How the Game Has Changed

[WoopeeTuralyon]

It just blows my mind when I recall playing the game at release, then think about all the new features that have changed the game forever. I mean, there weren't even meeting stones! Now we have our LFD tool that not only finds groups for us, but teleports us there. Thoughts on the game now and then?

[Yegolev]

Sucked then, sucks now.

[Azuredream]

I do different stuff now than I did then but it still feels like the same game. Fortunately I like that game.

[Merusk]

Sucked then, sucks now.

Yeah, but you like LOTRO which most here hold the same opinion of.   The games are for two different player types.

[nurtsi]

Some things haven't changed. Still can't customize my avatar. Barbershops were a step in the right direction though. Maybe one day.

[Lantyssa]

You should ask this question again in a few months.  They've made a lot of changes and they're about to make a lot more.  Things will be different enough to change some people's opinions.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, it's going to be wildly different at that point.

[Mrbloodworth]

Now we have our LFD tool that not only finds groups for us, but teleports us there.

I welcome my half an hour (+ In some cases waiting on others) game time back. Glad more games are doing this.

[Dren]

Slowly but surely they made the game tailored to what I would want.  It is deep enough to be a nerd, but casual enough to do it all in small bites.  Sure, if you want the best of the best, you need to set aside 3-4 hours for a raid, but even with that, you can cram in way more content in that 3-4 hours than you could before.  Just reducing the amount of trouble from the logistics of organizing a 10 or 25 person group has been a huge improvement.

Quest design and layout for levelling is a ton better.  I'm hearing even more imrpovements to this in the expansion too.  That's a good thing.

[Musashi]

There's like, two other threads in here on this general topic.

[Yegolev]

Sucked then, sucks now.

Yeah, but you like LOTRO which most here hold the same opinion of.   The games are for two different player types.

I will submit this is 100% accurate.  I suppose I liked it more at release, to be a bit more precise, but as you said I am looking for something else.

I do sometimes consider coming back but then my old pals drop my lv30 in Scarlet Monastery and tell me to kill shit for a few hours while they go do "fun stuff".  Maybe I just need new pals.

[Vision]

My crystal ball computer screen sees this thread derailing into another nostalgic "What I miss about wow" thread,

I liked vanilla WoW for all its faults and plusses. It was nice to have other people to play with while leveling, as opposed to going from 1-80 basically alone now. Plus I basically hate all of Outlands....god awful zones IMO.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Off the top of my head things that are better now.

~Battleground exp
~Cheaper mounts at lower levels
~Random dungeon finder
~No spec feels useless(like boomkins or spriests in vanilla)
~mage food/water being combined
~Rep grinding via tabard.


There's other things but those stand out.

[Mrbloodworth]

Mounts at 20.

[Morat20]

It just blows my mind when I recall playing the game at release, then think about all the new features that have changed the game forever. I mean, there weren't even meeting stones! Now we have our LFD tool that not only finds groups for us, but teleports us there. Thoughts on the game now and then?

I about had a spontaneous nerdgasm when I found out the "Exit dungeon" choice zaps you back to EXACTLY WHERE YOU WERE when the group popped.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Mounts at 20.

 

[proudft]

I had fun with the slow pace in Original WoW.  Once.  Traveling back and forth across the whole world to go through every single 30-40 zone to get enough quests to level is an epic journey that does not need to be repeated.

I do kinda miss the lack of universal knowledge we now have (wowhead, etc.) in some ways, since it takes away some of the mystery of the world itself.  Thottbot was always sort of a clunky mess of unreliability so it wasn't as universally referenced.   But I think the immersion loss is outweighed by the various frustrations that are removed.

