Hopefully at the end of each expansion now, we get to keep (clone) our characters.
The problem with old WoW is the linear levelling, which was a pain point for many, many years.
Technically, Blizzard could pull a hat trick and scale the old world (up to 70, I would personally accept 80 as well) while also shortening levels and stuff, but I doubt the majority would be receptive.
The first alternative are free boosts or a level up quest which allows you do skip ahead but not too much, if you desire to do something.
The other alternative is time gating - which we currently do. People can level to 60, and once everyone is there, we can go to 70, and so on.
1-80 is a major journey and it would be an intergalactic failure as a new server. Sure, 20 people would rush it, but for the majority it would be rather long. The 1-max is similar to Classic (shorter but more levels), for reference my main is 49 (about 130 hours /played, for a long while 100% rested). Basically, by the time a random player gets to 80, nobody would care about heroics or even Naxx.
Any guild or static worth their salt will clear both on first reset. The strats are all over the internet, r14 gear is overgeared for AQ and perfectly adequate for Naxx. Or rather, if you don’t clear each first reset, you should take a hard look at the sort of people you play with. And then it’s just long months of farming low drop rate gear in not-particulary enjoyable raids for 2-3 hours each. TBC can’t come soon enough.
For most guilds that willl not happen. I don’t know where you got this “everyone is in r14 gear” - what I see in our guild is BWL geared raiders.
The ones in PvP gear are usually not the ones participating in raids, but it could be a PvE server thing - I dunno.
And “BWL geared raiders” will somehow have more trouble? If anything, those items are better for pve stats. What I meant is even IF you don’t have P4 BiS gear (to absolutely dominate AQ), you can still have r14, which is about the same quality and a better weapon to boot. And consumes with wbuffs do more than gear anyway. I don’t even use ANY r13 anymore, just the weapon, everything else is replaced with ZG/BWL.
No matter how you look at it, if you have to “progress” AQ and Naxx, you can forget Kael and Vashj, let alone SWP.
You’re very obviously speaking as someone who’s an absolute uber hardcore progression raider with decades of experience under their belt and unlimited free time to play this game - and so for you and those like you grinding your way up to Rank 14, and then one-shotting all of the Classic bosses is easy as pie.
But Classic contains a great many very casual Dad Guilds who can only raid at weekends and many of these will never see AQ40 or Naxx, some of them will still be wiping on Ragnaros - and though doubtless you’d consider these types of players as useless scrubs they’re still having fun.
This ultra-elite attitude of “If you don’t have Naxx on farm after a week, and everyone in the guild iis at R14, you need to take a look at the people you’re playing with” might be fine for the absolute ultra, ultra tryhard meta/min/max/BIS/sweatlords but I still think these people are a minority.
I’m a father of 2 with a job. I raid for 2 hours on Saturday(MC+BWL) and another 2 one hour long zg raids on random days I can get some time. Being a dad with limited time is no excuse for being an anchor around the collective necks of others you raid with, and I expect no less from them.
When you don’t bring a wbuff or reasonably easy to get consume, you basically tell me “screw your limited time with wife and kids, I’d rather you spent 20 more minutes carrying me to some easy loot you dumb rube.” And frankly I find that rather insulting. And would never do to others.
Edit: I guess I really am all of those things from your perspective. I played this game as a “casual” noob back in 2005, even though I had much more free time. But I know the game now, reasonably well in fact, and I know how to press buttons. I can’t have fun pretending I don’t know what I’m doing.
You will absolutely despise me then, in fact you’ll probably consider me to be a disease on the game - because I refuse to have anything to do with the world buff meta.
Why would I despise you? I’d just never be caught dead in a static raid with you.
We all play with people we enjoy playing with. It’s perfectly fine if you want to raid with no buffs, no consumes and take 3 breaks for bio and smoking and kid crying over a 4 hour BWL raid. I prefer to be done in 45 min with no breaks between pulls and no deaths.
I said nothing about no consumables, those are a part of the intended experience, the world buff meta is not.
I don’t share your desire for speed either, the mindset of: “must be completed in fastest possible time, and anyone who needs to go to the toilet or attend to their children are a liability who I would never, ever share my game with” is completely alien to me - and I suspect many others.
There was a time when people used to play videogames for fun, and that’s still my main focus. I couldn’t give a damn it we spend four hours in a raid and wipe repeatedly on trash, because it’s the social experience that I am interested in - the spending time with friends. I don’t view it as some kind of super-e-sports contest where I must aggressively compete against everyone else to get the highest possible parses and anyone who slows me down is abominable.
