Great post, i agree 100%
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Ex-WoW players: Is there anything that could bring you back?
- Thread starter Azzurri
- Start date
Great post, i agree 100%
The atmosphere and storyline of WotLK. That was the peak for me, even though I hung out until Panda before I officially quit. I was in a great active guild and loved everything about Northrend. During Cata we had a lot lose interest in the game and about halfway through the xpac we became an inactive guild...
Birgitte2004
Member
They lost me with two things, their attitude on flying and their attitude on LFR.
I'm a filthy casual, but in both cases they seemed to listen to hardcore elitists who whined that flying and loot in LFR were both too convenient for the masses, or something, so I quit.
Flying was almost universally PvPers, but I will never understand why hardcore raiders were so annoyed that LFR people could get vastly inferior versions of the same loot, rather than even more vastly inferior different loot.
Even if they totally revert both, I'm pretty sure I'll never go back.
I'm a filthy casual, but in both cases they seemed to listen to hardcore elitists who whined that flying and loot in LFR were both too convenient for the masses, or something, so I quit.
Flying was almost universally PvPers, but I will never understand why hardcore raiders were so annoyed that LFR people could get vastly inferior versions of the same loot, rather than even more vastly inferior different loot.
Even if they totally revert both, I'm pretty sure I'll never go back.
Milly Osworth
Member
Yeah you're right we were all young and full of ourselves at some point.
Oh that is a new video...
T_Exige
Member
I didn't even plan to buy WoW, I did because I was a fan of Warcraft 3 and wanted to try it because of the free month. It was my first MMO and what a game this was!
I wasted too much time on this game, but at the same time it gave me some of the best gaming memories. Would I do it again? Nope!
I wasted too much time on this game, but at the same time it gave me some of the best gaming memories. Would I do it again? Nope!
William Bonney
Banned
A sequel.
ricardo_sousa11
Member
This,
the damn game has been running for what...10 years ?! Its time for a real engine upgrade.
flyinpiranha
Member
Nope. The MMO model is terrible in retrospect. I had my fun but I will probably never play a WoW model type of game ever again.
noomi
Member
Probably not.
Started in vanilla, played really heavily until Cataclysm and then I fell away for a bit, came back during Pandaria for a little while and then just completely stopped.
I do not have the time to invest into MMO's anymore, and the interest is completely lost.
The one thing that bothers me the most is how much of my life this game drained from me...
sigh
Started in vanilla, played really heavily until Cataclysm and then I fell away for a bit, came back during Pandaria for a little while and then just completely stopped.
I do not have the time to invest into MMO's anymore, and the interest is completely lost.
The one thing that bothers me the most is how much of my life this game drained from me...
sigh
Drained?
If you were playing heavily (like I was), I imagine you enjoyed it at the time right? If you're enjoying your time doing something, is that not what life is all about?
Star Falcon
Member
Played hardcore Classic-WotLK, over 400 days /played...
Still enjoy the world and seeing the new zones but I can never play it for more than a couple weeks at a time. For example in January just gone I actually resubbed for a month, but in that time I already managed to get the Legendary Ring, clear Heroic Hellfire Citadel and do just about every quest in Draenor.
I'm okay with flying visits here and there but it just doesn't hold my attention for long enough to be a long term subscriber or part of a guild (which sucks as when I do play now I barely talk to anyone).
I think for its age the engine actually holds up okay and the art style pulls the game up visually. It's the content plan and pace at which you can get stuff done that shrunk the game - releasing a WoW 2 without changing those problems won't do anything.
Still enjoy the world and seeing the new zones but I can never play it for more than a couple weeks at a time. For example in January just gone I actually resubbed for a month, but in that time I already managed to get the Legendary Ring, clear Heroic Hellfire Citadel and do just about every quest in Draenor.
I'm okay with flying visits here and there but it just doesn't hold my attention for long enough to be a long term subscriber or part of a guild (which sucks as when I do play now I barely talk to anyone).
I think for its age the engine actually holds up okay and the art style pulls the game up visually. It's the content plan and pace at which you can get stuff done that shrunk the game - releasing a WoW 2 without changing those problems won't do anything.
Great post.
SiKotikJ30
Member
I'll play Legion when it comes out, but likely just for the month or two at most it'll take to get a few characters up to 110. I simply don't have the time to commit to raiding and everything that goes with it anymore. I could do that a decade ago when I was 19, 20, 21 years old, unemployed and living with my parents. Not anymore. Same goes for any MMO really. I'll play to max level and dabble in whatever end game stuff is there, then move on to the next one.
