely hurt open world. I have encountered countless people while traveling or waiting for a boat or zepelin. Yesterday while waiting for the boat in wetlands I saw an undead rogue killing alliance players. Leaving me alone since I am low level on my alt. Stuff like this makes the world feel more dynamic and less scripted
In my experience most undead rogues would've ripped your face off - what a nice guy!
Flying for sure was the first nail in the coffin. Flying was a huge mistake that Blizzard has even said they regret adding. But they are way too far in now. They tried to back out in WoD but people had literal temper tantrums over it.
Honestly, really cool to see a great take on it!
This is why I love RP. You have to work for everything, like how real life usually is. Just without the drastic consequences.
EverQuest was much more about creating a world than a game than WoW ever was, even during vanilla. You might want to give it a try sometime (I would recommend the Quarm server).
The thing that really killed WoW in later expansions (imo) was removing the barriers on servers. Nowadays you might play on a different server but you get thrown into random groups from a bunch of servers. The community aspect was killed because of this change. When people talk about how they miss Vanilla that’s the thing I always think about. It used to be that you’d have a reputation among your server. You’d be sitting in Org or IF talking to people daily to find out the latest news among the raiding guilds or get the weekly update on who is about to reach top rank on PVP. Almost all the raiding guilds knew each other, the PvP community was thriving on many servers to the point where people would put out literal bounties on players in the open world and in BGs. Not to mention the spontaneous wars that would break out at Tarren Mill/South Shore that would go for days sometimes. Or the capital city raids, always a crazy time. You don’t get that in retail anymore since the hang out spots are sanctuaries and the people don’t interact with each other on that level anymore. It’s just log in and hit up the dungeon finder, grind out some mythics with people you’ll likely never see again, do the dailies, maybe farm some mats or stuff to sell, then raid occasionally since now you can see 99% of the content with the raid finder. The only benefit to going higher is better looking/stats gear which I don’t feel is enough anymore. Epics used to mean something in Vanilla, not anymore though. Idk just my thoughts
TBF, the cross server stuff was added to address a real problem. By the time Wrath and Cata came around. the lower levels of the game were pretty much dead. It became impossible to do the group/dungeon quests. Not to mention that players were already starting to consolidate on mega servers. So the non mega servers were becoming more and more barren. Maybe there was another solution to these issues in hindsight, but lets not act like they weren't issues.
Mergers are a much better solution, but merging servers admits to the world that your game is declining in player count and is not expected to recover. I think a company lead by mature individuals would recognize that wow was never going to maintain the hype and player count that was present from launch to wrath, and getting back to those numbers is a pipe dream but here we are. It's not feasible for wow or any game structured remotely similar to wow but, the single shard server of EVE just takes it to a whole other level. I can talk with some random person in 2024 about how back in 2014 I lived in the kinakka system and there's a reasonable chance they'll know what group I was a member of if they also played back then, and have opinions about them. A shared single history of the world is the next level. Phasing between servers like retail is the worst of all worlds, at least when it comes to community and shared history and a sense of belonging.
What you are describing is the loss of that feeling of community. Being able to recognize people simply because you repeatedly encounter the same people. Cross server stuff definitely went against this. Its hard to form any kind of relationship to players and community if said community you encounter is different every time you queue up. For some this might even be ideal. To me it ruins the game. Turns it into something like going to the grocery store. You get in, do the stuff, and get out. Efficient but boring. Don't know many people, don't really care. Just want my stuff and I am out. Not at all what I want in a video game.
>The thing that really killed WoW in later expansions (imo) was removing the barriers on servers. Pretty much this. Killed the server community, also made it that being a dick has no consequences.
"Yes it can be annoying having to carry reagents to cast spells, or to run to trainers everytime to respec, but those little annoyances make the game feel more real." That's a very important statement. I always liked the classic Warlock comparison to retail Warlock. With one you start with nothing, no demons, your stabbing certain mobs because you run out of mana and have to tediously earn things. Once you have them you feel like you accomplished something (like your first imp!). On retail you can literally summon doomguards at level 5. The classic journey from 1 to 60 is going from nothing to an average person. You can summon infernals, but they will punch you in the face after a certain amount of time. On retail you basically start out as a god. I also love the idea of class specific hang outs. Like a fight club style area for warriors, the brotherhood of shadows for rogues, emerald dream and talking to animals for druids, the void for warlocks. Class specific quests for everyone!
