He seems offended more than anything(also judging by how he started replying to me after I mentioned that I have been busy on classic the last month), but it’s really no point arguing opinions about two very different games. My sons(1 adult and 1 teenager) love playing Minecraft. I just have zero interest in that game(I have tried… because they wanted me to play with them), but I don’t go around critisising it because I personally don’t see the appeal. It doesn’t matter what he thinks. Classic has it’s audience, and considering the average age of the WoW player(incl. retail), even retail doesn’t seem to stand a chance amongst younger players, so he is just as much of a weirdo for playing retail, if that was to matter. I really don’t get the need to bash other games. Never had that need myself at least.
You somehow heavily implied it.
I replied to someone that gave a list of reasons as to why Classic questing is somehow better than Retail. And I gave a plethora of objective facts as to why not.
And you answer me with this comment here:
I understand that you disagree with my comments. That you somehow want to have a “debate” on the objective pixel size of maps and quest number of classic vs. retail…
Its not my opinion. It a number that you can compare. So a fact.
cant be balanced and shouldnt be taken serious at all.
Okay, if you’ve done that…
Anyone will sour on vanilla with that in the bag.
I now fully understand why you’ve forgotten all about the adventure and all that remains is an epic grind that scars your memory.
Vanilla was unfinished. It became more and more apparent the higher level you got. By level 40, it started to be glaringly obvious that there weren’t enough quests, and many zones that were referenced just weren’t available for play, including famous ones like Mt. Hyjal or Quel’Thalas.
The neutral factions, too, were often empty. And the ones you need for the Insane more so than any other. So much potential there, but they just didn’t finish it, and then tBC happened.
And it did result in grinding towards the end, and it only got worse.
But those first 40 levels - if they could do that for the last 20 - and they could’ve if they had the money for it, and that’s what I want SoD to be. It could’ve been amazing.
Actually, it’s not a fact. It’s a subjective opinion. Good riddance we have plenty of games to pick between, and not just the one with the most active players. I am not sure WoW retail would even be here if that was the point. Why exactly does it bother you that people find enjoyment in classic? Are you equally aggressive if I say I spent the last month playing Stardew Valley or Skyrim? You don’t have to answer me that, but ask yourself. You went all aggressive and defensive after I mentioned that I have spent the last month playing classic. You even made up a whole story about how much time, and what I do in classic. It seems to be a huge trigger for you, and you might want to ask yourself why.
Which leads you into rage starvation as a guardian druid. So you don’t have rage when you need it.
We can argue your number. To the picture I attached. Which I measured myself with TomTom.
Right. So some random person in a village with out explanation counts as being “related”? Really?
I remember showing up in Swamp of Sorroes. On a random ogre camp. Which an alliance camp next to it. And some weird troll temple.
NONE of the quests related to anyone or anything. It was confusing, and near impossible to understand what was going on there.
You might not relate to the quest givers in retail. But they atleast present themselves, tell you why they are there. And how you can help in their tasks. Not random “kill X things… Just because”
Make up your mind. Its the questing or the sharding? Because they are totally different things.
Vanilla would also be like Retail if they had sharding.
Well that tells you something already dosent it? People quest in Classic because of the “quality” or they were so desperate to get it over with that they optimized the living hell out of questing to get to level 60…
OK. What do monsters do?
Tell me. What is the difference between a boar in durotar doing white hits. And wolf in Goldshire doing white hits.
As for the panoramas… they look good ONCE. But not twice…
Yes I am through. And I will just say it one last time:
- There is no “classic vs. retail” discussion here. Retail IS classic. Retail is simply: Get Vanilla, ask players what are the most annoying things they want changed in the game… and implement those things. (with variable success rate to be honest).
Therefore, questing in Retail is LITERALLY a version of Vanilla questing, with out all the annoying things people hated at the time. So I cannot understand how comments such as yours can even be possible. NO. Vanilla questing was not better.
