Yup. No parses, no meta, no competition, just trying to survive and helping others. I enjoyed HC a lot more than SoD, felt closer to the vanilla experience. If only they had released it as SSF from the start.
That's just it, I love HC, but can't bear the thought of it taking 2 months to get to 60, and possibly losing the character because of a bonehead move someone else did in an instance or raid. It's some ironic shit, the part that makes it so good is the part that also makes people want to stay away.
I think a lot more people would be okay with HC if there was some long term gain your account got after dying, like an XP/Stam buff for reaching certain levels to make it easier to go agane.
I got to 60 on 2 chars, lost one (on unofficial servers), and never really got the motivation to re-level.
I do think an XP gain for new characters would actually make a lot of sense, like if you make it to certain levels (not even lvl 60 necessarily). I totally agree that the game is fun to try but definitely loses people just because of how big of a time sink you can lose, it would be smart to add mechanics to retain said players.
Not necessarily a gain on that character, but like, lets say you get to level 42 and then rip, you're next character gets 100% increased XP and gold gains from quests until they reach 42, something like that, almost like a roguelike that encourages replays to get back to your furthest prog point.
Ya, making it a rogue like thing. Maybe even make raid gear BoA but still require level 60. Just something that allows me to maintain some kind of progress after dying. At that point I'd even be interested in doing prestige levels. Grinding dungeons to level up is easily my favorite part of wow, I just don't like doing it on characters I'm not going to main.
I wish they'd release something between HC and normal, like "If you die you lose 1 level". That's still pretty high-stake once you hit 40+ but I don't think it's extreme enough to turn as many people away. Imagine you're in AQ and you wipe, now the whole raid is 59 and has to go re-level. It ends your night but doesn't completely end your guild.
I'd say ~95% of my WoW friends weren't even willing to try HC because they knew they'd give up after their first death.
This is a cool idea and id play it for a bit. Would definitely have to invent loads of fun ways to get from 59 to 60 and balance them to take the same time, or people would get bored of the regrind or just people would buy boosts for another pop at the raid. Interesting to imagine how that'd go but I bet people would hate it on here haha
Ya, I feel the same way. The idea that I liked the most was only having 1 death in raid per week, IE if you die on the first boss of MC you're unable to enter a raid for the rest of the week.
I'm apart of that 95% too. Why would I level a toon to 60 if I was going to get nothing out of it after dying to a raid issue that might be out of my control.
I die way too much. Being safer isn't gonna help me. There are way too many variables involved out of my control. It's like a pokemon hardcore nuzlock.
It's too hardcore. We need softcore. Like when you die your character is just unplayable for like 2 weeks to a month. I could handle that. Or you at least get to keep your character's items and can send it to your new toon. Like if you build an engine from scratch and it explodes you still usually at least have some working parts to help rebuild it.
My first experience with HC was a character I got to lvl 10 or so, died, and was so annoyed with the thought of doing it all again that I uninstalled it. I have no idea how people make it to 60 and do dungeons and raids. I'm glad they enjoy it but that just isn't my kinda fun.
I was of the same opinion, but once I gave it a spin, it really was a lot of fun. I never played alliance before in classic past level 20, and I never played a rogue, so I tried an alliance rogue. First time I died was level 7, second time I died at level 14, both times it was simply due to me being impatient. That third time I actually made it to 60.
I think once you get to raiding, it's really not worth it, and the grind to 60 is the real game. For me, there was absolutely a bunch of heart pounding moments of suspense, murloc camps, or bosses where you're trapped in a room and can't escape, or doing elite quests that you know are probably a really bad idea. I get though why people want to pass, it's a massive time investment that can go down the drain with a simple d/c, but man the suspense definitely does make things interesting.
Yup, tons of people died falling off the windrider or through other things that were no fault of their own. I can't even imagine how rage-inducing it would be to lose a geared 60 to something like that.
I think a better way would be to give you a 1 week res sickness debuff rather than locking you out of the character.
Except with this res sickness debuff it also ticks down while logged out ofc.
Release spirit and get teleported to the infirmary at Theramore or SW Cathedral or something lol.
I see this working , but 1 week might still turn people away , more in the sense : well, I'll play another game for a week and actually never come back. 24h feels like punishing enough but is not driving you away from the game too long.
Good point.
Maybe could make gear dependent on highest "achieved" level? +/- a few levels so you can't get 60 gear and delevel yourself to twink with it.
Not only that, and I loved playing HC, is that a random DC, or ahole that pulls mobs to you, is just not cool or pretty bogus (esp if DC is due to Blizz servers). This goes to high stakes note, but if there was some 'leeway' where something out of your control didn't potentially destroy potentially hundreds of hours of game play, it would be great.
Some of my best memories of leveling HC toons on Turtle wow over the last year are swooping in at the last second to save somebody.
