and a monthly payment to continue doing it
Compares to gatcha
Hmmm
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
It was never about quests. It was always about player interactions.
Leveling up with company was fun. Especially when you had an ass-puller like me in the party, running for your lives from all the boars in the area, because he got a new AoE spell.
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!
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.
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.
I’m so old my first MMO was ICQ
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.
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.
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.
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.
Adding to that: this was back when a lot of people were getting high speed internet for the first time, which allowed them to play for much longer periods. While messaging programs already existed, the social aspect was super important and the artificial difficulty of certain enemies was an attempt to force people to socialize, before dungeon/raid finder killed a significant part of that.
“You don’t miss spamming LFG with need tank, need tank, need tank, nowadays you just press a button and wait!” - from the “you think you do, but you don’t” guy
Many things killed it off. I’d add external databases and addons.
It is not that I hate external databases and addons. They are great and help a ton. But they also did remove the “exploration” part of the game. If you know exactly where to go and addon also plans out the optimal route +if you do not know what to do, external database will tell you in details - this kills exploration and player interactions on top of dungeon-finder and auction damage.
It’s like Hearthstone is a pretty decent card battling game, but because of dark pattern monetisation they made it so you’re only playing to fulfill your daily quests, which means it’s not actually fun anymore and you grow to resent feeling like you have to play or you’re losing something.
why do real chores when virtual chores
“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! 😩”
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.
Now I kind of feel guilty for enjoying Crime Scene Cleaner. At least in my defense, my house is not covered in blood.
I’ve been playing Hitman: World of Assassination all weekend.
Not sure if that’s better than the alternative.
Real chores give us no sense of pride and accomplishment
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
Pride And Accomplishment™ 🤤
Surely you are referencing the EA comment, yes?
If powerwashing the house got me new socks that gave me +.25 an hour pay I’d be doing all kinds of side quests
I hear those are in the next patch release of Earth
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.
For a lot of people. they don’t. Chores are just painful and annoying and unrewarding and they hate them objectively.
I’m sure lots of people don’t feel a sense of accomplishment from gaming, either.
but gaming is fine-tuned to be fun, real life isn’t
but real life achievements are much more real and often more lasting than in-game achievements
lol what world are you living in? chores never stop.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We disagree on this point. I liked 20 situational ones. It made for finding edge cases where a spell or ability was critical and a game changer. While I normally played on an RP server, I would frequenly run around with my PvP flag on allowing myself to be attacked by other players. On a Warlock class, one of the “most useless” summoned pets was the Felhound. However, because almost no one used a Felhound, no one knew how they fought. It was extremely satisfying to be out in world doing a PvE question only be jumped by a casting player that suddenly lost them abilty to cast when the Felhound activated, or when the theif is walking up to you in stealth only to be outted by the felhoud that could see through it.
Not having the many obscure options was what prevented me from really getting into Guild Wars that only had 2 actions at a time when I played it.
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.
This didn’t bother me either. With the 20 and 40 person raids, you were one of many that accomplished the goal. For the individual quests, it made sense to me that new lands wouldn’t know you or your exploits. Its not like there is regular newspapers or internet in game the NPCs read.
It sounds like we had different things we wanted from the game. I’m glad that the things that annoyed me were things that others found value in.
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.
With your post, I went looking for the book and couldn’t find it. I only found his novels. I’m on the fence about trying to find/read the book. I carry some personal shame from the time when I wasted so much time in WoW. This may be an embarrassing reminder of a mistake of my youth.
It’s called Mogworld.
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.
Learned this exact same lesson and quit.
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.
did better than me, took me till legion before i truly gave up on it, and then came back for classic
and even now my brain sometimes randomly is like dude you should play wow again
You know you have a WoW problem when you’re spending an appreciable amount of time on Thottbot looking up in-game items and locations while at work.
I dropped out of college because of this game. And honestly, it was worth it.
Because you had so much fun in the game or because college was (or would in the future) serving you so poorly?
I played for a while on the Warmane private server. High population, very active, and completely free.
Nice! Is there an invite process for private servers?
Check out their website. They run a number of servers/realms. There is a torrent to grab of the client bins that have been tweaked to connect to their stuff. Check out the forums for more details. But generally, you just create an account on the website and just go. I recommend donating and getting some gold. It will help with the mats for professions without grinding. And playing on a 7x XP, you progress without the grind.
X1 rate, original experience. No pay to win. Best server!
