Playing from Vanilla through Wrath, once Cataclysm released, so many people hated the world changes because they were so dramatic that it put a lot of us off. A lot of guilds disbanded, many old school players quit.
Zirene made a comment about how TBC was the "actual" peak of WoW, and Wrath rode on it's coattails, so to speak, and I think I have an explanation for why that is. I'm coming at this from a PvE perspective, since I don't PvP all that much, but I think some of the same points apply. Vanilla and TBC are both games wherein the experience is primarily determined by the community and not the game design itself. Raid fight mechanics are more vague and require creative problem solving to overcome (Maexxna's web wrap being overcome by paladins and warlocks Diving Intervention-ing and soulstone-ing to keep healing a stunned tank, for example), instead of having a designed success formula ("push the right button that every tank has to not die" mechanics, for example). This encouraged and rewarded collaboration and group effort over individual success, and as such strengthened communities that naturally developed to tackles these challenges. You even struggled to acquire pre-raid gear without a guild or friends to help you out, so to even get started, you had to join or create a community of like-minded individuals to work together toward the same goal. And I think it goes without saying that any multiplayer game is more enjoyable when you play it with other people. Starting in Wrath, with the Group Finder feature, you were able to get everything you needed to theoretically step into a raid setting without anyone else to help you out. The need for community out of the gate was essentially removed. and without the NEED for community, a lot of new players never really engaged with one, and then fell off once they hit that wall which required one. I count myself in this group. I was one of many who started late in the TBC cycle, had my fun solo leveling and going through Outland, but wasn't really aware of the end-game scene. Then Wrath hit, with a ton of new content still accessible to people like me, and it kept me hooked. This had a positive feedback loop through the first half or so of Wrath, until those players like me eventually just... stopped progressing. I never learned how important it was to be part of a guild for the entire 3-ish years I played at the time, because I never needed it to feel like I was getting somewhere, until suddenly I couldn't, and I just stopped playing. Could I have joined a guild then, and kept going? Probably, and that's certainly the easiest way to dismiss my claims here, but my failure to do so is not the issue here. The issue is that the game led me to believe I could succeed without the aid of other players, when in reality I could not. Not in the long term. Blizzard removed the need for players to actually engage with each other socially, to develop a report with each other, and misinterpreted Wrath's initial financial success as "more features and accessibility = more subs." In reality, what had kept their game going so long and so strong was the strong bonds and communities people had created with each other in order to succeed within it. Removing the need for such social engagement ultimately led to WoW long and painful decline, even to this day. There's more I could say on this topic, but this is a long enough "comment" already. If you got this far, thanks for reading all my rambling thoughts
Just my two cents, as a former speedrunner (not in wow, but in other games): Yes, there is competition in speedrunning, but if you check every game's speedrunning community, it's about sharing strats, finding ways to break the game ... yes, everyone is trying to get that 1st place and there is competition, but hiding strats, that normally does not happen (also because, in most of the game's speedrunning leaderboards, it is mandatory to stream for anti-cheat purpose) I personally don't like group speedrunning nor having games where you can't speedrun out of the gate (in wow case, leveling, gearing etc.), but that is my personal opinion. About the Noobs 10s gain strategy ... maybe Zirene is not that familiar with speedrunning in general, but people fight over TENTHS of a second, even less, in some games/category. 10 seconds in a 50m run is HUGE, i had a former WR beaten by seconds in a 7 hour game run/category, just saying. Speaking about TBC and Pre-Patch, i hope they come asap ... i personally can't stand playing classic anymore :D i'm just leveling toons waiting for tbc :)
Good Respond but i see it quite differently, I usually don't Speedrun a Game, I usually play Games that can't be Speedrunned (competitive Shooters) and I really like Speedruns of various Games that I don't even play so really the only Game I Speedrun is WoW Classic. Your talking about People showing their Strats and more but forget that it's a 40 (or even more) People Speedrun, no Single player Archievement and honestly I don't know Any Game that gets Speedrunned with a 40 Man Raidsquad, you can't compare that in my opinion. And also that u say Vids are needed 2 show that no one is hacking or making something that's not allowed does not affect wow speedruns cuz without a Log its just a Video dude.
good conversation around why WoW classis was so popular. I would add to Zirene's comments about movement favoring the player: The far distance 3rd person view is really enjoyable; too many modern MMOs are in first person view or don't allow for a distanced 3rd person view. I also think modern MMOs try too hard to reduce the number of buttons pressed. In WoW, we have sometimes 50 buttons we can potentially use on our UI (all of which are customizable)... this enables us to really dive deep into our gameplay and have a customized experience. It's almost as if my complex WOW UI is an extension of my brain... once I remember all my hotkeys - don't need to think about where I am clicking to control my character.
Regarding the expansion transition talk, I think Vanilla to BC had the best power level creep. In playing a game like WoW, you expect your gear to get replaced every new tier of raid. Naxx items being on par with level 70 blue items was the sweet spot for me.
It's more the tbc transition. You want a few items lasting a good deal through tbc, but not to where someone else can't easily get gear to where they aren't desired from a gear perspective in the highest expansion raids
My personal theory is that WoW was successful because it was essentially the first easily-accessible form of social media. It was essentially a chat room with a game attached. Players had status. Instead of likes and checkmarks it was purples and the noobs who recognized you as a baddass. Yes, there were games before it. But, they weren't anywhere near as accessible. On the topic of the inevitable fate of MMOs being decline by overcomplicating... I wonder if there would be a way to avoid that by having an MMO that developed horizontally instead of vertically. For example, not increasing the level cap, but instead adding content for all levels?
