Blizzard announced "Classic" World of Warcraft

[whydoibother]

They're adding paid boosts to TBC, letting you skip all the old world content and start with a 58 in Outland. Blizz couldn't help themselves. Game is dead on arrival.

Way to ruin it...

Level 60 blood elf hour 2.

You can't boost characters of the new races. Also the boost is limited to one character per account.

Not saying it's perfect, but without the boost I'm going to have a hard time convincing friends to start playing for TBC content.

One of the main reasons for the decline of WoW is that you would see a level 80 guy, and you wouldn't be sure that he beat Stratholme in his early 50s or whatever. The learning experience wasn't there for most people, and you couldn't trust them.
I quit the game late in WotLK and even doing heroics and pick up raids with my small group we had to check gear of the randoms, because we couldn't be sure they know how to play. Check the guy who wants to tank, he has very little defense. Stacks stamina instead. Has to be explained why this is bad. Nobody who played from level 1 to level 80 with a tank class would need this explained to them. Same with boss mechanics, and system interactions, etc. Boosts make it so there is no trust between two high level characters that both know how the game works. One might've just bought the character.

 

[SerratedBiz]

If you think that not having boosting would mean people wouldn't buy their characters, I've got a bridge to sell ya.

 

[Naraya]

If you think that not having boosting would mean people wouldn't buy their characters, I've got a bridge to sell ya.

Two wrongs don't make right.

 

[whydoibother]

If you think that not having boosting would mean people wouldn't buy their characters, I've got a bridge to sell ya.

Using that same logic, lets legalize murder too. I mean, people murder even when its illegal, so why bother, right? Obviously I am exaggerating for comedic effect, but it LITERALLY is the same logic.
Ideally, we'd have some measures taken to prevent, or make difficult, or punish, the sale of characters. This should happen regardless of boosts existing or not.

 

[Avarize]

No fresh TBC servers is very bad news. With mage boosting, botting, and gold buying in Classic, the economy WILL be ruined day 1 TBC launch and get even worse. Even though fresh servers would only reset the timer on these issues, it would at least allow new players to not be immediately priced out of playing the endgame day 1 and try to stay afloat in-game. I seriously hope Blizz reconsiders their server releases and adds 'Fresh TBC' servers as an option. Otherwise, there will be horrendous player retention from any new players coming in with TBC.

This is the reason I won't be playing TBC.

 

[SerratedBiz]

Using that same logic, lets legalize murder too. I mean, people murder even when its illegal, so why bother, right? Obviously I am exaggerating for comedic effect, but it LITERALLY is the same logic.
Ideally, we'd have some measures taken to prevent, or make difficult, or punish, the sale of characters. This should happen regardless of boosts existing or not.

It's literally NOT the same logic because the absolute value of murder is always negative, whereas the value of a boost is only negative if it's used, by your own words, by someone who is (paraphrasing) not good at their role because they boosted.

One of the main reasons for the decline of WoW is that you would see a level 80 guy, and you wouldn't be sure that he beat Stratholme in his early 50s or whatever.

Therefore a boost isn't a problem as long as the guy playing it is skillful. Which I agree with; I have friends who don't have the wish to do the vanilla leveling again, but who are good and experienced players who would like to relive TBC. They will play by using the boost option and my experience will be all the better for it.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

PVP system of the vanilla is cancerous as fuck, that's the one good thing that TBC improves.

This may very well be true, I don't know as I didn't experience much of it in TBC-era given that everyone was flying around and avoiding each other but it killed open world PvP so what's the point of a better PvP system if no one's doing it?

He meant arenas. Open world PvP has always been a joke.

Arenas will be just as broken.
I assume there will be no S3+/T6+ gear available at start ergo warlock/druid will dominate 2v2 and WLD + RMP will completely dominate 3v3, with maybe a handful of shadowplay.

