World of Whorecraft: Battle for Asseroth

[hivemind]

There's nothing to the game, never has been.

The game has always been about the community and friendships you make while adventuring throughout the world.

sorry that you are too autistic to have experienced this

 

[Lacrymas]

I still have no idea what you are comparing vanilla, and WoW in general, to? Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies? Everquest is one huge grind and I've never played SWG, maybe it is better. Maybe you mean City of Heroes/Villains? Never played it either, though I did want to.

 

[Orobis]

Warcraft lore is cliche and intellectually shallow and has been since vanilla.

Agreed. Nobody cared about Warcraft lore back in the day and i mean fucking no one. I don't think i ever met anyone in game or real life that played WoW for it's "rich lore".

PVP is always unbalanced.

Agreed again. But imo it's what made vanilla pvp fun/interesting and quite satisfying, some would disagree with that but that's their oppinion. By the time the second quarter of 2006 came around, it was actually fairly balanced, it wasn't the class's that were unbalanced it was the gear that made pvp unbalanced. The difference between a freshly dinged toon and someone that was decked out in top end gear was indeed a problem and was never solved.

quest design has progressed from "collect 45 bear hides" to "collect 45 bear hides then sit through a cutscene".

I have no idea what they changed over the years, i haven't played since early 2007.

Player mentality hasn't changed; Rush to max level ASAP then raid or PVP.

This is an assumption but you are half-right. This rush to max lvl mentality did not happen until early 2006 at least from my experience, but yea it did eventually happen. I fucking hated raiding with a passion, it was my biggest gripe with WoW and took me 2 fucking years just to finally wrap my head around the whole concept of it. Trying to work 40-60 hours a week job plus have a girlfriend or any type of functioning social life and raid was impossible. I can go on and on about problems with raiding and how bad it is in general and the overall negative effect it had on the game with the schism it caused between "casuals" and "hardcore" (Or No lifers as we use to call them i wonder if that term is still used today) but that would require writing a thesis which is just not going to happen.

My favourite part about WoW and hundreds of thousands of others was the leveling experience believe it or not. Getting from 1-60 took a good 4-7 weeks depending on how much you played per day, and when you hit the level cap it was immensely satisfying. Yes gameplay/skill wise it was easy, but the low lvl pvp and social interaction with other players while going about your business was fun. Again, trying to explain this properly without writing a thesis is difficult but really, it's just something you had to experience yourself firsthand to understand why it was so beloved.

The largest changes that have been made are for convenience. You no longer need to spend hours walking to a dungeon (but if you want to in retail you certainly can). You gain access to mounts earlier, you level faster. Leveling up is easier because people only care about getting to max ASAP.

This is just a shame. I don't know what else to say about this sentence.

Vanilla was never challenging gameplay wise, it was challenging time consumption wise.

Again, no argument here. I agree.

There's nothing to the game, never has been.

This last sentence baffles me. When you think about it, there is nothing to any game, they are all just menial wastes of time or time sinks if you will. To say that there is nothing to vanilla WoW is just a flat out false statement. Really not sure what else to say about this.

Thank you for typing up a proper response and not quoting my tag.

Inb4 more faggots keep quoting my shitposter tag and fuck you if you do. Pricks.

 

[GarfunkeL]

I didn't say that retail is for adults or that Vanilla is worse than retail. Both suck about equally and both are for children.

Warcraft lore is cliche and intellectually shallow and has been since vanilla. PVP is always unbalanced. There's less world pvp on retail because of arenas and bgs but world pvp has always been meaningless. Quest design has progressed from "collect 45 bear hides" to "collect 45 bear hides then sit through a cutscene".

Player mentality hasn't changed; Rush to max level ASAP then raid or PVP. Raids and dungeons run the same way. Read a guide, spec a certain way, and press the right buttons. Current bosses have more abilities that force players to move around some. Modern raid groups are a bit smaller... Max level players sit in a Garrison all day instead of Stormwind. Whatever.

