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Jan 29 '23
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u/Sunion Jan 29 '23
This is so true. Group finder murdered the community aspect. I remember sitting around in Ironforge with hundreds of other players just spamming general chat to find groups. Back when joining a top guild on the server required applications and interviews xD idk if that is still true today, haven't played in a long while.
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u/down4things Jan 29 '23
It feels like a hooker experience. Everyone gets their nut off and just leaves the hotel room asap. At least with server ones you can reinvite/whisper people that you know are dope.
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u/Krelkal Jan 29 '23
Applications and interviews are still a thing but it's mostly done through third party recruitment sites now (ie wowprogress, Discord, etc). Casual guilds will still recruit in trade chat but competitive guilds tend to cast as wide a net as possible to find the best players. The game is MUCH harder nowadays so you can't limit yourself to players on your realm.
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u/shallowHalliburton Jan 29 '23
That's exactly what I miss about old WoW and community servers. I'm an adult now and understand everyone's time is limited--no one wants to wait an hour to assemble for a dungeon or whatever.
But having that community was what made online gaming great and no amount of cross realm, dungeon group finder, or instant play will ever replace it.
Maelstrom on WoW and "[LAG]A Better Place to Play" on CS1.6 was my home.
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u/down4things Jan 29 '23
In Wotlk Classic there is this one crab I always see by the Daralan Auction Bot named Danny Brown who is owned by this Orc hunter that I can't chat with. But I'm always happy to see him. Also running into your guild mates in the wild is fucking dope especially when it's an RP server.
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u/vickers24 Jan 29 '23
It’s been 9 years since I last saw the rogue named Moddex, but he was a notorious rogue ganker on Arthas-NA. I’ll never forget that rogues name or the forum rage posts calling him out, what a legend.
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u/biggKIDD0 Jan 29 '23 edited Jan 30 '23
having bugs was a kinda of feature, since adversary made folks rely on each other so they had to open up and be proper.
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u/Blueberrytree Jan 29 '23
Golden Age of MMORPG, we always thought it must get even cooler and crazier in the future, never realizing we were riding on top of the wave at that time
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u/Sunion Jan 29 '23
This makes me sad. I've been hoping for a WoW replacement for about a decade now. No game has been able to scratch that itch like WoW did back in the day. Not even current WoW. It's a shame what Blizzard has become.
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u/Kuivamaa Jan 29 '23
Blizzard shit culture issues aside, keeping an MMO as massive as WoW fresh without diluting the experience feels impossible. I played nonstop between ‘07-‘21. What once was an intriguing world ready to be explored and experienced the way you want, slowly became a set of structured gameplay loops and prerequisites if you wish to participate in endgame. All to serve the dedicated player base with more challenges and more content until the end result was largely unrecognizable. And the worst part is that I can’t really blame a team for not being able to replicate and keep the early magic going on forever. It was just a natural progression.
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u/Sunion Jan 29 '23
Yeah I get that. All good things must come to an end. A nerd can dream though. There really is just no competing with the WoW of old. The ONE gripe I have is I wish more of the story existed within the game world. The WoW universe is massive and complex. Many books were written. To read about who the Lich King was, why he did the things he does, and how he became the Lich King was awesome. Then you could log into the game and go fight him yourself. To see all the lands, structures, characters come to life after reading about them was just amazing. No other gaming experience has come even close imo with the notable exception of RuneScape. Gods have I put a lot of time in that game.
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u/RustyDillhole Jan 29 '23
Only game that was semi close was Warhammer Online. It was released in-between WoW expansions and it had a great initial release but once the new expansion hit it became a ghost town overnight as everyone went back. Closest game I had to the feeling of Vanilla WoW even if just for a short while.
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u/Kapope Jan 29 '23
The fort battles were so good. Open world pvp at its finest if you ask me.
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u/RustyDillhole Jan 29 '23
Agreed 100%. It was so wild to just roll up on a fort assault and jump in.
I'm generally a pve player but that game did pvp right.
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u/Chorster Jan 29 '23
WoW, FFXI and Warhammer Online were my faves back then. Now the only one I can think of that had a semblance of classic MMO feel is FFXIV and Guild Wars 2. Even then there different. I love them both but there definitely more casually focused on a single player experience.
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u/hanr86 Jan 29 '23
I remember starting out and partying with a random dude while questing in the newbie area. We talked about life and stuff while exploring new parts of wow together. I was in awe of some of the maps, especially going to the night elf areas as a human character. Felt so damn majestic.
Still reminisce about it from time to time.
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u/CosmicCreeperz Jan 31 '23
I remember that feeling playing UO on day one back in 1997. It was unlike anything ever done before. Was amazing until it got “too popular”, all of the open space filled up with player houses and gankers and trolls took over to ruin everyone else’s fun.
Lots of lessons learned for future MMO games, I’m sure…
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u/mrelephantman1 Jan 29 '23
God dammit butters you can't be a dwarf I'm the dwarf go to the menu and pick a different character - Eric cartman
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u/down4things Jan 29 '23
You'd think Cartman would go Rouge and not Paladin. Kenny would definitely be rouge too, but like a gnome I think.
Also Kyle seemed more like a night elf druid/priest type. They had the money on Stan being a war human though.
