Classic was a bigger time sink than current retail

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Classic was a bigger time sink than Retail WoW

I’m probably going to get lots of flak for this but I don’t understand the thought process of some people who believe retail is a bigger time sink than classic.

In classic, It takes forever to get anywhere, to get gold (you’ll be lucky to have enough gold to buy a mount at 40), and not to mention how much effort you NEED to put in if you want to be part of an active, raiding guild. I’m talking like guilds who spent 6-7 hours 4-5 nights a week raiding. In addition to that, you also have to gather mats for your potions, go to an instance to make them. Also the fact that you has to have 40 semi-competent raiders and that was no easy feat. I just remember it taking forever to actually gear up and waiting around ages for the group to actually gather those 40 people and move (no luxury of a group finder)

When classic came out back then I had no issues doing all of that as I was still in college, living at home and what not. Nowadays, I can barely spend maybe 1-2 hours a day playing and when I do I’m usually up doing other things and I don’t even have any kids lol.

I guess my question is, why do people think classic isn’t as big of a time sink as retail and how are you going to manage playing it?

I would love to play but I level slow as hell and feel like it’ll take me at least 3-4 months (if that) to get to level 60.

EDIT: SO I guess it’s blatantly obvious that people aren’t reading the whole post and missing my question so i’ll add it again at the end:

I guess my question is, why do people think classic isn’t as big of a time sink as retail and how are you going to manage playing it?

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MMO games are generally unlimited time sinks. I think that’s why they aren’t the most popular nowadays. The tempo is also so slow that it doesn’t make for a very viewer friendly game type.

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You in a race?

How about this, stop worrying about getting to 60 and enjoy the game…take your time, meet some new people and form new relationships.

If you want to get to 60, raid and get all your BIS and then quit…more power to you! It will however leave you empty and missing the point of all of this. The game used to be about more then just gear grinds and daily’s.

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When you enjoy the game it does not matter the time spent playing it.

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Ignored my question but thank you for the response.

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Retail wow isn’t a time sink.

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Potentially, yes. Which is good mmo design. You get out of it what you put into it. Current WoW has abandoned this philosophy. The problem is catering to the entitled mindset that everyone should be able to get the same results. Which means artificially gating everything, restricting what players can accomplish, and not allowing players to achieve things that others simply can’t.

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It is a bigger time sink, but the rewards are astronomically larger. So you don’t have a lot of time to play, big deal. A lot of people played the game pretty casually back then too. It was basically a glorified chat room with gameplay. You’ll take longer to level, again big deal. I’d wager that if you get in a group and do a lower level dungeon in Classic you’ll feel way more accomplishment than in modern WoW.

Vanilla WoW was designed around the leveling process. That is the core gameplay.

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You can sink a TON of time into the live WoW. Assuming you are doing all content and not limiting yourself to current content.

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Well, i got a real job now, back when vanilla was out. I was working off the books and going to school. DAMN YOU LABOR LAWS! During Vanilla i also had to matian a social life, cook 4 out 7 day’s a week, attempt to date. Do a lot of homework and study, had to take a bus EVERYWHERE Since the State law’s here are BS!

So… Now i’m older, and i have much much more freedom to do what i want, i can legally drive. Work a job and schudle whatever i want to do. I don’t even gotta go on dates anymore or have a social life it’s pretty great, even i want to go fishing hunting or hit a bar / club, i can and it’s my time, the second i punch out of work that’s all my time, 24 hours in a day just tihnk of it like that. Everything you do has value you control

Learn to cook while playing study etc, learn to min max EVERYTHING and you’ll have more time then you need. I also have innosima. So that helps.

I think a huge problem is people just either A Get hooked on to many responsibility. I.e Get a wife and kid, and complain they don’t got enough free time… Well why did you put a baby in her belly, but still didn’t want to dedicate your life to raising that whiny baby? Same with school, take classes that fit you and find time for them.

and B People now and days… Just waste so much time on social media, or what have you, i mean i don’t even have to read the newspaper anymore (Though i tend to every sunday with some coffee.) Learn that your Schedule isn’t your master but your friend, trying to help mange your daily life. Do things that you want, and when you give yourself up to responsibility’s do so with a clear head.