I'm thinking of reactivating for Legion. Just for a month or two. Raiding is beyond me now. I can't muster the enthusiasm to play long single player games, let alone scheduled multiplayer sessions lasting 3+ hours and also needing hours of grinding to prepare. Going through the 5 man dungeons and zones could still be fun though.
Some great posts in this thread. Nostalgia is strong. I remember going into Thousand Needles for the first time and just kind of being overwhelmed by the experience. This amazing place felt like just the beginning of a huge adventure. Great game. Best game of the decade.
Some great posts in this thread. Nostalgia is strong. I remember going into Thousand Needles for the first time and just kind of being overwhelmed by the experience. This amazing place felt like just the beginning of a huge adventure. Great game. Best game of the decade.
Milly Osworth
Member
This goes for most people that started playing Wow in Vanilla and Burning Crusade.
What are the kids playing these days? Is it League of Legends?
AlimNassor
Banned
I want to get into wow but, as an adult that works would I be wasting my time? I heard wow is basically a second job.
Probably this.
A lot of MMO players back in the day played very heavily more out of obsession/addiction/isolation and having ditched their "real" life (sometimes quitting or doing poorly at school/work) more than because it was genuinely "fun".
Less common now though.
I don't even think a time machine would be enough, I'm a different person now - even if I had the time, and we got the old
I think what people just have to remember is that on release World of Warcraft was waaaaaaay ahead of the ball, in terms of being an engageing super fun PC experience it was just so far ahead of a PC market that had 24 player Battlefield 1942, Elder Scrolls Morrowind tier graphics and borked combat, and it was just mindblowing.
The standard has moved forward these days. We live in an era where mid range AAA releases like Witcher/MGSV/FO4 are 80-150 milion games, and GTAV is at multiple hundreds of millions in dev budget (there is no need to go into advertising). The standard of experience is just so much higher, compare Witcher 3 to even lovable classics like KOTOR1 and the difference is there.
That reflects on WoW. WoW has to live in Grand Theft Auto's shade these days, and it'll never have the same effect when you gave the sweetness that is carjacking some bum at 4K 45FPS as a comparison. Gaming has hit new highs, found sweeter drugs.
The standard has moved forward these days. We live in an era where mid range AAA releases like Witcher/MGSV/FO4 are 80-150 milion games, and GTAV is at multiple hundreds of millions in dev budget (there is no need to go into advertising). The standard of experience is just so much higher, compare Witcher 3 to even lovable classics like KOTOR1 and the difference is there.
That reflects on WoW. WoW has to live in Grand Theft Auto's shade these days, and it'll never have the same effect when you gave the sweetness that is carjacking some bum at 4K 45FPS as a comparison. Gaming has hit new highs, found sweeter drugs.
SlickShoes
Member
I saw that this morning and generally agree with it.
Even when I was most invested in WoW it wasn't just raiding, it was the other activities and people that kept me playing.
As soon as the Dungeon Finder came in things went rapidly downhill and you never saw anyone outside cities and you never needed to communicate with another person every again, that's suicide for an MMO.
I had re-subbed again but as soon as I am done exploring the new lands and questing at a leisurely place all there is to do is raid or queue in dungeon finder and stand in a city.
I love
of WoW so much.
It was the first online game that I could co-op with my brother.
We played for hours and hours, mostly just exploring the world. The way the game was played was so new and different compared to anything else from the era.
It was a bit more forgiving to get into than other MMO's and still offered enough in the sense of discovery.
The fact that a lot of areas and quest objectives were only described in quest logs only added to the enjoyment.
I think we played for a couple of months before even hitting max level.
I think that sense of wonder continued into Wrath of the Lich King. That's where Blizzard made it's biggest mistake and started holding the players' hands. Dropping them straight into dungeons, giving quest objective indicators etc.
The biggest sense of wonder came from actually being in the gameworld and needing your friends and community to make sense of it.
my memories
It was the first online game that I could co-op with my brother.
We played for hours and hours, mostly just exploring the world. The way the game was played was so new and different compared to anything else from the era.
It was a bit more forgiving to get into than other MMO's and still offered enough in the sense of discovery.
The fact that a lot of areas and quest objectives were only described in quest logs only added to the enjoyment.
I think we played for a couple of months before even hitting max level.
I think that sense of wonder continued into Wrath of the Lich King. That's where Blizzard made it's biggest mistake and started holding the players' hands. Dropping them straight into dungeons, giving quest objective indicators etc.
The biggest sense of wonder came from actually being in the gameworld and needing your friends and community to make sense of it.
