Analyzing why Classic World of Warcraft was better

1) It was more thematic. There was a highly distinctive look both to the Alliance and the Horde which was later spoiled. That was owing to the introduction of Blood Elves, Worgen, Draenei, and Pandaren. The individual look of races was itself also spoiled, first, by making different and non-racial mounts too easy to acquire; secondly, by giving too many classes to too many races, in particular by according paladins to the Horde, shamans to the Alliance. Every gathering of people in modern World of Warcraft looks like an ugly mess; when you stand in the middle of a city and look about you at the hodge-podge of races and mounts and classes mingled together, you are reminded of the sort of sludgy hue you get from mixing too many colours together. The coherence of the art-style is ruined.

Because it was so much harder to get around, the various towns and cities tended to be mostly populated by the races appropriate to them. You knew, for example, that, if you went to Darnassus, you were mostly going to see Night Elves. It was an enjoyable feeling to be of a rare race in some particular area: a dwarf would have been a very unusual sight in Night Elf territory.

2) Class uniqueness was also infinitely more pronounced in practice. Protection Paladins, for example, could tank massive numbers of mobs, and could turn immune, provide blessings, resurrect, do a little healing, and a number of other things; but were not able to go toe to toe with warriors as to tanking single targets. The Druid enjoyed an enormous degree of versatility, as well as his own unique class bonuses, like getting a speed-increase at a leveler level than anybody else, and his own unique Druidic realm; but was never as good in his respective adopted roles as any of the pure classes. Everybody excelled in some areas, was deficient in others.

3) The world felt enormous, and inspired a constant sense of wonder and adventure and exploration. This was later spoiled by a number of things. Besides the fact that levelling was slower, and so kept you in the world's various zones longer, you also had no choice but to go out into the real world in order to level. So too by the introduction of flying mount, which made everything too easy to traverse and seem miniscule, and by the Looking for Group tool, which teleports you instantaneously to any dungeon suitable to your level that you please to enter. I remember the sense of aweful mystery in which areas which were more out-of-the-way, difficult to get to, devoid of flight paths, were enwrapped. That sense is now utterly gone. The sense of making a perilous journey--through the jungles of Stranglethorn Vale, for example--along with the sense of safety and relief once you get your destination--let us say, Booty Bay--is gone. The sense of something like going on the Ironforge train, or a boat or a zeppelin, and finding a whole new world open up to you, is gone.

The fact that you had to walk to instances made you take the whole experience of going through them far more seriously, and appreciate it infinitely more. The instances which were designed for the enemy faction to use were particularly exciting to enter. I remember the thrilling sense of jubilation I felt when I did instances like the Deadmines or Stockades as a member of the Horde, or the Wailing Cavern or Ragefire Chasm as a member of the Alliance. I remember what it was like to travel on a boat with some other adventuresome souls and traverse such a great deal of land to go and do these instances, simply for the fun of it.

4) Because you could not make an enemy faction character, the enemy faction carried with it a sense of awesomeness and mystery. This extends to what you felt both when meeting its members, and when being in its locations. I shall never forget how it felt to cross a boat to Kalimdor at about level thirty as a member of the Alliance, and find a whole new alien world open up to me.

5) Levelling was slow and arduous, which made every level matter to you. You felt a real sense of pride when you went up by a level. The game became more about the journey than the end-result.

6) Reputation mattered, whether as to your own faction or in relation to the enemy. You had to build bonds and friendships and connections with people in order to get along; this put people on their best behaviour: bad people were ostracized, which is impossible to do now, owing to the cross-realm business. There were rivalries with members of the opposite faction, and people gained reputations for their fearsomeness in battle.

The social aspect as a whole is now destroyed. You formerly had to work together with people constantly in order to explore the enormous world and brave its dangers; heirlooms, the Looking for Group tool, cross-faction implementation, have spoiled this.

7) Gear was not masked; you wore the tokens of your progress on your own body for all to see. So too people who had attained remarkable gear inspired awe in people when it was seen for what it was.

