The thing that makes me most sad about this situation is that it was 100% made possible because players collectively decided to not be c**ts for a couple of months. It's one of the reasons I seem to enjoy MMORPGs 1000x as much when they first release. Usually the first 1-5 months depending on which one it is. Everyone is just having fun, exploring the game, figuring things out. Min/max BS hasn't taken root too much yet. But it's just I constantly hear people talking about online how amazing classic vanilla was for the first 1-3 months. And I just sit there being like "We can do that, every day. If you all decide to relax and just have fun...that can be your experience EVERY DAY".
what you're describing is just the general moronation of the average person. I am power gaming those first few months don't you worry. It just takes a while for the morons to figure out what me and my ilk are doing before the population copies the strats. what you are effectively saying is that you are bad at games and can only enjoy them when everyone else playing is also bad at games. try wine tasting painting classes instead, they're probably more your speed.
I mean...you kind of miss the point of MMOs? There's not really being "good" at a MMO. It's just about being first. Being first doesn't mean you're better at the game nor does it mean you are worse. It's simply a representation of free time. There's rarely anything inside of a MMO that is skill based. Most of the time its 80% time. What ended up happening is the average person tried to power game like yourself. But unlike you, they don't have the time to do so. So what ended up happening is they lost sight of the purpose of a MMORPG, threw a fit, got toxic, and now the current state (and on going state) of classic is largely do to these crowds. >Bots >Boosting >Blizzard cashing in on deluxe editions/boosts >Server transfers >Faction stacks >Dead open world PvP >Lack of class variety (lack of certain roles as a result in instanced content) >Long PvP queues >Community demanding looking for dungeon/looking for raid
These are all because average people are trying to poop sock no life a game that they cannot (either time, patience, or just attention span). It has very little to do about skill.
I know I can't power game. I'm not in highschool anymore. I've got a job, responsibilities. So I do things at my own pace. I got to Naxx without getting all sweaty and powergaming. All those people I made friends with who are sweaty/powergamers ended up quitting because they got bored once they "beat" the game. The problem isn't really people like yourself who can dedicate a ton of time. It's people who see people like yourself, think you're the golden standard that all must aspire too, realize they can't do it, then bring the entire game down with them. Those are the issues.
2 years ago
Anonymous
you're the one who clearly doesn't understand despite definitively stating what the point is. they're free time sinks, like you say. therefore being good at them is figuring out how to do things and progress without wasting a frickload of time. some of this is implementing strategies (figuring out complicated pulls for instance), some of this is mechanical skill (actually doing the complicated pulls). here's a dead simple one a lot of people don't do: rebind your keys from numbers to the buttons around wasd and use macros. this will make you 10x more effective and therefore save you time. it's first grade spongebob.
2 years ago
Anonymous
The point of a MMORPG is not to min/max it to complete it as quickly as possible. That's the issue at hand here. MMORPGs were never meant to be just "ok figure out how to beat the game in under a month". The whole point of a MMORPG is not to min/max it, but to experience the world with friends and socialize. That's one of the reasons why you see constant posts all over saying that MMORPGs suck now a days. It's because too much of the community behaves like you're saying the game is supposed to be played. Which MMORPGs are sadly not designed for. And key rebinding is not what I'm talking about. When I'm talking about people being overly toxic I mean things like >Not playing with/accepting certain classes
People say that they read online that X class can't generate as much DPS as another one. Which means taking said class adds on 5 minutes to their average time to completion. So that can't happen. That's a stupid way to look at it. I played with every class when I played classic WoW, and classes like that did not determine if it was a pass or fail. Pretty much all content I was able to do no issues. Its things like this that also cause the shortage of tanks/healers. Everyone was to be the "best" class. >Boosting
Refusing to do anything in the open world and only play scarlet monastery 300x. You want to do that, go ahead. But don't b***h about there not being enough content in the game, or it being boring. >Routes
You have to go this certain route in this dungeon and any deviation causes a rage. Again, it's not a huge difference. Not that big of a deal. But people get all b***hy about it.
People put a huge focus on schedule and meta. Even though the game was not that difficult to warrant such behavior. And when people achieve their goals, they're bored and complain because they missed the entire point of MMORPGs.
2 years ago
Anonymous
a dollar says I got infinitely more interaction in with WoW than you did. just because i'm attempting to minimize time waste doesn't mean i'm not in it for the emergent gameplay. you are simultaneously complaining about not having as much time as other people to play a certain way yet speaking of playing in a way that maximizes the amount of time it takes you to do anything. if it took me two days less to hit sixty, that's two days of free time I have to do things that aren't fricking leveling. do you get it? it's too much game to not play aggressively. no one has time for shitty classes in a raid.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Again you're missing the point here. MMORPGs are not meant to be min/maxed. They're not made to be rushed. The framework of their design does not meld with that kind of gameplay. That's why people are constantly complaining about MMORPGs. That's why they're constantly failing. Players are expecting a gameplay out of them that results in a lose lose for both parties. On one hand, which is what I touched on earlier, you have people who cannot support this gameplay style. So they end up shooting themselves in the foot and making it unfun. Then on the other hand you've got people like you who do it, then get bored at the endgame. Yeah you saved 2 days. 2 days to do what? Run a few dungeons quickier than others? People like yourself get all the gear they want out of dungeons, get all the crafting mats, etc; within a month. Because that's all they focused on. Then they go to the forums and complain how there's nothing to do in classic vanilla except raid log. Because you didn't build up any of the support structure that comes with having fun at endgame while playing.
Can MMORPGs be rushed and min/maxed? Yes. Should they? Generally no. Most players either cannot support that kind of gameplay and end up hating it OR they get to the endgame, get their carrot, and get bored.
I'm not going to argue because we all know neither of us are going to budge on this issue. Just in my eyes its people like yourself who end up causing MMORPGs to fail. Either by forcing those you interact with to play that way and getting angry when they don't, or just bringing the whole game down to support your style of play. So remember that the next time you find yourself in a spot where you cannot find any enjoyment out of all your MMORPGs or are bored with them.
2 years ago
Anonymous
try online roleplay or DnD then. MMOs are games and the gameplay is grinding. expecting people to not engage the systems and subsequently push them is the height of absurdity. i LIKE making big number and going fast. it's f u n
2 years ago
Anonymous
This guy gets it. I've been playing XIV on and off for a couple years, and I always end up leaving because as soon as the game starts requiring you to get into multiplayer content, if you're not working your rotation the way other people think you should, you will get griefed for it. It's sad because XIV has a great community for the most part, but if you're new to MMOs or whatever, it can be pretty inaccessible.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Yeah I mean I feel like that's most MMOs now a days. You've got these people who watched a guide, read something online, or listened to something said by their favorite influencer/streamer/youtuber. Then they just regurgitate it. Many times not really understand the who what when where and how. "If I press these buttons in this order, my slot on the DPS meter is really high". I remember in classic vanilla, there was a shortage of tanks (as always). And we were doing dungeons. Well we spent 10 minutes looking for a tank and couldn't find one (didn't help that the other pugs were all sitting there saying it HAD to be a warrior because they were the best). Finally I got my friend who players shadow priest to tank, since they had taunts and what not. We were able to complete the entire dungeon with no wipes. We did that a few times and it always blew the other PUGs minds that it was even possible. Not all MMOs are like this and there are instances where you can run an absolutely shit build with no rhyme or reason. But, like in WoW, if there's two DPS specs and you build each correctly. Even if one of them is "meta", choosing the other doesn't have an impact to the point where you can't complete the content nor complete it in a reasonable time.
2 years ago
Anonymous
This is exactly it.
WOW streamlined the genre too much, vanilla was pretty much perfect at launch, with different ways to approach different problems, lots of items worth collecting and using, ect.
As the game grew it only became more streamlined, they 'cut' anything that was too much of a burden for their supposedly 'hardcore' players, such as nerfing green dragonscale armor so it wasn't good for druids to fight off rogue ganks, or making eviscerate scale off attackpower, essentially nuetering rogues in PVP, among many many other fun things.
This is the core issue with the modern MMO, spreadsheet designers who are anti-fun. Like no one gives a frick about your hyper advanced groundfire and debuff algorithms and patterns that one shot a raid if all 8-20 players don't do them correctly all while expecting each of those players to perfectly execute a DDR song worth of button mashing at 120-150bpm depending on how many ogcd's you got.
You no longer present players with problems and give them the tools to overcome those problems, either through brute force via organizing a community to zerg it but have less loot to spread around, or by exploiting the weakness of the boss to minimize players and maximize loot per person, or using comfy builds and playstyles vs turbonerd grognard glass cannon builds where one frickup = instant death
Like WOW and its trinity is the prime example of this (And every other WOW clone that copies the trinity), the trinity is so streamlined that every single class plays the same fundementally, its just choosing which DDR song you wish to mash, and the balance is fricked, you just take the best in slot for those roles and bench people who insist on playing dogshit specs, because those specs have no usecases anywhere, DPS is DPS, no one wants you to take up a limited DPS slot for a weak spec because you bring nothing to the table.
