I’m not sure what Shadowlands brought that was a premise of old school? Can you elaborate on what you mean with this?
Your lack of self-awareness is astonishing.
How can you dismiss anything you disagree with as “Trolling”? How can you dismiss anything you fail to understand as the problem of the person describing the issue?
Yes, yes, you’re very annoying with your deflecting tactics. We have tried so much with you. At this point, it’s a you issue. You’re literally a one man army still going…
Of course there is.
Everyone who is enjoying modern WoW. Vs you.
We might not all want exactly the same things, but most of ‘us’ don’t want ‘our version’ turned into yet another Classic clone.
I’m not.
I’m calling your repeated insults, trolling.
Yeah, I don’t surrender to bullies.
I bite back. 
Yes. When shadowlands launched, they wanted to mix in a bit of the vanilla wow spirit, where choices matter, things take time, and characters are unique. I think they definitely tried to learn from the success of classic, but they took the wrong lessons I think. What makes classic special could be hundreds of things. Nobody really knows, everyone has a different opinion. That being said, I don’t think that they necessarily have to copy anything directly from vanilla wow, legion, or other beloved expansions. They just need to understand, why people liked their unique features, so they can make new features.
For example, what made vanilla wow feel like this big, epic, lotr-style journey to the wow version of Mount Doom? How can they recapture that feeling in a new version of the game? Does wow maybe need a hard-reset as in wow 2? Is it that the gameplay isn’t immersive enough, so it lacks RPG features? Does the combat make sense? Most of wow’s bloat now comes from its combat for example. That feature eats so much ressources, even though more and more people don’t even like it and ask for OBR, etc. Maybe Blizzard needs to rethink wow combat to be more cooperative and rpg-y, where we have less, but what we have matters more.
Also, I suggest Blizzard to not wait with wow 2 until wow dies. It makes more sense to launch wow 2 during a peak of wow, so there is a lot of positivity and many jump to the new game. If the Last Titan is wow’s peak, better to leave at that peak, and go to wow 2 imo.
Brother, if I really wanted to bully you, I would. I’m trying to make you understand, not bully you…
Please think before you write your next post. Thinking is good.
1 Like
By insulting me?
‘Right’
Another insult. You really can’t help yourself, can you?
Go work on yourself before you start handing out ‘advice’ to others. Buddy.
You have insulted me by wasting my time arguing with you. I’m getting grey hair because of you.
I would be doing you a disservice letting you believe your in own nonsense.
1 Like
No, plenty of people know what made vanilla special (you say classic, but you mean vanilla). You just refuse to listen.
What made it special, can’t be created again.
Because we don’t live in the same world as we did back then.
We are not the same people as we were back then.
Classic has PROVEN this.
Classic was NOT the same as vanilla was. It can’t be.
But I have played classic only in 2020. I didn’t play in actual vanilla. It was a great game. It has nothing really to do with the time of it launching that it succeeded. Pretty sure that the 2019 classic launch was more successful than actual vanilla, and the average player experience was only leveling. Can you imagine, that just good leveling is enough for many players, even if the endgame is terrible? Blizzard made the mistake of turning classic into some seasonal endgame rush server. I have the impression, that Blizzard doesn’t understand why classic has succeeded, and I think neither do you.
What nonsense exactly?
I’ve been asking people about what they want exactly.
So please, oh enlightened one, tell me what nonsense. Help me understand.
And we have tried to explain, but you still fail to understand. How is it our problem? Please do some introspection. Go reread this thread. Educate yourself on why people are leaving retail wow. There are plenty of videos you can watch, Twitter posts you can read, etc.
I’m done for now. I will just let you live in your own delusion.
Of course it was not exactly the same, but it was still a great game. And I bet for many people it was exactly the same though, especially for non-wow players jumping into it.
Also, it’s not just that times have changed, the game is also simply very old and a lot of info was available fast. Also, I wonder if you play any other games than wow, because lots of games are still very rpg-y nowadays. Blizzard turned the wow gameplay a bit into what I’d expect from a mobile game with very shallow action combat, where we just oneshot everything. Only the far endgame stuff like heroic raiding or M+ is an actual videogame
There you go then.
