WoW XX: It's Not A Recolor, It's An Original Thread

[Kish]

I don't think you're going to find many places where you have more people who are sufficiently invested in a 12+ year old game to consider going back to a time when it wasn't as much of an over-curated theme-park.

This seems a contradictory sentence. Given that you and I, if no one else here, apparently agree on a fundamentally negative description of modern WoW...why wouldn't we play the version of the game we enjoyed playing if it was available again? Would you like to count how many of the threads on this forum are dedicated to games at least 12 years old?

(If you do, have fun; I don't see the point myself--but that's because I find the "it's 12 years old" argument entirely incomprehensible, not because I find it invincibly compelling.)

[The_Jackal]

This seems a contradictory sentence. Given that you and I, if no one else here, apparently agree on a fundamentally negative description of modern WoW...why wouldn't we play the version of the game we enjoyed playing if it was available again? Would you like to count how many of the threads on this forum are dedicated to games at least 12 years old?

(If you do, have fun; I don't see the point myself--but that's because I find the "it's 12 years old" argument entirely incomprehensible, not because I find it invincibly compelling.)

Because there are games on the market now that were not on the market in 2004? Because technology is constantly progressing? Because we've seen and done it all already? I think its important to distinguish the dynamics of Vanilla WoW with the content of Vanilla WoW. My affection for the places in vanilla WoW, like Winterspring, Un'Goro crater, and Blackrock mountain are mostly nostalgic in nature; what I like about them is the feeling I had visiting these places for the first time. By any objective measure, newer zones in the newer expansions are better. There's no question that Surmar is light-years better than Winterspring (in fact, I think overall Suramar was a triumph, and the 'long-term progression' zone is an idea that MMOs should really develop more aggressively). So when I talk about wanting to go back to the Vanilla era, I'm talking about dynamics: The effect that game mechanics and systems have on the behavior of the player community, and the general experience of play.

Look, I like some old games to, but there are old games that age well, and there are old games that don't. Alpha Centauri is an example of a game that has, at least for me, stupendous legs. Games that are iterative, and have good replay value can age well, where games that are narrative and finite in their content tend to do less well, in my opinion. I really liked "No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in Harm's Way", it's a great game whose graphics and gameplay hold up surprisingly well, but I can't really imagine bothering to go back and replay it again, to do the same gunfights and watch the same cut-scenes. Likewise, all of us going back to Tirisfal Glades or Goldshire or Razor Hill with a level 5 <your class here> is just going to be the same exercise again. In fact, barring a certain lack of challenge and abrupt leveling curve, there's nothing stopping you from doing just that, for free; after all, WoW is free up to level 20.

So, if nobody is busting the doors down on the current low-level experience, I think it's daft to expect that they'll do it when they roll back to an earlier build of the game.

[Kish]

In fact, barring a certain lack of challenge and abrupt leveling curve, there's nothing stopping you from doing just that, for free; after all, WoW is free up to level 20.

Lack of challenge, mechanics that amount to "your damage button might create a slightly different visual effect if you're a different class/spec" until well after level 20, hideous graphics, obnoxiously smug self-referential jokes...any dungeon groups you join being all "charge ahead full-tilt and smash everything..."

In other words, barring that the game we're talking about--World of Warcraft as it was pre-Cataclysm--currently doesn't exist, there's nothing stopping people from playing it, and if no one wants to play the current, how did you put it, "over-curated theme park" version of WoW, why would they want to play the version lots of people wanted to play? Uh...

You continue to mystify me by answering your own questions before you ask them, Jackal. I get "I like the current version of WoW," though I can't relate. I even get MCerberus' argument that, assuming everyone who wants classic WoW just wants to reclaim their childhood somehow, everyone who wants classic WoW will inevitably be disappointed. I do not, in the least, get the logic behind pointing out that something's awful and then saying anyone who doesn't want that surely doesn't want something that was fun, either. The closest I can get to what you're saying making sense, is focusing on the "there are games on the market now that were not on the market in 2004" part and treating that as a statement that you don't believe people play 12-year-old games--but you explicitly said that's not the case. Pre-Cataclysm WoW did not age badly, because it didn't get a chance to age at all; a Cataclysm hit it, an unfortunate hazard of MMORPGs.

Lemme tell you a story. One which, I promise, has a happy ending.

Recently, I was given two free weeks of time on my old WoW accounts. I was curious enough about the current mechanics to load up a character I played before I quit, a Demonology warlock, spend a few minutes figuring out the new mechanics, and queue for a random Burning Crusade dungeon. (I kind of wanted to try the raid finder, but the only characters I had high enough level to queue for that were tanks, and I didn't want to try a more demanding role. ...Anything you say about Raid Finder being too easy to have demanding roles will be used against you in courtthis thread.) We got Shadow Labyrinth, a dungeon which was notoriously, gloriously tough in Burning Crusade days.