Cash shop shit is on it's way guys. There is potentially a lot of money to be made from cash shop and they know this. Those types of changes is what, imo, contributed to the downfall of WoW and they're starting earlier in destroying the game than they did last time. As far as release date. Closed beta for classic was in May and the game didnt release until August. I just cannot see them releasing BC with a one month beta. I hope I'm wrong but I think its foolish to expect a BC release any sooner than June.
@Kaan Özkuscu To be fair, you can actually more or less buy gold in retail WoW from Blizzard, thus making it pretty easy to pay for player boosting towards gear, achievements and so on. Part of this will happen regardless with in-game gold being grinded and used to pay for it anyway. But there is a large gap (in my mind) between earning money outside the game, thus having an advantage towards gearing in-game, or having to play the game somehow to earn that gear. Though crossrealm and raid /dungeon finder and such surely contributes to a more isolated player base in terms of player interaction.
I find it funny Zirene says he's a purist about when DK's game into the game but yet he wants all these changes that can (and likely will be) more detrimental to the classic era expansions that didn't exist in the game in the first place. He says the spirit of classic is min/max but would he be okay with all the retail mounts from the cash shop being in classic? I bet he would say no. So is the spirit of classic only min/max, or is it actually much more than his perspective from playing in such a high level hardcore guild? Seems he's doing exactly what Madseason talked about in his video where he's dismissing the other side's point about all these changes without thinking about the bigger picture or listening to anyone else's points. Also just because there are server transfers right now, doesn't mean you should add every other cash shop item you can think of. Transfers existed in classic; lvl 58 boosts did not exist in tbc. I don't know why we can't just play tbc the same way we played classic.
First off awesome podcast, I really enjoyed it. Second, your remarks about RUclips comments really resonated with me. I also do a WoW Classic podcast and recently we started putting our episodes on RUclips. We have gotten so many long passionate and often angry comments. I'll go to reply and the comment just isn't there. I wonder if people are just having a bad day and comment before thinking it through. In the end it's all just opinions. But I do love how invested people are. Thanks for the new podcast to make the work days go by faster. Also is this podcast on any audio only platforms like Spotify or iTunes?
Heya ty! Yep, I agree I feel a lot of it is kneejerk reactions from people who disagree with one point but started typing before listening to the full thing. And yeah, we're on both spotify and itunes (spotify link is in description, i need to update links for itunes too since we just got on there)
@@ClassicRoguecraft You're totally right about people typing before listening to the whole thing. So many comments actually hit on the same points we hit later. Sometimes they literally mimic points brought up later in the show. It's unfortunate that some stop listening the second they disagree with any opinion. If they had just stuck around they MIGHT have heard their point made. Just found the pod today, had to check the previous episodes. I'll be enjoying episode 2 tomorrow. Also we are both on Whitemane. I'm in Vargflocken. Gonna shout your pod out on our next podcast. Keep it up!
Another great podcast guys! In my opinion, a lot of the issue with the plateauing and whatnot in my opinion is due to the catchup mechanics in wrath thru current. Nothing feels valuable, let alone expansion to expansion, but from patch to patch, as the time that you put into get gear/rewards is completely negated by the mechanisms they introduce to "catch-up" the new player. I have no issue with the 58 boost, because its not relevant to the burning crusade content and doesn't detract from the time people put into The Burning Crusade in general. In an MMO, you're always aspiring to be that guy at the top, with the best gear, with the warglaives, "caught up" or ahead of the curve. In order to have that dream you have to feel like that guy is actually separated from the pack, versus Johnny who dinged 60 last week and put 40 hours into random heroic dungeon finder and is now rolling on the same gear as you. This "true classic experience" that caters to hardcores does currently exist. It's interwoven into the game design of classic rn. In classic, that gearing process takes longer, and requires more raids. Having a decked out character feels good - getting that QSR in phase 1 feels so good because you got it so far ahead of the pack. It strikes that wonderful balance between the new player getting to still raid and catch up with zg gear, and how easy the raids are to carry new people in, and the player who's been playing phase 1-6 still feeling good from having extra gearing options that still matter. You can still catch up, it just takes some months of raiding with a good guild (forced social interaction, which makes players more attached to the game and their characters in general). There's really a whole conversation to be had on this topic in general, of how to make the current player feel like its still "worth it" to play, especially once you beat current content. In current, you beat the content and then you either raid log or quit until next patch comes out. There's not a point to getting more gear and getting bisd out unless your guild is really competing hard on logs. Right now, for hardcores the reason people stay killing KT from week to week is that gear is good in BC (doesn't happen in wrath), they're hardcore and they want to push times and speedrunning (new! very good for the game! Blizz should make sure this IS NOT KILLED (your conversation about DMF, world buffs, and rewarding good play and seasonal speedruns was great for this), or that they're attached to their character and just used to playing from week to week for the grind. Killing KT and quitting wasn't a problem for me in a higher level guild, but in a lot of the middle tier guilds, killing KT is an issue because it causes people to quit because they don't feel like there is a reason for them to keep playing. The reason there wasn't cthun and quit was because gear will still be useful and matter to them being ahead of the curve. If getting the loot doesn't have an impact on future gameplay and maintaining ahead of the curve having some sort of advantage, people stagnate and eventually quit.
