I honestly miss playing WoW. It was a fun game, especially if you had a group to raid with. If only I didn’t have to give Blizzard money to play it.
Anon plays World of Warcraft
Submitted 2 weeks ago by Early_To_Risa@sh.itjust.works to greentext@sh.itjust.works
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Comments
Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
In 2004 (the launch year) the original WoW was an amazing time I lost and entire year of professional growth and productivity to. When the first expansion (Burning Crusade) came out, I was equally excited as as the original launch, but after seeing Green gear fall of simple mobs that was better than the epic Purple gear I spent weeks getting in 40 person raids, I could instantly forecast how the entire rest of the game would be forever: and endless grind with your hard won efforts simply trivialized in the first month of the next expansion. I stopped playing WoW about a month after, went back to school instead, and finished the college degree I had started 8 years earlier. Quitting WoW lead to my actions which launched my career to new heights.
I credit WoW with teaching me an incredible life lesson in my 20s to never get drawn into something like that again.
OberonSwanson@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
My reaction exactly to BC!
And flying? Walking around was a core part of the game, seeing stuff, getting whacked by +10 monsters so you had to sneak around, now you just spend 50% of the game in the skybox.
chunes@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I dropped out of college because of this game. And honestly, it was worth it.
merc@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
See, I very much liked the gear reset.
I didn’t start playing when the game first came out. By the time I hit level 60 people had been raiding for months, maybe even a year. Back then, a lot of raiding was about getting fire resist gear so that you could get a bit further in Molten Core. If you were behind, there was no real way to catch up unless you had people who were willing to do work on your behalf to get you the gear you needed.
The Burning Crusade launch basically reset everything, so people who hadn’t had a chance to do raids were on an even footing with people who had.
It was pretty amusing that heroes that were fighting the primal elements of nature were then having a difficult time with mutated boars. But, at least it was mutated boars on another planet. Eventually it was just “oh, you’re on a new island. I know you’ve previously killed a god on this same planet, but the birds on this particular island… they’re tough”. That was poorly explained, but the reason for the gear reset was clear.
To me, there were two big issues with WoW. One was that people constantly wanted new buttons to push, so classes just kept getting more and more complicated to the point that while a MOBA might have 6 ability buttons you use regularly, WoW might have 15ish, with another 20 that are situational.
The other one is just that the story keeps collapsing under its own weight. Increasingly it’s a personal story – it’s not that you’re an adventurer and participated in an event that saved the planet. You’re the individual person who saved the planet (and so is everybody else in the game). And then, because this expansion is over, you, the individual who saved the planet, has to go kill 20 boars on this newly discovered island where apparently boars are as tough as gods. Nobody on this island recognizes you as the hero who saved the planet, so you need to build your reputation up again, and eventually you get to fight the newest god who is destroying the planet.
Dojan@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
I think a lot of people had this experience. Yahtzee Croshaw had a similar experience, albeit compressed to a month, and it resulted in a book. It’s a really fun book, too.
Lemming6969@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Games are just story+art+button timing+math. Mmo’s almost entirely remove button timing, and what is left is extremely formulaic. Given that, number go up isn’t worth anyone’s thousands of hours, and neither is the overall content. I know, as I had the hours and the same epiphany.
Davel23@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
I played for a while on the Warmane private server. High population, very active, and completely free.
Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Nice! Is there an invite process for private servers?
Sabata11792@ani.social 2 weeks ago
Ive tried to go back a few times but nothing topped WOTLK, game play was peak and the community wasn’t jaded and as sweaty. There was still a sense of community and mystery before things got min-maxed. Last time it felt about as friendly as playing League and you were essentially locked out of non LFG raids unless you had a guild and were chronically in there discord.
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Everyone plays to the meta that unless you’re on your class’ best spec you won’t get in.
figjam@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
there are private servers that don’t require blizzard money
AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I am literally in WoW classic killing boars for their snouts while reading this on the other monitor.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Is Barons chat still and endless spam of people asking for the location of Mankrik’s wife?
AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I play alliance, so I’m spared that.
But back in the day, the horde side had an over-representation of edgie teenagers. Now almost everyone is adult, most with kids and many old and retired like me. So you on’t see as much of that stuff as before.
porkloin@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Death to Hogger
AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I have four max level characters and recently started a fifth. It’s funny doing all the different starting area stuff, but including hogger. I just killed Bellygrub and Yowler an hour or so ago, twenty years after the first time for me.
Rolder@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
It was more because it was a virtual chatroom and community in an age where such things were not widespread
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Also, I think this undersells how good the game looked.
