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Vanilla World of Warcraft, if released today would be #1

13

Comments

  • melyne28melyne28 Member UncommonPosts: 9
    melyne28 said:
    No one will spend hours in game just to go in dungeon or make some significant progress.
    Let me guess, you haven't played WoW in a long time, or you have possibly even never played it at all, right?
    Wrong. Still playing. Started with wotlk :)
  • krgwynnekrgwynne Member UncommonPosts: 119
    in its hayday it was awesome but is way to dated now would still be better than the current version game play wise though.
  • Loke666Loke666 Member EpicPosts: 21,441
    melyne28 said:
    WoW vanilla number 1? Today? No way. Average MMORPG player is around 30, so he/she most likely have job and family. No one will spend hours in game just to go in dungeon or make some significant progress. And pay money for it. If you look at top 10 mmorpg list for 2016 you'll see, that all of those games have one thing in common - friendliness to casual player. Any game who was praised for vanilla wow feeling - Wildstar, Asta online not just not popular but have very hard time to survive at all. And private servers, well, those ppl play for free. Charge them with some fee and let's see how many will stay. Everyone, who saying that vanilla wow was better or best ever - "Nostalgia goggles are strong with these ones"
    First of all isn't all the top 10 games casual friendly, Lineage still have a couple of millions paying subscribers so it certainly is up there (Eve might be low on the list as well). Secondly, almost all MMOs being made today are casual friendly but if that is because most people want casual friendly games or if publishers think so is up for debate.

    But most importantly was vanilla Wow rather casual friendly as well. Yes, it was harder and took longer then the game does today but it wasn't exactly hardcore just because of that.

    Still, I agree that Wow wouldn't have done nearly as well if it released today as back then, Wows competition back in 2004 was mainly EQ2 but it was in a sad state at the time (Wow also had 5 times it's budget which didn't hurt and the other MMOs had an ever lower one). Today is the market way harder.

    Personally do I think MMOs have gone way too far with focus on super casuals since there usually is very little challenge in them today and that seriously hurt the long term playability of them. People don't play the same game for years nowadays. The endgame is challenging but since everything before is so easy most players don't have a clue how to play their class and constantly die because of it.

    A good game slowly ramps up it's difficulty to ease players in, today they go from super easy as you level up into an actually hard endgame, that is a terrible learning curve.

    Also, the zone range is still the same as EQs where leveling was slow, with many lower level zones and few higher even though people pass those zones in days or for super casuals a few weeks. That leaves people in a small part of the game very fast and 75% of all content is a short tutorial which is a huge waste of content.

    I don't see vanilla Wow doing what Wow did in 2004 but I think it probably would get close to Wow current sub numbers.
    Gdemami
  • melyne28melyne28 Member UncommonPosts: 9
    edited October 2017
    Then I don't understand your previous claim about needing hours to make some significant progress. WoW nowadays can be played very casually. We aren't any longer at the time of 6+ hours 40 man Molten Core raids...



    Please, read my post first and comment later :) If i wasn't very clear, than sorry about it.  Trying to fix - my comment was about why VANILLA wow wont be popular today. No one ( or very little players ) will play and pay for the game where you need grind ANYTHING for hours. That is why wow, like most mmorg, is now so friendly to casuals, easy to lvl up and make progress in game in shorter period of time than is was before. Your last comment expanded what I have in mind :)

    EDITED

    Sorry, just saw your edit comment :) That's ok. Your last comment expanded what I have in mind, so thank you :)
  • melyne28melyne28 Member UncommonPosts: 9
    edited October 2017
    Loke666 said:


    I don't see vanilla Wow doing what Wow did in 2004 but I think it probably would get close to Wow current sub numbers.
    "Nostalgia goggles..." And yes, you right about Lineage numbers... in Asia. Grind still good to gold sellers, bots and PvPers. EVE a bit different case. Converted to f2p model ( wonder why ), many sources give different players numbers ( from 500,000 to 150,000 ) and it looks a bit different than others mmorpg ( never played myself, so don't know for sure). And yes, ppl don't stay for long anywhere for anything. So thinking, that you can seduce to play ( and pay ) for grindy game full of gold beggers and "L2P noob" crowd and wait for hours in main city to go in normal dungeon, just to kicked out from party because lack of achievement or certain piece of gear, you joking about it, right?