Not gonna yuck your yum, but me and boys had lots of fun with a meme group of druids. Healing, tanking, DPS. Super non-optimal. But it was fun. Only really possible to do that either buying the toons, or training up your own. Training up with 7x means that you basically have no good gear by the time to get up to the upper levels where it matters.
I did that with a friend on Lordaeron. Tank + heal and rdf the dps. Was a lot of fun. 7x would have meant lvling so fast the dungeon runs would have been irrelevant.
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.
Everyone plays to the meta that unless you’re on your class’ best spec you won’t get in.
Fuck me for thinking for my self and not copy pasting my spec.
Happy Cake day! Also yeah, this push in video games to play them optimally sucks. They’re supposed to be fun, a way from work. Not more work.
Yeah and some of the less common ones were fun or even more optimal.
Like I had a paladin tank in classic. It was difficult holding threat especially if the targets weren’t undead, but it was so rewarding to succeed.
My mage was a frost mage like so many were after Molten Core basically pigeon holed mages into frost spec. But holy shit could fire/arcane mages put out dps. The PvP spec was incredibly bursty but the PvE spec could do more damage than frost spec (outside of MC) plus was more interesting than constant frostbolt spam.
Though affliction warlock was probably my favourite spec out of them all, due to the different durations of each of the dots making you have to constantly think about spell order. I didn’t play one in classic but switched to my affliction lock as my main in WotLK and remember getting in the top 3 dps on that PvP zone raid boss, desopite being a filler that wasn’t even max level.
I brought my all in that game and if I was trying to join a pug raid, it was because I knew that character was ready for it regardless of spec or gear. But I did get tired of raiding on a schedule with a guild and pugs could be shitshows, so I kinda understand it.
Pokèmon had a neat answer to that by randomizing each Pokèmon’s stats. Unfortunately people bred them to minmax their stats so that mechanic is gradually getting removed
I forgot cake days were a thing, the clock hasn’t rolled over in my timezone yet.
I got kicked before with warlock unending corruption, seed of corruption spam build. I could max dps charts for some fights because I could hit all the adds and keep dps on bosses that are out of range, but not a pasted build and your gears not capped, your out. I couldn’t get back into it if I wanted to at this point.
Curse of agony and corruption spells were the thing before they got nerfed
My feels…
there are private servers that don’t require blizzard money
I am literally in WoW classic killing boars for their snouts while reading this on the other monitor.
Is Barons chat still and endless spam of people asking for the location of Mankrik’s wife?
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.
I remember noobs being called Kevins (bc lots of kids were named kevin after that kid in the movie “home alone” IIRC) and were like 13 yo and all over the place.
Good times!
I started playing in early 2005; I was in my 40s and far older than most of the people playing. I kept playing the expansions through 2017, then quit until fall 2024. Came back to The War Within and played for a while, but they’ve dumbed the retail version down so much, it just doesn’t feel like it has any soul.
Tried classic early last year and I’m having a blast, even with all it’s issues. But the funny thing is that most of the people are the age I was when I started, and many are older. Hardly any teenagers. It’s funny how much it changes the game.
Ha ha yeah classic was really fun, got all the way up to the big raids and all, reliving the excitement once again.
Death to Hogger
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.
I haven’t played since Wrath of the Lich King (started with vanilla around launch) and still have super fond memories of the Alliance starting areas in particular
I solo leveled my first character after coming back to classic until 58. I’m just not much of a joiner, so don’t use Looking For Group or whatever. But as I approached 60 I realized I’d either have to mothball the character or do groups for endgame, so I bit the bullet and joined a guild.
It’s been so much fun. Really good people, who I end up hanging out on discord with a lot. Like I said earlier, they skew older now. I’m retired, so I spend a lot of time helping folks with those quests that are impossible to do solo, or running them through dungeons. I’m actually becoming more fond of some of the classic content.
It was more because it was a virtual chatroom and community in an age where such things were not widespread
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.
That’s also true, a lack of information plus gamers just generally being dumber definitely forced more cooperation and interaction
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.
AHHH! RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! I’M TOO LOW LEVEL TO DIE!! sorry ptsd kicked in there
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Says you. I spent hours grinding gorillas for an aged gorilla sinew.
That’s how aging works. Did you expect aged sinew from a fresh gorilla? 🤷♂️
A recent video the origins of the term grinding placed abundant blame on Evercrack.
I sentence you to 40 vanilla Barrens zebra hoofs.
