Ok, I am starting this thread because most of us played in BC and even many in vanilla. I was not one of those blessed to have started my journey in Azeroth in vanilla. However I got a grand taste of BC. We all speak about those times with nostalgic reverence with that 1000 yard stare in our eyes as we reflect back on the days of glory. Those times when you walked into a dungeon with 20% greens and 75% blues and were high five'd for your gear. The times when a title meant you actually did something hard. Back when having a few weapon skills maxed proved that you had commitment. Back when you only had one maxed toon. Back when getting to the raid entrance was a feat in and of itself. back when our best spells required reagents and no one else had any spell like it. Back when Leroy was the name of legends.
Since we no longer play in such a world, discuss how Blizz can make minor changes and allow us a taste of the glory days.
Here are my suggestions:
1. Simulate world PvP by every 3 hours on the hour, dumping every level 90 no matter where they stand (except in dungeons) into the same zone and flagging them. This will reignite open pvp by creating hate, vengeance and vindication.
2. No more damed purples as heroic reward. Earn it by showing up to raids.
3. If LFR is really for laid back folk to "see and experience raid content", NO MORE REWARDS! Do LFR for the sake of LFR and not skip real raiding because it is easier to get gear.
4. If you do not have a level 90, you cannot wear a title for anything and are automatically forced to wear the title "... the noob" or "Who is Sageras?".
I love 'The Noob' title idea! I also miss many of the things you stated, especially the titles. I worked so hard to get Bloodsail Admiral and now it's so easy. The long grind to get The Insane was, well, insane! I wish they could bring back some long grind/big payoff things like titles, maybe something for a mount. Class quests would be nice too and not the crappy one they give everyone now, which I think is in Shadowfang Keep.
1. Yeah, you must live on a low-pop server. Most servers would be brought to their knees and crash if this happened. although that does bring back "fond" memories of trying to play at all on a Tuesday.
2. The only purples in heroics are really rare drops. It seems this has been implemented. unless you mean valor epics, in which case - those were in BC as well.
3. how exactly do you get people to do LFR then? If there's no reward, there's no reason for doing it. LFR is there to allow the casual player a chance to see everything. Take away any rewards (which some people probably already think they've done, do to complaints about receiving another "golden nutsack".
4. What about those titles that one can get before 90?
I've met more good people and players since LFD that i'm not so sure vanilla/BC era WoW was actually better as a whole. Some points were good, but people always ignore all the bad points.
Long, convoluted attunement quest chains. I don't mind attunements, granted, but I disliked having to go do several different heroics, with extra requirements, and being benched because all I had was my rogue. H Shattered Halls comes to mind instantly. "sorry, you've only got sap, we're going to take a mage so that we can re-CC in combat. maybe next time"
No one shared any strategies for raid bosses. You were on your own. So starting your own raid was difficult, because you got a group of 40 people together, and no one knew what to expect.
And man, 40-man raids. Yeah, it was "epic", but if you ever tried to lead one, it was a logistical nightmare. that's 39 other people to make sure had food buffs, flask, potions, repaired, and proper resistance gear. Sure, your class leads helped out with that, but it was still a lot to dump on one person. 10 I can handle, especially in combination with tools like the armory.
I know of no paladin who misses 5-minute blessings. Nor anyone who misses reagents when all you had was 16-slot bags, one of which has all your consumables and resistance gear set.
I very much prefer everything to be accessible to everyone, provided they put in a bit of effort, as soon as they hit 90 or shortly after. I played in vanilla, and all I saw was Molten Core, ZG, and AQ20. In BC? Due to the different raid sizes, I only saw Karazhan and ZA. did I have fun? Yeah, still raiding with some of the same people. Did I wish I could have seen everything? Yes. Now I can, and i'm happy.
First off, if you started in BC, you did not experience hard content. 40-man Vanilla raid content was difficult. Even the entry tier of Molten Core had its challenges until you out-geared it. BWL and AQ40 were the same way. Naxx was the ultimate in difficulty, with somewhere around 1% of the entire player base being able to see the zone, let alone conquer anything in it.
I know it can't be spoken of, but there are private servers that have the old Vanilla content with raid groups that play for the old style of the game. Go forth and find them if you want some hard WoW.
