Blizzard announced "Classic" World of Warcraft

[Lacrymas]

Why would I waste my time with one of the worst BGs in WoW's history? I only ever did AV to max reputation for the items. It was such a badly designed clusterfuck I can't even. It was supposed to be like DAoC's RvR, but WoW wasn't built with PvP in mind at all, let alone RvR, so all it did was waste everyone's time. Have 5 mages sit in your base towers and nobody could ever get through, such PvP, such skill, wow.

 

[Makabb]

 

[Lacrymas]

Route of BWL, also one of the worst things in WoW's history. Not that MC is any better, it gives the illusion of non-linearity, but it's actually linear as fuck because you HAVE to kill all the bosses to get to Majordomo and Rag.

 

[gruntar]

Yeah this is so much worse than Dragon Soul or Trials of the Crusader, I'm actually disgusted.

 

[Lacrymas]

At least ToC and DS on the highest difficulty provided some challenge. I'm not justifying ToC being so simple, especially in the context of WoW's highest subscriber count, but the bosses were still better and more imaginative than BWL. The only truly interesting fight in BWL is Nefarian, you finally have some mechanics to worry about and can shine as an individual player.

 

[Parabalus]

Why would I waste my time with one of the worst BGs in WoW's history? I only ever did AV to max reputation for the items. It was such a badly designed clusterfuck I can't even. It was supposed to be like DAoC's RvR, but WoW wasn't built with PvP in mind at all, let alone RvR, so all it did was waste everyone's time. Have 5 mages sit in your base towers and nobody could ever get through, such PvP, such skill, wow.

Lots of rose-tinted glasses rating you retarded.

AV was garbage, it could last 40h+ hours without any side making headway. You even had those two big summons, ice ele and treant, who were supposed to push the trench forward, but they'd just aggro whole map and die in less than a minute. The "winning" move was to just run around the map mining thorium.

 

[gruntar]

Why would I waste my time with one of the worst BGs in WoW's history? I only ever did AV to max reputation for the items. It was such a badly designed clusterfuck I can't even. It was supposed to be like DAoC's RvR, but WoW wasn't built with PvP in mind at all, let alone RvR, so all it did was waste everyone's time. Have 5 mages sit in your base towers and nobody could ever get through, such PvP, such skill, wow.

Lots of rose-tinted glasses rating you retarded.

AV was garbage, it could last 40h+ hours without any side making headway. You even had those two big summons, ice ele and treant, who were supposed to push the trench forward, but they'd just aggro whole map and die in less than a minute. The "winning" move was to just run around the map mining thorium.

You are exhibiting that modern mindset that everything must be rewarded, no matter how much you contributed. No, the "winning move" in old AV was to log for as long as you wanted, have some fun, and then log out. Seeing victory screen was not most important thing back then. By the way, managing to summon Ice Lord and keeping him alive until he reached maximum power could be crucial to breaking status quo and actually winning AV, seen it many times.

 

[Lacrymas]

It's not about being rewarded, it's about it being pointless and you having a goal you are working towards that is needlessly drawn out. Sure, it might be fun the first 3 times, although it really wasn't because of its bad design, but then what? You have to do it a LOT, the least of which is to get max rep for items, the longest being ranking up. Like I said many times, if you didn't have any long-term goal for vanilla, like serious raiding or rank 14, then vanilla was great, logging in for a bit to do an AV and have fun doing it, you didn't even begin to see vanilla's problems. But if you had long-term goals, oh boy, the "fun" begins. Rotating raids daily, the low quantity of raid drops and low drop chance for the good items, a lot of grinding for consumables if you were retarded enough to not work the AH, the shitty and limited economy even if you were, grinding reputations, the degenerate gameplay due to meter whoring, spending 16 hours a day in BGs for rank 14, etc. etc, the list goes on and on.

 

[Parabalus]

Why would I waste my time with one of the worst BGs in WoW's history? I only ever did AV to max reputation for the items. It was such a badly designed clusterfuck I can't even. It was supposed to be like DAoC's RvR, but WoW wasn't built with PvP in mind at all, let alone RvR, so all it did was waste everyone's time. Have 5 mages sit in your base towers and nobody could ever get through, such PvP, such skill, wow.