My group ran through it full-tilt. We came up on Blackheart the Inciter. As one did when I was last there, I switched to my lowest-damage minion, my voidwalker. The tank asked why I had a tank pet out. After the battle, I resummoned my felguard; the tank said something that made it clear that, even after being repeatedly mind-controlled by Blackheart, he had no idea why I wouldn't have kept the felguard out throughout. We continued, smashing everything. Incidentally, at over level 80, I had fewer abilities than a level 20 warlock did when I first played.

So. We got to Murmur. I noticed that at some point Blizzard had added this bright red highlighting to Murmur's blast zone, which wasn't exactly subtle before. Of course (or once it would have been "of course"), I stayed outside the blast zone, including running out of it when Murmur pulled me in. Murmur started casting Sonic Boom. My felguard ran out independently; huh, they buffed minion AI at some point.

Murmur completed the Sonic Boom, and in the chat log, I saw that three group members had just died. The tank was down to a sliver of health. The only one who'd shown any interest in avoiding getting blasted was me.

Told you it had a happy ending.

(Oh, we--which mostly means me, since almost everyone else was dead--killed Murmur, no trouble. So, so, so easy now, even if Murmur's Sonic Boom still has teeth should one completely ignore it.)

So yeah. Why wouldn't someone who wanted classic WoW back play what's currently on live? You tell me.

[The_Jackal]

You continue to mystify me by answering your own questions before you ask them, Jackal. I get "I like the current version of WoW," though I can't relate. I even get MCerberus' argument that, assuming everyone who wants classic WoW just wants to reclaim their childhood somehow, everyone who wants classic WoW will inevitably be disappointed. I do not, in the least, get the logic behind pointing out that something's awful and then saying anyone who doesn't want that surely doesn't want something that was fun, either. The closest I can get to what you're saying making sense, is focusing on the "there are games on the market now that were not on the market in 2004" part and treating that as a statement that you don't believe people play 12-year-old games--but you explicitly said that's not the case. Pre-Cataclysm WoW did not age badly, because it didn't get a chance to age at all; a Cataclysm hit it, an unfortunate hazard of MMORPGs.

"I like the current version of WoW" is not how I would have condensed my block of text, though. There are features that I think are legitimate improvements, and there are features that completely detract from the overall MMO experience, to the point where one is tempted to ask, "Why don't I just play Skyrim?". My suspicion is that were we to discuss this in person, we'd quickly agree more than we disagree as to the state of WoW, and what could be done to improve it. And that's really what my point is: "These are trends which, while they may seem positive, have pernicious outcomes in how they wind up shaping the experience of play".

I'm not sure what I said to invoke your ire, I think we largely agree on the rather meager theme-park immitation of itself that WoW has devolved into. But I, personally, do not expect Classic WoW, that is, a complete rollback to vanilla, without any concessions to later game innovations, to succeed. Not because it's not a better game than the current fare, it absolutely is (in my opinion), rather because we, the fan base of this old game, have played it, thoroughly, and for years. If, for some reason, Blizzard had stopped development on WoW at 2009, and simply left the servers unchanged from late Wrath to today, I think we'd find the state of affairs just as dreary and intolerable as now, only for different reasons (namely, a lack of new content, and meaningful rewards to pursue).

What I want is not Classic WoW, it's WoW Reborn, with a return to a type of engrossing, immersive, and challenging game that WoW was at its inception, with all the detail, depth and complexity I enjoyed, and a decided turn away from the highly optimized multiplayer treadmill that we currently have. I'd be happy to see them actually even drop the Warcraft setting and try a new fantasy IP, something whose aesthetics are more compatible with modern platform capabilites, and whose scope is geared more toward enjoyable group content, and less on weekly lockout content. But hey, if some peeps really go back and get into Classic WoW, I'm happy for them, but I can't imagine that's going to be a sudden resurgence of the missing millions of players who left WoW after it jumped the shark.

Lemme tell you a story. One which, I promise, has a happy ending.

Recently, I was given two free weeks of time on my old WoW accounts. I was curious enough about the current mechanics to load up a character I played before I quit, a Demonology warlock, spend a few minutes figuring out the new mechanics, and queue for a random Burning Crusade dungeon. (I kind of wanted to try the raid finder, but the only characters I had high enough level to queue for that were tanks, and I didn't want to try a more demanding role. ...Anything you say about Raid Finder being too easy to have demanding roles will be used against you in courtthis thread.) We got Shadow Labyrinth, a dungeon which was notoriously, gloriously tough in Burning Crusade days.

My group ran through it full-tilt. We came up on Blackheart the Inciter. As one did when I was last there, I switched to my lowest-damage minion, my voidwalker. The tank asked why I had a tank pet out. After the battle, I resummoned my felguard; the tank said something that made it clear that, even after being repeatedly mind-controlled by Blackheart, he had no idea why I wouldn't have kept the felguard out throughout. We continued, smashing everything. Incidentally, at over level 80, I had fewer abilities than a level 20 warlock did when I first played.

So. We got to Murmur. I noticed that at some point Blizzard had added this bright red highlighting to Murmur's blast zone, which wasn't exactly unsubtle before. Of course (or once it would have been "of course"), I stayed outside the blast zone, including running out of it when Murmur pulled me in. Murmur started casting Sonic Boom. My felguard ran out independently; huh, they buffed minion AI at some point.