Failing that, if you really want difficult content, try doing current raid content on normal or even heroic. Come back when you're farming current raid content on heroic and complain.
quote:1. Simulate world PvP by every 3 hours on the hour, dumping every level 90 no matter where they stand (except in dungeons) into the same zone and flagging them. This will reignite open pvp by creating hate, vengeance and vindication.
Hate for the developers, maybe. Hate for the idiot who came up with the idea.
quote:2. No more damed purples as heroic reward. Earn it by showing up to raids.
Just because it's purple, doesn't mean it's the same quality as higher ilevel gear.
quote:3. If LFR is really for laid back folk to "see and experience raid content", NO MORE REWARDS! Do LFR for the sake of LFR and not skip real raiding because it is easier to get gear.
It's not the same gear as you would get from regular raids or heroic raids. Why does it matter?
quote:4. If you do not have a level 90, you cannot wear a title for anything and are automatically forced to wear the title "... the noob" or "Who is Sageras?".
Did your mother inject heroin into her colon when she was pregnant with you?
I was thinking about this earlier and my best thought was to create zone-wide scenerio type events. Currently you have the world bosses that are a great start as this gets players together, but what WoW has not done that both Rift and GW2 have successfully implemented are zone events. Unbalanced servers will find more in-game fighting if you have these events that are more significant in execution and reward. Think zone-wide scenario with objectives and possible competition from the other faction. Even with unbalanced servers, as long as the reward is high enough (or you offer a mount or pet reward) you will get participation leading to more of a community beyond "let's kill boss x now that he is up."
What I think WoW is missing now is the sense of community. Servers are no longer autonomous, players treat others like crap because there is no more server reputation or repercussions. Also, the insta-portal to dungeons, raids, ect could go away for all I care, there are enough portals, boats and zeppelins to get where most need to within 5 min or so.
Nothing can bring back that BC or Vanilla feel unless they had specific servers for these old school versions of WoW. Hence why I'm experiencing WoW like I use too... Most people don't understand how brutal Vanilla was. Most people don't understand it use to require skill to get to 60 and not just faceroll everything. You didn't have tons of gold to buy anything you need or want. You have to actually pick and choose what skills will benefit you more while leveling until you get enough gold to buy the others. Every single mob would run off around 10% health left and aggro many, many more mobs. Normally when you pull more than 1 mob, you die. When you have to have an honest rep on a server or you didn't do crap... with anyone.
I'm really enjoying playing with a few friends right now on how it use to be. You see someone in SW or IF with t2 or Naxx gear and you're like "holy shit that is bad ass". The feel of getting your first epic or even your first tier 0 blue item. Blizz will never bring back the feel of Vanilla or BC because they are too busy "moving forward" with the game to appeal to the masses who want instant gratification and/or welfare gear without having to do much of anything.
I would really love for Blizz to make a few servers that had only Vanilla, BC, Wrath, Cata on them with the latest patch for that expansion. Honestly I believe they would bring back some of their customer base.
Compounding on your point, I thought it would be great if Blizzard made Expansion ladder servers. The idea would be to cap a server at a particular expansion version and reset all players on that server after a specific time. One idea would be to have a vanilla server when only MC was main content, with a certain time frame to get past MC before the server would be patched to the next version, culminating in the last patch prior to expansion release (in this case BC). Once a certain number of characters defeated the final boss of the expansion or time ran out, all players that hit milestones would get a reward, say a new title for making it to 60, a mount for killing the last boss and/or BOAs in the form of some of the gear from the content that was cleared, then the server would reset and wipe all players. They could do 1 server per expansion or even have specific raid servers, say first to open AQ.
if you really want difficult content, try doing current raid content on normal or even heroic. Come back when you're farming current raid content on heroic and complain.
I was thinking about this earlier and my best thought was to create zone-wide scenerio type events. Currently you have the world bosses that are a great start as this gets players together, but what WoW has not done that both Rift and GW2 have successfully implemented are zone events. Unbalanced servers will find more in-game fighting if you have these events that are more significant in execution and reward. Think zone-wide scenario with objectives and possible competition from the other faction. Even with unbalanced servers, as long as the reward is high enough (or you offer a mount or pet reward) you will get participation leading to more of a community beyond "let's kill boss x now that he is up."