By trying to cater to the so called hardcores, they streamlined all the actual depth from their games.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Yeah its an interesting concept. The subject of streamlining really came about as a way to make things less complex to appeal to the more casual audiences. But they over extended on that bit I think. To be its more of a community issue than a dev one. Even today with everything so streamlined, people still get all antsy about playing with certain classes or certain specs. I don't think its an issue that's going to go away soon though.
The other major challenge is that most of the time, people on things like Ganker/reddit/forums are a small percentage of the overall audience. But they're also the mainly people who can be put under the hardcore classification. So they take up most of the feedback that is read. Which is why a lot of developers across multiple genres get shy when blindly following what it says on forums and such.
But I think this unspoken audience who is being the most impacted by making things too constrained/hardcore/meta driven is the same audience that are propping up other MMOs. Games like ESO, SWTOR, and Gw2 are well known for having endgame options that basically let you play however you want. Simply because they the constant is easier or the combat helps promote build diversity to some degree. I think these audiences are the same ones who shy away from those "meta constrained" games or gameplay types.
2 years ago
Anonymous
The thing is they ironically streamlined for the hardcore and just created welfare modes for casuals.
But casual gamers aren't moronic cutscene watchers despite the vocal minority, most people just play games to have fun and not be bored, but streamlining for the extremely stupid and extremely hardcore and having little wiggle room in the middle is what ruins it for the casual majority.
Like in Diablo 2 a casual player will enjoy playing a summon necro, even if summon necro isn't optimal or fast at clearing compared to any other build, and those same casual players will try to min-max their summon build for comfiness rather than hyper speedrun uber hardcore exp/minute chaos santuary farming.
Its why D3 failed and POE succeeded, POE offers different content for different players at the end game, and you can still play your comfy arc sorceress, necro, CoCC builds, or you can go uber hardcore max defense unkillable hardcore ladder running grognard build trying to rush end game content to be first on the league, the game caters to everyone.
Diablo 3 though? Its non stop greater rifts, so there is only one thing to build for, which is why Diablo 3 died and POE is still going.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I completely agree with your take but unfortunately there's just nothing we can do as it's a cultural issue around the internet world that partly came from the mindsets we gained from the esports world that then carried over to the streamer/influencer sphere.
That isn't to say that min/maxing started from that time period but the mindset was increasingly more popular as the majority way to think about multiplayer games strayed from 'having fun just because' to 'having fun because you are the best' to 'having fun because everyone KNOWS you are the best'.
I'm basically praying and hoping for this to change but I don't expect much. Hopefully there will be some sort of cultural shift and the majority attitude to how people approach multiplayer games changes which then opens up for these types of games to prosper again.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I could not have worded this better.
Min/Maxers are a fricking cancer that is killing the game.
I don't want to treat WoW as a fulltime job, I want to explore and enjoy the world, and see everything it has to offer.
But unlike the average ruski/chink, I don't have 20 hours a day to waste and do fricking calculations to see which class can do 0.00005% more damage.
>worth it
Sure, if you’ve never tried it before, but it’s not worth it long-term unless you’re on a private server where nothing’s broken and there are people you like.
Biggest warning? It’s addictive. I mean really addictive. I am the complete anti-addiction personality and yet there was a brief period in 2008 where I played all day, almost every day. After that, never again
Over 25,000hrs in this game, yes.
You'll never get the ~2005 experience, but the game is amazing.
I'm playing tbc classic atm, i'm working on a lv45 twink retail, and i'm just chilling end game doing lfr (i've been top10 guild world) I don't really care for shadowlands. Now day's i just like playing the game my way, seeing the sights, it's a super easy interactive wallpaper to watch netflix to. If you want community, check out tbc (soon to be wrath) classic, retail is a single player game.
Now, you can jump in and have a blast, join a leveling guild for people to shoot the shit with and dungeons, and the world is pretty active.
I'm not right up on the news, but the general thought is fresh servers are going to be fairly dead. People are going to want to hop right into wotlk with their established toons. Anyone hc enough to re-roll is very shortly going to feel their missing out on the new thing and log over, if their hc enough to power level, it's going to be lonely at the top. I think the fresh servers are releasing with gates of aq open etc, so no side mission reason to either.
>but the general thought is fresh servers are going to be fairly dead
I mean, I'm not too sure about that... I think fresh servers are more for people who didn't play TBC (or Classic overall) but do want to play WotLK, and want to start leveling on an equal footing with everyone else while enjoying a well populated leveling experience compared to already established servers.
I don't think the main target audience of fresh servers are people who already have characters leveled in the progressive servers.
Now, if there's gonna be enough new people coming over and enough people wanting to start fresh, that's another thing. But given how popular WotLK was and the fact that there's many people who didn't play TBC but were waiting specifically for it... I actually think that the fresh servers are gonna be quite big.
Maybe, but there is no incentive to do so, and from what i've heard you can't server xfer to a fresh server for the leveling timeframe.
Personally, I think wow is best played on the largest (pvp) server in your region. I like to see cities full, people in remote quest hubs, other people questing around you, big guilds, active trade, active lfm, active ah. imo playing on small / dead servers is demoralizing. The other thing about wow is the quality of the players around you, you need consistent good players to clear raids and have numbers for player turnover. I don't think fresh servers are a good entry point for fresh players, at all, assuming the bulk of the active player base having the active experience isn't on them. My general advice is find the highest pop server, and check the H/A ratio, and raid completion numbers before you commit.
Being honest here,pvp servers is what made me quit wow on wotlk era, it's not funny at all to be minding your business and a fricking moron kills you and starts camping your body.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Good news is almost every single PvP server is dead because of issues you mentioned. The griefing was so fricking bad in classic vanilla and Blizzard refused to do anything about it a few servers xfer'd off or rerolled to other servers which tilted the balance of those servers which made the lesser played faction xfer off/reroll to another server and it snowballed so there's only like 1 or 2 balanced servers in all of NA and all the other PvP servers are 99% one faction.
2 years ago
Anonymous
No shit, it's really frustrating to be leveling and some max level butthole appears from behind and insta kills you, on wotlk I played on a private server, but when I started with blizzard servers I just picked a pve server and never looked back, funily enough, all spanish servers are pve so literally zero pvp for spaniards.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Being honest here,pvp servers is what made me quit wow on wotlk era, it's not funny at all to be minding your business and a fricking moron kills you and starts camping your body.
Imagine being this much of a pussy
2 years ago
Anonymous
Honestly, this is what makes the game fun and immersive. I don't care about being bopped to the gy, it's just how it is, but it leads to far, far more memorable moments and places. There are corners of the map burned into my memories of 'this is where that warrior charged me outa nowhere and i frost shocked him to death, this is where the rogue ganked me and we both died haha'. Being camped sucks, but honestly know the game more deeply and go somewhere else, or log in another char that's stronger or somewhere else, or hurl your broken body at them relentlessly in a show of defiance. I even have fond memories of notorious zone gankers and proudly saying 'I leveled through there and he only got me twice'. Now, i'm not saying i'm always the prey either, but removing pvp is a shell of the games experience. You just have to let go of ego, pretend your in a bg, and win some loose some.
2 years ago
Anonymous
To me this is a double edged sword. PvP servers ONLY work if both sides have at least close to the same populations. Which isn't the case 90% of the time. At least in retail. That's mainly because both factions are comprised of absolute idiots. It's mainly because things like this happen
>PvP server launches >People join >PvP Happens >Camping/griefing/leveling prevention happens >Losing side gets mad >Portion of losing side tries to fight back and gather people >Sadly most people don't want to help and will either just change zones or go play a different game >Server pop starts to drop as losing side quits and complains >Server pop dropping also makes the PvP issues Even worse >Winning side starts bragging about making people quit >Low tier shit sheep see the winning side >They create a char/reroll to winning side >Makes population issues even worse >Transfers are introduced >Losing side just transfers >Makes server populations even worse
When I played classic vanilla, I was alliance on a PvP server. There was a lot of griefing/camping/etc. I tried to fight back. I was ALWAYS out numbered. I can't think of a moment where every PvP engagement I had wasn't out numbered, especially while leveling. The minute you had even a semi decent group to fight back, the horde would send out a call for help and you'd have like 10 people fly in from the horde. I tried to get alliance to do the same, but nobody ever wanted to fight. It was so frustrating. Why join a PvP server when you only want opt in pvp? So many times players would just quit or change zones. I think I finally transferred off the server when it was 70% somethin horde. Didn't help that when we asked the horde to dial it back a bit to slow the flood of players leaving, they just insulted yah and said they take pride in making you quit. Also one of the reasons I never take players who complain about one sided servers seriously.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Retail is trash, even in your warmode people are in 10 different phases or have so many chores to do they dgaf about pvp.. well, outside the kill x players in this zone weekly quests.
To be honest, my classic experience has been very different. I know it was notoriously toxic by reputation, I play on highest pop oce and it's chill af, like I describe. I'm pretty casual so maybe I haven't seen the bleeding edge fighting for resources.