Murmur completed the Sonic Boom, and in the chat log, I saw that three group members had just died. The tank was down to a sliver of health. The only one who'd shown any interest in avoiding getting blasted was me.

Told you it had a happy ending.

(Oh, we--which mostly means me, since almost everyone else was dead--killed Murmur, no trouble. So, so, so easy now, even if Murmur's Sonic Boom still has teeth should one completely ignore it.)

So yeah. Why wouldn't someone who wanted classic WoW back play what's currently on live? You tell me.

Good story, and yes, happy ending. Now I'm sure someone will tell you that the experience you're looking for is still in the game as 'Mythic+' dungeons, but to me, that implementation makes it feel like more treadmill at the end of the escalator, rather than an integral stepping stone in your progression to the top of a challenging journey. It also sharply reduced the number of players from which you can recruit to continue your progression. In my last twirl through Legion, I was in an active and friendly guild, got regular raid slots, but nobody was interested in doing mythic+ content, because getting raid gear was easier to schedule and far more reliable, as a source of quality loot, and in particular, cool-looking set pieces that motivated many players (myself included) to continue into the endgame treadmill in the first place.

[Kish]

"I like the current version of WoW" is not how I would have condensed my block of text, though.

The only one of those that was meant to be paraphrasing you was the one I said I didn't get. "I like the current version of WoW" is Psyren, and MCerberus, and all the people in this thread I'm not addressing because their perspective is as straightforwardly strange to me as "I like eating broken glass, get that chocolate cake away from me" would be.

You didn't invoke my ire, or I wouldn't be posting this at all.

I think we'll have to wait and see 1) first if it's actually a complete rollback to original WoW or if Blizzard does something characteristically boneheaded, like "WoW Classic! Just like original WoW, except of course everyone loves the dungeon queue!" and 2) how many people want to play it if they do. This is, as I said, pretty close to the worst possible place to look for people who want original-WoW back; I might be the only person in this thread who isn't a current WoW player.

But also, what is "succeed"? Will it have the numbers WoW did at its height? Unlikely. Will a lot of players accustomed to modern-WoW play it for a day, go, "Why am I not maximum level yet?" and quit? I'm sure they will. Will it have enough continuing players for guilds and dungeon groups and Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, and at least a few Naxxramas raids? Unless Blizzard actively messes up in a way that loses all of Classic's base (see 1 above).

[Psyren]

The only one of those that was meant to be paraphrasing you was the one I said I didn't get. "I like the current version of WoW" is Psyren, and MCerberus, and all the people in this thread I'm not addressing because their perspective is as straightforwardly strange to me as "I like eating broken glass, get that chocolate cake away from me" would be.

To carefully extricate the broken glass that is your words out of my mouth, I'd like to point out that I actually don't like the current version of WoW. The game has added a number of progression mechanics that I quite like the idea of (Mythic+ being the most recent), but they're hampered by being shackled to the same stale core gameplay that we had a decade ago - hash table combat, holy trinity, tab-targeting and all. What I'm doing here is praising WoW's innovation (or more accurately, their masterful ability to steal the better progression mechanics of other MMOs and polish them to a mirror sheen) in nearly everything else, but the core is still woefully stagnant and possibly even rotting at this point.

Classic Servers are unfathomably regressive to me because they take those very updated progression mechanics - in my mind, the only strength WoW has left - and remove even that. And whatever community and camaraderie you think will result from going back to battling the UI itself to get anything done, I expect to be fleeting, as Sporegg stated.

[Winthur]

Curiously: what exactly is the problem that the dungeon queue causes? Looking in World chat for a long while and hoping that the eager yet slightly underleveled Retribution Paladin suffices isn't exactly the most fun experience, nor is it *that* socially reinforcing.

As for Classic, I'll reiterate that while I really appreciate the nuances and difficulty of pre-Cata progression, I don't appreciate the braindead rotations and the general sluggishness of progress. A Protection Paladin one-shotting world mobs with his early game Avenger's Shield is pretty stupid. But drinking before every pull and resorting to fairly counterintuitive mechanics (keep walking backwards while punching this monster in order to exploit the fact that their attack animation has a slightly shorter range than yours!) to save time is also not my cup of tea. I think the levelling experience of Classic WoW has flaws, even if the road to 60 can be engrossing (or not, if you recall the popular conspiracy theory on what the true purpose of the Paladin kit actually is). Having to approach every single boar or spider with caution and respect would be nice if it didn't get really old after the 12th pull and the 13th drink.

I also insinuate that although Kish's story is somewhat reflective of my experiences, I'd assume that even the proest WoW players upon the game's first iteration were pretty trash at it - though, ofc, you can argue that they had much more stuff to discover. I once watched the World First Ragnaros clear with some commentary and a lot of people made comments on how sloppy the play was, or how screwed up rotations or combos were.