I like how we have regressed since Hellfire Peninsula.
They had that with Halaa, SSC zone, EPL and Silthis as well, but every time the events were stale or involved killing the other side. Rift and GW2 for players to work together for completing quest objectives to move into different phases with an eventual end boss or swarm. Just adding PVP elements to a zone doesn't constitute zone-wide events, and tbh the rewards have always been pretty lackluster. Halaa was the only one I recall that had a mount was the Nagrand event, which was designed to require many players to complete. In the other games, events are soloable and ramp up in difficulty with the more players there are to help out. This is what I was thinking would be better suited for open world. World pvp will occur when you have a high enough reward that both factions want and will not wait for.
1. Simulate world PvP by every 3 hours on the hour, dumping every level 90 no matter where they stand (except in dungeons) into the same zone and flagging them. This will reignite open pvp by creating hate, vengeance and vindication.
I would love to hear what you all think.
Sure, if you are on a PvP SERVER. That's why you are there, you relish this; I do not, so I would HATE if I was forced into this.
3. If LFR is really for laid back folk to "see and experience raid content", NO MORE REWARDS! Do LFR for the sake of LFR and not skip real raiding because it is easier to get gear.
For some of us, this is the first step into seeing and experiencing the raid element - don't take this away from me!
4. If you do not have a level 90, you cannot wear a title for anything and are automatically forced to wear the title "... the noob" or "Who is Sageras?".
I don't think titles should be tied to levels, I think they should be tied to the toon that earned it. I know there has been a lot of debate about titles, achievements, and pets being account-based and not toon based; I believe for the sake of the role-playing aspect, they should be toon-based.
MY wish list on how to make WoW more appealing isn't necessarily an era-based wish, but more of a wish on how public players interact. To quote Skittles in an earlier post: "The racist, sexist filth spewed in trade chat is disgusting. The game has become a single player game played in a sea of other single players that for the most part have no interest in you, or you in them."
THIS is what makes it tough for me to hang in there. I agree that a good guild can make your experience more enjoyable - has taken me 7 years to find one, but I did
Archivis it's not so much that all the content has been made to easy as it is that they made it so easy to do all the content on easy modes. When my guild did Kara there was basically another 10 man raid waiting just in case some one left because they wanted to raid. When we raided nax in the LK we had people standing by waiting. Now if you want to raid (not LFR) its hard to find people because they all just run everything on easy mode. Sure people would love a slightly higher item level but to most players now purple is purple. WOW lost a lot of the challenging aspects that kept a lot of people (a lot ou us) logging in everyday, and the number of subs went up. They're not going to make things more challenging to make the numbers go down. To many people want things handed to them, or at least they think they do, but when they get something that was no challenge they realize it wasn't really a big deal. That's when people start looking for something else to do. WOW is not going to end anytime soon but it has reached its peak. When the good people at Blizzard try to figure out how keep its downward decent from being to steep they aren't going to look at what got good but not best sub numbers, they are going to look at what they did when they had the most. Which was make things easier.
I love how players say this game is too easy, yet aren't completing the heroic raids. Blizz has the difficult content there, if you aren't able to do it, perhaps you should either try or stop complaining things are too easy. Honestly, players have no room to complain about ease of this game until they can show they are finishing the hard parts.
seriously though, with the exception of some of the things that are in game now , that i personally do not care for, the game is much better now, like someone else pointed out just something simple like a bag that was more than 16 slots, i rolled with 10 slot bags till 45, the one tailor in our guild that made the 14 slot runecloth bags was notoriously slow at farming, plus with cloth turn ins it took forever, who remembers cloth turn ins for rep , this guy does. one did not simply go and buy bags, gold was at a premium it wasn't as inflated like it is today. who can tell me what the gold sink was back in those days, i will give you a min .................. respeccing thats right, and it was a fortune to do.
and Stone is quite right about being sat on raid nights, i had to tell many people hey we cant take you tonight , we need this mace specced warrior over you or we have enough druids tonight i need a holy priest, why because if you were a healer more often than not youre a holy priest, it is from this that we got the mantra of bring the player not the class, now most every class can fill the roll that is needed but most people do not realize that blizzard has done that for them.
