If enough people were interested in playing Vanilla WoW, then chances are Rift probably would have been way more successful than it was. If you look back to when WoW first launched, there wasn't really that much competition, the game has evolved by a huge amount since then, and its not been all bad either, lots of good things been added to the game, there is a reason after all why its managed to still be successful after all this time. Forget Vanilla WoW, it had its place, but, too many confuse nostalgia with real desire to revisit on anything other than a very very temporary basis. Blizzard are not stupid after all, if there was real demand for it, then they would have put it out there for people to play, after all why wouldn't they?
Noboddy would play vanilla anymore, if it was still around, there is a reason wow replaced Everquest as the leading MMO, it evolved and kept evolving..
i recently played trough all the lore, story and quest content from level 1 to 100, and its clear to me how and why the game evolved.. Storywise and lorewise the game kept becomming better and better over time.. But also the streamlining of the content has become an art by itselves.. It turned into the best MMO available still... With truely something for everyone..
however, thee weak point of current WoW is the lack of fresh comtent, and this exactly has been the main reason i quit WoW on and off ever since release..
its however the only MMo you can play both casuall as well as hardcore... And has become better at that over the last 11 years..
vanilla will never be as good as it on e was, however they could make a huge zone with connected duneons and raid now and then to give that old feeling back... Just more freedom to explore...and more challenges to find on the road...
in the end, purists will die, people that on e loved to play everquest will recognise this... Nothing will evevr be like your first MMO, and the worst thing you can do is play that old outdated stuff again, because after the nostalgic feeling has left you.. The game will feel cold and old pretty fast
Nobody would play Vanilla? Are you sure? :-)
I play Vanilla on unnamed server, 11k ppl online on peak, doesn't go under 7k online , it's more than any other expansion ever had on any server but official WoW servers of course :-). And quality of vanilla free servers are pretty good these days. So yeah, sure, nobody would play Vanilla...
i also probably play where you are playing but i also play a cata server with about 3k population also and I find cata better just because of the quality of life compared to vanilla. I think a lot of people here saying they want vanilla do not really remember what vanilla was like and only remember the fun parts. Playing default wow with all the elites and forced groupings for just quest mobs goes against just about every single game since vanilla wow and the players playing mmorpgs nowadays. People want some gratification when playing games especially being rewarded and vanilla wow doesnt do much of a good job of that hence why blizzard changed it. Also the talent system sucked honestly so many irrelevant talents that just feel like a waste.
Everyone seems to be turning this into a Vanilla Nostalgia post, and the pros and cons of it. But that's not what I'm trying to say.
This is my perspective :
I've been playing on a crowed Private Sever for a few years now, but the designers made some changes and most quit.
With this, I found another one and it's packed solid...... With this, I have to ask myself, As much as I enjoyed playing several classes over several years, do I feel like continuing ?.....The same stuff over again. The answer is yes !
This got me thinking. Vanilla alone will not hold the attention of thousands and thousands of players for ever.
Blizzard should take Vanilla and expand on it. Call it and expansion, call it a new game, whatever. Classic style but new !..............Hay, they may even get the 6 million players they lost back !
Blizzard should take Vanilla and expand on it. Call it and expansion, call it a new game, whatever. Classic style but new !..............Hay, they may even get the 6 million players they lost back !
The problem is that you seem to be under the delusion that most people who quit WoW did so because of progression. Most people simply just moved on... It is called churn. You see when We speak of WoW "losing" 6 million players... We are actually talking about them not gaining 6 million new players... You see that is the real wonder of WoW. that they had 10 mil-ish players but still had a positive churn, more players coming in than was leaving. It is not like the game always has the same 6-10 mil players...
At this point WoW have simply churned through most of the people who would be interested in the game... Sure you get a slow trickle of people who are either coming of age or in to money. But that is the way it is.
Bringing back a classic WoW with some extra shine would absolutely tug on the nostalgia nerv, but most of those players who left have other commitments these days.. kids, grandkids, jobs and so on. Many do not see gaming as a proper thing to do for adults. Much like how many stop partying like an animal...
They would gain back perhaps a few hundred thousand... short term like any expansion. A month or two. And then what.? No new content for the regular game for two years and a expansion that will be more dead than MoP.
Most people who claim to want vanilla WoW, whether "expanded upon" or not, don't actually want vanilla WoW - they just want the experience they had when playing vanilla. Unfortunately, those two things are entirely separate. One is possible, the other is not.
Essentially, it's like going back to an ex-girlfriend and trying to make it work. Almost invariably, it ends up failing - even if there's a good time to be had for a while. Feelings can be hard to quantify, but there's usually a reason people part - and there's usually a reason you stop playing a game in the first place.
We could go back and forth forever about why WoW had such an impact - and I think there are many reasons.
One key reason, I believe, is that the MMO genre was still quite new to a lot of people. Since it was a genuinely good and refined example, it became the first in-depth experience with the genre for millions.
Several good MMOs have come out in the post-WoW scene, but none of them have managed to give us a truly new experience.
No, someone talented has to come up with something entirely new. A bold, fresh vision - and then we can talk about having that kind of experience once again.