Lots of rose-tinted glasses rating you retarded.

AV was garbage, it could last 40h+ hours without any side making headway. You even had those two big summons, ice ele and treant, who were supposed to push the trench forward, but they'd just aggro whole map and die in less than a minute. The "winning" move was to just run around the map mining thorium.

You are exhibiting that modern mindset that everything must be rewarded, no matter how much you contributed.

No, that was precisely the case in release AV. You'd get the same amount of rep/honor(+-) whether you participated in the trench (real fun as a melee) or run around the edges killing other "miners" (there was other PvE stuff to do too, to summon the elementals), small skirmishes were way better than the main line clusterfuck. Victory screen was irrelevant since your contribution in a 40h+ slugfest is almost nothing.

The Lords got patched later not to aggro on NPCs, they were useless beforehand.

It's not about being rewarded, it's about it being pointless and you having a goal you are working towards that is needlessly drawn out. Sure, it might be fun the first 3 times, although it really wasn't because of its bad design, but then what? You have to do it a LOT, the least of which is to get max rep for items, the longest being ranking up. Like I said many times, if you didn't have any long-term goal for vanilla, like serious raiding or rank 14, then vanilla was great, logging in for a bit to do an AV and have fun doing it, you didn't even begin to see vanilla's problems. But if you had long-term goals, oh boy, the "fun" begins. Rotating raids daily, a lot of grinding for consumables if you were retarded enough to not work the AH, the shitty and limited economy even if you were, grinding reputations, spending 16 hours a day in BGs for rank 14, etc. etc, the list goes on and on.

I legit can't recall anyone liking AV enough to play it for fun when WSG or AB existed, after the novelty wears off. Pointless for honor gain too.

 

[Lacrymas]

I really was having fun in WSG or AB, I did those a lot even when decked out in full gladiator gear because they were small-scale enough for individual skill to matter and fight constantly. AV was trash the moment it was conceived, with people only playing it on AV weekends.

 

[Gentle Player]

I've a confession to make about my time playing classic WoW. It must have been about twelve years ago so please don't judge me too harshly...

Anyway, merely ganking low level Alliance was for rank amateurs. What I liked to do was to torture them. I played Priest, and what I did was find a victim and bash him about the head with my staff, which dealt low damage but slowly whittled his health down. Then when he was near death I would cast Mind Control to make him friendly, and my accomplice, a Shaman, would heal him to full health. Then I'd begin the process all over again and continue until I got tired or until he logged out. If the victim didn't log out, and a body of water was nearby, as a finishing touch I would Mind Control again and wait until he died of drowning.

I feel ashamed of myself after remembering this. But only slightly

 

[Maculo]

ColonelTeacup, here's my character from TBC -> https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-gb/character/dragonmaw/dustyy

He's the only one I haven't leveled past 70, so "you haven't played pre-WotLK" is off the table entirely. I already linked my Kronos character, but I'll do it again -> http://armory.twinstar.cz/character-sheet.xml?r=Kronos&cn=Lacrymas . Like me and Direwolf explained, all the bullshit you are spewing about "reputation" and "community", and "server cooperation" is just that, bullshit. You are the one who simply can't understand that those things were, and still are, immaterial and some vague memories you have of the "good" parts of vanilla. I won't repeat myself anymore, you are just wrong on all counts. Not to mention that you keep moving the goalposts, if your definition of a "community" is "people in the same place", then yes, that extremely general definition applies to vanilla/TBC servers, that doesn't mean it amounted to anything or people cared about such a community.

Not to make you repeat yourself, but I am not sure I understand the issue with community or lack thereof. I started Horde-side on the Scarlet Crusade server (RP server), which was by no means a large server. In fact, guilds had trouble finding enough people to fill Molten Core, and so multiple guilds came together and formed a shared raid team to fill spots. There was a shared chat channel where people could organize on raid days. Once that fell apart, my guild (Forsaken Brotherhood?) carried on a similar arrangement with two other guilds.