    I see just one way to vanilla wow to have small but dedicated community - f2p with sub option. Just like EQ, EQ2 or Wildstar have.
    Post edited by melyne28 on
  • GaladournGaladourn Member RarePosts: 1,813
    for some strange reason, vanilla manages to capture that feeling of accomplishment found in tabletop RPGs even to this day. And no, it's not nostalgia. Nostalgia usually wears off after a brief period of time. The fact that Nostalrius had the population it had (and now, Elysium) means that there is something fun in the design of the game and it's not about "rose coloured glasses"
    Gdemami
  • melyne28melyne28 Member UncommonPosts: 9
    Galadourn said:
    for some strange reason, vanilla manages to capture that feeling of accomplishment found in tabletop RPGs even to this day. And no, it's not nostalgia. Nostalgia usually wears off after a brief period of time. The fact that Nostalrius had the population it had (and now, Elysium) means that there is something fun in the design of the game and it's not about "rose coloured glasses"
    Do they pay any fee to play in those servers? Nostalrius had free commercial and in all wow forums you can see rants all the time about "vanilla was better" Of course ppl want to check it out. How many still stay is another question ( don't count bots ). And sure some ppl do stay and like it ( some ppl like go in the dark, barefoot in the snow ) It just what it is - taste. Like I commented before - small but dedicated community, not the number 1 mmorpg.
  • PhryPhry Member LegendaryPosts: 11,004
    I have played WoW on and off, currently off because legion just isn't for me, since 2004, but back then, there wasn't really much competition and WoW was pretty new and a huge improvement over EQ, and the Beta for EQ2 was a disaster the game was terrible and the guild i was in, in EQ1 was moving to WoW, but they were mostly NA and i wasn't, WoW back then was awesome, at least in comparison, but i wouldn't want to play that version again, indeed if i was going to roll back to a 'decent' version i wouldn't go any further back than Burning Crusade, but to play the game again today now, they would have to improve the graphics, significantly, as WoW's graphics just don't cut it compared to modern MMO's, so if the game was released as a BC version with graphics that are at least close to current year, then yes i would likely play it, but Vanilla WoW with Vanilla WoW graphics, i would not touch with a bargepole, been there already, wouldn't want to go back, not even to visit. :/
  • ACommonMuggerACommonMugger Member RarePosts: 556
    God, the nostalgia-covered glasses are really strong today. Vanilla WoW had a TON of issues, on top of that it wasn't very entertaining in terms of leveling and the PvP ranking system was botched in favor of certain classes ( LOOKIN AT YOU ONE-SHOT MAGE ).

    You gotta remember the bad and not just the good. The way Blizzard developed WoW was inevitable. 

    Also, I'd rather not take a month and a half to get dungeon entrance keys for all my guildies just to do a raid, it's already difficult enough to get them to come online. Thanks. 

  • btdtbtdt Member RarePosts: 523
    These days, all one needs to do is see who the OP of the post is and you don't even have to read it to know what it already says.  

    Posts like these are why the phrase "broken record" was coined.
  • deniterdeniter Member RarePosts: 1,431
    God, the nostalgia-covered glasses are really strong today. Vanilla WoW had a TON of issues, on top of that it wasn't very entertaining in terms of leveling and the PvP ranking system was botched in favor of certain classes ( LOOKIN AT YOU ONE-SHOT MAGE ).

    You gotta remember the bad and not just the good. The way Blizzard developed WoW was inevitable. 

    Also, I'd rather not take a month and a half to get dungeon entrance keys for all my guildies just to do a raid, it's already difficult enough to get them to come online. Thanks. 

    From a casual player's point of view raiding is a bad concept for an end game feature. I'd have developed 5-10 man dungeons similar to Blackrock dungeons for end game progression. As you said, it's difficult enough to get people to come online for raiding, and afaik raiding was the thing that separated casuals from hardcore in various MMOs in the past.

    Current solution for this problem is LFR-tools, which makes raiding work like an instanced battleground. As a casual player i take it as an offense from Blizzards side. That's not why i started to play these games and fell in love with them.

    What they managed to achieve with WoW is to make the game more friendly to all those CS and FPS crowd whom the lobby based instancing didn't bother at all but at the same time they alienated the rest of their playerbase that was more focused on rpg and virtual world mechanics.

    That's why you can't talk about nostalgia-covered glasses, since the current playerbase have none, and the ones who quit long time ago would still prefer the way the game was when they logged off for the last time. Nostalgia has very little to do with this matter.
    KyleranGdemami
  • ACommonMuggerACommonMugger Member RarePosts: 556
    deniter said:
    God, the nostalgia-covered glasses are really strong today. Vanilla WoW had a TON of issues, on top of that it wasn't very entertaining in terms of leveling and the PvP ranking system was botched in favor of certain classes ( LOOKIN AT YOU ONE-SHOT MAGE ).