Would not be fun at all the way you've experienced it.
2 years ago
Anonymous
PVP only works in MMOs when its a community run affair.
With WOW, your faction, your 'community' is based entirely on which race you want to play as at the start of your 20-100 hour journey to end game, and once you're there you're stuck with it.
Real PVP MMOs don't use NPCs factions, they have a PVP sandbox for players to exploit, its why PVP in WOW was at its prime in vanilla and TBC, because its the closest the game had to a PVP sandbox with profession materials in the world being worth a frick, and everything since has been an imbalanced arena ladder grind that simply pales in comparisons to MOBAs that stole themepark MMO PVP populations, the only people who play that dogshit now are people who couldn't transition
2 years ago
Anonymous
Even if you don't think that pvp is a mini game for gays, pvp is a waste of time. You aren't rewarded for it. If you get ganked, stop and fight back your progress goes to zero. Fighting players is neither as lucrative or rewarding as grinding boars.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Yeah I mean the purpose of PvP is to have the challenge and the act of beating another player in battle is supposed to be the draw. But in MMORPGs its useless most of the time because gear plays a large factor. And open world PvP it also becomes a numbers game. Now a days though people either just do it to grief (not fair fights) or they do it for profit.
>It really wouldn't mean much to anyone who wasn't there for the original vanilla release
It definitely wasn't the same but I really enjoyed the launch of classic. Helped that I went in with a group of friends, one who never even experienced pre-cata wow, and had a great time until we had to raid.
Overall it was still a 9/10 time, very happy that I went and did it.
Yeap. That's the same situation myself and so many encountered. Myself and so many of my friends player classic till phase 2. Then once phase 2 hit people started getting super weird and the vibe went from oldschool-leaning to retail leaning. Mainly because now everyone wanted to get raiding gear as fast as they could. They wanted to to be world first. Got all sweaty. And most of them sucked at the game in general. I remember raiding people who would get so upset and intense about the game. Then they'd get their gear, quit for like 4 months, then return. It's just like why are you getting so worked up about raiding? You're not going to get a world first. You disappear after you get your gear. Nobody gives a shit if you have some kind of gear, especially if you don't use it. Just chill bro.
Now a days though I swear somebody went and clubbed everyone all those vocal classic players on the forums and shit. If you look at what they want, what they're discussing, what they think blizzard should do....they're just retail players. They all want just retail. But they refuse to just go play retail because they're sheep and think its somehow different because "well people said shadowlands is bad". b***h you made it bad with your asinine requests. I remember seeing a webm of hey arnold where all the kids went and cleaned up a dump spot to turn it into a baseball park, put all this work into it. Then all the adults moved in and ruined it. Overlays with all the shitty retail players requesting bad things where the adults. Was so true. Glad devs aren't giving in and trying to keep it classic like
2 years ago
Anonymous
You can thank certain streamers for setting the standard that their opinionated demands must be met or they'll throw a tantrum and weaponize other MMOs. It doesn't take a genius to see if that behavior is mimicked down to the entire player base you will get infinite and competing design demands. To an extent the game always had this but influencer culture made it go nuclear. The game can't be fixed until certain streamers setting this precedent are permabanned.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Yeap. I mean don't get me wrong, streamers can have good ideas. But they can also have bad ones. They're no different from a random user with a similar gaming experience. I think a major issue with a lot of modern MMORPG players is they forget that...well MMORPG gameplay is probably not what you're looking for. Does that mean its bad? Nah. But I think a lot of people don't actually like the core gameplay of MMORPGs. They focus on things like achievements/carrots to distract them. Once they get it? They realize the combat is boring and quit. I also think this is why there's a trend lately of MMORPGs introducing "side activities". ESO just had a card game introduced and an antiquity system before that. FF14 has some kind of housing and farming mini game being introduced. Gw2's entire endgame is just side activities since its all horizontal progression. WoW has always tried to rely on crap like this with things like mission tables and pet battles. Developers put in all this stuff to make sure people don't realize that the combat gets kind of boring once you're all geared up and complete.
What I yearn for is combat that feels like a proper singleplayer style combat in a MMORPG world. Like take Skyrim's combat and throw it in a MMO. New world honestly came the closest to "singleplayer like" combat. It's a shame that game was mismanaged to hell in development and struggling to get on its feet again.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Yeap. I mean don't get me wrong, streamers can have good ideas. But they can also have bad ones. They're no different from a random user with a similar gaming experience. I think a major issue with a lot of modern MMORPG players is they forget that...well MMORPG gameplay is probably not what you're looking for. Does that mean its bad? Nah. But I think a lot of people don't actually like the core gameplay of MMORPGs. They focus on things like achievements/carrots to distract them. Once they get it? They realize the combat is boring and quit. I also think this is why there's a trend lately of MMORPGs introducing "side activities". ESO just had a card game introduced and an antiquity system before that. FF14 has some kind of housing and farming mini game being introduced. Gw2's entire endgame is just side activities since its all horizontal progression. WoW has always tried to rely on crap like this with things like mission tables and pet battles. Developers put in all this stuff to make sure people don't realize that the combat gets kind of boring once you're all geared up and complete.
What I yearn for is combat that feels like a proper singleplayer style combat in a MMORPG world. Like take Skyrim's combat and throw it in a MMO. New world honestly came the closest to "singleplayer like" combat. It's a shame that game was mismanaged to hell in development and struggling to get on its feet again.
tbh streamers and influencers are a plague to each and every fricking game they touch; yeah they can have good ideas now and then but overall they're a cancerous tumor.
I don't mind the side content the other poster mentioned: I think that shit's amazing and anything that takes away from the awful dungeon/class design in those games is fine by me as long as it's not a huge grind or chore to do. I'd rather the XIV devs fix their dungeon design, make loadouts/level sync better for lower duties etc over that side content but I'm aware it doesn't matter and then when we go back to the influencers: they'll go up in arms over one or two small issues which usually won't affect me.
When I see streamers, content creators etc cry about a lack of content I think back to that funny lil' jeffyk comic about everquest. The MMO playerbase wants to optimise the fun out of everything, that's gonna happen but it doesn't mean the devs have to listen to the rageballs.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>The MMO playerbase wants to optimise the fun out of everything, that's gonna happen but it doesn't mean the devs have to listen to the rageballs.
Yeap. This is where the skill of the developer comes in. Because you have to save the players from themselves, so to speak. And honestly I think where the biggest issue in the development of MMOs is. Many times when someone gets experienced in developing MMOs, they don't want to do it again if they move on from their position. So there's like constant skill gap of MMO developers because nobody wants to touch it with a 10 foot pole who is experienced. This is also made worse by a huge reliance/delegation of decision on data analytics and proven tactics. Publishers, most of the time, do not want their developers to try something new. New most of the time fails. It's not proven to be money making. So publishers only want proven methods which results in these MMORPGs that are 50-75% of the same of what's on the market. And then situations like New World happen and publishers sit there and be like "SEE! This is what happens when you try something new". Even though that game could've been super successful it it wasn't mismanaged, started out as a battle royale, built on a fault engine full of bugs/exploits. But nope, just gets added to the list of reasons why a new MMORPG will be some cookie cutter bullshit.
2 years ago
Anonymous
This is why any form of streamlining is the biggest red flag if the game is going to be shit or not.
The only people who seem to want to develop MMOs are the people who probably shouldn't, like Ion Hozzikotas who spreadsheeted the fun out of the game for him and his guild to speedrun efficiently, and got hired to playtest the content he hated so much, while everyone who actaully liked RPGs and community driven gameplay quit developing WOW after vanilla/TBC launched.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Runescape streamlines the frick out of itself >Skillers are fricking useless and replaced by bots thanks to the G.E. driving down non-combat GP/hour >Only way to enjoy the game now is to play the game as a single player game you pay money for
I don't understand the autism that defends this shit, just go fricking play skyrim if you want a mindless singleplayer RPG
2 years ago
Anonymous
>single player game you pay money for
This here is the thing that most bugs me about modern day MMORPG players. Why do so many people play MMORPGs as single player games? I've talked to a pleathora of communities about what their day-to-day gameplay is like in respective MMORPGs. About 65% of them don't talk to anyone and barely interact with other players. And so many MMORPGs are like this. When you ask people what they like about various games >SWTOR
It's a good single player MMO with fun storylines >ESO
It's a good single player MMO with fun storylines >Gw2
It's a good casual MMO with a solo friendly open world >WoW
It's a good dungeon/raiding MMO where you can do dungeons/raids without really having to talk to anyone
It feels like I'm going crazy here. Whenever you bring this up too the community either ignores you or gets all angry and tells you to frick off. Its like...why? Why are you all here? You're buying a sub. You're buying things off the gemstore. You're paying for housing. GO PLAY SINGLEPLAYER RPGS WITH MODS. It's the same experience, but better. I love the elder scrolls series, but everytime I go into ESO it just depresses me the current state of that shit. It's got to be the least social MMO I've ever played. Then you get into endgame stuff like raiding and the combat is a pile of shit that feels horrible. I mean their latest expansion, the big thing was an imbalanced/poorly designed card game that they'll probably not update for another month.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Feels like every major RPG project from 2008-2020 were pretty much forced to become some kind of MMO or online service trash.