Yes, you were hunting boar livers but you were doing it in this beautiful tropical jungle beside a giant waterfall. And then you’d peak behind the waterfall, discover a mermaid who was at the gate of a giant dungeon themed like a water park. And you completely forgot about the quest to go play in the water park for a couple of hours.
I’d say the bigger problem with WoW was the gradient of zones. You’d be hunting zebra-taurs on the high planes. And then you’d walk through a mountain pass, see a dinosaur, get all excited, and aggro a creature +30 your level.
Unstoppable_Flop@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
AHHH! RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! I’M TOO LOW LEVEL TO DIE!! sorry ptsd kicked in there
merc@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
That, and nobody had documented how everything worked yet. And, there wasn’t a good way to communicate outside the game. And there was no group finder, etc. so the only way to work together was to chat.
In-game chat was essential to playing the game. It was essential to understanding the game. And it was somewhat self-policing, because if you got a bad reputation on your realm from chat, it would be harder to find groups.
These days most chat happens outside the game. Nobody chats in-game to understand the game. Nobody needs the community features of the game to do quests, group content, even raids. Realms are meaningless because most content is cross-realm, so you can’t get a bad reputation if you’re an asshole because you never see the same people again.
I don’t think there’s a way to go back to 2004. But, it still seems like Blizzard shot themselves in the foot multiple times when it comes to community features.
Rolder@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
That’s also true, a lack of information plus gamers just generally being dumber definitely forced more cooperation and interaction
greenskye@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
You’re forgetting the part where there are 6 boar spawns that respawn every 2 minutes and there are 15 people waiting on the next spawn.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
As a long time player of EQ before WoW ever came out: the drops in WoW were never that bad.
I remember doing the starter weapon quest for the dark knight? One of the dark elf tank classes. Needed a special type of bone for the weapon and killed so many fucking skeletons, by the time I got the materials for the weapon, I was like level 25 or something and had enough money to just buy an even better weapon from the bazaar.
favoredponcho@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
EQ was fucking brutal, most of the game was just grinding, killing the same mobs over and over. While quests did exist, it wasn’t the main thing people did. I didn’t play much wow, but it did strike me that the game had more questing than EverQuest.
imadethis@fedinsfw.app 2 weeks ago
I think the one thing that EQ had over Wow was the emphasis on group content to level. Holy hell was it a slog to level if you weren’t grouping and running the actual dungeons. Wow, meanwhile, was a slog if you did anything but the single player quests. The times when my friends came to help on EQ, I would see my xp bar jump. The times when we did the same in Wow, there were fights over what to do because we were so frustrated with leveling.
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Wow had loads of quests, and a really big universe, that was what hooked me back in the day, haven’t ever seen anything like it (except maybe Dwarf Fortress) since.
mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
A recent video the origins of the term grinding placed abundant blame on Evercrack.
Sabata11792@ani.social 2 weeks ago
I sentence you to 40 vanilla Barrens zebra hoofs.
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
It kinda boils down to chucking rocks in the river alone vs chucking rocks in the river with friends.
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Wow was fantastic when it came out. I never had the money to pay for a subscription so I played on pirate servers. I never got the endless grind stages, but I adored exploring the early zones with all the original classes. The world looked great, the magic felt real and the fantasy was engrossing. I don’t think I ever made it passed lvl 35 on any characters, but thoroughly enjoyed getting there, sometimes with friends and sometimes alone.
bett@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
and a monthly payment to continue doing it
Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
Now that’s just not true.
Repeatable quests weren’t added until much later. You had to collect all sorts of organs with shitty drop rates from a variety of animals in different zones.
It was actually barely worth doing quests in the original game, because most of the XP was on the kills rather than quest hand-ins, and the rewards were mostly crap.
djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
it’s less about the moment to moment gameplay and more about the vibes and ambiance tbh. Players love zones like Barrens and Nagrand even though a good chunk of both zones’ quests are just hunting animals because the vibes of those zones are immaculate.
Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
You’re not wrong about Alliance zones feeling more fleshed out… but over the last two decades of playing vanilla WoW on and off, every single time that I’ve rolled an Alliance character and tried my best to commit, I would eventually see a primitive ass Horde outpost with hanging feathers and dreamcatchers, with some bulky spiked Orc and a noble Tauren standing there… and I would feel such an immense feeling of homesickness unlike anything I’ve ever felt in another game, and I would immediately delete that character and start over in Durotar.
