Title of the post is just to continue things for folks who apparently only read titles and go directly to comment.
There was a lot of nostalgia when my old raiding character, an orc warrior in full T2 wielding the original Quel-Serrar, first loaded in near the bank in Ogrimmar. That nostalgia was pushed further when, about 5 minutes in, I had a few people whisper me about my gear. Some things never change.
Looking over his bank content was like viewing a trophy room of past accomplishments. Items from MC, BWL, AQ40, Nax40, PvP tiers, and others. In his bags I still had the server-first Spinal Reaper that I crafted, though sadly it no longer has the text of who crafted it (thanks Blizzard). I got a chuckle out of all the flasks in his inventory, and the two full bank bags of gems and other crafting materials. Even little Diablo, the original collector box pet, came out to say hello.
Nostalgia aside however, WoW does nothing for me at this point. The game looks beyond dated now, with the graphics long since having move from ‘stylized’ to just plain ugly. In 2014 EVE looks like a 2014 game. In 2014 WoW looks like a 2004 game. Then there was everyone else around me; the dozen or so ridiculous mounts that would make the most asian of MMOs blush, the drab yet at the same time silly looking gear, the stupid-even-by-WoW-standards pets. While even in vanilla WoW had some ‘immersion breaking’ stuff, today it’s just full-on clowncar nonsense.
The UI is also something that looks like it has a few (dozen) too many mods going for it. Just stuff all over the place, which I’m sure once you get use to makes sense, but is EVE-level of shocking when first glanced at. I’m almost tempted to get my wife to give returning a shot, only to see how she would react to the UI, especially as we are playing FFXIV (which, now more so than ever, I fully believe is just a better version of what made WoW great in 2004, brought up to 2014 standards)
And so SynCaine the orc warrior went back into retirement in the same spot he did so many years ago. The world around him has changed, but he won’t be tarnished by it.
Hardcore Casual 
Sometimes the title is the best part.
No lonely orc screen shots?
I thought about it, but I don’t really do screenshots here. That said I think later tonight I’ll log back in and grab it to add to this post. He deserves at least that much.
Now the question is, should it be him standing in the character select window, or in front of the Ogri bank?
Ogri bank for sure.
But then I’d have to ask all the weirdos on their pink spaceships with their mecha-chickens or whatever to get out of the shot…
Go in this weekend for the shot by the bank. Everybody will be in Draenor complaining about the fact that their pink spaceships and mecha-chickens are grounded for now.
It didn’t get a lot of fanfare but in the new ‘clowncar’ WoW, I really like the addition of challenge mode dungeons. In case you’re not familiar, they normalize everyone’s gear down to a certain level. Then you have to beat the dungeons in certain times to unlock different rewards. None of it is gear upgrades, it’s cosmetic prestige rewards.
I love 40 man raids in MMORPGs I’m immersed in, but in a theme park like WoW 2014, the 5 man content is as deep as I really want to go. They’re not going to make normal dungeons difficult again (they tried in Cataclysm and there was a massive backlash). This was a nice way to make 5 mans fun again, and be rewarding without ruffling feathers. As much shit as I give Blizzard for the vast sea of changes that have ruined the game beginning in Jan 2007, I’ve gotta give credit where it’s due and give them an A+ on this one.
Just wondering – what did you expect when you decided to activate your account?
It was reactivated for me by Blizzard, so I didn’t have expectations. I knew before even loading it up I wasn’t going to play, but just looking around for a few minutes further reinforced that.
Wonder how many people will have the same reaction as you do even though they bought the new exp?
I bought Pandas and quit within 3 hours of playing it. Same old crap and nothing new or better. Sure people might feel a little tug from the past but that is likely going to fade real quick. The community also deteriorated beyond salvation.
I’m sure it will sell good, but doesn’t mean the game itself is any good.
A bunch of my friends are going back to WoW for the new expansion. I still have zero interest, though not on purpose. It just isn’t there. If it were, I’d probably play again. I haven’t played in 3 or so years (after 7 years off and on since release), and I think I may have finally lost all interest for good.
I think the final straw was the new talent system. It’s so boring and bland and uninspiring. The old talent trees, especially the REALLY old ones, were, sure, stocked with some total crap talents and at end-game you were basically forced into certain specs, but they were also really interesting and really fun. I loved the incremental upgrades. I loved being able to mix and match points of talents from the same tree or different trees. I loved the theorycrafting. It made me feel like there were possibilities to carve out a unique niche for my character.
Now? Choose from three all-or-nothing options once every 15 levels. Yaaaaaaaaaawn.
I’d add that while it sounds like I’m complaining, I consider WoW to probably be my favorite game of all time. It just feels like sometime in the last 5 or 6 years WoW’s development got taken over by this mindset to cater to a specific group of players that I am evidently not a member of. That was disappointing.