Like SWTOR was clearly just KOTOR 3 with extra steps and all the bad aspects of MMOs with none of the good, ESO is a strictly worse skyrim experience, GW2 and WOW are pretty much in the same camp now, do dailies and farm bosses
It was always the holy grail for MMOs to become more dynamic where community input affected the world both directly (Who owned what territory) and indirectly (people working for one faction more than the other will ultimately change a certain outcome.)
Instead MMOs were streamlined and dumbed down for min-maxing nerds who think that any dynamics = imbalanced garbage that needs to be ripped out so they can design cleaner spreadsheets.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Because MMOs essentially evolved into escapism simulators. People want word to be in with others around, doesn't mean they want to interact with others, but the sheer fact there are people running around doing their own shit enough for them to feel invested in. On that note i would question the notion of people being less social, in fact modern mmo players are much more social on average, they just don't want to be forced into social core gameplay. There is a reason all the side activities are so popular, both official and unofficial, from huge jack off to housing, casinos and dress up all the way to wow stormwind guard guilds, xiv nightclubs and erp.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Yeah I mean in the way of socialization, you do have niche stuff like that. I wouldn't say housing is "social". At least not in games like ESO or SWTOR. They're mainly social in regards to RP guilds and that's about it. The average player will rarely visit another house. But the average player is sorta what I'm talking about. Where you log in, play, and just chit chat with others around you. Zone chat, local chat, etc. Most average players will rarely communicate with other players in a social manner (beyond LFG type of conversations). Even in instanced content like LFD/LFR stuff in WoW, the people in those groups will rarely talk to one another. If you go out and join very specific niche guilds that are focused around RP aspects, yeah they do communicate. But I don't think the average player would be in one of those.
What I find is that these average player's socialization got outsourced. It used to be in game. But now it's mainly in various discords and twitch chats. Both of which I'm not a fan of because they are either unhealthy (twitch) or they sorta defeat the purpose of a MMO in the first place (discord). Like I can go play a game like vermintide, join their official discords, and do it that way. And it provides the same experience as something like WoW. Instanced group content where most of the socialization is happening in discord.
There are exceptions to this. Gw2 is fairly social. Which is probably one of the main reasons I'll pop in to play that every once in awhile. But that's the only "mainstream" MMO that I can think of where it happens to such a degree. The rest are a hit or miss (games like ESO being more of a miss).
2 years ago
Anonymous
DAoC held up much better because it had 3 sides. It wasn't perfect for sure, but it is a better solution than 2 factions.
No. Classic and retail are living off of the legacy of what was. Both are P2W as frick and you can unironically pay your way to end-game with full BIS gear without ever having to do much of anything. The soul of classic died within a few months and now it's a corpse infested by casuals who think they're hardcore raiders for beating solved content with the most meta gear and best comp with all the consumables when the difficulty was in progging them when they were new.
>wow >mmorpg >difficult
No MMORPG has ever been difficult. The fun was playing in a living, breathing, dynamic Azeroth with your friends and pretending to be an Alliance Footman or Horde Grunt or whatever Warcraft hero you wanted to be.
Classic sucked because all the autistic nerd friends got pushed to the fringes of the internet by normalgays a long time ago. Everyone rushed to max level, beat all the content and asked where the content was. They all skipped it and played the gay shit instead.
The WoW ost can hit you like a train if you haven't touched the game in years. Recently listened to the Elmwyn forest ost and got regressed to childhood. I want to go back bros... but the azeroth I grew up in no longer exists...
there are games that respect your time, money and intellect. WoW doesn't. You may play it to be able to talk to the rest, but other then that: No.
If you wanna go hard in an MMO, play EVE. If you wanna have a gr<eat time for a good price for a long time with great people, play Guild Wars 2.
Its ok and by today standards its decent. Most people who say its bad are usually using the past as a comparison. If you wanted to see what WoW was like back in the day, you had to play Classic WoW vanilla for the first ~3 months. That's as close as you could get. What you saw was.
1. People not just sitting inside major cities waiting for lobby queues to pop
2. People working together to take on group quests while leveling
3. People casually chit chatting while leveling and being social
4. People trying to form rapport with other players, especially tanks and healers
5. Generally people super positive and good vibes
I've never seen anything like it since sadly. Most MMORPGs now a days are glorified bad singleplayer games. It's such a shame. >Play ESO
Combat sucks. Everyone ignores one another. Most players treat it as a singleplayer RPG. >Play WoW
Sit in the main city and wait for queues >Play FF14
Pretty similar to WoW >Play Gw2
Honestly the best out of the bunch. People actually talk to one another in this one. Endgame lacks depth though because of combat + horizontal progression >SWTOR
Another ESO, just without as bad combat >New World
Had the most promise. Disasters launch, boring world, lack of direction in development (hoping to god it makes a comeback later this year)
Only MMOs that are super old and have real sweaty niche audiences (like eve) that feel at least somewhat old school in design and audience.
>I've never seen anything like it since sadly.
honestly, the last time i remember seeing a game where people were like that was back around 2006-2007 in runescape. its been a long time. i didnt get to play classic due to work related stuff during classic's prime, and i regret not being able to. ive tried a lot of these new mmos like ffxiv, but none of them come close to being on par with the experiences we yearn to experience again. honestly ffxiv was one of the dullest mmos ive played, and the setting + endless cut scenes put me to sleep multiple times after long days at work.
The actual developers (I.E. grifters who didn't do shit to make these games, just keep them on life support) actively hate you and their playerbase and spend all the subscription money you feed them to virtue signal while the games you loved playing rot and die.
At least with a private server you can play this shit in their prime, whichever era you'd like, without giving these grifters any money.
I wish i played classic more when it was actually alive. I was still in Uni when it launched but my life is shit now anyways, i heavily regret every moment i spent doing anything that wasnt levelling when i had the chance
It was my last chance to be a true junkie and actually have it be worth it
It really wouldn't mean much to anyone who wasn't there for the original vanilla release, in my opinion. I had a great time reliving those memories. But if you weren't a player of the OG release, then yeah it wouldn't have been that big of an issue. The "fun" times lasted for like 1-2 months. Then the internet, as usual, ruined it. Everyone wanted to be like their streamers. They wanted world firsts. Achievement focused as the modern MMORPG community shitters are now a days. That's when mage boosting got way out of hand. That's when gold buying started. That's when botting exploded.
You just have to watch for the next major hyped MMORPG to release. The first 1-3 months of any MMORPG are always magical cause everyone is discovering things together. I think the next "major" one like this will probably be ashes of creation. But that will easily be another 2-6 years out sadly.
I was there for much of launch but i had to take a hiatus for money and school reasons. When i came back the overworld was nothing but horde gankers and my friends were pissed that i fell behind
Ahh well I think wotlk is gonna be interesting. I think a lot of people are going to return and the first few months will be close to the same. They're doing fresh servers too. Ima try both the normal server and fresh. If the vibe on fresh is good instead of just a bunch of sweaty private server dudes, that would be good. If its not the vibe I like, then ima just go back to the normal and experience that initial wotlk leveling rushing.
>It really wouldn't mean much to anyone who wasn't there for the original vanilla release
It definitely wasn't the same but I really enjoyed the launch of classic. Helped that I went in with a group of friends, one who never even experienced pre-cata wow, and had a great time until we had to raid.
Overall it was still a 9/10 time, very happy that I went and did it.
If you scroll on Ganker, you do not belong on turtle wow. They actively moderate channels and any sort of talk against their agenda will lead to you being promptly muted and eventually banned.
I was gonna do WoW but blizz were going to shit at the time and a friend was recommending XIV instead (also it's trial was better).
Heard that you can only play the game's story in order after the current expansion, all dungeons/raids/trials are dead or some bullshit like that, that still true?
XIV got me good for the themepark MMO experience. For me: It was always gonna be the lore and the older shit but blizz just couldn't sell it to me for less than Square could.
Don't really care about PVP, don't care about endgame raiding. What I do care about are comfy dungeon & quest experiences with other players for several year old content. Is it really true that's dead?
Classic was good for a bit but it's boring now. They ruined the shit by making everyone min max for raids. All this gay parse shit too, the game is actually a job now.
>be me non WoW player >friends always talk about WoW on discord >"WoW is the shit" >convince me to play for free till i get the 20 lvl cap >pay the month >play as palladin >"well this fricking sucks" >shit graphics >shit storyline >shit combat mode >level cap >shit pvp modes >realize my frens who play this shit call people by their pronouns, hate trump, are gay, transexuals, such >epiphany hit >this is a gay game played by gay fricks and gayer people >uninstal >played only 2 days and got lvl cap >started playing chivalry >no regrets
>is it worth it
Hard to say, Retail is a fricking joke, and private servers aren't better.