In regards to the new players vs old players starting a new expansion, what about a hall of fame system. Which is just a cosmetic building in stormwind or orgrimmar that lists the guilds that managed to kill the last boss of the expansion. And the building just remains for the rest of the game, with additions to it each expansion? That way new players have somthing to aspire towards getting into the hall of fame, and old players have a momento from the past expac and a goal for the new one too? Just a thought
The boost leading to other things is a valid concern, but all of these people who are scared probably played on private servers. How do private servers stay open? they sell items, mounts, boosts and other things. The economies hold up and adjust. I think trying to hold onto the past is fine, but the single boost is what 2021 players want.
First of all I appreciate the amount of effort there goes in to have a educated opinion on subjects covered in the podcast. On some topics though I feel as if the debate is a tad one sided. In terms of who WoW development should cater to and why; I feel the point of catering towards hardcore raiding for progress, on more complex mechanics and so on, is what retail tries to do. Whereas the difficulty in hardcore classic raiding seems to be really just how fast can you roll over content. Point being I am not really buying into the idea of classic truly being all that hardcore in terms of complexity. Regardless though keep up the debate and expressing views; the community (and Blizzard) needs this from both sides to land on what would be solid path forwards for the classic servers. *Yikes a way to longwinded comment on what has already been covered in so many ways* :) Edit: spelling..
I realise there is more recent episodes of this podcast, with at least one debating the polarising topic of boosting et cetera more in depth. Regardless leaving my reply on this slightly older episode.
I hope that once they are done with classic Wrath, they make a new iteration of classic + outlands + northrend, where everything is tuned to lvl 70 for raiding and the gear is what determines progression from MC all the way to killing the lich king :D
All you see running on Faerlina are GDKPs for 40 mans, gbids on all Hakkar and Ossirian loot, Ony GDKPs. Flasks are like 130g. Right now, I’m boosting 3 chars just to be farm toons for Outland. I have like 15 flask of Titans I can’t even sell anymore because prices have tanked so hard.
An issue with the 58 boost that I don't see talked about a whole lot is the fact of "do we have a 58 boost when WotLK comes out?" Because in Wrath, a level boost of any kind is kinda worthless. You can just dungeon queue over a weekend and have a max level character. So for me, do we have some 58 boost for only TBC and then never again? It's kinda of a weird thing.
You guys didn't accurately represent Madseason's arguments from his big video. He talks about the dissolution of any sense of server community and a diminished sense of accomplishment, not a reduction of "sweaty hardcore mechanics." Also, he didn't say WoW peaked during Wotlk. He talks about how it actually introduced some systems that resulted in a decline in popularity, such as the Dungeon Finder tool and faction changes. I know you said you hadn't necessarily planned on covering it in this podcast, and I have no issue if you disagree with him, but it's kind of frustrating to hear you talk about an hour long video you didn't seem to completely understand.
Those were separate points from the notes I took from madseason's video. Maybe we didn't clarify that we weren't addressing the other points you brought up? I do have notes for madseason's video if needed but to go pt by pt would take 2 hours. The main flaw I see personally in his take is the assumption that those dungeon finder tools and faction changes are cause of decline in popularity - which isn't proven to be necessary true. It's 100% a decline in feel and community but whether that is the actual reason for decline in subs isn't proven, when MMORPGs have a big flaw in complicated mechanics as expansions continue. Every mmorpg has the in vs out problem in later expansions due to catch up not being easy for newer players, and no mmorpg has survived that so far without decline - so assuming that those particular pts were the reason for the decline is a big leap. For reference I did watch the entire madseason video and made notes for the entire thing: + brings in people to game - boost is available to everyone not just new people - unfair to those who leveled to 60 earlier - (core point) classic was popular originally because of core design philosophy - (core point) introduction of cash shop and other features is what killed retail WoW - why is there a fee on level boost? - in game advantage for RL money - slippery slope of more cash shop - Blizzard trying to slip in cash shop to get people used to it - Boost is a bad solution to tedious time investments - paying to skip content is bad - leveling disappears with the boost - boost amplifies bot issues - boost causes dead zones - leveling is a big part of the game - casuals don't stick around - level boost hastens reaching endgame = people run out of content quicker - forcing people through the 'grind' attaches them to character more = more likely to stick around if they make it - fresh tbc a possible solution? - transmutes alts via boosting
I would love to see them go into classic plus after wrath and completely redo cata and fix it to let us go into different Avenues and keep the lore straight
Wow to TBC was a huge punch in the gut for end guild players. TBC/Wrath that ledge was less and not as noticeable. Noobs speed run. But the faster you go the harder it is to shave time, RNG not included. To the fact that they can do the pull and not need that other person to kill the boss is huge.
I'm hearing from people that we can do faction transfer is that a real thing I would prefer that to a boost would be nice what do you think. I absolutely love this stream great fresh point of view.
