Patch 5.2 interview with Dave Kosak
Inside an old alt's vault
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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsOld Azeroth through rose-colored glasses
by Mike Schramm 
May 22nd 2009 at 1:00PM
Sometimes denial works for you, and I think that's why I like this forum thread so much. It's full of nostalgia for a simpler time, when PvP meant going to Southshore and murdering some Alliance, when the encounters in Molten Core were the most epic thing in the game, and speaking of epics, when seeing a player outfitted with all purples meant that they'd be raiding for weeks with 39 other people. This thread willingly looks back and sees things not as they were, but as we remember them: super fun, refreshing, and completely empty of the problems and quibbles we have to deal with today.Of course, Azeroth's past wasn't really like that. It was hell organizing 40 people to do one boss, much less a whole night of raiding, and if the organization didn't get you, the server lag and disconnects would. Southshore and Crossroads PvP made for great stories, but in actuality, it was really just a zerg fest, and no one actually won, it was really just everyone throwing away their nights because there was nothing better to do. And epics -- well, it was actually pretty cool when epic gear meant something. But boy was it disappointing when you went whole weeks of raiding without getting any loot at all, without even a Badge of Justice for your efforts. Or when you had to disenchant a tier piece because the Paladin set dropped yet again.
Do we want to go back to those days? Probably not -- while there are definitely some good things about them, there were all kinds of issues that have since been solved (and that many of the nostalgists tend to forget about). But every once in a while, it's nice to look back through rose-colored glasses and remember when.
Filed under: Horde, Alliance, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Instances, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
aaron May 22nd 2009 1:49PM
Ok, what's up with the main frontpage of wow.com hiding my mouse cursor after 2 secs of no movement? This is happening in Firefox and I even created a new firefox profile to test it to rule out addons etc. and it still does it.
Popesicle May 22nd 2009 2:54PM
Same thing is happening to me. And it happens on all webpages I have open in other tabs or even other windows, if this site is open. When I close this site, it stops disappearing on other pages too.
I am on Windows 7 and using the latest Firefox Beta, so I assumed it had something to do with one of those? Maybe not though if your setup is different.
Cyanea May 22nd 2009 1:50PM
Back in the day, QQ was EPIC.
...no wait.
Chris May 22nd 2009 1:54PM
Ah the days of 40 people running thru BRD into Molten Core only to have half get one Raid ID and the other half another. A bug that crippled raiding for months in Vanilla WoW. Now people are threatening to quit because patch day is buggy.
Gant May 22nd 2009 2:15PM
I do miss the day of 40 man raids and how all the buffs stacked up, would love to see old world instance as heroic and 40 mans as 25 like they did nax
Erogroth May 22nd 2009 2:13PM
Out of combat rez FTW!
Hal May 22nd 2009 2:17PM
I was never around for Vanilla WoW, but going through old content and seeing current organization for things makes me glad that I missed what must have been insane grinding.
Here's an example:
Out in EPL, you can turn in monster bits to the Argent Dawn/Scarlet Crusade to get tokens. In fact, you get ONE token for every 30 monster bits you turn in. The drop rate on those bits? Not that good (although they may have been better in old Naxx). Why are you collecting AD/SC tokens? Why, to trade them for gear, of course. If you handed in 27 of each token, you could get a purple item from an AD vendor.
That is a lot of grinding. I realize that's just one little example, but it seems to be representative as far as I can tell. Your mileage may have varied.
AutumnBringer May 22nd 2009 4:19PM
That thing is crazy for grinding. Wanna hear the real crazy part about it? That wasn't even around in vanilla WoW, at least not for a couple years. To get any even somewhat decent gear, you HAD to either raid or do constant runs of Strat, Scholo, UBRS, LBRS etc ... or when the honor system came out, you could try to compete with people who played 18 hours a day (literally) for a PvP title.
For my Priest, decent gear just meant it had more Int and more Spirit than my other gear. That was as good as it got, no + to spell power, haste, crit (not that it would have been a valued stat then).
As far as I remember, Silithus was the first place where you could grind stuff not in an instance and get some gear, and that came along a bit later in vanilla WoW. That place was horribly grindy.
Verit May 22nd 2009 7:50PM
Even better - those tokens you get these days that automatically increase rep? Used to start profession quests where they asked you to make x amount of a really hard recipe. So you grind, to grind to grind etc.
