How Atypical, How Unusual?

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
1

My CV: Started in '05, hardcore raider, gm & rl '06-'14; 38yo

From the ashes of my old guild I revived a small group, at most we had 6 people at any given moment but with a core consisting of myself, my husband, my brother, and my two RL besties. We all had experience blah blah top 20-50 here and there over the years, so we figured we could probably approach Classic doing more with less and set rules for ourselves:

-no pugs, only progress with each other
-never prioritize WoW over RL, we’re olds now
-only play together on Sundays, but level/alts/whatever on other days

In Classic we struggled to keep up with the patch cycles, doing a lot of 10-mans with just 5-6 of us. We peaked in Ulduar, downing six bosses, some repeats, before BG3 came out and we all kinda just bailed on wotlk because we felt disconnected from the progression. It didn’t feel right just mindlessly blowing through stupidly easy titan runes to nudge our ilvls forward just so it would be even easier to do easy things. I think it reminded us of why we all quit retail.

Then SoD came out. Our little 6-man team waltzed over, tried new runes, did BFD no problem, but the pacing seems rushed for us. We’re all just now 40. My hubby and I played what we consider to be a lot, didn’t have much time for alts or other games, and only hit 40 two weeks ago. The rest of the team hit 40 last week. We really wanted to do Gnomer as 6, but the next phase is already coming.

The purpose of my post is to try to feel out just how unusual my group is. I got a weird response on an Asmond video I commented on when I expressed a little frustration that ST is a 20-man, it rules out any possibility of us 6-manning it. The response was overwhelmingly “no this is great, it means I don’t have to do gnomer every 3 days”

… what is this mentality and does it really make sense to push this game forward based around people feeling they always need to push the pedal to the metal?

I get it, WoW is a social game, and I’m not out to suggest anyone should play it any way they don’t want to. However, I figure my little gaggle can’t be the only one out there that feels like Classic/SoD is really the best time to relive, enjoy, relax, but also play the content.

I’m not sure why Phase 2 is this short, it could be longer. I’m not sure why there is what I seem to notice as a collective mindset about taking the shortest routes possible to a goal and treating this game like it’s competitive when it should be collaborative.

I know I’ve seen other small groups out there, some 5 and 6-man Ulduars and Gnomers like we do, but I’m really curious… are we an iceberg that hasn’t been vocal or are we floatsam adrift in the maelstrom of meta-gaming hell?

2

Nice blog post.

3 Likes
3

We have little over 10. Maybe 15 max players in our daddy guild. We run gno every lock out with avg 8 guildies + 2 pugs. I think we had many 2 full guild runs till now. It still feels very good

4

Similar-ish situation. Been playing since vanilla, played on pservers for years because retail is bad, guild leading the whole way, consistent core for years and years (larger than yours). Also old, in our 40’s with kids, some of us have our kids in the guild playing with us which is awesome. This phase was way to short. 100. We made it farther then your lot did, but only because it was winter and we invested more time than you it sounds like. Our guild missed, i believe, only 2 lock outs as a full ten man, and this most recent reset was the first week that all 10 members got their necklace in our main core group. We’ve begun building for 20 mans, but half of our team 2 still doesn’t even have their neck. I understand they can get that later in the phase, I’m just using it as a benchmark to corroborate the experience - the phase push is too fast for the average gamer (in my own echo chamber) to really enjoy the phase.

1 Like
5

OP is going to tell us about his trip to the grocery store next.

I hear it’s a real doozy… He got spinach, but his wife already bought spinach, so then he had to bring back his spinach, but then he couldn’t find the receipt. Then the manager says, “Well I can’t accept this return.” Well well well… so you know the customer is always right so he made sure to bring that up to see if it would help the situation. Trust me, it’s very interesting, I’m just not doing it justice.

6

I’m going to catch it for saying this, But legitimately Mythic Plus.

What you’re currently doing is taking content designed with certain intent and essentially brute forcing how you want to play into it; Ulduar 10, BFD are not made to be done with a max of 6 people, they Can be but it’s clearly not their purpose.

Now I’m not going to be critical, you play how you want and it’s kinda worked(?) But because the content is being made with completely different expectations Phase 2, and probably even more Phase 3 SoD will be a struggle. I’d bet you could get Gnomer done with 6, but it would be long and likely sweatier than just trying to be a parse-lord

M+ however is designed to be done in groups of 5, and it always (Always) has an appropriate difficulty level, whether you top out at a +11 or +26 you will eventually find the limit. Yeah it has similar ilvl nudging to TRs but it certainly does not make easy content even easier - there is always legitimate progression to be made.

You are kinda an Iceberg, you’re just in the middle of the Pacific playing classic when most small groups of long time friends still playing WoW so insularly are in retail doing keys

1 Like
7

I’d be curious how (un)usual your group is too. I suspect it’s hard to tell, but the direction the dev team is going seems to suggest that they are much more focused on end-game, raiding and catering towards raid-loggers.

10 man - 20 man

I think it’s an odd decision to introduce a system (10-man raiding with a 3-day lockout) for the first few months, which is quite long enough for people to adjust and get used to, and then change it.

Regardless of my own personal preferences (I think they should have had 40-man, weekly lockouts from the beginning), I think that making changes means some people will be displaced, and some will be uncomfortable. At the very least, it means that guilds and raid team recruitment, scheduling and planning needs to adapt to the changes, whether welcomed changes or not.