I of course just can speak for myself, I also tried alot of MMOs in the past and why they always failed for me in the end is simply they dont play as smooth as WoW / movement. For example SWTOR, I really like that game but the stiffness of the animations totally turns me off after a while, it just feels very bad. In the beginning they also had alot of problems with ability lag. Or AION, I really liked that one aswell but being stuck in animations or the auto snapback of the camera so you couldnt target someone behind you while running was also a turn off. WoW just plays VERY smooth and so are the animations, thats why I also love to PvP in WoW. The other part are flashy spell effects, here most MMOs also fail. Its either one department they fail or a combination of animations/movement and spell effects. For me WOTLK was the best as PvPer because classes were already very well fleshed out. For example Priests got "Penance", Shamans "Lavaburst", Mages "Deepfreeze" etc. (they also looked and felt very good). Maybe these abilities somewhat were on the edge of OPness but SOOOO FUN and thats the most important thing !!!. For PvE I cant speak, I never did much PvE in endgame. PvE is never something that could hold my interest for too long in the endgame, its always the same with no purpose, PvP is just for fun.
thats the problem though tbh i bet it is the big wigs that are pushing for payed services for tbc. like you are saying it would destroy the servers that are already pretty well balanced. but the bobbys etc up at the top dont care less
Anyone saying anything positive about paying for faction/race change is a lunatic. If you want to play a different different class, race or faction you have the option already in the game. Click 'create new character' and just create it. The faction balance is going to get decimated if you allow this and it is going to create precedent that allows Blizzard to put more dumb microtransactions in the game that nobody wants.
43:10 Zirene: "I'm a heavy believer WotLK was a plateau, and that you were having the same number of people join and quit the game simultaneously which is the first time that that happened." I think a critical part of that equation was plummeting new player retention. A big, big motivator for revamping all the leveling zones in Cataclysm was because new players kept bombing out of the game before they could hit the latest content. Blizzard believed that revamping leveling would fix the problem, but it didn't. Fundamentally without a critical mass of other players around the biggest draw of WoW leveling, namely the living world full of other people, just wasn't there. That critical mass was already eroding halfway through BC, and had collapsed by the time WotLK arrived. Without it new players didn't have the communal experience promised by WoW, didn't forge the bonds that would keep them playing, and lost steam before they could become long-term players. This is, incindentally, why the level boost is critical for Classic's continued success. You will always be losing players, but if you want to gain players you can't expect them to care to essentially play a different game from everyone else by themselves for untold hours. They won't survive the experince.
The reason vanilla is here again is soley because we all asked and wanted the original game philosophy again. So keep the cash shop out of it. It's that simple.
I think it's a little hard to say what is the spirit of classic because it's different for everybody. I can say for me it's the idea of still be able to make friends in the open world and get into a Guild without having to sign up through a website. And people are just friendly over all or more friendly rather and Min maxing and classic is just so well different that in retail. Because everything is actually in the game not everything's good about it but you know. As far as BC I want the best version not necessarily the authentic OK and 1st off for the record wrath was my favorite expansion and no not just because of death Knights The 1st raid of wrath technically was the remake of naxx I disagree I absolutely think that wrath of the lich king was the best expansion and I still think that it still wrath was the peak personally in my opinion. Astle I gaps only things that if they do stop it will be at wrath they're not going to stop at TB C there are so many people that wrath was their 1st expansion. And so many people are going to be hyped for it again. This is kind of my thing with World of Warcraft as a whole as far as expansions I think wrath of the lich king is the best Behind that for me would be burning crusade And number 3 believe it or not legion. The thing is is not every single change that blizzard has made has been a mistake I almost kind of have a big brain theory and I'd be curious to see what people think. What is blizzard is re releasing each expansion Maybe as a test like where did we go wrong here OK this didn't work out so let's do this this time I mean. What if I mean I'm just gonna go for this imagine I cataclasm, a mop,wod, and bfa That could be good. I know it's out there but still as far as pre patch goes those that don't have weapons well people like me sir that RNG hates Me personally I am so hyped for pre patch I want pre patch so badd people are prepared for how much fun we're all gonna have I want 3 months of it.
I think that they should have a few servers after WOTLK for each expansion instead of replaying classic then tbc then wotlk. I also want to play cata and mop :(. they should eventually make these expansions like private servers.
Man I hope boosts get taken out. Do we play classic because retail is so good? Why would we WANT to turn classic into fkn retail? Lol are we that stupid? We've already gone down this road 15 years ago and look how it turned out.
I hard disagree with zirene, you should not add elements into the game that will only cater to the hardcore playerbase like faction changes. Majority of the player base are people that want to have fun and if you really want to see your game like wow grow, you need to make it accessible to everyone and fun for everyone. You can't just buff raids that will gatekeep new players from raid content and implement faction changes that will benefit the hardcore in expense of the new alliance players losing their community.
Ps - started a podcast channel for clips and highlights: ruclips.net/channel/UCWqKoupyrXEp6cDd5VNydeA
Playing from Vanilla through Wrath, once Cataclysm released, so many people hated the world changes because they were so dramatic that it put a lot of us off. A lot of guilds disbanded, many old school players quit.
Zirene made a comment about how TBC was the "actual" peak of WoW, and Wrath rode on it's coattails, so to speak, and I think I have an explanation for why that is. I'm coming at this from a PvE perspective, since I don't PvP all that much, but I think some of the same points apply.
Vanilla and TBC are both games wherein the experience is primarily determined by the community and not the game design itself. Raid fight mechanics are more vague and require creative problem solving to overcome (Maexxna's web wrap being overcome by paladins and warlocks Diving Intervention-ing and soulstone-ing to keep healing a stunned tank, for example), instead of having a designed success formula ("push the right button that every tank has to not die" mechanics, for example). This encouraged and rewarded collaboration and group effort over individual success, and as such strengthened communities that naturally developed to tackles these challenges. You even struggled to acquire pre-raid gear without a guild or friends to help you out, so to even get started, you had to join or create a community of like-minded individuals to work together toward the same goal. And I think it goes without saying that any multiplayer game is more enjoyable when you play it with other people.
