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(An Opinion) Alternate WoW
VirusDancer
Member UncommonPosts: 3,649
I was asked for my opinion on something in another thread, and I said I would reply in a new thread - since the reply would be entirely too distracting and off topic for that particular thread. So here's that reply! What? No fireworks? Hrmmm...
It was a thread about what we're looking forward to with MoP. My reply was for it to crash and burn. I'll stop there, even though that's not all that I said; but I figure it's as far as most people read. Let that sink in. Lalalalala, okay - now on to the rest of what I said. I said I wanted MoP to fail in the hopes that Blizzard would realize what they've done to the game since Cata and take the steps necessary to return to what they once had. It's not about hating WoW in the least - it's not about wanting WoW to go down in flames.
So here's that reply! What? Still no fireworks? Meh...
While not everybody is going to say that Vanilla was there favorite, it is a very common post from folks that they preferred Vanilla or making the comment that expansion A, B, or C was not Vanilla. With each expansion, the game was less like Vanilla - and - the more they said it was not like Vanilla. I'm going to take us on a little trip from Vanilla, into The Burning Crusade, over to Wrath of the Lich King, run into Cataclysm, and even look ahead at Mists of Pandaria. So make sure your seatbelts are fastened, it's not going to be fast - but it's going to be bumpy....
Starting with Vanilla, here's a look at the features WoW was going to bring us - courtesy of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine:
- Adventure together with thousands of other players together
- Explore an expansive world
- Two factions with eight total races
- Nine different classes
- Familiar and new Warcraft characters/monsters
- Hundreds of hours of gameplay with new quests, items, and adventures every month
- An epic world full dungeons of different styles and depths
- Six capital cities to serve as hubs
- Professions
- Air travel and personal mounts for fast travel
- Guilds and guild mangement tools
Sounds pretty damn nifty, eh?
How about TBC? What's cooking there? Again, here's a look a tthe features TBC was going to bring us - courtesy of the Wayback Machine again:
- Level cap increased to 70
- Two new playable races
- New starting zones
- A new continent
- New high level dungeons
- Flying mounts in Outland
- New monsters and epic world monsters
- Hundreds of new quests
- Hundreds of new items
- New profession
- Socketed items
- And much more
Sounds pretty damn nifty, eh?
- New class
- Cap increased to level 80
- New area to explore
- Siege warfare in PvP
- Multi-passenger mounts
Hrmmm, yeah - I prefer the original main pages. Still though, there's no denying most of that sounds damn nifty, eh?
- Azeroth's been jacked up (okay, I took some creative license with a world transformed)
- Two new races
- Level cap now 85
- New areas to explore
Wish I had the original pages, meh. Still though, there's no denying how they're adding to the game, right?
- New race
- New class
- Timed runs
- Pet battle system
- Three man instances
- New talent system
- New zone
- New mobs, gear, dungeons, raids, battlegrounds, arenas, and factions
So there you go, mostly, once again adding a bunch of nifty stuff to the game, eh?
So right from the start, Blizzard's added all sorts of nifty stuff to the game. Far more than's listed here or any of the little pages listing features. They've done a pretty good job of adding and expanding to the game.
Well uh...hrmm...so...uh...what's the problem then?
None of this mentions any of the things they've taken out of the game - none of the things that made Vanilla what it was that just are not there. The expansions did not just add to the game - they also took away from the game.
Mogu'shan Vaults... woot, a 10/25 raid! So uh...are there going to be any 40/60 man raids? Nope, those were killed off long ago.
A new talent system? Hrmmm, yeah - see - weren't they around for what happened during Cata? Hell, even before Cata... you can't make your Vanilla toon today. You can't even make your BC, LK, much less Cata toon today...
Remember how you felt getting that gear at 60? Remember what 58 BC gear was like - much less 60? Heck, remember actually hanging around in Azeroth to hit 60 and not being ready to get the Hell out at 58 because the leveling was so much faster over in Outland?
Oh yeah, remember that leveling did not take place in the blink of an eye? The complaints about BC leveling being too fast. Heh, you haven't seen anything - check out LK leveling. Man, LK leveling's slow as molasses compared to Cata. Um...yeah.
Remember the old Honor System - what problem did not exist with that system that grew to be a major problem?
And that list goes on and on... but sure, the list of the various things they removed or changed is relatively small to all the great stuff that they added - there's no doubt about that. No doubt about that at all...
...however, imagine just for a moment - if they had added all that great stuff without removing or changing all the things that they did?
It's just my opinion, but that would have been the game - that when I think about it, a song by the Divinyls starts to play.
Not everybody's going to share the same opinion, obviously. But like I said, I was asked... so here it is.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Comments
TLDR Version:
Remember in BC all the stuff you missed from Vanilla?
Remember in LK all the stuff you missed from BC and Vanilla?
Remember in Cata all the stuff you missed from LK, BC, and Vanilla?
Think about MoP and all the stuff you're going to miss from Cata, LK, BC, and Vanilla...
Wouldn't it have been nifty if you could have gotten all the new stuff from BC, LK, Cata, and MoP...without having to miss anything?
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Uh...maybe?
I really never noticed or cared about past stuff unless I actually participated in it. Like how city raids, in my personal opinion, got torn apart as a result of the guards getting too powerful, and the increasing lack of people who were willing to even attempt to put one together.
Old AV was as good if not better than GW2's WvW.
Wow it's been so long.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design