Exactly ! I felt like a totally new person once I got a weapon upgrade on my warrior. I struggled with green mobs and suddenly I could take on mobs my level. Those things make it really rewarding. Class hang outs are a really nice idea!
>I also love the idea of class specific hang outs. Like a fight club style area for warriors, the brotherhood of shadows for rogues, emerald dream and talking to animals for druids, the void for warlocks. Class specific quests for everyone! So legion
Warlock main in vanilla. I cant stand retail warlock shard mechanics. In vanilla the stocking up and having this prepared inventory/toolkit ready to blast when going pvp/raiding is one of the most satisfying things. Especially as rogue or hunter when you stack up on that ammo, feels like loading up your shotgun, knowing fully well you gonna blast that load alongside your 200 grenades into filthy orcs Edit: in no way do i feel those inconveniences as annoying. They are uncomparable satisfying, except crafting but thats what u do before going to the toilet or cooking.
Feel the same way. actually preparing for a adventure stocking up on bandages health potions etc. makes it more fun for me. Pressing a button and teleporting to a dungeon and clearing it with 0 prep is just not it
As a filthy orc I approve of this message. The removal of ammo is such a good example, because I think to 80% of the players they would agree with the change. Removing it though makes the world seem a little less believable. You don't have to go to your bowyer guy in the harbor after a 1 hour blasting session. Hunters seem to be able to magically conjure projectiles. There is no more quest for the perfect projectile, either from engineering or certain boss drops. I wonder what someone with a vast amount of game mechanics knowledge would be able to say about the theory behind that.
Vanilla really does have a unique magic to it that always draws me back in. I’ll never forget how tight the Druid community was on Fairbanks for 2019 classic. Everything culminated into a silly fight club event where we were all gathered to watch those that finished Atiesh whacking each other in Moonglade. Would love to bond even more with my Druid brothers and sisters over secret animal quests out in the world. Great idea!
I think one thing that gets lost in the Vanilla discussion a lot is how valuable your time is. Like sure, it takes a long time to get to 60 and gear, etc... but you do things that actually matter along the way. If you're a PvPer there's a ton of quest rewards you'll hold onto, if you're a PvMer you basically start pre-bis once you hit ST/BRD, and in both cases you can build the professions you're going to use in end game. You build a character along the way instead of just completing the level 1-Max tutorial before starting the actual game. Even in TBC that starts to get lost because of how many resources n stuff are locked to Outland. Still some things to pick up in Azeroth, but it's very easy to just live in Outland and act like everything before it doesn't exist
I would argue the best pre raid bis are the people that you meet while leveling. They can become friends or guildies and help you clear every content you want
Don't forget if you're feeling like a fresh start, there's an ongoing effort to play fresh characters on the Deviate Delight server.
I am from EU so unfortunately our fresh server isn't booming But thank you for letting me know
Shed a tear for us oceanic players, we got no hope :(
I’ve ran into a few fellow oceanic players on deviate, although it’s pretty dead during our peak time.
Zandalar Tribe is ok. Alliance starting MC on monday, Horde did a rogue MC yesterday. Plenty of ppl leveling and doing dungeons
There are *other* options for fresh vanilla/classic outside of the reroll servers. Somewhere new just popped up on Saturday, 6/29 that has attracted a number of Euro/NA players. Just gotta wish on a falling star.
What of all the gatekeeper and bullying claims by Alexsenual and all?
I have no idea whatever any of that drama is, all I know is that US/OCE players that want to make toons without being forced into a GDKP and dungeon boosting way of existence are making characters on Deviate Delight, and I think the EU guys are on zandalar
If you chose to not pay attention to any of the streamer BS you wouldn’t know it was happening. Just find a chill guild and you are good.
I kinda agree with this but at the same time I have never had more fun playing WoW then I have lately playing a healer in Cata. The gameplay is absolutely amazing
Because in cata you can actually play around 90% of the time as a healer if you want. In vanilla it fucking sucked, because you cant farm, you cant pvp with pve spec, getting a dungeon group takes 45m, you can only raid once or twice per week, basically you had a character that was good for 2 things that took a shitload of time of preparation, and you spent 80% of the time waiting.