For a time, Scarlet Crusade was small enough where you could know a lot of its players. It had its good players, village idiots, peculiar RPers, and ninjas (See Rahurm: https://wow.gamepedia.com/Server:Scarlet_Crusade_US/Rahurm). Even though the community did not last, I would not call it immaterial to the experience. Relative to other serves, I never found the same degree of kindness and cooperation that I did on early Scarlet Crusade.

I am not going to say that "community" was a defining quality of Vanilla (there is no way to quantify that), but that does not mean it did not exist on certain servers.

Edit: I recently checked the Scarlet Crusade server forum, and the hunter I remember people railing on still is there posting. God damn.

 

[Lacrymas]

Stealing members from other guilds or merging with other guilds have been a staple of MMOs in general since they have existed. Don't see how that forms the fabled community. What does "the community" do? Where is it? How do you differentiate between "community" and some random guy or gal helping you with a quest? All the saccharine niceties and trivialities are quickly replaced with the reality and demands of high level raiding or ranking in PvP. No amount of "kindness" is going to down C'thun or KT, nor is it going to farm/buy the huge amount of flasks and consumables you need, so "community" is quickly forgotten if it ever existed.This is doubly true if you are good enough to outskill everyone you met during leveling. Since it's awkward to write on my phone, I'll elaborate more once I get back home if you want.

 

[Metro]

Community was a major part of vanilla. Note that it does not always mean friendly relations and fair dealing. Yes, poaching was a big part of guilds sustaining themselves but that is part of the community and people interacting. Most people knew the major (and even minor) players and guilds on their realms. Realm forums actually had meaning. To question the value of community in vanilla makes me seriously doubt you played WoW at/near launch and for the immediate initial year following. You can link to a dozen characters but your impressions betray reality.

I really was having fun in WSG or AB, I did those a lot even when decked out in full gladiator gear because they were small-scale enough for individual skill to matter and fight constantly. AV was trash the moment it was conceived, with people only playing it on AV weekends.

Battleground 'weekends' didn't come into play until later. AV was an amazing battle when it was first conceived and battlegrounds didn't have cross-realm grouping. AV is what PvP in WoW should be and not shitty capture the flag or arena vignettes.

 

[Maculo]

Stealing members from other guilds or merging with other guilds have been a staple of MMOs in general since they have existed. Don't see how that forms the fabled community. What does "the community" do? Where is it? How do you differentiate between "community" and some random guy or gal helping you with a quest? All the saccharine niceties and trivialities are quickly replaced with the reality and demands of high level raiding or ranking in PvP. No amount of "kindness" is going to down C'thun or KT, nor is it going to farm/buy the huge amount of flasks and consumables you need, so "community" is quickly forgotten if it ever existed.This is doubly true if you are good enough to outskill everyone you met during leveling. Since it's awkward to write on my phone, I'll elaborate more once I get back home if you want.

There was no stealing of members or merging of guilds though. Multiple guilds set up a shared channel and tried to fill up as many different raids as possible. It was laid back and an opportunity to socialize with players. In my mind, that is how I would define the "community" of Scarlet Crusade for that brief period of time - laid back and social.

My issue with your argument is that you seem to define everything through a lens of competition and demand for top performance. My server (Scarlet Crusade) had trouble fielding basic 40 man instances at one point. It was months behind other servers in terms of raiding. Only a single guild completed the AQ event to my knowledge. The expectation of hardcore raiding and ranked PVP was pretty low to begin with, and not to mention it was a RP server.

My server likely sucked by all measurements of a "good" server (i.e., number of players, progression guilds, notable PVP players), but it was comfy as fuck to log in and talk about trivial shit. To go on Barrens Chat, to read the latest drama on the forum, wasting time in meaningless dungeons for hours at a time for little to no reward -- the charm was not only about progression.