The power of hindsight is a very strong one. Compositions that are known to completely dominate will be at the top first day arena starts. At the end of TBC, rog/dru(dreamstate build on druid) was known to be one of the strongest possible 2v2 comps you could run. When I was playing it in S3, I never once encountered a mirror in probably hundreds of not well over a thousand matches. Yet the moment they can get their hands on the gear that makes the comp work they'll know to play it because it has no real counter.

 

[FreeKaner]

Reality is that all the theorycrafting in PV TBC servers showed there are a lot more viable comps than what was being played in original TBC. Plus the differences between the good comps aren't that much and there are a lot of good comps. However sure, if two equally skilled teams are playing and one has a bullshit comp like rogue/restokin or RMP especially with higher tier gears then the latter will win. Reality is however except at absolute top the teams aren't equal skilled and people can win or lose lopsided match ups, and there is a lot more rock-paper-scissors between comps. Is it great balance? Not really, is it passable for fun experience that isn't a streamlined e-sport? For sure. There is also the fact comp viability shifts with gear and they decided to gate launch phase to not have Hyjal so a lot of possibilities are open in early arena. When everyone has got their T6s and every other rogue as glaives then rogues will dominate 2v2s.

As long as you don't take an absolute invalid comp, and those will necessarily exist when classes have any distinction whatsover, and you are good at the game you can have fun. Also let me remind you that Blizzard from WOTLK onward did everything they could do to streamline classes as to make every 2 viable and look what that did to the game. They also never managed to eliminate certain 2s dominating but killed the fun and asymmetry in the process too.

 

[Ninjerk]

I can't wait to hear about wintrading all over again.

 

[Alienman]

One thing they should have cut is flying mounts. I think that aspect ruined WoW more than anything.

 

[Avarize]

The only thing that really ruined WoW is class design. Everything else is just casual crying.

 

[Zeriel]

The only thing that really ruined WoW is class design. Everything else is just casual crying.

Not really. I don't think you've thought this through at all--either that or you weren't there. If I was to point to one or two things that totally destroyed the old World of Warcraft (and are emblematic of classic MMOs in general), it would be getting rid of individual server queues for PVP, and the attendant follow-on effect of that which was to eventually allow them to make servers matter not at all for PVE either, by megasharding and mixing players from multiple "servers". You can't have a community with such design, and a world without a community is not a world at all.

"We still have mythic" is the one refuge of hardcore players in WoW, but it's a hollow refuge, shown by the fact that almost every group of players from the old hardcore guilds quit by the time mythic was even a thing. They didn't quit because they were bad or casual, I can tell you that much.

And yes, this is why classic WoW sucks too. It is built on the foundational engine and systems of modern WoW, so it's not anything like the real thing. People who think it is are being conned.

 

[Ravielsk]

community is not a world at all.

Hit the nail on the head. MMOs are a social experience, whether that experience comes from competition or cooperation does not matter but it has to be there. Blizzad seemingly forgot(or maybe never realized) this after they made RDF for Wotlk. Its been a steep ride downwards for them since. Although it could have been fine if they did not expand the game in an entirely vertical fashion. Although its not entirely vertical column but more like a pyramid where each new section is progressively smaller and smaller. For example crafting was almost entirely shafted as it went from "the best way to get gear early" to "gold farm(sometimes)". Attunement was pretty much gone after Wotlk, pets were homogenized, character builds streamlined... essentially the whole game became paradoxically smaller as it grew.
There was less for the players to do in general and the stuff that was left essentially boiled down to re-running the same instances over and over until you got enough good boy point to move to another instance. So Bliizz successfully pushed everyone into treating every dungeon and every raid as a speed run challenge. In that sort of environment the best social interaction you can hope for is a brief "hi" and not much else, not even people bitching about loot as everyone is there for the good boi points and nothing else.

 

[anvi]

What are the problems with flying mounts / class design?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

WoW's pivoting away from the things people liked in classic was by design. Most of the good things of WoW classic were coincidental and largely taken from EQ.
EQ was always about the journey and the community. It wasn't a race to max level to go sit in a queue to get gear to sit in another queue to get gear ad infinitum.

