2004 Vanilla and ERA were both designed to not run forever

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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ERA players have been hashing out, for days now, talks about why or why not MoS should return. It has mostly been civil discussions… I want to bring a point that I think we all will need to talk about at some time or another.

Both the 2004 vanilla as well as the 2019 release of classic, were both designed to only be running for a limited time. They simply were never designed to run forever and we are already seeing some of those effects.

Though many, myself included, don’t want to admit it, there WILL come a time when world buff drops become rarer and rarer. Where the player base dwindles and aspects of the game don’t function as intended or don’t function at all.

There will come a time where we will have to make decisions about what to do to combat this.

So my question is, if we are opposed to a objectively small change in MoS, what will we have to do to combat this issue when there are so few fresh 60s coming in that even the more popular world buffs aren’t being dropped? World buffs are a huge aspect of classic and part of what makes classic, well, classic. Simply not having them wouldnt be sufficient.

We can tell ourselves that will never happen, but imagine 3 or maybe even 4 years down the line… what do you think ERA will look like? Will it be a place you want to continue playing?

I just ask you to think along with me and brainstorm what you think ERA will look like in the future, and what, if anything, there is we can do to help keep this wonderful version called ERA going.

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When era was low pop people would create new toons for rend quest and scheduel the buff never doubt peoples ability to make sure the buff goes out

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We even scheduled Battlegrounds when we were low pop and there were more rats in stormwind than players.

What people asking for homogenization seem to forget is the game is an RPG, and things should be different and unique in an RPG.

IMO, homogenization belongs in games like SOD, CATA and Retail where that stuff has a place in powergamer culture.

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Vanilla wow was created and designed at a time when the only thought was putting out a cool game for people to play. Outland came about as an internal project both pitted against and developed in conjunction with the release of vanilla.

Blizzard was actively seeking a replacement game for Wow, due to the massively unfinished nature of Vanilla. If you think it’s a ‘completed game experience’ well that’s Blizzard Marketing for you.

Basically, some large % of the game was never even started for vanilla. Much of it was moved to TBC and the design of moving everyone to a new place, adding new level cap, new items more powerful than anything else before it… the WORST aspects of this game, was done as a byproduct of ‘TBC is ready for launch.’

It had nothing to do with intentional design in any capacity, and the haphazard nature of early Blizzard, especially during Wow’s early days, nearly prevented the game from being developed at all. Every aspect of the game you regard as ‘meticulously hand-crafted for a perfect online play experience’ is actually just ‘what Blizzard devs were able to cobble together in time for release.’

That whole design-by-committee approach everyone loathes and no one at blizzard will acknowledge as bad, let alone do away with. The Merits of Vanilla wow is that it was MOSTLY a great play experience, despite it being largely haphazard and unfinished. That’s why people gravitate toward Vanilla ERA and ask for those servers.

Because Blizzard just happened to hit a ball deep into left field, long enough for a couple runners to advance. But then the coach saw the team hit the ball into Deep Left and decided to move the entire outfield and shortstop into deep left, released TBC, WOTLK, CATA, MOP, ect, ect. Here we are, on TWW, Blizzard still has half their team in deep left field, anticipating a triple.

Really, what we need is a new coach. Someone who knows how to play baseball, how to get on first, advance to second, and use Deep Left when they want to force a home, rather than it being the only strat they are capable of. Blizzard is the worst baseball team manager in the world, and it shows.

If you want anything to last long term, your best bet is to NOT play a blizzard product, or pick one they themselves have forgotten about (starcraft, Warcraft, you know, the lame stuff).

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It’s a great experience, not despite the haphazard development process, but because of it. Every time Blizzard tries to do WoW polished (expansions, SoD, etc…) it ends up polishing the player-driven aspect of the game. Vanilla/Era is unique in that it’s the only version of Wow that has unplanned emergent gameplay come from it that wasn’t “corrected”.

If Blizzard had time to design Vanilla exactly how they wanted it to be, it still would have been a successful game, but people wouldn’t keep coming back for it. It would be as hollow as retail: finish the designed play, then move on.

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Right, it’s impossible to recapture that haphazard design, and instead of trying, let’s try really hard to one-up it for the next 20 years (unsuccessfully).