 

[Lacrymas]

I said multiple times that you can only see vanilla's problems if you played at high enough level. Also, cross-realm raiding wasn't a thing until LFR, so you could still be a shitty realm with no good guilds, share members and socialize like that until then, that wasn't exclusive to vanilla. I am starting to think that "community" means "a bunch of people not achieving anything".

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

I've a confession to make about my time playing classic WoW. It must have been about twelve years ago so please don't judge me too harshly...

Anyway, merely ganking low level Alliance was for rank amateurs. What I liked to do was to torture them. I played Priest, and what I did was find a victim and bash him about the head with my staff, which dealt low damage but slowly whittled his health down. Then when he was near death I would cast Mind Control to make him friendly, and my accomplice, a Shaman, would heal him to full health. Then I'd begin the process all over again and continue until I got tired or until he logged out. If the victim didn't log out, and a body of water was nearby, as a finishing touch I would Mind Control again and wait until he died of drowning.

I feel ashamed of myself after remembering this. But only slightly

 

[Maculo]

I said multiple times that you can only see vanilla's problems if you played at high enough level. Also, cross-realm raiding wasn't a thing until LFR, so you could still be a shitty realm with no good guilds, share members and socialize like that until then, that wasn't exclusive to vanilla.

Alright, but I am not arguing over Vanilla's problems at high level of play. I am not even arguing that community was exclusive to WoW or vanilla. Instead, what I disagree with is the assertion that "community" was immaterial to the experience. Community was a material aspect of Vanilla for some people, otherwise the Scarlet Crusade server would have been a graveyard. Progression alone did not keep people on that server. Furthermore, Vanilla WoW attracted people that never even played an MMO before. What would they know of hardcore raiding or high level issues?

Your argument takes into account only the Vanilla players that played at top level, and I have no doubt it was true for some servers, but not all.

 

[Lacrymas]

I need a functioning definition of what you think "community" is. Not having enough people to raid and going at it with other guilds? Which raises the question why you didn't merge and cut out the middle-man. Talking to people? Doing quests with a few people? What? Bare in mind that none of these things are exclusive to vanilla.

EDIT: I am starting to understand why people like vanilla so much compared to any other expansion. Being young is one thing obviously, but what matters is that they haven't actually grappled with vanilla's mechanics and systems. All they did was go to 5-mans, UBRS and the occasional MC/ZG, never going prepared with buffs and consumables, and some spammed battlegrounds till they were bored.

 

[Maculo]

People did not merge guilds because they simply wanted to retain their guilds and social groups - that's it. Was it logical for top level progression? Certainly not, but that is what I mean by how Scarlet Crusade functioned. That is also why I disagree with your assertion that community was immaterial. People did not stay on Scarlet Crusade for the raids or the pvp, because it was borderline abysmal. Hence, something other than top-level play and progression kept players together on that server.

What do you even mean by "functioning definition?" Do you want me to test it in a lab first? Players on Scarlet Crusade not only stayed on the sever, but also stayed together in guilds, even though it made zero sense in terms of progression. They stayed when it had no quantifiable benefit. Those same players played together for years and socialized both in and outside the game. If I had to make a definition of community in Vanilla, it would be that the interactions went beyond just the game and progression. You had a sense of comradery. Therefore, I do not agree that community was immaterial to the experience.

Was every server like Scarlet Crusade? Hell no, but to say it did not exist because progression servers functioned differently also does not make sense.

EDIT: I am starting to understand why people like vanilla so much compared to any other expansion. Being young is one thing obviously, but what matters is that they haven't actually grappled with vanilla's mechanics and systems. All they did was go to 5-mans, UBRS and the occasional MC/ZG, never going prepared with buffs and consumables, and some spammed battlegrounds till they were bored.

You are getting closer. People did not stay on Scarlet Crusade, because they knew the game system. The game system was just a pretext.

 

[Parabalus]

I really was having fun in WSG or AB, I did those a lot even when decked out in full gladiator gear because they were small-scale enough for individual skill to matter and fight constantly. AV was trash the moment it was conceived, with people only playing it on AV weekends.

