Vanilla WoW from the perspective of a Wrath baby.
12 posts
• Page 2 of 2 • 1, 2
Re: Vanilla WoW from the perspective of a Wrath baby.
^ just an added detail the reason this was designed to have players play LESS and everything take longer is cuz of the subscription revenue
- bertson
- Tester
Re: Vanilla WoW from the perspective of a Wrath baby.
While I don't entirely agree with everything in Drain's post above, he does have quite a bit right.
You have to understand something about what it is you've gotten yourself into here. Vanilla WoW was made back in the days before welfare gaming was a thing, and players were actually expected to contribute money to the company for all it's hard work creating and maintaining a game and the servers to play it, largely in the form of a monthly subscription. Now while many look down at a subscription now days, honestly if you can't afford 15 bucks a month for a monthly subscription, or about the price of a movie at a theater, then you have some serious issues and need to go get a job. Quite frankly 15 bucks a month for literally unlimited entertainment 24/7 for 30 days is a bargain. Anywho, the point of all that was that the economic model for the gaming industry back then was the subscription, and the game was designed to make it where you a.) wanted to, and b.) had to play the game many hours to accomplish goals in said game, purposely to keep you paying that fifteen bucks a month. This is a major difference in today's welfare games that entice you in with the 'f2p' feature, but are designed to make you pay tons of cash up front for basic amenities like bank slots or character slots, bag space, etc before you burn through the game's content and / or grow bored with it in 2 months and move on to the next sucker attraction on the market. The end result, you have Vanilla WoW,
Quests
Quests can be fun. Especially group quests (they're the one's with the elite mobs you have to fight your way through to complete. Stromguard is a good example. I know, it's a novelty now days, but no you can't solo everything in this game.) However, questing doesn't provide a good exp to time investment. Outside of your starter zones (and even some of those <glares at Teldrassil>) quests often are a time sink. Mostly you do them for lore or just simply because you like certain quests. A few, such as go kill x number of xyz, or bring back so many of x drop from y mob are good to do as an easy exp boost to your grinding. Mostly though, they're going to send you off to god unforsaken places of Azeroth that are no where near where you are questing at because it get's you out exploring the world, and quite frankly, it's a time sink. Remember that 15 dollars a month sub I was talking about before? Besides, Blizzard was proud of their new world and wanted to show it off. But if it's your first time through the game and you want to do all the quests, that's fine, and entirely doable and enjoyable. However, understand one thing, the quest AREN'T designed to be the sole source of your exp. You're going to find yourself grinding mobs to make up the difference, and this was done on purpose. It's those long hours spent grinding mob after mob where you really learn how to play your class with a fine edge. It still boggles me how someone can make it all the way to 60 and still not figured out a decent rotation or which abilities have a better dps than others. It's also the best way to earn cash. Yeah all that grey vendor stuff you leave on the mob all the time that you think is garbage. Vendors pay good money for that garbage. Especially when you get to the higher levels. Yeah they may only pay a silver for that claw, but that claw also stacks up to 10. That's 10 silver. Collect 10 stacks of those and that's a gold. This increases exponentially the higher level you are. Level 50 mobs will drop items that in stacks will sell for quite literally gold.
End Game Raiding
This is where it's at. Contrary to popular belief, and subsequent expansions, this, not pvp, is what the game was designed around. You'll find out real quick that dungeons here are not the typical tank and spank fare you're accustomed to and they sure as hell are not your standard aoe fest that Wrath and beyond devolved into being. Here there be dragons. And mobs that stun. And heal. and drop aggro. And if you get through all that, just before they die they'll run away to those other batch of mobs over there and ask for assistance. (Pretty sad when the mobs have better teamwork than the players.) Dungeon pulls are going to require specific tactics, specially selected targets for CC and OMG...teamwork. And just to get the point across, most wipes are caused because of one of two things. Bad pulls, or stupid dps. If your tank's idea of pulling is to charge the nearest group of mobs and wail on them right then and there, leave. Trust me, just leave. I PROMISE you it wont be worth the repair bill you're going to suffer just to watch the group break up, possibly 2 hours later after everyone's gear is red. And then we have dps. Because apparently hitting the mob the tank is beating on, quite possible the one with a large white skull over it's head, is entirely too complicated a notion for the most slack-jawed, inbred, autistic, drooling mother fuckers to ever wield a bow or cast a nuke in the game.
All that said, end game raiding is a bit different. It's not easy perse, but you have to keep something in mind, you can only make a 40 man raid so dificult. The biggest difficulty in 40 man raiding is not actually killing the mobs. Probably not even the boss. It's getting 40 people to show up at the same place, at the same time, and all heading in the same direction. It's getting 30 healers and dps to line up against the wall in one spot so they don't get hit by the aoe. It's getting 40 people to do whatever shimmy and shuffle that particular boss is making you do to kill him. And since getting 40 people to ANYTHING in unison is damn near impossible, you can understand why the 40 man raid content here will not be anything like the 10 man (/cough) raid (/cough) content (/snicker) you're used to later expansions. When you're only dealing with 10 people you can complicate the dosey doe you require of them to do for a boss fight. But Vanilla raiding really was more about getting 40 people together in one big group and throwing them at an epic dragon. For this reason bosses weren't tuned as close to the group's limit as they were in subsequent, but smaller groups. It won't be uncommon for boss downings to occur where half the raid is dead. On the flip side, this meant dungeons had to have an epic scale to them that hasn't been seen since. It takes a LOT of room for 40 people to spread out in. And THIS is what people loved about vanilla raiding. It actually looks and FEELS like you're going after a dragon. Would you bring 5 people to a dragon fight? The first time you have 40 of your guildies riding through noobland on your way to a raid you'll understand. The level of excitement it generates both in the group and in those that gawk as you all ride through will practically sizzle in the air. That said, it was still hard, and it was a rare thing to see someone strolling through a major city in tier gear. Time will see how much that still applies.