[The_Jackal]

Curiously: what exactly is the problem that the dungeon queue causes? Looking in World chat for a long while and hoping that the eager yet slightly underleveled Retribution Paladin suffices isn't exactly the most fun experience, nor is it *that* socially reinforcing.

In my opinion the ultimate effect of an anonymous queuing system is to undermine people's investment in their own behavior and reputation. There's no consequences for behaving like a prick, no particular incentive to communicate, use teamwork, or even tough out a tough encounter or boss fight. There's no reason to impart advice or help to someone who's struggling with their role or class. If you behave like a jerk, there's always another queue, and particular to WoW, if you play one of the advantaged classes (healers or tanks) you can use your privileged position to exert unearned authority upon your team. Now that's not to say that there aren't games where playing in anonymous pugs can work, but these tend to be much less complex, more intuitive games. But games which require and reward coordination do not do well. So, in order to limit the frequency of negative experiences that the queue would produce, the developers gradually turned the game from a game which required teamwork and coordination, to one that did not, and, as Psyren points out, the simplistic mechanics of the game do not hold up without these features.

I'm certainly sympathetic to the woes of the DPS players who languished in LFG for hours prior to the queue's introduction, after all, my first level 60 was a hunter. But on balance, I'd rather do the work to earn the trust and respect of tanks and healers so I could get re-invited than get dumped into a mindless faceroll. I'd rather work to build a party for a challenging and fun dungeon than queue for a boring loot dispenser.

I also think it's possible to re-design WoW so that it handles a queue more gracefully, and supports a wider diversity of roles. I've long argued that the tank/healer/dps trope is holding the MMO genre back, and that a more flexible game that made players more self-sufficient, spread around group synergies more diversely, and had a more engaging NPC AI would make for a much more exciting, intuitive game, one that would much more successfully leverage a 'pick-up-and-play' matchmaking system. There's no mandatory support classes in Diablo 2, and that had fantastic multiplayer. City of Heroes had a much less rigid party system, where you could form a team of up to 8 players, gave tanks more self-sustain, game supports more independence, and also provided hybrid and control archetypes in a game that, once they shook out the bugs, was really very solid, and it had a great community. That's why there's still activity over at their subreddit, and still multiple projects to resurrect the game. It was by no means as good a game as WoW, but they definitely found the fairway when it came to making a game engaging to casual and hardcore players alike.

As for Classic, I'll reiterate that while I really appreciate the nuances and difficulty of pre-Cata progression, I don't appreciate the braindead rotations and the general sluggishness of progress. A Protection Paladin one-shotting world mobs with his early game Avenger's Shield is pretty stupid. But drinking before every pull and resorting to fairly counterintuitive mechanics (keep walking backwards while punching this monster in order to exploit the fact that their attack animation has a slightly shorter range than yours!) to save time is also not my cup of tea. I think the levelling experience of Classic WoW has flaws, even if the road to 60 can be engrossing (or not, if you recall the popular conspiracy theory on what the true purpose of the Paladin kit actually is). Having to approach every single boar or spider with caution and respect would be nice if it didn't get really old after the 12th pull and the 13th drink.

Well, I can't really speak with authority on the Paladin design, but I can certainly agree that many classes didn't have the most accessible design or well-thought out rotations and abilities. The warrior, for example, didn't get their major damage dealing ability until level FORTY, and before that, play was largely 'apply rend, swing for white damage, and dump rage with heroic strike'. Again, I'm a huge proponent of making games more intuitive and mechanically challenging, in lieu of making them just arcane and obtuse, both when it comes to class mechanics and encounter mechanics, so I think we're on the same side of this one.

I also insinuate that although Kish's story is somewhat reflective of my experiences, I'd assume that even the proest WoW players upon the game's first iteration were pretty trash at it - though, ofc, you can argue that they had much more stuff to discover. I once watched the World First Ragnaros clear with some commentary and a lot of people made comments on how sloppy the play was, or how screwed up rotations or combos were.

Oh, absolutely. But the trouble with dungeon queue is that you can stay trash, and still get loot, all you need to do is keep queuing until you get matched with someone who overgears the content so badly they can solo the dungeon outright. While you might find someone to carry you with the dungeon finder, there's at least some more incentive to stay engaged with your class, your role, and the content, and some incentive for a better player to help an up-and-comer, as they might be useful to group with in the future.

[Psyren]

In my opinion the ultimate effect of an anonymous queuing system is to undermine people's investment in their own behavior and reputation. There's no consequences for behaving like a prick, no particular incentive to communicate, use teamwork, or even tough out a tough encounter or boss fight.

You know what good games do? They actually design around that. They don't puncture your tires just to force you to hitchhike - they fix the gorram road.

Unless you're in God-Tier Double-Peppermint-Mocha Mythic Raiding, a mode you should only be running with friends/guildmates in the first place, you shouldn't have to communicate at all - at least not verbally. You should be able to clear the majority of group content by at most emoting, marking targets, pinging the map and using ready check. Mass Effect 3 is my gold standard for small-scale multiplayer for this very reason - the game's mechanics encourage teamwork without any of the kind of social ostracism Big Brother you're promoting above, while still managing to be challenging and engaging and not faceroll. Guild Wars 2 executes a similar philosophy on a much larger scale.