Retail questing COULD be better. Thats for certain. But its definetly not worse than vanilla. It cant be. By defenition…
Actually… I found a way to avoid running out of quests. Juggle 3 zones at once, avoid doing orange quests, and just think of the low droprate quests as that filler experience you need. You don’t even need to do dungeons! Then that grind won’t be noticable. I failed at this is vanilla. Chased orange quests, and skipped the most extreme low droprate quests. Ended up grinding from 58-60, and I had even done dungeons then. My classic leveling is so much better after changing my method(which I did out of enjoyment and lack of need to get to 60, unlike in vanilla).
Well i was not, I simply described what has changed from a design, technical and even the amount of manpower that the wow team had compared from the design of original Ek and Kalimdor to recent expansion.
Sure I cant deny that there is X amount of more quest, but it makes only that a fact not that one version is superior to the other, there we transition to subjective taste because thankfully we are all different and we like different things.
I have not forgotten it. I remember it perfectly well.
But here is the thing. You can only visit Paris once for the first time. You cant do it twice. Dont forget that. Its not 2004.
Now. You can recount your memories from the past if you want. You can say you personally prefer questing in Classic so much its what you do all the time: Level alts from 1 to 60 in the Classic Era servers. Makes sense.
But you cant objectively be serious with generalizing your nostalgia, or personal tastes to a whole expansion that is 21 years older. It makes no sense.
Yes. AND:
All those “different tastes” managed to change Vanilla questing to what we have now in Retail.
Fair. But I heard GDruids complain about rage management of the spec in general. Maybe the solution is simply a re-work IMO.
To me, classic questing is superior, but I can respect that you see it differently. I admit I was one of those asking for the world to scale with your level many years ago. A few years after that, we got that.
Classic questing isn’t perfect, but to me it feels way more rewarding and progressive than retail. And I love all the story references which we later went more in debt with. I do wish we had retail with more classic type of leveling though, but it could be a seperate game version, as we have with all the different classic versions. I don’t wanns take away the version you enjoy, but to me, leveling doesn’t exist on retail. This is a bit sad, because both me and my partner would rather have leveled on retail. If it had more of the leveling style as classic.
We have derailed the thread quite heavily, but please stop taking it as a personal insult that other players find a version of the game you seemingly can’t stand, fun. It’s not meant as an insult.
Sure they did and people choose to play what they most prefer, I saw it firsthand people that the stopped to play before tbc or before wotlk, people choose what they want because you cant make everyone happy.
It’s because the only worthwhile rage spender is ironfur. Maul isn’t worth it, doesn’t do enough damage. We can’t path into raze.
Spending rage reduces the CD on incarnation. So you just spam ironfur except when you need the rage for something else, like a rebirth or frenzied regen. Even when at max armor. Because of thorns of iron and rage reducing the CD on incarnation.
I found several new measurements. This one looks right:
Little over half of Kalimndor. TWW is a little smaller than the Dragon Isles.
Like I said, TWW is about 1/4th to 1/5th the size of vanilla WoW. It’s just a fact.
But this whole pixels thing… we’re moving at 6 times the speed, and you can tell.
The game was unfinished near the later levels, as I said before. 
However every class had class quests - druids were unfinished but mages were better. And from level 1-40 or so the zones you went through were very much related to your race. In many cases these quests existed in multiple versions depending on race or faction as well.
Night Elves would be fed through Teldrassil, then Darkshore, then Ashenvale, then the northern parts of Stonetalon, then Desolace, then Feralas.
Same thing with humans. That quad of zones south of Stormwind was amazing.
Anyone could do them, unless you were Horde of course, but there was a sense of belonging there.
They could’ve done better. Done more. But the truth is that they were scrambling for time. The solution was to spend more time developing the vanilla zones, and for tBC they actually did. And then they forgot about them. And then they forgot it was supposed to be an open world game with Cata and now it’s all messed up.
How do I have to make up my mind?
It’s both, of course. If you dynamically shard you’ll never meet the same person twice. If the quests aren’t designed for a certain level and don’t encourage you to party up (tagging system was hugely helpful here) then you don’t need to engage with them at all. It takes both for it to work. And it did.
What it tells me is that around ~17% of the players were very busy getting out of the levelling, because I happen to know through contacts within Blizzard that that was about the number of people who even had a max level character. That’s an important detail.
That particular example not much, I think the wolves will howl?