Also every kind of entertainment in life, is a timesink.

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I’d rather take a protoss ship to Argus than go back to my desecrated cataclysm Azeroth.

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The big difference is that information is easily obtainable now, and the way to do things is incredibly easy to find out. We won’t be spending 6 months clearing Naxx, because Nihilum figured out how to kill Kel’thuzad over 12 years ago. The methods to success are well-documented.

It’s a really small time commitment (albeit, spread out over a long time) now that people know what to do. Half of the time, people had to spend hours searching for how to complete quests or find NPCs, or how to get certain enchants. People know how to do that now.

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That’s cool too, you can limit your time sinking how ever you like.

:wink:

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Welcome to internet forums, where there are no right answers, or helpful ones for that matter. :slight_smile:

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Well, I can’t speak for why others think that.

What I think is that Retail sucked my time up with chores that weren’t my choice of activity, and when I did finally try to work on my choice I ran into walls constantly. When I was letting my time run out in Legion, I could log in for 2 hours and all I’d have accomplished was doing 4-6 WQs on every character, mailing OR between them, updating mission table outtings, and doing the weekly boss if it was new. Once I had all that done, if I wanted to work on professions I’d have to do a dungeon, if I wanted to quest I already hated Broken Isles and would end up on an alt in Cata or Draenor zones (avoiding MoP and Cata-broken Azeroth). Oh, this patch added quests to Suramar? Great, except it’s four quests a week and I’m done and back in a holding pattern.

Compare that to vanilla / TBC where I could play for six hours straight, and the entire block of time was doing what I wanted. If I wanted to work on a profession, I went off gathering materials or grinding mobs for gold to pick up some stuff on the AH cheap. If I wanted to quest, I had dozens of zones to choose from that weren’t boring even when I’d already done them before because I had so much variety to choose from. If a patch came out with new quests, there they all were ready to be experienced.

Retail is the game for people who want to log in, get some list of tasks done, and log out. WOW Classic is the game for people who want to log in and savor the world.

(And I’ll manage to play it easily. I have a lot of free time, enough that I could play 40+ hours weekly and still have free time for other things. I don’t intend to play that much, but I manage my life to ensure I have plenty of free time.)

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Especially for me, I quit retail in 2018. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Classic was a huge time sink because you’d log in and just hang out shooting the schiesse with your friends.

For the last 10+ years, wow has been the mmo equivalent of duolingo. A chore you force yourself to do for 20 minutes per day in the vague hope that it’ll let you read the comments on german fetis… Sorry, my mind wandered. A chore you force yourself to do for 20 minutes per day in the vague hope that it’ll pay off in the future.

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I am going to play it to the fullest: quests, exploration, lore, dungeons, raids, crafting, collecting, even fishing. I am handicapped & spend a lot of my time in my chair so I can (& will) devote most of the day to this. I’m not saying I’m going to play 12 hours a day, but maybe 11. :wink:

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Thanks for your reply! Your time management skills seem way better than mine lol

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Because retail has more time sinks…

If you are in a 6-7 hour a day, 4-5 day a week raid guild then all you have to farm is enough gold to cover consumables and repairs.

If you are in that hardcore of a raiding guild, then they are gonna require massive farming of M+ for titanforging, constant clearing of all the invasions and world quests. Oh and you have essentially an infinite farm of islands to get your AP as high as possible. Oh and most guilds that are that hardcore require at least 2 if not 3 or 4 characters who have done all of that so if you need to be swapped out for a fight you are ready. Oh and you need to be able to play all specs for your role on all those characters at a high level and be up to date on current theorycrafting for each of them.

So ya Vanilla has a longer time sink on the basics, but retail makes up with it for the sheer number of grinds and alts that are required.