    You gotta remember the bad and not just the good. The way Blizzard developed WoW was inevitable. 

    Also, I'd rather not take a month and a half to get dungeon entrance keys for all my guildies just to do a raid, it's already difficult enough to get them to come online. Thanks. 

    From a casual player's point of view raiding is a bad concept for an end game feature. I'd have developed 5-10 man dungeons similar to Blackrock dungeons for end game progression. As you said, it's difficult enough to get people to come online for raiding, and afaik raiding was the thing that separated casuals from hardcore in various MMOs in the past.

    Current solution for this problem is LFR-tools, which makes raiding work like an instanced battleground. As a casual player i take it as an offense from Blizzards side. That's not why i started to play these games and fell in love with them.

    What they managed to achieve with WoW is to make the game more friendly to all those CS and FPS crowd whom the lobby based instancing didn't bother at all but at the same time they alienated the rest of their playerbase that was more focused on rpg and virtual world mechanics.

    That's why you can't talk about nostalgia-covered glasses, since the current playerbase have none, and the ones who quit long time ago would still prefer the way the game was when they logged off for the last time. Nostalgia has very little to do with this matter.

    That's just inaccurate, as I'm still playing, and have been since Vanilla. The current playerbase has a ton of people who have been there since the beginning - so absolutely I can call nostalgia glasses.

    If you remember the past fondly, that's great. If you think what WoW was in 2004 "still unmatched" in today's MMO market, you're just deluding yourself.

    I guarantee you that if Vanilla WoW launched again today, with all the same features without any of the updates released over the years, or the current WoW just NEVER applied updates, it'd be a failure. The only reason it's even still discussed is because those people who remember it fondly happen to also be the loudest people on forums.


  • LobotomistLobotomist Member EpicPosts: 5,971
    I was playing last few months on emulated server. And can confirm, Vanilla WoW blows anything else ,  everything that came after, even most modern and new MMOs, out of the water.


    The community, the difficulty, the excitement, the world, the sense of progression, the classes compatibility - it was never surpased - and sadly it seems at the moment it never will.


    And one thing I asked my self whole time I was playing : How is it possible that MMO that came out in 2004 is so much better than anything else out - even on graphic ( style , not number of polygons ) and technological level ???
    GdemamiKyleran



  • CaldicotCaldicot Member UncommonPosts: 455
    Mindblown

    If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. - Carl Sagan

  • deniterdeniter Member RarePosts: 1,431
    edited October 2017
    deniter said:
    God, the nostalgia-covered glasses are really strong today. Vanilla WoW had a TON of issues, on top of that it wasn't very entertaining in terms of leveling and the PvP ranking system was botched in favor of certain classes ( LOOKIN AT YOU ONE-SHOT MAGE ).

    You gotta remember the bad and not just the good. The way Blizzard developed WoW was inevitable. 

    Also, I'd rather not take a month and a half to get dungeon entrance keys for all my guildies just to do a raid, it's already difficult enough to get them to come online. Thanks. 

    From a casual player's point of view raiding is a bad concept for an end game feature. I'd have developed 5-10 man dungeons similar to Blackrock dungeons for end game progression. As you said, it's difficult enough to get people to come online for raiding, and afaik raiding was the thing that separated casuals from hardcore in various MMOs in the past.

    Current solution for this problem is LFR-tools, which makes raiding work like an instanced battleground. As a casual player i take it as an offense from Blizzards side. That's not why i started to play these games and fell in love with them.

    What they managed to achieve with WoW is to make the game more friendly to all those CS and FPS crowd whom the lobby based instancing didn't bother at all but at the same time they alienated the rest of their playerbase that was more focused on rpg and virtual world mechanics.

    That's why you can't talk about nostalgia-covered glasses, since the current playerbase have none, and the ones who quit long time ago would still prefer the way the game was when they logged off for the last time. Nostalgia has very little to do with this matter.

    That's just inaccurate, as I'm still playing, and have been since Vanilla. The current playerbase has a ton of people who have been there since the beginning - so absolutely I can call nostalgia glasses.

    If you remember the past fondly, that's great. If you think what WoW was in 2004 "still unmatched" in today's MMO market, you're just deluding yourself.

    I guarantee you that if Vanilla WoW launched again today, with all the same features without any of the updates released over the years, or the current WoW just NEVER applied updates, it'd be a failure. The only reason it's even still discussed is because those people who remember it fondly happen to also be the loudest people on forums.


