Old-time WoW players : Do you still play it now?

[Nasher]

I remember calling this when Activision took over, they really are the living embodiment of gaming cancer. I just hope that when they hit the wall Blizzard will somehow be saved on it's own as a separate entity. Until then I don't hold out much hope.

Yep around the same time many of the game's best developers also left. Which was mid-WOTLK, I think Ulduar was the last thing the original team made. After that point it went downhill and never stopped.

They will screw up "classic" wow, guaranteed. They will slip in some of the stuff people don't like and it won't be real vanilla. Because in all but name, it's really a different company now and they don't seem to grasp why most vanilla players left years ago.

 

[Marsman]

Not sure the OP would enjoy what the game has become. Quite a difference between what it was during TBC and what it is now; feels like a completely different game, and not in a good way; not for me anyway.

I had a lot of fun questing with guild members before and including TBC, but WotLK was when it started to go down hill.

Not played for about a year. It's never going to match that vanilla experience again.

Levelling is just too easy and quick, it's all just a rush to end game grinding.

Very true. Now it doesn't matter now if you pull too many mobs when soloing as you can take a beating without much trouble, even in the early levels with rubbish gear. I used to enjoy playing a hunter, but removing the ranged weapon dead zone was another addition which added to making levelling too easy.

I remember calling this when Activision took over, they really are the living embodiment of gaming cancer. I just hope that when they hit the wall Blizzard will somehow be saved on it's own as a separate entity. Until then I don't hold out much hope.

At the time I thought the same thing, despite Blizzard (unsurprisingly) and other people insisting it was a merger and Activision would not have any impact on Blizzard. Yeah right..

Pretty much as Nasher has already said; if Activision collapsed and Blizzard were saved, I'd expect many of the people that made them a once great game developer, have left. The name Blizzard doesn't mean squat without the talented developers..

Look at Relic; Dawn of War and Company of Heroes, were fantastic games. I imagine many of those people that made those games have long since gone and what is left of that developer now, can only come up with the very disappointing DoW 3.

Westwood, creators of the RTS genre and the once great Command and Conquer games. Then EA came along and the C&C franchise went downhill fast..

It's a shame that good smaller developers get swallowed by big money grabbing corporations. I guess that's just business.

 

[Jokester]

Played from EU release, raided a bit in Vanilla, never got on with TBC but came back for WotLK and raided at a high level.

WotLK was an odd one for me, the raiding was fantastic, but looking back it was clear the rot had set in as regards dumbing things down. Cataclysm turned me off again but then came back for WoD. Again did a decent amount of raiding, but beyond that the impact of garrisons, group finder and all that sort of thing had largely destroyed the social side of the game. Did most of the levelling content in Legion but it didn’t hold my interest.

I’ve been playing Diablo 3 lately, and it’s not the far off what WoW has become to be honest, limited class abilities, basic crafting and limited social input.

I’m not sure whether they’ll get it to last much longer, subscriptions have plummeted apparently. I suspect there will be one more expansion as presumably it’s already in development but I suspect the next one will be the last otherwise they will just be shovelling tatt out the door content wise. Was bemused to see the other day that PvP servers are no more as well.

WoW Classic will allow them to keep hold of some subscriptions but not sure what they will plan on doing long term with it. I’ll probably give it a go again though.

Though it won’t feel the same as it did originally there was a depth and complexity that helped flesh out an immersive world to it that’s long gone in the current game.

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

I reactivated 3 days ago and have played about 30minutes. It doesnt feel the same anymore.
Little to no socialising in the world, PUGS might as well be bots as none of them talk.
I know BFA has been out a while but I might see 1 or 2 players in the world wile out questing the game almost feels single player now.

I miss the vanilla/bc days where you had to work with others just to achieve much more minor things.

The worst thing about it now compared to vanilla days is the lack of interaction with other people on the same server due to cross realm gameplay. From purely a gear perspective, the pay to win element is also a lot stronger. The fact pugs ask for curve achievement for heroic uldir when so many will have purchased a run gets silly fast. The artwork, graphics and general gameplay and balancing are all still very good I think.

From what both of you have said, the lack of social interaction would be a deal-breaker for me. Although I loved the raiding and we were quite a good guild, the socialising was the most addictive part of the game for me. I would go from having 0 friends to a dozen friends, and I ended up meeting nearly all of them in real life on several occasions. 6 of them were British, 2 from Germany, 1 from Sweden and 1 from Norway. The German ones I've met both here and in Germany.

Off-topic, but WoW seemed to have gone the same way as the British clubbing scene. I used to meet people from clubbing forums on a weekly basis, then the clubbing scene slowly died and the forums dropped out one by one.