Battleground 'weekends' didn't come into play until later. AV was an amazing battle when it was first conceived and battlegrounds didn't have cross-realm grouping. AV is what PvP in WoW should be and not shitty capture the flag or arena vignettes.

Let me guess, you played SP, Aff lock or hunter.

I need a functioning definition of what you think "community" is. Not having enough people to raid and going at it with other guilds? Which raises the question why you didn't merge and cut out the middle-man. Talking to people? Doing quests with a few people? What? Bare in mind that none of these things are exclusive to vanilla.

EDIT: I am starting to understand why people like vanilla so much compared to any other expansion. Being young is one thing obviously, but what matters is that they haven't actually grappled with vanilla's mechanics and systems. All they did was go to 5-mans, UBRS and the occasional MC/ZG, never going prepared with buffs and consumables, and some spammed battlegrounds till they were bored.

I didn't really play much after vanilla, but my experience was that it was way easier to make "friends", for lack of a better word, not only because the systems required it (no LFG, char relativ. weaker vs mobs compared to later, etc.), but it was most people's first MMO so there was a lot of wide-eyed enthusiasm going around.

 

[Lacrymas]

TBC 5-man heroics were much more difficult than any vanilla 5-man (remember at least Black Morass?), so the "making friends" part should apply twice as strongly in TBC, but somehow people are concentrated on vanilla. What this whole thread tells me is that people are going to have a wild ride down memory destruction lane once they start actually playing vanilla. I'm convinced now that people don't have rose-tinted goggles, they just didn't experience vanilla like the people who raided at a reasonably high level, i.e. actually consumed the content Blizzard were shitting out. Naxx is the only raid in vanilla worth a damn and that's putting it charitably. All "muh community" people did was use WoW as a glorified chat room with mini-games, like dungeons and BGs, thrown in the mix. You can still do that, btw, like I mentioned previously there were many guilds on Kronos who couldn't progress past Majordomo and all they did was talk to each other. That's fine, but don't try to convince yourself that you are seeking more difficult content, that's what pisses me off the most. If you haven't been raiding Mythic or been at least 2500 arena rating (due to the rating inflation, 2100 was a comparable high in TBC) on retail don't talk about wanting difficult content, you obviously didn't try hard enough to seek it out, while Blizzard were making each new raid more difficult than the last. That's probably the only virtue modern Blizzard and WoW have, difficult raids.

I predict vanilla servers being very popular, but also history repeating itself, only high-end guilds clearing content, because you don't get better by passively playing throughout the years, it requires conscious effort, effort which people haven't been putting in. Just like they weren't putting it in in actual vanilla. Here's a very interesting reminder of what people were doing in even in EQ, effort which is very foreign to the vast majority of players. It's the open letter Furor (now one of the devs at Blizzard) posted on the most popular EQ site when EQ was current and EQ devs didn't have their shit together -

The Plane of Time

2003-05-09 18:50:26 - Furor Planedefiler
You have 14 Days. If after that time the Plane is not properly tuned, I am deleting my characters, and cancelling all of my accounts. The rest of my guild will follow suit, as will several other guilds and people that play Everquest.

To be brief, I did not work my ass off, jumping through your idiotic hoops with my friends and guildmates, so I could go to a zone where only groups of 18 could enjoy the content. EVEN if past these initial moronic events I can finally get my entire guild in to raid with me, FUCK YOU GUYS. Seriously, FUCK YOU.

I cannot believe this... right now I'm just so pissed off. I am sitting here in the Plane of Time, and 3/4 of my guild is just sitting around while a group of 18 is repeatedly trying to beat one of the mini ring encounters. Don't you people have ANY FUCKING DECENCY? SMEDLEY WHY DON'T YOU STOP COUNTING YOUR MONEY AND START ISSUING ORDERS?

The tragic irony of creating the ultimate cockblock encounter in the form of the Rathe which requires 80 people to defeat and then to limit encounters in the Plane of Time to 18.

14 Days.... after that this site will change from the most popular EQ fan site on the internet to the most popular World of Warcraft fan site on the internet. I'm done playing ball with you useless fuckers... it's my turn.