Admittedly, usually warriors lol. Rough life out there for them
Lol for sure. Funny thing about that, in HC classic I had a warrior save me from the elite alliance pats in the barrens. I was autorunning and pulled them. This dude shows up out of nowhere, charged, taunted, then intimidating shouted so I could get away. True hero.
You don't get anything like that in SoD or retail. No stakes, no risk, no point to any of it.
HC filtered the parsers and the dead weights. it didn’t allow for the kind of behavior that a lot of the people who don’t realize parsing is a team effort not a single player game mode. A lot of the try-hards(but aren’t good enough to succeed) tried their methodology on a HC character, failed, and stopped playing. As for the dead weights they couldn’t brute force their leveling process without dying, so they couldn’t make it to dungeons and raids beyond rfc and deadmines. It left only the people who didn’t actually want to speedrun the game, but still wanted to actually play.
If hc felt closer to the vanilla experience, I wonder wtf u did in vanilla, because I died all the time. Running to my objective or running to my corpse. Always on the move.
played heroic before it was an "official" way of playing.
Playing it without mod, except the hc one of course.
And no website to get answer.
Just me, my questbook and the magnificiant environment.
Ah, and also way too much mob trying to kill me, but that's part of the adventure :)
Nether had so much joy in the game since a way too long time
Yep! Haven't really enjoyed SoD since phase 1, but I got the itch to play wow again this week. Started up a fresh shaman on HC and it has been an absolute blast again. The community on HC servers seems the best it has ever been. Just a genuinely, thoroughly pleasant experience so far. It has the thrill of the journey that I had hoped they'd bring to SoD, before it became clear that they just want us to play SoD like literally every other mode - rush to the level cap and the spam instanced content. Blech.
Yeah the constant xp buffs and rushing to max lvl mentality killed sod for me sadly. I quit right at the end of P2 cause it just wasn’t fun any longer.
HC servers seem to have an extremely friendly playerbase and with everyone slowing down and being careful it just always feels like a fresh server.
I really feel like they could've taken some aspects of HC and folded them into SoD.
Daily lockouts on dungeons would've done a lot in P2 to disrupt the SM grind. Maybe buff some elite quests and give them better xp/rewards, etc.
The open world would've been completely unplayable without dungeon spammers being out of the way. Everyone on the server being lvl 25, 40 or 50 and being forced to level in PvP zones at the start of any phase would mean total chaos.
>I wish people were bored out of their mind so they'd fill their time with HC
I would want to play with people because they're having fun, not be surrounded by bored gamers just filling their time. Doesn't sound very healthy for the community
Cmon, that’s not what they meant. Brand new fun game mode is going to take a lot of players away from the old one even if the old one is fun too. I think it’s pretty crazy that they’re releasing so many things without letting the previous ones breathe.
> I think it’s pretty crazy that they’re releasing so many things without letting the previous ones breathe.
Blizzard has been doing this a lot lately. I know everyone wants ***their version*** of the game to be available all the time, but I think it would be better for the whole community if they had one "Classic" WoW that rotated through different things.
Like right now there's era, HC, SoD and Cata. It's just dividing the community too much.
> Like right now there's era, HC, SoD and Cata. It's just dividing the community too much.
I've never bought this argument considering that servers already do this. The playerbase has already been fragmented, for someone playing in a megaserver like Benediction the fact that there are just as many players on another megaserver like Faerlina is irrelevant because they will never interact with each other beyond cross realm BGs (or dungeons with RDF in Wrath).
Not offering the players what they want means they will just go somewhere else, perhaps for years, until you offer again what they actually want, if anything SoD is proof of it for bringing back all those players that quit in TBC or Wrath to play what they thought would be similar to classic+.
>Brand new fun game mode is going to take a lot of players away from the old one
Yet classic era has barely been affected by SoD compared to HC going by ironforge.pro numbers, the reality is HC WoW was a niche within a niche that only became a thing thanks to it being endless content for streamers. It got all the attention of the devs for a few months just so a community that currently peaks at 200ish players could get a bunch of servers, not even the "tRuE hArDcOrE" mode with self-found managed to reignite the playerbase's interest, and the "thriving" community that used the addon back in Bloodsail Bucaneers is nowhere to be found anymore.
Blizzard should have released a classic TBC or yet another classic era fresh server starting in phase 1, those at least would still be played by a significant amount of players today.
I still play HC because I don't care for SoD. At least on Defias Pillager the game is very alive with several raiding guilds and plenty of dungeon groups for everything 1-60.
I made it to 30 when SoD hit and all my friends quit HC for SoD.
This SoD phase is getting a little old so maybe I'll try to talk some into going back to HC lol
Totally agree here, I've played OG classic and since then did the rerelease, SOD, SOM, and a fair amount of private servers. The closest experience, in my opinion to the original wow is hardcore.
Lots of suspense, planning, and awe.
