Another perk to that was you KNEW exactly how many dungeons you had to run; counting down how many bosses and finishing dungeons it would take to get enough badges to get that upgraded piece
And they were armor sets! When you were done, you looked good! Lol
The flip side is seeing a new raid tier come out and then realizing most of the loot is worse than what you already have.
That isn’t a great feeling either.
Mental progress bars are so much better than dice cups.
Star wars galaxies I was in a band and we spent hours playing songs in the cantina. I don’t know if I ever killed anything in that game except time.
This is what helped alts in the previous expansions. We knew how many and which alt to level if the guild needed something or if you knew what class wasn’t played enough.
Before Brad passed a few years ago he was working on another game that mirrored Original EQ. Original EQ to me was so much fun. It wasn’t a race to the finish but it was the journey there. Everything in EQ felt perilous. Being told if you’re in Qeynos but wanting to fight along side the Dwarves, Gnomes, Wood Elfs, High Elfs, and Half-Elfs of Faydwer meant running across Antonica through the Karanas, then into High Pass Hold, where you would have to stay during the night time because Kithicor Forest was cursed and high level undead roamed during the night, into the Commonlands, into Freeport and then on a Boat to Faydwer. But Vanilla WoW is like that too in terms of time sinks.
But I guess what I’m getting at here it feels like WoW developed a system into seasons for gear and what not but it’s not really a system that lets you build up. It’s kinda like Ranked Play but you don’t get to experience all the content unless you fit the meta, which isn’t how any other type of game operates under this structure. Right now I’m enjoying leveling my Druid in Hillsbrad then I’m headed to Eastern Plaguelands, Western, and then travel down to the Valley of Sorrow just to see the story line there because Warcraft 1 took place there.
I love this, even though I never played SWG. There’s no law written anywhere that combat and measuring contests have to the focal point of an MMO… would be nice if current MMO dev teams remembered that.
Also why get rid of badge gear? I don’t understand that at all. It’s like the simplest way for people to gear up. Just give them tokens at the end they can buy appropriate ilvl gear for.
Sandbox RPG MMO vs. Theme park Adventure MMO is the difference.
So many corpse runs. I’d have a trail of corpses alone the wall between HPH and Rivervale because I kept dying trying to recover my first corpse. Lol
Stupid red conned mobs jumping 30 levels at night. I just wanted to collect my goblin ears for turn in exp in high pass hold 
I think a large part of the problem sadly stems from the attitude of the player base, which in large part has been a result of m+ speed running where failures are punishing and there is often little to no chance for a do over if you mess up. Blizzard has nurtured an environment where this behavior is rewarded.
People want to steamroll the content without any challenge. Few are interested in progressing through wipes or learning fights the old fashioned way (and m+ make this largely impossible anyways). People simply want to outgear it and overpower it, hence absurd ilvl requirements for entry level content week 1. The attitude has bled into raids as well despite the lack of timers - people dropping group after 2 or 3 wipes on fights like council, for example.
I dont know how to put that genie back in the bottle, but its a huge part of why i despise speed run metas and content designed around them. It just encourages this type of overbearing toxicity.
Can I just say the the skips that people do in dungeons always always make me mad. It’s the most corny way to play the system and so many players get pissed off if you can’t mirror the skip. Instead of putting intentional skips in a dungeon can you just make them traps that we have to avoid it fits the flavor so much more than follow this path, watch the roam, and don’t pull this add.
I also feel like everytime I run a dungeon there’s a FOTM skip that a memo went out and I didn’t get it.
Yep. My husband plays a tank and theres always some abusive dps with a bad attitude if he doesnt magically know the skip someone discovered 2 days ago.
I recall that being in DAoC, the trials of atlantis expansion, and a lot of players hated it…looking back on it I think it wouldn’t be all that bad in a game like WoW. The thing with DAoC though is a lot of the gear stayed relevant through the years. That artifact weapons stuck with you for many years. I spent a good half year leveling a few of my artifacts. It was less favorable though in a pvp-focused game.
Oh god I was in a M3 and this Tank was like you don’t know this skip don’t you watch so and so. I was like bruh I’m in my 30’s. I don’t mind watching people play crafting creation games but watching someone play a WoW dungeon just feels wrong.
Could be wrong but I don’t think Blizz intentionally designs skips, those are entirely of the community’s design.
When tanking I don’t like taking them either, because invariably one or two of the party’s members won’t be able to pull the skip off, pull 5 packs of mobs, and wipe us.
I dont even have to pick another game. Old WoW hit it out the park. It had a perfect mesh of difficulty, exploration and reward. Especially for people who actually had lives.
People keep saying WoW is more accessible now, but I just dont see it. I could raid Molten core or wolk on its hardest settings with dungeon or lfr gear.
Now? No chance, game is on endless rails of gear and difficulty progression. You have to log in each and every day to get anywhere.
This, I don’t know why Blizz decided to abandon the Mythic + style in MoP. It was purely cosmetic and nobody had a problem with it.
It’s more accessible in regards to getting to end game and doing the dungeons and normal raids. But other than that–nada. You will get to see the end game content in retail vs classic it’s way easier to get picked because finders eliminate all the gatekeeping for a good chunk of the game. The only thing you won’t see is Mythic mechanics unless you start getting into more serious group play.
It’s “more accessible” in that you can technically be in the same “tier” as the cutting edge guilds more easily by virtue of LFR/Normal, but that’s really just smoke and mirrors. LFR/Normal are basically different raids than Heroic/Mythic, they just happen to use the same map, which makes things cheaper for Blizzard since they don’t need actual separate raids for different difficulties (ala MC/ZG/BWL in Vanilla).