Most are a quick cashgrab (Everlook is gonna be a cashgrab, and anything by Shenna/Crogge should be avoided at all costs).
Try finding a custom server.
If you never played it before, yes
i have never played it
I played classic when it came out, and I can tell you that it is fun. It made me jealous of missing out on the golden age.
The thing that makes me most sad about this situation is that it was 100% made possible because players collectively decided to not be c**ts for a couple of months. It's one of the reasons I seem to enjoy MMORPGs 1000x as much when they first release. Usually the first 1-5 months depending on which one it is. Everyone is just having fun, exploring the game, figuring things out. Min/max BS hasn't taken root too much yet. But it's just I constantly hear people talking about online how amazing classic vanilla was for the first 1-3 months. And I just sit there being like "We can do that, every day. If you all decide to relax and just have fun...that can be your experience EVERY DAY".
what you're describing is just the general moronation of the average person. I am power gaming those first few months don't you worry. It just takes a while for the morons to figure out what me and my ilk are doing before the population copies the strats. what you are effectively saying is that you are bad at games and can only enjoy them when everyone else playing is also bad at games. try wine tasting painting classes instead, they're probably more your speed.
I mean...you kind of miss the point of MMOs? There's not really being "good" at a MMO. It's just about being first. Being first doesn't mean you're better at the game nor does it mean you are worse. It's simply a representation of free time. There's rarely anything inside of a MMO that is skill based. Most of the time its 80% time. What ended up happening is the average person tried to power game like yourself. But unlike you, they don't have the time to do so. So what ended up happening is they lost sight of the purpose of a MMORPG, threw a fit, got toxic, and now the current state (and on going state) of classic is largely do to these crowds.
>Bots
>Boosting
>Blizzard cashing in on deluxe editions/boosts
>Server transfers
>Faction stacks
>Dead open world PvP
>Lack of class variety (lack of certain roles as a result in instanced content)
>Long PvP queues
>Community demanding looking for dungeon/looking for raid
These are all because average people are trying to poop sock no life a game that they cannot (either time, patience, or just attention span). It has very little to do about skill.
I know I can't power game. I'm not in highschool anymore. I've got a job, responsibilities. So I do things at my own pace. I got to Naxx without getting all sweaty and powergaming. All those people I made friends with who are sweaty/powergamers ended up quitting because they got bored once they "beat" the game. The problem isn't really people like yourself who can dedicate a ton of time. It's people who see people like yourself, think you're the golden standard that all must aspire too, realize they can't do it, then bring the entire game down with them. Those are the issues.
you're the one who clearly doesn't understand despite definitively stating what the point is. they're free time sinks, like you say. therefore being good at them is figuring out how to do things and progress without wasting a frickload of time. some of this is implementing strategies (figuring out complicated pulls for instance), some of this is mechanical skill (actually doing the complicated pulls). here's a dead simple one a lot of people don't do: rebind your keys from numbers to the buttons around wasd and use macros. this will make you 10x more effective and therefore save you time. it's first grade spongebob.
The point of a MMORPG is not to min/max it to complete it as quickly as possible. That's the issue at hand here. MMORPGs were never meant to be just "ok figure out how to beat the game in under a month". The whole point of a MMORPG is not to min/max it, but to experience the world with friends and socialize. That's one of the reasons why you see constant posts all over saying that MMORPGs suck now a days. It's because too much of the community behaves like you're saying the game is supposed to be played. Which MMORPGs are sadly not designed for. And key rebinding is not what I'm talking about. When I'm talking about people being overly toxic I mean things like
>Not playing with/accepting certain classes
People say that they read online that X class can't generate as much DPS as another one. Which means taking said class adds on 5 minutes to their average time to completion. So that can't happen. That's a stupid way to look at it. I played with every class when I played classic WoW, and classes like that did not determine if it was a pass or fail. Pretty much all content I was able to do no issues. Its things like this that also cause the shortage of tanks/healers. Everyone was to be the "best" class.
>Boosting
Refusing to do anything in the open world and only play scarlet monastery 300x. You want to do that, go ahead. But don't b***h about there not being enough content in the game, or it being boring.
>Routes
You have to go this certain route in this dungeon and any deviation causes a rage. Again, it's not a huge difference. Not that big of a deal. But people get all b***hy about it.
People put a huge focus on schedule and meta. Even though the game was not that difficult to warrant such behavior. And when people achieve their goals, they're bored and complain because they missed the entire point of MMORPGs.
a dollar says I got infinitely more interaction in with WoW than you did. just because i'm attempting to minimize time waste doesn't mean i'm not in it for the emergent gameplay. you are simultaneously complaining about not having as much time as other people to play a certain way yet speaking of playing in a way that maximizes the amount of time it takes you to do anything. if it took me two days less to hit sixty, that's two days of free time I have to do things that aren't fricking leveling. do you get it? it's too much game to not play aggressively. no one has time for shitty classes in a raid.
Again you're missing the point here. MMORPGs are not meant to be min/maxed. They're not made to be rushed. The framework of their design does not meld with that kind of gameplay. That's why people are constantly complaining about MMORPGs. That's why they're constantly failing. Players are expecting a gameplay out of them that results in a lose lose for both parties. On one hand, which is what I touched on earlier, you have people who cannot support this gameplay style. So they end up shooting themselves in the foot and making it unfun. Then on the other hand you've got people like you who do it, then get bored at the endgame. Yeah you saved 2 days. 2 days to do what? Run a few dungeons quickier than others? People like yourself get all the gear they want out of dungeons, get all the crafting mats, etc; within a month. Because that's all they focused on. Then they go to the forums and complain how there's nothing to do in classic vanilla except raid log. Because you didn't build up any of the support structure that comes with having fun at endgame while playing.
Can MMORPGs be rushed and min/maxed? Yes. Should they? Generally no. Most players either cannot support that kind of gameplay and end up hating it OR they get to the endgame, get their carrot, and get bored.
I'm not going to argue because we all know neither of us are going to budge on this issue. Just in my eyes its people like yourself who end up causing MMORPGs to fail. Either by forcing those you interact with to play that way and getting angry when they don't, or just bringing the whole game down to support your style of play. So remember that the next time you find yourself in a spot where you cannot find any enjoyment out of all your MMORPGs or are bored with them.
try online roleplay or DnD then. MMOs are games and the gameplay is grinding. expecting people to not engage the systems and subsequently push them is the height of absurdity. i LIKE making big number and going fast. it's f u n
This guy gets it. I've been playing XIV on and off for a couple years, and I always end up leaving because as soon as the game starts requiring you to get into multiplayer content, if you're not working your rotation the way other people think you should, you will get griefed for it. It's sad because XIV has a great community for the most part, but if you're new to MMOs or whatever, it can be pretty inaccessible.
Yeah I mean I feel like that's most MMOs now a days. You've got these people who watched a guide, read something online, or listened to something said by their favorite influencer/streamer/youtuber. Then they just regurgitate it. Many times not really understand the who what when where and how. "If I press these buttons in this order, my slot on the DPS meter is really high". I remember in classic vanilla, there was a shortage of tanks (as always). And we were doing dungeons. Well we spent 10 minutes looking for a tank and couldn't find one (didn't help that the other pugs were all sitting there saying it HAD to be a warrior because they were the best). Finally I got my friend who players shadow priest to tank, since they had taunts and what not. We were able to complete the entire dungeon with no wipes. We did that a few times and it always blew the other PUGs minds that it was even possible. Not all MMOs are like this and there are instances where you can run an absolutely shit build with no rhyme or reason. But, like in WoW, if there's two DPS specs and you build each correctly. Even if one of them is "meta", choosing the other doesn't have an impact to the point where you can't complete the content nor complete it in a reasonable time.
This is exactly it.
WOW streamlined the genre too much, vanilla was pretty much perfect at launch, with different ways to approach different problems, lots of items worth collecting and using, ect.
As the game grew it only became more streamlined, they 'cut' anything that was too much of a burden for their supposedly 'hardcore' players, such as nerfing green dragonscale armor so it wasn't good for druids to fight off rogue ganks, or making eviscerate scale off attackpower, essentially nuetering rogues in PVP, among many many other fun things.
This is the core issue with the modern MMO, spreadsheet designers who are anti-fun. Like no one gives a frick about your hyper advanced groundfire and debuff algorithms and patterns that one shot a raid if all 8-20 players don't do them correctly all while expecting each of those players to perfectly execute a DDR song worth of button mashing at 120-150bpm depending on how many ogcd's you got.
You no longer present players with problems and give them the tools to overcome those problems, either through brute force via organizing a community to zerg it but have less loot to spread around, or by exploiting the weakness of the boss to minimize players and maximize loot per person, or using comfy builds and playstyles vs turbonerd grognard glass cannon builds where one frickup = instant death
Like WOW and its trinity is the prime example of this (And every other WOW clone that copies the trinity), the trinity is so streamlined that every single class plays the same fundementally, its just choosing which DDR song you wish to mash, and the balance is fricked, you just take the best in slot for those roles and bench people who insist on playing dogshit specs, because those specs have no usecases anywhere, DPS is DPS, no one wants you to take up a limited DPS slot for a weak spec because you bring nothing to the table.
