Blizzard announced "Classic" World of Warcraft

[Xorphitus]

Initially they had 10 servers open yesterday evening but then decided there wasn't enough stress so they cut it down to two servers and then started adding the others as time passed. Made trying to complete quests in the starter areas annoying. I grouped up with a couple of warriors and left the starter zone to grind mobs.

 

[FreeKaner]

The top guilds are probably anal about it, but I wasn't in the top guild yet when they told me it doesn't really matter and I should go anyway. I had just dinged 60 and had gone once with the guild master and some other peeps to Stratholme. We killed everything in MC without breaking a sweat. This was very early in the server's lifetime, probably 2 to 3 months max after it launched. As for unpopular specs, it depends on the amount of memeness, balance druids and prot paladins are a no-no, but some guilds take an enh shaman with Nightfall (as opposed to a warrior with one) or a shadow priest (as opposed to a Holy/Shadow hybrid that can keep up the debuff while being more useful) for example. And even then, if your guild master is playing a druid, like ours was, he can force his way into being balance for some raids that are on farm.

People who are good at the game are more willing to raid with suboptimal gear than ones that are bad. This has always been that way. Guilds that were good are willing to try at first raids both in vanilla and later in expansions with just questing items while worse guilds wanted everyone in pre-raid BiS and PUGs want everyone to already outgear the content.

It's a myth that more casual guilds allow worse gear. PUGs are alwasy going to be most demanding gear wise.

 

[Revenant]

Blizzard is actually requiring players to be subscribed in order to participate in the Classic stress test. Lol what a bunch of greedy bastards

 

[MapMan]

Only the dead can know peace from this evil

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Only the dead can know peace from this evil

Meanwhile on Asmon layer...

 

[Steamboat Willie]

Fuck this gay earth.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Before shutting the servers down, they collapsed all layers into one. It looked like this:

It was laggy as fuck. I had perfect 60 fps, but received updates from server once per second.

 

[anvi]

Will there be a classic PVP server? I barely played this game but creeping around as a stealthed druid looking for people to gank was super fun.

 

[Xorphitus]

They had pvp servers during the stress test so there should be pvp servers at launch.

 

[Lyric Suite]

They better. STVietnam was one of the most fun times i had on private servers. I think i got PTSD from it but i still loved it!

 

[Wilian]

They already confirmed full set of PvE, PvP and RP servers. RP-PvP ones are still up in the air.

 

[GrainWetski]

Obviously they will have PvP servers. The PvE server is dead in the beta, as far as I know.

On another note, the new Light's Hope realm opens up this very minute if anyone cares.

 

[FreeKaner]

It's because mmos, especially those that copied the wow formula, typically aren't fun or remotely challenging until end game. And getting to end game requires 240+ hours of in game grinding.

Games in other genres are fun right from the beginning and don't require you to slodge through a 240 hour tutorial

This is just false. It is true now the design philosophy of WOW revolves the game around end-game content and LFG/LFR queues but wow originally wasn't like this, leveling itself was meant to be part of the experience rather than tutorial. Now in WOW nothing before end game content is remotely threatening, let alone challenging while end game content is very challenging.

WoW was a different take on the then hardcore sandbox MMOs where you grinded mobs and lost XP on death. It was a more casual experience and more like an RPG. Where your character was an adventurer tackling on a world that didn't care about you. It isn't a "240 hour tutorial", it is 240 hour of mostly social gameplay. The most challenging part of the game is always going to be facing another player anyway.

People playing this classic just for the raids will be sorely disappointed but there is fun to be had before.

 

[anvi]

Most MMOs have that problem a few years after release, everyone is max level. So they start pumping out content for max level to keep them playing. The early game just becomes secondary. But it wasn't always like that.

 

[Beastro]

That ties into the fact that MMOs grow and develop. Much of EQ became a hallow shell because all those low to middling zones were no longer needed for the reduced numbers of levelers to use. They tried elevating that by alternating "hot zones" where different ones would give exp bonus' to help them be of use in turn, but even then the core of the game became a ghost town.

IMO, they should never have put in Plane of Knowledge to become the games center, that should have remained Antonica.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

leveling itself was meant to be part of the experience rather than tutorial.