[Winthur]

YYou should be able to clear the majority of group content by at most emoting, marking targets, pinging the map and using ready check.

Uh, well, but in this game it's generally really boring to do stuff that way, and you can still run into cocky, hotshot tanks that create an impossible pace for you to heal or loot-ninja DPSes.

[Kish]

Yeah, that...at that point, you're in outright "the game should be awful" territory, as far as I'm concerned. If it needs multiple players then it should need communication. If you could do it just as well with bots then you should have bots to do it with.

Though I guess that explains some of why you would consider the current game bad but the original game even worse.

[Spore]

Uh, well, but in this game it's generally really boring to do stuff that way, and you can still run into cocky, hotshot tanks that create an impossible pace for you to heal or loot-ninja DPSes.

They really should make instances have an upper item level. I LOVE timewalking because you cannot faceroll a boss as easily. But you are hard pressed NOT to basically ignore the healer in the current "heroic" instances because stuff is so incredibly easy (and boring). Heck, until mythic +7 everything just dies and barely needs healing (I play vengeance but still).

[The_Jackal]

Yeah, that...at that point, you're in outright "the game should be awful" territory, as far as I'm concerned. If it needs multiple players then it should need communication. If you could do it just as well with bots then you should have bots to do it with.

Though I guess that explains some of why you would consider the current game bad but the original game even worse.

I'm of two minds about this. I do agree, if you aren't prepared to communicate or think, and you just want a faceroll meatbash, then we need to agree to disagree on what kind of game WoW, or any MMO, should be. On the other hand, there's no mechanic, game system, or incentive you can put in any game that's going to completely eradicate human stupidity, so you're going to have turds in any multiplayer game, period, end of file. As Sartre put it, "Hell is other people."

On the whole, however, I feel that there's more to be gained by putting in systems that encourage people to communicate and have fun together than there is to be lost by occasionally putting players in a situation where the lack of communication will result in being sent to the showers. I have made real-life friends playing WoW. I can't say that about Diablo 2 or Left4Dead or Overwatch. Anyone who can't see value in that, I have sincere concerns about their mental health.

[The_Jackal]

They really should make instances have an upper item level. I LOVE timewalking because you cannot faceroll a boss as easily. But you are hard pressed NOT to basically ignore the healer in the current "heroic" instances because stuff is so incredibly easy (and boring). Heck, until mythic +7 everything just dies and barely needs healing (I play vengeance but still).

Destiny 2, in spite of being a content-light latrine-fire in general, had, what I thought, was a really ingenious itemization system: Your power level only counts if you're below the enemy's threat level. Overcapping does nothing, so none of the content ever becomes trivial. It's a great system, and one that more games should implement. Sadly, the lack of content, lack of end-game progression, and lack of item balance, and fairly tedious gameplay.

[MCerberus]

There's an aspect of the 'old design better' argument that hasn't been touched much yet. And that's that WoW has, actually picked up competitors over the years that have kept many of the old-style design choices but iterated the wonkiness out of them without eliminating them.

A big example is Rift, which has toolbar-overload, pretty much the same crafting system, pre-cata talent tree, a fantasy trope vs collection of misfits two faction system, and more. The thing is though, they've added quality-of-life changes everywhere on top of new features wow doesn't have like player housing (bless them... they tried in Warlords).

Then there's ToR, ur WoW clone, which has been quietly doing multiple-expansion arc stories better and avoiding the "we all have Ashbringers" problem since day one.

[The_Jackal]

And just to prove that I'm chemically incapable of avoiding equivocation, I'd like to point out some examples of later-era WoW features and changes that I actually thought were good! In no particular order:

Scenarios. I kinda liked these bite-sized coop content, and felt that they actually *did* work in the 'fun casual pick up group' type of content that Psyren might appreciate. I do understand why they didn't continue them, as I think they wound up starving dungeon queues of players in MoP. The question really becomes 'where is the sweet spot?' when it comes to level of effort versus rewards, and the 'correct' answer is subjective, but I do think there's a big problem when a particular class of content offers a 'shortcut', because people will ruthlessly exploit it, get all the rewards in the game, and then complain about having nothing to do.

Treasures, from Mists of Pandaria, I thought were kind of okay. A scavenger hunt that gave each player some pocket cash for exploring the world, and added cool lore was a nice way to add some cool flair to the story, kind of like finding Bobbleheads in Fallout 4. Of course, they went completely berserk with them in Warlords of Draenor, while letting regular content languish.

On a related note, Timeless Isle was actually kind of fun, when it was a one-off concept zone. Of course, when that model was spread across the entire continent of Draenor, the shine quickly faded. For both of these concepts, the key is variety.

Suramar's 'Withered Army Training' was another mini-game that I actually enjoyed quite a bit. It was just one fixed location, in a weekly reward system, had fun mechanics and its own little progression system, with some cool rewards. Altogether, I thought it was quite cool.