The largest changes that have been made are for convenience. You no longer need to spend hours walking to a dungeon (but if you want to in retail you certainly can). You gain access to mounts earlier, you level faster. Leveling up is easier because people only care about getting to max ASAP. Blizzard says they want to re-balance leveling so that will probably get fixed soon.

Vanilla was never challenging gameplay wise, it was challenging time consumption wise. WoW has always been ridiculously easy the difference is that in Vanilla you needed to dump a quarter of your life to get anywhere. There's nothing to the game, never has been.

Adult man spends enough time playing videogames that he registers on a discussion board to waste even more time discussing said videogames; disses videogames for being shallow and childish. I won't even bother listing all the factual errors in the rest of your shit-posting because it's the same kind of reductio ad absurdum that any pretentious wanker can utilize to reduce literally any book/movie/game into a pile of rubbish.

Newsflash - no video game is challenging, it's all a waste of time, pretending otherwise will not make you cool or smart. Go climb K2 while citing poetry, instead of shit posting on the Codex.

 

[Revenant]

No, guys, sorry, but you seriously need to check your nostalgia glasses prescription. I haven't played vanilla, but after watching hours of videos by best WoW players in the world, and learning things like: most specs being useless; tanking consisting of macro'ing sunder armor; bugs, bugs everywhere; mathematically impossible bosses on raid release; raids completeable with only about a half of players playing optimally, and others just riding along - it convinces me that vanilla WoW was nothing but shit.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

There's nothing to the game, never has been.

The game has always been about the community and friendships you make while adventuring throughout the world.

sorry that you are too autistic to have experienced this

My favourite part about WoW and hundreds of thousands of others was the leveling experience believe it or not. Getting from 1-60 took a good 4-7 weeks depending on how much you played per day, and when you hit the level cap it was immensely satisfying. Yes gameplay/skill wise it was easy, but the low lvl pvp and social interaction with other players while going about your business was fun. Again, trying to explain this properly without writing a thesis is difficult but really, it's just something you had to experience yourself firsthand to understand why it was so beloved.

When I was leveling in Vanilla people rarely wanted to group up because solo questing was more efficient and teams were considered a waste of time. This is what turned me off of the game. I wish that wasn't the case but Vanilla WoW was one of the first games to introduce the idea of a single player MMO. You can still find friends and interact with the community in current retail but I don't think it was any easier to do so back in Vanilla.

I'm happy that you guys found social interaction when playing but from my experience that's always been sparse because of the single player mentality that its design promoted.

I still have no idea what you are comparing vanilla, and WoW in general, to? Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies? Everquest is one huge grind and I've never played SWG, maybe it is better. Maybe you mean City of Heroes/Villains? Never played it either, though I did want to.

When I played CoX it had a way more social community because the game didn't punish you for grouping up. You could hardly log in without being invited to a group within a few minutes and its community was very friendly. Darkfall and other more old school type MMOs also had more social interaction because the games were not designed for a single player and you wouldn't get anywhere playing by yourself.

no video game is challenging

Plenty of games are and have been challenging, just not WoW. Also Game of Thrones was created for people with room temperature IQ

 

[Bester]

most specs being useless;

It's whiners like you that killed video games. Nowadays all specs are equally useful, enjoy PoE and the likes.

 

[Orobis]

Honestly this is some of the worst fucking posting i have ever seen. And the mods game me a shitposter tag? lol what a fucking joke. Dawkinsfan69 posts reeks of pretentiousness and douchebaggery.

I'm happy that you guys found social interaction when playing but from my experience that's always been sparse because of the single player mentality that its design promoted.

You probably played on a shit low pop server. Remember those tags they put on jewel cases/boxes: "ERSB notice, your online experience may vary." No truer words could ever be said about WoW.

Plenty of games are and have been challenging, just not WoW.

Who the fuck even said WoW was challenging? Are you high? Can i have what your smoking?

Also Game of Thrones was created for people with room temperature IQ

More pretentiousness and douchebaggery, im starting to see a pattern here. My hippsterdar is going off the fucking rails right now men.

