What went right?
YOU
This is what went right.
>>334472163
What did BC do better than Vanilla?
Best-in-the-medium atmosphere and music
Polish, particularly in the areas that count the most (like responsiveness to your input)
Very readable (strong silhouettes and such like) aesthetic easy on the eyes
Built on top of a strong franchise with players eager to visit locations and meet characters from popular and beloved WC3
Designed such that the world feels grand and interesting, with a lot of iconic content emerging from something seemingly mundane (think of Mankrik's Wife)
A good balance between possibility of solo play but offering incentives for grouping up and interacting with your fellow players
>>334472229
Far superior class design and balance (it didn't take out anything unique but instead created roles that previously didn't even exist or that weren't even worth considering, such as paladin AoE-tank) while making the classes more involved to play on average
Questing that maintains the non-linear structure and the concept of travelling around the world on major story chains but offers greater quest variety and concentrates the majority of quest to hubs
Superior professions, with very much desirable unique benefits for each profession
More involved endgame content with superior tuning, keeping concepts such as tier-to-tier profession and resistance gear relevant but toning down the most outrageous bullshit (4HM tank gear requirements, anyone?)
Superior itemization that still allowed items to stay relevant well beyond their league (think of Quaggmirran's Eye or Idol of the Emerald Queen, or even some vanilla items like Libram of Light) but made gearing more involved with new stats and toned down the idiocy like spirit plate
Many of the most atmospheric zones ranging from Nagrand to Eversong Woods, complete with on average better, properly orchestrated, music
Generally superior style of PvP that maintained virtually all the nuance that existed in vanilla (warrior stancedancing and such like) but better pace and balance
Etc.
>>334473270
These are all very good points.
My question now is what has Blizzard done that made the game as bad as it is today?
>>334472229
Blood elves
>>334472229
Basically took an already good formula and perfected it in every way
>>334473417
Shortcuts to everything, and the culling of the social requirements.
>>334473417
>adding in Garrisons which is essentially a Facebook game
>pandering to casuals
>LFR has largely killed the opportunity to make friends ingame since you can do any group without anyone speaking at all
>Alot of old gear has been made redundant (resist comes to mind particularly)
>Everyone can get a legendary, making them less legendary
>Social requirements removed to the point you can single player through most content
>Storyline throughout the game is all over the place and in all different expansions (Start a blood elf, level from 1 to 20 in TBC content, 20 to 58 in Cata content, 58 - 70 in TBC content, 70 - 80 in WotLK)
>The general playerbase is Reddit incarnate
>They're doing a second Legion themed expansion showing how creatively bankrupt they are
>Current content drought
>Due to the fact of how easy it is to get gold + items as well as garrisons, now everyone is a millionaire rendering the professions and auction house worthless
>If you do a raid and don't know literally every single mechanic of everything good chance you'll get kicked
>If you aren't overgeared as fuck with several heirlooms people don't want to be in a group with you
Anyone else care to expand or add to this list?
>>334472051
You think it went right, but it went left.
>>334474403
You forgot cross-realm shit, assuring that if you group up for a dungeon or raid you'll play with people from completely different realms that won't talk to you. Making the run a silent and anti-social affair. Removing the community from each realm in favor of hiding the fact that realms are getting more and more empty and need to rely on this because the game has become so shit and Blizzard doesnt want to merge servers
>>334474752
Keeping in mind i don't play the game anymore, I just researched because I was curious about what made something that brought me so much joy when i was younger to the level of complete shit. Its sad really, so sad.
>>334473417
In general, it has ceased being an MMO and an RPG.
For example, besides the highest artificial difficulty modes for raids, there's no kind of incentive to interact with the players (why the hell would you group up when just one of you is enough to 1-shot mobs?). Indeed, in some ways you could say it offers incentives NOT to: for example, dungeons are designed to be facerollable by the worst 5 players on the server so, with success assured, the most efficient way to do the content is to press a button and be instantly teleported to the dungeon with randoms. Since they might not even play on your server, you're unlikely to ever meet them again and there's no reputation or anything to uphold, you can just need on everything and generally act as assholeish as you can possibly get away with. And even if you are a decent enough human being to be polite, the other players might as well be NPCs. And that's just the social aspect, the Facebook and queue simulator style of gameplay is everywhere.
Even in terms of things that WoW still excels at or has improved in (at least in some ways), this cancerous style of game still handicaps it. For example, even though the new areas are as beautiful as ever, when you're on a guided 100% linear tour following arrows and globalling mobs, any sense of mystery and danger instantly vanishes from the atmosphere. Neo-WoW is pretty to look at but there's no feel, character or identity to it. Or let's consider something like boss encounters: obscene power creep of player characters and more visualized abilities (to the point of them looking fairly comical) have forced bosses to have more and more abilities and while many of the most involved bossfights are recent, even if it wasn't for the rest of the game being unbearable garbage, I'd still be turned away from bosses that feel like completely arbitrary dance floors rather than something fitting an RPG with RPG-like challenges.
