As part of our bachelor’s thesis, my study partner and I want to establish player types as well as measure motivation for players of the Retail and Classic versions of World of Warcraft. We’re conducting a survey where the participants chose one of these versions and answers questions on a scale of 1-7. The survey is an important part of our thesis and we’d really appreciate it if you’d like to participate.
Note that while a gmail account is required, it will not be shared with us. The test is completely anonymous, and your gmail is between you and Google.
Survey Google Form link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfrya6u64cLSMe3LsUH6B9MPkN1f-th2L0OTbM0EgxZ2s-wUA/viewform?usp=sf_link
If you’d like to participate further we’d also love to read replies here of what aspects of WoW made you play one version of the game over the other, or if you play both, is there some parts you prefer in Classic more than Retail and vice versa? We may use these comments when discussing the survey results in our report.
Because there is an own differation in gaming theory where power is differated from destruction. Basically power means you see how effective things can be while when you do it right while destruction is less about doing it right but more like either make the enviroment suffering too or the gameplay is not about defeating the enemies but defeating ENOUGH enemies.
In WoW this would be like shooting down enemies with a cannon. You know you can defeat the enemies easy with it but the challenge is timing your shots so that NONE can pass alive.
The issue started when it became specified with guns and explosives, which essentially means being a hunter and being an engineer, respectively. Power can take many forms and destruction can take many forms, but destruction was for some reason defined essentially by modern means of causing it.
I answered your survey and I prefer Classic over Retail for three reasons.
First in Classic I still have an RP Server with a functioning community so I can have fun doing RP while playing on a server community that feels like a village from Harvest Moon/Story of Season or Stardew Valley.
Second on Era there is no time limit.
Everything that could I miss I missed already and so this feeling is liberating. I can just focus on doing Roleplay and leveling up my character at my pace. When I want to do something I just do it and when not then not. So I will slowly climb at my goal of becomming stronger and I have many character slots to make stronger while I enjoy interacting with the servervillage.
Third I prefer Classic way of gearing up and playing over Retail. There are still enough Roleplayelements build in that make it feel like I play in a World and not a Game and the slow gearing means every upgrade is an improvement.
Meanwhile in Retail they tried to make the gearing feeling meaningfull but also do basically a soft reset every patch and with the scaling system and easy enemies it just feels pointless getting stronger anyway so until there are delves Retail is for me just for RP. Additionally I do not like the course they did in retail with Shadowlands so there is no real fun for me in the current story and getting stronger just to see a bigger number feels pointless.
I completed the survery, but I do wonder how well it accounts for factors like nostalgia.
For Classic vs Retail:
I’ve been enjoying hopping on Classic SoD for a bit recently since it’s an entirely different change of pace to Retail. Everything’s slower, feels a bit more relaxed/simplistic, and it reminds me of when I first started playing WoW. It’s nice to have to be careful about fighting mobs in the open world and the runes that they’ve added make it feel a bit more refreshing than just being Classic all over again.
However, it does annoy me how long it takes to travel around, there isn’t much skill involved, and there isn’t really anything to collect in the game. That’s why faster-paced Retail will always end up winning for me.
We have! Bartle, Yee and others like BrainHex were player motivation models we studied as candidates for our survey. The framework we ended up using for player type was the Gamer Motivation Model by Quantic Foundry, of which Yee is a founder.
What motivates me in warcraft?.. Same as its always been… The epic loot and the transmogs.
One of the things I really like about Dragonflight is that our Transmogs are trying to look class fantasy themed… Rather than expansion themed like before…
So if the expansion is Cataclysm and all. At least now your transmogs don’t look like fallen debrie and planks all over the place. But it actually try to look your class fantasy.
I kinda like that.
It was extremely Night elf leaning in Dragonflight though.
