As many gamers anticipate the return of vanilla World of Warcraft, many have forgotten what made it such a good game. It wasn’t the graphics, it wasn’t dungeon raids, or boss kills, but rather the community that each realm became. There was a real atmosphere to each realm you played on from top guilds to PVP battles. To raid a dungeon actually required communication skills and a little bit of work to build a good party. Raiding horde / alliance cities were actually something of value as it was how you could talk smack to the enemies after a world PVP encounter or world boss wipe.
The entire atmosphere of the realm was dictated by the people themselves, a story created inside the realm of World of Warcraft. Where players were held accountable for ninja looting, being toxic, or having terrible communication skills. In most modern games this goes unchecked or they implement some retarded automated ban system that causes total chaos on unsuspecting players.
Vanilla WoW hit the nail on the head with this concept because the toxic players were removed from guilds, parties, and replaced. When the player realized he no longer could hop in any party and raid because he had the label of a ninja looter or dick head there was a reason to hold back your toxic’ness and try and work things out instead. Vanilla WoW not only required you to treat others with respect, but also removed the toxic players or at least limit them to how toxic they would be.
This in essence is what made World of Warcraft so popular. The ability to enjoy an awesome game with real people. People you got to know in the dungeons because you had to work together to actually complete the dungeon. Everyone had to communicate and help each other out to complete a dungeon.
I remember once getting angry about some stupid player doing stupid things and I realized that by doing a short explanation of each boss before charging in actually decreased the amount of deaths in a dungeon. Helping out your fellow horde or alliance actually had real benefit to your pals and you. Then you’d see these same names in barrens chat, world PVP, the battlegrounds, there was real time friendship created on horde vs alliance.
This doesn’t take into account the world PVP and helping those around you. So many stories of fighting for a quest and getting ganked, only to have a friendly run out of the bushes and jump into the fight. You thought you were toast but a friendly priest tosses you a bubble and a heal from the bushes. It’s good game as the rogue sits in your frozen trap as you unload a barrage of arrows from 20 meters.
Without a doubt any type of dungeon or raid finder in vanilla WoW would completely destroy it. The reason I no longer play World of Warcraft is because of what the game became, not that I don’t like video games or have any extra time. The reality is the new WoW sucks ass. The achievement system is a joke, the PVP system is a joke, the world PVP system is a joke, the raiding is a joke, the looking for raid or group system totally breaks the entire essence of what made World of Warcraft such a fun MMO game.
The idea you can hop on for an hour and get geared up is a total joke. I remember when the Panda expansion came out and it literally took me less than a day to level up a healing priest to max level. By my self. There was no reason to group or party as they had made the game so easy that a healing priest could solo level. What a joke! Fortunetly they did give me a refund after complaining, because who wants to spend that kind of money for a dumbed down RPG that a blind 75 year old man could beat in his sleep.
The idea that vanilla took time, energy, and actual thought process to complete was what made it so fun. The idea that you had to have friends and help to complete some missions and raids and they were all part of your realm family. There was a close community of players that really got to know each other from Barrens chat to their main city.
The new WoW’s have so many bells and whistles that literally just destroy the entire concept of the game. To be immersed into the World of Warcraft was one of the most exciting things as a gamer, yet the new WoW’s totally destroyed that. The new WoW’s have catered to little kids and streamers failing to realize that most of the WoW players are neither!
How many video gamers even use twitch? I certainly don’t. Only on rare occasions will I hop on and see what’s going on. I don’t want to watch people play video games, I want to play them. They aren’t movies, and creating a game to appeal to a non video game playing audience is just stupid. To create or alter a game just because of streamers totally negates the entire concept.
Especially considering the player base has been in the millions, even the top streamer with 20-30k viewers is only .00000001% of the gamer base, and those tend to be little kids anyway. Twitch is really just a glorified babysitter. Regardless of what the narcissistic streamers say, they should have no influence on game creation or ideas for games. They literally ruin it. They’re after money and more views for twitch, so they want games that look super special for their stream.
For example, someone like Sodapoppin who clearly never even played Vanilla, thinks he understands Vanilla by hopping in a 12 year old private server. He thinks he has some profound knowledge of Vanilla when he didn’t even play it. He makes all kinds of claims about what the game was, that totally contradict the truth of what Vanilla WoW was. He states over and over again that the game should be catered to streamers and thus removing many of the concepts that made WoW great to begin with.
Streamers have seriously ruined gaming in many ways, all the while they beg for money and baby sit little kids. Gaming companies, please stop asking them for advice about your game. Why would you change your game to appease someone that uses it to solicit donations and entertain a bunch of little kids that don’t even play the game themselves.. they watch it! Pretty dumb on the developers part.