So it's not like the new custodians of WoW are completely asleep at the wheel, imo. The problem is, they also do some really bizarre and inexplicable changes, like this. This is a classic example of a team so completely bumfuzzled that they build classes around lining up a ton of cooldowns into a burst window (Colossus Smash, for example), and then throttle the GCD so you can't actually fit all of the cooldowns inside the burst window.

There's an aspect of the 'old design better' argument that hasn't been touched much yet. And that's that WoW has, actually picked up competitors over the years that have kept many of the old-style design choices but iterated the wonkiness out of them without eliminating them.

I think few people in here are advocating a pure, unadulterated reversion to vintage 2004 WoW. I'm certainly not. It's not mere change that's objectionable, it's the effects of those changes on the experience we're having.

A big example is Rift, which has toolbar-overload, pretty much the same crafting system, pre-cata talent tree, a fantasy trope vs collection of misfits two faction system, and more. The thing is though, they've added quality-of-life changes everywhere on top of new features wow doesn't have like player housing (bless them... they tried in Warlords).

I think player housing is an idea that sounds cool but is invariably bad for the game. The more people stay squirreled off in their own personal pocket dimension, the more you're undermining the 'multiplayer' in MMO. Now, guild housing, you have my attention. City of Heroes Super-Bases were a great implementation, let you design your base, earn facilities and teleporters, and also made for a good resource sink, as all bases cost rent. The main thing here is you want to foster a sense of ownership, but without undermining the sense of community. Like, if you could make a Guild-Wide garrison where each player in the guild could show up, and decorate their own building, that would be mega.

Then there's ToR, ur WoW clone, which has been quietly doing multiple-expansion arc stories better and avoiding the "we all have Ashbringers" problem since day one.

You mean Star Wars: The Old Republic? I'm sorry, but while SW:TOR had a group of solid single-player campaigns, as one would expect from Bioware, their MMO components were a mess. The 'NPC faction grind' quiz that game with every mission and flashpoint made doing almost everything super-tedious, and robbed me of any sense of investment I had in my character, since I was pretty much required to curry favor with whichever obnoxious douche companion I was carting around because I wanted their affinity bonuses. Plus, after the 3rd daily mission, I don't want to slog through 4 dialogue circles. Jeebus.

I agree that the 'everyone is special' decision for Legion was a bad misstep, one they started blundering into with Warlords of Draenor, and only got worse with Legion. The worst part is, in addition to causing migraine-inducing cognitive dissonance, they undercut the premise that you're the savior of Azeroth at every turn by having every cutscene focusing on someone else stealing your thunder. My personal favorite was watching Y'rel upstage me in the Battle of Shattrath. It's one thing to be upstaged by some legend of the setting, but Y'rel starts the expansion off as being some random prole, and now she's getting all the cool one-liners after I basiecally carried her worthless hide through two zones.

[Kish]

ToR is the best single-player CRPG disguised as an MMORPG I've ever played. Also the only single-player CRPG disguised as a morepig I've ever played.

It would have been better if it had simply been designed and released as KotOR 3 with no pretense of being an MMORPG, and it's certainly not in the same market as WoW; that it manages to do the dungeon queue so much better* is entirely a reason for WoW to be mortified. It is not something I would recommend to anyone who said they wanted to play a morepig, because it's not really a morepig.

*In ToR, there are Story modes for each of the half-dozen or so dungeons that are strongly tied into the overall plot, which can be easily soloed; Veteran modes for every dungeon for a group of players regardless of roles, tuned so that a group of all damage-dealers can run them, with healing stations all around each boss fight; and Master modes that require a tank, a healer, and damage-dealers. This means that queuing for Veteran dungeons is nearly instantaneous for everyone, not just for tanks. There's too little communication in random groups for my tastes, but it seems to be exactly Psyren's described ideal; people react to the mechanics instead of ignoring them like in WoW, and there's only discussion if a group wipes or someone has a reason to think someone else doesn't know what to do for a fight where that person needs to do something nonobvious.

Don't ever mistake "better than WoW" for as good as "not existing" where the dungeon queue is concerned, though.

[MCerberus]

One thing to remember about skirmishes is that they were directly lifted from a competitor (not judging in either direction. We're talking about the game industry, it's how it goes), LotRO. They were great, wasn't given a reward structure that made sense, withered and died.

Well they really don't have an option of going back but having improved systems with an insane amount of effort going into what the WoW dev team called failures. Total recreation and rewrite and potential of introducing a "tree and root" system just to get talents working. Then we think hit. Are we going to back to the weapon skill system? that was the ultimate garbage. Then if they go with the expertise system, wow that's a lot of gear they have to go back and change. Introduce the rating system and change aaaaaaaaaaaaall the gear. Maybe they go with the base no-miss system... wait that's not old WoW.

I think housing would work... if they take trade chat out. It's a place to go back and store items or relax or decorate or host friends. Garrisons should never have had trade chat.