By trying to cater to the so called hardcores, they streamlined all the actual depth from their games.
Yeah its an interesting concept. The subject of streamlining really came about as a way to make things less complex to appeal to the more casual audiences. But they over extended on that bit I think. To be its more of a community issue than a dev one. Even today with everything so streamlined, people still get all antsy about playing with certain classes or certain specs. I don't think its an issue that's going to go away soon though.
The other major challenge is that most of the time, people on things like Ganker/reddit/forums are a small percentage of the overall audience. But they're also the mainly people who can be put under the hardcore classification. So they take up most of the feedback that is read. Which is why a lot of developers across multiple genres get shy when blindly following what it says on forums and such.
But I think this unspoken audience who is being the most impacted by making things too constrained/hardcore/meta driven is the same audience that are propping up other MMOs. Games like ESO, SWTOR, and Gw2 are well known for having endgame options that basically let you play however you want. Simply because they the constant is easier or the combat helps promote build diversity to some degree. I think these audiences are the same ones who shy away from those "meta constrained" games or gameplay types.
The thing is they ironically streamlined for the hardcore and just created welfare modes for casuals.
But casual gamers aren't moronic cutscene watchers despite the vocal minority, most people just play games to have fun and not be bored, but streamlining for the extremely stupid and extremely hardcore and having little wiggle room in the middle is what ruins it for the casual majority.
Like in Diablo 2 a casual player will enjoy playing a summon necro, even if summon necro isn't optimal or fast at clearing compared to any other build, and those same casual players will try to min-max their summon build for comfiness rather than hyper speedrun uber hardcore exp/minute chaos santuary farming.
Its why D3 failed and POE succeeded, POE offers different content for different players at the end game, and you can still play your comfy arc sorceress, necro, CoCC builds, or you can go uber hardcore max defense unkillable hardcore ladder running grognard build trying to rush end game content to be first on the league, the game caters to everyone.
Diablo 3 though? Its non stop greater rifts, so there is only one thing to build for, which is why Diablo 3 died and POE is still going.
I completely agree with your take but unfortunately there's just nothing we can do as it's a cultural issue around the internet world that partly came from the mindsets we gained from the esports world that then carried over to the streamer/influencer sphere.
That isn't to say that min/maxing started from that time period but the mindset was increasingly more popular as the majority way to think about multiplayer games strayed from 'having fun just because' to 'having fun because you are the best' to 'having fun because everyone KNOWS you are the best'.
I'm basically praying and hoping for this to change but I don't expect much. Hopefully there will be some sort of cultural shift and the majority attitude to how people approach multiplayer games changes which then opens up for these types of games to prosper again.
I could not have worded this better.
Min/Maxers are a fricking cancer that is killing the game.
I don't want to treat WoW as a fulltime job, I want to explore and enjoy the world, and see everything it has to offer.
But unlike the average ruski/chink, I don't have 20 hours a day to waste and do fricking calculations to see which class can do 0.00005% more damage.
https://turtle-wow.org
what is it?
it's a WoW private server. I recently started playing on there after not playing WoW since 2009 or so. It's pretty cool.
thats cool, im downoading the game right now
A Shenna/Crogge server stay away from it like the plague.
I'm not up-to-date on the schizo lore. Who are Shenna and Crogge?
>Who are Shenna and Crogge?
Sell their user's information.
Sell gold.
Server is infested with china and bots.
https://everlook.org/
Official servers? No.
>worth it
Sure, if you’ve never tried it before, but it’s not worth it long-term unless you’re on a private server where nothing’s broken and there are people you like.
Biggest warning? It’s addictive. I mean really addictive. I am the complete anti-addiction personality and yet there was a brief period in 2008 where I played all day, almost every day. After that, never again
Over 25,000hrs in this game, yes.
You'll never get the ~2005 experience, but the game is amazing.
I'm playing tbc classic atm, i'm working on a lv45 twink retail, and i'm just chilling end game doing lfr (i've been top10 guild world) I don't really care for shadowlands. Now day's i just like playing the game my way, seeing the sights, it's a super easy interactive wallpaper to watch netflix to. If you want community, check out tbc (soon to be wrath) classic, retail is a single player game.
As someone that haven't played TBC... do you think it's better to come back now and start leveling, or wait for WotLK fresh servers?
Now, you can jump in and have a blast, join a leveling guild for people to shoot the shit with and dungeons, and the world is pretty active.
I'm not right up on the news, but the general thought is fresh servers are going to be fairly dead. People are going to want to hop right into wotlk with their established toons. Anyone hc enough to re-roll is very shortly going to feel their missing out on the new thing and log over, if their hc enough to power level, it's going to be lonely at the top. I think the fresh servers are releasing with gates of aq open etc, so no side mission reason to either.
>but the general thought is fresh servers are going to be fairly dead
I mean, I'm not too sure about that... I think fresh servers are more for people who didn't play TBC (or Classic overall) but do want to play WotLK, and want to start leveling on an equal footing with everyone else while enjoying a well populated leveling experience compared to already established servers.
I don't think the main target audience of fresh servers are people who already have characters leveled in the progressive servers.
Now, if there's gonna be enough new people coming over and enough people wanting to start fresh, that's another thing. But given how popular WotLK was and the fact that there's many people who didn't play TBC but were waiting specifically for it... I actually think that the fresh servers are gonna be quite big.
Maybe, but there is no incentive to do so, and from what i've heard you can't server xfer to a fresh server for the leveling timeframe.
Personally, I think wow is best played on the largest (pvp) server in your region. I like to see cities full, people in remote quest hubs, other people questing around you, big guilds, active trade, active lfm, active ah. imo playing on small / dead servers is demoralizing. The other thing about wow is the quality of the players around you, you need consistent good players to clear raids and have numbers for player turnover. I don't think fresh servers are a good entry point for fresh players, at all, assuming the bulk of the active player base having the active experience isn't on them. My general advice is find the highest pop server, and check the H/A ratio, and raid completion numbers before you commit.
Being honest here,pvp servers is what made me quit wow on wotlk era, it's not funny at all to be minding your business and a fricking moron kills you and starts camping your body.
Good news is almost every single PvP server is dead because of issues you mentioned. The griefing was so fricking bad in classic vanilla and Blizzard refused to do anything about it a few servers xfer'd off or rerolled to other servers which tilted the balance of those servers which made the lesser played faction xfer off/reroll to another server and it snowballed so there's only like 1 or 2 balanced servers in all of NA and all the other PvP servers are 99% one faction.
No shit, it's really frustrating to be leveling and some max level butthole appears from behind and insta kills you, on wotlk I played on a private server, but when I started with blizzard servers I just picked a pve server and never looked back, funily enough, all spanish servers are pve so literally zero pvp for spaniards.
Imagine being this much of a pussy
Honestly, this is what makes the game fun and immersive. I don't care about being bopped to the gy, it's just how it is, but it leads to far, far more memorable moments and places. There are corners of the map burned into my memories of 'this is where that warrior charged me outa nowhere and i frost shocked him to death, this is where the rogue ganked me and we both died haha'. Being camped sucks, but honestly know the game more deeply and go somewhere else, or log in another char that's stronger or somewhere else, or hurl your broken body at them relentlessly in a show of defiance. I even have fond memories of notorious zone gankers and proudly saying 'I leveled through there and he only got me twice'. Now, i'm not saying i'm always the prey either, but removing pvp is a shell of the games experience. You just have to let go of ego, pretend your in a bg, and win some loose some.
To me this is a double edged sword. PvP servers ONLY work if both sides have at least close to the same populations. Which isn't the case 90% of the time. At least in retail. That's mainly because both factions are comprised of absolute idiots. It's mainly because things like this happen
>PvP server launches
>People join
>PvP Happens
>Camping/griefing/leveling prevention happens
>Losing side gets mad
>Portion of losing side tries to fight back and gather people
>Sadly most people don't want to help and will either just change zones or go play a different game
>Server pop starts to drop as losing side quits and complains
>Server pop dropping also makes the PvP issues Even worse
>Winning side starts bragging about making people quit
>Low tier shit sheep see the winning side
>They create a char/reroll to winning side
>Makes population issues even worse
>Transfers are introduced
>Losing side just transfers
>Makes server populations even worse
When I played classic vanilla, I was alliance on a PvP server. There was a lot of griefing/camping/etc. I tried to fight back. I was ALWAYS out numbered. I can't think of a moment where every PvP engagement I had wasn't out numbered, especially while leveling. The minute you had even a semi decent group to fight back, the horde would send out a call for help and you'd have like 10 people fly in from the horde. I tried to get alliance to do the same, but nobody ever wanted to fight. It was so frustrating. Why join a PvP server when you only want opt in pvp? So many times players would just quit or change zones. I think I finally transferred off the server when it was 70% somethin horde. Didn't help that when we asked the horde to dial it back a bit to slow the flood of players leaving, they just insulted yah and said they take pride in making you quit. Also one of the reasons I never take players who complain about one sided servers seriously.