Cenarian Circle gear had the same design concepts.
Same with Nax 40 tier tokens - yay I got my shoulders, except no - I need a bunch of shards, arcanite bars (titansteel bars anyone?), mooncloth and gold. Really quite strange.
KillerKarl May 22nd 2009 3:00PM
As an old time mage I can say that I do not miss having to log 30 minutes before the raid was to start just to get started making water for everyone.
Now having a pally hang back in order to stay out of combat in order to rez people, that was cool.
briker May 22nd 2009 3:13PM
And when being casual meant being completely broke, stuck with a regular speed mount, and having nothing to do but run Dire Maul, Strat, Scholo, LBRS, UBRS (LFM UBRS, need key) 50 times each to get your Tier 0 set pieces. Then the "Upgrade" quest came along, and you spent TONS of gold and time for a measly upgrade that made 3 or 4 of the pieces epic. I had all except the last piece, after I could never find a good enough group to finish the coliseum event in BRD.
Also, Windfury was teh awesome, especially with a TUF - The Unstoppable Force - 2- handed mace with a stun effect, which could be gained through days and days days of grinding Alterac Valley.
Oh and the most equipped relic item? Egan's Blaster. Because Shammies, Pallys, and Druids didn't have relic items, silly. That was the only item in the game that fit into that slot.
And no resilience. Or Arena's. 10 hour Alterac Valley battles. Etc, etc.
Rob Wynne May 22nd 2009 3:32PM
I think the philosopher William Joel put it best, when he said:
"The good old days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems."
Ragehoof May 22nd 2009 4:04PM
Ok, I am sure there would be a host of practical problems with this but one thing it would solve would be to give those who want to go retro an option without being unduly difficult to implement.
Two changes:
1. Allow people to artifically cap their leveling for any given toon at 60 or 70. Also restrict them from going into outland and northrend as appropriate.
2. Create achievements for doing the old content only with level appropriate toons present.
I understand that this will not reproduce the old world as it one was and that is what a lot of people are going for but, as so many have said, "Get over it, those days are gone." What it would give us would be simply a different way of enjoying the game. A different tier of endgame so to speak but without getting rid of all that has been changed. Yes, old time nostalgia-boys will complain that it is just not the same with blood elves and draenai running around. Very true. In a way it would create a "New" old world. Is that so very bad? It would at least create the option of doing the old content in a somewhat challenging format.
Sure they can do #1 by simply buying a new non-upgraded or partially upgraded account. This is, in fact, where the idea comes from. I have seen a forum post, I don't remember where now, advertising for recruits to a lvl60 capped guild. The problem is that not everyone wants multiple accounts it would stink of Blizz just trying to nickle and dime people. (This would generate interest in leveling a capped alt.)
The problems I can see with doing this would be, that given the class changes that have happened in the last 2+ years, all the new talent trees and abilities, the old content may need some tuning to be playable with these "new" characters, especially the vanilla stuff. I suspect it would mostly be easier now rather than harder but that would probably not be the case on every boss. Secondly, or rather more specifically would be how death knights would effect these old instances. DK's had some pretty awsome gear going into outlands it seemed so this could be a problem for simply capping at 60.
Other problems might revolve around a given level cap not having enough people to support playing that that level. I suspect this problem would work itself out on a server by server basis. It would suck to have to pay to transfer to a server with a high pop of capped 60s just to have fun but what can you do. This is also why it would be important to have the achievements available, it would give people a reason to play at these levels. The population would need to be big enough to support a raiding guild or more at that level and would also need to be big enough and active enough to generate an economy for the items that interest people at that level. Fiery Core anyone? If a server were to only have a few hundred at 60 and a few hundred at 70 it would still create interesting changes in population distribution. Imagine Shatt with just a hundred people running as opposed to almost nobody. Giving people a reason and the tools necessary to repopulate the old areas might even has some positive effects. Levelers not feeling like they are all alone and having more fun at those levels even if they are not capped. Generally spreading the population over more zones and instances. Reviving unused world pvp zones like EPL, Silithus and Nagrand.
Over all. I wouldn't mind seeing something like this happen. Overall, it doesn't strike me as requiring a lot of development time. Even if it didn't work out, it wouldn't be so bad, we still do have the real endgame. What would there be to loose.
