Classic WoW is proving this. What the player base demanded was to begin the journey all over again. The only way to experience the "magic" of World of Warcraft is to reset the game. No amount of new raids, questing zones, or class changes will recapture what players are experiencing in Classic WoW.

MMORPGs are about the journey. Classic WoW was a journey where you started with nothing but rags and a rusty weapon. This is the heart of WoW. The expansions could never recapture this, because you were already a hero who had been through the journey. This is why you have to start all over. Every legend has a beginning and an end. Think of the Lord of the Rings. Playing Classic WoW is like reading the LOTR trilogy 15 years after your first time. You get to experience the adventure of the fellowship once again. It is magic.

The new Classic WoW should be a new journey using the same template. The emphasis on "endgame" is what led to the current state of retail. When the phases of Classic WoW are completed, players will want to experience the journey all over again. Perhaps in a new Azeroth.

My oh my.

However, airdrops and houses will fix the game - changes proposed by Gnoll.

I couldn't have said it better than our Gnoll.

I mean a good chunk of us aren't too worried about new content. I've been playing vanilla actively for almost a decade now. Some of us are just nerds. But a new game would be cool as well as added content to Classic in classic+

Makes sense, but all I'm saying is wait 3 years and then make this post again. Just in case.

If you want to recapture that magic, roll a new toon.

TBC! <3

I think it really depends on players pacing. I'm reeeeeally slow, so for me all the game is the journey. But for some people the endgame is important too, and a new expansion/classic+ would benefit them

Fair points, but I'd argue against the idea that focusing on end-game is what doomed future expansions and the lack of focus on end-game is what made Classic great. I mean yeah, there's a great journey from 1 to 60, but I think this line of thinking glosses over a lot of things.

For instance, 90% of the content added by patches in vanilla was for end-game or was mostly intended for end-game (like yeah you can play AB at level 44, but you're not grinding honor or using the majority of the rep gear pre-60). And this ignores that there was in fact controversy in the community that new content added was seemingly only for level 60 content. Players who were slow levelers or who didn't really prioritize leveling asked for more content for sub-60's. And they did not receive it.

And indeed, the emphasis on end-game is what made so many people adore BC. So I think this is a silly point.

I think the development in a black hole without feedback or poor feedback from the playerbase is what ruined the game. Somewhere along the line, dev decisions started to diverge with the players wants. If they polled, talked with, discussed with the player base before any development started on new content, and brought them in multiple times during the development, i think a lot of the issues we have today can be avoided. Especially since a lot of the issues were tested out in retail, we know what worked well and what didnt work well.

I think most of us aggree, do nothing until many months after phase 6.

Buying a new MMO is the answer imo.
If you get sick of classic WoW, play elder scrolls, Rift or final fantasy online.
Classic+ would just add something new for a couple hours, there isn't anything new about it except recycled content.

Limited life servers could be fun, with a reset every few months, but pretty sure they would also a niche.

The kind of thing super hardcore guilds like APES would do just to beat the game over and over as fast as possible.

Most players i’d argue are casual or chill, and don’t want to see their invested time in a character vanish in a couple of months.


As for Beyond Classic, i would love to see them take the game in a more EVE Online direction, with guild Alliances and fully contested zones that said alliances can own and get revenue/loot from.

Wouldn’t be easy to pull off but this is a direction Blizzard never tried and i would be thrilled with PvP sieges in WoW.

Kazukii wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Buying a new MMO is the answer imo.
If you get sick of classic WoW, play elder scrolls, Rift or final fantasy online.
Classic+ would just add something new for a couple hours, there isn't anything new about it except recycled content.

Ya see that is what I am saying. If you add new dungeons or raids or w/e.. That content won't last very long. Most of the content in Classic WoW is the leveling itself, which is why rushing to level 60 is so silly. You can't keep adding higher Tiers to Classic WoW, because then power creep takes over. The gap between a fresh level 60 and a player doing the highest tier raid can't be too wide. This already becomes an issue once Naxxramas is released. What makes Classic special is that you can gear up through dungeons and still compete with a player in T2 BWL gear. Once you go beyond T2, the power creep gets too strong. A lot of players are suggesting adding horizontal content to Classic. New T1 or T2 raids etc.. All that does is create potential gear inflation and an unrewarding progression system. Players want upgrades. They don't want minor stat variations or affixes on their gear. That is the kind of stuff BFA does.

Classic WoW is about the entire experience, not just endgame. The overemphasis on endgame towards the end of Classic and throughout TBC is what ultimately doomed WoW. The only other alterantive is to shrink the endgame gear and make the raids obsolete. Molten Core, BWL, and NAXX would be replaced by new raids, but they would use the same Tier system. Old raid items would be shrunk and replaced with new gear from the new raids. You have to do this, because you can't have T4-T6, the powercreep destroys balance. Keeping the T1-T3 progression system is necessary. Ideally, Blizzard can customize the world, add new features,. and re-release the game again so players can experience the journey.

Players need to stop thinking of WoW in terms of raiding. Raiding should never be the focus of the game. The open world should always be the main priority. Raiding is something a small % of players would do. It lasted a few hours a week. The Burning Crusade put way too much emphasis on raiding and it hurt the game. You could see this shift during the second year of Classic with AQ/NAXX. It was shortsighted by Blizzard.

I think what's probably going to happen is they're going to progress the servers to TBC or (less likely) do Classic+, but then after a month or two (or a phase) of that, they're going to rerelease a bunch of Classic servers and let people start over again. I'm imagining it'll be like how Daybreak is doing the EQ Progression Servers, where they release a new one every year or so, though I'd expect new fresh WoW Classic servers will be spaced out a little more and a little less half-assed.

I'm waiting for saga of lucimia. That will be the next mmo i buy

RedridgeGnoll wrote: ↑

5 years ago

This is why you have to start all over. Every legend has a beginning and an end.

I think this is my biggest issue with retail. As I've mentioned in other threads, I fully believe that the main driver of success in every expansion was the story. Classic doesn't have that much of a story, because the point is more about you just being in the world of warcraft. But the most successful expansions were WOTLK and Legion, and that's despite that the quality of the gameplay took a nosedive in WOTLK and was full blown trash in legion. And those were still my favorite expansions. WOTLK completed the scourge storyline and Legion completed the Burning Crusade storyline. That should have been the end. But instead, we have BFA...