WoW was a different take on the then hardcore sandbox MMOs where you grinded mobs and lost XP on death. It was a more casual experience and more like an RPG. Where your character was an adventurer tackling on a world that didn't care about you. It isn't a "240 hour tutorial", it is 240 hour of mostly social gameplay. The most challenging part of the game is always going to be facing another player anyway.

Facing another player mostly comes down to who picked the pvp spec and who spent more time grinding gear. Wouldn't really consider that a challenge more of a "who wasted more time" achievement.

I'm not sure how chains of 'collect 30 bird feathers' quests coupled with terrible writing is considered an adventure. Read lord of the rings. That's an adventure. This is... just a bad game

 

[Dzupakazul]

Facing another player mostly comes down to who picked the pvp spec and who spent more time grinding gear.

If you're levelling and your level ranges are remotely equal, then it's anyone's game, more often than not reliant on your class and spec, what cooldowns you have available, and whether or not you aren't tanking mobs when the jackass from the enemy faction decides to initiate. There's very few "purely PvP" talents that you wouldn't take while levelling anyway, so at least for vanilla gameplay this isn't really true.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

leveling itself was meant to be part of the experience rather than tutorial.

WoW was a different take on the then hardcore sandbox MMOs where you grinded mobs and lost XP on death. It was a more casual experience and more like an RPG. Where your character was an adventurer tackling on a world that didn't care about you. It isn't a "240 hour tutorial", it is 240 hour of mostly social gameplay. The most challenging part of the game is always going to be facing another player anyway.

Facing another player mostly comes down to who picked the pvp spec and who spent more time grinding gear. Wouldn't really consider that a challenge more of a "who wasted more time" achievement.

I'm not sure how chains of 'collect 30 bird feathers' quests coupled with terrible writing is considered an adventure. Read lord of the rings. That's an adventure. This is... just a bad game

Every adventurer has part time work inbetween the grand adventures like the deadmines, or one of those end of region quests. And adventure is not measure in one or two moments but in the journey itself.

 

[Metro]

Facing another player mostly comes down to who picked the pvp spec and who spent more time grinding gear. Wouldn't really consider that a challenge more of a "who wasted more time" achievement.

I'm not sure how chains of 'collect 30 bird feathers' quests coupled with terrible writing is considered an adventure. Read lord of the rings. That's an adventure. This is... just a bad game

I mean... if you want to get literal, you're not having an adventure PvPing in WoW, you're literally just sitting on your ass with one hand on a keyboard and one hand on a mouse.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Facing another player mostly comes down to who picked the pvp spec and who spent more time grinding gear. Wouldn't really consider that a challenge more of a "who wasted more time" achievement.

I take you have never played on a pvp server.

It's not about the "challenge", because the odds will always be against you. Gankers will always have the best spec and also the best class for pvp (try leveling a warrior and you'll begin to resent frost mages to the very deepest recesses of your being), but they will also always come in a group and sometimes they'll have their T2 decked main parked on the side in the unlikely event things go south for them.

So what's the advantage when you know you will almost always loose? The possibility of emergent gameplay and socialization. You are not playing alone, there's always going to be people of your faction playing in the same map and depending on how annoying gankers get things start to escalate from there. You'll start forming groups to kill the gankers, and they in their turn will form groups to kill you and suddenly you'll have a mass scale brawl on your hand. You can say that's "wasting time" but everything in the game is wasting time. It's a game. And the possibilities for emergent pvp is what makes it fun because you never know what you are going to get. The rewards really aren't there because the honor you get from open pvp is basically nothing, so it's all about the fun of it, and there's always ways to minimize the griefing, by knowing which areas are more prone to ganking than others, by teaming up with people for safer questing and so forth.

 

[Metro]

I enjoyed PvP leveling... to an extent. Nothing I have any interest in now, though.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

I just log off when there is a raid going.

Thanks for RDF Blizzard

 

[Rahdulan]

Meanwhile on Asmon layer...

I guess people really miss that overcrowded private server experience.

They already confirmed full set of PvE, PvP and RP servers. RP-PvP ones are still up in the air.

Makes me think how relevant Classic is to roleplayers' interests.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Roleplayers and PvPers don't really mix. RP-PvP servers have never been as popular as the others from what i remember.

 

[FreeKaner]

One thing that is correct about MMO players that blizzard said is, they actually don't know what they want. MMO players will constantly ask for more convenience and more ways to skip leveling, content, obstacles and challenges then say they don't like the game anymore when they get it and ask for more conveniences as a solution.