Seriously why are you here? Just to troll?

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Who the fuck even said WoW was challenging? Are you high? Can i have what your smoking?

More pretentiousness and douchebaggery, im starting to see a pattern here. My hippsterdar is going off the fucking rails right now men.

Seriously why are you here? Just to troll?

I was replying to GarfunkeL lol, note the quote.

 

[Lacrymas]

GoT IS shit, though.

 

[Metro]

Even if they had official legacy servers I doubt I'd bother much with them. It took shitloads of time to get anywhere in vanilla and back then the community was better than what it has devolved into now. Vanilla was 50% time and 50% e-politics. I ran the dominant guild on my server for about a year. Poaching healers/tanks from lesser guilds and then ultimately taking the quality people from the guild and merging with another guild that server transferred. It's what you had to do to field a 40 man raid roster. None of this was particularly fun or interesting from a game play perspective.

Modern WoW is Good For What It Is. The moves towards Diablo and five mans with scaling difficulty is a step in the right direction for people who don't want to deal with the bullshit of raiding and raiding guilds anymore. I'm not saying I'm a huge fan. I play maybe two or three months out of the year. There has never been enough content to stay subbed consistently

 

[Hobo Elf]

I didn't play Vanilla but let me tell you why I'm an expert on this subject anyway

Getting a """"Ph.D"""" from Youtube doesn't actually teach you anything, kid.

 

[Metro]

I have a PhD in Vanilla WoWology.

 

[RK47]

A Pretty huge Dick is something to be proud of, yes.

 

[GarfunkeL]

No, guys, sorry, but you seriously need to check your nostalgia glasses prescription. I haven't played vanilla, but after watching hours of videos by best WoW players in the world, and learning things like: most specs being useless; tanking consisting of macro'ing sunder armor; bugs, bugs everywhere; mathematically impossible bosses on raid release; raids completeable with only about a half of players playing optimally, and others just riding along - it convinces me that vanilla WoW was nothing but shit.

As Hobo Elf said, maybe just shut the fuck up.

1. All specs were feasible for 1-60 and for 5/10-mans. All specs were possible in 20/40-mans as well, just that guilds who wanted to min/max their performance, would only accept certain specs. In fact, that spec-racism only got bad on buggy private servers, it wasn't a massive problem during actual vanilla.

2. Tanking certainly consists more than "macroing sunder armor". The first time a vanilla tank tries to tank a whole group at the same time with no CC, your party is liable to be wiped out. It's not exactly rocket science, but it is little more than just tab between targets and apply sunder armor. Especially if you're a bear or a paladin who do not have sunder armour.

3. Bugs were certainly present but they are present in every MMORPG and basically every game ever. Most were also fixed by 1.11 and 1.12 - I don't remember any massive, glaring things being around at that point though I could be mistaken.

4. There were no impossible bosses on release. This myth stems from C'thun and rumours about him that are perpetuated by players who never played back then or certainly didn't face C'thun. At launch, C'thun was bugged - because Blizz wanted to keep raids secret from players. Which I agree with but the downside is that C'thun spawned multiple tentacles inside his stomach. Which made him impossible to kill. Once that bug was fixed, he was killable by a perfectly working and equipped raid. At which state he was killed by Nihilum only, I think. Maybe some other guild too. Anyway, people whined that he was too hard so he was nerfed at Naxx launch so that more guilds could finish AQ40 "properly" before progressing to Naxxramas.

5. Raids completed with half of players - well this is the usual bullshit claim. You will never see 20-players in greens and blues completing Molten Core. It doesn't happen. What you do see is 20-players fully decked in purples - and that'll be BWL gear or higher - completing MC. Because Molten Core was the very first big raid. It was designed before the game was even complete. It wasn't too easy - plenty of guilds who wiped countless times in Molten Core before they mastered it. Once you had enough players knowing what to do and with good gear, yeah then the rest could coast along. Same happened in BWL too. If you want shitty guilds to be able to raid, all raids cannot be fine tuned to be as difficult as possible. Blizz got it right in vanilla and TBC before patch 2.3 ruined things by nerfing everything across the board so that sad morons like you could brag about clearing Karazhan and tier-5 raids - first tier of raids was doable for everyone, second tier required you to be good, anything beyond that was for the best only.