But humanoids behave differently to bears. They are often clumped up in camps, and they run away at low health to aggro more (something that’s gone in retail 
). Many cast spells, use ranged weapons, and use crowd control. Some have pets. Some are immune to certain types of damage, explode on death, their classifications can determine what abilities and CC work on them, etc.
You didn’t notice any of that? Or did you just forget?
It feels like you’re suppressing what the game was actually like to level through the first time due to some painful memories of grinding the everliving daylights out of it.
As for your comments on the same vista twice…
Yeah, that’s why I’m playing more retail. I want new vistas. Content is one of the core pillars of WoW, and it was the way they justified $15/mo.
It’s also why Era will never be like vanilla. It can’t be.
Uhh… yes? But that’s… a pretty big deal in the long run. :'D
I have no issues with people enjoying Classic. Or any other game for that matter.
I DO have a problem when people suggest somehow imposing their taste on others. Like implying that Retail quests should be similar to those in Classic. Because classic quests are more “adventury”.
Retail has issues. As does Classic. Or any game. And Retail problems require retail solutions. Going back in time will literally not solve any issues at all.
Because dont forget:
It took 20 years to get rid of some of the most annoying and stupid things Vanilla had. I dont thing getting them back is a logical solution.
I thought this when I started playing classic back when it was released. I said: “Vanilla was fun for it’s time, but I don’t think I will enjoy it again”. To my huge surprise I find the old leveling style very entertaining and rewarding. Obviously this doesn’t go for everyone, but we lost 2 of our raiders to classic. They never returned to retail, but most I know who enjoy classic play retail too. Retail really do have the endame of MUCH higher quality. Imo.
But here’s the thing. Let’s bring the current expansion as an example:
We start Season 1. Highest attainable gear is 636 to 639. Only the people who can clear Mythic raids and high M+ can hope to get that. They also get special mounts, pets, cosmetics and achievements for doing that. People who, for whatever reason, do only overworld content never go above 606. People who do Delves may reach 619.
Then we start Season 2. Highest attainable gear is 681 to 684 at the moment. Only the people who can clear Mythic raids and high M+ can hope to get that. They also get special mounts, pets, cosmetics and achievements for doing that. But here’s the difference now! People who do not raid or do high M+ can reach 660+! They essentially acquired item-level equipment that was exclusive to the cutting-edge playerbase! The developers literally gave that item level for free without requiring effort.
So why should the people who do overworld and delve be allowed to go beyond the 606 and 619 ilvl limits of the first season, but not be allowed to also earn the achievements, pets, mounts etc. from Season 1? Why did these have to be removed?
That is why I insist on playing Retail to coment about Retail. The problem with healers is WHY they need the addons to begin with. I will tell you why:
Because in a world of spiky damage, you REQUIRE addons like “WA targeted spells” to know who to heal before the damage comes in. And DDs need to know that to pop their deff CDs or die.
What caused this?? Addons? NO. What caused this is the inability of blizzard to balance tune encounters and healers. Because over-healing exists.
In other words. Asume they ban WA tomorrow. And they say: Well now you dont need it because nothing will 1-shot you.
The next day you will have 4 DD parties clearing M+20 because healers are not required at all. So… next patch they increase the damage. And now we are back to the cycle of “1-shot meta” and “4 DD dungeons”…
See where im going?
If you say you raided in SL. I dont find it surprising. SL was a dumpsterfire… You were bleeding players because SL was garbage.
Trust me, I don’t want those annoying things back. I also do not want to take away your retail leveling experience, but I would have liked to see a version of the game where their kept the leveling spirit/style of classic into retail.
I must say though, they did go back a bit on their changes. The linarity of Cataclysm was scrapped. Not all the changes worked out. I would have liked a version with slower leveling too though, where professions are usefull alongside the leveling again, and where the power increase is much slower, so that you can actually get a feel of your rotation and talent choices also during leveling. This is some of the classic spirit I wish a retail version had. I will not support reintroducing the horrible manadrink quality though… ooof. Playing ele shaman at level 44 in need of drinking. That’s just horrible design from classic. It would be hard to pick what elements to preserve and what to scrap for such a version though. And I can’t see them giving us this, but I can dream.