Not that you made the accusation but I am not in any kind of denial about the level of arrogance surrounding that whole thing. Im just noting that his cocksure and smug demeanor wasn’t totally baseless thanks to we the people.
Here’s what Im talking about - and this applies to the other responses made to me as well:
The “Wall of No” comes crumbling down in the aftermath of Brack’s “you think you do but you don’t” commentary and the whole Nostalrius thing. The guy is then made to announce the relaunch of “Classic WoW” at the next Blizzcon. Haha, that’s what you get for being a jerk! We were right after all! Take that you son of a gun!
From there its one streamer after another waxing poetic about vanilla how its rerelease is a dream come true. The forums open up and everyone is in a state of ecstasy singing the praises of the old game, what it brings, how it does, why its the best blah blah blah.
The game launches and there is a brief honeymoon period lasting maybe for the first two phases. Right after that, the consensus was this game is easy, boring and sucks, we want TBC. At the very same time if not a little before, RMT and exploiting becomes wildly rampant, people leave servers in droves to form megaservers, pvp servers become single faction realms as any whiff of old school vanilla gameplay all but evaporates except for the small cadre of pathetic “classic andys” who should likewise burn in hell for holding their ground and speaking positively about the original vision of the game and/or not wanting any changes. Leading the charge are the very same streamers.
So here comes TBC, with a cash shop boost and mount package and you were in the tiniest of minorities if you thought those things didnt belong there and even more so if you actually stayed with Era - 99% of players gone and those that left didnt go quietly either, they made sure to let everyone know it was because Vanilla actually sucked and made fun of the people that played it.
While maining Era I was on the TBC boards having daily arguments with people who thought boosts were great, TBC should have dual specs and RFD and if I didnt like it, I can go play that crap and dead game, Classic Era. Again, I was in a very small minority - like 100 to 1, no joke. Well, now we need Wrath because that’s when Classic actually gets good because dual specs and RFD.
When it was announced that RFD would not be in Wrath (for launch as it turned out) people whined so hard you would think their lives depended on it. Some people quit over it. Then all the usual tropes of suing Blizzard, lame conspiracy theories, petitions, flaming dissenters, the whole works. Mind you Era was slightly less of a ghost town at this point but still a ghost town. And, as you can see this is a running theme by now - if you thought RDF wasn’t the whole reason to play Classic WoW you were outnumbered by such a wide margin it was damn near pointless to post unless you were okay with being viciously trolled and hated upon by most other people on the forum. There is no Classic WoW without RDF according to them.
Do you remember what Brack used to back his play? He said we didnt want old WoW because we couldn’t play without RDF - that was his example - we had forgotten “need tank for X”. We became hooked on all the QoL and watering down of vanillas experience to the point of no going back.
Even though Era is alive and kicking, you still have people that hate on certain specs, think prot warriors are obsolete, RMT is just another way to play the game, mage boosts and GDKPs are absolute necessities, min/max to the nth degree is the only way to play and on and on it goes - and the Era population will still be dwarfed by Cataclysms population.
So yeah, its your prerogative if you want to dismiss Brack as a charlatan and a jerk but thanks to the benefit of hindsight, I dont think the guy was just being mean and rude and dismissive - he kinda had a grasp on things. He wasn’t wrong.