    I guess you were a raider back in vanilla and you're a mythic raider in Legion. In that case nothing has really changed - you always thought the non-raiding game as a minor annoyance you have to do in order to get to the raiding part and hated the leveling process and attunements for raid dungeons.

    Or, you are one of those who never hit lvl 60 in vanilla, soloed everything or played with a few RL-friends only, and never took part in any group orientated content excluding instanced battlegrounds.

    For both of the above groups of people WoW has indeed gone in the right direction for different but obvious reasons, but taken huge leaps backwards for everyone else. I'm cool with it, tho. It's their game and they know there are lots of people who are happy with all the changes done in last few years.

    And i agree WoW would be a disaster in its vanilla form if launched today, but for different reasons than what you think. It has dated graphics, broken class mechanics, incomplete quest lines, etc. which they had to fix if vanilla re-release was ever considered seriously.
    Gdemami
  • NegativeJoeNegativeJoe Member UncommonPosts: 213
    klash2def said:


    Because there are more people playing official wow than private servers that no one wants to play it?

    even though there are more people playing these servers than any game that has launched in the past 10 years save 1 or maybe 2..
    and thats not factoring in the fact that most people won't ever play on a private server for many reasons. 

    your making about as much sense as a football bat
    Delusion like this is why. You really believe that the WoW private servers are bigger than ANY game that launched in the last 5 years save 1 or 2.. okay buddy. Keep drinking that juice..


    if by 'drinking that juice' you mean doing a quick google search of population stats, and noticing the facts then  yeah bud, you got me. 

    which games have millions of accoutns made?  because wow private servers do.  which game have 100's of thousands playing right now? online at the moment? because wow private servers do. 

    ill hang up and listen to you drop some further insults while totally ignoring the facts.
    Gdemami

    ::::26:: ::::26:: ::::26::

  • GhavriggGhavrigg Member RarePosts: 1,308
    edited October 2017
    We have no idea how the genre would have evolved up until now without WoW's influence, but I highly doubt it.
  • GaladournGaladourn Member RarePosts: 1,813
    edited October 2017
    Galadourn said:
    for some strange reason, vanilla manages to capture that feeling of accomplishment found in tabletop RPGs even to this day.
    The only feeling of accomplishment I ever felt in tabletop RPGs was to have had fun and to have completed a good adventure with my fellow players. It was never about grinding and spreadsheet stats.
    what about character advancement? that was the focal point of PnP RPGs...fun coming along the way.

    at least in AD&D-type RPGs
  • Loke666Loke666 Member EpicPosts: 21,441
    melyne28 said:
    Loke666 said:


    I don't see vanilla Wow doing what Wow did in 2004 but I think it probably would get close to Wow current sub numbers.
    "Nostalgia goggles..." And yes, you right about Lineage numbers... in Asia. Grind still good to gold sellers, bots and PvPers. EVE a bit different case. Converted to f2p model ( wonder why ), many sources give different players numbers ( from 500,000 to 150,000 ) and it looks a bit different than others mmorpg ( never played myself, so don't know for sure). And yes, ppl don't stay for long anywhere for anything. So thinking, that you can seduce to play ( and pay ) for grindy game full of gold beggers and "L2P noob" crowd and wait for hours in main city to go in normal dungeon, just to kicked out from party because lack of achievement or certain piece of gear, you joking about it, right?

    I see just one way to vanilla wow to have small but dedicated community - f2p with sub option. Just like EQ, EQ2 or Wildstar have.
    It is not about nostalgia glasses, old MMOs had some good and some bad things but the same can be said about new MMOs.

    New MMOs only focus on short term fun, that is why so many people subscribe to Wow for a month after a new expansion releases and stop until the next comes out.

     Old MMOs had the opposite problem, they were fun long term but not so much short term.

    There is more to it, leveling in an old MMO actually felt like an achivement, yes, it was often grindy but everytime you hit a new level you got a kick. There is no challenge until the very confined endgame, and that endgame is as grindy or far worse then it was in Wow or EQ. It feels even worse then it is because it is so fast and easy to reach.

    So basically, the pacing was better in the early game. The grind slowly got slower instead of being close to nothing until you hit the super grindy endgame.

    Not all old games was grindy though, Guildwars had close to no grind and was still fun a long while.

    My point anyways is that while we have gained some very helpful features we also lost others. What we really need is a MMO that is fun both short term and long term which is a rather hard balance.

    I don't feel Wow is better or worse today, it is different and focus on different things and that is why I think vanilla with updated graphics probably would be close to current Wow numbers. Neither of them is exactly what the genre needs now though.