I will defend ToR's MMO-ness for one reason: flashpoints. The way the story is set up the flashpoints (dungeons) feel not like "oh look a dungeon" but when things GET REAL. You're the 4 baddest dudes. Ancient sith ghosts trying to invade the galaxy! Rescue someone and restart the galactic war! Invade the capital of a planet before they deploy their WMDs!

[The_Jackal]

Well they really don't have an option of going back but having improved systems with an insane amount of effort going into what the WoW dev team called failures. Total recreation and rewrite and potential of introducing a "tree and root" system just to get talents working. Then we think hit. Are we going to back to the weapon skill system? that was the ultimate garbage.

I'll concede that having to kill up different weapon skills was tedious and pointless. I want to be clear, there should be a clear delineation between challenge and grind. Part of the big, big problem with modern WoW is that they've kept the grind by edited out the challenge, the result being tedium. I just want goals to have in my play that aren't mediated by 'click a button and log out' or 'do this instance once a week', and I want the activities I undertake to achieve those goals to be fun.

Then if they go with the expertise system, wow that's a lot of gear they have to go back and change. Introduce the rating system and change aaaaaaaaaaaaall the gear. Maybe they go with the base no-miss system... wait that's not old WoW.

That system should not come back. In fact, one of the main reasons I prefer leaving behind the 'combat resolution via hash table lookup' systems is because mechanics like critical hits or misses start being about aim and location hitboxes, rather than being some hidden game lore that players must discover through external research and tons of spreadsheet simulations.

I think housing would work... if they take trade chat out. It's a place to go back and store items or relax or decorate or host friends. Garrisons should never have had trade chat.

Perhaps, but I think an shared space you and your guild and friends passively share would be insanely, wildly preferrable. Yes, you could visit each others' garrisons, but think how much better it would have been if the garrison had been guild-wide and larger, with plots divided up among members? So much more potential there, imo.

I will defend ToR's MMO-ness for one reason: flashpoints. The way the story is set up the flashpoints (dungeons) feel not like "oh look a dungeon" but when things GET REAL. You're the 4 baddest dudes. Ancient sith ghosts trying to invade the galaxy! Rescue someone and restart the galactic war! Invade the capital of a planet before they deploy their WMDs!

Nothing that WoW didn't do better before. There are a ton of quests in Elwyn Forest and Westfall which culminate in the Stockade and Deadmines, and the Razorfen dungeons do the same for the missions around the south Barrens. I'll concede that STO makes a bigger deal about your character's own role in the story, but that 'chosen one' narrative causes cognitive dissonance, like when you and the other Imperial Agent in your party is swiping your dialogue, or when you choose one dialogue option, and someone else chooses the opposite. I'd much rather that the stories be a bit looser, and more of the rewards be emergent, and your own personal role in the world actually comport with the fact that you're playing a game with lots of other people in it. There's nothing wrong with a single-player RPG, but I think it's a mistake to conflate the MMORGP and CRPG types.

[Lord Raziere]

Finally got the Nightborne.

Yaaaaaaay.

thankfully most of the last parts of the reputation was earned by doing a combination of the last parts of good Suramaritan and the beginning parts of Insurrection. just made my rep go up by leaps and bounds.

now I have an arcane mage nightborne.

to level 80 levels to get a transmog set.

......yeah. thats an achievement for another day.

[Spore]

now I have an arcane mage nightborne.

to level 80 levels to get a transmog set.

......yeah. thats an achievement for another day.

20 -> 110 is 90 levels though.

[Lord Raziere]

20 -> 110 is 90 levels though.

Oh. Sorry thought it was to 100, my bad.

[Psyren]

Uh, well, but in this game it's generally really boring to do stuff that way, and you can still run into cocky, hotshot tanks that create an impossible pace for you to heal or loot-ninja DPSes.

"Loot Ninja" has been solved (for years now) in other games, it's called personal loot. We have all the technology we need to pull it off. Hell, we can apply it to resource nodes too like GW2 does.

"Boring" is where revamping the combat engine comes into play; the gameplay should be fun enough to stand on its own without needing all the social blocks to fall into place perfectly too. But as long as the pablum remains profitable they've got no incentive to do anything about that, so there's nothing (for me anyway) to really do, save waiting until it isn't anymore and they decide WoW 2 is worth the investment.

But I'm hopeful that the success of games like Dark Souls, Monster Hunter, and Final Fantasy XV is whetting people's appetite for actual meaty combat and physics engines in their fantasy RPGs.

If it needs multiple players then it should need communication.

For the hardest content in it (Mythic Raids, Mythic+, Rated BGs, and Arena) I agree with you, it should. But there's a huge difference between it being necessary at the top end, and being necessary for everything else. It all hinges on how badly Blizzard really wants to solve their toxicity problem in the end.

[Kish]

It all hinges on how badly Blizzard really wants to solve their toxicity problem in the end.

...okay? Clarify? Would making communication necessary for all multi-player content be or require solving the toxicity problem, or is not making communication necessary what would be or require doing so?

(I don't think the toxicity problem for modern WoW is solvable, or has been since before Cataclysm came out. Stick a fork in it, it's done, as far as I'm concerned.)