>>334472051
everything except garrisons
>>334475656
>dungeon grinding to level alts
>be cordial and friendly, groups having plenty of chatter and having fun going through the dungeon
>maybe once in a while get a need rolling faggot, just laugh at them and kick em
Yeah I dunno what you're talking about. The game is as social as you want it to be anon.
>>334472229
Everything. Name something it didn't do better
they shut down the vanilla server down
>>334479347
Dungeons.
TBC dungeons are garbage hallways with recycled assets.
Lore and stories.
TBC was fucking retarded in every aspect when it comes to that.
World and content.
Vanilla had MUCH more overall.
>>334480012
>vanilla had more
>>334475656
The market used to be sensitive to free roam being so mysterious and "hazardous". It used to seem as if getting ganked was going to be a massive problem, and maybe it really is less so because of empty zones; but is there honestly any rush in the no-loss gameplay that is WoW?
>>334479736
They had it coming.
Well deserved too.
>>334480231
World PVP always felt pointless to me because you can just revive in a minute and be on your way.
Not sure why people were so obsessed with it. It defintiely wasnt the gameplay.
>>334480195
Yep.
Objectively.
>>334480195
>scholomance
>strat
>brd
>blackrock spire
>all felt like actual places you were invading and fucking up
I mean he's not wrong
I miss 10 man scholos....
>>334480901
Actually the whole blackrock mountain thing in vanilla I really enjoyed
There was so much going on there and it really felt like a big conflict going on there
>>334480901
BRD alone is bigger than two whole dungeon hubs in TBC.
>>334481050
They were all kind of designed a little shitty but that just added to the charm
>>334481141
TBC dungeons sucked.
It also brought us the cancer that is Caverns of Time.
Everything surrounding the Caverns of Time is objectively shit.
Charm my ass. TBC did little things well. Basically just better balance and better raiding.
But expansions after that had even better raiding and even better balance so that goes out of the window too.
>>334480012
>TBC dungeons are garbage hallways with recycled assets.
I'm not omniscient so I don't know if you really thought that way back in the day but I can't help but to feel most people making this kind of argument are noticing the awful state of dungeons in WotLK and generalizing it to TBC, or generally upset about the linear "cinematic experience" trend in gaming (so am I) and again, retroactively blaming TBC for it.
See, TBC dungeons weren't WotLK dungeons. Yes, if you look at the maps, it's blatantly obvious they are linear, but doing them isn't a question of bear tank running forward from the beginning of the instance until the end and simply pressing 360 degree swipe, never stopping until you're at last boss and the mobs have died to cleave. No. You're pulling mobs far back behind the corners, waiting for patrols, jumping on top of objects to skip packs and such like. When you're on a bridge (that obviously is a straight line, that's how bridges work) and facing two pre-nerf Arcatratz sentinels, are you thinking of the straight line ahead of you, or are you perhaps thinking about how the hell you're supposed to beat those fuckers? I certainly didn't feel like TBC dungeons were "linear". I felt they were well-paced, challenging, varied, atmospheric and all of those things.
Besides, I'd argue TBC tends to really good job at misdirecting you and providing an illusion of scale or freedom, be it the huge open cavern of Underbog, vast halls of Shadow Labyrinth where you're not just moving forward but have to clear the halls entirely, or Escape from Durnholde that's literally the same as uninstanced Hillsbrad Foothills, even if the route you take is pretty much 100% pre-determined. And the dungeons that don't try to hide their "linear" nature tend to make sense that way: Hellfire Ramparts are literally the battlements of Hellfire Citadel. Walls aren't labyrinths, they stretch from point A to point B to defend the area behind them. That's how walls work!
>>334481236
I was talking about the vanilla dungeons, mostly brd lol
But yeah CoT.... I felt like I was fucking hyped to much for that shit to and it was just ok.... wow it's fucking nothing
>>334481423
Vanilla dungeons were jank and kinda unpolished, but at least they were experimental and varied.
BRD was apparently a scrapped full zone and it kinda shows.
Would have been cool if we got more of that. But we didnt, we got garbage like TBC instead.
>>334481398
No, TBC dungeons are definitely shitty fucking hallways. WOTLK just continued the trend.
Then they tried to shake things up with the Occulus and they FUCKED UP.
The hardest dungeon in TBC was literally a hallway with 90° turns and then trash mobs and mobbses on the way.