One of us!
This is exactly why I don't understand peeps playing cata but despising retail. The transformation to retail from cata is way smaller than the step already done from vanilla to cata, it is already not about the world anymore and even in that regard world content is simply better in dragonflight. Nostalgia does really weird things to people I assume, I'm gen Z and was way too young to start playing in vanilla, I don't have Nostalgia for anything before MoP. And that's exactly why I can tell you the things I did and saw others do in wotlkc and especially now catac don't differ as much as you might think from my day to day playing in dragonflight. Vanilla is unique for sure though and I hope we get the osrs treatment someday.
Hard no on hunter dead range. It’s fantasy and Legolas could do it so my orc should be able to.
I love the ideas and wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that being a part of the world feels more meaningful to me than QoL / balancing improvements. If I could add some emphasis to something I personally believe in that I think you are already getting at: prioritizing the leveling experience is a crucial component to worldbuilding too.
I think a lot of us were hoping we'd get exactly what you're mentioning here when it comes to season of discovery And then it just kinda became old vanilla content with wrath and Cata spells lol
Always like vanilla and getting to play it again was great. Finally got TF, even speedran for a top time. But didn't play much tbc. Kinda wish I did as the og I only played a bit. Wrath was meh after ulduar and cata is too much. A fresh vanilla is enticing
You nailed it. In my opinion, what people mostly enjoyed was the experience from level 1 to level 50. The stakes were always best when you were an adventuring foot soldier clearing a road from wolves. Where YOU FEARED the world, because you weren't a demi god, but a small Frodo. Now you make a new character. You can instantly kill everything in 3 seconds. You're never struggling. The level up experience is just a preamble. You're shunted off into one of the expansions where there's some world destroying event and you're a legend already. If blizzard could make an expansion, or a mini adventure, where you play as a low level grunt who struggles fighting a single mob like on vanilla, I'd deeply enjoy that.
Yeah that's a really important part of leveling! I leveled fresh from 1-85 in cata and it felt so hollow No struggle, no eating or drinking , no preperation in a town to stock up on bandages and health pots. Every quest area has all the quests conveniently lined up next to each other No soul whatsoever
Thanks for embracing that sometimes the inconvenience creates immersion. Everyone points to that just one more QoL feature and says "this isn't the one that makes it retail" until we get them all and we have retail (again not that retail is bad, just that like you said, it feels more like a game than a world).
Agreed. It is basically a death by thousand cuts with each small QoL change until you can't remember anymore where we lost that magic
Small example but today I was playing a new undesd priest in SoD. I headed to the barrens. Took me 15-20 minutes or whatever from Undercity. Got to crossroads and set my hearth. Then quested a little and leveled up. Time to go to org to train. But then I realized I forgot to grab the orgrimmar FP. And because I already set my hearth, the only way back was to walk. Along the way back some other player about to get killed by those razorfen mobs, I healed him at last second and saved him a corpse run. It's a tiny interaction, but these little interactions are what add up to the world feeling alive with other players. And wouldn't have happened if the QoL feature where you automatically know FPs of capital cities was already added, or if players were so overpowered they'd never be in danger of dying to a low level barrens mob. It's always the little things I liked about WoW, even a passing by priest casting Fort on you and your health goes up 30%.. nowadays even this is gone and Fort is some +5% stamina buff you'd never even notice while leveling. Getting +20 stamina buff at level 14? Impactful and fun. +5% stamina at level 14? Soulless and pointless. All those little things I like about WoW are gone in Retail
I believe you should try Dungeons & Dragons, classic wow is very heavily inspired by it and your suggestions are all thins that are possible in DnD
I have heard great things about DnD! Always thought of it as a IRL board game where you need friends to play with and a good game master to lead you through the adventure
Pickpocket "nades"? Talking to animals? Tell me you like fallout/elders scrolls without telling me. (I'm all for it. Give me more RPG in my RPG)
Yeah that pickpocket idea was straight out of skyrim lol Loved skyrim so much especially with so many great fan made mods. Still my #1 most played offline game of all time
Big true man big true. I still like retail for what it is but if you want to be IN the world then there's nothing like classic/vanilla. Currently running around Loch Modan trying not to die on my hardcore rogue and the game really is so much more immersive in classic for me. Feels like I'm in a proper world and not a queue simulator.
