World of Warcraft - your experiences nowadays?

[Pawnless Endgame]

I know there is a WoW Classic thread just a few posts down, but the last retail thread I can find is from about a year ago. So I remember in 2006 that WoW was the biggest thing going, but it went into decline from around 2010 onwards. I imagine Minecraft and Fortnight are the bigger MMOs these days?

What era did you all originally play WoW, and for those who are still playing, what is it like now? I looked on YouTube and the client is now called Shadowlands, WoW 9.2. Visually, it seems like Blizz have gone down the Diablo route and I don't think it's as fitting for WoW on first impression. The Wikipedia article says that the levels have been reset to 60. New players start in a new area called Exile Island, and returning players can pick any of the old start areas. Both groups can then progress onto the Shadowlands.

- what's the community like now?
- what's a good amount of gold (or 'glod') to have?
- at what levels do you get mounts?
- what are the new levels for MC, BWL, AQ40, KZ, Gruul's etc?
- what classes have changed the most?
- what VoIP clients do you use nowadays?

My background: I mainly played from Dec 2005 to Sep 2009 on the Silvermoon server. Great community spirit, players had lots of time for new MMORPG players like myself, and there was banter in PUGs while we still got the job done. I was in an AQ40 guild. In TBC, the raid numbers got reduced from 40/20 to 25/10, so we split up into 2 guilds to grind the TBC content. My guild went onto do Sunwell but didn't finish it. In WoTLK, I was no longer addicted to WoW and just did the heroics and completed Naxx (which I never saw first time round).

The first mount was at L40 (1.6x speed) and epic mount at L60 (2.0x speed). I think an expansion had flying mounts but I can't remember which.

In 2014, I had a "welcome back to WoW" free trial type email/code where I could try Mists free for 1 month. My main character got given a boost to max level (85 or 90 I think?) along with new gear. Becoming full-epic took me most of 2006 first time round, but in Mists, I became full-epic in just 2 days with nothing needed beyond 5-man PUGs and open-world bosses. I still enjoyed the content that Blizz put out e.g. Timeless Isle, but I felt that the community spirit has gone. PUGs were just all action and no banter, and ninja looting was still rife. I think the 2006 players were 20-somethings people like myself who played the original Warcraft 1/2 games 10 years earlier, but the 2014 players were younger and probably weren't alive when WC 1/2 was out.

Money-wise, 500G to 1000G was a good amount to have in the base game and in TBC. In Mists, I was playing the auction house "stock market" and quickly got up to 40,000G but I couldn't find anything to spend it on as I was already geared up.

My main was a warlock. As I came from a Final Fantasy background, I had no idea about classes because FF didn't have them. I just wanted a wizard-type character. Talent points were all over the shop while levelling, which I sorted out at L60 after I got advice from other warlocks. I also had a L70 priest and a L58(ish) warrior.

For VoIP, the main options were Teamspeak and Ventrillo, my guild using Teamspeak. What are the options now? Separately, what is Discord and how does it compare to VoIP? I keep hearing about it as a more recent alternative. I'm pretty sure that WoW did really well during the pandemic era, and that Zoom has also encroached into the gaming world?!

 

[.Lethal]

You played it during the best years. Today it's a shell of it's former self, don't waste your time IMHO.

MMO's aren't in a good place.


- what's the community like now? Most systems have became automated that removed the "need" for communities and friendships to develop. Some guilds will have their own communities, dungeons are usually completed in silence.

- what's a good amount of gold (or 'glod') to have? Some of the best mounts in game cost in the many millions of gold. The value of gold changed drastically in Warlords of Draenor, a raid boost will cost you near 10 million gold for a mythic carry. Trade chat and Looking for group is usually filled with groups wanting to sell you a boost. You can get by with much less however, gold in todays economy is a little bit out of control IMO.

- at what levels do you get mounts? With the release of the Shadowlands expansion there was a level squish which brought max level down to level 60. Mounts are now earned at level 10 and 20 with flying being level 30 and 40.

- what are the new levels for MC, BWL, AQ40, KZ, Gruul's etc? Level 30 to enter old (formally level 60) content.