At the end of the day, it’s just a game, and I hope we can all enjoy it and play however we want. Of course, I have my own preferences, and others have theirs.

:woman_shrugging:

1 Like
8

Great replies, even the trolls. I could tell you about my latest grocery shopping experience but I’ll spare everyone the complaining about reading labels. You think min-maxxing WoW is neurotic, try applying that mindset to food.

I think you really bring up a point that my group finds uncomfortable to confront, Gununu. We’ve become so disconnected from retail that it is very hard to convince ourselves it’s something worth returning to because we all begin to complain about it being too visually busy, too micro-gamey, and I guess too many ghosts of the past. I had a nuclear-level burnout after pushing some world firsts in SoO and it was like recovering from PTSD before I could ease my way back into MMOs at all with classic. I play well but I could never let myself prioritize a push above life again (that’s not to be judgmental of anyone who values the push, I’ve been there!)

Anyway, I’m open to hearing this sort of point and possibly that I’m just out of touch. I used to be so involved in the community and then I just wasn’t anymore. If fast-paced phase releases and competitive environments is what everyone wants in Classic, my group has no right to try to crash that party. I accept that we’re niche, I just had doubts about exactly how niche as the initial allure of Classic was the digestible simplicity without the extreme over-gamification that at this stage of our lives is easier to say no to than yes.

9

No reason to not pull in some pugs to do the content you want.

I mean, your post is the equivalent of me complaining that I can’t solo Gnomer.

10

The second one.

EDIT: Honestly not sure how hard it is to understand that trying to 5-6 man raid content months after it was relevant does in fact make you an incredibly small minority, but if you needed someone to tell you, here it is.

You are floatsam.

11

I’m not sure I agree. Again, there is an element of us wanting the game to be something it isn’t. It’s that it’s our poker night equivalent, we want to spend time together, socially, because my hubby and I are expats, an ocean away from my two best friends and brother. We all quit the rat race of raiding, worrying about the admin of a guild. In Classic vanilla and tbc we did open the guild up to some other players bit in a way it wasn’t fair to them and it changed the tone of our groups because what we really wanted was WoW to be our poker night. This game is what we know, we’re decent at it, and it’s really good for this sort of thing.

Try not to look at it through the lens of blasting through the progression. We easily accept the things we cannot do as a smaller group, the restrictions. The purpose of the post is to get a feel for if we’re extremely unusual or if there are other red dwarf guilds out there using the game like we do.

I’m sharing my blog writing skills to that end, because as we discover these things about SoD, we’re discovering a tone shift. Phase 2 felt rushed compared to phase 1, so is it discovery and enjoyment or is it hurry up then have everything become outdated on a cycle?

12

And so sayeth the Lord, all these things are done in accordance with the prophecy…

Hey man, SoD is a fun little side project, not a super serious, proper Classic server to funnel all your hopes and dreams. Lighten up yo…go forth and DISCOVER!!!

13

Phase 2 will be 9 weeks long, Phase 1 was 10 weeks long.

The only real differences between Phase 2 and Phase 1 was that we had 30 days notice before the end of Phase 1 compared to 10 days notice for the end of Phase 2, plus at the beginning of Phase 2, Gnomer was on a 7 day lockout for 12 days, leading to Phase 2 having less Gnomer lockouts then Phase 1 had of BFD lockouts.

Under those circumstances, it makes sense that you might feel like Phase 2 was rushed, but it’s just that, a feeling. In truth, Phase 2 is barely shorter than Phase 1.

14

The word “relevant” has been a power term for years in this game. It throws some extremely heavy weight around to easily dismiss topics of discussion that are worthwhile to the community and perhaps the developers.

What is relevant? Is Classic WoW relevant to retail? Is PvP relevant to a raider?

What’s relevant to you isn’t relevant to us if what you find relevant is the bleeding edge of progression. What’s relevant to my guild is how we can enjoy time together once per week. We always find something to do, and to reiterate the purpose of my post: I want to see if there are others in a similar boat. There have been mixed replies so far and that’s good.

15

In this case, relevant to the vast majority of players. Which you self-admittedly do not seem to belong to.

You asked if you and your friends represented an unusual subset of the playerbase or not. The answer is yes. Not that hard to figure out to be honest. You and your friends reside right alongside the incredibly niche group of people that try to solo raid content and upload it to Youtube for views.

Players who try to take down group content in WoW with half or less of what that group content would normally support (ie trying to solo or even 5 man a 10 man raid) are indeed a very small minority of the playerbase.

16

A fun little side project drenched in the sweat of parsers and people who feel they needed to raid every lockout to be “relevant” - the mindset that seems to infect every version of the game, at least that’s what it seems. I’m not sure of the reality.

17

I dont disagree and while I hate the parse bro culture and its effects on the game…to some degree it is what you make of it. Im just saying SoD aint the place to get ‘too’ bent out of shape over…ultimately its more of a throwaway server than other servers

1 Like
18

Get a diary.

19

The longest dur wins

20

Do you think that others in our demographic and situation, unwilling to join or create a larger guild to match the content delivered simply don’t bother? I’m curious what else they might do, possibly pvp together? To some extent, I’m also open to ideas from anyone else who might be in a similar “poker night” mindset with a close group of friends but still wanting to enjoy an MMO for the open-ended progression.