Noboddy would play vanilla anymore, if it was still around, there is a reason wow replaced Everquest as the leading MMO, it evolved and kept evolving..
i recently played trough all the lore, story and quest content from level 1 to 100, and its clear to me how and why the game evolved.. Storywise and lorewise the game kept becomming better and better over time.. But also the streamlining of the content has become an art by itselves.. It turned into the best MMO available still... With truely something for everyone..
however, thee weak point of current WoW is the lack of fresh comtent, and this exactly has been the main reason i quit WoW on and off ever since release..
its however the only MMo you can play both casuall as well as hardcore... And has become better at that over the last 11 years..
vanilla will never be as good as it on e was, however they could make a huge zone with connected duneons and raid now and then to give that old feeling back... Just more freedom to explore...and more challenges to find on the road...
in the end, purists will die, people that on e loved to play everquest will recognise this... Nothing will evevr be like your first MMO, and the worst thing you can do is play that old outdated stuff again, because after the nostalgic feeling has left you.. The game will feel cold and old pretty fast
Nobody would play Vanilla? Are you sure? :-)
I play Vanilla on unnamed server, 11k ppl online on peak, doesn't go under 7k online , it's more than any other expansion ever had on any server but official WoW servers of course :-). And quality of vanilla free servers are pretty good these days. So yeah, sure, nobody would play Vanilla...
And they all play for free:) Vanilla was something new back in the days but it's no ware as good now people want content that spend as a fun time then 12 to 14 hours a day trying to kill 1 boss with 40 people on a RNG system never feel like enjoying the game as people who enjoy it just wanted to be knowed they was the first who down that boss it was race the rush back then but now other games do that now sometime better with less time needed.
The new solid vanilla servers are incredibly busy. Players are flocking to them. They are run progression style so you likely have a year or 2 to level and stage through new raids throughout the patch history. These servers are solid and amassing huge amounts of players.
Blizzard is idiotic not to revisit the vanilla experience. BC is going to open as well as a stand alone server you can copy your vanilla characters to (and still play vanilla). The demand for this is high.
Those who do not know of the real and current demand for vanilla Wow are completely out of touch with reality. Their is a massive and growing sub-culture for vanilla. Website for builds and addons exist specifically for 1.12.1. There are more fan supported sites for vanilla than some modern mmos.
If Blizzard opened their official vanilla progression servers the numbers would shoot up 100x! Some current vanilla servers have up to 10k players online (the game is rebuilt on new engine that supports far more than back in the day). A brand new vanilla pve server now peaks around 3500 players and has only been online 1.5 months or so. Guilds and economy are active ... more so than live Wow per server!
Vanilla Wow was popular because it was a completely different game than today's Wow. This is NOT rose coloured glasses because the demand is real! This is the game for guilds and players wanting to play with others and not the solo queue, easy mode game that exists today. Different audience ... different demands!
Comments
I was talking about expanding on Vanilla. Just Vanilla would be boring.
Take it in the same direction it started out as, is what I was saying.
If you look back to when WoW first launched, there wasn't really that much competition, the game has evolved by a huge amount since then, and its not been all bad either, lots of good things been added to the game, there is a reason after all why its managed to still be successful after all this time.
Forget Vanilla WoW, it had its place, but, too many confuse nostalgia with real desire to revisit on anything other than a very very temporary basis.
Blizzard are not stupid after all, if there was real demand for it, then they would have put it out there for people to play, after all why wouldn't they?
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
Everyone seems to be turning this into a Vanilla Nostalgia post, and the pros and cons of it. But that's not what I'm trying to say.
This is my perspective :
I've been playing on a crowed Private Sever for a few years now, but the designers made some changes and most quit.
With this, I found another one and it's packed solid...... With this, I have to ask myself, As much as I enjoyed playing several classes over several years, do I feel like continuing ?.....The same stuff over again. The answer is yes !
This got me thinking. Vanilla alone will not hold the attention of thousands and thousands of players for ever.
Blizzard should take Vanilla and expand on it. Call it and expansion, call it a new game, whatever. Classic style but new !..............Hay, they may even get the 6 million players they lost back !
At this point WoW have simply churned through most of the people who would be interested in the game... Sure you get a slow trickle of people who are either coming of age or in to money. But that is the way it is.
Bringing back a classic WoW with some extra shine would absolutely tug on the nostalgia nerv, but most of those players who left have other commitments these days.. kids, grandkids, jobs and so on. Many do not see gaming as a proper thing to do for adults. Much like how many stop partying like an animal...
They would gain back perhaps a few hundred thousand... short term like any expansion. A month or two. And then what.? No new content for the regular game for two years and a expansion that will be more dead than MoP.
Not a sound investment.
This have been a good conversation
Essentially, it's like going back to an ex-girlfriend and trying to make it work. Almost invariably, it ends up failing - even if there's a good time to be had for a while. Feelings can be hard to quantify, but there's usually a reason people part - and there's usually a reason you stop playing a game in the first place.
We could go back and forth forever about why WoW had such an impact - and I think there are many reasons.
One key reason, I believe, is that the MMO genre was still quite new to a lot of people. Since it was a genuinely good and refined example, it became the first in-depth experience with the genre for millions.
Several good MMOs have come out in the post-WoW scene, but none of them have managed to give us a truly new experience.
No, someone talented has to come up with something entirely new. A bold, fresh vision - and then we can talk about having that kind of experience once again.
Blizzard is idiotic not to revisit the vanilla experience. BC is going to open as well as a stand alone server you can copy your vanilla characters to (and still play vanilla). The demand for this is high.
Those who do not know of the real and current demand for vanilla Wow are completely out of touch with reality. Their is a massive and growing sub-culture for vanilla. Website for builds and addons exist specifically for 1.12.1. There are more fan supported sites for vanilla than some modern mmos.
If Blizzard opened their official vanilla progression servers the numbers would shoot up 100x! Some current vanilla servers have up to 10k players online (the game is rebuilt on new engine that supports far more than back in the day). A brand new vanilla pve server now peaks around 3500 players and has only been online 1.5 months or so. Guilds and economy are active ... more so than live Wow per server!
Vanilla Wow was popular because it was a completely different game than today's Wow. This is NOT rose coloured glasses because the demand is real! This is the game for guilds and players wanting to play with others and not the solo queue, easy mode game that exists today. Different audience ... different demands!
You stay sassy!