Anyone find Classic's appeal troubling for the mmo genre?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Imagine if you will that the most popular and played FPS game of 2004 is The Ultimate Doom. No Wads or anything new. Just regular old The Ultimate Doom. Now keep imaging that in 2005 it is still The Ultimate Doom, along with 2006, 2007, and so on and so forth until we get to today.

I know the MMO genre is a niche genre, but so is the FPS genre. Not everyone plays MMOs, just like how not everyone plays FPS games. You may have touched one in the past, but the same goes for both genres. While the FPS genre reached a boom in the mid 2000’s and have settled down dramatically since then, the same went for MMO’s.

The only difference between the two genres is that FPS’s have made many advancements over the years while MMO’s have mostly stagnated. Wow is still the most played and talked about MMO on the market today, and it is 15 years old. The love for classic shows that many, many, many, many people love the game for what it was.

Is that necessarily good, though?

The Ultimate Doom is awesome, especially with wads, but it is extremely dated compared to today’s standards for FPS.

What about MMOs? You cannot hide behind the argument that it is a “niche” genre, because that can only lost so long…like you think you do but you don’t. Looking at classic’s success so far, I see only trouble for the genre as a whole. When a genre fails to advance for so long, and when the most played and loved game for that genre is a 15 year old game showing its age, then that genre will implode upon itself once that old game is still no longer loved. Seriously, what are we gonna do past classic? TBC? Then what? Wrath? What about after that? Cata again? Are we then going to go back and say that we need classic again once Cata is done with? I do not believe classic will have the longevity people believe it will have. I remember people saying it will take months to reach to sixty. Those same people had surprise pikachu face on when sixties were popping up within the first couple days of classics release.

While i love classic so far, i do not see this as a good sign for the genre. Its like walking outside and seeing people still driving around Model T’s because…why improve at all?

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Classic is a sandbox. We will see what people make of it. Gamers are more sophisticated today than in the past. Players who need “on rails” content that just leads them along will stay with modern WoW and do whatever the game designers tell them to do. Classic will hopefully foster emergent player activity. People will do more of what they want to do.

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I… really don’t understand the point of this post. Your sole argument seems to be that a genre must change and (the only tangible point you made) visually improve. Why? Not sure, you never stated “why”, just that change is necessary.

If anything, the “old style” MMORPGs having staying power is showing that MMORPGs don’t serve a single market, but two distinct markets. Retail and Classic are touching on both of those markets respectively.

i don’t see what the problem is.

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It’s more about nostalgia. When things aren’t so great in the present, people want an escape and look to the past.

The Gen X and Gen Y crowd are getting old enough to pine for the good ol’ days. Vanilla was one of best (for gamers) back then.

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There are not 2 distinct markets. there are many different playstyles. Or at least there were, until devs decided to enforce a one-size-fits-all gameplay.

Look at what happened to twinking. By eliminating xp off players from xp on queues, they forced a lot of players out of the game. They’re gone now.

But look! If you level up to 120 and gear up your toon to the eyeballs, you can group with a token low level, queue up for a low level dungeon, and pretend to twink! Kewl, eh?

What could possibly go wrong with this?

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It will take anyone that has a life/responsibilities months to reach 60.

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to be fair they disable twinking because the community complained.

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Gamers are more used to totally dumbed-down MMOGs like BFA where the RP aspect was jettisoned years ago.

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I think all genres are in a bit of trouble because this whole instant gratification/loot box style of reward system is now everywhere. Everything seems like it’s just about doing it as fast as possible so you can pull the handle on the slot machine and then do it again and again. It feels like the focus has moved away from environment, community and story-telling.
It’s not just a retail wow problem or a mmo problem.

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There absolutely are. Games like Pantheon (if it ever releases) aim to serve a market that more closely overlaps Classic WoW than Retail WoW.