[Psyren]

...okay? Clarify? Would making communication necessary for all multi-player content be or require solving the toxicity problem, or is not making communication necessary what would be or require doing so?

More the latter. To clarify, it would involve doing two things simultaneously:

1) De-emphasizing (or to go nuclear, outright removing) all freeform communication that isn't "opt-in" - guild chat, friends lists, and the like. This could be limited to instances if removing it from the world proper would be a bridge too far.
2) Design the game such that lack of communication outside of the highest-difficulty modes of said instances (i.e. the content people would only be running with their opt-in list in the first place - their friends, in other words) isn't a hindrance.

The root of toxic behavior comes from handing everyone a megaphone while letting them retain their anonymity - "GIFT" in other words. But the way WoW is currently set up, getting rid of that megaphone has negative consequences even in instanced content that really shouldn't need it, because the tools to communicate without it are underdeveloped. For example, marking targets should be a much simpler exercise than it is now, where almost every group going into an instance has different conventions for what the symbols mean (aside from skull, I think everyone gets that one at least.)

[MCerberus]

More the latter. To clarify, it would involve doing two things simultaneously:

1) De-emphasizing (or to go nuclear, outright removing) all freeform communication that isn't "opt-in" - guild chat, friends lists, and the like. This could be limited to instances if removing it from the world proper would be a bridge too far.
2) Design the game such that lack of communication outside of the highest-difficulty modes of said instances (i.e. the content people would only be running with their opt-in list in the first place - their friends, in other words) isn't a hindrance.

The root of toxic behavior comes from handing everyone a megaphone while letting them retain their anonymity - "GIFT" in other words. But the way WoW is currently set up, getting rid of that megaphone has negative consequences even in instanced content that really shouldn't need it, because the tools to communicate without it are underdeveloped. For example, marking targets should be a much simpler exercise than it is now, where almost every group going into an instance has different conventions for what the symbols mean (aside from skull, I think everyone gets that one at least.)

Getting back on to the topic of retro servers, if done properly the classic servers would help with the general toxicity problems in the opposite direction. In the modern wow era, your identity sticks to your bnet account. Without server links, you actually need a small amount of social cache to really function. Group finder and LFR were pretty... monkey paw curse in what it did to the social element of the game.

I know this is counter to your earlier stated play style, but it may be something that ends up happening.

[Kish]

Ah.

I think getting rid of the dungeon queue entirely would go further toward getting rid of the toxicity. I also think it would do that by getting rid of about 95% of the players, at this point. So, like I said, not really a solvable problem.

[MCerberus]

Ah.

I think getting rid of the dungeon queue entirely would go further toward getting rid of the toxicity. I also think it would do that by getting rid of about 95% of the players, at this point. So, like I said, not really a solvable problem.

Like I said
monkey paw.

[Psyren]

Ah.

I think getting rid of the dungeon queue entirely would go further toward getting rid of the toxicity. I also think it would do that by getting rid of about 95% of the players, at this point. So, like I said, not really a solvable problem.

And with good reason - spamming chat hoping for premades for every group activity is not engaging in the slightest. I think there's a middle ground here, and a better game will try it out first.

[The_Jackal]

And with good reason - spamming chat hoping for premades for every group activity is not engaging in the slightest. I think there's a middle ground here, and a better game will try it out first.

I don't think anyone's advocating a return to the raw, unmediated 'spam chat' method of building groups. I'm certainly not. Here's what City of Heroes did: The group finder inverted the normal convention of letting people browse groups, and was geared more towards letting players list themselves as available to run content. So, if you wanted to run a particular type of content, you just went to the group finder, looked for the Archetype (class) you were looking for, narrowed for the level range that would suit your content, and send them a tell inviting them. Quick, and easy.

You didn't need to squat in a city to wait to get invited to something, you could go out in the world and grind solo stuff, or, heavens forbid, browse the players marking themselves as 'available' for your desired content, and send them tells until you had your group. They also didn't have a fixed group size, so you could have groups of anywhere from 2 to 8 players.

They also had a feature which matched the members of the group to the level of the party leader, so you could get a group of friends and guildies into some new players' content, and everyone could a) have fun, and b) get cool stuff.

Why could you get cool stuff? Because their loot system was based on all crafted components. There wasn't a 'this gear drops this item from this boss', rather you collected various types of ingredients of varying rarities, and once you had the right bits, you crafted your item. But you could get useful parts for crafted gear from like level 10 to the level cap. All loot was personal, and all items could be traded or sold, so even if you personally didn't have a use for 'Rikti Telepathic Gel' or whatever, you could still flog it on the exchange.

Finally, they had a difficulty slider, which increased the numbers, health, damage, and control resistance of the foes you fought, so if you found you'd been paired with some less than stellar teammates, you didn't have to choose between a re-queue and a repair party, the party leader could just downcheck the difficulty and finish the content, albeit with a slightly reduced payout of loot and XP. And there's plenty of ways you could put in cheevos and cosmetics to promote people reaching for the tip-top difficulty content.