I couldn’t agree more. We just find different things fun
This is the opposite of fun to me, especially in a “solved” raid. I’d be livid and have toxic level of foul mood for all evening and following days, probably subconsciously taking it out on my kids, wife and co-workers. I’d literally rather unsub than experience that for multiple weeks.
Is it the same in AQ, Naxx, TBC and WotLK classic? I played WoW almost half of my life, I spent countless nights raiding, and those were filled with wipes on progression bosses mostly, with may be one farm day. So the vanilla playstyle, where wipes are not expected, is kind of novel experience to me. So I wonder, if that’s just first vanilla tiers or it’ll continue to be the norm.
I, personally, could care less about wipes. I could wipe in UBRS all the week long, I got used to it many years ago. So I’m surprised that you experiencing it differently. I used to play with you a bit in the times past (Darkfire at Sporeggar) and I don’t remember us to one-shot those first WotLK raids, especially after Naxx.
Think of it this way: four hours spent playing with your friends. That’s never wasted time as far as I’m concerned.
I don’t think I could tolerate any videogame that put me in a foul mood for days, even to the extent of it toxifying my family relationships.
That’s not a hobby, that’s a stressful, high-pressure job in which errors or failures have catastrophic consequences and plays havoc with your own mental health. Who needs more of that in their lives? Well I guess some people do - maybe very focussed, top performing athletes feel that way before an Olympic event? It’s not for me though. I get enough pressure, stress and working to tight deadlines with my real job. The last thing I’d want is more of that in my hobbies.
No of course there can be wipes on “progression”. By “solved” raids or rather encounters I meant those you already cleared without a wipe at least once. And frankly, I don’t enjoy “progression” raiding nearly as much as I used to. I had surprisingly little fun in Wrath Classic on Yog, Algalon and ICC heroic, I even rage quit one raid I think, where human furniture kept popping uncalled clouds wipe after wipe after wipe.
It was very different back in retail days, I had no idea we played together on Sporeggar, but obviously that was encountering the raids for the first time, and also back then I was permanently drunk failing university student, not a father with a schedule.
Maybe it’s a weird quirk of my spectrum personality, but if I replay computer RPGs, I generally tend to do so as optimally as possible, utilizing my own and online knowledge to utterly demolish the game within anything but most glaring exploits. Like not letting Frank Horrigan take any offensive action in Fallout 2 or not letting Sarevok’s party do any HP damage to my party in Baldur’s Gate, cutting down flocks of dragons while I out-regenerate them in Might and Magic 6 or not losing a single fight in HoMM3 or planet in Imperium Galactica.
WoW is no different, I’d get maximum enjoyment out of clearing Naxx in 2 hours, without a single death and with every DPS raid member within purple parse range. That would be perfect playthrough of Vanilla WoW, like not letting Sarevok hit you is a perfect playthrough of BG1.
I’m weird like that. I don’t have to be a top DPS as long as my raid has top execution.
Last time I played with somebody I could call a “friend” unironically was in Retail Wrath. I still hang out with my GM from Wrath guild once every few years when we are in the same country.
Yeah I don’t know why I keep torturing myself with this game. It’s 95% rage or disappointment and 5% mild amusement. I genuinely hate the fact I play WoW. I thought I was free a year ago when I couldn’t bother to log back onto SoD or Cata anymore after 2 weeks in a hospital (unrelated trauma accident), yet here I am back in Anniversary making myself miserable twice a week for no apparent reason. I guess it’s some sort of pathology to hate your only “hobby”.
That’s not a positive relationship with this game, it’s a negative relationship, and I’d surmise that it’s your compulsion for perfect results, and flawless solutions that keeps you at it, rather than any true desire to keep playing.
Believe it or not I get it, as I suffer from something broadly similar, it just manifests itself differently for me and I’ve managed to condition myself to stop it affecting my hobbies quite so much. It does affect my actual RL job though.
“Quite so much” isn’t “never” though. I still sometimes find myself getting into a mindset in which dying, or failing a task or personal goal in a videogame puts me into a kind of “Everything’s gone to crap, this is a sign that I’m going to have stinking luck for the rest of the day, and everything’s going to go wrong - might as well tank this day and just write it off” frame of mind.
However it doesn’t affect group activities such as raiding or dungeons, perhaps because there are other people involved and I’m subconsciously aware that I’m only the arbiter of my own actions, not other people’s.
That’s funny, I managed to get it under control at work. I’m a 3 language translator and editor, and I just accept some of my work will have errors, or I misjudge a deadline, the source is corrupt etc. Though it’s still almost physically painful to find a typo or a mistranslation or omission.
Funnily enough, I do it all the more in games and home maintenance to compensate