 

[Metro]

I need a functioning definition of what you think "community" is. Not having enough people to raid and going at it with other guilds? Which raises the question why you didn't merge and cut out the middle-man. Talking to people? Doing quests with a few people? What? Bare in mind that none of these things are exclusive to vanilla.

EDIT: I am starting to understand why people like vanilla so much compared to any other expansion. Being young is one thing obviously, but what matters is that they haven't actually grappled with vanilla's mechanics and systems. All they did was go to 5-mans, UBRS and the occasional MC/ZG, never going prepared with buffs and consumables, and some spammed battlegrounds till they were bored.

Bitch, please, you probably didn't even down a single boss in Naxx 40. You also seem to have forgotten that level 60 5 mans were fairly time-consuming/challenging in early vanilla. You seem to forget a lot about vanilla for a guy who allegedly played it.

Let me guess, you played SP, Aff lock or hunter.

Holy Paladin and Hunter. And if you hated original AV so much you'd love WoW PvP today with the shitfest that is arenas.

 

[Lacrymas]

What are all these things that I am forgetting? You playing with bad people doesn't mean the dungeons were more challenging than TBC 5-man heroics.

 

[Parabalus]

All "muh community" people did was use WoW as a glorified chat room with mini-games, like dungeons and BGs, thrown in the mix. You can still do that, btw, like I mentioned previously there were many guilds on Kronos who couldn't progress past Majordomo and all they did was talk to each other.

This is pretty good assessment. I'd add that the key difference was that back then information was much more obfuscated (low information players, if you will), so when you cleared MC even though AQ40 was released, you felt as you did something great. Streamlining everything and making the comparisons (of one's own mediocrity) easier likely bug people too.

I predict vanilla servers being very popular, but also history repeating itself, only high-end guilds clearing content, because you don't get better by passively playing throughout the years, it requires conscious effort, effort which people haven't been putting in. Just like they weren't putting it in in actual vanilla. Here's a very interesting reminder of what people were doing in even in EQ, effort which is very foreign to the vast majority of players. It's the open letter Furor (now one of the devs at Blizzard) posted on the most popular EQ site when EQ was current and EQ devs didn't have their shit together -

The Plane of Time

2003-05-09 18:50:26 - Furor Planedefiler
You have 14 Days. If after that time the Plane is not properly tuned, I am deleting my characters, and cancelling all of my accounts. The rest of my guild will follow suit, as will several other guilds and people that play Everquest.

To be brief, I did not work my ass off, jumping through your idiotic hoops with my friends and guildmates, so I could go to a zone where only groups of 18 could enjoy the content. EVEN if past these initial moronic events I can finally get my entire guild in to raid with me, FUCK YOU GUYS. Seriously, FUCK YOU.

I cannot believe this... right now I'm just so pissed off. I am sitting here in the Plane of Time, and 3/4 of my guild is just sitting around while a group of 18 is repeatedly trying to beat one of the mini ring encounters. Don't you people have ANY FUCKING DECENCY? SMEDLEY WHY DON'T YOU STOP COUNTING YOUR MONEY AND START ISSUING ORDERS?

The tragic irony of creating the ultimate cockblock encounter in the form of the Rathe which requires 80 people to defeat and then to limit encounters in the Plane of Time to 18.

14 Days.... after that this site will change from the most popular EQ fan site on the internet to the most popular World of Warcraft fan site on the internet. I'm done playing ball with you useless fuckers... it's my turn.

Content will be cleared faster because mods are here now. When vanilla came out raid frames didn't exist w/o mods, you didn't know class or encounter mechanics. Even monkeys who continued playing for 10+ years will have a easy time. Not to mention how often progress bosses were bugged.

There was also a hilarious quote in a similar vein from that other guy, Tigole, I think. Can't find it right now.

Let me guess, you played SP, Aff lock or hunter.

Holy Paladin and Hunter. And if you hated original AV so much you'd love WoW PvP today with the shitfest that is arenas.

No wonder you have fond memories playing a hunter, easy to top the scoreboard and feel like a boss.