 

[agnes]

Played it the moment it released, all through TBC, mainly PVP, finished Wrath, never really stuck with it after I toyed around with end game, same for the following expansions. Always dived in, completed the raids on heroic, most content. Then put it down again.

Legion came along and I moved to the US so I picked up the expansion late and got into a guild on Area 52 US server, started from scratch. By the end of legion, I had gotten back into it fully and was a 8/11M with my team (Toast guild has 19 raid teams, only one of those are not mythic raiding teams lol, spanning over 5 Toast guilds all combined in game). I took a break after the push as we were one of the few teams not to 11/11M it and the team broke up for a break.

With BFA, I played it for a few days on release, and stopped, I was still burnt out. The last few weeks I've picked it back up again, geared my main running heroic a couple of times enough that I can do +10 keys. But mostly focusing on getting ready for the next raid where I'll join back up with a team and push for mythic AOTC.

I have one HUGE gripe with the game now though, I'm sick of everything, and I mean everything, being locked behind time windows. Rep, mog sets, dailies etc etc. Everything can be done in a couple of hours then all you can do is grind keys pretty much. I'm not a fan of mount chasing, mogs yes, but even now mogs only give you an item at the end of an old raid to go and redeem for one item from that tier set. It's bloody awful and really makes the game feel boring. I can't sit for 6 hours on a Sunday afternoon on my main toon with something to do that I'd like to do. It's a shame.

 

[Drollic]

From what both of you have said, the lack of social interaction would be a deal-breaker for me. Although I loved the raiding and we were quite a good guild, the socialising was the most addictive part of the game for me. I would go from having 0 friends to a dozen friends, and I ended up meeting nearly all of them in real life on several occasions. 6 of them were British, 2 from Germany, 1 from Sweden and 1 from Norway. The German ones I've met both here and in Germany.

Off-topic, but WoW seemed to have gone the same way as the British clubbing scene. I used to meet people from clubbing forums on a weekly basis, then the clubbing scene slowly died and the forums dropped out one by one.

It's still relevant in the sense there are guilds, it's just you don't pug/battlegrounds and see the same people on either side as much in the world itself. It can at times if you don't have the time for a decent raiding guild feel like your playing with bots simply doing the basic runs for mid tier gear.

Played it the moment it released, all through TBC, mainly PVP, finished Wrath, never really stuck with it after I toyed around with end game, same for the following expansions. Always dived in, completed the raids on heroic, most content. Then put it down again.

Legion came along and I moved to the US so I picked up the expansion late and got into a guild on Area 52 US server, started from scratch. By the end of legion, I had gotten back into it fully and was a 8/11M with my team (Toast guild has 19 raid teams, only one of those are not mythic raiding teams lol, spanning over 5 Toast guilds all combined in game). I took a break after the push as we were one of the few teams not to 11/11M it and the team broke up for a break.

With BFA, I played it for a few days on release, and stopped, I was still burnt out. The last few weeks I've picked it back up again, geared my main running heroic a couple of times enough that I can do +10 keys. But mostly focusing on getting ready for the next raid where I'll join back up with a team and push for mythic AOTC.

I have one HUGE gripe with the game now though, I'm sick of everything, and I mean everything, being locked behind time windows. Rep, mog sets, dailies etc etc. Everything can be done in a couple of hours then all you can do is grind keys pretty much. I'm not a fan of mount chasing, mogs yes, but even now mogs only give you an item at the end of an old raid to go and redeem for one item from that tier set. It's bloody awful and really makes the game feel boring. I can't sit for 6 hours on a Sunday afternoon on my main toon with something to do that I'd like to do. It's a shame.

The time window behind raids I find the most annoying. Once per day is fair enough, but once weekly isn't enough if you didn't get the drop you were after.

 

[agnes]

The time window behind raids I find the most annoying. Once per day is fair enough, but once weekly isn't enough if you didn't get the drop you were after.

It's a nightmare, specially when you heavily outgear normal and even heroic... If instead they had it like there used to be, multiple raids it would be better. But there is literally only ever one raid that's up to date with the latest gear. Drives me up the wall.

 

[Clav]

Not sure on the forum rules for private servers, I do recall there being a giant thread on Nostalrius before it was shut down. I played on that for a bit and it was great, Vanilla WoW as remembered. I got to 60 and then rediscovered what a time sink it was at that level. Keys, attunements, the grind for T1 blues, class quests etc. so I gave up as I just don't have the time for it anymore.

