From one side, people say that classic will bring back some people from the original community whom left because of retail. They also say that because of the difficulty of classic and the lack of LFR and sharding, the design of classic will force an improved community.
People from the other side of the argument say that ‘times change’ and that people whom originally played vanilla now have real world responsibilities and will not likely return to wow. They also say that because of the wave of entitlement that has now swept over the real life community, the community of wow classic will also share those attributes.
I mean, both sides make good arguments. I think wow classic will be an interesting social experiment to see what happens.
Not really. People will be who they are in an online environment. Vanilla to Retail, I haven’t seen a change in behavior or community, except when people move from server to server.
The community will be better not because the people are any better, but because their reputation is much more significant. It encourages better behavior.
Exactly. People will actually talk and be nicer because we’ll have a reputation again. You didnt have 50 crossed server to hide your bad and negative attitude in. You had the people on your server - couldn’t change it - couldn’t change your name. People would know you if you were nice or not.
Also, if you had a profession maxed, people would add you to friends because you were one of the fews on the server. All that is part of what made WoW nice : a sens of community, a WORLD (of warcraft).
Bring your own community and build from there, that’s what Vanilla was all about. You can’t expect everyone to be super friendly and social, so start out with a guild that believes in playing the way you want to.
The internet that made Vanilla what it was is gone, and can never come back. Everything is worse. Everyone is worse. This isn’t the fault of any one generation or certainly any game.
The rules of the game, of course, are grooves that channel the behavior into certain patterns. People will see more value in supporting each other, and of their reputation, for reasons that have been endlessly explained around here.
To answer your question, both sides of the argument you’ve laid forth are right, in their own way. The experience won’t be as good, but it can be better than what we’ve got.
The vast majority of those players moved on long ago. And while some will come back. It won’t be many and the toxic community will drive them away again soon enough.
I don’t consider PUGs and dungeons “community”. I’m a roleplayer, I talk to my community about things that don’t involve gameplay mechanics or “content.”
If your sense of community is based around players’ ability to play a video game, and you’re quick to leave a game based on whether you talk to them in a dungeon, that says more about you than me.
It will, because the Classic server design self-polices through having a reputation. This combined with the need to be social to form parties for any group content leads to a fundamentally different Community than we have in BFA.
I’ve found the lack of communication to be across all facets of the game. My involvement with the community begins or dies with communication with the rest of said community.
Dungeons are where it is most prevalent for me, as I had found it far more easy to meet new people that I would play with afterwards on a regular basis.
That said, based on the “I want this and I’m going to call anyone telling me no, a troll” attitudes on the forums, I do wonder how closely those communities are going to align with the ‘old days’. The game enforces a lot of teamwork and community, but if there’s enough poison, even good communities break down into rabble.
It will definitely be better than retail, but definitely be worse than Vanilla.
On one hand, having a reputation on a server will force people to act much more kindly unless they want to become outcasts.
…but on the other hand, I’ve noticed that there is WAY more elitism coming from the Private Server community than there ever was in Vanilla.
While I’m going to be playing a mage with a cookie cutter build to avoid the “Not correct spec/class, no invite” mentality, I’m going to hope hybrids get treated better this time around
(for the record, I’ve never played a private server, so I’m hoping it’s just a vocal minority on the forums that make Private Server Elitists thing an over-blown issue) : /
I try to be nice to everyone, the whole Gogogo mentally not being there will be A HUGE boost to being a IF NOT better person more patience.
I posted a whole thing on The General forums about how this guy just had to change a kids diapers and he got kicked in my Normal Eye of Azshara, and how wrong that felt, and how something like that happend to me on a P server and we just joked about it after the person came back.
So, yes it will be better. We won’t be vote kicking people for being a decent parent, and that alone already makes us a little better then the people who don’t say anything to anyone and just QUE for LFGS
It’ll be as divided as the current retail community. You’ll have your cutting edge min/max base that already knows Vanilla inside in out through research or Pserver experience and then you’ll have your casual playerbase captivated by talent trees and slower, more meaningful progression.
Like I said, I don’t have your priorities when it comes to community. I spend mine talking to people about them, and not their gaming habits.
My community is built on the social interaction and the contribution of creative ideas shared with others, and Classic won’t bring out anything in that regard that I don’t already have.
If you have a lack of communication, that is again, because of what your priorities are.
I don’t think we’re on the same page here. I enjoy talking with other players about all sorts of things (not all gameplay driven as you’re assuming), and that begins by encountering them in various content and getting the ball rolling with a simple “hello” and /greetings. These days, it’s pretty much the sound of crickets when I try to engage with others.
Maybe you’re just luckier than I am in encountering the rest of the player base, because more often than not I’m running into silent protagonists that want to quicly run the content and get it done.
If it wasn’t for the good people in my guild, I’d likely not be subbed at this point.
Well I think whether or not the community will be any good comes down to us. A quick glance at the forums here can probably tell us what to expect. And it’s about as you’d expect: some people might be friendly, most will be alright, some might only play a certain way and preach “one-way-to-play”, some might play hard at launch and leave after a few months, and some will be completely rude.
I think the community will be overall decent, because we need a game like WoW Classic these days. It’s something that’s gone MIA since almost a decade ago as retail WoW changed and became something different. And soon that experience will be back to enjoy again.
![:thinking:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/thinking.png?v=6" ":thinking:")
![:face_with_raised_eyebrow:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/face_with_raised_eyebrow.png?v=6" ":face_with_raised_eyebrow:")
