So it still feels like three hundo hours till classic release and I decided to log into retail to mess around. I decided to make an Orc warlock to check out the horde Kalimdor zones in retail since the last time I did that was pre cata.
I make my warlock, pick up my first quest to kill the mottled boars, and got on my merry way. To my surprise… instead of the boars being scattered around, they are all in a pinned ditch!!! What?! Was it too challenging to kill the scattered boars? So here I am, standing on top of the ditch, firing shadow bolts at a bunch of pinned up boars… I felt dirty and slightly disgusted with myself when I turned in that quest…
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It was never too hard for the “filthy casuals” as people call them. however there was a perception by exects that had no idea what the community liked and didn’t like. That is why they game became more and more like a trashy mobile game. Even when they took a step back in the right direction, they then got scared and went running the wrong way again.
Even the most causal player can and will enjoy the classic style of gameplay. Working person or stay at home mom. There was never a lack of variety in the people that played from vanilla to wrath, thats why they had so many subs.
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You forgot about the handholding overload. I tried the same thing with a NE druid and it was so overwhelming I logged off. Awful game.
https://imgur.com/a/69pnSEh
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Don’t forget that every quest is shaded on the map. They literally got to lead you by the nose, rather than have you read quests or look for mobs like the old days.
2/10
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I feel dirty and disgusted with myself after doing a lot of things
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Pretty sure that you can turn off tutorials somewhere in the options menu, and that messages like these were in Classic jic it was your first MMO.
Still horrendous though, can probably take on 5+ level 3 mobs at level 1, you can slay a level 8 mob if you have a healing spell. Leveling balance is also very questionable (Brew monks can AoE obliterate mobs at level 10, Ele Shamans slowly whittle away at 1.)
You are correct. I didn’t know the tutorial was a thing and it hasn’t been that long since I made a new character. This was a fresh install of the game so it’s all enabled by default, and if I were a genuinely new player, I don’t think I’d have given it a chance.
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Yes retail is a total mess going off this boar quest. How did WoW survive all this time.
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Hope you’re not planning on playing a warrior in classic…
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WoW survived this long because it became obvious that Blizzard and the playerbase (note: not all, but enough) never cared about the beginning of a new character’s experience - and worked hard to make sure that the road to reaching the cap level was as quick as possible, without actually ever fixing the leveling experience.
Blizzard made the game accessible at the cost of tearing out any actual challenge to properly engage new players as they level.
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Very similar experience,
Quit years ago due to the “hand holding” re-upped my subscription just in time to get into the Beta stress test and loved it! Had to talk to people to find areas and quests, died a lot.
Started a new toon to re-initialize the armory just so I could post in forums, every thing was handed to me from the word go. Can play without any effort or even paying attention.
Playing the Classic Beta, I got lost and died, I ran out of ammo and died, pulled a mob and died, backed into a mob and died, fell off a cliff and died etc. Retail level 1-17 no deaths, no challenges, no fun!
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Also dont forget. Most players had a add on that did that exact thing before
Blizzard started doing it themselves because most players used the add on.
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The fact that some players are lazy or want to cheat in a game doesn’t mean it should be made default.
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It had 10 million subs to shed. Thats a lot of people to chase away.
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It wasnt just some players. That is why they added it into the game.
you wont be able to do anything at classic launch the zones will be to packed.
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I leveled to 10 today, this Gnome.
- Frostbolt costs 3 mana, I have 158 total at level 1.
- I can kill mobs 3 to 4 levels higher than me before they reach me
- I never went under 95% mana
- Mobs were scarce, it was hard to grind to 10 just in terms of finding targets. Areas on Classic that have groups of 4 to 5 mobs only had 2, spaced to where you’ll never accidentally pull an extra
Its missing core game experience, where you learn mechanics and have a chance to fail and learn and explore. It was very similar to playing on a repack pserver, where i’d set my mana to 99999999 and had it set to where reaching 0 health didn’t cause me to die… just aimlessly wander, kill things I guess.
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I feel like people forget this. A lot of changes were made to the base game, because of the popularity of add ons. Extra hot bars, quest tracking, targeting, bag management, markers, ect. All came from super popular add ons.
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That’s fine. The tutorial features that are enabled for every new player is my issue. Who is that for? Does anyone find that helpful? Good lord.
I’m also not a fan of ezmode questing, I don’t mind some waypoints on the map or even the “sparkle” they added to quest items in the world. Just… there is such a thing as too much!
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Everything just happens in retail WoW. It’s all too automatic. Your biggest obstacle is time. It doesn’t take long to get bored when everything feels like a foregone conclusion. You level up and boom things just happen. You get skills, access to new dungeons via a queue, talents that can be changed virtually anywhere, etc.
It’s like an MMORPG simulator at this point.
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