8) World PvP was ever-present, and added a real freshness and liveliness to the game. On PvP servers the warring that was constantly going on between the two factions was a real thrill; and when you wandered through a contested zone in the lower levels, you felt genuine fear and unease. It also made it far more special when you would build connections with the mysterious enemy faction; when you would agree with your gestures and your behaviour to level together with somebody else in peace, and hold true to your word.

Playing devils advocate
1) They kept distinctive styles after classic, it's only TBC that was a stylistic debacle

2) Class mechanics were made much more unique post-cataclysm, are you kidding me? The difference between a WotlK server and Cataclysm server is nuts but every class is more functional, has lower downtime and I'd say is more fun to play than in vanilla

3) The game world just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I dont think you've got a point here.

All of these points are still things. Is there sincerely a ton of mystery and intrigue just because you can't make a troll on the same server as your gnome.

It's fair that you like classic better but fuck dude, you need to give me legitimate points and gameplay discussions. This "and everything was just more magical back then" shit is subjective opinion.

Even vanilla was shit.

>1
You do know the whole Horde Vs Alliance thing wasn't even a big part of WoW. They didn't even have battlegrounds or rewards for world pvp until the community spent months begging for it. The faction thing was largely unimportaint and they only did it because everquest did it.

Past level 20 the factions all do 99% identical quests so they arn't evne experiencing different stories

2: Class balance was a fucking mess. The only classes that can solo quest with ridiculous downtime between fights were hunters and warlocks. Hunters were in a league of their own for being the best at leveling. Once leveling ended warriors were the absolute best at literally everything other than healing: they dps the most, tank the best, and win every encounter in PVP unless it's vs a rogue that is going to spend every cooldown it has: why? Because they scale the best with gear.

3: You're argueing in favor of walking simulator crap here. Yeah the Griffon ride was cool the first time. Not so much the 528th time. Same with all the other boring journies where I tab out and look at porn

4: LOL Like I said post level 20 faction doesn't matter. everyone is on the same quests and go to the same dungeons

5: It being slow doesn't make something valuable. A level up where you get no reward is unrewarding whether it's slow or fast (aka any levle where you didn't learn an importaint new rank or a worthwhile talent)

6: Your dellusional. Other people are basically bots, go play a vanilla server if you want to see what I mean

7: All gear did was remind you hwo stupid the world is 'he killed the dude I killed last week!"

8: World pvp is decided by who has the better the gear, the higher level, or who out numbers who. If all those factors are equal than its probably decided by some other stupid factor like whether you just finished fighting a mob and are at 1/3 hp with no cooldowns when you get ambushed. It also had no consiquence other than making you corpse run.

In regard to point 2, it's only fair that warriors should be best in raiding, being that they lack the utility of the other classes. They can't stealth around like rogues, they don't have the versatility of druids, they do not have the immunity and survivability and AOE tanking abilities of paladins, etc., etc. A warrior needs something to compensate for the fact (for example) that he can't enjoy sneaking about an enemy city.

In regard to 8) that is not the case if you build social connections. If you as a warrior have worse gear than some warrior on the other team, you will easily beat him if you have a priest friend going around with you. Or again, think about the devastation two or three rogues or druids can do, owing to their stealth capabilities, and various other combinations of people.

> it's only fair that warriors should be best in raiding, being that they lack the utility of the other classes

>They can't stealth around like rogues,
You've just outed you have never fucking played vanilla. Stealth isn't useful in raiding at all dude.

And as for 'utility' unless you are a paladin or shaman your 'utility' is fucking trivial (who are basically glorified buff-bots). Everyone other 'utility' is either too garbage too care about (45 attack damage buff...thanks hunters! That's like 1/10th of the warriors battle shout!) or you only need one in the 40 man raid.

>Or again, think about the devastation two or three rogues or druids can do, owing to their stealth capabilities, and various other combinations of people.

>questing togeather
I'm doing that now on a vanilla server and let tell you. It's a fucking pain in the ass and blizzard seems to have designed the whole game to discourage it. What do you do when one dude gets a few levels higher than other? Is he expected to quest with his friend and fight mobs that give him no experience?