When I was leveling in Vanilla people rarely wanted to group up because solo questing was more efficient and teams were considered a waste of time. This is what turned me off of the game. I wish that wasn't the case but Vanilla WoW was one of the first games to introduce the idea of a single player MMO. You can still find friends and interact with the community in current retail but I don't think it was any easier to do so back in Vanilla.

Hahah what bullshit. Yes, you got less kill XP from mobs if you were in a party. Yes, you had to find more quest items if you were in a party. But - you were able to breeze through the kill quests easily, you could control spawn locations for gathering quests easily, you could complete elite quests quickly (since you're already in a party) and guess what? Quest XP is the same in a party or as in solo. It was actually better to be in a party if you thought longer-term than just the next 30 minutes. Obviously some players were retarded and only thought about the kill XP from mobs, but even they usually grouped up once you explained the reality of the game to them. WoW wasn't turned into a single-player MMO until much later. So check your facts, you retarded hipster faggot.

 

[Revenant]

The mere fact that you mention paladins and bears among tanks in vanilla is enough to dismiss all your other reasoning.

 

[rashiakas]

Whats equally retarded is the claim that all specs were feasible. Ret Paladin? Shadow Priests? Warlocks? Fire mage in MC?

 

[J1M]

Whats equally retarded is the claim that all specs were feasible. Ret Paladin? Shadow Priests? Warlocks? Fire mage in MC?

There were plenty of warlocks in MC, who were limited to spamming shadowbolt so they didn't use up the debuff slots on the boss.

 

[Sceptic]

back then the community was better than what it has devolved into now. Vanilla was 50% time and 50% e-politics. I ran the dominant guild on my server for about a year. Poaching healers/tanks from lesser guilds and then ultimately taking the quality people from the guild and merging with another guild that server transferred. It's what you had to do to field a 40 man raid roster. None of this was particularly fun or interesting from a game play perspective.

I shudder to think what the community is like now if it's even worse than what you just described...

Though what you describe does make me think back to some of the arguments I've had about MMOs and WOW and online communities with people on here. And it cements my belief that WOW vanilla was an utterly horrible game, and that what fun people got from it derived from things that they might've got from running the game, but have nothing to do with the game itself. It also explains why I hated the game so much; "50% time and 50% e-politics" doesn't leave much room for "but it had good gameplay".

Also, I really like you most of the time GarfunkeL, but if you're claiming "Wow vanilla wasn't buggy!" because they fixed most "massive glaring" things by patch ELEVEN... I don't know the history of WOW patching, but I hope for your sake that the first 10 patches came out with 2 or 3 months, because if 1.12 is the last vanilla patch released some 2 years later, well....

 

[Scroo]

Vanilla and BC WoW had a feeling of adventure to it. You had to communicate, you had to group up at times and it took time to travel the world which actually made it feel huge. This is what made it special and differentiated it from the Diablo 3 shitfest it is becoming more and more. The beginning of the end was the dungeon tool. Leveling was hell for some specs tho, same for pvp.

 

[Angthoron]

Vanilla and BC WoW had a feeling of adventure to it. You had to communicate, you had to group up at times and it took time to travel the world which actually made it feel huge. This is what made it special and differentiated it from the Diablo 3 shitfest it is becoming more and more. The beginning of the end was the dungeon tool. Leveling was hell for some specs tho, same for pvp.

I'll specify: beginning of the end was the cross-realm dungeon tool. As long as it was confined to one server only, it worked, since you would end up playing with the same pool of players, make connections, chat, set up more runs etc. Sure, it could take you a while to get a group. If you are strong with assburgers and aren't playing a healer or a tank, that is, or are generally a shit player. Otherwise, you'd end up with a steadily increasing pool of players that would go "Dungeon with YOU? Fuck yeah!" and be on your merry way in 5 minutes.

