If people will accept the premise of this thread, a lot of the angst here will dissolve. Classic and Retail aren’t merely different games, they are different types of games. That endgame raiding in Classic is easy makes no difference, because it isn’t an action game.
Vanilla is best categorized as the mainstreamed endpoint of UO to EQ to WoW.
And it’s BC-Wrath … BfA. BC was the precursor to the modern game, as it shifted emphasis to gameplay and away from being an RPG. It’s true that the action aspects of Vanilla felt more challenging at the time — and actually were, given a new playerbase along with hardware and tech limitations — but the essence of reviving Classic always was about RPG.
People who trashtalk Classic because of easy reading thus miss the point, and it’s up to the Classic community not to take the bait. None of us who plays Retail can seriously argue that it’s an RPG. There are bits and pieces, but just look at what Blizz has done to professions to see how little the devs emphasize RPG components at this point.
That’s what I think Retail is missing and what Classic has to contribute going forward. But everyone should have known modern players would stomp Vanilla raids. It was a given, and that’s fine.
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One of the core elements of an RPG is a lack of required player skill. The skill comes from the character.
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I think classic/vanilla is a better game overall, but some things from retail are alright I think. You can like some things and dislike others. M+, raid difficulty and arenas are all things that you just can’t get in classic, but tbh I think they’re things that should have been broken off into totally separate games years ago (honestly if arenas became a standalone game at the end of wrath I think it could have had LoL/Dota-levels of success).
You can’t combine an mmo with an arena pvp game with a instanced dungeon crawler game and still maintain rpg elements. It just doesn’t work. And when you get to the top the meta becomes so polarized in terms of class balance just by the nature of the systems.
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Just a minor clarification, you mean it is “better” for people who prefer RPG’s correct? Obviously if you prefer action games retail would be “better” for you.
Ya true. I guess my point was that blizzard tried so hard to appeal to so many demographics of gamers that the true heart/soul (I really hate the “soul” meme but it applies here) of the game was lost somewhere along the line.
There wasn’t one thing that “ruined” retail wow, it was a death by a thousand needles over time
Seconded for emphasis and agreement.
I agree, although I think there was one needle which started the Avalanche. Mixed my metaphors a bit there.
An interesting note about each of those needles is that I felt the pain of none of them individually. I loved flying. I didn’t care about lfg. I didn’t care about additional flight paths, Etc.
Only when perceived as a whole from the future do I understand what I did.
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I think retail is just inherently more competitive and prone to elitism. The community became more impatient as time wore on to the point that a single wipe would almost always lead to the group disbanding after a bunch of trashtalking.
Also, my favorite things to do - leveling and BGs - became unrewarding, nearly pointless processes, and moreso with each expansion. Arenas, Dailies, Mythics, and the ever-increasing number of reputation grinds made the game less and less appealing to me, and made the community that much worse IMO.
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I agree and have defended Blizzard on that basis. They had no choice to evolve the game toward gameplay, given that everyone had leveled at least one character and were ready for something new without having to backtrack.
That’s why I view Classic as distinct from every expansion. Its priorities could be and were different. I just think it’s unfortunate to see so much discussion here about the easy or difficulty of raiding. That’s a fair criticism of the xpacs, but not the original game in my opinion.
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