Oh and that fucking 'traveling empty space' you love so much. How do you think that affects partying? If you want to quest with someone else it involves spending 30 fucking minutes traveling to their zone to help him with a quest that can't be shared and has 3 other per-quesite quests he's already done but you haven't. How about when your warrior friend says "Sorry I need to take spend 30 minutes doing blacksmithing first than take 2 boat trips and a griffon ride to get more training. Can you wait till than?"

Oh and are you planning to quest with 3 people? Do you realize how fucking long it would take to complete the 'collect x items' quests? Not only do you need to collect 10 ape asses that have a 5% drop chance but so do all your other party members.

Yeah questing togather is nice but Vanilla sure makes it a fucking pain.

It's obvious:
>Most people's first MMO

There, now you don't have to read OP's blogpost

Fuck off. Everyone interested already know this and everyone else is not interested.

>1) They kept distinctive styles after classic, it's only TBC that was a stylistic debacle
This is not true. All of the items in the game became a "how insane can we make this look" contest. Also the class items stopped looking distinctly like their class. What i mean by that is they would only use different 'design language' for each class but not really themed towards what that class actually was. If you look at the old tier 1, 2, 3 items you can clearly see how each class is deeply portrayed by the look.
>2) Class mechanics were made much more unique post-cataclysm, are you kidding me? The difference between a WotlK server and Cataclysm server is nuts but every class is more functional, has lower downtime and I'd say is more fun to play than in vanilla
Vanilla was more fun to play by a large margin because you got to use items from everywhere in the game. An example is the engineering items. Nothing even half that interesting was made into the game later on. There is a reason why noggen fogger elixirs are one of the most popular things in the game.
>3) The game world just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I dont think you've got a point here.
The game world is smaller first of all just because the newer zones are more compactly designed and also because of flying mounts which shrunk the world drastically.

RELEASE THE SERVER OPEN THE GATE THE WAIT IS KILLING ME

1) Everyone either sat in Ironforge or Orgrimmar, looking for groups. It wasn't difficult to get around, because you could just get a mage portal to anywhere you needed to go.

2)Horde having Bloodlost and Alliance not meant that Horde progressed faster, every time. Prot paladins were absolutely useless because they didn't have threat gen. Hitting their bubble just put them at the bottom of the threat list.

3) The world was tiny as fuck. You lived in IF/Org, you stayed there until Thing happened, then you FP'd to the closest spot and ran. It took five minutes.

4)People just had Alliance and Horde on different servers.

5) This is your only point.

6)Patently untrue. You just found a guild willing to deal with your shit and stayed in that guild forever. Exactly the same as you do today.

7) No one was awestruck by anything. No one looked at anyone else.

8) The only fear/unease happened when someone higher level/better geared/capable of one shotting you was camping your corpse for an hour, forcing you to Spirit Rez and hearth.

>WoW classic
>better
Literally nostalgia

Horde didn't have bloodlust. That's a TBC ability.

Reminder WoW killed mmos due to autist latching onto this trash game

9) I suck cocks daily

just going to wrap up this thread

>YOU THINK YOU DO BUT YOU DONT
>YES I DO
>NO YOU DONT
>YES I DO

i hope no one read these walls of text

Better than what? It was still far shittier than the MMOs before it.

>Could still solo the entire way to 60
>Only took 8-9 days played time max
>Very rarely had any reason to communicate with other players unless you're doing a dungeon or raid.
>Over half of the professions had no payoff beyond pre-raid gear
>Completely axed support classes as they were too difficult to design for
>No EXP penalty upon dying. No risk of losing equipment upon dying.
>Players can report other players for corpse camping them too long

I agree it was far better than the absolute shithole it became when BC hit and introduced all of its extreme casualizations.

>Horde having Bloodlost and Alliance not meant that Horde progressed faster, every time
bloodlust didnt even exist before tbc you mong

lmao at you wrathbabbies pretending to have played vanilla

>Horde having Bloodlost and Alliance not meant that Horde progressed faster

Confirmed didn't actually play Vanilla, but whatever dude, keep trying :^)

is it worth playing warrior on a private server?