Starting in Wrath, with the Group Finder feature, you were able to get everything you needed to theoretically step into a raid setting without anyone else to help you out. The need for community out of the gate was essentially removed. and without the NEED for community, a lot of new players never really engaged with one, and then fell off once they hit that wall which required one. I count myself in this group. I was one of many who started late in the TBC cycle, had my fun solo leveling and going through Outland, but wasn't really aware of the end-game scene. Then Wrath hit, with a ton of new content still accessible to people like me, and it kept me hooked. This had a positive feedback loop through the first half or so of Wrath, until those players like me eventually just... stopped progressing. I never learned how important it was to be part of a guild for the entire 3-ish years I played at the time, because I never needed it to feel like I was getting somewhere, until suddenly I couldn't, and I just stopped playing. Could I have joined a guild then, and kept going? Probably, and that's certainly the easiest way to dismiss my claims here, but my failure to do so is not the issue here. The issue is that the game led me to believe I could succeed without the aid of other players, when in reality I could not. Not in the long term.
Blizzard removed the need for players to actually engage with each other socially, to develop a report with each other, and misinterpreted Wrath's initial financial success as "more features and accessibility = more subs." In reality, what had kept their game going so long and so strong was the strong bonds and communities people had created with each other in order to succeed within it. Removing the need for such social engagement ultimately led to WoW long and painful decline, even to this day.
There's more I could say on this topic, but this is a long enough "comment" already. If you got this far, thanks for reading all my rambling thoughts
Just my two cents, as a former speedrunner (not in wow, but in other games):
Yes, there is competition in speedrunning, but if you check every game's speedrunning community, it's about sharing strats, finding ways to break the game ... yes, everyone is trying to get that 1st place and there is competition, but hiding strats, that normally does not happen (also because, in most of the game's speedrunning leaderboards, it is mandatory to stream for anti-cheat purpose)
I personally don't like group speedrunning nor having games where you can't speedrun out of the gate (in wow case, leveling, gearing etc.), but that is my personal opinion.
About the Noobs 10s gain strategy ... maybe Zirene is not that familiar with speedrunning in general, but people fight over TENTHS of a second, even less, in some games/category. 10 seconds in a 50m run is HUGE, i had a former WR beaten by seconds in a 7 hour game run/category, just saying.
Speaking about TBC and Pre-Patch, i hope they come asap ... i personally can't stand playing classic anymore :D i'm just leveling toons waiting for tbc :)
Good Respond but i see it quite differently, I usually don't Speedrun a Game, I usually play Games that can't be Speedrunned (competitive Shooters) and I really like Speedruns of various Games that I don't even play so really the only Game I Speedrun is WoW Classic. Your talking about People showing their Strats and more but forget that it's a 40 (or even more) People Speedrun, no Single player Archievement and honestly I don't know Any Game that gets Speedrunned with a 40 Man Raidsquad, you can't compare that in my opinion. And also that u say Vids are needed 2 show that no one is hacking or making something that's not allowed does not affect wow speedruns cuz without a Log its just a Video dude.
You guys are soooo good toghter! Deep level talk!
good conversation around why WoW classis was so popular. I would add to Zirene's comments about movement favoring the player: The far distance 3rd person view is really enjoyable; too many modern MMOs are in first person view or don't allow for a distanced 3rd person view. I also think modern MMOs try too hard to reduce the number of buttons pressed. In WoW, we have sometimes 50 buttons we can potentially use on our UI (all of which are customizable)... this enables us to really dive deep into our gameplay and have a customized experience.
It's almost as if my complex WOW UI is an extension of my brain... once I remember all my hotkeys - don't need to think about where I am clicking to control my character.
Regarding the expansion transition talk, I think Vanilla to BC had the best power level creep. In playing a game like WoW, you expect your gear to get replaced every new tier of raid. Naxx items being on par with level 70 blue items was the sweet spot for me.
It's more the tbc transition. You want a few items lasting a good deal through tbc, but not to where someone else can't easily get gear to where they aren't desired from a gear perspective in the highest expansion raids
My personal theory is that WoW was successful because it was essentially the first easily-accessible form of social media. It was essentially a chat room with a game attached. Players had status. Instead of likes and checkmarks it was purples and the noobs who recognized you as a baddass. Yes, there were games before it. But, they weren't anywhere near as accessible.
On the topic of the inevitable fate of MMOs being decline by overcomplicating... I wonder if there would be a way to avoid that by having an MMO that developed horizontally instead of vertically. For example, not increasing the level cap, but instead adding content for all levels?
Cash shop shit is on it's way guys. There is potentially a lot of money to be made from cash shop and they know this. Those types of changes is what, imo, contributed to the downfall of WoW and they're starting earlier in destroying the game than they did last time.
As far as release date. Closed beta for classic was in May and the game didnt release until August. I just cannot see them releasing BC with a one month beta. I hope I'm wrong but I think its foolish to expect a BC release any sooner than June.
@Kaan Özkuscu To be fair, you can actually more or less buy gold in retail WoW from Blizzard, thus making it pretty easy to pay for player boosting towards gear, achievements and so on. Part of this will happen regardless with in-game gold being grinded and used to pay for it anyway. But there is a large gap (in my mind) between earning money outside the game, thus having an advantage towards gearing in-game, or having to play the game somehow to earn that gear.
