i think retail and classic are two different types of games, not that one type is superior to the other. i do prefer one type to the other, and the only rationale i can think of for that is that it lends itself to delayed gratification, which appeals to me. in real life, delayed gratification is something i’d prefer not to have to deal with, but in a fantasy environment, i can safely explore it.
1 Like
I will say they have the old aggressive/assist/passive options and they seem consistent with the old system. I think. As I said, I played a mage main so I’m not as familiar with hunter stuff from back then. I do remember those being the options when I started one in BC. Aggressive attack anything within a certain range of where the pet is, neither of the other 2 will the pet attack back if you are attacked. Assist will help you on anything you attack (unless something cc’s it via gouge, sheep, etc.).
Theres already been topics on the subreddit and the General forum with people saying their guildies are saying they are leaving to play classic in August, and the ones with Beta access don’t logon anymore.
Its typically followed by the people saying that going on to curse Classic WoW’s existence, predict that it will be a failure, and cry about how it sucks.
A lot of the vitriol Classic gets from retail players can be traced back to it further ruining guilds by way of pulling away players attention.
1 Like
nyl, nyl, nyl, is it possible to discuss a topic without sounding like your chewing rocks and spitting gravel? ![:joy:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/joy.png?v=6" ":joy:")
1 Like
Sure it is, make points that make any kind of sense whatsoever. No one asked for a list of completely irrelevant game changes that impacted players in trivial and meaningless ways and try to spin them into how those things have horridly impacted your roleplay experience. I asked for explicit examples of how vanilla WoW catered to RP’ers and retail doesn’t and was given a pile of bull feces. I’m not sure why you expect I’ll respond with anything more than ridicule to such a response.
“You can roleplay as long as you limit yourself to ghetto content.” That’s obviously not conducive to roleplaying.
I agree. Most of the differences between Classic and now that interfere with roleplaying are added functionality that’s great for nonroleplayers.
Having to know what’s phased and what’s not is pretty destructive to roleplay immersion, and then there’s all the new phasing that keeps getting put in.
I’ll give you an example. Early in BFA, I met a character of an actual new player. I struck up an in character conversation with him in Stormwind, eventually grouping so I could use party chat for out of character explanations. He’d started a Demon Hunter, and was playing the character as someone who had been fighting the Burning Legion for ages and was now interested in going back and seeing how his homeland had changed. This was a great opportunity for intense roleplaying, since not only the character, but the player, didn’t know that his homeland had been destroyed.
I figured, both in character and out of character, that I’d rather let him see for himself, so I lead him to the portal in the castle to Teldrassil, which I knew redirected to Darkshore. So we both take the portal and end up in Darkshore.
Except, he can’t see me there since he’s story phased. I think it was because I’d done the War of Thorns and he hadn’t, or something. It takes us 5 or 10 minutes to figure out and explain what was going on. We try to roleplay through it anyway after that, but chat room roleplay would have been easier.
I’m sure that was a bad enough introductory experience with roleplay that he didn’t stick around. One potential new subscriber lost.
Sure. I’m grouped with someone and we both turn in a quest, but not perfectly synchronized. One of us starts responding to the NPC when, on the other person’s screen, the NPC is still talking. Very disrupting trying to make roleplay sense of that, and it happens all the time.
My examples are true. You don’t agree with them because you don’t like roleplay, but the changes are still detrimental to those of us who do like it.
I agree. Like most of the changes that are detrimental to roleplay, it was done because Blizzard had no clue what aspects of their game facilitated roleplay. That doesn’t change the fact that many of the things they thought were improvements were actually the opposite from a roleplaying standpoint.
No, all it demonstrates is that you don’t know and don’t care about roleplaying in the game.
i beg your pardon but my words are not bull feces. my words are words. ![:sunglasses:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/sunglasses.png?v=6" ":sunglasses:")
i didnt find the reasons trivial either.
retail has removed many not all, but many of vanilla era rpg elements, such as exploration in the form of going to the dungeon on foot, finding the entrance in the game world, making your group, needing to feed your pet and train it/level it up (not irrelevant game play), needing to learn poisons, buy the ingredients and use them to create poisons for your weapons as a rogue (not meaningless game play), etc. why do you think mmorpgs traditionally include stuff like that?
in everquest, rangers even learned how to make the arrows from various bits (nocks, shafts, arrowheads, etc).
1 Like
There are a lot of people who are killing time in Retail just waiting on Classic. I expect the short-term effect will be for those people to stop playing Retail and switch to Classic, dropping the Retail population quite a bit.
After a while some will come back and some people who joined for Classic will move over to Retail. It will eventually reach a steady-state of sorts.
I expect, overall, that Retail numbers will permanently be depressed by Classic and Blizzard will have to further consolidate Retail to keep certain aspects of the game active.
