Perhaps I should’ve explained more because people will always assume that’s meant as a dismissive insult (I suppose I can’t blame them because it often is).
Classic isn’t meant for the people who want “Retail features”. The whole reason why Classic exists at all is because, despite all of the money Activision made by forcing WoW down the path of Retail, an enormous number of players were sick of it. So much that they decided to host private realms when they were continually denied the “Legacy servers” they spent a decade pleading for.
Activision Blizzard was never going to fund the creation of a version of WoW without all the monetizations and “accessibility” or roll back all of the changes because modern Retail was astronomically more profitable. So they kept saying “No”. That is, until the number of people who wanted “Gameplay First” again grew to such a critical mass that Activision could no longer ignore how profitable appealing to that part of the playerbase would be.
Make no mistake, Classic is absolutely NOT meant for the majority of Activision Blizzard’s audience. Activision Blizzard understands their majority customer demographic very well. And that’s why Retail is what it is. The majority of people are “casual”, which is why the casual player has been the primary beneficiary of nearly every single significant change to WoW since Activision merged with Blizzard’s parent company in 2008.
Retail is what you get when WoW appeals to the majority of players. When someone wants these things implemented in Classic, I see no option that makes more sense than for them to simply play Retail instead of asking for Blizzard to undermine the very reason why Classic exists in the first place.
While I think those people against LFD will still play regardless, I don’t think its a problem they don’t care. Because I don’t think anyone cares about what others think. Pro LFD people aren’t any better or worse.
The difference is mindset and how far back you go WoW wise. If you started in Vanilla 15+ years ago, prog raided , Vanilla you were of a certain mold. The people that are left now, are of a different mold. And that includes Classic Vanilla as well, to a lesser degree than now. Naxx happened giving guilds a little bit adversity and they folded like lawn chairs.
While I think it’s hilarious the current player base is no different than 15 years ago, I completely understand why a lot of people want it. It’s not a personal thing. It’s a generational thing. The further back you go, in general, you’ll at least see value different things.
Nah I think if you went back and offered LFD to vanilla players back in the day they would have jumped all over it. Just like they did with BG’s and CRBG’s.
But we didn’t. So we valued different things. I’m genuinely curious Zir, what was your favorite xpac anyway. I know you just want to troll, but It’d be interesting to know.
Wrath was my favorite expansion, that was the point where blizzard got the formula just about as right as they ever have. There was tons of content to do at all levels of play from super casual through super hardcore, pvp through pve and class balance was over all pretty decent.
But anyways I was playing since vanilla and yes CRBG’s were generally very welcomed by the community at the time. Ironically the people upset about CRBG’s sound basically the same as people upset about LFD namely, “the current system happens to work perfectly for me because i’m lucky enough to be in the right situation”
From what i know, I do think the achievement system is pretty cool. But for me, the cons just out weight the pros.
Wrath just doesn’t seem like the xpac for me. Wrath was the anti Vanilla. I loved it. Most people now, don’t. Which is totally fine. I personally loved the 40 man, the large raid sizes, the grind, the gate keeping, the totem pole of guilds i.e. not everyone gets to do everything. Sure, it was a pain in the butt and I won’t argue with anyone who thinks it’s terrible, but it valued, for lack of a better term, distinction over homogenization.
Well do you think launch or very early vanilla was better than 1.12 or that 1.12 was an improvement over launch?
Because I would say that Wrath the culmination of design ideas started in vanilla. And if you want to go to other games in the genre particularly EQ vanilla at launch was by design what lead to Wrath. I mean that was one of what lead to me playing WoW in the first place, it being warcraft and at the time blizzard was generally solid and that it was a casual friendly version of EQ.
My opinion is falls in the tiny percentage of progression raiders, so it’s not necessarily indicative of what’s better. For me, 1.12 was no different than 1.1 because the grind and the progression “feel” was the same if not more intensive and I was more burnt out.
That being said, 1.12 was probably for those trying to “catch up” and for the casual. So I’d say 1.12 was an improvement despite what my experience was.
But either way, even though Wrath might have been more of a polished product and design wise objectively better, it doesn’t seem like the right xpac for me, anyway. I just value different things.
Edit: And when WoW came out, the people I knew playing EQ told me “Hey, they have a game out for noobs like you”. I hosting my own MuD at the time.
It’s funny you would claim it’s about “gameplay first” when the game play people will use without the RDF is staring at the lfg channel or sitting afk at the dungeon entrance while a made is paid to run it. With the RDF the players are actually engaging in Game play
That’s cool if wrath didn’t click for you it didn’t click. Personally vanilla was this porridge is good, TBC was this porridge is really good, and wrath was this porridge is just perfect. Then things started to go down hill.
Sorry, I’m not really experienced with the html on these forums but I’m sure you get the gist. And I’ve skimmed a lot of this thread so I have NO doubt the guy was probably being inflammatory to you, but if you actually do want a discussion (and I’m starting to believe you actually do) on these forums, name calling definitely doesn’t help.