Though crossrealm and raid /dungeon finder and such surely contributes to a more isolated player base in terms of player interaction.
I find it funny Zirene says he's a purist about when DK's game into the game but yet he wants all these changes that can (and likely will be) more detrimental to the classic era expansions that didn't exist in the game in the first place. He says the spirit of classic is min/max but would he be okay with all the retail mounts from the cash shop being in classic? I bet he would say no. So is the spirit of classic only min/max, or is it actually much more than his perspective from playing in such a high level hardcore guild? Seems he's doing exactly what Madseason talked about in his video where he's dismissing the other side's point about all these changes without thinking about the bigger picture or listening to anyone else's points. Also just because there are server transfers right now, doesn't mean you should add every other cash shop item you can think of. Transfers existed in classic; lvl 58 boosts did not exist in tbc. I don't know why we can't just play tbc the same way we played classic.
I want seasons, I want this game to take the OSRS route. Basically, stop at WotLK and let the community decide what's next
First off awesome podcast, I really enjoyed it.
Second, your remarks about RUclips comments really resonated with me. I also do a WoW Classic podcast and recently we started putting our episodes on RUclips. We have gotten so many long passionate and often angry comments. I'll go to reply and the comment just isn't there. I wonder if people are just having a bad day and comment before thinking it through. In the end it's all just opinions. But I do love how invested people are.
Thanks for the new podcast to make the work days go by faster. Also is this podcast on any audio only platforms like Spotify or iTunes?
Heya ty! Yep, I agree I feel a lot of it is kneejerk reactions from people who disagree with one point but started typing before listening to the full thing.
And yeah, we're on both spotify and itunes (spotify link is in description, i need to update links for itunes too since we just got on there)
@@ClassicRoguecraft You're totally right about people typing before listening to the whole thing. So many comments actually hit on the same points we hit later. Sometimes they literally mimic points brought up later in the show. It's unfortunate that some stop listening the second they disagree with any opinion. If they had just stuck around they MIGHT have heard their point made.
Just found the pod today, had to check the previous episodes. I'll be enjoying episode 2 tomorrow.
Also we are both on Whitemane. I'm in Vargflocken. Gonna shout your pod out on our next podcast.
Keep it up!
Another great podcast guys!
In my opinion, a lot of the issue with the plateauing and whatnot in my opinion is due to the catchup mechanics in wrath thru current. Nothing feels valuable, let alone expansion to expansion, but from patch to patch, as the time that you put into get gear/rewards is completely negated by the mechanisms they introduce to "catch-up" the new player. I have no issue with the 58 boost, because its not relevant to the burning crusade content and doesn't detract from the time people put into The Burning Crusade in general. In an MMO, you're always aspiring to be that guy at the top, with the best gear, with the warglaives, "caught up" or ahead of the curve. In order to have that dream you have to feel like that guy is actually separated from the pack, versus Johnny who dinged 60 last week and put 40 hours into random heroic dungeon finder and is now rolling on the same gear as you. This "true classic experience" that caters to hardcores does currently exist. It's interwoven into the game design of classic rn. In classic, that gearing process takes longer, and requires more raids. Having a decked out character feels good - getting that QSR in phase 1 feels so good because you got it so far ahead of the pack. It strikes that wonderful balance between the new player getting to still raid and catch up with zg gear, and how easy the raids are to carry new people in, and the player who's been playing phase 1-6 still feeling good from having extra gearing options that still matter. You can still catch up, it just takes some months of raiding with a good guild (forced social interaction, which makes players more attached to the game and their characters in general).
There's really a whole conversation to be had on this topic in general, of how to make the current player feel like its still "worth it" to play, especially once you beat current content. In current, you beat the content and then you either raid log or quit until next patch comes out. There's not a point to getting more gear and getting bisd out unless your guild is really competing hard on logs. Right now, for hardcores the reason people stay killing KT from week to week is that gear is good in BC (doesn't happen in wrath), they're hardcore and they want to push times and speedrunning (new! very good for the game! Blizz should make sure this IS NOT KILLED (your conversation about DMF, world buffs, and rewarding good play and seasonal speedruns was great for this), or that they're attached to their character and just used to playing from week to week for the grind. Killing KT and quitting wasn't a problem for me in a higher level guild, but in a lot of the middle tier guilds, killing KT is an issue because it causes people to quit because they don't feel like there is a reason for them to keep playing. The reason there wasn't cthun and quit was because gear will still be useful and matter to them being ahead of the curve. If getting the loot doesn't have an impact on future gameplay and maintaining ahead of the curve having some sort of advantage, people stagnate and eventually quit.
In regards to the new players vs old players starting a new expansion, what about a hall of fame system. Which is just a cosmetic building in stormwind or orgrimmar that lists the guilds that managed to kill the last boss of the expansion. And the building just remains for the rest of the game, with additions to it each expansion? That way new players have somthing to aspire towards getting into the hall of fame, and old players have a momento from the past expac and a goal for the new one too? Just a thought
Love these!
The boost leading to other things is a valid concern, but all of these people who are scared probably played on private servers. How do private servers stay open? they sell items, mounts, boosts and other things. The economies hold up and adjust. I think trying to hold onto the past is fine, but the single boost is what 2021 players want.
Only thing this taught me is that Zirene didn't look in to how the boosts work. You can't boost BE or Goats
huh? He knows that - we talked about how the boosts work in episode 1. Not sure where you got that idea from
First of all I appreciate the amount of effort there goes in to have a educated opinion on subjects covered in the podcast.