Then you can’t understand.
Classic is a soulless, meaningless simulation of an old game that, in its time, was special. But now it’s shoved into a world that is not the same. And with people who are not the same.
Classic is horrible, if you know what vanilla was like. Imo anyway.
I’m sure there’s players who like both.
Weird comparison. Probably yeah, because WoW wasn’t HUGE from day 1. It grew, because it was special. And more and more people flocked to the game, making it a global sensation.
So yeah, of course Classic launch would have had more people. That’s logical.
Good leveling yes. But why won’t you understand: In today’s world, for many players, Classic’s leveling ISN’T good leveling.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I love leveling. And I wouldn’t mind leveling taking longer and being a journey. For me, the best time I have in any expansion is when I get to level again when it starts.
So in that regard, I don’t feel the same as many ‘endgame focused players’. But the fact remains, that there are many players who don’t like leveling. You can’t just completely ignore them, can you?
Classic succeeded for a while.
And it regains a surge of interest with every new ‘old’ thing they release.
Much like modern WoW gains a surge of interest when they release a new expansion or patch.
In that regard, They’re the same.
For me and many others it wasn’t. You just show your own opinion. If you feel like that about classic, I don’t think you know why it worked, and I don’t really care what you think about it. There are plenty of people still playing 90ies games, and not out of nostalgia necessarily. Some games were just fun, and that’s all they need to be.
1 Like
Well, go play Classic then?
One of the 7 (maybe 8 soon) versions you have access to.
You don’t need ‘our version’ as well.
But at what cost are we getting Housing?
If Housing was free, I would never have objected to Housing (although maybe vis á vis gameplay cohesion?..)
But over the years I have objected, because Housing is not free. It takes a development team to create it.
And having that development team create Housing, means that that development team isn’t creating something else. What’s that something else? I don’t know. Maybe it’s less of everything else that goes into a new expansion. Maybe it’s less of what goes into a final major patch. Maybe it’s another big gameplay feature that could have been, but won’t be, because of Housing.
Housing most definitely does cost a raid tier, figuratively speaking. Development resources are finite.
And I would rather have had that team of developers work on something else than Housing, but I don’t object to Housing per se, I object to the prioritization of it – even after all these years.
But personally I’m super careful to say what Blizzard should do, well-knowing that in the prioritization of things I don’t really know what I want most or second-most, or what I want the least, or even if I truly want something or just believe I do.
That exercise is probably not very different from the job of the developers who have to decide on what to do and what not to do. They seem to struggle with that just as much and by their own admission don’t get it right all the time either.
Ergo why I’m happy to leave the whole “what to do” to the developers. It’s harder than it looks. As a player I’m perfectly happy to simply share my thoughts and feelings on the game to the degree I’m confident in those thoughts and feelings.
I linked a video way earlier in the thread of a Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas where I specifically asked him what WoW’s biggest design challenges were.
So I have given this a lot of thought, hence why I asked the guy himself – and he didn’t even seem able to truly focus on a single matter himself!
No? Well let’s have it then. What are your thoughts on what WoW’s single biggest design challenge is going forward in the long term?
I am not a doctor.
If I have pain in my arm I can go to the doctor and say that my arm hurts.
But I cannot say why it hurts.
I can describe to the best of my ability how it hurts, and I can also explain when it began hurting, and perhaps even the specific event that made it hurt.
But the cause for why it hurts? That’s for the doctor to say. That’s his job.
It’s the same with game design.
I can tell Blizzard that I like their game less than I used to many years ago.
I can describe to the best of my ability why I like it less now – something about immersion, cohesion, community, progression, continuity, and many other things.
I can perhaps pinpoint when I began to like it less – after WotLK? After BfA? Not sure…
But I can’t really deduct that the reason why I like WoW less is because of a certain implementation to the game, or multiple ones, and that certain other changes or implementations could make me like WoW more.