Azzurri
Member
That's the thing, a lot of people in thread are talking like once you hit endgame it's all raiding all the time, but that's not what classic WoW was, even up to wrath. The problem is that Blizzard just made it about raiding. If there are multiple endgame activities to do at endgame, then raiding should be for the very dedicated.
Another thing, it's not like to play an MMO you need to invest 40hr a week, you guys are talking like the hardest of hardcore. You can play very casually and enjoy almost any MMO. It seems like a lot of you are taking it to an extreme when you say 'time' it doesn't have to be like that, it's just you made or make it like that.
The LFG is the worst thing to happen to MMO worlds and communities. So you saved yourself at most 30min, but it the process destroyed the community, socialization and the world.
Vincent Grayson
Member
LFG made (and makes, in new MMOs) the actual playing of some of the best content far easier to do, and for that reason, I feel like it should be mandatory in all MMOs.
That said, I think it's a flaw on a higher level that dungeons/raids tend to be the only interesting group content in most MMOs (and especially WoW), moreso if you're not into PvP.
RumblingRosco
Member
I would pay big money for Blizzard to release a Vanilla WoW server that has progression overtime. Basically repeat the progression that already existed, just with some bug fixes. Basically, do what Nostalrius is doing, but make it legit. Easily throw money down on that.
Anoregon
The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
I agree wholeheartedly with dawg, which is to say Nosatalrius doesn't recreate the vanilla experience because that experience is not reproducible. You would need a time machine and a special type of amnesia. The actual game mechanics and content of Vanilla are only part of "the vanilla experience", and without all the other aspects that made playing the game 10 years ago so groundbreaking, it is pretty uninteresting.
WoW worked best in early-mid Classic, Mid-TBC, and WotLK, and raiding was not "for the very dedicated." in any of those. More like "the moderately-dedicated and their more casual friends". Late classic (Naxx hahaha), early and late TBC, and Cata, it was much more hardcore.
The big problem is that each raid costs as much development time/money as pretty much all the other endgame content put together (certainly 3+ dungeons), so to justify that they had to try and MAKE everyone raid (via various schemes), which was not a great plan, as many people aren't interested.
JohnSpartanLee
Member
I'd return for hardmode leveling (approximately Vanilla WoW difficulty - maybe except for Elite Mobs).
And/or a PS4 version.
And/or a PS4 version.
The part that they neglect is the psychological aspect though. I never raided Naxx in vanilla but I still played almost daily because it was jut fun to be part of that world. Knowing that there is a place in the game that only the truly dedicated reach was strangely tantalizing, and made the world feel like a bigger, deeper place - even if there was technically less actual content.
Somehow the idea of mythic modes and achievements don't inspire that same sense of wonder / awe. I know it sounds weird but there is just something about being a little fish in a big pond that is really immersive and exciting.
justsomeguy
Member
Swap all the people / attitudes of the people that play now, for the people that played in vanilla.
TBiddy
Member
This is pretty much my opinion. World PVP due to people waiting at/going to dungeons and quests, people talking about what happened in the zone due to the pvp that occurred, not having people land for/fly away from PVP easily.
It just...FELT more due to having to face the world they had built. As it stands now the entire client is just a modern version of AllSeeingEye/GameSpy.
Oh yeah, I think that's fine, having some super-elite content.
It's just not justifiable even with psychology accounted for, to make a gigantic 4-wing 13-boss raid that literally only 1% of players see the inside of (I was one of those 1%).
A tight, keyed*, semi-secret 1-4 boss ultra-hard raid would have been more like it.
* = Not that Naxx wasn't lol.
RumblingRosco
Member
A shame that the PvE server is only 1/10th of the size of the PvP server.
The PvE server population is actually very close to what a retail vanilla server had population-wise. The PvP server is very un-vanilla-like because it has about 4-5x the population of what a retail vanilla server had. We're talking ~1,500-3,000 on the PvE server vs 8,000-13,000 on the PvP server versus retail vanilla which had a population cap (aka, after this point you had to wait in a queue) of 2,500 to 3,500.
noomi
Member
Sure, I had some good times with WoW. Not going to deny that.
Lets just say it feels kind of like a bad break up, and I'm a bit salty when I think about it these days. An end to a relationship that was once good, but the longer I stayed in it I realized how much time I had wasted and could have been doing better things with my life.
Not to say there is anything wrong with the game, or playing it. It's more of a personal issue.
This too, When I first played I was just finishing highschool and had SO many hours to invest.