On some topics though I feel as if the debate is a tad one sided.
In terms of who WoW development should cater to and why; I feel the point of catering towards hardcore raiding for progress, on more complex mechanics and so on, is what retail tries to do. Whereas the difficulty in hardcore classic raiding seems to be really just how fast can you roll over content.
Point being I am not really buying into the idea of classic truly being all that hardcore in terms of complexity.
Regardless though keep up the debate and expressing views; the community (and Blizzard) needs this from both sides to land on what would be solid path forwards for the classic servers.
*Yikes a way to longwinded comment on what has already been covered in so many ways* :)
Edit: spelling..
I realise there is more recent episodes of this podcast, with at least one debating the polarising topic of boosting et cetera more in depth. Regardless leaving my reply on this slightly older episode.
Oooh nice I have a lot of time to hit lvl 60 with my lock. Do u raccomand to have full T1 for it's bonuses while leveling?
I hope that once they are done with classic Wrath, they make a new iteration of classic + outlands + northrend, where everything is tuned to lvl 70 for raiding and the gear is what determines progression from MC all the way to killing the lich king :D
All you see running on Faerlina are GDKPs for 40 mans, gbids on all Hakkar and Ossirian loot, Ony GDKPs. Flasks are like 130g. Right now, I’m boosting 3 chars just to be farm toons for Outland. I have like 15 flask of Titans I can’t even sell anymore because prices have tanked so hard.
Wrath was the best of the 3.... not bias at all.... (Maimed a RET pally in vanilla and TBC)
TBC was the peak and wrath rode on that... i was there back in the begining. TBC was the peak
An issue with the 58 boost that I don't see talked about a whole lot is the fact of "do we have a 58 boost when WotLK comes out?" Because in Wrath, a level boost of any kind is kinda worthless. You can just dungeon queue over a weekend and have a max level character. So for me, do we have some 58 boost for only TBC and then never again? It's kinda of a weird thing.
You guys didn't accurately represent Madseason's arguments from his big video. He talks about the dissolution of any sense of server community and a diminished sense of accomplishment, not a reduction of "sweaty hardcore mechanics." Also, he didn't say WoW peaked during Wotlk. He talks about how it actually introduced some systems that resulted in a decline in popularity, such as the Dungeon Finder tool and faction changes. I know you said you hadn't necessarily planned on covering it in this podcast, and I have no issue if you disagree with him, but it's kind of frustrating to hear you talk about an hour long video you didn't seem to completely understand.
Those were separate points from the notes I took from madseason's video. Maybe we didn't clarify that we weren't addressing the other points you brought up?
I do have notes for madseason's video if needed but to go pt by pt would take 2 hours. The main flaw I see personally in his take is the assumption that those dungeon finder tools and faction changes are cause of decline in popularity - which isn't proven to be necessary true.
It's 100% a decline in feel and community but whether that is the actual reason for decline in subs isn't proven, when MMORPGs have a big flaw in complicated mechanics as expansions continue.
Every mmorpg has the in vs out problem in later expansions due to catch up not being easy for newer players, and no mmorpg has survived that so far without decline - so assuming that those particular pts were the reason for the decline is a big leap.
For reference I did watch the entire madseason video and made notes for the entire thing:
+ brings in people to game
- boost is available to everyone not just new people
- unfair to those who leveled to 60 earlier
- (core point) classic was popular originally because of core design philosophy
- (core point) introduction of cash shop and other features is what killed retail WoW
- why is there a fee on level boost?
- in game advantage for RL money
- slippery slope of more cash shop
- Blizzard trying to slip in cash shop to get people used to it
- Boost is a bad solution to tedious time investments
- paying to skip content is bad
- leveling disappears with the boost
- boost amplifies bot issues
- boost causes dead zones
- leveling is a big part of the game
- casuals don't stick around
- level boost hastens reaching endgame = people run out of content quicker
- forcing people through the 'grind' attaches them to character more = more likely to stick around if they make it
- fresh tbc a possible solution?
- transmutes alts via boosting
I would love to see them go into classic plus after wrath and completely redo cata and fix it to let us go into different Avenues and keep the lore straight
Wotlk was a great expansion tbh. I had a ton of fun raiding
Yeah, Ulduar hardmodes & ICC hc beats any BC raid imo
@@Pettzn ulduar hardmodes were amazing
Wow to TBC was a huge punch in the gut for end guild players. TBC/Wrath that ledge was less and not as noticeable.
Noobs speed run. But the faster you go the harder it is to shave time, RNG not included. To the fact that they can do the pull and not need that other person to kill the boss is huge.
I'm hearing from people that we can do faction transfer is that a real thing I would prefer that to a boost would be nice what do you think. I absolutely love this stream great fresh point of view.
I would assume faction change is part of retail client that they copy/pasted over, so I don't expect them to turn it on but who knows.
I of course just can speak for myself, I also tried alot of MMOs in the past and why they always failed for me in the end is simply they dont play as smooth as WoW / movement. For example SWTOR, I really like that game but the stiffness of the animations totally turns me off after a while, it just feels very bad. In the beginning they also had alot of problems with ability lag.
Or AION, I really liked that one aswell but being stuck in animations or the auto snapback of the camera so you couldnt target someone behind you while running was also a turn off. WoW just plays VERY smooth and so are the animations, thats why I also love to PvP in WoW. The other part are flashy spell effects, here most MMOs also fail. Its either one department they fail or a combination of animations/movement and spell effects.