How the hell am I supposed to know that?
Blizzard can make a bunch of changes and add a bunch of new things, and I can try it out on a PRT or Beta realm and tell them whether I like the game more or less now. But I can’t say it beforehand without having tried them.
That’s why Blizzard asks players to test things! Because they also know that there’s a difference between players saying they like or dislike something based on their thoughts and feelings, and then players saying they like or dislike something based on actual gameplay experience and having played with those things.
Maybe the greatest thing for me in WoW would be kangaroo stilts. But until Blizzard invents kangaroo stilts for WoW I won’t really know, because I have to try the damn things to know. I can’t just know beforehand about something that is unknown.
Perfectly reasonable. Everyone’s time on the forums is their own to spend as they please. If someone doesn’t care to spend their time entertaining the whims of others, then they are under absolutely no obligation to do so.
Asking someone on the forum a question is asking them to give their time and attention to you. Be grateful if they care to give it, don’t expect it and be upset if you’re not given it – for whatever reason.
I’ll take it as such.
And it’s a fair observation. I can certainly also dish out a list of stuff I don’t like in The War Within and stuff I do like and I can rank it all and rate it and give it stars and…you know what? I actually reviewed The War Within early in the expansion and did exactly that. So it’s not like it’s an impossible thing to do.
But if we are to entertain the truly deep contemplation of what one likes about WoW and what one doesn’t like, and really consider why, and reflect on whether those thoughts and feelings are genuinely true or just adopted by bias or manipulation, I will certainly argue that uncertainty in the confidence of one’s own thinking gives cause for hesitation and even pause.
And since you are fishing for specifics so you can argue against them, then I too will lean into an argument of cautionary wisdom rather than spilling my guts and going on a rant about everything wrong with WoW and how to fix it that I might regret later.
No it was a simple realization. I initially responded to you because I objected to your argument against the OP. That response was born out of emotion, i.e. a sense of injustice, and I guess that qualifies as being triggered to respond.
But I hold no ill will. It’s just a discussion.
I’ve played it already. Why would I play the same game multiple times? I think it makes sense to make retail more RPG-y and reach a bit of a compromise, as many retail players probably also don’t like a hollow experience. You are not representing really the whole retail playerbase, and neither do I. Retail wow has changed constantly, every 2-3 expansions. The Dragonflight era of gameplay is hopefully over soon.
I think what Blizzard really needs to nail from classic in the modern game is that the game feels like this epic, grand rpg adventure again. That’s a really important feeling/emotion from vanilla, that made it successful. This Frodo Baggins type of journey is what made it good.
The issue, if we can call it that, is simple: we’re older now and have less time to game overall. New players aren’t exactly signing up everyday (and stick with the game) and well… we get what modern WoW is now.
It doesn’t help either that people don’t favor changes and Blizz is afraid of said people, thus we get the same old endgame since Legion with the same seasons, same 4 zones, same 1 raid per patch etc.
It’s a blame that we, the players, share it with Blizz. The majority doesn’t want change and everyone is afraid of experimenting new stuff. Blizz is afraid of failing and angering the older playerbase.
That’s why we get actual new big features every 2-3 expansions nowadays (example being delves).
Harsh, but it’s the truth.
No, it has actually nothing to do with it. It is all about preference. There are 30-60 years old extremely busy people, who enjoyed classic. A game is not just about how much rewards you get per hour or the dopamine per second in someone’s brain. One can play a game like classic and enjoy it without ever reaching level 60. It’s not about reaching the end, the goal is the way there. I’m 25 for example and I enjoy oldschool style RPGs. Not because of graphics, it’s just the feeling in these games, that is hard to get from new releases. That’s because they were designed with a different mentality. There are games now though, that are made with this spirit like Baldurs Gate 3.
Alas, classic is an old cow already. How much can you milk it? Also my point was regarding retail, based on the topic’s title.
Classic is there and can be enjoyed by everyone, true. It doesn’t change the fact that is an already “won” game and most people min max the heck out of it. You barely see new people join for any version of WoW.