So, SO many people throwing up threads like "WoW is dying" or "WoW is dumb now".
Now I never played in classic, and while I was around in TBC I didn't get a max level toon until wrath, but at the very least I've flicked through old patch notes, old videos, threads, asked players who were around in classic and so on to get a -rough- idea of what classic was like. It probably isn't 100% correct, but it's the general view I've gotten thus far.
(Side note: I was rather tired and grumpy when I initially wrote this, if anything seems to be coming off as overly aggressive in the following paragraphs, it's not meant to be.)
Raiding
A lot of people say "Oh today raiding is so easy" or "Gear is so easy to get/so hard to get".
Unless I'm wrong, in classic, gear wasn't hard or easy to obtain, just time consuming. VERY time consuming.
These days you have tier tokens right? Well, in classic, there were NONE. What did this mean? Well, not only did you have to hope against hope that gear that was suitable for your class to drop but also your spec! Stats were an absolute mess, Paladin gear had pretty much EVERYTHING on it! Not even Blizzard really knew what was optimal for a class to use.
Bosses weren't hard, getting the raid sorted was. 24 or 9 people is nothing, but people say "Oh 40 man raiding was so epic!" but they fail to remember cases where that one dwarf priest with fear ward didn't show up, thus the other 39 people had to cancel and had their time wasted. THEN you had to make sure EVERYONE had the EXACT right gear, didn't bring your fire resistance helmet to Molten Core? Guess who's gonna die first!
"Oh I -hate- having to farm these 12 or so instances over and over". Yeah, it can get boring. But better than classic, you wanted to raid? I hope you liked Stratholme because that was pretty much the ONLY place people went to gear up. And they ran it over, and over, and over and over again. And as before, you had no JP or VP to fall back on if RNG wasn't with you. And unless you were 100% perfectly geared, no serious raid guild would take you.
So what do we have now? An easy raid mode (LFR) that lets any average joe see what raiders see, good! In classic only about 2% could even get into Naxx.
Points, for when RNG is against you.
Multiple instances to play.
Don't fancy a dungeon? Good thing we have scenarios!
Only need 24 or 9 people as opposed to 39.
Don't need the top 1% best gear except for Heroic 10/25 man.
Tier tokens! An increased chance of actually getting something useful!
Stats make sense! Paladins no longer have to have bits of EVERYTHING.
Gold
"Gold is so easy to make" it sure is. Remember when 2g was a lot? Good times. Remember when tanks had to fork over 50g for repair bills a dungeon? Bad times. Tanks -had- to grind absurd (at the time, remember) amounts of gold just to be able to keep their gear repaired.
"Epic mounts used to be epic" yup, but there was no skill involved in obtaining them. Just whoever had the most time on their hands to grind the amount of gold needed. The same going for anyone who grinded ANYTHING. There was no skill or difficulty, just an absurd grind and time required to lengthen out how long content lasted.
Repair bills are more reasonable now.
Gold is easier to obtain, but never required -skill- in the first place.
Our "Epic" mounts are now in the form of the rare drops and expensive crafted mounts. Meaning the base 100% is now available to almost everyone.
PvP
"PvP is so gear dependent" yeah, it is. And so it was back then, but there was an itty bitty problem. Yup, you guessed it, the GRIND. Lord the PvP grind was legendary in classic, people who had the maxed titles back then deserve them simply for spending about an hour a day grinding battlegrounds. Missed a day? Welp, down a rank you go! Not at max rank? No epic PvP gear for you!
So, for those who spent so much time getting epic mounts and the gear, they had a rather large advantage with faster mounts and better gear.
Now there are no real PvP ranks outside Arena rating, and no HP decay either. So you don't have to PvP almost 24/7 just to get decent gear. You can grind whenever you want for however long you prefer. We also have crafted gear now, to help with the first step into PvP, so unlike previous expansions you don't have to endure hundreds of inevitable deaths (And likely losses) just to get the trinket.
Because everyone can get 100% mount speed, there is no longer a distinct advantage for people who have far too much time on their hands over those who would rather play fair and square. "But...but I wanna be treated special!" we have the PvP mount achy for showing off, and really, now it means matches are based far more on skill than just whoever has the more meager social life, hehe. (Although I personally think it's still too gear based and would prefer uniforms that are auto-equipped on Arena/BG entrance with rewards being armour cosmetics for said uniform, but whatever).
So can someone PLEASE explain why people keep thinking classic was oh-so-much-better than Wrath/Cataclysm/Mists? Pretty please? I'm really not seeing it.
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Answer can be found in the vid I posted above, game is hardly any time consuming now. It really depends on which activity are you doing. Sure, if you only do dailies, scenarios, etc, it doesn't take much time. If you want to cap your valor points, you'll have to put some time into the game, though. If you're chasing Heroic raid kills, you'll have to devote time as well. That's the beauty of the game these days, you can devote as much time as you want (and your reward will probably be comparable to how much time you've spent).