My next complaint is about players stating they want “no changes”. They want bugs to remain, they want all the stupid shit to remain, but why? To “re live” that nostalgia? Yeah it’s not really fun to have your Blackwing Layer raid bug out leaving you on the first boss for an entire week with no way to advance. Why would anyone in their right mind want to keep bugs in the game? That’s just dumb.
Many players are limiting the classic WoW developers when in reality they could make vanilla WoW into what WoW was supposed to be. By using vanilla WoW as the true foundation and building a game around that. To have everything vanilla, with ZG, BWL, and Nax, but followed by new content and new dungeons. Building on top of vanilla while maintaining the essence of the community realm.
Gear itself in modern WoW has become a numbers joke. By removing all these tiers and random junk mythic heroic, blah blah blah, keep it simple. Gear doesn’t have to be 10x better to make it worth it but rather add variety in gear. New weapons with new stats but perhaps just barely better than the last, or even the same.
I know many times I have gone for a cape or piece of gear that was exactly the same as what I had, it just looked cooler or provided a unique addition like a one time bubble for 20 damage, or something else small. It made me as a character feel unique and it was always fun to pop off something they weren’t expecting. Even if it was small it was still fun and unique. Rather than all these transmogs and crappy upgrades to confuse everyone giving them a reward for walking around in a dungeon rather than having to communicate, try, and actually win.
Balancing vanilla WoW is as simple as adding gear for everyone. New dungeons and raids would create the vanilla atmosphere while bringing in new content. To create a video game people truly enjoy based off something we know we enjoy. Modern WoW destroyed itself by catering to streamers and easy reward systems.
As far as leveling goes in vanilla it shouldn’t be changed at all. The most fun I had in a lot of my vanilla game play was leveling itself. The stories of helping and being helped by random players and fighting to the death with the alliance was always fun. Then to fight those same players in the battleground where I could woop on them some more. The community aspect of each realm really made it what it was. The leveling was fun. The PVP was fun. The world PVP was fun. The PVE was fun. Even the professions were fun, simple yet demanding, and rewarding.
Arena for PVP is a bit of a joke, I always laughed when people said it was competitive or skill based when they’d stack the same classes over and over. They’d create silly little tricks on the gay little fighting arenas and pretend it took skills and hard work to grind arena points all week. The reality is this is not World of Warcraft. It’s not PVP how it should be done in World of Warcraft. The idea of a 2v2 or 3v3 team going at it is just cheezy. Go to the open world for that. What would be cool is a solo PVP system and a pre-made / guild pvp system.
Queuing up with 3 or less for solo and pre-made with full groups. This would eliminate the farming of players in the PVP system making it more competitive for both sides. As a pre-made group it’s not really that fun to smash a bunch of un-geared noobs. Some may find enjoyment in that, but I don’t. I want to fight others with similar gear so I know it’s my sneaky tricks that led me to victory rather than just some zombie grinded gear. The orignal AV, WSG, or AB were so much fun and people actually fought for hours.
They didn’t run passed each other in hopes of racing to victory. Seriously, you know your game is broken when PVP is a race from one side of the map to the other. What a joke. WoW is made for intense battles of all classes doing what they do. Not some 3 on 3 gay circle jerk in a confined arena where everyone does the same moves with the same builds just to get some arena points and free gear. Skill based? Hahaha yeah right. You could probably build a macro and win most games as a bot. Same thing over and over again.
The PVE system in vanilla WoW was also a lot of fun. The way the dungeons were setup and the requirement of having to work together, prepare, and grind out potions or gold for your fellow guild mates. Players were known for having water and food ready, soul shards, all this stuff. It made each player feel important and needed in a raid. Every class was sought after because variety was always better in vanilla. Even the boomkin was good in raids with his spell buffs. (Only one though ;) )
To get into good raids you actually had to be a decent person or damn good at your class. To be helpful or willing to fight with your buddies. The reality of growing these friendships as you wipe 30 times over the same error on the same boss for a month strait. It becomes a real challenge, and overcoming that with the same friends you started with is something most video games never achieve.
From my point of view vanilla WoW was one of the best games created, and using it as a foundation to create more content inside this realm would be the dream of many gamers, rather than just reliving the original WoW, why not build a game from that? Why limit yourself to vanilla when we could have a brand new game with something of real value and merit.
That’s where I’d like to see vanilla go, and where I wished modern WoW would have went, rather than this lack luster, boring, repetitive, reward based non-sense it has become. For Blizzard, the best thing they could ever do is relaunch and re-build vanilla World of Warcraft, and my guess would be, it would be more popular than modern WoW in just a few short months.