Is this a generational thing? When I was a kid you would put a quarter in and play until you died 3 times. Every time you left and came back, you started at the beginning. Same thing happened when we got Atari. You put the cartridge in and you started at level 1. There was no “save”. And we liked it!
JK - I am not saying we need to go back to starting over, but there was a certain acceptance and appreciation of playing the game again. I see lots of threads about “raid logging” and “nothing to do”. This game seems a lot more engaging than eating a bunch of dots and chasing ghosts, but there doesn’t seem much desire to do it again. Why is that?
I may be considered by some as an alt-aholic. When I run out of progress on one toon, I enjoy doing it again. Is that a generational thing? Is it because I was conditioned that way?
I do believe it most likely is a generational thing…
It seems that nowadays, instant gratification is more important than good gameplay… it’s been a slow change that started around the end of WotLK, and what has given us the mess that is retail.
Rpg’s are much different than the games you’re refering to. They get more difficult as you level so when replaying the early levels a good player can whiz through them and the practice increases your ability to master the harder levels. In rpg’s the difficulty doesn’t increase much with levels and much of the game is the story and the exploration of the lands. Once you’ve done it several times it gets boring. Nothing is new. There are no surprises
When I started classic I never bothered to download questie. I knew the location of every quest objective. I remembered every inch of Azeroth. For example before I began the game I knew I was rolling an undead rogue with LW and at 10 would go to the Barrens because of the synergy of the animal quests and skinning.
Even the things I seem to have forgotten I remember as soon as I start doing them. I forgot I did Kara but as soon as I started the attunement and went to the entrance of Kara I remembered I did the raid in original. When I start the raid I’ll remember every fight and everything about the whole raid. Every room, every stair case and hallway, every boss.
Games that are less about skill and more about other things have limited replayability.
At almost 49 yrs old, I’m neither young nor old.
I started playing retail about halfway through LK, so I’m neither “old guard” nor “newbie”.
I enjoy playing both TBC Classic and Retail. To me, they are separate experiences that are definitely not mutually exclusive.
I am also a major altoholic. I’m maxed out on my main TBC Classic server and have 42 toons in Retail across 4 servers.
For me, “replayability” in WoW is achieved via alts. By playing a different class or even a different spec of the same class “old” content can feel new again, especially at higher levels or in dungeons. Playing the opposite faction opens your eyes to new quests and lets you explore areas and storylines from a completely different perspective.
Tired of being a tank? Try rolling a priest and healing once in a while.
Tired of Westfall? Try rolling an orc or an undead.
Tried of exploring? Run a dungeon. Tired of dungeons? Try PvP.
One of my favorite things about WoW is how easy it is to find something new and different to do every time you play it. While TBC Classic doesn’t offer the same range of classes / races as retail, it still offers plenty of variety and places to be explored.
I think part of it is a generational difference. The younger people didn’t grow up in a world where games were doing the same thing again but harder.
Part of it could also be that WoW is, if I’m being honest, a pretty mediocre single player game. That’s why they did the questing revamp in Cata that everybody seems to hate so much. They knew the vast majority of people would be questing alone, so they wanted to make that more interesting for them.
All that said, I think the biggest reason is that a lot of people here already did this way back in the day. These Classic games are functionally “New Game +” for a lot of people, so it’s all about picking a class and going all in on that class. It’s not about exploration and seeing the content from multiple angles cause they did that back in 2007.
You play the game for fun. Many players, especially retail players want everything handed to them on a silver platter on the first minute available to them. Even having to pay (RMT) for achievements is fine for them. No pride in working towards anything.
