How the Game Has Changed

[WoopeeTuralyon]

I would never join a pug raid with a master looter I didn't know. There are just too many people looking for easy ways to get rare things (twilight drake from OS 3D, for one. Speaking from experience here...).

[Fordel]

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.

That's every MMO community in ever really.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

I might be more likely to invite someone to my raid if I see a prestigious guild under their name, but I will be no slower to boot them if they're terrible, and they won't get any "you're awesome" comments till they prove it.

EDIT: Hooray! The mouthed potato has joined my thread!

[Sjofn]

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.

I feel this way about Wailing Caverns. I want it to fall into a pit of lava and never return.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

*Lots* of vanilla instances are like that. BRD comes to mind. And both upper and lower Blackrock Spire are just sprawling endless mazes full of enemies. They can take forever if you don't know where you're going.  They changed things completely in BC and made instances a lot more linear, with way fewer optional mobs/turns down paths with 100 enemies and no boss.

[Sjofn]

Yeah, it's just that for some reason Wailing Caverns pisses me off more than any other instance. I can DEAL with BRD. I can DEAL with Uldaman. I can DEAL with Mauradon (although I'd rather not). But Wailing Caverns? Fuuuuuuuuuuck yoooooooooou.

[ezrast]

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

I would love a random raid finder; honestly all my best raiding memories are of terrible PUGs.

Actually they should just add a button that drops you and 39 other people straight into Heigan's room. Nobody who gets hit by fire gets loot. That would be awesome.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

That would NOT be awesome. 40 people together would destroy my FPS so utterly that moving even one step might take a minute or two.

[Khaldun]

Having had to go through a lot of vanilla instances to finish Loremaster, in a situation where I could basically pull the entire instance in one go and instakill it once they were all on me, I was kind of stunned at just how bad Wailing Caverns is--I'd avoided the place since the first time I ran it a million years ago.

BRD at least *feels* like a city: it's huge, winding, intricate, ultimately totally annoying but there's a lot going on. Mauraudon is at least interesting in the two entry paths + second half + optional bosses. Wailing Caverns? It's endless and almost totally monotonous. It took me forever to get through it even with the mobs posing absolutely zero threat. The dev who did it really needs to be kicked in the crotch repeatedly, once for every time someone's gone through that place.

One other thing that struck me: a lot of the instances have no way out at the end.

[OcellotJenkins]

A couple of random changes that come to mind... 

1)  Mining is now one hit/loot all.  Ahh the days of node stealing.

2)  Improved quest log with waypoint mapping.  Resubbing after a year's break, this was one of the most noticeable changes for me.  Even the location of the wandering monsters and such is noted on the map for each quest.  Face-roll easy.

[Polysorbate80]

Yeah, it's just that for some reason Wailing Caverns pisses me off more than any other instance. I can DEAL with BRD. I can DEAL with Uldaman. I can DEAL with Mauradon (although I'd rather not). But Wailing Caverns? Fuuuuuuuuuuck yoooooooooou.

For me, it's that one lone boss over in the snake tunnel side, as far as possible from every other boss.

[Malakili]

Its probably a better game now, but I enjoyed it more then.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

My favorite time was in BC but that might have been because I got to do all the raids(up to Brutallus). But I also liked Outland, for the most part 

[Shrike]

I was going to say I liked TBC, but the more I think about it, the more it appears to be the shit sandwich it was.

Firstly, there were warriors. They sucked. Once the server(s) were stable enough (after maybe 3-4 days) I could finally fly my warrior to Honor Hold and get really started. The suck became very apparent, very rapidly. Three days of it and I was done. The last straw was grouping with a guild feral druid--whom I outgeared--and seeing the difference in a fury warrior vs. a cat druid. Pathetic.

So, secondly. Since I had a few days of server suckitude to level my draenei shaman, I said screw it, I"m going shaman. Enhance of course. Wasn't so bad early on, but became very apparent you didn't have the mana to use spells. So you were strictly melee with some spells if the shit really hit the fan. Worked OK, but was getting really tired of it...then the nerfs came down prior to the WS fix. Combine this with an account getting hacked and this was the third time I quit WoW (and the longest).

Thirdly. I finally got talked back into WoW (still not sure how). Picked up the shaman and slammed her to 70. OK, great. Class was better at this point and I could actually use spells--which was as cool as it seemed 4 months earlier when I rolled the character. Problem now was gearing up for raids. Gee, I'm a shaman I can't do heroics: no CC. I think I did exactly three in two years of TBC. Shades of the GS bullshit of today. Anyway, finally got into some raiding and had a pretty good time from that point.

Yeah, looking back, it wasn't a great experience overall, but I did have some good times. I still can't help but think it was despite the gameplay, but not because of it.

[Vision]

Its probably a better game now, but I enjoyed it more then.

exactly.