Retail is trash, even in your warmode people are in 10 different phases or have so many chores to do they dgaf about pvp.. well, outside the kill x players in this zone weekly quests.
To be honest, my classic experience has been very different. I know it was notoriously toxic by reputation, I play on highest pop oce and it's chill af, like I describe. I'm pretty casual so maybe I haven't seen the bleeding edge fighting for resources.
Would not be fun at all the way you've experienced it.
PVP only works in MMOs when its a community run affair.
With WOW, your faction, your 'community' is based entirely on which race you want to play as at the start of your 20-100 hour journey to end game, and once you're there you're stuck with it.
Real PVP MMOs don't use NPCs factions, they have a PVP sandbox for players to exploit, its why PVP in WOW was at its prime in vanilla and TBC, because its the closest the game had to a PVP sandbox with profession materials in the world being worth a frick, and everything since has been an imbalanced arena ladder grind that simply pales in comparisons to MOBAs that stole themepark MMO PVP populations, the only people who play that dogshit now are people who couldn't transition
Even if you don't think that pvp is a mini game for gays, pvp is a waste of time. You aren't rewarded for it. If you get ganked, stop and fight back your progress goes to zero. Fighting players is neither as lucrative or rewarding as grinding boars.
Yeah I mean the purpose of PvP is to have the challenge and the act of beating another player in battle is supposed to be the draw. But in MMORPGs its useless most of the time because gear plays a large factor. And open world PvP it also becomes a numbers game. Now a days though people either just do it to grief (not fair fights) or they do it for profit.
Yeap. That's the same situation myself and so many encountered. Myself and so many of my friends player classic till phase 2. Then once phase 2 hit people started getting super weird and the vibe went from oldschool-leaning to retail leaning. Mainly because now everyone wanted to get raiding gear as fast as they could. They wanted to to be world first. Got all sweaty. And most of them sucked at the game in general. I remember raiding people who would get so upset and intense about the game. Then they'd get their gear, quit for like 4 months, then return. It's just like why are you getting so worked up about raiding? You're not going to get a world first. You disappear after you get your gear. Nobody gives a shit if you have some kind of gear, especially if you don't use it. Just chill bro.
Now a days though I swear somebody went and clubbed everyone all those vocal classic players on the forums and shit. If you look at what they want, what they're discussing, what they think blizzard should do....they're just retail players. They all want just retail. But they refuse to just go play retail because they're sheep and think its somehow different because "well people said shadowlands is bad". b***h you made it bad with your asinine requests. I remember seeing a webm of hey arnold where all the kids went and cleaned up a dump spot to turn it into a baseball park, put all this work into it. Then all the adults moved in and ruined it. Overlays with all the shitty retail players requesting bad things where the adults. Was so true. Glad devs aren't giving in and trying to keep it classic like
You can thank certain streamers for setting the standard that their opinionated demands must be met or they'll throw a tantrum and weaponize other MMOs. It doesn't take a genius to see if that behavior is mimicked down to the entire player base you will get infinite and competing design demands. To an extent the game always had this but influencer culture made it go nuclear. The game can't be fixed until certain streamers setting this precedent are permabanned.
Yeap. I mean don't get me wrong, streamers can have good ideas. But they can also have bad ones. They're no different from a random user with a similar gaming experience. I think a major issue with a lot of modern MMORPG players is they forget that...well MMORPG gameplay is probably not what you're looking for. Does that mean its bad? Nah. But I think a lot of people don't actually like the core gameplay of MMORPGs. They focus on things like achievements/carrots to distract them. Once they get it? They realize the combat is boring and quit. I also think this is why there's a trend lately of MMORPGs introducing "side activities". ESO just had a card game introduced and an antiquity system before that. FF14 has some kind of housing and farming mini game being introduced. Gw2's entire endgame is just side activities since its all horizontal progression. WoW has always tried to rely on crap like this with things like mission tables and pet battles. Developers put in all this stuff to make sure people don't realize that the combat gets kind of boring once you're all geared up and complete.
What I yearn for is combat that feels like a proper singleplayer style combat in a MMORPG world. Like take Skyrim's combat and throw it in a MMO. New world honestly came the closest to "singleplayer like" combat. It's a shame that game was mismanaged to hell in development and struggling to get on its feet again.
tbh streamers and influencers are a plague to each and every fricking game they touch; yeah they can have good ideas now and then but overall they're a cancerous tumor.
I don't mind the side content the other poster mentioned: I think that shit's amazing and anything that takes away from the awful dungeon/class design in those games is fine by me as long as it's not a huge grind or chore to do. I'd rather the XIV devs fix their dungeon design, make loadouts/level sync better for lower duties etc over that side content but I'm aware it doesn't matter and then when we go back to the influencers: they'll go up in arms over one or two small issues which usually won't affect me.
When I see streamers, content creators etc cry about a lack of content I think back to that funny lil' jeffyk comic about everquest. The MMO playerbase wants to optimise the fun out of everything, that's gonna happen but it doesn't mean the devs have to listen to the rageballs.
>The MMO playerbase wants to optimise the fun out of everything, that's gonna happen but it doesn't mean the devs have to listen to the rageballs.
Yeap. This is where the skill of the developer comes in. Because you have to save the players from themselves, so to speak. And honestly I think where the biggest issue in the development of MMOs is. Many times when someone gets experienced in developing MMOs, they don't want to do it again if they move on from their position. So there's like constant skill gap of MMO developers because nobody wants to touch it with a 10 foot pole who is experienced. This is also made worse by a huge reliance/delegation of decision on data analytics and proven tactics. Publishers, most of the time, do not want their developers to try something new. New most of the time fails. It's not proven to be money making. So publishers only want proven methods which results in these MMORPGs that are 50-75% of the same of what's on the market. And then situations like New World happen and publishers sit there and be like "SEE! This is what happens when you try something new". Even though that game could've been super successful it it wasn't mismanaged, started out as a battle royale, built on a fault engine full of bugs/exploits. But nope, just gets added to the list of reasons why a new MMORPG will be some cookie cutter bullshit.
This is why any form of streamlining is the biggest red flag if the game is going to be shit or not.
Adversity creates niche, niche creates roles, roles creates community.
The only people who seem to want to develop MMOs are the people who probably shouldn't, like Ion Hozzikotas who spreadsheeted the fun out of the game for him and his guild to speedrun efficiently, and got hired to playtest the content he hated so much, while everyone who actaully liked RPGs and community driven gameplay quit developing WOW after vanilla/TBC launched.
>Runescape streamlines the frick out of itself
>Skillers are fricking useless and replaced by bots thanks to the G.E. driving down non-combat GP/hour
>Only way to enjoy the game now is to play the game as a single player game you pay money for
I don't understand the autism that defends this shit, just go fricking play skyrim if you want a mindless singleplayer RPG
>single player game you pay money for
This here is the thing that most bugs me about modern day MMORPG players. Why do so many people play MMORPGs as single player games? I've talked to a pleathora of communities about what their day-to-day gameplay is like in respective MMORPGs. About 65% of them don't talk to anyone and barely interact with other players. And so many MMORPGs are like this. When you ask people what they like about various games
>SWTOR
It's a good single player MMO with fun storylines
>ESO
It's a good single player MMO with fun storylines
>Gw2
It's a good casual MMO with a solo friendly open world
>WoW
It's a good dungeon/raiding MMO where you can do dungeons/raids without really having to talk to anyone
It feels like I'm going crazy here. Whenever you bring this up too the community either ignores you or gets all angry and tells you to frick off. Its like...why? Why are you all here? You're buying a sub. You're buying things off the gemstore. You're paying for housing. GO PLAY SINGLEPLAYER RPGS WITH MODS. It's the same experience, but better. I love the elder scrolls series, but everytime I go into ESO it just depresses me the current state of that shit. It's got to be the least social MMO I've ever played. Then you get into endgame stuff like raiding and the combat is a pile of shit that feels horrible. I mean their latest expansion, the big thing was an imbalanced/poorly designed card game that they'll probably not update for another month.
Feels like every major RPG project from 2008-2020 were pretty much forced to become some kind of MMO or online service trash.
Like SWTOR was clearly just KOTOR 3 with extra steps and all the bad aspects of MMOs with none of the good, ESO is a strictly worse skyrim experience, GW2 and WOW are pretty much in the same camp now, do dailies and farm bosses
It was always the holy grail for MMOs to become more dynamic where community input affected the world both directly (Who owned what territory) and indirectly (people working for one faction more than the other will ultimately change a certain outcome.)
Instead MMOs were streamlined and dumbed down for min-maxing nerds who think that any dynamics = imbalanced garbage that needs to be ripped out so they can design cleaner spreadsheets.
