At least last time I played that's still how it rolls, it's just randos in heirloom gear now 2-shotting people in quest greens. Admittedly not all of them actually L2P, so it's not hopeless, but it's still a pretty uphill battle if you're just starting out or levelling on a new server in a different battle group. Assuming they truly make it classic-style, leveling is likely to take that long. ;)



While I don't often come to Blizz's defense...in this case I will. The server mergers were a reaction to all the things that had already changed, at least outside the small percent of truly high pop servers.

I played on a variety of servers (I was an alt-oholic) and saw the loss of community in a number of ways (trolling and gold sale spamming as the only things happening in genchat, as exhibit A), but spent a few months leveling ally on one of those notorious 90% horde PVP servers, and it was totally amusing to evade attackers. But with a few exceptions the culture was still pretty trollish and crappy.

I mean, most of the time there weren't enough ally players in SW to even try to fend off an invasion. It was humorous in a way, but also kinda sad.

I think what CMOT70 means is the fake server mergers where it pretended people from another realm were in your realm but you couldn't interact with properly. Cross realm zoning is what it was called.

The gold spam comment was funny because some dead servers were empty enough that there wasn't even gold seller spam. It was a situation that should have warranted a class action lawsuit against them for ripping people off.

The main difference about classic is difficulty really, you NEED to group up with others even for PvE content, otherwise you will have a slow, tedious experience of having to rest and eat to regen after every few monsters. Of course most modern wow players are used to being able to single-handedly steamroll PvE content and play wow as a mostly single-player game. I expect the turnover rate for the standard anti-social wow players will be high.

As someone who's never played WoW, what's the appeal of Classic?

In the same vein of kalirion above, is there any appeal in WoW for players who do not care about multiplayer features at all? Meaning, if solo playing against the environment is anything meaningful.

Supposedly a purer experience, in that there are way less mechanics in place that help you along at every corner. Instead you face challenges from the get-go where you have to learn to play your character class to advance and to contribute meaningfully in team efforts (raids mostly, but sometimes also - for example - aiding buddies to get gear in special solo quests). Just speculating a bit, since I only played Vanilla back then (and loved it).

At the time, I was playing Hunter class with a pet I used as a tank (which was a setup that worked for a mostly solo WOW experience) - spent most of my time exploring by myself, doing quests, soloed some stuff even that wasn't meant to be done alone - for a challenge. Loved raid group events too, but the world is beautiful and that by itself provided lots of wonder for me.

I actually joined up for the stress this this weekend because I was bored, figured it was about as much as going to the cinema. I must say it was quite what I had hoped for, I originally started on official servers in TBC which still had most of the 'vanilla/classic' feel.

During this weekend I had a lot more fun than any time I spent in Legion. Getting an item upgrade is actually meaningful, even just upgrading a gray item to a white item meant you'd not get so close to death on the next few mobs. Loads of people were teaming up, there were still mute players but unlike in the modern game general chat was actually being used so things felt more lively.

If you've never played an MMO then it'd be difficult to tell you what the draw really is, but for me back in the day it was primarily the social aspect of it. Everything takes time in this game and you can set your own goals, such as level a character, earn certain gear from specific bosses, earn money from crafting, organize a pvp raid and whatnot. Before the game turned more and more into a 'we as Blizzard will tell you what you should be doing' game loop design people would do funny things just because they could. Stuff like a 5-man team killing a 40-man raid boss just because they could, or a group of people raiding an enemy capital city. The social aspect comes into play as you would basically end up recocnizing names of people who had earned certain gear or accomplished certain things in the game. The old game design allowed people to earn an identity within the game. Most people on my server would know who the top guilds were and commonly knew a few people by their character name as well.

Pretty much all MMO's ive seen rise and fall since have commonly fallen into the same trap of trying to dictate what the player should be doing way too much. Their designs commonly funnel people into timegated tasks with no alternatives (special currencies, stamina systems, dailies/weeklies that provide too much good stuff for time invested etc.) The only time systems you have in WoW are weekly raid locks preventing you from clearing the same raid multiple times and a few crafting related things. If you want to earn something you can progress towards it at your own pace, you won't be bound by real-life time limits. The only time limit is your actual playtime.

I've probably been rambling on for too long, but for me the few days I could play have been enough to show me that this game is indeed what I've been missing in newer MMO's. I have no clue how long I'll last but I'll surely play for a few months while I have time available.

Lots of good points, I'm kind of pondering now whether I should check it out.

I don't think people want "Vanilla" WOW back as much as they want 2005 back.

At least that was my impression from my 6 months on Nostalrius. I don't think Activision/Blizzard can deliver
the atmosphere.

As someone who played WoW for a couple of months in the Burning Crusade I don't know what the appeal of WoW ever was :P

This. I think of the whole endevour as basically Blizzard jumping on the same nostalgic bandwagon that produces all the indie "love letters to 16-bit classics" and "spiritual successors to [insert famous game here]".

Or the Disney remakes. How about the next expansion WoW goes FMV, with Will Smith as Thrall?

Yes, gotta try it if I can find the money for it. Here's hoping it's good.

The Warcraft movie was an experiment to see how that would look, wasn't it? I haven't watched it yet, though I have it on blu-ray.

It was a more challenging and community-driven experience.

- No cross-server anything (except eventually battlegroups), so realms actually have communities rather than a mass of strangers.

- The solo experience is much more challenging, you don't just roflstomp everything you come across, you have to watch what you pull, profession crafted items aren't just a worthless byproduct of skilling up and consumables (potions, food, drink, bandages) are actually helpful.

- You don't just get handed everything as you level up, even basic things like affording all your skills and getting a mount can be tough if you don't know what you're doing.

- No LFD or any kind of matchmaking means you actually have to communicate and travel a lot more.

- The leveling experience is the bulk of the game, it's not a grind that Blizz want you to pay to skip.

- No microtransactions.

I have to say, this is something that always puzzled me to no end. Who buys a game and then pays to skip most of it? Why would you pay for a game that's so not fun to play? I mean, if you apply this to any single player RPG it's I think immediately and obviously ridiculous to everyone.

Honest Trailers Warcraft movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIfbU_nz2UY&
IMO, at some point people became convinced that having the shiniest pixels was the point of the game.

I've mentioned it before, but when Blizzard first introduced "titles" which cost in-game gold, most of the old timers mocked it. Within a year or so, Blizzard had rolled out all kind of crap through the game store which cost IRL money, and it exploded and the damn things were everywhere.

And then paid server transfers, name changes, level boosts, etc. all followed in steady procession.

Plus, if you want to PvP, the loot system rewards those at the top with the best gear. So if you can get to the top first, you can often beat even better players who are still gearing up, which...apparently makes people feel awesome or something.