 

[Guerrilla]

Played through vanilla, mostly pvp and smaller instances, enjoyed TBC too, quit during wotlk, think I was just burned out, most of my spare time was spent glued to the computer playing.
Went back a good few times at different expansions but apart from the surprise that was MOP really didn't enjoy any of it. Don't think I'll ever go back to retail. Very much looking forward to Classic though and hope it's a good representation but am aware it's going to feel a lot different purely from a knowledge perspective... I'm also very aware my time is much more limited now and not sure how well that fits with a game like wow, think I'll have to be very casual!

 

[krooton]

Played through Vanilla on launch, night elf druid.

Got to max level, solo'd Smoulderweb, got in to a guild, started raiding, realised raiding made it like a second job, that I paid to play, and then I quit.

Never played any of the expansions, but I did have a blast in Vanilla as it was my first ever MMO, getting to Darkshore was so cool.

I enjoyed GW2 more though, so much so that I had a max level of every class before I quit that too.

 

[ShortWarning]

I've played WOW since Vanilla and have played every expansion since (in some way shape or form).

The game is completely different now, up until the latest expansion I wouldn't necessarily it was massively worse (just very different) but it slowly became less of an MMO in the traditional sense.

I levelled to 120 in the latest expansion, tried the latest raid then unsubbed. It just seemed like a carbon copy of the previous expansion except they actually took some cool stuff out. I got bored far quicker than with any expansion previously.

I'm dipping my toes into ESO every now and again and it seems quite good but really I'm waiting for the release of Classic WOW. Can't wait.

 

[Toasty]

Played off and on over the years since Vanilla, sometimes going pretty hardcore 4 nights a week I guess.

Main was a mage
Hardcore in Vanilla in top guild on server managed to complete Naxx shortly before TBC - raided and pvp in TBC although had to cut back hours later on so didn't raid swp
Vanilla and early TBC was the best game i had ever played; I was seriously addicted my guild was great and it was so fun.

I rerolled DK at this point
Got all the early server 1sts in WOTLK then had a bit of a break as little to do really now, did some uld and cleared ICC HC

Cata I played hardcore for first raids then had trouble with guilds falling apart on Ragnaros HC Progress- joined another guild cleared Dragon-soul raid then guild fell apart after 4th boss on HC so I quit the game for a while at that point as was sick of transferring characters and faction change at this point.

Played casually in MOP until SOO then raided again - much more casual guild this time but still good set of people and fun.

WOD started off raiding again and really liked the class design, problem was the lack of content and joined a hardcore mythic team but after BRF I couldn't be bothered with the commitment and started to play less as it felt like another job which was ok before but not when I was older, cleared HFC and did most of the bosses on Mythic.

I was really hyped for Legion at first and enjoyed the first couple of months but then got bored of the same old stuff really - not a fan of all the RNG they introduced to the game in specs and loot

Again hyped for BFA but played like a month and I was done with it, felt like a Legion patch but with the good stuff missing and so slow paced. - they should have just listed to feedback and improved systems not just removed them.

Its a shame to see how bad the game is now really after it was so good, really doesn't feel like a world now though as everything new makes older content irrelevant and pigeon holes you to a smaller and smaller section of viable content which gets really repetitive.

I'm going to try classic but I think that will really need a good social experience and guild or it will be awful

 

[MrMarvelous]

Play occasionally on a private Wrath x1 server. In this day and age I just can't be arsed to put in the time/effort like I used to. It feels like more work instead of fun.

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

They will screw up "classic" wow, guaranteed. They will slip in some of the stuff people don't like and it won't be real vanilla. Because in all but name, it's really a different company now and they don't seem to grasp why most vanilla players left years ago.

Interesting and good point! I think there was a comment up-thread about the game going south when Activision took over. I totally forgot about the Activision Blizzard branding. I think also, it depends on where on the timeline Classic will be deployed. E.g. widescreen support wasn't patched in until early 2006. The weather system was patched in around March or April 2006. Certain materials that used to stack to 5 were later able to stack to 20. I think that all of these features should be in the Classic reboot. Also, all of the raids up to the last raid that opened. So no opening events as such. All of the raids are already there.

I'm not sure where I stand with the graphics though. I believe there have been numerous graphics updates since I left, but I'm not sure to what extent they should be incorporated in the Classic reboot.

Got to max level, solo'd Smoulderweb, got in to a guild, started raiding, realised raiding made it like a second job, that I paid to play, and then I quit.

I think I was lucky in that my guild had an age limit of 16 which meant that a lot of us were at uni or working and some had families. Therefore we weren't on a strict 6 or 7 nights per week schedule. If you committed 2 or 3 nights per week (which is what I did), then you were considered a regular and you got given DKP (dragon kill points) based on your attendance. That would go on T1 and T2 gear, so that by the end of 2006, I was almost full-T2. Except for the chest piece (warlock), because Nefarious NEVER EVER EVER EVER dropped the warlock chest piece, you damn l'il bugger. Sure he didn't hesitate to drop the shamen piece (sometimes shamen x 2) on a few occasions for an Alliance guild that had no shamen lol.