It’s a pity you’ve quit Syn – I was looking forward to some classic blog posts and comments! Personally, I’ve tried Cataclysm and Pandas, but I’ve had enough. Firstly the questing – I liked the stories being told in Cataclysm, but it was completely on rails. Pandaria felt less on rails, but the stories bored me. Secondly, the grind for dailies got too much for me. I actually liked most of them the first couple of times, but not for weeks on end.
However, the main reason I’ve quit Cata and Pandaria (and Wrath before), is the cross server dungeon finder. It’s just not compatible with the way I play and enjoy these games. People often complain about obnoxious idiots spoiling a random dungeon run, and it’s certainly true. But that’s not my main gripe – I can deal with these characters and honestly, it does not happen that often (10% of the time maybe?). The reason I hate the cross-server dungeon finder is the other end of the spectrum – the nice guys, the ones I’d like to play with again, future guild mates. Previously the main source for my friends list came from dungeon runs. After a while you started knowing the people on your server, people had reputations for being great tanks or dps or whatever. In other words, a sense of community was created. Cross server dungeons spoiled that completely. The exact same thing happened in Rift – at first the dungeon finder was same server only, and we build an entire guild from those runs. That dried up the moment cross-server dungeons were introduced.
Having said all that, I realize I’m in the minority here. If enough people felt as I do the dungeon finder would not have been so popular, and chat would still be full of players looking for groups. Some have commented how bad it was in the old days: how long they had to wait, how often they were rejected and what a pain it was to actually get everybody to the dungeon. All true – I guess cross-server dungeons created a better gaming experience for many, but for me it ruined a shared online experience. Games I grow tired off, but making friends not.
100% agree on the whole dungeon finder thing, I’ve posted about that before, but basically without social hooks keeping people playing, you’re MMO doesn’t retain people as well. Funny how the biggest MMO started losing subs right around the time they removed so many of the social hook mechanics huh?
Worked out really well for Rift too.
Its the classic “listen to what the players say they want and do that” rather than “give the players what they actually need” dev mistake.
The dungeon finder is a social a-bomb for any MMO. Another reason I believe the WoW and many MMOs employing those types of mechanism have little real appeal to people experienced with old school MMO communities.
It’s been said by others, but modern MMOs are not designed for the original players of UO, EQ, and Vanilla.
Some intelligence when adding the dungeon finder could have helped immensely. Something like automatically remembering everyone you’re random grouped with and letting you rate them up or down and all future random groups favoring putting you with people that you rated up. That’s just off the top of my head. But they certainly could have made LFG less destructive of social ties.
I wish they hadn’t given everyone massive AE and removed all skill from pulling and tanking. AE zerg fights in dungeons just suck. Back in vanilla (or was it TBC?), paladins were the only AE tanks and had a huge leg up in some content. Everyone was jealous and complained. They stupidly gave EVERYONE AE stuff instead of sensibly removing it from paladins and making sure to retain some purpose to CC and pulling. Dumb Blizzard.
Polynices suggestions seem to be so reasonable, and so obvious, it’s tempting to believe there’s some technical reason why they don’t happen. I suspect though that the real reason is in HillJack’s final line. Most big MMO companies simply aren’t interested in attracting or retaining the people who would appreciate it.
They make the MMOs the way they do because they want people who would never have played UO/EQ to give them money. None of which explains Vanilla WoW of course but if anyone knew how that happened we’d have had more of them, Which we haven’t and probably never will.
So they stick to what they know, which is giving people what they say they want and then changing it to what they say they want next when they complain they didn’t like the last thing they were given.
Pulling stuff like kiting, single target tanking, and pulling really killed the easy to learn, difficult to master hook that a lot of blizzard games have.
Being cross-server is not the main problem with the dungeon finder IMO.
Dungeons being faceroll-easy is.
People don’t look for groups in chat because that’s way more difficult than insta-dungeon button and there’s no advantage to looking for players – you’ll complete it with 4 randoms anyway.
There’s no more room for being a great tank or great dps because there’s no challenge to separate “great” from “able to mash the keyboard”. The only difference is that the “great” group will faceroll the dungeon in 12 minutes instead of 18.
Lastly, there’s no need for planning and no time for talking in dungeons – just run into the next pack.
Of course, the dungeon finder couldn’t have been made any other way: when at the beginning of Cata heroics were actually decent difficulty, the torrent of tears got them nerfed within a month. Also Halls of Reflection and how half the group dropped when zoning into that instance every time?
I played at the beginning of Cata when the dungeons were a challenge, and the dungeon finder was still the only way to find groups. I actually tried to get groups together through chat, with almost zero success. So while I agree with you that nerving the dungeons is an issue, I think it’s a separate issue. The cross-server dungeon finder will destroy the communal hooks whether dungeons are easy or difficult, because people will still use it (as Cata showed), and then complain about how the community is not the same as in the old days!
I stoped playing somewhere in the midle of Cataclysm, returned for free week last month, looked at clowns around Stormwind, try some quests for pandaria, dropped the game, download some vanilla wow freeshard and leveling warlock since then. :)
I wish blizzard make some nostalgia vanilla server, fat chance i know :(