Is areas having clear levelling brackets, it felt like an accomplishment to be the correct level to take on an area that you may have previously accidentally wandered into and learned quickly you weren’t supposed to be there. I doubt they’ll ever go back to such a system but I do feel that made the levelling experience more personal.
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That one time in FF3 I took a left turn and got as far as suddenly facing a mob a dozen levels higher
For me, in WoW, it’s the minding my own business in classic and the Night elf pack in Barrens decides to annihilate me. That or Stitches
I suppose the Fel Reaver for Retail oriented players and suddenly Zekvir
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That Fel Reaver was noisy but had a talent for sneaking up on you silently.
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I got so used to hearing it or playing with music and I’m in my 400th vulture skeleton bone hunt that suddenly
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I was playing on the Classic Anniversary Hardcore servers earlier today, and I died. I lost my level 16 self-made Shaman and I can’t get them back. What did I die to? Two random tallstriders in The Barrens because my taunt totem didn’t work and my earthgrab totem wasn’t effective enough. So I lost my shaman.
What you are asking for is essentially a return to that … where everything is so dangerous and everything is so unfair that you just die randomly at times having done essentially nothing wrong. Things just didn’t go right. Of course without the hardcore element but in essence, that’s what you are asking for.
And this is also why these servers exist: because I am going to make another hardcore character and do the song and dance again. I lost my “No death run” but eh, why let that stop me? The answer is simple: because I don’t mind poor design, I don’t mind bad encounters, I can deal with unfairness, and I think it is fun to overcome these things.
Most people aren’t though. What most people want is to have fun, to try things, to do things, to succeed because they did the right things, and so on.
A return to the “old dangers of WoW” is a return to when the game was poorly designed. It takes a VERY particular type of player to enjoy this kind of experience beyond it being a niche. The Hardcore servers work because they don’t sell themselves as the premier levelling experience, but rather a niche levelling experience wherein you share your successes and accept your failures.
No one wants a return to a poorly designed game, full of BS-encounters where randomness decides whether you die or not, and sometimes you can spend hours on end just to lose massive progress… because of a coin toss. It is a fun thing to do as an activity, but not as the main driving force of the game.
People play on Hardcore realms despite of it being Hardcore, not because of it. All of this has to do with the particular mentality people go into these experiences with.
In short, if you want this experience again, it is there. Just go and play it. Folks have solved Classic for decades, but Hardcore hasn’t because of the sheer consequences failure has impose onto you. But it is a good thing that this is something people should opt into; this shouldn’t be the default.
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This wasn’t a suggestion thread, I’m just fondly reminiscing.
But, thanks for the thesis.
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Seems to me we still have random max-level mobs/areas in the world that give more than enough “took a wrong turn” moments.
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I miss having a Devilsaur sneak up on me, Classic is not the same when PC specs have made them easier to see half a zone away. I learned to make Devilsaur Gloves and Leggings, which then became my source of gold. 40g per glove, 80g per pants, slapped rugged armor kits on them to make them look higher quality than other sellers. Hide of the Wild became my next big seller at 600g each.
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To be fair, I played more Diablo 2 HC than this WoW HC.
And in those years it was almost always stuff like bad portals and lag. I’ve died to lag constantly in Warcraft. So, it’s just an acceptable risk being an online game
But my friends and I would do HC NES runs. Like no death Ninja Gaiden or Contra.
I’m glad it’s a feature
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I personally haven’t experienced that in retail for at least over a decade.
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Have you played?
I have, you can see by the fact that I’m not level 10.
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Yup, scaling is a huge downer IMO
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Yeah I flight nosed dived into those elite bees in Dornagal the first time. I had a Western Maldraxxus moment where I was corpse crawling back to safety
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You are seriously telling me that you actually played this expansion out in the world and not once while leveling wandered into an area of level 80 mobs? Wow.
Flight hinders exploration.
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It was more about me being new, young and bad PC/lag. Once I experienced it… it got old fast.
Ah, ok, so you’re just trolling, got it.
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What kind of mental gymnastics got you to that conclusion?
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Leveling brackets and scaling of zones is something that was good.
I could live with mob scaling to level. But TBH, the worst mistake blizzard ever made, or at least in the top 5, was introducing mobs scaling with ilvl. This single change basically negated one of the major reason to get better gear, to kill things faster.
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