I played Vanilla wow but played TBC more than I can remember.
Community is huge for me because I was an only child with older parents and attended small private schools.
Classic WoW was my main avenue for finding friends, adventures, new exploration, and events going on. I remember WoW as being a place to log on and chill. I logged on and immediately BS’d for half an hour. I had friends who were my age to 30 years older than myself (14). The community wanted to learn and grow together. It was a social device for most. You needed people to get geared and get things done considering you had to hope these guys would fly to your dungeon or raid in a timely and consistent manner with potions to boot.
Now I feel like people are almost mad I want to chat in LFD or LFR. At best the guild only has 5/25 people chatting in discord as we easily plow through heroic raids. Theres nothing that isnt easily googleable or youtubeable…
Not a year doesnt go by where I’m not powerwatching youtube videos about vanilla-WOTLK and considering logging onto a private server to get my fill. Not a game goes by MMORPG or not where I get even a fragment of similarity to the sense of vastness that classic gave… I knew all the top people in my server back then and wanted to gear like them… Nowadays? I only know who youtubes because google tells me watch them…
I wonder if Classic can even begin to emulate the most important part of what WoW made it rise from 0 players to 3.5 million players within 2 years…
What do you miss? The challenge? The world? The PvP? The realm specific history? Or maybe just the community in general?
WoW wasn’t my first MMO (it was City of Heroes but at the time I had no computer to run it, so I had to go to a “hangout place” that sells baseball cards and toys but also had tvs with game consoles and computers to play games for a few hours or so, also buying snacks, it was amazing) but WoW sucked me into it far greater than CoH ever could.
My parents gave me a hand-me down computer that couldn’t run ANYTHING…except WoW. At least if I avoided Orgrimmar during peak hours, I could play just fine on low-mid settings. That’s all I needed when I was a kid back then.
God the world, the community, the everything…
This post hits all those feels, even if I didnt’ share that same experience.
The overall design of vanilla actually encourages this. Things like simply buffing people as you pass by them brings out "ty"s and so forth to randomly saving someone out in the world because we’re actually out in the world and the world is actually dangerous you know.
I forgot this so much…
Just walking by a druid/pally/etc and getting the buff where you turnaround and thank them… It was the little things… The game really did shove you into getting your faction and friends up in any little way you could.
Even if you weren’t a healing class. If you saw someone who’s health was rapidly dropping with multiple mobs on them, a well placed CC or just helping to down a mob can save them a corpse run. It usually ended with a “ty” and sometimes a group invite, or even a friend request.
Don’t get that these days when the world is mostly unused.
Also having to build a group for instances, you actually had to talk haha and plan some things out.
People made leveling guilds just to help make it easier for getting groups together and those said groups worked together often. Had an amazing tank or healer? You made sure to befriend them! That amazing hunter who knows how to pull every single mob in deadmines, points to self*, yeah you befriended them big time!
Exactly!
Heck my server had a mutual agreement (it died in BC sadly) where if you came into an area with opposing player(s) you helped one kill a mob they working on and that signaled to them that you were there to level and not cause trouble.
I’ve gone so far as to save horde players as an ally and I was ALWAYS known for ganking endlessly.
Had a really great conversation and made a friend because they asked a question in group chat and I took the time to help them understand something. After the LFG was over they sent a whisper saying it was so nice to finally have someone take the time to explain it to them. Most players didn’t even respond to a hello once the LFG started.
Getting requests to add you to a friend’s list after grouping because they had a good time is a great feeling, and one I look forward to having again.
Get a good DPS, tank or healer? You whispered them and asked if you could add them and if they were interested in future dungeons!
Now? You know there will be many other decent enough whatevers that you dont even have to whisper more than /w mythic 3+ boralis? if they dont auto apply from the LFG page… It’s sad
I remember when I was level 67 (Edit: Back in TBC) I ran into an Orc Rogue and Tauren Druid in Netherstorm and we were all doing a rather difficult quest. We grouped up and somehow we stuck together doing dungeons for months. I think we all joined the same guild briefly before going separate ways.
These days? Just another passing face I’ll never see again. Never talk, never WANTING to talk.
I’m optimistic, actually. Game mechanics directly influence how community’s form, after all. Classic WoW certainly encouraged a healthy community. I hate being on the Boo-Retail soapbox so often, I really do, but I can honestly say the game’s current mechanics actively discourage forming real bonds.
What I personally miss most is how recognizable some people could be, especially as you leveled. Granted I’ve only played private servers but I recall leveling up a mage, and all throughout the leveling process I found myself grouping up with and talking to many people. Sometimes I would meet these people multiple times, so much so that me, a priest and a warrior often grouped up for dungeons as we all independently leveled through the world. There were others that I recognized, like a gf/bf duo that played warrior and hunter, an insane greek paladin who to this day remains the single best 5man tank I’ve ever witnessed, another mage that leveled frost who became something of a rival to me as i used fire, and many others that i still have fond memories of.
Nowadays I can’t pick anyone out of the faceless mobs of players, much less care to interact with them.
It’s this feeling of knowing and being known that stands out to me. You have a reputation, good or bad, and people remember you for it.
I want that back again, there’s no guarantees that it’ll be back… but that’s not up to blizz to recreate, it’s up to us.
These days the only way you stand out to people is if you’re a regular in Trade Chat. And even then, good luck actually finding people in your own realm if you’re not in the same guild…
I miss the community and the challenge. That is why I already joined a Classic guild www[dot]reguild[dot]org/. We have already started creating those bonds through the guild community and discord.
The community at large is mostly irrelevant to me. I had a good group of people that I ran with in Vanilla/TBC/early Wrath days and if I truly miss anything, its being on Vent with them wiping over and over again on Vashj and Kael. We were total jagwads and it was fun.