It also needs to be understood that there wasn’t a plan to go beyond Vanilla, at least not until it launched the way it did. The game would have been largely a completed, polished game, with some aspects seemingly haphazardly approached.

It’s the fact that Blizzard is willing to spend all that time and energy only to let another group of devs come in and ‘fix an unbroken clock’ and then try to build Wow upon the ‘a broken clock is right twice a day’ approach. Honestly, I root for PRIVATE SERVERS now and hope Wow sunsets soon. I hope the reception of WWI is sooo low they rethink having two expansions pre planned and announced.

I’m just going to wait until the 3rd one to bother buying anything or resubbing, letting whatever catch-up mechanics get me up to speed after a 4 year hiatus (hopefully, a dev reads this and the sheer incompetence of standard Blizzard design philosophies hit them square in the jaw).

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Took me a second to realise you weren’t saying they were recreating world war 1.

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xD I did it subconsciously. Really meant TWW.

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World buffs are literally MORE plentiful today on Era than they were 3 years ago.

3 years is longer than the entire lifespan of original WoW and also longer than 2019 Classic.

You will never run out. The more people that play Era, the more world buffs there will be. Even long-time players will make new characters.

Changes that bring more people to Era will only increase the availability of buffs. When people stop playing, then buffs dry up.

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Dont let him trick you, he wants to nerf the game.

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Thanks for the reminder of just how much I detest sports analogies.
Not meaning to pick on you but most of them are bad in the extreme or some homer bloviating on tv/social media.

But they have plans I’m sure for Remastered lame stuff. Which will flop.

Kudos I guess to Garlic’s super new and improved approach to convince people to enable his ezbuff MoS addiction. But yeah - as long as Blizzard lets the game continue to run players will level new characters …
For The Horde
nanner

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As long as there are players logging on the game can run forever. The game was designed to have players make it function. Players can ruin it just as much as they can grow it.

Players quiting over a world buff in droves being removed or added is hurting the whole game at the moment. Grow up.

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As long as players have faith in being able to enjoy the experience they intend to have, as in ‘the game didn’t suddenly update something to be unenjoyable or removed’ then yeah, players can continue to come.

The argument I find abhorrent is the: we need updates and new content or players won’t continue to play.’ False. Look at classic. Just look.

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Yep… A game doesnt need content and updates. Just like when we were playing PS1 games or bricker games on the N64. They were complete and never needed content or expansions. Yet they are still being played actively by speed runners or casual retro enjoyers.

The no changes movement people seem to keep spouting was botched even before release of 2019. Because of LAYERS. It was a gameplay change and created segmented communities and far more access to gear and farming.

Layers opened the door to changes in the future and people should have stonewalled blizzard right then and there but they got sweet talked into them in fear of losing out on progression with 1 layer realms and competition or server performance loss.

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Currently playing Gran Turismo 3. Legit fun times.

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I think the statement about them being “more plentiful” could be more anecdotal than anything. I remember drops back in 2019 version were pretty much happening on CD, and that was on Old Blanchy, the most dad server there ever was.

Let it also be known that there were so many different servers, so people’s experiences might be different depending on that fact.

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After all the embellishment that is this thread.
Under the sugar coating of community, longevity of the game (that is still going strong 20ys on), or whatever else “please for the children” excuse they have.

The bottom line is, they want to adapt Era to their current meta side game on a third party website.

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Exactly this! All I hear when I read these threads is “me, me, me, me, me, me”

“It’s easier for me” “I have adult responsibilities now, so the game should change” “I don’t have time” “it takes so much effort to exploit the game to get a buff that really wasn’t intended for me in the first place”

Maybe Era isn’t the game for you then, you know? If you truly loved Era, you would understand why it’s important to leave it alone. But no, it’s just a list of selfish reasons why this change should occur.

And in before “you’re posting on a retail character, you don’t even play Era” - this is the first character I ever created, so she’s my forum avatar. I play both Horde and Alliance on Windseeker Era.

#stopmakingchanges

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If you read my post and actually read it without putting your own spin on what you think I was saying, I made the post to try to work together with both points of view.

Again, I didnt think you of all people would be able to work together because all you do is bring up random political comments trying to bait people into a discussion that has nothing to do with anything we are discussing.

Why are you that way?

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I read your “story”, tell it how you want, because that’s what it is.