I dunno what to tell you. I’m playing the beta a lot right now (when it’s up, it’s down for AV testing and I’m bored of that) and while I’m having a good time, I have no expectation that I’ll be spending the bulk of my time there. It’ll be a great place to go when retail is at a lull, like right now 6 months into a tier when everyone is bored of the current content. Aside from the people I’ve met in the beta I know 2 people out of dozens that have any interest in Classic at all. The rest just don’t care at all. In fact talking about my experiences with them they double down on the fact that they aren’t interested. I mean, I’m sure some people will enjoy it, I expect the community will stabilize. But my guild has no one that’s intending to make Classic a full time investment. Anecdotal experiences are anecdotal. And as much as I’d love it if people unhappy with retail found in Classic something they wanted, my guess is most people won’t.
I’ve seen dozens of people give up who were excited about the beta because of things like having to death run back to dungeons from 10 minutes away from the dungeon entrance or people who went into BG’s when they became available expecting to trash folks who got chain cc’d, raged, and quit never to be heard from again. I know several who went super hard in on honor and ended up 5th and 12th standing on the server. And after investing that much time to get 5th and 12th they realized there was no way they could put in the time to get the standing they wanted when Classic goes live. So they quit. Hell most people in my guild (over 400 last I looked) didn’t even make it past level 15 before they gave up.
In the end, Classic being successful doesn’t hurt me in any way, I’ll be playing it as a secondary game. And if people who hate some of the retail systems enjoy Classic, awesome, maybe they’ll stop spamming the forums with stupid posts asking for changing to things when they already have the penultimate rollback to systems via Classic. If you want to buy into the hype and think that this is what it’s going to be like when Classic goes live, well, I can’t because I’m there playing it and the hype only goes so far.
I believe they should be aggressive/defensive/passive.
Passive: follows or stays as orders, doesn’t fight at all, even to defend you or itself. When explicitly ordered to attack, switches to defensive and attacks as ordered. This is the mode you use when micromanaging your pet.
Defensive: attacks things that attack you or the pet. Attacks as ordered. This is the default mode for most hunters.
Aggressive: attacks anything within aggro range. For stealth detection pets, this is very useful against rogues in PVP.
The era of retail WoW is over come August. Yeah, there will be some people who still play it—some people still play SW:TOR. But the question is, will Blizzard be able to justify continued investment in retail’s development?
I suppose the answer to that question also depends on what the next expansion looks like, and if Blizzard takes any cues from Classic’s success. But this is also why they should have had a long term plan in place for WoW 2, instead of riding on the belief that WoW was going to succeed forever.
You can roleplay all you want in raids, normal through mythic. M+ there’s just a timer so if you intentionally take a long time you won’t beat the timer. That’s the price you pay for choosing to take a long time. How is this any different than vanilla? It’s not, it’s just another lame notch on your list of garbage.
Except this is functionality that you can opt out of. “OHNOS YOU GAVE ME ALL THESE THINGS AND I USE THEM AND COMPLAIN” Just like travelling to dungeons on foot and every other idiotic thing on your list.
That’s not an example of how the game used to be catered to RP’ers and now it isn’t. That’s just an example that the game has never catered to RP’ers and that it’s impossible to cater to RP’ers who want every possible story element open to them to experience at a whim with no regard for how that would actually impact the target player that isn’t someone who RP’s. If you want an experience that you can’t emulate well in game, go play a different game. Congrats! You learned that WoW is not a tabletop RPG!
So don’t be a metagaming tool. Stay in character and roll with it. Because when roleplaying there are tons of things that can be disruptive or you as a player can have knowledge of things your character shouldn’t. Again, this isn’t an example of how the game used to cater to RP’ers and now doesn’t. That’s you having unrealistic expectations and being pissy about it. The reality is things like this were changed to make the individual player turning in that quest make sense in relation to what’s going on around them, you know, how the game is designed to be played. Because it sucks to have an npc react to another player turning in the quest you’re about to turn in (or even steps further down a quest chain) only to be stuck there watching RP for someone else unable to turn in. That’s just as immersion breaking for the player trying to RP the story. Or are you too busy quibbling over silly things to be intellectually honest about how these changes have positively impacted the game for RP’ers, eh?
Whether true or not doesn’t change the point. That wasn’t something that was done to cater to RP’ers which was the point we were talking about not this stupidity you’ve tried to spin it into. And you can stop trying to speak for me. I’ve been playing RPG’s for over 3 decades. I started with the red box set of D&D when elves and dwarves were classes. I love RP’ing. I just don’t RP in WoW. When I want to RP I’ll break out a one off game on roll20 with buddies I’ve been gaming with my entire life.