    Making a MMO that is fun both short and long term could be made be mixing old and new features but it peobably be better to rework the entire progression instead.
    rojoArcueidpantarodeniterGdemami
  • rojoArcueidrojoArcueid Member EpicPosts: 10,722
    As long as mmo devs keep making mmos focus only on end game and "the fun begin at max level" then we will never have another mmo that is constantly fun from lvl 1.

    I personally don't care about end game, but like Loke666 said, mmos need to be fun and engaging all the way through.

    MMORPGs are long term. However, Long term should never mean constant grind at max level. Long term should start at lvl 1. By the time you hit max level with normal exp rate it should have passed a very long time of doing meaningful content and not just grinding mobs and dungeons. After that you deal with max level content. Devs dont do that. They make you hit max lvl in a week to bypass boring tasks (boring by design) and render the entire game obsolete.
    pantarodeniterGdemami




  • GeezerGamerGeezerGamer Member EpicPosts: 8,857
    There were so many factors involved in 2004.
    Also, think of this. What would the MMO genre be like today had WoW never launched? I can say one thing. We would not have gone through the 2nd have of last decade with every one making a WoW clone. What were the most successful MMOs pre wow? EQ? SWG? COH? They all had populations a fraction the size of WoW's combined. SO there is no telling how the last 10 years of MMOROGs would have evolved or if there would have been some other title that stepped up to take the lion's share.

    TLDR, Everything that we know today would not have happened as it did. There is no telling what would be successful today in that situation.
    Gdemami
  • TamanousTamanous Member RarePosts: 3,026
    edited October 2017
    If the emulator was built on a more modern core (project in the works but always slow going with risk of never completing when speaking of volunteer work) and some tweaks to launch the game matching it's realistic meta, vanilla Wow could likely reach close to #1 in the field of real mmos (not moba's  included).

    I fully agree. I've played a couple modern mmo's lately and none even come close to the passion the player's have playing vanilla Wow on the big emulators. Not even close.

    The vast majority of vanilla wow players today have never played vanilla in retail. Most only entered Wow post-Cata or perhaps at some point in Wotlk. It's a new experience to them and nearly every time they can't believe how damn fun the game is. It is obvious in zone chat and leveling guilds which players absolutely want to get into instead of solo playing like most modern mmos.

    deniter

    You stay sassy!

  • melyne28melyne28 Member UncommonPosts: 9
    Sometimes I feel like Don Kichoth fighting with windmills... Ok, I try my best. Ultima online, vanilla Wow, EQ boosted and made mmorpg genre how it is today. Nobody saying otherwise.  And sure, old games even now have fans. Even legally dead ones like Warhammer online, Matrix and so on. Private servers, forums are still around. But we talking about mmorpg industry as it is now. With nowadays market and buyers mindset. If you want to know how vanilla wow would be popular today , look at Wildstar "popularity". Best example I can think off. With huge variety of games you can't be frozen in time forever. And sure, mmorpg changing even now - look how many survival games coming out and community is waiting for them, action combat became a thing. In every expansion companies trying something new. Things ppl liked stayed, others not so much. Many things are still there - sense of achievement, being part of community and just making friends in the way. All you have to do is to make an effort. For example,in FFXIV in trial for 8 ppl we were wiped 6 times till we finally did it. Nobody left, nobody was angry. Just shared useful tips and learned for mistakes. We really celebrated later:) And moments like that are common, you know. More than it was back in the days. Ppl want to help and be friendly, they want to stay were they have tons to do and explore, not to grind and hope that they would be lucky and would be invited to VIP club of game elite. Numbers and MONEY are best indicators what gamers truly want. Game and genre have to adapt to it or die. Nobody will play and PAY for the game from the past. WoW Legion edition have few millions, other leaders in the market - FFXIV, GW2, ESO have around the million. Any private server don't hold a candle for it.  Simply put, if vanilla wow would be released like new game or re-released for fans it wont be big, at the best it could hope is small community with big dedication.

    Wow, it was longer than I expected.  But I hope that I made my point.
  • unfilteredJWunfilteredJW Member RarePosts: 397
    Well this is a giant pile of horse dookie.

    I'm a MUDder. I play MUDs.

    Current: Dragonrealms

  • deniterdeniter Member RarePosts: 1,431
    I still can't see how vanilla WoW has anything to do with Wildstar. If anything, WS is an action version of retail WoW with slightly more boring classes and twitch based dungeons.

    I'd gladly hear what do people mean when they say they have something in common. Please enlighten me. :)
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