The distinct markets are loosely separated by those who desire instant gratification (the sense of notable progress in bite-sized chunks of time), and those who enjoy decidedly more slow paced content that isn’t even necessarily ‘hard’, just time consuming.

The “there’s dozens of us, dozens!” meme comes to mind when you talk about XP off/twinks. That’s embarrassing to even imply it’s a notable chunk of player. There’s a reason Blizzard reacted to the vast majority that disliked the behavior of the XP off crowd. Money talks, and the XP off crowd wasn’t spending enough of it.

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To be accurate, next to no one complained until after they announced they were removing it.

I’m not saying there weren’t longstanding issues. But my observation is that after announcing they were going to eliminate xp off options for 110+ players, there was a huge forum backlash and they backed down.

And then, suddenly there was a giant wave of previously unknown posters (actually not all that many) posting threads, cross-posting on each other’s threads and demanding that something be done to eliminate the chance of pvp actually happening when their alts were afking in low level bgs.

Months later they stealth removed xp off from queues with no notice. People had to figure out for themselves what had happened.

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I hope classic do something similar of what Runescape did, they launched the old version, it was a success and they decided to launch content for it, keeping what brought people back. Wow retail lost the sense of community, challenge, hard work and accomplishment that is fundamental to an RPG.

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lol. Classic/vanilla is a dumbed down version of retail WoW. Think about it. If EA released an mmorpg in exactly the same form as Classic/vanilla in 2020, they would be laughed at. “The character models look outdated.” “Ooh, see how easy the dungeons and raids are.” “The leveling is so simplistic.” Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

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your implying the retail version of the game is an improvment over the fun had in classic, retail makes me want to logout when i login. classic makes me want to skip work/sleep to keep playing

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If more games were made like they were in the late 90s/early 00s the industry would be way better. Every single major franchise that I can think of just got worse and worse and worse and worse. We switched from an industry of gamers making games they wanted to play, to corporate board rooms making games that will net them the most profit for their shareholders. Almost every new gaming trend has not been with the player’s enjoyment or experience in mind (micro-transactions, time gated metric-based design, releasing unfinished games that you have to buy dlc for to complete, releasing games basically in their alpha state to meet deadlines, etc). They’re made with your wallet in mind, and the $60 (in some cases $80) for a new game isn’t enough.

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Some gamers are accustomed to doing what game ‘designers’ tell them to do. Not all of us, though.

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That’s a really good point. Older players experienced a much different gaming industry that a lot of younger players never did.

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Wildstar tried the hardcore route, which meant making an mmo more like vanilla. It was a tedious, massive time sink which required committed players (see the 40 man raids). Wildstar didn’t even even last five years.

But if you have $50 million-$100 million (U.S.) to sink into a brand new mmorpg to clone vanilla, go for it!

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I think it’s important to understand that Wildstar tried to make vanilla accessible to everyone, and even marketed it that way. It was never marketed as having a targeted audience. It was marketed as… well… what people claim Classic+ would be. Both sides didn’t find it to their liking, and it tanked.

What I am very curious about is a game like Pantheon (should it ever release). That one is actually being marketed as an old school mechanics MMORPG. It understands from the outset that it’s a niche market and isn’t trying to get people from Retail WoW over to play it.

If Pantheon fails, I feel that may be what seals the deal and ensures no developers attempt a new MMORPG with old school MMORPG elements again.

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MMOs have declined quite a bit. They’ve become mostly Pub style Sand Box Customization MOBA MMORPGs these days. WoW Classic was kind of an adventure theme park style MMO. I think it has to do with the generation. Kids these days don’t care for adventure style games. If you look at games before and games now, they went from very adventure/exploration style games to just action/fighting games. The gogo zoomer retail players are sort of responsible for the change in WoW as well. They wanted to rush to max level and do only endgame content trying to bypass the process of becoming a level 60. Blizzard listened to them and starting from TBC it was just a big rush to max level fest then endgame only matters.

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