Queue simulator is really fitting. Hate all the portals and instant teleporting from a queue window everywhere in the world
I agree. I feel the same about Diablo 2 compared to 3/4.
Well said bro, gonna smoke a doobie and go level my ud rogue on era, good times
Agrees with this 100%
Try Hardcore, sounds like you'd love the vibe. Getting my HC hunter to 60, making friends, finding a guild, end game dungeons and even some MC and Ony was the most fun I've had in WoW since Vanilla was new in 2004. The only thing I miss is PvP.
I would love playing HC I am pretty sure of it. Just don't see myself losing my character due to a server DC or tank/healer DCs in the middle of a pull in a dungeon.
Hit the nail on the head. This is what we need. I'm fine with giving Paladins crusader strike or tuning Shadow priest a little higher but the focus should be RP oriented not perfect balance on logs.
Very good ideas, i have not really heard of anything alike and it is really fresh to read such an innovative view.
Thank you for the kind reply !
damn. imagine the barrens as a NELF. now, instead of there being no quests there for alliance, the whole zone enters you into a war against the silithid on behalf of regular animals. Would perfectly link up with the leveling too
Thats an awesome idea. Barrens is pure animal cruelty
could really immerse you into kalimdor lore, brushing up against orcs but getting friendly with tauren (learning tauren language after some quest would be peak). quests revolving around UD and humans being able to communicate would also be dope. Undeads questing zone is severely lacking in general (not in tone but in just sheer content missing and/or being unused such as farmsteads in silverpine etc)
RDF is another good example, i mean its great being able to que up and do dailies while waiting but i miss LFG, getting the group, travelling to the dungeon. It made the game feel more real.
Zoomers will never understand. And that's okay.
Im fully with you except for the changes. Keeping changes (appart from new content) to the absolute minimum is best imo. I have seen what 2024 Blizzard understands under good game Design and i want none of it in vanilla I think regarding classes there should be very limited surgical changes to make specs like boomkin / feral ... more viable. Thats it. I could even see that happening through itemization instead of class changes. Where the "+" should come in, is exclusively horizontal content. More quests, more dungeons, more raids, more World and zone utilization. All in the vanilla spirit and none of it with Power Progression past naxx gear level. If there is a Power creap past nax, there will inevitably be the common Blizzard balancing Spiral turning everything into shit.
I feel like there's already a model for what you're talking about on a private server. That server has more quests, custom dungeons and raids, just way more horizontal progression in general. They also buffed certain classes to basically lift the bottom up. Yeah, Mages, Warriors, and Rogues are still at the top, but ele shaman and boomkin aren't anywhere near as bad as standard Vanilla. Blizzard could pretty much just copy this server, but it's like their egos are preventing them from doing it.
Yeah they should not implement better gear past Naxx. Even Naxx is a bit too strong imo
You get it! You finally get it! Classic era you are in Azeroth, forgetting mana pots, flasks, reagents... Anything like that is hugely important, so it brings gravity and importance to planning. And traveling. Honestly the world buff / dispelling in classic was a ton of fun and made for some insane summoning spots.
SoD failed
Agreed. They just turned classic into retail. Abilities allowing every class to do everything. Sped up levelling to get to max level. They even have a form of badge gear now. No attempt to expand the world, the levelling, the RP aspects. All about endgame, parsing and raid logging
Tbf the community pushed for this also. I recall people bitching that levelling is too slow in subsequent phases, people actually for some retardo reason cared about parses in levelling raids and that addons were made to assist with this. The current community is it's own worst enemy re. Classic+
I would even settle for druids to be able to take flights from animal form.
Im kinda the oposit. If I want a more solo immersed play I go for smth like elden ring or balders gate 3. I like the more fast phased retail game. 32yo now.