I think a lot of it was the newness factor back then, that there weren't a ton of resources or guides to things, so that you basically figured a lot of things out for yourself. I leveled my rogue basically picking talents that I thought seemed useful, with no real research or input from anywhere, and pretty much just explored and quested. Was my build optimal? Not even close, but it was fun to figure out on my own and not just go to website xyz and know in two seconds what the mathematically best build was, what the exact rotation I should be using is, etc. Class diversity was also a lot more interesting then, as now it feels like a lot of classes share different versions of the same skills, but it also lead to imbalance. I don't see an easy way of going back to that.
You also have the fact that the game has been out for 8+ years now. Most of the people who played in Vanilla and BC have likely had their lives change significantly in that time, and may not be able to experience the game in the same way they used to. I used to do Molten Core raids every week with 39 other people, starting at 10 p.m. my time because I'm on the East Coast, and often ending at 2 or 3 a.m. and I really enjoyed it. Today, there's no way I could devote that kind of time, stay up routinely to that hour, or even schedule something on a recurring basis like that. Work, significant others, family, etc. have changed a lot form many people since those days.
The one thing I would like to see brought back is an emphasis on 5 man dungeons / heroics, with actual challenging mechanics. Doing heroics back in the day, when it actually required strategy, you had to use crowd control, and if you didn't perform well, you wiped, was probably my favorite experience in WoW. Now, I haven't even bothered doing the 5-mans in Pandaria, having come back in the middle of the expansion and just leveled, done a few scenarios, then jumped right into LFR. I'd like a reason to want to do them, and for them to be more than a "gather everything up and AoE them down in 15 minutes or less" experience.
*Edit* I also think making everything cross-server has taken away a lot of the interaction and "camaraderie" of WoW. You used to see the same people in dungeons, battlegrounds, questing, etc. and I made several good friends that I still talk to outside the game to this day from that. Today, I hardly talk to anyone in game, the people you see in LFR or BGs are mostly faceless characters you'll likely never come across again, and there's not much social interaction at all.
I'm with Krisnatharok , you can't. And if you're really honest you don't want a lot of it back.
I didn't start playing WoW until the end of Vanilla. I do miss the total control you had over your toons. Now it has been dumbed down so any console player can pick it up.
I really didn't run dungeons until LFD came around because it was so painful to get a group of five people together.
The real question is why should Blizzard bring back vanilla/BC feel?
Like every other company money is the bottom line. The game is driven by the majority and during Vanilla & BC only around 20% of raiders even saw end-game raid content.
I get it, we all miss the difficulty. But there is no going back because it would absolutely mean losing subscriptions. I know, you say you'd return to the game if it returned to its original self, but many more would leave.
The real question is why should Blizzard bring back vanilla/BC feel?
....... I get it, we all miss the difficulty. But there is no going back because it would absolutely mean losing subscriptions. I know, you say you'd return to the game if it returned to its original self, but many more would leave.
Yeah, over all I do agree with your comments that Blizz has virtually zero incentive to take us back to BC and Vanilla. Blizz is in the business of profit and profits say to appeal to the masses. Unfortunately the came is now a democracy of mob rule at the cost of the few. I for one loved it when all content was a bit more challenging mentally on nearly every aspect and not just in normal or heroic raids as they are now. To me, doing the same dailies weeks or months in a row becomes neither challenging, entertaining nor adventurous.
Who's to say that Blizzard wouldn't make money off of this? Have they tried it before? Nope... What if there were 500k people who would come back to the game just to play the older stuff? And actually pay $15 a month to do so... How could that not be a profit? I don't see every single server that Blizz runs as being "full". They could easily scrap a few and host classic material.
Nostalgic/classic content servers would be cool. I'd love to see the vanilla content rolled into a separate game you could play single player or LAN on a tablet.
Kind watered down but vanilla gameplay/graphics with just enough content to take on the go and enjoy via WiFi from a coffee shop or other WiFi area.
I think Blizzard would get more subs if they maintained a vanilla server. One that didn't allow character transfers, or name changes, or race changes, etc. Just old school, vanilla WOW. The game as it was just before BC.
I can even see a similar BC server being successful.