Something about the linear instances and quest finders/helping UI took the mystery out of the game. I was so overwhelmed when WoW came out that I was so excited to level up a character and get good loot.
Now I know all I have waiting for me is another grind through ass holes in raids and my own guild ladder to actually getting good gear. Is making the player run 45 minutes from SW to IF bad game design? Maybe. Do I look back on those memories with total nostalgia and wish those days back again? Probably.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

I had the good fortune of meeting an amazing tank at level 40 on my shaman, and leveling all the way to 70 with him. He broke CC on purpose if people tried, and almost never lost aggro, as a warrior.

[Azuredream]

Back in Vanilla WC was my favorite instance. Maraudon/BRD were both more confusing to me. I remember running my buddy's druid who was new through WC until he had the whole fang set. Every horde character I made did WC at least once. Mostly it was just really convenient, you were out there questing in the Barrens anyways, and there's like 6-7 quests in there, it was great exp. Only thing that was annoying was how damn slow the escort guy was.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Leveling arms is and was much smarter than trying it as fury.

edit to add my fave instance of all time was scholomance. Nice setting, not too long and with bosses spread throughout.

[Ratman_tf]

2)  Improved quest log with waypoint mapping.  Resubbing after a year's break, this was one of the most noticeable changes for me.  Even the location of the wandering monsters and such is noted on the map for each quest.  Face-roll easy.

Most times it's not an issue, but goddamn if every now and then a quest pops up and I can't, for the life of me, find the goddamn mobs or where to look for the foozles. And that just pisses me off to no end.

Exploring for exploring's sake is fun. Running all over the map looking for Red Juvenile Left Handed Greebles is not.

[Ratman_tf]

Its probably a better game now, but I enjoyed it more then.

exactly.

Something about the linear instances and quest finders/helping UI took the mystery out of the game. I was so overwhelmed when WoW came out that I was so excited to level up a character and get good loot.
Now I know all I have waiting for me is another grind through ass holes in raids and my own guild ladder to actually getting good gear. Is making the player run 45 minutes from SW to IF bad game design? Maybe. Do I look back on those memories with total nostalgia and wish those days back again? Probably.

WoW has become very efficient at deliviering it's fun to us. It's becoming more and more a pure amusement park experience, without any of the other stuff that made previous MMOGS fun, or frustrating.

[Vision]

Its probably a better game now, but I enjoyed it more then.

exactly.

Something about the linear instances and quest finders/helping UI took the mystery out of the game. I was so overwhelmed when WoW came out that I was so excited to level up a character and get good loot.
Now I know all I have waiting for me is another grind through ass holes in raids and my own guild ladder to actually getting good gear. Is making the player run 45 minutes from SW to IF bad game design? Maybe. Do I look back on those memories with total nostalgia and wish those days back again? Probably.

WoW has become very efficient at deliviering it's fun to us. It's becoming more and more a pure amusement park experience, without any of the other stuff that made previous MMOGS fun, or frustrating.

It was never about "beating the game" for me, it was more about being badass amongst where you were in the game. Whether it was level 20, 40, 50, w/e. This was probably because I played with a huge group of friends. With all of the streamlined leveling additions it more or less deleted this aspect of the game imo, and focused on holding the players hand all the way through end game instances. Forget having fun with a group of friends completing outside of anything pre-Naxx since instances, prior to Northrend, just aren't worth it in terms of leveling XP.

[OcellotJenkins]

With all of the streamlined leveling additions it more or less deleted this aspect of the game imo, and focused on holding the players hand all the way through end game instances. Forget having fun with a group of friends completing outside of anything pre-Naxx since instances, prior to Northrend, just aren't worth it in terms of leveling XP.

I'm not sure I agree with this per say.  I've recently been bringing a protection warrior alt up, currently level 50, and have found the classic dungeons to be worth doing with dungeon finder.  Yesterday I got at least two levels from Zul'Farrak and it's associated quests.  Cataclysm revamp will only make this better.  I just saw where they redesigned Stockades into a three winged dungeon which will be fun to check out a time or two.

[koro]

1)  Mining is now one hit/loot all.  Ahh the days of node stealing.

Now people just mine a node, take the ore, and leave the stones!

Drove me nuts mining Thorium in Un'Goro.

[Lantyssa]

It was never about "beating the game" for me, it was more about being badass amongst where you were in the game. Whether it was level 20, 40, 50, w/e. This was probably because I played with a huge group of friends. With all of the streamlined leveling additions it more or less deleted this aspect of the game imo, and focused on holding the players hand all the way through end game instances. Forget having fun with a group of friends completing outside of anything pre-Naxx since instances, prior to Northrend, just aren't worth it in terms of leveling XP.

Until I quit recently, I had a Sunday night group where a bunch of friends and I did an instance or two (or holiday stuff).  Up to that point we'd get roughly a level an instance and we comparatively over-geared since we'd have blues to wear the second we got high enough to equip them.