Now, I'm married, trying to start a family, working hard at work etc etc. Spending an hour playing ROCKET league with friends gives me the same enjoyment and reward as downing bosses in WoW. So I have shifted my focus to simpler MP experiences and more SP small chunk play sessions.
DouglasteR
Member
Nothing really.
It's just like Ultima Online.
Its time has passed.
Just accept
It's just like Ultima Online.
Its time has passed.
Just accept
and join the next step, VR MMO
trikster40
Member
Sure: a free lifetime subscription, the ability to solo the entire game including the raids, infinite gold, guaranteed epic drops, and free maxed-out gaming rigs every year.
Oh, and take my family, job, and any other responsibilities I have. That should do it.
Oh, and take my family, job, and any other responsibilities I have. That should do it.
1% is a tad on the extreme side I will admit that. But a lot of issues with today's WoW could have been avoided if they had stuck to the older model of tiered raiding. It's so easy to gear up now that introductory raids are all but forgotten by the time an expansion wraps up. If you had to raid previous places before the end-of-expansion dungeons were viable, then the player base would be much more distributed and there wouldn't really be "ghost" raids that are totally dead.
Deadpool_X
Banned
True F2p for Vanilla, like they did with Aion. No gimping, just full Vanilla for free with the level cap being the original 60. If you want more than that, you digitally buy the expansion.
socksfelloff
Member
I can't go back to WoW. I hit a point where I deleted all my characters to force myself to quit. I never believed in video game addiction untill that game.
Plague Doctor
Member
.... I really have no idea what would get me back. I could technically break, buy, and get back on it now. I just don't want to.
I think a WoW2 with current graphics and a brand new vanilla core would have me intrigued like the first go around.
I think a WoW2 with current graphics and a brand new vanilla core would have me intrigued like the first go around.
I may pick up the next expansion, which will probably hold my attention for a month or two, but there is nothing there that can get me hooked again. The people I played with are no longer there, and the game simply isn't that interesting anymore.
After playing the game for years, you'll know nearly everything about it. There is nothing left to be discovered, and discovery was so amazing initially. In addition, many changes made to the game are a double-edged sword. For example, LFG made going to dungeons much more convenient and less time consuming, but it was at the cost of the social aspect and the fact that you don't actually have to traverse to the right location. Later I didn't even know where the entrances were to many dungeons because I never had to go there. I lost much of the connection I had with the world because of changes like that.
Without some changes many people wouldn't even touch the game anymore, and they certainly improved things in many ways, it just isn't all that interesting anymore.
After playing the game for years, you'll know nearly everything about it. There is nothing left to be discovered, and discovery was so amazing initially. In addition, many changes made to the game are a double-edged sword. For example, LFG made going to dungeons much more convenient and less time consuming, but it was at the cost of the social aspect and the fact that you don't actually have to traverse to the right location. Later I didn't even know where the entrances were to many dungeons because I never had to go there. I lost much of the connection I had with the world because of changes like that.
Without some changes many people wouldn't even touch the game anymore, and they certainly improved things in many ways, it just isn't all that interesting anymore.
Netherscourge
Banned
Blizzard's new business model is built around 1 or 2 month subs and 18 month Expansion releases.
Warlords brought people back for two months. They had 10 million Warlords buyers ($50) and subs ($15) for about two months. Then, everyone beat the main campaign and quit again.
I think they're back down to the 4 million sub range?
Their new business model:
1. Faster releasing, but smaller content expansions.
2. They increased the price of the expansions to $50 from $40
3. They now sell Game Time Tokens for people to sell for in-game gold, but they're market-dependent, not static Blizzard store offerings. So, someone has to PAY for the time token with cash before it enters the game for a gold price.
4. Fewer content patches per expansion.
They may as well just go Free 2 Play now and sell cosmetic Transmogs, pets and mounts in the Blizzard store, along with the boosts, transfers, name changes and whatever else they do to make money.
Warlords brought people back for two months. They had 10 million Warlords buyers ($50) and subs ($15) for about two months. Then, everyone beat the main campaign and quit again.
I think they're back down to the 4 million sub range?
Their new business model:
1. Faster releasing, but smaller content expansions.
2. They increased the price of the expansions to $50 from $40
3. They now sell Game Time Tokens for people to sell for in-game gold, but they're market-dependent, not static Blizzard store offerings. So, someone has to PAY for the time token with cash before it enters the game for a gold price.
4. Fewer content patches per expansion.
They may as well just go Free 2 Play now and sell cosmetic Transmogs, pets and mounts in the Blizzard store, along with the boosts, transfers, name changes and whatever else they do to make money.