The Dungeon Finder is a HUGE improvement.   I   that thing so much.  The whole hanging out in city to chat-spam to find a group always took FOREVER and then it was an endless series of:

afk I need to grab a smoke before we start
where's the entrance lol
is the druid afk?  hello?
drop him, find another
IM HERE GOSH
ok let's go
afk 5 min
(20 mins pass)
(a single gunshot is heard from my computer room)

Multiply by 10, 25, or 40 for raids.  Man, I hope they put in a Raid Finder.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

Well, the LFD tool, while awesomely efficient for finding groups, is a pain when you get, say, Mara, and only 10% of people have a clue how to get in after a wipe. But I guess there was that same problem when everyone had to go there. Also, my friends list was full when I quit in BC of good players I'd met doing instances. Now, I rarely add someone because I seldom see people from the same server in my groups, and even more rarely are they good players, AND there's no point in asking them to join you for an instance unless they're a tank because, as a healer, I get rapid pops regardless. I mean, I met some of my favorite people in the game leveling my shammy... not so for my next char.

On a different note, mounts at 20 ARE nice. And so are heirlooms. And Vision, how could you hate ole Hellfire Peninsula?!

proudft, there is currently a raid browser that nobody uses.

[proudft]

Yeah, I mean a cross-server one, to bump up the population using it, and automatically make groups.

No one ever knew their way around Mauradon anyway, you know.   

[Mrbloodworth]

I was honestly surprised you get placed outside the dungeon when you died. Blizzard hates players.

[Ingmar]

The raid browser was used heavily until they added the dungeon finder, then for some reason they took it off that UI button and moved it to the raid frame instead, so I think people just don't know where to find it to use it anymore.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

Come now, if you think you get bad pugs from cross-server 5 mans, imagine the capacity for bad possessed by a cross-server 25 man

[Morat20]

Yeah, I mean a cross-server one, to bump up the population using it, and automatically make groups.

No one ever knew their way around Mauradon anyway, you know.   

That piece of shit better get wiped off the face of the planet with Cataclysm hits. I pulled that with my mage, and spent 10 minutes running around after a wipe to find the entrance. And I'd RUN that fucker several times before.

Goddamn maze.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

lol, I was once part of a 6 hour Mara run... we did finish though! If I hadn't been playing with people I liked there's no chance I would've stayed for 2 hours, let alone 6. The place is an awful, huge maze.

[proudft]

Come now, if you think you get bad pugs from cross-server 5 mans, imagine the capacity for bad possessed by a cross-server 25 man

The only downside I've experienced cross-server LFD is loot-ninja type drama.  As far as capability to actually get the instance done, it's improved for me, if anything.  What makes the Heigan dance harder on other servers than ours?   There are always people who fail at stuff like that on every server.

I'm also assuming if they added cross-server raid it would give you the random 5% boof and not be designed as unforgiving.  Planned for this from the outset, basically.  Automatic grouping would also get rid of the gearscore nonsense, which drives me up the wall as someone with a lot of alts hovering in the 4800-5000 range and perfectly capable of doing ICC but who get inspected and denied because people are cowards.  So I have an ulterior motive, as well.   

[Khaldun]

I just finished doing Loremaster with my main, so I was thinking about this question a lot. What the experience reminded me of is that Blizzard's basic schtick with WoW has always been to take the sum total of what's out there in MMO-land, throw away the dumb features and technical hackery, improve the best ideas in game-mechanical terms, and offer up a polished product. This means inevitably that the older layers of the game compare unfavorably to the newer stuff, but they're also an archaeological reminder of what MMOs as a whole used to be like. Now that there aren't any left that really matter worth a piss besides EVE, which is the one MMO that WoW cannot in any way borrow from, it's no wonder that the devs are cluelessly dicking around with social networking and so on. There's no one left to cherrypick from, and no product that they can make look like a bargain-basement reject simply by doing it better. The oldest layers of vanilla WoW left are basically like a Proustian madeleine that reminds you of playing EQ and AC1, and then you're reminded of why WoW seemed like such a breath of fresh air in comparison. It isn't that it was radically different: it was the same, just pleasant and enjoyable and relaxing in comparison to EQ assraping you in every way it could concoct.

But now the old WoW looks like vanilla looked in comparison to EQ. I was kind of stunned to remember suddenly what the experience of levelling 1-60 was like: quests that took you back and forth between distant zones not just when the intent was to make an epic experience, but routinely, for utterly banal Fed Ex content. How rough the edges were at times. How awful in some cases the instance design really was. And yet, and yet. Kind of charming precisely because it reminds you of how much the experience was driven by endurance and tooth-gritting determination to collect...all...those...fucking...shredder...pages and so on. It didn't seem so bad because the comparable experiences most of us had were far, far worse. (Or so different as to not merit comparison, as with pre-Trammel UO.)

