the openworld was relevant and story based driven questlines was what made it an MMO
the pvp was structured
and to answer your question, yes it had better MMO options than current retail WoW
gw2 however ( again a game ive played 1000s of hours into ) is sharded zones and WvWvW
again a better MMO experience than current wow and the main reason we have World quests now
im way older than most people on these forums, I’ve played through them all
runescape
elder scrolls
gw1 , gw2
albion online
lost ark
id even consider Habbo hotel and club penguin a history of games ive played but reluctantly wont admit it
Much harder than it is today. I remember levelling in December 2004 up to March 2005, or thereabouts. Yes it was slow. But it was also very dangerous. You could not simply go in all guns blazing, you’d have to pick mobs off one at a time, and if you made a mistake and pulled a group, you’d have to run, or die. This remained in BC too. I cannot remember how bad it was in Wrath.
Actually levelling up, out in the open world, was similar to being in a dungeon, in terms of adrenaline, and much more dangerous because there would be no tank or healer to save you.
And past that, heroic dungeons, were hour or more long propositions with big pulls requiring CC from all classes. Tank could not hold aggro onto more than 2 targets and that on the assumption that no one (in their right mind) would hit the X. On a 5-6 mob pull you needed ballet dancing class coordination or else.
I do remember with Wrath tanks got AoE cleaves and incredible threat generation, so there we started seeing large pulls and the game went downhill from then on.
and now look at retail a bunch of young teenagers wanting everything on day 1 whilst simultaneously not putting in the effort to even move to the dungeon
reasons like this that dumbed the game down, there’s no effort, no fear of death in game, no decision making
its just Zerg to the finish line and get loot, wait till wednesday and get free loot in vault
rinse and repeat
Its not stupid. MMORPGS are build on 3 core pillars. Gameplay, Imeersion and Social interactions and theses 3 have to be in balance. Gameplay is not whats important in MMOS becouse gameplay is now what makes mmos.
no it milks nostalgia out of players who don’t want to learn new things so they avoid retail and trash it without even giving it a chance. retail is fine but the solo experience should be enhanced in various ways.
Yeah, I think I quit retail soon, because the thing is: I was doing higher keys today, and I’m topping dps, avoiding most damage, kicking everything, but I invited some boosted tank, who just failed constantly and died randomly and ruined my key. Now I just lost 40 minutes of my life and stuff like this happens constantly. Why does this happen? Because wow content is challenging, yet their playerbase is full of wallet warriors, and generally people, who are not very good at playing. Those people also tend to be toxic too, because they are frustrated for being bad. This is just hell, and I remember again why I quit m+ in shadowlands to play pvp. Classic wow at least is so easy, that all of this doesn’t matter, and most players are relaxed.
Did you play back in 2004? Because what I wrote is word for word how it used to be. An accidental pull of one extra mob would be dangerous, and in many cases you’d have to run. With 2-3 extra mobs you’d be fighting for your life.
I am not sure if modern day “Classic” is verbatim how it was back then, but you could go take a look.
I remember heroic Shattrath Halls (I think that was the name), the dungeon where the first pulls were 5-6 mobs, and we had to mark and CC, and we were all good players, but one wrong move, one mob breaking CC, one lost aggro and it was curtains. Hours spent in those kind of dungeons. I remember as a pally healer I would wait for tank to be 50% before even attempting to heal and as tank counting 3-4 sunders on the off target before touching the main target. We would spend hours.
I played classic too, and you know what? Vanilla can be played with 2 bananas replacing your hand, and this is a very good thing considering the age of our playerbase in wow generally. The thing is, I don’t care about wow as a competitive game. I just wanna get BIS gear and all the tier sets, etc. To do that I got good enough to play, but most people just buy boosts, and then they join my key and hecking ruin my time. I don’t want the game to be easy for myself anymore, because I got good enough to play this content, but I don’t wanna go ahead and join a hardcore m+ group just to play without boosted people, da heck? Legit, why can’t this game just be easier and more chill, so people play instead buying boosts. I wouldn’t mind it at all, if it was easier, even if I invested the time to get good.
You see it with Wrath Classic too. As the game gets harder, the game gets more toxic and elitist. This is one of the hardest parts of Classic Wrath and people are quitting.
The truth is most WoW players are just absolutely terrible at computer games, we are the Fall guys of competitive video games, which is why the current difficulty of M+ and raids in retail is just insanity.
I agree completely with you that it also adds so much toxicity to the game. It´s a shame when the entire point of MMORPGs is to be… a massive SOCIAL game?
Haha, exactly. It´s so crazy people shame Classic for being easy, like yeah that´s why it is successful roflmao.
That’s not my experience whatsoever. It just took longer and there was more downtime.
Sure, you couldn’t mass pull stuff; but you can’t do that now either in leveling content in retail (except maybe a few class/specs). To be clear: I’m talking about leveling up in a new expansion here; not the low lvl leveling.
Classic leveling is way harder then retail. You cant die on retail. Its simply isnt possible. Only thing wahts easy is the end game beocuse its 20y old contentet what has been solved and min maxed for 20 years and is played with moder addons. Nobady plays classic beocuse its easy. Literaly everyone would agree that end game should be tunned harder.
People play classic for its phisolophy on game desing.
No LFR
No LFG
No difficulty levels
No season
Epics are epic
Professions matter from lvl 1 to lvl 60
No flying
Slower and harder leveling
Immersive world
Better social enviroment where players actualy interact with each other