Ragehoof May 22nd 2009 4:12PM
(This would generate interest in leveling a capped alt.)
This should have been two paragraphs up right after point #2.
That is, the new achievements would generate interest in these new level ranges, thereby helping the population to grow at that level.
I should have also pointed out that as soon as a player is tired of that level range, they can simply re-enable experience gain and move up to the next decade of levels.
AutumnBringer May 22nd 2009 4:28PM
Even if you played a level 60 character today, I assure you, everything is much easier than it was before due to the ability and talent changes. All classes would definitely be doing more damage, more healing and better tanking. Plus, you could pretty easily get some early Outland greens in the AH that completely destroy gear you'd get from dungeons in classic WoW, so you'd have that advantage as well (same thing for if you were capped at 70, not as drastic though) - also there would be enchants and stuff that you could easily get that weren't available then. To truly do something that would come close to recreating the vanilla WoW experience (when a Discipline Priest's ultimate talent point was Divine Spirit - eek), it would require much more investment by Blizzard than it would ever be worth to players.
Zamn May 22nd 2009 6:18PM
The old instances could be retuned to match the new abilities/talents without too much effort, and capping your character's level could also cap the ilvl of greens and blues you can equip to an appropriate level.
A bigger problem would be the fact that the classes aren't balanced at 60 or 70. Remember all the whinging about the lack of balance between 2.0 and TBC and again between 3.0 and WotLK?
epsilon343 May 22nd 2009 4:06PM
I mainly just miss that feeling of appearing somewhere new and listening to a new song swell up on my speakers and the parts of my map slowly being revealed. I can still remember my first time running into Stormwind as a little ol Pally and being amazed as that song started playing and I saw all of the people running around.
It's a little different now, though, different priorities. No longer focusing on questing or setting leveling goals for the day, it's all about building up bank to pay for raiding costs and getting bigger and better mounts. Still love the game though, just a different game then 3-4 years ago.
Luke May 22nd 2009 6:49PM
Ha. I also remember how epic it felt for me the first time I ran into Stormwind. All the streets and back allies, all the shops with their signs selling different things, the different districts...it felt good.
Mask May 22nd 2009 4:14PM
Classic WoW actually was great because many of the original design decisions were closer to what Everquest did. The game has departed from many of those philosophies since the Burning Crusade. Making it so much more casual friendly and giving less and less benefits to the hardcore players.
Todays WoW is built for new players entering the MMO genre. This is a great strategy for getting 11.5 million players. It sucks for those of us who have been playing MMO's for 10 years now (and MUDs before that) and actually liked how the game used to have significant rewards for the hardcore players. Even classic WoW was sooooo much more casual than Everquest was. We used to joke about how easy the game was from the first days we played it, and todays WoW is about 10x easier than that. Ahh well.
MCRaider May 22nd 2009 5:44PM
I feel the same way, WoW has just become so easy now that it is not even worth playing.
The good days of raiding when you would sit in Ironforge for hours on end just inspecting one of members of that one uber guild on your server. Looking at all of the tier gear and how amazing it looked (Judgment still looks best by far).
Getting on almost every night for at least 4 hours to do BWL or AQ40 and just getting that boss to below 20% before your tank gets crit a few to many times and you all wipe. Or the paladin would DI the wrong person and so it was an hour cool down and no one could rez.
I loved the old WoW when raiding meant something and even the word epic meant something a whole lot more.
Sure you could have epics but they were not bought by badge runs or 5-10mans no they where 40-man raids the challenge, triumph and defeats that all came with it. You can sneeze now in WoW and get an epic there is nothing to it, no sense of this greater acomplishment. Sure you may have downed that one new boss but it is nothing like trying to fight a dog with time lapse.
Epic is long gone, just to get a piece of armor/weapon that you worked so hard for it is what made epic really epic. Now it is just gear and the colors all blend together.
I think that Blizzard is going to keep the casual friendly style in their next MMO since that is what WoW has done from this industry. Gone from being to easy (from EQ people) to really easy (old WoW players).
Blizz has given in to the people who only play 4 hours a week and gives them the items that I would play 30+ for.
You think your guild has a hard time finding 25 people to raid? On most good servers guilds had 50+ members and it was not hard at all to find a good guild with people to raid with.