So we’re in agreement then. They didn’t cater to RP’ers in vanilla more than they do in retail because they never did. Glad we’re on the same page.
stuff like this i’m not looking forward to but it isn’t enough to put me off from it. have you done the quest chains in Netherstorm’s Kirin’Var Village ? i was doing them the other day and it dawned on me that i had never done them. i’ve been subbed since vanilla 2005. i even got the achievement called into the nether for doing specific quests in netherstorm. i realized at that point, that the reason i hadn’t was probably because it’s not an easy area in tbc but it isn’t bad now. i can solo it.
that’s part of the immersion thing - stuff being too easy outside of dungeons/raids, that wasn’t or probably wasn’t, when it was released.
when legion launched, stuff wasn’t easy at first. took a bit for me to settle on a character that could do the content without investing in a bunch of upgrades right off the bat. turned out my holy priest was my best option - who woulda guessed that. i really enjoyed legion gameplay. loved suramar - best city ever. but its not the same kind of game as classic. its difficulty originally, was the one thing it had in common with vanilla.
I see the NPC and the other player talking at the same time. “Why are you talking at the same time?” “I’m not, he already finished talking.” We’re not seeing the same reality, so staying in character doesn’t help.
You do realize roleplaying often involves interaction with other players, right?
Glad you agree that the reason you don’t care about the differences is because you don’t care about roleplaying in the first place.
And then you realize that and you adjust and go back into RP and you now both know that the timing is off so you roll with it instead of pretending like you don’t know what to do and your life is ruined. Maybe try that next time. Unless you prefer to be a metagaming Debbie Downer. Which my guess is based on this thread that’s you.
That’s the quote with context that demonstrates we’re both on the same page. That means they weren’t catering to RP back in vanilla. And you agree, right there, your words, with context that clarifies explicitly what you were talking about. So thanks for proving my point that you’ve been arguing about this entire time! Blizzard never catered to RP’ers.
This is just you being salty and snarky. It doesn’t change the facts though! Just look up for that hehe.
no, that’s her being observant and honest. ![:nerd_face:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/nerd_face.png?v=6" ":nerd_face:")
1 Like
Yeah, but that’s one thing on a giant list of things that are going to turn people off, along with unrealistic expectations just because their memory is fuzzy. One of the guys I play retail with that’s hyped about classic remembers getting rank 1 and he’s all pumped to recreate that experience. The problem is at the time he was on a server that was low population and it was very high horde to alliance ratio, and he was alliance. People made characters there just to try to get rank 1. This is a guy that barely has time to log into retail for than a handful of hours a week due to work/family obligations and he really thinks he’s going to have a repeat of his glory days. It’s kinda sad. I think there’s a whole lot of people who fall into that category (unrealistic expectations) too.
I did all the quests in Netherstorm back in the day, but that’s because I made a ton of money and ended up getting my flying mount at 68. I do agree though, the world is more engaging because of things like Mor’ladim in Duskwood or Stitches or being out in Badlands and having the pack of ogres with the Ogre captain or whatever the dudes name is running laps around the mountain, or the named stone giant that wanders around there, or even the Fel Reaver in Hellfire that would somehow sneak up on people. Zones have huge ranges (10-12 levels) sometimes so often times in beta I go somewhere, do the low level quests, eventually run out of ones I can do solo because they’re too hard, I have to leave and go somewhere else to get a few levels. But because there’s no scaling I can push myself and kill one of red mobs and those fights are hard, not because I have some crazy APM and strategy, just by raw numbers and getting a single pat agro’ing can spell my death. And I get why scaling was added. It allows people to experience the story in a non-linear way, go to whatever zone they want, but it also eliminates a lot of the variance that made the world feel engaging or deadly. Trust me, there’s a lot of things I could go on about that I like about Classic over retail. And world scaling is something I heavily prefer done in the Classic/vanilla style over the way they do things in retail.
1 Like
Her trying to repeatedly speak for me is her being observant and honest? I mean, really? That’s the line you’re going to go with? We all know it’s salt and vitriol regardless of which emoji you tack on at the end.
You seem to be confused about what metagaming is. having to “adjust and go back” is metagaming. Requiring metagaming is not conducive to roleplay.
The context would include what I was responding to, which was only whether the changes were unintentional - at the time they were made. And the changes weren’t made in Vanilla.
The original dev team did understand roleplaying better; things like not using story phasing were intentional. Other things, like the boat time, were likely unintentional. Most of the original dev team left soon after the game went live, so they weren’t around when all the changes detrimental to roleplaying were made.
Ultimately, though, I’m arguing only that Retail actually is much worse for roleplay than Vanilla was, not that the change was intentional. If you agree that it’s actually much worse now, and are only arguing that the changes were unintentional, then yes, we’re on the same page.
well thats the problem with mmorpgs. there’s really no spot for them to end and not upset at least a good portion of the playerbase. been trying to figure out a way for them to transistion retail into a wow2 like state but you’ve got players who’ve spent thousands of dollars on mounts and pets and everything else from the game store. there ain’t no way, not no how, they will be happy with any talk of those things no longer being available as bragging rights. so anything wow2-ish will necessarily need a way for that stuff to still have import