Anyways…personally, I’m willing to admit that I only played vanilla Classic servers until level 58 before quitting, and boosted a character on BC Classic servers to 58 and it’s still sitting at 63. I did originally start playing WoW at the end of vanilla so I was fully familiar with how BC leveling would be, but it didn’t take very long for me to see that those two iterations of Classic weren’t for me.
That being said, I was waiting excitedly for WotLK Classic knowing it was one of my favorite expansions, and that it had LFD in it originally. Telling someone to go play retail just doesn’t cut it, because they want to play that WotLK Classic for a lot of the same reason the anti-LFD crowd does. Nostalgia, it being one of their favorite expansions, wanting to play that raid content again at level, among other reasons. Retail does not provide that now. It’s extremely difficult to find full guilds that turn off their XP gains in order to play that content at level, and even if someone could find them, it’s not the same because a lot of the systems have changed.
And I think you’re gonna find some disagreement about everything you said being the reason Classic exists in the first place. For many people, Classic exists for the reasons I said above.
The short reply here is to say that we can speculate what opinion is in the majority but, without a player poll, there is no way to be certain what opinion is the true consensus among players. I think that the fact that Blizz conveniently refuses to do a player poll on this issue (that several of us have been asking for) is indicative that their “consensus” is actually not a consensus at all. If I saw a player poll where the non-LFD crowd actually was the consensus, I wouldn’t be such a voice of opposition. However, Blizz infamously ignores the will of their patrons and has a long history of telling us what we want without doing any actual fact finding into the matter.
see that was the same mentality when LFD was added in retail. Did subs rise after that, nope, they took a drastic turn south and never came back. It killed the social aspect, whether the social part was forced or not, it was still there. Taking away the option to que with random people solves this issue in a sense. IF given the option to save time, the majority are going to do it and avoid the chat channels. Take that option away, a few retail junkies that will leave classic anyways might quit, but the rest will form their groups and move on. If anyone thinks that social media and forum posts speak for the masses, I already give up trying to explain how the LFD tool was the beginning of the end for WOW. Why make this same mistake twice? I’m against the whole nochanges thing, I want them to fix some of the mistakes they made with each expansion they re-do, and like it or not, LFD is gonna alienate the true hardcore players, the ones who will stay the entire life cycle. I get it time is precious, I work 40+ hours most week, I understand. But at the same time, I would rather get less done while having an engaging experience than return to this rush fest the retail junkies want. That’s not what this game was about, and never should have become.
Subs stayed the same for two quarters after the lfd was add then rose for two quarters. It was for over a year after the release of the lfd that subs started to decline.
Let’s actually break down what you’re saying – Do you mean that you think there isn’t a vast difference in gameplay between Classic and Retail? I mean, whether you think the gameplay of Classic is better or not, do you actually disagree with me that Activision only influenced WoW to optimize it for profits?
I think you’re probably going to find a lot of people who disagree with you if you don’t think that old WoW and Retail are only different because of game design itself and not because of Blizzard’s parent company desecrating the game with the cash shop, accessibility and grindy busy work gameplay loops that no one wanted.
Haha, OH. He was being a dick to me. I don’t know what you want from me. xD I was being perfectly friendly the whole time and this person decides to dismiss everything I’ve said and say that the things that matter to me are “imaginary and made up”. Yeah. That’s a dick move. That’s not me insulting someone. That’s calling them out for not being willing to have a civil conversation. I’m honestly quite amazed that I’m the one you take issue with in that interaction, unless you’re only paying attention to me because we disagree (which I’d understand).
Yeah, I can understand that. Like I’ve said here, I don’t take any pleasure in people’s disappointment over Dungeon Finder. I really do wish that everyone could be happy. We just see it differently though. I’ll admit I should’ve actually explained myself more rather than making it seem like I wanted to dismiss people’s concerns by saying “Play Retail”. I definitely didn’t mean for it to be an insult.
Yeah, that’s understandable too. After all, getting roughly the same experience from Classic as I did originally is the only thing I’ve expected from the WoW team since they announced it. I get that the people who just wanted the same experience aren’t getting what they wanted. That’s definitely a sucky situation to be in.
To be fair, not everything in the game should be determined by what’s popular. This is another situation where majority preference should be secondary.
I don’t think the sub numbers can be attributed to Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder. At least, not until their effects had run their course. Every major spike in the game’s subscriber count coincided with a significant content release. And I think every major drop was because of a culmination of things; not any single feature.
Of course there’s a vast difference. Dozens of changes of which the lfd was just one and in my opinion not the largest or most meaningful of those many changes. That’s why it’s stupid when people say if you want the lfd go back to retail. To get the lfd by going back to retail I’d have to deal with dozens of changes the vast majority I don’t like. I wouldn’t play retail with all those bad changes just to get the good one I like, the lfd.
I agree completely. I only point out that subs stayed the same or increased for about 16 months after the lfd was added when people falsely claim subs dropped after the lfd was added. The lfd neither caused the increase nor the decrease that started in Cata.