Why do you think they relented on having a classic server for so long? The designers legitimately don't like the part of classic that actually appeals to people.

The image doesn't go far enough to explain Tigole (and unmentioned, Furor)'s butthurt, btw. They used to purposely crash EQ servers when they didn't get their way.
If you want an example of what kind of whiner he was, here you go: https://web.archive.org/web/20030610223708/http://www.legacyofsteel.net/newspro/archives/arc27.html
It starts with this and goes on about how you'd expect

The high end game in Everquest revolves around raiding. Currently, for a number of reasons which I will indentify, there are simply not enough spawns to keep the *raiding community* content. What happens when people are not content? They stop playing.

(hey, it's almost exactly like the part from the image)

 

[Ravielsk]

The image doesn't go far enough

The sad part is that no one in the industry seems to have enough braincells to realize that structuring a MMO like a lamer Diablo(farm loot so you can farm loot+1) clone is just not viable financially nor critically. Making content solely around grinding for better gear is both expensive and slow, which is why WoW has trouble pushing out enough content even with all the shortcuts they take. No studio can really compete in that arena without insane investments that have 0 chance of return before at least two or more expansions are out. Critically it dooms games to failure because there is no way for a fresh new MMO to be more polished or smoother to grind when the benchmark is a game with a 17 years worth of a head start.

This is the exact reason why the MMO boom in the early 2000s ended with a complete crash. Those MMOs were trying to beat WoW at its own game by being worse versions of WoW. This same tactic was attempted several times by multiple studios and always ended in the same kind of failure. It makes you seriously question whether people financing game development do not have some kind of learning disability.

 

[anvi]

My hero who made EQ said the budget to make a competing WoW would need to be over $1.5bn. Otherwise it just isn't worth it, all these other games come and go and don't make a dent on WoW's numbers. I think the budget for Rift was something like $200 million which was huge, but they just can't compete. I loved early Rift but I basically ran out of content completely in 1 month.

The endless farm was boring even in EQ even in 1999. It was awesome for a while, you start naked so have to hunt down items for every slot, and then keep upgrading them with better ones. It is addictive as hell, (mostly the mass killing required for exp more than the item hunting), and the items were hard to achieve and required big long adventures that were pretty intense. I enjoyed it and the process, but then an expansion comes along and raises the bar. So everyone has to set out again to grind another bunch of levels and hunt another bunch of items and repeat everything you did all over again, just in a new skin. If you really love the process then you could love these games for decades, but the repetition really bothers me and I also think raiding itself is boring and not even as good group content. EQ had such amazing dungeons with great items and groups could really struggle to take on these places, it was fun. But everything you get is basically obsolete because if you spend your time sitting in a raid instead, then you get something with bigger stats and that's the end of it... So raiding now dominates the games and I find it boring as hell. I miss dungeons with a group.

But the endless item hoarding is a problem too. When MMOs started people thought it was going to go to give us amazing persistent worlds with realistic economies and politics and villains and heroes etc. EQ had a bit of that but not that much. Then instead of developing anything like that, they just mass produced expansion packs which kept the raiders happy. It is a cop out but seems to pay off.. I just have to wait and hope some indie game will fill in the gaps.

 

[Gregz]

One of the hardest problems MMOs create is coordinating people’s RL schedules. That’s an unchanging boundary condition that determines what the genre is capable of.

 

[Lacrymas]

If I were to create an MMO, it would be about going on tabletop-like adventures. Raiding needs to go, attachment to a specific character needs to go, grinding needs to go. The best content WoW ever had was dungeons (or max 10-man raids) and arenas, so more of that please.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Raiding needs to go, attachment to a specific character needs to go, grinding needs to go.

Modern wow has no raiding and no grinding, just PVP and Mythics. Only retards play in guilds and raid, unable to get on with the times.
I did Castle Nathria once, just gathered a raid of random idiots and spent the day trying the bosses, then getting new idiots. Completed it towards the end of the day. That was fun, but it's just good for one time.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

If I were to create an MMO, it would be about going on tabletop-like adventures. Raiding needs to go, attachment to a specific character needs to go, grinding needs to go. The best content WoW ever had was dungeons (or max 10-man raids) and arenas, so more of that please.