Funny enough, xrealm PvP didn't hurt the community anywhere as bad from where I see it, in fact, it kinda made PvP better, at least from my point of view, since suddenly queue for WSG didn't take up to 1 fucking hour.

Whats equally retarded is the claim that all specs were feasible. Ret Paladin? Shadow Priests? Warlocks? Fire mage in MC?

Rets and warlocks were perfectly feasible as long as the players didn't suck a fucking dick. Fire mages and spriests were a bit of a different thing, but iirc eventually spriests got in on the action too.

Edit: Apart from a couple of encounters where rets were completely screwed. But hey, you had time to level alts for that.

back then the community was better than what it has devolved into now. Vanilla was 50% time and 50% e-politics. I ran the dominant guild on my server for about a year. Poaching healers/tanks from lesser guilds and then ultimately taking the quality people from the guild and merging with another guild that server transferred. It's what you had to do to field a 40 man raid roster. None of this was particularly fun or interesting from a game play perspective.

I shudder to think what the community is like now if it's even worse than what you just described...

Though what you describe does make me think back to some of the arguments I've had about MMOs and WOW and online communities with people on here. And it cements my belief that WOW vanilla was an utterly horrible game, and that what fun people got from it derived from things that they might've got from running the game, but have nothing to do with the game itself. It also explains why I hated the game so much; "50% time and 50% e-politics" doesn't leave much room for "but it had good gameplay".

Also, I really like you most of the time GarfunkeL, but if you're claiming "Wow vanilla wasn't buggy!" because they fixed most "massive glaring" things by patch ELEVEN... I don't know the history of WOW patching, but I hope for your sake that the first 10 patches came out with 2 or 3 months, because if 1.12 is the last vanilla patch released some 2 years later, well....

What Metro describes was more of a MO for top tier guilds though. Lower tier guilds that wanted to run regular stuff ended up making friends with other guilds or players and it was nowhere as dickish with that. A lot of people have very different views on vanilla it seems, and I'm guessing it has a lot to do with the kind of groups they fell in with.

I happened to have my own guild, a fairly large one by the server's standards, with hand-pick recruitment policy and a lot of connections to other guilds - so our guys would basically have company whenever they wanted it, without having to poach. My main, an "unviable" Ret, had several invites to dungeons per night and a full friend list to call on. My incognito combat rogue alt had the same. So yeah, as you can imagine, I am seeing Vanilla as a fucking golden time of adventure because of these factors. And it was new, of course, so there's all the sense of wonder and discovery associated with it.

 

[rashiakas]

Rets and warlocks were perfectly feasible as long as the players didn't suck a fucking dick. Fire mages and spriests were a bit of a different thing, but iirc eventually spriests got in on the action too.

Edit: Apart from a couple of encounters where rets were completely screwed. But hey, you had time to level alts for that.

Maybe we have a different definition of "feasible" then.

 

[Angthoron]

Rets and warlocks were perfectly feasible as long as the players didn't suck a fucking dick. Fire mages and spriests were a bit of a different thing, but iirc eventually spriests got in on the action too.

Edit: Apart from a couple of encounters where rets were completely screwed. But hey, you had time to level alts for that.

Maybe we have a different definition of "feasible" then.

Perhaps. But did you know that there were several encounters in MoP and Cataclysm raids where playing melee essentially meant sitting around with a dick in your hand waiting for the fight's gimmick while everyone else was useful? It wasn't a brilliant design decision isolated to vanilla by any means. Dragon's Soul raid comes to mind.

 

[rashiakas]

Sure I know. But I never claimed that every spec was feasible in vanilla. This is never the case, at least not in the guilds I raid(ed).

 

[Angthoron]

Sure I know. But I never claimed that every spec was feasible in vanilla. This is never the case, at least not in the guilds I raid(ed).

Yeah, fair enough. Especially if you're talking proper progress raiding, that still takes class composition very seriously unless you want to intentionally gimp your group.