Its garbage design. Fucking SHIT and so are your excuses. All the hallway complaints people use on current WoW now also apply to TBC.
TBC set most of the things people dislike in current WoW in motion.
>>334481398
this isn't particularly related but this is the first time i've seen anyone mention guardian in anything
i'm not sure why that class exists when you can just play blood dk
>>334481896
being a bear>being an edgeman
only thing that holds them back is wonky balance at times.
>>334481845
>jank and kinda unpolished
I liked this. Vanilla dungeons, especially when you were running them without a map or something, were actually interesting. You bonded with your group with hard pulls and CC rotations and had fun exploring.
But I suppose that has more to do with the fact that I miss WoW feeling like an actual world, you know. Not just an instanced hallway.
>>334474403
You sure sound the casual to me scrublord...
The first points were all valid then the deeper you go the more your true color shows.
>>334482145
that's pretty much why i play guardian
not entirely sure what the class actually does, but it's fun being a bear
i probably started too late to get into any form of difficult raids though
>>334482345
I could do without the jank, but it lead to neat differences in design.
Something like UBRS/LBRS doesnt feel like it was made by the same people who made Strat or Scholomance.
BRD by itself is mega unique.
>>334482579
Every expansion works as a soft reset on everybodies progress.
The level cap gets raised and then everybodies gear is kinda shit so they have to get new ones.
So getting into raids is always possible sooner or later.
Right now many people are not raiding because no content is coming out until the next expansion.
>>334473270
>Questing that maintains the non-linear structure
lol
>Nagrand
>wow this place is so beautiful!
>kill 30 eagles
>kill 30 deers
>kill 30 bisons
>kill 30 more eagles
>kill 30 more deers
>kill 30 more bisons
>proceed to next quest area
get fucked
>>334482345
>>334482605
You know why that is right? It's because the concept artists also designed the dungeons.
Everything was done by people with multiple skills, especially in the art department.
>Classic shit get's closed
>All these assmad players that actually invested so much time in playing an outdated version of the game
>mfw
>>334482824
Or alternatively, you grab quests from Throne of the Elements, Telaar/Garadar and the ethereal place as well and travel around the zone doing quests for all those hubs and then returning to take new quests. It's the same shit as in STV where you're ought to take quests from Booty Bay and Grom'gol/Rebel Camp as well while doing Nesingwary quests. While you are travelling to kill Stranglethorn Tigers, you might as well kill Bloodscal trolls for their tusks. While you are doing Raptor Mastery, you simultaneously complete The Defense of Grom'Gol. You probably want to do the first Nesingwary quests and the first crocolisk skin quest from Booty Bay as you start the zone because they're level 30 while most quests are 35ish or above, but beyond that there's no kind of clear structure or order in which you're "supposed" to do the quests. Vanilla and TBC questing work exactly the same.
Then, you get to Scholazar (which, I think, is a good point of comparison since it also features Nesingwary). You only have several quests available in Hunter's Camp. You do a few quests and the beer-tasting quest brings you to Lakeside Landing where you get a breadcrumb to Freya and Frenzyheart/Oracles chain. But should you go to do Avatar of Freya quests, they're in that select area and there's no overlap at all with the other quests. Or maybe you go to do Frenzyheart quests. You only have 2 quests available at once and again, there's no overlap with the quests from the other hubs. The style of questing is very much different. Cata and beyond go even further.
>>334483780
>Vanilla and TBC questing work exactly the same.
Not really. I'm thinking of quests like The Green Hills of Stranglethorn. you are rakh'likh demon. UBRS attunement. Etc.
>>334484110
And then you have chains like Karazhan key chain (from Shattrath to Deadwind to Alterac to Deadwind to Shattrath to instances all over the place), Varedis chain (from SMV to Nagrand to SMV to Terokkar to Netherstorm to Nagrand to Shadow Labyrinth to Nagrand to SMV), Cipher of Damnation (which in turns leads toTrial of the Naaru/TK attunement), Greatmother chain and such.
And anyway, I was talking about the general structure of questing. You get a log full of quest from one zone and then you do them all around the zone (sometimes in neighbouring zones) in no particular order vs only getting a several quests for a concentrated area that you can't combine in any way with quests available from other hubs (if the other hubs are available and active in the first place).
>>334483087
>fair point
Why keep playing servers that are going to get C&Ds?
Maybe the Russian versions wouldn't, but why not just start an interesting game project or appeal to studios who can?
>>334485846
The common perception in the private server community was that servers hosted outside US were pretty much untouchable by Blizz. And allegedly a number of servers (even popular for-profit ones like Molten/Warmane) have received C&D letters before and nothing has ever come out of that so maybe they ARE pretty much untouchable and Nostalrius admins were just pussies.