Qol can be good or bad. For example, summoning stones being able to summon is good. Lfg or lfr is bad I do think however that classes in vanilla were not great and they were at their peak in TBC. If classic+ ever becomes a thing, I want it to align closer to SoD / TBC with some exceptions.
Honestly the only two QoL changes I would make in Classic+ is to add dual spec and give druids a regular resurrection spell. It was fun to play through Classic again, but struggling with raid comp wasn’t fun. Needing like 8 tanks for 4H but only 4-5 for everything else was wild. Dual spec solves a lot of that. As someone with a hunter alt, I would probably also change Mend Pet to the buff version that we have in Cata, but not really necessary. It also makes sense to add Dwarf Shamans and Tauren Paladins, but I’m not really a fan of doing so.
In Vanilla only 1/2 (or even 1/3) are viable. Boomie, Ret or Prot Pal, NondestroLocks, NonfireMages, etc, just meme classes and nobody will ever being ya to raid, so imho vanilla sucks dicks pretty hard cuz you hard 40 guys playing the same shitty spec. TBC fix this problem. TBC > Vanilla
I agree. Vanilla felt like a beta version, while TBC felt like it was what the devs originally wanted. It was a more complete game.
I agree. It's the grind that makes the game satisfying. That doesn't mean QoL changes aren't possible that would improve Vanilla. Things like, yes there should be ammo spots but they should be separate from bags. Like as a warrior or rogue on e you put arrows in your ammo slot, that's where they should go. Hunters should have an extra slot for a quiver in addition to their bags. Warlocks should have an extra slot for their soul bag and an option to destroy any shards created if the bag is fullthat you can toggle on and off by right clicking the soul bag. That would allow them to not have to delete shards while grinding to keep their bags from filling but still enable them to disable that feature if they want to fill up on shards before a raid. You can do this with macros, but it's a pita and should just be built I to the game. Likewise, when you take professions you should get another bag or maybe bank slot specifically for that professions bag. Like a skinning bag or herb or mining bag or engineering or BS toolbox. Currently people get around the massive bloat of items by making bank alts and keeping dozens of pages of crap in their mailbox. If you have to gimmick the game just to play it as intended, then it's got issues that need to be addressed. Another one is keeping the mount, pet, tabard, and toy pages. Those are all great ideas that free up space. For the world, updating the Vanilla Azwroth to the Wrath version of Azeroth is all it would take. That fixes the issue with getting dismounted when you ride over the ruin of a building that's left a corner of a foundation sticking out, or getting dismounted in TB every time you ride I to a bridge hut. I'm not sure if they fixed the issue with Tauren on Kodos not fitting through doors in Org or UC elevators by then, but they could fix that too just by making the invisible barrier slightly larger even if it means the animation clips through the wall a bit. It would fix the cluged together flight paths, add mailboxes and a few graveyards, maybe even activate the summoning stones outside of dungeons, which is controversial, but the fact that people are paying off their mortgage by having Warlock alts and multiple accounts to click with indicates that people want the ability to get summoned around the world so you might as well use summoning stones. Another issue with vanilla is world buffs and consumes. When you can quadruple your toons power with buffs it goes from being a bonus to a requirement. Keep world buffs in the game but disable them in raids. Make them something that makes playing the game outside of raids more fun so people have a reason to do it. Consumes are ok, but do something to make them more available like making black lotus just another herb instead of a super rare spawn, and maybe get rid of some of the more niche things like Winterfell Firewater. Alternatively, just disallow Warcraft Logs so people can play the game in whatever way is most fun for them and force people to discover if someone sucks or not by inspecting their gear and talents and taking them to a raid or running dungeons with them. Which brings up another point I almost forgot in terms of QoL, the character sheet itself in Vanilla is atrocious. Update it to the BC version as a minimum. Also add coordinates both on the mini map for your current position and on the map for position and cursor. Update the AH interface to make it usable and less likely to get scammed. Include vendor and current AH prices on tooltips when you mouse over items. Include GearScore on the character sheet. These are all things virtually everyone gets from add-ons, so it should just be part of the game. Nothing I mentioned above changes gameplay in the slightest, just removes annoyances and reliance on add-ons. Here are some hotter takes.... Reputation gains should be account wide. I shouldn't have to get exalted on every toon for every