You basically described DDO. And yes, it's good(and very unique.)

attachment to a specific character needs to go,

gay

 

[anvi]

I enjoyed it and the process, but then an expansion comes along and raises the bar. So everyone has to set out again to grind another bunch of levels and hunt another bunch of items and repeat everything you did all over again, just in a new skin.

Also, when I quit EQ the first time, I was tired of the repetition. But there were a dozen interesting classes that were all different, and lots of different places to go which I wanted to see... But the game discourages trying multiple classes and even exploring too much and trying too many things. So they rush expansions to keep the masses happy with their +2 swords instead of their +1 swords. But there could be area conquest and legacy classes and things to encourage people to do more than grind. It had the content, it didn't even use it!

A lot of the problems with EQ actually got fixed in a really good private server but those ideas never made it into mainstream MMOs.

 

[Avarize]

Not really. I don't think you've thought this through at all--either that or you weren't there. If I was to point to one or two things that totally destroyed the old World of Warcraft (and are emblematic of classic MMOs in general), it would be getting rid of individual server queues for PVP, and the attendant follow-on effect of that which was to eventually allow them to make servers matter not at all for PVE either, by megasharding and mixing players from multiple "servers". You can't have a community with such design, and a world without a community is not a world at all.

"We still have mythic" is the one refuge of hardcore players in WoW, but it's a hollow refuge, shown by the fact that almost every group of players from the old hardcore guilds quit by the time mythic was even a thing. They didn't quit because they were bad or casual, I can tell you that much.

And yes, this is why classic WoW sucks too. It is built on the foundational engine and systems of modern WoW, so it's not anything like the real thing. People who think it is are being conned.

Sure those other things matter but at the end of the day only raiding is truly fun and everything else just facilitates that. Sure some people dislike raiding but it's usually because they or the people around them suck at it. Having good exploration, economy and open world content would be great but that's something I've yet to see in an MMO so I play for the competitive experience, the thing they actually used to do well and still do okay.

 

[Lacrymas]

attachment to a specific character needs to go,

gay

I meant that more in a "don't play the same character for years on end" way, unless it's in the same tabletop-like adventure. Like in tabletop. You retire a character when the adventure is done. That prevents the temptation to powercreep or go in the same kind of cycles of new raids introducing more powerful items so you do the same thing every patch.

 

[Zeriel]

Not really. I don't think you've thought this through at all--either that or you weren't there. If I was to point to one or two things that totally destroyed the old World of Warcraft (and are emblematic of classic MMOs in general), it would be getting rid of individual server queues for PVP, and the attendant follow-on effect of that which was to eventually allow them to make servers matter not at all for PVE either, by megasharding and mixing players from multiple "servers". You can't have a community with such design, and a world without a community is not a world at all.

"We still have mythic" is the one refuge of hardcore players in WoW, but it's a hollow refuge, shown by the fact that almost every group of players from the old hardcore guilds quit by the time mythic was even a thing. They didn't quit because they were bad or casual, I can tell you that much.

And yes, this is why classic WoW sucks too. It is built on the foundational engine and systems of modern WoW, so it's not anything like the real thing. People who think it is are being conned.

Sure those other things matter but at the end of the day only raiding is truly fun and everything else just facilitates that. Sure some people dislike raiding but it's usually because they or the people around them suck at it. Having good exploration, economy and open world content would be great but that's something I've yet to see in an MMO so I play for the competitive experience, the thing they actually used to do well and still do okay.

My point was raiding doesn't matter without a community. What is the point of "achieving" anything if you live in a formless, slipstream environment where no one knows who you are? That's what those changes did to WoW. Basically the only "recognition" you can have in modern WoW is to be the absolute best in the world, not just the best on your server, and there's not much of a community left to care that you're the best in the world either. Everything in MMOs touches on social aspects in some way, and a lack of community touches on everything social.