Something about fighting for the honor of the Horde and the glory of the Warchief out there in an inhospitable land, with the inspirational swell of horns and indigenous drums just puts me in it. Like, really puts me in it.
ICastFist@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Kinda ironic that alliance zones are more fleshed out, but horde lore and characters tended to get much better treatment.
Frostbeard@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Barrens compared to Goldshire was so garbage in vanilla at launch. Alliance aesthetics was so much more developed and implemented
Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
I think Duskwood was peak WoW for me. I spent years chasing that early high, and never really found it in that game or any others.
Allero@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
I’d argue the Horde aesthetics is meant of be raw.
Although I am myself an Alliance connoisseur. Darnassus and Auberdine still being my favorite throughout the Classic, despite some immediate confusion over the location of some merchants.
The Burning Crusade only reinforces this notion, with Silvermoon being initially part of the Alliance and growing to be the majestic city I love wholeheartedly. Truly a gem of the Horde.
djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
You may like the Alliance aesthetic more but there’s plenty of people who enjoy the Western feel of Barrens.
Hell, people are still making jokes about Barrens chat in this very post, do you see anyone talking about Westfall? If we wanna go off cultural relevancy, Horde is way more well known. Nobody cares about asking “Where’s the Defias Messenger,” but everyone knows Mankirk’s wife.
criss_cross@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I remember trying wow in their 10 hour demo being like “I’m just killing spiders when does this get fun?”
Then a friend told me “it takes 20 hours to get to the fun bit”. I then uninstalled and never looked back.
Rampsquatch@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
It doesn’t take 20 hours to get to the fun but, it just wasn’t for you.
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Yeah def not.
There is fun in changing zones sightseeing and getting really powerful abilities, running in raids. But if the hook for the core kill loop doesn’t catch, you’re going to have a bad time.
criss_cross@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah probably not.
Which is good for me as it saved me $15/month.
Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
So what? The grind is the fun bit to you?
mrmisses@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I remember leaving the dwarf starter zone for the first time. Passed some NPC dwarfs, got chased by a mob that was way too powerful for me and barely survived. When I was done running, and was safe, I looked around and saw the entrance to IronForge.
That’s when I knew the game was for me
wpb@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I picked it up recently with a group of friends on turtle wow (RIP, fuck blizzard), and while I really enjoyed the social aspect, the actual gameplay felt like a chore the whole way through. Plus, it felt like an obligation to keep up with my friends who somehow had much more time to throw at the game.
Aerosolcb@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’d heard about Tutrtlewow for a while. I decided to try it a few months ago. Loved it. But you know what happened.
To be fair, it was Turtlewow’s fault. Blizzard has a legal obligation to defend their IP. Private servers are an uneasy truce. Blizzard ignores them because they get people into the WoW space. Turt Wow, however, started charging money and literally advertising on Blizzard’s pages on social media. Turtle WoW literally pulled their dick out in front of Blizzard, started helicoptering it while taunting Blizz, “The fuck you gonna do, pussy boooiiii??”
Blizzard quite literally had no choice. I really loved Turtle WoW, but they completely fucked themselves on this one.
Montagge@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
This is a friendly reminder that Warcraft stole from Warhammer’s IP
DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
Apparently Blizzard does have a choice when its Ascension doing all of that?
DillDough@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
None of what you said was a new thing or what actually pushed Blizz/Msoft to action. It was the unreal engine port that did it.
houndeyes@toast.ooo 2 weeks ago
Where is Mankrik’s wife?!
Frostbeard@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Worst quest for me was rescuing Marshall Winsor from Blacrock Depths. First he is walking agroing all kinds of mobs, then when he sees the entrance he starts running and if you don’t keep up, (let’s say you are fighting some mobs he agroed) you fail the mission even if you can see him standing by the entrance.
First you need to find BRD group, then a group willing to do the quest. And then do the quest. Tried so many times… Still hurts talking about it.
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
oce@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
Me, a refined person, playing Guild Wars instead.
MithranArkanere@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Well, in Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, you also have reasons to collect lots of the same stuff to do stuff.
The difference is that you don’t have to collect 10 boar asses in boar ass forest for a specific boar ass quest, but instead you may want to craft a legendary bone weapon, so you need to gather bones, and you can go anywhere in the world that drops the bones, or that gives gold you can use to buy the bones from other players, or that grants a special map currency that you can use tyo buy boxes of bones from a map currency vendor, all while doing whatever you feel like doing, progressing your bone gathering in a wide variety of ways.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Compares to gatcha
Hmmm
kandoh@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
Yeah but while killing the boars another guy comes round and helps you kill some quicker and then you team up and go around helping anyone else you come across
saltesc@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That game was all about the end-game. Questing up to max level was like the intro and could be done very fast with a good guide. The only good thing about leveling was getting used to new skills at a slow rate, otherwise it was kind of pointless and just something you’d quickly get out of the way.
alsimoneau@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Never got into the and game. The levelling is the fun part.