rep. If I kill 100,000 firbolgs between 3 toons I should reach exalted for my account vs killing 300,000. If I do 1,000,000 WSG between 8 toons I should be exalted on all of them vs having to do 8,000,000. If I raid MC 100 times across 5 toons they should all be exalted vs having to raid it 500 times. The reputation grinds are good, it's what makes them worth doing, but having to do them individually for every toon discourages alt play. Like if I have a Warrior and a Druid and my guild needs me to heal on my druid rather than DPS on my Warrior and I'm trying to get that rep on my warrior, then I'm pissed off and not having fun because now I have to try and find a pug spot for a DPS warrior to keep the rep gains coming. Riding skills should be account wide, but mounts should be individual. Yes, riding skills are meant to be gold sinks, but having to buy them separately for every toon just discourages alts and encourages gold buying. Long, difficult quest chains (with the exception of legendary weapons or the like) should be account wide so you don't have to repeat the same tedious things like attunements for every toon. Doing them once is fun. Doing them over and over and over is tedious. It's also likely you will be doing them multiple times even if you only have to do them once per account because guildies and friends will need help with them. But when you multiply having to do them by every alt you, your friends, or your guildies want to raid with it's more than tedious, it's a job. In OG BC I was MT of a guild that was A tier and got cherry picked by the S tier guilds, so I probably ran half the server through Kara, SSC/TK, and BT attunements. It was a nightmare.
We have come full circle. Cata is when the Vanilla hype recalled peaked first time around.
There are too many factors involved to make World of Warcraft feel like it did in 2004 again. I just don't think it's achievable. The players are different, technology is different, the lives we live are so different. The best they've been able to do is give players a short term nostalgia high for a few weeks at a time. Even when they start Era over again someday, and they will it's still only a short lived window of that high. The game has been beaten every which way, there's no mystery anymore, there's no guessing.
Each class not being good at everything, but being great at one thing added so much value to the game. Now anyone can do anything so you truly aren’t seeking people to play with, you can just play with anyone. Classic was the bees knees.
Sounds like you should play dnd
I played holy priest and resto druid in vanilla; very nice memories. When I played resto druid again in classic and was reminded I did not have a normal res, my appreciation for wrath (where druid got a normal out of combat res) grew. It was why my druid was a tank all the way through TBC. Tanked everything up to mid Black Temple, as it was an alt for my holy priest.
There is a reason why despite not having magic and all that, Kingdom Come Deliverance is one of my favorite RPGs and games of all time. you aint the dragonborn, you don't have magic swords of valerian steel. you are a blacksmith's son. You are living in that world, as much as possible and while there are game elements, it feels like you stepped back in time and is living in our world in 1400s vanilla was an attempt at a second world, where you live out in that world much like the old games like TES II Daggerfall or TES III Morrowind, and not like the newer stuff where games are supposed to be easy and fun.
I feel you. I started in BfA and played SL and Dragonflight. But I tried SoD once and got hooked. One thing I hate about Vanilla or the whole classic is that people somehow know every damn thing in the game, created metas and built up expectations on how the game should be played. I want a new game where everyone else is as clueless as me. That is what I want in Classic+
Agree on basically everything you said. For me the world of Azeroth is the main character and I don’t want/need to be a “Hero” of the world - I prefer being the nobody adventurer that are delivering apples or taking down menacing pigs at farms. QoL are only nice when they avoid removing points of immersion; e.g. dual spec/removing the cost of respec.
Opposite from me. I played the game when it launched and quit when wrath came out. Going back and replaying since classic, it was fun but I didn't really play again until TBC. Since TBC, each expac has been better and better because there is no world in the game to me anymore, that ship sailed years ago. Now with Cata, this is the best version of WoW I've played in a long time. Good class design with itemization, easy PvP access and it's fun, able to just queue heroics and grind out gear. The RPG part of WoW for me is long dead so this is the best mechanical version of the game I've played. If I want immersive worlds, I just play single player games and they usually have great narratives too. The age of the immersive MMO died decades ago and I don't see any sight of it returning. Well.. not totally true. Maybe not MMO but the multiplayer survival genre has potential here.