>>334483087
This.
Its like doing something illegal and then when you get caught. you guys act all surprise as if doing something illegal was bad.
Get with the times people and accept the new updates like every other MMO
vanilla, bc, and pandaria
everything in the middle of bc and pandaria, along with wod was a gigantic mistake
pandaria had solid raiding and great end game with the dailies
wod and cata were bad, wotlk was just a big 'meh
so far legion has potential if you like pvp/raiding because for the first time EVER they'll be able to balance classes that are having issues in pvp or pve without breaking the other aspect in the process
that's pretty huge, honestly, but unless they have mop like end game/daily stuff it's at risk of being meh too
anything more towards pandaria would be a step in the right direction, anything remotely close to wotlk, cata, and wod would be a bad look
>>334486318
Lots of private servers werent shutdown and they still operate
>>334486492
>tuning is the fix for stale gameplay, no content, and no MMORPG elements
>>334472051
The first 4 years.
What went right with WoW is what went right with every single major piece of software ever developed, game or otherwise. It took everything that was great from every other game and plugged it in, and did its best to weed out what wasn't. Achievement system? Open-world quest zones (i.e. no NPC involved and everyone gets credit for helping). Warhammer implemented these several months earlier. PvP ranks, PvP levels (in legion), and battlegrounds (albeit at lower levels)? Dark Age of Camelot implemented these long before, and they were a huge part of the PvP grind. They wait for the release of a new game, see what works, and then implement it. Original vanilla WoW was just that.. vanilla. Sure, the art style was great, and the zones were pretty cool, but there was nothing much to it. It wasn't until they started implementing raids (see: every MMO ever) and the honor system (again, based off of DAoC's RP system) that things started to take an upturn in popularity.
>>334472051
It was an extremely casual MMO that was accessible for people that weren't hardcore enough for the other games on the market. It helped that it had an existing brand name that spanned decades attached to it.
>>334489534
There was nothing casual about the old honor system. In my last week of R14 push I had to stay awake from Saturday morning through server shutdown Tuesday morning because this was right after the boosted AV honor and some kids with no jobs were boosting out of turn. Anyone who ever pushed R14 would agree with this. People have literally died doing it.
>>334489727
People have literally died playing other MMOs too.
>>334472051
Pandaren dudes are adorable so thats a positive
Why was this expansion so good? Maybe because everyone weren't really expecting anything from it, they thought that it was just random spin-off expansion, maybe it felt little like but still it meant more than WoD. After Cata, it was interesting to see WoW slowly coming back to it's feets. It was like watching someone to climb out of well, then when WoD hits, he backflips back to the well.
>>334490251
The soundtrack was pretty damn great
>>334490251
Because there was still progression and need to do the raids before the final one to be able to get into them. Pre-Timeless was the best part. It also gave reasons to be out and about with the world bosses, random toys, dailies, mounts. The stats in game were perfect too.
>>334479347
PVP
Warrior/Druid 2s all day long.
>>334473417
They took everything that made MoP a step back into the right direction and threw it away when they made WoD.
I remember when WoD and garrisons were first announced, people asked, at that very blizzcon, if Blizzard was concerned with people just staying in their garrisons all the time and not interacting with each other, Blizzard's response is that they'd find ways to get people to come out and interact, and then they just didn't really do anything.
Maybe they were banking on Trashran to be good or something?
>>334491569
All that being said, I have hope that the hilarious drop in sub numbers was a wake up call for them and they make legion better.
>>334490251
it seems like it was the last hurrah for blizzard
sub numbers were on the decline since the beginning of cata and they probably decided to put in some effort to show players they can still put out good content. people didnt really care though and sub numbers continued to fall so blizzard went full cash grab mode and decided to milk people dry with TBC nostalgia
>>334481845
>Dungeon literally named shattered halls
>ITS SHIT DESIGN GAIS
>doesn't use any of the time travel dungeons as evidence.
>MMO
Literally nothing
Take off the nostalgia goggles
>>334491569
Sad how they took Thunder and Timeless isle concept of world bosses and butchered it in WoD. Like what the fuck were they thinking? And with Tanaan they should have just copy pasted Thunder and Timeless model but they fucked that up too.
>"MMOs used to be about muh adventure"
>Wanting an outdated design philosophy from when the PS2, GameCube, and XBox Phat were the current gen
Could you be any more casual? How anyone could call current WoW cucks casuals then turn around and miss the most casual aspect of the game is beyond me.
>>334492592
The time travel dungeons were even more ass m8. Black Morass was just a big circle. Durnholde was nonlinear when you were burning the buildings but after that it was just follow Thrall
>you will never glitch through the map to get to the top of the AH
Flying mounts really ruined exploration