- what classes have changed the most? You played a long time ago, they have iterated the classes many times over.

- what VoIP clients do you use nowadays? Discord, it's just a more modern and better version of what you previously used

edit: gold can also be bought in game via game tokens (bought with real money) which can be sold on the AH for a few hundred thousand.

 

[Tombstone]

Just because it bugs the hell out of me that everything under the sun gets labelled as an MMO, I'd just like to point out that Fortnite isnt an MMO.

As for the question at hand, WoW is a shadow of what it was in the early days and to be honest the same can be said of the MMO genre as a whole. IMO, the golden age of MMOs was the 1997-2005 period (Asherons Call 1, Ultima Online, Everquest 1, Dark Age of Camelot etc) , its been all downhill from then.

 

[.Lethal]

Just because it bugs the hell out of me that everything under the sun gets labelled as an MMO, I'd just like to point out that Fortnite isnt an MMO.

I'd never heard Fortnite labelled as an MMO prior to OP tbh, I figured they were just confused. Minecraft I've always considered a sandbox with Fortnite being a battle royale.

 

[Malevolence]

Haven't played in years, my playing time had dropped off halfway though Cataclysm but the final nail in the coffin was when Kung-Fu Pandas became a thing - I quit at that. Now if they introduced Murlocs as a playable race I'd re-sub.

 

[Ayahuasca]

Even with the catchup mechanisms that they have now, it's too time-consuming to play it at the higher end. Raids aren't something you can just dip in and out of and need your full attention during progression.

If you just want to dabble in dungeons and do LFG weekly raids then it's probably fine.

I stopped playing after Legion.

 

[MonkeyBasher]

The new starting area and over NPE is pretty good.
The community as a whole is horrible.
If you are going in as a solo player you will be able to solo your way to max level, easy and end up with a nice amount of gear and gold.
You will do this seeing very little of the content on offer. The squish and new levelling experience means it all scales. So you pick a zone and level there.
No need to go anywhere else.
You will solo 99% of quests and spend dungeon runs facerolling them in silence. Doing them only once to get the quest credit.
you will be able to do this using as many or as few hours a week as you want. once you hit max level, you can roll an alt, start farming old content for achieves/transmog, invest much more time and start raiding or quit.

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

Many thanks guys - some really good responses!

It looks like WoW isn't the place any more for me. The biggest thing I got out of the game was making friends and meeting them IRL. I've met around 8 UK people in the UK, plus 1 Norwegian who came over to the UK. Then I also met 2 Germans in the UK and I stopped over at theirs in Germany for several nights as well. So yes, looks like the social aspect of the game has gone, and that was what made me addicted to WoW, followed by raiding.

My bad for labelling Fortnite as an MMO (and I spelt it wrong too!) I just thought it was 40 or 50 people fighting against each other and that would have been enough to class it as an MMO, like with the WoW battlegrounds.

That's crazy to see gold in the millions now, quite some inflation, on a logarithmic level. I didn't know about the game tokens either. Hopefully that will have weeded out the gold farmers.

Ahh well, I was glad to have played WoW at the time I did play it

 

[hairyfeet]

Its essentially a modern day Ultima Online (circa 2000) in terms of the playerbase/game decline.
There will always be a cult following attached to it, but its better days are past it
The game is just being positioned to be as automated as it can be at this stage.
Revolving door policy with arrogant developers who don't play their own game yet insist on pushing their interpretation of how it should be played.

Also fluff fortnite for denying us a new UT

 

[.Lethal]

Its essentially a modern day Ultima Online (circa 2000) in terms of the playerbase/game decline.
There will always be a cult following attached to it, but its better days are past it
The game is just being positioned to be as automated as it can be at this stage.
Revolving door policy with arrogant developers who don't play their own game yet insist on pushing their interpretation of how it should be played.

Also fluff fortnite for denying us a new UT

Stop blaming devs for the state of the game, they don't have a say in the games direction. It's management and people like Ion Hazzikostas.

Developers get blamed for way to much **** in the gaming industry yet are some of the most dedicated and passionate people there is.