For me WOTLK was the best as PvPer because classes were already very well fleshed out. For example Priests got "Penance", Shamans "Lavaburst", Mages "Deepfreeze" etc. (they also looked and felt very good). Maybe these abilities somewhat were on the edge of OPness but SOOOO FUN and thats the most important thing !!!. For PvE I cant speak, I never did much PvE in endgame. PvE is never something that could hold my interest for too long in the endgame, its always the same with no purpose, PvP is just for fun.
can't believe you remembered mum banning zac and i haha... it was a sad day.
thats the problem though tbh i bet it is the big wigs that are pushing for payed services for tbc. like you are saying it would destroy the servers that are already pretty well balanced. but the bobbys etc up at the top dont care less
Anyone saying anything positive about paying for faction/race change is a lunatic. If you want to play a different different class, race or faction you have the option already in the game. Click 'create new character' and just create it. The faction balance is going to get decimated if you allow this and it is going to create precedent that allows Blizzard to put more dumb microtransactions in the game that nobody wants.
43:10 Zirene: "I'm a heavy believer WotLK was a plateau, and that you were having the same number of people join and quit the game simultaneously which is the first time that that happened."
I think a critical part of that equation was plummeting new player retention. A big, big motivator for revamping all the leveling zones in Cataclysm was because new players kept bombing out of the game before they could hit the latest content. Blizzard believed that revamping leveling would fix the problem, but it didn't.
Fundamentally without a critical mass of other players around the biggest draw of WoW leveling, namely the living world full of other people, just wasn't there. That critical mass was already eroding halfway through BC, and had collapsed by the time WotLK arrived. Without it new players didn't have the communal experience promised by WoW, didn't forge the bonds that would keep them playing, and lost steam before they could become long-term players.
This is, incindentally, why the level boost is critical for Classic's continued success. You will always be losing players, but if you want to gain players you can't expect them to care to essentially play a different game from everyone else by themselves for untold hours. They won't survive the experince.
No mention of bots affecting the game and the correlation with 58 boost? Interesting listen non the less..
Best Podcast Ty Sno👍💯
The reason vanilla is here again is soley because we all asked and wanted the original game philosophy again. So keep the cash shop out of it. It's that simple.
With that being said, if blizzard offered a specific paid service during original TBC or Wrath. That's fine.
I already rerolled Horde for BC so if they add a faction change I get to have two rogues on Horde lmao
first! really enjoy these podcasts keep them coming
I had a blast in wrath. After that, WoW kinda died for me.
MAKE ARENA TITLES % BASED FOR 1 COMMON LADDER, BUT FACTION BASED LIKE RETAIL
no on faction changes yes on race changes
I think it's a little hard to say what is the spirit of classic because it's different for everybody.
I can say for me it's the idea of still be able to make friends in the open world and get into a Guild without having to sign up through a website.
And people are just friendly over all or more friendly rather and Min maxing and classic is just so well different that in retail.
Because everything is actually in the game not everything's good about it but you know.
As far as BC I want the best version not necessarily the authentic
OK and 1st off for the record wrath was my favorite expansion and no not just because of death Knights The 1st raid of wrath technically was the remake of naxx
I disagree I absolutely think that wrath of the lich king was the best expansion and I still think that it still wrath was the peak personally in my opinion.
Astle I gaps only things that if they do stop it will be at wrath they're not going to stop at TB C there are so many people that wrath was their 1st expansion.
And so many people are going to be hyped for it again.
This is kind of my thing with World of Warcraft as a whole as far as expansions I think wrath of the lich king is the best Behind that for me would be burning crusade And number 3 believe it or not legion.
The thing is is not every single change that blizzard has made has been a mistake I almost kind of have a big brain theory and I'd be curious to see what people think.
What is blizzard is re releasing each expansion Maybe as a test like where did we go wrong here OK this didn't work out so let's do this this time I mean.
What if I mean I'm just gonna go for this imagine I cataclasm, a mop,wod, and bfa That could be good.
I know it's out there but still as far as pre patch goes those that don't have weapons well people like me sir that RNG hates
Me personally I am so hyped for pre patch I want pre patch so badd people are prepared for how much fun we're all gonna have I want 3 months of it.
how is it even a competition in regards to speed runs lmao, once horde get paladins and alliance lose the ability to get WCB its over.
I think that they should have a few servers after WOTLK for each expansion instead of replaying classic then tbc then wotlk. I also want to play cata and mop :(. they should eventually make these expansions like private servers.
Holy fuck it Is zirene from proguides. Dope.
A lot of people play EU for the helpful community. NA is all me me me
Man I hope boosts get taken out. Do we play classic because retail is so good? Why would we WANT to turn classic into fkn retail? Lol are we that stupid? We've already gone down this road 15 years ago and look how it turned out.
They want to turn classic into retail... retail makes a shit ton of money.
classic is a hard reset, basically. We already ruined it by being the community we are today.
Zirene from proguides? Lol
Dude. If they release cata I'll freak. Cuz the pvp I think was the best in cata.
I hard disagree with zirene, you should not add elements into the game that will only cater to the hardcore playerbase like faction changes. Majority of the player base are people that want to have fun and if you really want to see your game like wow grow, you need to make it accessible to everyone and fun for everyone. You can't just buff raids that will gatekeep new players from raid content and implement faction changes that will benefit the hardcore in expense of the new alliance players losing their community.
pog