For me it wasn’t about the leveling or end game content. It was the engagement - you had to interact with other players, negatively or positively, to truly progress. Then they added dungeon finder and for all I know the other four players could be bots for all the engagement you get.
@Escew@Goronmon too true. My brother was one of the first on our pvp server to do most of the hunter 'epic' quest in classic (rng screwed him out of the onyxia synew tho, so he lost the race). Everyone knew his name, and other hunters from both factions sought him out on how to beat the demons.
You had a reputation and if you were an ass, you stopped getting groups and guilds. If you were good that mattered too. Community and identity died for convenience.
I didn’t play Vanilla but my friend talked me into Classic at launch. I played for a year or two before quitting and playing retail (which I’ve since stopped playing as well).
I loved my time in Classic but in retrospect, my fondness was just for my guild. I hated the “leveling journey” they’re praising here. Both games are a rush to max level…Classic is just slower.
With limited time, I really don’t want to spend half my night looking for a group and then traveling to the dungeon. I don’t want to wait 20 minutes for the quest mob I couldn’t tag to respawn.
Personally I just don’t want a level grind in an MMO. I love them in single player games (or even some multiplayer like bg3) but not in an MMO where levels are a barrier to entry for a lot of game activities. I think I would have loved Classic as a jobless teenager but now…it’s just not for me.
I’m happy for anyone who finds joy in Classic, though.
loved my time in Classic but in retrospect, my fondness was just for my guild.
The social aspect and the game being slower are intrinsically tied together. Having to run to the dungeon and then wait 15 min til a straggler shows up lets you know the people you are playing with in ways that modern MMOs and their gogogo playstyle just don’t allow.
Classic was full of systems that intentionally put the social aspect of the game front and center.
But I got that on my retail guild, too, we just weren’t waiting for the zeppelin while we did it. By far the biggest social loss of the modernization is that so much of it is cross-server now - you’ll probably never see the people in your group again after the dungeon. I do miss knowing nearly everyone on the server. The time our whole faction rallied to stop this one guild from getting scarab lord after they griefed another guild by mass reporting them is one of my favorite gaming moments of any game.
But really, it’s the LACK of systems that put the social aspect front and center. There was very little to do outside of pvp and leveling alts - two things I didn’t enjoy. Non-raid nights were usually extremely boring, Classic became a chat room I’d keep on my second monitor. As fun as guild chat might have been, the lockdown is long over and I don’t find that to be a great use of time.
As a kid I’d sit my favorite tfc server just to chat so I get the appeal but with so many options out there, I guess nowadays when I log on I want to play more than socialize
I would expect to see this kind of article in 2019 prior to the launch of WoW Classic, not now in October 2023. Classic has had the same mindset that’s pervasive in retail from the very beginning. Everyone rushed straight to 60 and promptly began raidlogging to preserve their precious world buffs. Parsing and speed running in raids was all anyone cared about.
You are right but classic WoW hardcore has really fixed most of those issues because if you rush things you will probably die. Anyway I really agree with this headline because I logged into retail WoW during a thunderstorm because if you DC while you are playing it's basically an automatic game over, anyway I was bored as hell immediately. Retail is all about doing raids and dungeons, which is fun if you like that but I actually enjoy simply leveling in classic hardcore way more, and the best part is I don't have to be logged in for hours at a time leveling unlike in raids.
While four hours would be fast for a new player, 1-10 is very doable in one sitting for those familiar with the game. Early levels are fast; the bulk of those 30 days are later levels. The 50’s in particular are a slog.
It’s not linear. Levels 55-60 took me a week in Vanilla. 45-55 was almost 2 weeks, too; since the quests and dungeons at that level range are sparse. 20-40 was about a week. 1-20 was about a week and a half.
You have to keep repeating yourself because you are wrong. I played Vanilla in 2006 (about a year after it came out) and also played Classic when it came out. Vanilla might have taken me a week to get to 12, I can’t remember anymore; but it was my first MMO and first RPG, my first time playing a social game and didn’t know how to group to quest or even respond to people whispering me, and didn’t have any friends giving me advice on how to play or know what internet resources to use to speed things up. I didn’t even know I could speed things up.
With Classic I was probably to level 10 in a night after work. I haven’t leveled a fresh character in Retail since Cataclysm, so I have no idea how fast it is these days.
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