 

[jim5000]

I have played every expansion since Burning Crusade, and as others have said, it really is a shell of it's former self.

The design decisions over the years have basically killed any sense of community within the game and you have to use external tools to find a guild. The nature of modern pugging and server clusters means you will never play with the same player twice unless you find a guild to play with, and you can't find a guild within the game itself, you have to use discord etc.

The graphics are good (for WoW), the gameplay is pretty fun, and there are interesting things to do, however the core ethos of the game seems to be a millions miles away from what it was during the first few WoW iterations an expansions.

This recent video pretty much sums it up

 

[hairyfeet]

Stop blaming devs for the state of the game, they don't have a say in the games direction. It's management and people like Ion Hazzikostas.

Developers get blamed for way to much **** in the gaming industry yet are some of the most dedicated and passionate people there is.

Ion literally being the lead director orchestrating development (be it on behalf of those above). I don't doubt their dedication/passion but the road to hell is paved with good intentions and this isn't some kick starter/crowdfunded game being grown out of rented office space, its a multi-billion franchise. They don't play their own game. You don't have to like what I am saying but I don't **** on other peoples opinions just because they conflict with my own and I'm generally more than patient (and reserved) about such things.

Also do not mistake my views for wanting the game to fail. I actually think it is an absolute travesty WoW is in the state its in, because in spite of its dotage, it could be doing so much better, most of us want it to do well because lets face it, it was always joked informally that it would end up doing itself more harm than any alleged competition would.

 

[.Lethal]

You don't have to like what I am saying

Of course I don't agree with it, I would have thought that was obvious lol. It's an awful take generalising an entire company yet pointing the blame to the developers who are told how to code the game.

 

[Geodude97AD]

I have played every expansion since Burning Crusade, and as others have said, it really is a shell of it's former self.

The design decisions over the years have basically killed any sense of community within the game and you have to use external tools to find a guild. The nature of modern pugging and server clusters means you will never play with the same player twice unless you find a guild to play with, and you can't find a guild within the game itself, you have to use discord etc.

The graphics are good (for WoW), the gameplay is pretty fun, and there are interesting things to do, however the core ethos of the game seems to be a millions miles away from what it was during the first few WoW iterations an expansions.

This recent video pretty much sums it up

I stopped playing around the time of cross realms, that video sums up the problem with the game. It was the people you played with that made the game, the world is great but if the people in it keep fazing in and out and you never get to know them, you may as well be playing a different game every month.

 

[Teaf]

Been playing (mostly) since vanilla beta back in 2004. Missed most of TBC and skipped half of Warlords of Draenor, but otherwise played throughout and still do.

It's still worth playing, and you'll get out what you put in.

It's not as good as it once was (even when ignoring any nostalgia trips of better days) but it's still fun. The social-server aspect died a death, however there are plenty of guilds out there that are friendly and fun and you can get a great experience. The general populace is definitely pretty toxic, but it's the same with every other game, forum, social media platform (and so forth) these days and it's not specific to Warcraft - the general twatery of people has just gotten worse over the years.

Also players, especially ex-players, tend to look back on their golden era's - whether it be vanilla, TBC, WotLK or even later - with 5 to 15 years of rose-tinted goggles and fond memories where nothing will likely ever live up to that experience again and often dissuade returning or new players, but there's still plenty of fun to be had and as aforesaid, you'll get out of what you put in.

 

[.Lethal]

Been playing (mostly) since vanilla beta back in 2004. Missed most of TBC and skipped half of Warlords of Draenor, but otherwise played throughout and still do.

It's still worth playing, and you'll get out what you put in.

It's not as good as it once was (even when ignoring any nostalgia trips of better days) but it's still fun. The social-server aspect died a death, however there are plenty of guilds out there that are friendly and fun and you can get a great experience. The general populace is definitely pretty toxic, but it's the same with every other game, forum, social media platform (and so forth) these days and it's not specific to Warcraft - the general twatery of people has just gotten worse over the years.