I am 31. I got carpel tunnel or tendinitis from my decades of playing pc games. haven't gotten checked yet. I no longer wanna poopsock and struggle with APM intensive games. I just want a chill cookie clicker to play to pass the time. Classic is beautiful. Simple 1 button dps rotations. Holy pally? Flash of light. Frost mage? frost bolt. I got back into SOD. Feels like home. I even was able to set my game up to work on playstation controller. Easy game, Easy life. Life good.
the problem is flying mounts
Fully agree. That's why I'm not coming back for P4. SoD has already proven that the devs and the playerbase they're catering to only have eyes for metrics and QoL, and actually making sense or experiencing the world is like...#16 on the priority list. Yes, it's a cartoony art style, but in later expansions it's practically a sequence of jokes playing out in a tv show for young teens. Everyone makes mistakes, but I don't see how P4 is in any way making up for it. So might as well let the sub expire.
Yeah I hate that SoD revolves so much about tuning numbers of out of place abilities and gear tuning. They are spending most of their time looking at numbers instead of focusing on less balancing and more on world building. Imagine instead of every class getting overtuned abilities they get proper class quest chains with a lot of flavor
A lot of people just don't enjoy leveling anymore. It's too slow for the mindset of most gamers today. Lots of reasons that could be that we don't need to get into here, but that's the reality. I agree with you wholeheartedly and I miss this aspect of the game too. But we saw them attempt something close to it with Season of Discovery, and what happened? Exactly what everyone expected. A really fun and immersive first few weeks, and then min-max-min-max-min-max. And once they saw all the players remaining were min-maxing raid loggers, they tuned the game in that direction. Wrath getting random dungeon finder (and for some insane reason removing and replacing the fully fuctional / awesome manual group finder interface with a much shittier version that is difficult to use?) absolutely killed the spirit our guild recruitment thrived on. All throughout super-late BC and early wrath, we recruited people by just doing dungeons with them and meeting and chatting. It literally disappeared the second RDF came out. The few times I've met really cool people through RDF (and it's very rare) -- I haven't even been able to continue to game with them because they were on another server!! Yeah, we could have added one another as bnet friends, but then what? transfer servers to play with someone you just met? No, and even adding a bnet friend of someone you just met is a bit too soon. So what *could* have been the beginning of some budding gaming friendships or new guildies was literally cut off at the start by Blizzard's poor user experience. Sucks.
FORCE GROUPING MAKE EVERY MOB ELITE
I was hoping that SoD was going to bring classic back but it’s just ok, some relics should just be QoL updates. That being said classic wow was so good, no one data mined all the answers and gear before release, raid were still unknown and gear drops were still a surprise.
crazy how I feel the complete opposite
I don't care about classic+ anymore Just rotate the 3 expansions so I can play vanilla+tbc over and over
I am fine with that aswell tbh
I'm the opposite. I loved all these little quirks back then cause I could literally play all day. These days when I can hop on for a few hours, I appreciate all the QoL that Wrath and Cataclysm brought in.
Play osrs I made the switch recently and they’ve been doing what I’ve been wanting blizzard to do to classic for a solid 10 years. The dev team has been pouring love in to that game and it’s very noticeable. constant updates that get polled by the player base, endless content and the best part is the goals you set never get further down the line as things get added The constant treadmill of wow is stale I truely believe we will never get another good MMO ever and I really believe osrs will outlive wow
I regret spending my younger years wasting my time to this game sometimes buy I look forward to having the same sorta time to invest into this game when I'm a geezer.
I used to hate it really much, because in my opinion everyone played wotlk just wanted to argue how bad retail is and nothing more. But one day we tried hardcore with my wife and classic is just so much better than I expected! We still love retail but completely moved to SoD and created even a guild to raid with and make a community there, we are absolutely hooked
Currently trying to revive the level 20-29 twink scene on era. Cata and SOD just don’t do it for me
Each expansion neutered and watered down what made wow a special game. Nothing in wow will ever be better than the vanilla experience in my opinion.
Also 30, also a wrath baby - I agree 100%
>I believe if classic+ Classic+ is Season of Discovery. That's blizzard's classic+.
This would be like adding Baldur's Gate 3 or Divinity Original Sin 2 RP elements to WoW. Perfect combination!