[Nebu]

Until I quit recently, I had a Sunday night group where a bunch of friends and I did an instance or two (or holiday stuff).  Up to that point we'd get roughly a level an instance and we comparatively over-geared since we'd have blues to wear the second we got high enough to equip them.

It's amazing how different the game becomes when you have better gear than you need.  Instances that were a fun challenge in greens become trivial with good gear.  

[Paelos]

I'm not really motivated by gear, but even I feel like there really isn't much to do once you have the gear available to you at the highest level you're willing to go. At this point, I'm literally logging in for two hours every Sunday to get our 10 man crew together and continue our tries on the Lich King (so far we've mastered phase 1, the transition, and phase 2, we've gotten through the transition once into phase 3, but with a few dead). That's pretty much been most of July right there, where I probably played less than 10 hours in the month total.

The only reason I'm still doing that is because I love a good challenge in the game, and it's really the only one left for us. Even if we beat him, it's not like we'll farm the boss since there's nothing we want. We might try Ruby Sanctum at some point if we get really bored, but we have all the badges, we can steamroll any heroic basically asleep at the wheel, and pvp is just plain silly. We did 25 man up to the point where I just got sick of trying to juggle rotating rosters, and we'd reached our competence level at 7 bosses in.

Even our guild is feeling the malaise heavily, and this is a 10 year old guild. It's August and the boredom has taken over completely.

[Morat20]

You know what makes a big change? Flying. I know it was introduced in TBC, but once you have the Z-axis, it changes a lot.

Don't want to deal with trash between you and the widget you need to collect? Fly over them. Want to do gathering? Fly above and drop down right on it. Mountain in your way? Fly over it.

Effectively, once you can fly, you've pretty much removed the "crap between where I am and where I need to be" killing. You've also removed the "fight my way to the resource" things, and even the "get around the bloody obstacle in the way" bit.

Since I can now -- finally --- fly in Northrend, I was shocked at how much quicker I could do, well, anything. Quests. Moving around. Exploring. Resource gathering.

[Selby]

Even our guild is feeling the malaise heavily, and this is a 10 year old guild. It's August and the boredom has taken over completely.

All our good DPS took vacations or left the game, so we have 15-20 regulars unable to do anything because all of the remaining players in PUG channels are just so damn bad it's not worth our time anymore.  I understand that not everyone has ALL the gear, but when you can't even beat a warrior tank on DPS and you have a 5600+ gearscore, either you are really bad at your class and don't know any better or you are just plain lazy and we aren't bringing anyone like that long anymore.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

I quit before WotLK and only began playing again a few months ago so I still haven't seen all the content and it still isn't boring. Lucky me 

[Chimpy]

edit to add my fave instance of all time was scholomance. Nice setting, not too long and with bosses spread throughout.

Not too long?

Surely you jest.

Until they retuned that place and made it 5 man only, doing that place with 5 people was several hours of painful trash killing hell. Sure the instance had a cool layout and theme, but the trash was both hard to kill and stuffed in like sardines.

[Zetor]

Oh, someone had to go and mention scholomance.  

RAEG

I ran that place over 90 times and the dreadmist helm never dropped. It had trash from hell with magic-immune mobs, summoner mobs, huge amounts of trash in general, quickly respawning trash, trash-that-wiped-you-if-you-pulled-more-than-one, and you had to clear to rattlegore every single time you ran the instance. About the only cool thing was using the Argent Dawn cube to kill a ton of skeletons in the study room.


edit: oh yeah, the loot was pure shit too until the revamp (a boss having a chance to drop a green? wat?). Even after that, most of it was useless...

[SurfD]

I remember the days when scholo was still tuned like a raid instance, and it was possible to go in there with 10 people and STILL wipe on trash repeatedly before getting to a boss.   I swear, vanilla scholo at launch was like ICC 0.1.

[Malakili]

I remember the days when scholo was still tuned like a raid instance, and it was possible to go in there with 10 people and STILL wipe on trash repeatedly before getting to a boss.   I swear, vanilla scholo at launch was like ICC 0.1.

Its just so insanely difficult to compare the two.  Scholo at launch was damn hard, no doubt. However, things were just so hugely different back then.  Tanking mechanics were different, +healing or spell damage (Spellpower) gear was non existent for most players as tier 1 raid gear was still reserved for the most hardcore.  Itemization was crap in general, and most people were in greens and blues if lucky.   

Its a little hard to remember the game back then because it was so different, but I think the difficulty was as much related to a variety of game mechanics that are a lot different today than to the design of the instances themselves.

[Ingmar]

Yeah I look at how I had to tank back at release and just think 'ugh'.

KIDS TODAY HAVE IT SO EASY

[Lakov_Sanite]

Three sunders before you dps god dammit!