Because MMOs essentially evolved into escapism simulators. People want word to be in with others around, doesn't mean they want to interact with others, but the sheer fact there are people running around doing their own shit enough for them to feel invested in. On that note i would question the notion of people being less social, in fact modern mmo players are much more social on average, they just don't want to be forced into social core gameplay. There is a reason all the side activities are so popular, both official and unofficial, from huge jack off to housing, casinos and dress up all the way to wow stormwind guard guilds, xiv nightclubs and erp.
Yeah I mean in the way of socialization, you do have niche stuff like that. I wouldn't say housing is "social". At least not in games like ESO or SWTOR. They're mainly social in regards to RP guilds and that's about it. The average player will rarely visit another house. But the average player is sorta what I'm talking about. Where you log in, play, and just chit chat with others around you. Zone chat, local chat, etc. Most average players will rarely communicate with other players in a social manner (beyond LFG type of conversations). Even in instanced content like LFD/LFR stuff in WoW, the people in those groups will rarely talk to one another. If you go out and join very specific niche guilds that are focused around RP aspects, yeah they do communicate. But I don't think the average player would be in one of those.
What I find is that these average player's socialization got outsourced. It used to be in game. But now it's mainly in various discords and twitch chats. Both of which I'm not a fan of because they are either unhealthy (twitch) or they sorta defeat the purpose of a MMO in the first place (discord). Like I can go play a game like vermintide, join their official discords, and do it that way. And it provides the same experience as something like WoW. Instanced group content where most of the socialization is happening in discord.
There are exceptions to this. Gw2 is fairly social. Which is probably one of the main reasons I'll pop in to play that every once in awhile. But that's the only "mainstream" MMO that I can think of where it happens to such a degree. The rest are a hit or miss (games like ESO being more of a miss).
DAoC held up much better because it had 3 sides. It wasn't perfect for sure, but it is a better solution than 2 factions.
No. Classic and retail are living off of the legacy of what was. Both are P2W as frick and you can unironically pay your way to end-game with full BIS gear without ever having to do much of anything. The soul of classic died within a few months and now it's a corpse infested by casuals who think they're hardcore raiders for beating solved content with the most meta gear and best comp with all the consumables when the difficulty was in progging them when they were new.
>wow
>mmorpg
>difficult
No MMORPG has ever been difficult. The fun was playing in a living, breathing, dynamic Azeroth with your friends and pretending to be an Alliance Footman or Horde Grunt or whatever Warcraft hero you wanted to be.
Classic sucked because all the autistic nerd friends got pushed to the fringes of the internet by normalgays a long time ago. Everyone rushed to max level, beat all the content and asked where the content was. They all skipped it and played the gay shit instead.
Also being on the 1.12 patch meant that everything was nerfed so it was just like retail where gearscore = win
That was always the case, it just wasn't always as obvious as Hunter = Agility + Crit.
The WoW ost can hit you like a train if you haven't touched the game in years. Recently listened to the Elmwyn forest ost and got regressed to childhood. I want to go back bros... but the azeroth I grew up in no longer exists...
Found this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=759X-uOaWio
Why are there two guys with female avatars?
Ive tried classic twice. It's one of the most boring experiences in present gaming.
You have bad taste and that’s fine.
there are games that respect your time, money and intellect. WoW doesn't. You may play it to be able to talk to the rest, but other then that: No.
If you wanna go hard in an MMO, play EVE. If you wanna have a gr<eat time for a good price for a long time with great people, play Guild Wars 2.
Its ok and by today standards its decent. Most people who say its bad are usually using the past as a comparison. If you wanted to see what WoW was like back in the day, you had to play Classic WoW vanilla for the first ~3 months. That's as close as you could get. What you saw was.
1. People not just sitting inside major cities waiting for lobby queues to pop
2. People working together to take on group quests while leveling
3. People casually chit chatting while leveling and being social
4. People trying to form rapport with other players, especially tanks and healers
5. Generally people super positive and good vibes
I've never seen anything like it since sadly. Most MMORPGs now a days are glorified bad singleplayer games. It's such a shame.
>Play ESO
Combat sucks. Everyone ignores one another. Most players treat it as a singleplayer RPG.
>Play WoW
Sit in the main city and wait for queues
>Play FF14
Pretty similar to WoW
>Play Gw2
Honestly the best out of the bunch. People actually talk to one another in this one. Endgame lacks depth though because of combat + horizontal progression
>SWTOR
Another ESO, just without as bad combat
>New World
Had the most promise. Disasters launch, boring world, lack of direction in development (hoping to god it makes a comeback later this year)
Only MMOs that are super old and have real sweaty niche audiences (like eve) that feel at least somewhat old school in design and audience.
>I've never seen anything like it since sadly.
honestly, the last time i remember seeing a game where people were like that was back around 2006-2007 in runescape. its been a long time. i didnt get to play classic due to work related stuff during classic's prime, and i regret not being able to. ive tried a lot of these new mmos like ffxiv, but none of them come close to being on par with the experiences we yearn to experience again. honestly ffxiv was one of the dullest mmos ive played, and the setting + endless cut scenes put me to sleep multiple times after long days at work.
Private servers sure.
The actual developers (I.E. grifters who didn't do shit to make these games, just keep them on life support) actively hate you and their playerbase and spend all the subscription money you feed them to virtue signal while the games you loved playing rot and die.
At least with a private server you can play this shit in their prime, whichever era you'd like, without giving these grifters any money.
I wish i played classic more when it was actually alive. I was still in Uni when it launched but my life is shit now anyways, i heavily regret every moment i spent doing anything that wasnt levelling when i had the chance
It was my last chance to be a true junkie and actually have it be worth it
It really wouldn't mean much to anyone who wasn't there for the original vanilla release, in my opinion. I had a great time reliving those memories. But if you weren't a player of the OG release, then yeah it wouldn't have been that big of an issue. The "fun" times lasted for like 1-2 months. Then the internet, as usual, ruined it. Everyone wanted to be like their streamers. They wanted world firsts. Achievement focused as the modern MMORPG community shitters are now a days. That's when mage boosting got way out of hand. That's when gold buying started. That's when botting exploded.
You just have to watch for the next major hyped MMORPG to release. The first 1-3 months of any MMORPG are always magical cause everyone is discovering things together. I think the next "major" one like this will probably be ashes of creation. But that will easily be another 2-6 years out sadly.
I was there for much of launch but i had to take a hiatus for money and school reasons. When i came back the overworld was nothing but horde gankers and my friends were pissed that i fell behind
Ahh well I think wotlk is gonna be interesting. I think a lot of people are going to return and the first few months will be close to the same. They're doing fresh servers too. Ima try both the normal server and fresh. If the vibe on fresh is good instead of just a bunch of sweaty private server dudes, that would be good. If its not the vibe I like, then ima just go back to the normal and experience that initial wotlk leveling rushing.
>It really wouldn't mean much to anyone who wasn't there for the original vanilla release
It definitely wasn't the same but I really enjoyed the launch of classic. Helped that I went in with a group of friends, one who never even experienced pre-cata wow, and had a great time until we had to raid.
Overall it was still a 9/10 time, very happy that I went and did it.
Not anymore!
So I’m interested in playing turtle wow, how does it compare to classic launch? Are 40 man raids doable or are they laggy bug fests? What about pvp?
If you scroll on Ganker, you do not belong on turtle wow. They actively moderate channels and any sort of talk against their agenda will lead to you being promptly muted and eventually banned.
I was gonna do WoW but blizz were going to shit at the time and a friend was recommending XIV instead (also it's trial was better).
Heard that you can only play the game's story in order after the current expansion, all dungeons/raids/trials are dead or some bullshit like that, that still true?
XIV got me good for the themepark MMO experience. For me: It was always gonna be the lore and the older shit but blizz just couldn't sell it to me for less than Square could.
Don't really care about PVP, don't care about endgame raiding. What I do care about are comfy dungeon & quest experiences with other players for several year old content. Is it really true that's dead?
ascension wow is pretty fun
Classic was good for a bit but it's boring now. They ruined the shit by making everyone min max for raids. All this gay parse shit too, the game is actually a job now.
Leveling from 1 to 60 is some of the most fun you can have. Everything after that is pretty boring
>be me non WoW player
>friends always talk about WoW on discord
>"WoW is the shit"
>convince me to play for free till i get the 20 lvl cap
>pay the month
>play as palladin
>"well this fricking sucks"
>shit graphics
>shit storyline
>shit combat mode
>level cap
>shit pvp modes
>realize my frens who play this shit call people by their pronouns, hate trump, are gay, transexuals, such
>epiphany hit
>this is a gay game played by gay fricks and gayer people
>uninstal
>played only 2 days and got lvl cap
>started playing chivalry
>no regrets
frick this gay ass game
>is it worth it
Hard to say, Retail is a fricking joke, and private servers aren't better.
Most are a quick cashgrab (Everlook is gonna be a cashgrab, and anything by Shenna/Crogge should be avoided at all costs).
Try finding a custom server.