Also players, especially ex-players, tend to look back on their golden era's - whether it be vanilla, TBC, WotLK or even later - with 5 to 15 years of rose-tinted goggles and fond memories where nothing will likely ever live up to that experience again and often dissuade returning or new players, but there's still plenty of fun to be had and as aforesaid, you'll get out of what you put in.

When you're giving an opinion of a game it helps when you don't focus on other peoples opinions of nostalgia and rose tinted reflection as an argument for playing a game, it detracts from the rest of your own opinion on the game itself and the many good points you could be making for your reason on why it's worth playing.

There are extreme former players who see it as one thing that it definitely was not, and then there are others who use that argument for the opposite end of the spectrum and it's very hard to understand where you position yourself when you don't add much reasoning behind your own opinion.

 

[Tombstone]

My bad for labelling Fortnite as an MMO (and I spelt it wrong too!) I just thought it was 40 or 50 people fighting against each other and that would have been enough to class it as an MMO, like with the WoW battlegrounds.

Yeah dont worry, its nothing personal, just a pet peeve of mine the way that websites and devs etc keep tagging games as MMOs which arent. 40 or 50 for example, well Call of Duty and Battlefield, or Escape from Tarkov or even the newly released Chivalry 2 all have more people than that in a "round" but obviously we wouldnt consider Call of Duty to be an MMO (yet)

 

[handyandy24]

I played from 04 to 07 whilst at uni, i had heaps of time. What an amazing experience coming across the AH for the first time, or an enemy player in the first mixed zone you go into. I remember seeing the first enemy player that was a high level and running! Awesome experience and i had the time to raid all the high end BWL, AQ40 etc and experience a proper organised guild community.

I cant see wow ever having replay value for me, it was all about that "new" experience

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

The design decisions over the years have basically killed any sense of community within the game and you have to use external tools to find a guild. The nature of modern pugging and server clusters means you will never play with the same player twice unless you find a guild to play with, and you can't find a guild within the game itself, you have to use discord etc.

That's interesting about the guild applying process. I got into my guild mostly by pure luck. In the LFG channel, a UBRS group was short by 1 player, so I joined it. It was only after we completed it that they were all from the same guild and they were conversing on Teamspeak throughout the dungeon. Then I got invited into the guild. They told me what mods I needed to install e.g. CT Raid, and away we went. It was good because it was an up-and-coming guild, everyone was new to MC, Ony, BWL etc so we all learnt it together.

I totally forgot about the cross-realm PUGs though. I think that came in very late on in my WoW 'career'.

 

[Teaf]

When you're giving an opinion of a game it helps when you don't focus on other peoples opinions of nostalgia and rose tinted reflection as an argument for playing a game, it detracts from the rest of your own opinion on the game itself and the many good points you could be making for your reason on why it's worth playing.

No it doesn't. This isn't the quest for facts and these are opinions that don't realistically need to be validated or reasoned. My opinion is that, often, ex-player's opinions are negatively warped by nostalgia and that the game is still worth playing. Best way to find out? Play it.

There are extreme former players who see it as one thing that it definitely was not, and then there are others who use that argument for the opposite end of the spectrum and it's very hard to understand where you position yourself when you don't add much reasoning behind your own opinion.

Not really sure what else I could explain further or where my position stands when I mentioned it already in my original post that it's my opinion that; a) the game is still worth playing, and b) it's pretty common to look back and want bygone days because of fond memories. I do it myself, but it can often affect people's opinion negatively.

That's interesting about the guild applying process. I got into my guild mostly by pure luck. In the LFG channel, a UBRS group was short by 1 player, so I joined it. It was only after we completed it that they were all from the same guild and they were conversing on Teamspeak throughout the dungeon. Then I got invited into the guild. They told me what mods I needed to install e.g. CT Raid, and away we went. It was good because it was an up-and-coming guild, everyone was new to MC, Ony, BWL etc so we all learnt it together.

I totally forgot about the cross-realm PUGs though. I think that came in very late on in my WoW 'career'.

That's one of the aspects of the social part of the server that I miss where stuff like this was a more common occurrence when your server was isolated by itself. People got to know each other, whereas today people rarer talk to each other outside of guild chat. Even dungeons are usually void of conversation unfortunately.