Different strokes for different folks, and catering to multiple playstyle is what made it so popular.
Zoomboingding@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Now, games have aggressive monetization through battle passes and gotcha mechanics! Truly we have improved.
nuko147@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Leveling up with company was fun. Especially when you had some ass-pullers like me in the party, running for your lives from all the boars in the area, because he got a new AoE spell.
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
So only every 25. boar has a liver there?
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
awfulawful@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
No idea if this was an official explanation, but I always heard drop rates like this were simulating the item/body part/etc. being too damaged during combat to retrieve.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Nah, you just keep instinctively stabbing them in the liver to kill them.
Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
My first WoW experience was Horde. I created an orc hunter, did the training area and got to the Crossroads in the Barrens. As I was figuring out what traders and so on were available, a bunch of high level alliance characters turned up and started laying into the guards. Word went out and high level Horde characters began arriving from Orgrimmar by wyvern. Ended up with about 20 or more characters on each side. It was epic!
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
My first PC game was WoW. I didn’t know how to use keyboards back then, and so, I was killed by boars 5 minutes into the game.
Fun times.
FrChazzz@lemmus.org 2 weeks ago
I’m old, so my first MMO was Everquest. I only did “hunt-and-peck” style typing using my index fingers prior to this. Within a month I was a skilled typist out of necessity.
Everquest also taught me that I have to keep very clear of WoW because I realize that if I ever started chasing that dragon, I’d wind up homeless.
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
This was the state of many RPGs to level up at that time, MMO or not. The more interesting quests or difficult ones came along when you had more kit to use. Though that said, most of WoW’s initial quests available for a while were like that. In BC you started to get bombing runs, more point A to B path finding quests, etc.
imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
It was never about quests. It was always about player interactions.
Kintarian@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I think a lot depends on why you play a game. I liked WoW and other open-world games for the vast lands I can explore. I don’t give a rats ass about combat or progression. I do just enough to stay alive and spend most of my time socializing and exploring.
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I played during the trial period once. I usually love games with fun gameplay loops that have a bit of grind, but I couldn’t get into WoW. It just didn’t feel fun. It felt like a job. I’m still not sure how it became the largest MMO ever made.
BillCheddar@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It might help to think of it less like a video game and more like a million person bowling league.
People would log in to hang out. To chat. To bullshit.
Sometimes, to level up or to raid or to pvp. Sometimes, people would log in and play for a few hours just…going around helping other people with stuff. Some people take their characters to the starter zones, handing out bags and some nice gear upgrades and advice to new players.
And that doesn’t even take into account the RP servers, where people would have like guild meetings in game, or legit life events like a wedding in game. Funerals when a guild mate dies? Of course!
**That is how it became the biggest MMO ever. ** And the game has largely strayed from those roots, which is why so many WoW players go for the Classic version, rather than play the new expansions.
ICastFist@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
When you compare it with its competition back in 2004, it was the most casual game. Everquest, Asheron’s Call, Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, those were full time jobs, while WoW was “only” a part time job next to them.
Blizzard was at its peak, coming off the huge successes of Starcraft (1998), Diablo 2 (2000) and Warcraft 3 (2002), the latter of which also brought DotA thanks to the community. Hype and hopes were high.
mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
Quadrexium@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
why do real chores when virtual chores
Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
“Honey, can you go out and powerwash the side of the house this weekend?”
“Awww, c’mon… I was planning on playing Powerwash Simulator this weekend! 😩”
jballs@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Now I kind of feel guilty for enjoying Crime Scene Cleaner. At least in my defense, my house is not covered in blood.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A real power washer can run out of water or power unless you tether it to outlets. Meanwhile in the simulator, you can parkour onto the roof with an infinite water tank.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Real chores give us no sense of pride and accomplishment
thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Pride And Accomplishment™ 🤤
figjam@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
If powerwashing the house got me new socks that gave me +.25 an hour pay I’d be doing all kinds of side quests
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
TBH they kinda do. It’s just that there’s all sorts of real-world issues attached to them, while a game is at worst boring.
Unstoppable_Flop@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Neither did WOW ones, every time I’d complete an impossible task and get my reward they’d nerf it and start giving it away the next week