I’ve been playing since Vanilla so I was there when things started to change, especially in the starter zones. You know, becoming easier, changing the quests, making it so the challenge was gone. People began to complain that the game was getting too easy - at that time I didn’t care, there were new expansions to play and if I rolled alts it was just easier to have them zoom through the starting gate and get to the new content faster.
But it’s got me thinking… why did the Blizzard game devs decide to change so much of what we remember as Vanilla? Did they think they were improving it, or, did they get new Devs with shiny new ideas that convinced the original creators to change what wasn’t broken?
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Years of pile up. Gaming Industry changing. In Video Game Design it is all about coming up with the next big thing. (new feature)
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Both.
Part of it was to polish up an old gem. Part was to speed up leveling so new players didn’t see a mountain of 90+ levels and give up. Part of it is the changing demographics of gamers, and the amount of time the average gamer can play now vs 20 years ago. And part of it is to give some more repeatability.
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A big part of it was to appeal to more people (to make a game for more of the casual player).
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Uh it started before WoW even launched.
Wow from the beginning was designed to be a more accessible game for people that hadn’t played an MMO before. Wow started as and continued to be the actualization of Blizzard’s ‘easy to learn hard to master’ design goals.
Vanilla only seems ‘rough’ through a modern lens. When it launched a huge portion of existing MMO players thought it was a joke, a game for casuals. And it definitely was. It was easy with little to no penalties for failure. But it was also alot of fun.
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In my opinion, they implemented the changes over a period of time to make the game their own.
They have to change it from the ground up in order to get credit for their work. If they recycle what’s already been, then it’s not “theirs.”
My hope is they’ll see how successful Classic is and begin to reimplement what works back into the game over the crapshow we have currently.
Who knows though … they seem to be on a pattern. WoD, crappy expansion, Legion decent, BFA crappy … etc.
All 100% subjective on my part and my opinion.
When you look at the original conversations about wow and comparing it to it’s main competition Everquest you can see WoW vanilla was for the casual. In Everquest you lost experience when you died and Blizzard originally had this idea of making it so your gear could permanently break or even lose gear and money when you died. But in the end they wanted it to be for a more casual audience. The reality of Classic is it was designed for gamers who at the time appreciated a challenge even in the simple day to day gameplay. You had to have your wits just to level instead of only when you queue for a mythic+. This made hte game more rewarding and thus even a casual could feel a sense of accomplishment. Today’s game gives you every experience you could want for little to nothing and the only challenge is to repeat the easy thing on a harder mode if you want a challenge. Nothing was meant to be “easy” by modern standards back then. After all what’s the point of a game if it doesn’t give you a sense of accomplishment.
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Primarily because they were trying to recapture a market with convenience, while not understanding that the challenge was what we were lacking. And then with MTX, it became about making more money from fewer people.
And the MOVEMENT… The movement and distance usage in the game was very different from what most of us came from. When it launched, I liked the music and didn’t like the cartoon look of it but by time I was strafing my way through Dusk Bats, cutting angles and seeing the flow of game mechanics translated from keystrokes I knew why the game was going to be awesome.
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A perfect example is Raiding sizes.
Vanilla: 40 man raids, because that feels epic (and is slightly smaller than EQ).
Players: “It’s too hard to organise 40 people” “I can’t commit to 8 hours a week of raids so they won’t let me in”. “I just want to play with my small group of friends.”
The Burning Crusade: Raids were reduced to 25 to allow for easier organisation.
Players: “It’s too hard to organise 25 people” “I can’t commit to 8 hours a week of raids so they won’t let me in”. “I just want to play with my small group of friends.”
Wrath of the Lich King: A 10 man option was added. Healer dispel homogenization.
Players: “It’s too hard to organise 25 people, and 10 man isn’t as good.” “I can’t commit to 8 hours a week of raids so they won’t let me in and I have to join a 10 man guild”. “I just want to play with my small group of friends, but 10 mans don’t give as good gear as full raids.”
Cataclysm: 10 man guilds became on-par with 25 man raids in terms of gear. Some class homegenization.
Players: “Why would we make a 25 man raid? 10 man is easier.” “10 man raids are too hard to have all the buffs in.” “We only had one person with an interrupt” “I had to reroll because my team didn’t have Kings/Mark”.
Cataclysm (Dragon Soul): Added LFR.
Players: “Lol welfare epics!”
Mists: Further class homogenization and the loss of class specific skills.
Players: “We’ve got all the required tools now in our 10 man raid.” “My class is no longer unique, and I could do more DPS as that class” “LFR is faceroll but required”
I could continue but I think the point is clear.
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I choose to view it as a similar concept to other changes in society. Take a look at how social media has evolved over the years. We as a consumer want convenience and over time, little changes and “improvements” we find ourselves disconnected instead of connected with the world. People catalog their lives instead of talking to each other and more concerned with their status/profile/politics/labels than how they actually feel living their own life.
Streamlining does have the impact of making thing easier and efficient, but also takes the satisfaction and feeling of success away.
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WoW forums are as close as I come to social media 
Agree. Again from a modern lens vanilla seems pretty dang slow. But at the time it was more twitchy than many MMOs that came before it and like most Blizzard games it felt visceral and visually communicative. Partially because that is Blizzards style but also to attract the non-MMO players of the time with a more action game style.
And we can see this all continue into retail; more streamlined, less penalizing and more action play. There is a point that the audience shifted due to the changes. But the changes where a continuation of the original designs.
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10 mans were added in BC.
10 mans in WoTLK had better drops than 25 man, for the hard modes.
See: Sarth 3D 10 vs Sarth 3D 25
Other than that, you’re not wrong.
This is a furphy. A 10 man raid existed in BC but it wasn’t a 10 man version of a 25 man raid.
If you want to use that logic, 10 mans existed in Vanilla. Karazhan was the equivalent of UBRS, not MC.
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I’d also call out that there was a bit of “burnout” over the course of the expansions. Going from Vanilla into BC and then into Wrath left a lot of people tired of the constant reset. It would be new level caps, new gear sets, and wipe away your accomplishments of the past. Not saying this was a big issue, but for the friends and guildmates I played with, it started to wear people down.
People like new content, but the resets started to become dull and tarnish a bit of the past. I do wonder what things might have been like if we stayed 60 and had gear growth/new content, but didn’t have to completely throw away the past work and nullify any epic as less than a green.
I wish my UBRS runs dropped BiS gear pre-final content patch raid.
Hell, I wish they dropped epics in general.
Definitely. It is my biggest gripes with Blizzard expansions; everything before becomes valueless. They are not expansions but instead result in resets.
This right here gets my goat every time.
Naxx was out for ~6 months @40 man pre 2.0 prepatch and another month after that.
Beta was out at least 4 months before 2.0 and this is when live servers lost their wind as news of greens from starting zone leveling quests with better than Naxx gear rewards from TBC beta leaked over. Earnest Naxx progression was really about 2 months.
SoO in MoP was out for over ~13 months @25 man pre 6.0 prepatch and another month after that.
Huge difference in allotted time to even attempt to play through the raids.
Everyone complaines about something, some just little tweaks, some just cosmetics things, but ultimatly, it dosent matter what your intent is for that change you want, it is the road to retail…
#No changes