You have to understand something about what it is you've gotten yourself into here. Vanilla WoW was made back in the days before welfare gaming was a thing, and players were actually expected to contribute money to the company for all it's hard work creating and maintaining a game and the servers to play it, largely in the form of a monthly subscription. Now while many look down at a subscription now days, honestly if you can't afford 15 bucks a month for a monthly subscription, or about the price of a movie at a theater, then you have some serious issues and need to go get a job. Quite frankly 15 bucks a month for literally unlimited entertainment 24/7 for 30 days is a bargain. Anywho, the point of all that was that the economic model for the gaming industry back then was the subscription, and the game was designed to make it where you a.) wanted to, and b.) had to play the game many hours to accomplish goals in said game, purposely to keep you paying that fifteen bucks a month. This is a major difference in today's welfare games that entice you in with the 'f2p' feature, but are designed to make you pay tons of cash up front for basic amenities like bank slots or character slots, bag space, etc before you burn through the game's content and / or grow bored with it in 2 months and move on to the next sucker attraction on the market. The end result, you have Vanilla WoW,
Quests
Quests can be fun. Especially group quests (they're the one's with the elite mobs you have to fight your way through to complete. Stromguard is a good example. I know, it's a novelty now days, but no you can't solo everything in this game.) However, questing doesn't provide a good exp to time investment. Outside of your starter zones (and even some of those <glares at Teldrassil>) quests often are a time sink. Mostly you do them for lore or just simply because you like certain quests. A few, such as go kill x number of xyz, or bring back so many of x drop from y mob are good to do as an easy exp boost to your grinding. Mostly though, they're going to send you off to god unforsaken places of Azeroth that are no where near where you are questing at because it get's you out exploring the world, and quite frankly, it's a time sink. Remember that 15 dollars a month sub I was talking about before? Besides, Blizzard was proud of their new world and wanted to show it off. But if it's your first time through the game and you want to do all the quests, that's fine, and entirely doable and enjoyable. However, understand one thing, the quest AREN'T designed to be the sole source of your exp. You're going to find yourself grinding mobs to make up the difference, and this was done on purpose. It's those long hours spent grinding mob after mob where you really learn how to play your class with a fine edge. It still boggles me how someone can make it all the way to 60 and still not figured out a decent rotation or which abilities have a better dps than others. It's also the best way to earn cash. Yeah all that grey vendor stuff you leave on the mob all the time that you think is garbage. Vendors pay good money for that garbage. Especially when you get to the higher levels. Yeah they may only pay a silver for that claw, but that claw also stacks up to 10. That's 10 silver. Collect 10 stacks of those and that's a gold. This increases exponentially the higher level you are. Level 50 mobs will drop items that in stacks will sell for quite literally gold.
End Game Raiding
This is where it's at. Contrary to popular belief, and subsequent expansions, this, not pvp, is what the game was designed around. You'll find out real quick that dungeons here are not the typical tank and spank fare you're accustomed to and they sure as hell are not your standard aoe fest that Wrath and beyond devolved into being. Here there be dragons. And mobs that stun. And heal. and drop aggro. And if you get through all that, just before they die they'll run away to those other batch of mobs over there and ask for assistance. (Pretty sad when the mobs have better teamwork than the players.) Dungeon pulls are going to require specific tactics, specially selected targets for CC and OMG...teamwork. And just to get the point across, most wipes are caused because of one of two things. Bad pulls, or stupid dps. If your tank's idea of pulling is to charge the nearest group of mobs and wail on them right then and there, leave. Trust me, just leave. I PROMISE you it wont be worth the repair bill you're going to suffer just to watch the group break up, possibly 2 hours later after everyone's gear is red. And then we have dps. Because apparently hitting the mob the tank is beating on, quite possible the one with a large white skull over it's head, is entirely too complicated a notion for the most slack-jawed, inbred, autistic, drooling mother fuckers to ever wield a bow or cast a nuke in the game.
All that said, end game raiding is a bit different. It's not easy perse, but you have to keep something in mind, you can only make a 40 man raid so dificult. The biggest difficulty in 40 man raiding is not actually killing the mobs. Probably not even the boss. It's getting 40 people to show up at the same place, at the same time, and all heading in the same direction. It's getting 30 healers and dps to line up against the wall in one spot so they don't get hit by the aoe. It's getting 40 people to do whatever shimmy and shuffle that particular boss is making you do to kill him. And since getting 40 people to ANYTHING in unison is damn near impossible, you can understand why the 40 man raid content here will not be anything like the 10 man (/cough) raid (/cough) content (/snicker) you're used to later expansions. When you're only dealing with 10 people you can complicate the dosey doe you require of them to do for a boss fight. But Vanilla raiding really was more about getting 40 people together in one big group and throwing them at an epic dragon. For this reason bosses weren't tuned as close to the group's limit as they were in subsequent, but smaller groups. It won't be uncommon for boss downings to occur where half the raid is dead. On the flip side, this meant dungeons had to have an epic scale to them that hasn't been seen since. It takes a LOT of room for 40 people to spread out in. And THIS is what people loved about vanilla raiding. It actually looks and FEELS like you're going after a dragon. Would you bring 5 people to a dragon fight? The first time you have 40 of your guildies riding through noobland on your way to a raid you'll understand. The level of excitement it generates both in the group and in those that gawk as you all ride through will practically sizzle in the air. That said, it was still hard, and it was a rare thing to see someone strolling through a major city in tier gear. Time will see how much that still applies.
- Fay Ray
- Private
12 posts
• Page 2 of 2 • 1, 2