I think Retail WoW only needs to make the game more of an open and social world again to recapture what Classic has. Both Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot have the same feel as WoW Classic which is not surprising because they are both from the golden age of MMORPGs alongside Vanilla WoW.
In Retail. I never meet the same person twice because of the layering. The Battlegrounds are a random mix of people and the rest of the time it feels like a single-player game. I walk the world alone and do missions, do quests, find world treasure chests for war materials. Retail WoW just doesnât feel like an MMORPG anymore it feels single-player unless you opt in using the dungeon, raid, or battleground finder tools.
Retail looks better and feels like it has much smoother game-play but it just isnât an MMORPG. All they have to do is tweak this and bring that back and I would probably play most of my time on Retail WoW. They probably wonât but this is just my opinion after playing both.
I mean, I donât see a community necessarily either but I just see people at least and that makes it more fun. I am a 29lvl Hunter and the zones I am in are packed and it brings the fun because I got jumped about 5 times by the Alliance while I was leveling. I did run into 3 unsuspecting Alliance that were leveling near me and jumped them when they pulled their mobs to ensure my survival. People in the zones were rallying to help one another survive as they did quests and such.
People werenât in the same guilds or groups and didnât necessarily have anything to gain. They were just working together for their mutual survival for fun and just I donât ever see this in Retail WoW.
If youâre suggesting that they make it impossible to do anything in the world without joining groups, then youâve chosen to limit the game to people who never play alone and never have their wow buddies offline.
OP, have you ever played on server that seen a huge in population shift or exile? Or once the main body toon have leveled past you or you ahead of them? Or if you was not able to be online at peek hours. You find yourself alone, that was classic. That is why they did band aid fixes such as LFD and cross realms.
I am on one of the more populated servers in Classic â Herod. I sit in queues of 8,000 - 10,000 people waiting to log in each night and the wait times to log in tend to be around 200-300 minutes.
In Retail, I play on Saurfang but I have no idea what the population health is there. Who knows, maybe this all comes down to server populations.
Get rid of instance content entirely outside of e-sports.
All your progression from cllvl to ilvl is done in the big open world. This keeps new players in the loop with veterans.
Also no such thing as legacy content. Every major release should do some revamp of the leveling process and the âold worldâ so that when new players come on they are mingling with existing players.
It wouldnât be that hard. Classic is mostly the leveling experience. Theyâd just have to make changes to the pre-max level experience. That is, remove level scaling and make world enemies hit MUCH harder, so players will have to think about what they pull and consider grouping together for questing. Also create some awesome class quests where your class trainer sends you to earn iconic abilities.
They could take it another step and remove LFD pre-max, or at least limit it.
I donât know what Blizz would do about character boosts. If Blizz made leveling a more challenging learning curve, inexperienced players would be compelled to take their free boost and skip all that. I already think there are many max level players who donât know anything about their class.
A video game cannot force you to be social. Thatâs a you choice. Some people like less social contact and others like more. Iâve never had a problem filling my friends list with some really fun and nice people that I commonly group with and my guild is also full of people who I find amazing. This weird made-up phenomenon that âclassic has communityâ is a literally ridiculous misperception, especially when the exact same people playing Classic were playing Retail a week ago. Or still play both.
I think the main problem is the same itâs always been. Players are forced to undertake several quest chains or spend weeks of grinding to âunlockâ the ability to play together.
Want to world pvp with a group? Better have unlocked flying (AGAIN).
Want to do raids? Better have the best gear (which you need to raid to get)
Need a certain item level to do something? Better have spent weeks or months leveling your âtime sink of azerothâ
There are just too many things that separate peopleâs ability to actually play together either by effectiveness or complete lock out from the content. Wow has always had this problem and has failed to adapt over time to the new style of gaming where everyone is on the same platform from the start. Look at most games out now. There are no âattunementsâ to do content and most of the power level of characters can be achieved by everyone in a short amount of time.
If you want people to play together you are going to have to make it easier to get on the same playing field. This problem is compounded by the fact that once youâve attained a certain power level your friends have become even MORE powerful and moved on to higher content. So it has a snowball effect. Once you hit about 385 Item level the game is pretty much over if you arenât in a raiding guild. Thereâs zero point in playing past the Q system. Too too many quest chains with unclear objectives to get to higher level gear.
If you want people to be in world pvp you need to place things in the actual world that give players a reason to be there. I played for 3 days trying to find horde players to kill in the open world and only found ONE guy lol. Not surprising as there is no actual reason to be out there other than hoping you run into other players. Give people items or chests in the game that actually contribute to HIGH LEVEL RAID TIER gear out in the open world and you will see more people working together. Right now the game is dying and splitting the playerbase between retail and classic was a HUGE error that will come to light in the next quarter.
One big flash back Iâm getting after playing Classic, is that itâs pretty much a first person RTS, where itâs required for you to team of with other players because mobs can group together in packs of 3, I actually really love feeling like a foot soilder rather than a champion.
There is nothing Blizzard can do to restore the community that existed many years ago. The entire gaming world has changed since then. The tools are in the game for WoW (either version) to be social. People just donât want to be.
Like many others I remember chatting with random players as I leveled through zones in Vanilla and BC. It still happens from time to time. But rarely. People arenât necessarily being rude, they just donât talk. I still encounter other players who help out with tough situations, like accidentally pulling more than you can handle. But talking⌠not so much.