In a way, I really regret Cataclysm, because this is all important historical data, in a way. You could use the old parts of the game to teach new players about the history of MMO design, really.

[fuser]

The only downside I've experienced cross-server LFD is loot-ninja type drama.  As far as capability to actually get the instance done, it's improved for me, if anything.  What makes the Heigan dance harder on other servers than ours?   There are always people who fail at stuff like that on every server.

There's an underlying repercussion from it, server community as a whole has gone down as you no longer need to get involved. This has had some direct effect where you no longer need to know about players on your server or its user base leading to an increase in on realm ninja looting. On a mid population server an unguilded or unknown are running ICC/VoA and just stealing loot with little repercussions as the user base has no idea who to trust.

It would be interesting to see but I'd be willing to wager pug/raids pre and post LFD has had a major increase in ninja looting.

[proudft]

In a way, I really regret Cataclysm, because this is all important historical data, in a way. You could use the old parts of the game to teach new players about the history of MMO design, really.

Well, we can totally just talk it up more!    

BACK IN MY DAY WE HAD TO COLLECT 140 SHREDDER PAGES AND WE ONLY HAD 24 INVENTORY SLOTS.  AND THEY WERE RANDOM DROPS ON THREE SEPARATE CONTINENTS.  UPHILL, BOTH WAYS.

[Ingmar]

Ninja looting and bad behavior in PUG raids has not changed since they added random queues to the dungeons, in my experience. I don't think there's any correlation.

[proudft]

I'm wondering what server this is that had a decent community to begin with.

Ninja-looting is only truly possible with Master Looter anyway, another thing I wish they would just suck up and kill off after they add more reasonable restrictions to rolling.

EDIT: More on actual changes in the game, though:  I really like the reactive method they have added to almost every class's abilities over time.  It's allllllmost gone overboard, but it is far more interesting than, say, frostboltfrostboltfrostboltfrostboltfrostbolt.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

Oh, the glorious frost mage one-button rotation!

[Draegan]

I both hate and love the LFD tool.  I love it because it allows me to play the game when I want and do it quickly.  I hate it because, to me, it takes the sense of world and dimension out of the game. 

It's still great fun though, and efficient.  But it takes a bit out of the game though.  Something is lost.

[fuser]

Ninja looting and bad behavior in PUG raids has not changed since they added random queues to the dungeons, in my experience. I don't think there's any correlation.

Funny because I was yet to file a petition pre 3.3, and post 3.3 I have done probably 5. Our realm might be outside the norm but the same core group of friends I have played from launch have all noticed the same. Besides a structured 25man guild runs or our own 10 I've given up on pugs.

Either then that it's awesome for leveling a hybrid 

[Rasix]

I'm wondering what server this is that had a decent community to begin with.

Not mine, that's for sure.

I think the only way you could ever perceive a server having a good community is if you're in a fairly top tier guild.  You pretty much don't need the community for anything and everyone  treats you like royalty. 

Every server also has some smallish cliques that tend to dominate the server board and stick together in game, but I wouldn't confuse this sort of entity with any sort of community.

[Selby]

I think the only way you could ever perceive a server having a good community is if you're in a fairly top tier guild.

This.  Some guilds are just known, and wearing their tag automatically gets you into raids because of it.  And some guilds are just so damn awful that having their tag can actually lead to you getting turned down or kicked out of a raid, just because of how bad the average player in said guild is.  We aren't the highest tier on my server, but we still have people bugging us to join since we do clear 95% of the 25-m raid content on a weekly basis.  If your server doesn't have much of a raiding community it can be replaced with PVP or just drama and socialization, but mostly it's the top raiding guilds that the loose WoW communities are built around.

There's also the /trade "community" but that's usually just morons doing the anal [rofl] routine and other stupid shit and they tend to be ignored.