For some it does. It was kinda weird for some people to see Illidan on the cinematic in TBC and never get to see him while he was current content because of <insert whichever reason>. If you don't have enough time well that is a different thing, but allow people that have or find time and put effort to feel awarded for it, don't just let everyone who can press Join LFR see and defeat the boss. People that have time (and the will) can defeat Heroic bosses and get rewarded much more than someone seeing the content through LFR. And from time to time there're bosses that are exclusive to Heroic raiders (Algalon, Sinestra, and now Ra-den when 5.2 is released).
It's your opinion, so you can't make it a fact. I feel as proud of my Arthas kill as I do of my TBC/Wrath/MoP kills. It's just up to you to how much importance you wish to give to those events. For me Arthas ranks higher than the others. Why? Because I've liked the Lich King character for a really long time and I feel his story (Arthas) was interesting to me.
True. As much as I love those evenings in BRD with my friends, I wouldn't have the time for it today. Time changes. |
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In fact, I remember some guilds became "feeders" of the most progressed guilds on the realm, so these guys could never really climb through the ranks because they kept losing raiders to guilds with more progress.
This is true, we tend to forget the bad memories and keep the bright ones. Back in Vanilla, I leveled my first character from 58 to 60 just circling Corin's Crossing because it was most efficient than trying to quest back then. And it wasn't terribly fun... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2byfNvzfOHs&list=PLgWzsPQLwtK85RJHRCNy4t69AGCGZxPfq&index=16 This may explain what happened to the community:D It's a very interesting thought in fact, thanks for sharing it!
But even these days, you surely have your community, right? I mean, your own circle of friends (perhaps your entire guild, perhaps just some guildies and a couple friends on the realm). We're all part of the same community. If anything, I'd say now we have the luxury of deciding when and how we want to participate with strangers. Before it was your only way of accessing to certain content (5-man PuGs or more progressed raiding guilds) and as with everything else in life, at times you'd have wonderful experiences and at times absolutely miserable ones. So, was that better than being able to stick with your friends and try to go as far as possible? It's really up to each individual. Some people love to make new friends, some would rather stick to their circles. WoW was better because the community was far better. All this LFG/LFR stuff ruined the community, but certainly brought in the big bucks. The community wasn't really better. Perhaps what happened was that the interaction was more limited? Through the Finder tools you can literally encounter hundreds of players every single day, it's hard to not come across a rotten apple every so often. Back then we didn't even have a Raid Finder, so most experiences with large groups were on PVP, and I'm fairly sure we all have memories of how heated the BG chat would be at times, as well as players from the opposite faction shouting text that was offensive for your team. The bad apples were already there, but our exposure as individuals... I'd wager it was much smaller, since even arranging a 5-man group (a pure PuG, that is) was a rather lengthy process.
Oh, but this happens even on games that are yet to be released... There'll always be people hoping for something that is not what they feel they're getting.
As far as I remember, many players would read the quest name, go to Thottbot, type the name of the quest, note the coordinates and then, with their addon, and then go there and get it done. Leveling guides from 1-60 were also popular because many players felt lost on their way to max level without them. You might feel that was epic, but it was truly confusing for the people that really didn't know where to go next or how to get to maximum level.
Vanilla gave me very memorable experiences. I enjoyed the discovery of Azeroth, the trek with my first character all the way to level 60. My first Molten Core, UBRS, WSG, you name it. But looking back, that doesn't prevent me from seeing the flaws it had in many regards. Vanilla was good in some aspects and bad in others. And every expansion since then has had its own lows and highs. |
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There were plenty of ninja looters, gankers and PVP griefers back then. It wasn't any different to today. Reputation and helping others was important only to those that cared about it, just as (surprise) today.
Quite the opposite, you can actually go with them onto LFD/LFR if for some reason they can't go through normal modes and you'll get as far as you can. Back in the days, you had to leave them behind if you wanted to go kill, say, Kil'jaeden, and they weren't cutting it. |
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Its a MIRACLE !!!, a blue posting on a EU forum thread, ITS A MIRACLE I TELL YOU. You should check other threads more often, because we try to be as active as possible on the forums, and not just on the threads that praise Blizzard :) |
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Playing the devil's advocate here, but basically The game now is just this Back then it was something like this... 1) Accept quest 2) Minimize WoW, check in Thottbot (for example) the quest(s?) 3) Complete quest going to the noted coordinates. 4) Minimize WoW, go to youtube, view all major PVE content in a couple hours by pressing "play" (Feel free to kick back and relax) Point 5 doesn't really apply here because we didn't have Cross-realm zones, dungeons, raids, scenarios back then, but it did apply on PVP however. Looking back at the other 4 points. We could argue the first three now have reduced hassle. And I don't know about you, but I'd rather take part on viewing all major PVE content and achieve it by myself (no matter if its on LFR, Normal or Heroic) than see some random pixel heroes go do it while I'm left trying to figure out what's going on. |