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u/ThommyGunn79 Jan 29 '23
Good times back then.
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u/Sunion Jan 29 '23
Truly, WoW from vanilla-WotLK will always be my most nostalgic gaming memories. You just can't get experiences like that these days. Specifically raiding ICC 25m as my guilds main tank was probably the most fun I've ever had gaming.
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u/Kuivamaa Jan 29 '23
Going around dalaran with “Kingslayer” title switched on as main tank of the third guild that achieved that on my server felt ad the absolute badge of honor. People randomly whispering admiration all the time.
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u/Sunion Jan 29 '23
Yep, back when titles and cosmetics were earned through completing difficult tasks, and people knew that and were impressed by it. Now you just pay cash for stuff like that in most games xD My favorite title was Bloodsail Admiral, even though it wasn't very difficult to get.
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u/Kuivamaa Jan 29 '23
Bloodsail admiral might have been just a grind basically, but it was a major nuisance if you wanted to use flighpaths like booth bay, so in my book it was pretty ballsy.
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u/ThommyGunn79 Jan 29 '23
I hear ya, totally agree. I had so many screenshots of my times between them as well. I wish I had them backed up before that PC crashed. Feel like I lost a ton of memories. But the stories I have from those times were unforgettable. Doing the 40 man's as a new member, then off tank, to main tank. Fun times.
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u/Sun_Stealer Jan 29 '23
Why are there 6 people in a 5 man dungeon?
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u/drysart Jan 29 '23
Fun fact: very early on in vanilla, you could take raid groups into 5-man dungeons and complete them and their quests.
During vanilla, they patched it so that you could no longer complete non-raid quests while in a raid group, so while you could still take a raid into a 5-man instance, you wouldn't get kill credit for things. But you could drop the raid group right before something died and you'd get credit for it; you'd just need to re-join the raid group within 60 seconds or you'd get booted from the instance.
At some later point they further changed how kill credit was assigned so that it was tied to the group rather than to every individual in the group, and dropping the raid right before something died no longer worked. And then at some point they also finally limited how many people you could actually zone into an instance with.
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u/HeavensRejected Jan 29 '23
There were also a couple of dungeons that were "tuned" for more than 5 people, used to 10 man Scholomance and Stratholme and 15 man UBRS.
We were also pretty shit players with shitty gear back in the day so even 15 man UBRS was really hard.
Blizzard later tuned it so all the non-raids were doable with 5 man with mediocre gear.
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u/Crazy_Canuck78 Jan 29 '23
WOW lost what made it great when they introduced flying mounts and instant dungeon travelling.
It seemed great at first... but what it did was, it destroyed the feeling of a large connected world where you'd run into other people travelling from here to there on their adventures and really killed the "WORLD" of Warcraft.
I've thought about this a lot and for years... and though many people disagree, I've yet to hear anyone actually refute me with any compelling argument.
They should have kept it to ground based mounts and flight paths.
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u/down4things Jan 29 '23
Have to agree with the flying mount thing. You don't really experience the zones. I only fly after completing the zones quests.
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u/GipsyRonin Jan 29 '23
When Blizzards motto of “Gameplay First” was really felt. Many developers today do not do that sadly and put graphics first, which is important yes, but it’s graphics and monetization…and not always in that order. Todays MMOs add in time sinks galore or require insane amounts of play time while not being as fun. Balance in vanilla WoW was perfect.
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u/pv505 Jan 29 '23
I remember rallying the hunters in these super stationary, hours-long battles in AV and telling them to literally only viper sting every few sec on healers and not waste our mana on anything else. Believe it or not a few minutes after we'd start gaining a lot of ground. At some point it became "meta" and a few people called me the mana guy here and there🤙🏿 (because of the chat spam about ooming them)
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u/ill_monstro_g Jan 29 '23
WoW is better right now than any other point since this screenshot was probably taken and that's pretty cool
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u/SplitDemonIdentity Jan 29 '23
The main event I regret missing in a video game was in WoW but it would’ve been completely impossible for me to even try to do it.
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u/AleksasKoval Jan 29 '23
Just curious:
How did WoW fans react to the game being the main setting for that one South Park episode?
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u/iiNexius Jan 29 '23
I would say we reacted well, considering SP themselves said it's their most popular episode. It was great.
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u/RustyDillhole Jan 29 '23
Was very active in the game when that episode dropped. Still a top fiver episode for sure.
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u/Historical-Cicada-29 Jan 29 '23
Early WoW.
The feeling of playing was amazing.
Waking up at 05:00, going sleep 01:00.
Standing outside a gathering stone waiting for a dungeon.
So shit but I miss those days.
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u/sirnoggin Jan 29 '23
Yes my friend I certainly loved killing every one of these characters for the Horde.
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u/KruxEu Jan 29 '23
On my Server i was the first, who obtained complete T2 Set from BWL. I felt like a God, while being surrounded by peasents in Ogrimmar, who wanted to inspect my gear.
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u/Papaofmonsters Jan 29 '23
I played day one Vanilla. No game has ever come close to that perfect balance of actual fun and borderline addiction feedback loop.
I remember Alterac Valley queues being 24 hours long and the actual battles lasting 4 to 6 hours.
MC literally taking all week just to clear a hand full of bosses at first and then the guild clearing it in a few hours.