 

[Jokester]

Interesting and good point! I think there was a comment up-thread about the game going south when Activision took over. I totally forgot about the Activision Blizzard branding. I think also, it depends on where on the timeline Classic will be deployed. E.g. widescreen support wasn't patched in until early 2006. The weather system was patched in around March or April 2006. Certain materials that used to stack to 5 were later able to stack to 20. I think that all of these features should be in the Classic reboot. Also, all of the raids up to the last raid that opened. So no opening events as such. All of the raids are already there.

I'm not sure where I stand with the graphics though. I believe there have been numerous graphics updates since I left, but I'm not sure to what extent they should be incorporated in the Classic reboot.

It looks like game mechanics will be based on patch 1.12.0 from day one (I would assume this would include weather effects since it's merely cosmetic), so August 2006, but content will be released in 4 batches over a similar time interval as vanilla, opening events and all:-

• Stage 1: Molten Core, Onyxia, Dire Maul, Kazzak, Azuregos (March 2005)
• Stage 2: Blackwing Lair, Battlegrounds and PvP rewards, Zul'Gurub (July 2005)
• Stage 3: Ahn'Qiraj 20/40, Tier 0.5 quest lines, Silithus content, Green Dragons (Jan 2006)
• Stage 4: Naxxramas, Scourge Invasion (June 2006)

It doesn't bother me about graphics updates (it'll definitely be running in the current game engine), I don't think it impacts the game mechanics, either way, you will be able to dial down the graphics to "vanilla" mode if you want.

The only things I would want to see changed that weren't vanilla would be:-
Expanded quest log to 25 quests (doesn't break any game immersion/mechanics in my opinion)

One thing I don't want to see that was non-vanilla and confirmed is loot trading as it's open to exploiting. Also sharding, which at least for now is only being talked about as a short term thing until everyone gets away from the starter zones so I can live with that.

Everything I've seen and read about the developers suggests that they are utterly committed to retaining it as close as possible to the original game, and I think even Activision would be aware that the people who will be playing Classic will quite easily vote with their wallets if they think that that's been corrupted. We'll see though.

 

[Soviet]

Vanilla was my favourite experience in WoW to be honest, and I still play today but nowhere near as much. Yes, we all look back with rose-tinted glasses and the game was arguably much more of a slog, especially in the end game, but playing in a 40-player raid, wiping for weeks before finally downing a boss like Ragnaros was incredible. I still remember downing him and Blackwing and the cheering on the voice comms. For me, there's been no game that has given that level of satisfaction since.

 

[Rimsy]

Sadly I’m looking forward to doing the legendary hunter quest again.
First time round it was a total pain in the ass waiting up until the early hours so the 4 demons weren’t being camped by rogues waiting to gank me.
Will be strange to be looking for 1h weapons with high agility as a hunter too

 

[Riggy]

I started playing about 6/7 months before TBC came out played the game to death up until the end of WotLK. I had an absolute blast, just thinking about it brings on the nostalgia. I've got all the expansions since and I've enjoyed playing on and off since WotLK but it hasn't been the same for me.

For me I'm not enjoying it as much as I did because I don't have what I did then. Real life friends in a guild, raiding/progressing etc and having a right laugh. People get burnt out and move on. I think I'd enjoy the current game as much as I did if that camaraderie was present. Feels like a very lonely game to me now. Even surrounded by people in a city feels lonely, it seems like nothing is going on.

Vanilla was my favourite experience in WoW to be honest, and I still play today but nowhere near as much. Yes, we all look back with rose-tinted glasses and the game was arguably much more of a slog, especially in the end game, but playing in a 40-player raid, wiping for weeks before finally downing a boss like Ragnaros was incredible. I still remember downing him and Blackwing and the cheering on the voice comms. For me, there's been no game that has given that level of satisfaction since.

I have to agree on the old wow being abit of a slog. I think the new expansions have definitely made some good quality of life changes.

 

[Nasher]

It became very stale. In vanilla you would get much more random stuff happening, like people kiting world bosses in to towns and the enemy faction attacking cities.

But it turned in to a chat room with a bunch of mini-games and stopped being an RPG. The "community" became non-existent. There just happens to be a bunch of other people on the same server. In the old days there was life.

 

[ExRayTed]

Like some others have said, WOTLK was the pinnacle for me then went steeply downhill in my opinion. The rinse/repeat nature of each expansion got boring fast and I haven't played since Pandaria released