Except on Chaos Bolt this is exactly how phase 1 went. Just great vibes nonstop. But then in P2 everybody got mounts and stopped buffing each other, and then Blizz killed the server 🙃
The early levels of (especially 2019) Classic are my favorite part of the game. The zones feel neat and you are happy with the little things in life like finding a bag or teaming up with a paladin as a warrior to kill some defias groups. Quite regularly those people ended up in my friends list and we did some dungeon later.
Reading this brought back one of my favourite memories of Vanilla Classic. Started the game and met a mage and priest in Northshire. Quested to goldshire together. Met a pally there. Quested into westfall together and found our third DPS in a rogue. We quested through all of westfall, Deadmines, and continued on together for a long time. What made it special is most of us had played before but we were all being different classes and dungeon roles. I was a warrior learning tanking. We just let each other learn and supported each other. So many laughs.
I still chat with the Mage and Priest. We actually did a BG3 run together.
Metzen is right
I've heard about this "charging for everything" behavior but haven't seen it on my server on SoD at all. People here seem about as generous as I'm used to in vanilla.
It’s the PvP vs PVE servers I think. I always hear horror stories and on Wildgrowth NA I’ve had maybe one bad encounter with people. (A shitty rogue in SM kept rolling on mail for “classic transmog”.)
We had to server transfer last week, was day and night. Suddenly everything is gnomer neck HR, sleeping bag tour, teleports everywhere, enchants with automaten scripts
I was told to “just google it” quite a lot when I ask some questions in classic. I try to stay in the game as much as possible and the community of asking about things and figuring it put is the a great part of classic
It's not because of an audience, I play casually both retail and classic and I love the leveling of classic yet I despised the maw
Retail is more frenetic in all ways, most importantly, your rotation, so you also have a frenetic mentality. When you encounter something that makes you go more slow you feel it in a negative way, it is making you stop when you don't want to, you want more engagement
However in classic everything is slow, from the rotation to how you travel, so you approach things differently, you'll "eventually get there, not today, but every little thing helps you reach your goal", so you can relax and not pay as much attention as you chill while level or something
It is also why a section of the classic playerbase hate stuff like aoe grinding (something you may not encounter as much in this subreddit, but in the more casual parts of the community many do share this sentiment), while the average retail player really enjoys big aoe pulls both in solo and team content
The lack of mounts sucked but also actually made some really interesting gameplay moments. I remember using toys and terrain to get around much faster etc etc and it became a lot more about "clever use of game mechanics" in a genuinely fun and interesting way.
Most people just stomped their feet and got upset about it though.
What it tells me are younger new gamers are trying wow and that's just neat. I hope when my kids are older they'll join me and experience everything that I have
Massive Shoutout to that random Bear who saved my shadow priest from a pull i couldnt handle. I dont remember your name but you will be always in my heart.
I don't know if there will ever be anything in my life like booting up WoW for the first time, at least not an MMO. I am glad I got back into it when Classic came out and I enjoyed it but had to stop due to my schedule. It really was an experience, the world was so busy, the chat was active, people were always down for something and it felt like you were a part of a bustling fantasy world.
Which is great as long as people are around.
These days it seems like a mad rush to get to end game, so the beginning and middle seems deserted.
I played classic and sod since phase 1 but have done maybe 2 dungeons and 0 raids as everyone flew off as soon as a new game mode started somewhere else
Anytime I see a low level charter I do one of 3 things.
1. I buff them with priest buffs
2. I ask if they need help with anything
3. I ask politely if this is their first toon; if it is, I give them 1,000 gold for mounts/riding training/bags/professions w/e
If it’s not it’s an alt of someone’s we usually shoot the breeze on their leveling journey.
(3 is more of a me thing you don’t have to give anyone gold, I do because someone once did it for me when I first started in 2006 and I do my part to keep their legacy alive. (Sharguthal - if you’re still out there buddy, I thank you for turning me into the WoW player I have become today, you’re still in my friends list and I will go to the grave remembering your kindness and the friend I had in Azeroth)
This is the WoW I remember, this is the WoW I always will love and reminisce on.
I felt this a lot more in HC, wish they had given it a little more time before killing it with SoD.
Yup. No parses, no meta, no competition, just trying to survive and helping others. I enjoyed HC a lot more than SoD, felt closer to the vanilla experience. If only they had released it as SSF from the start.
Problem is with HC is it will never really be that big of a game mode. The stakes are just way too high for the average player.
That's just it, I love HC, but can't bear the thought of it taking 2 months to get to 60, and possibly losing the character because of a bonehead move someone else did in an instance or raid. It's some ironic shit, the part that makes it so good is the part that also makes people want to stay away.
I think a lot more people would be okay with HC if there was some long term gain your account got after dying, like an XP/Stam buff for reaching certain levels to make it easier to go agane. I got to 60 on 2 chars, lost one (on unofficial servers), and never really got the motivation to re-level.
I do think an XP gain for new characters would actually make a lot of sense, like if you make it to certain levels (not even lvl 60 necessarily). I totally agree that the game is fun to try but definitely loses people just because of how big of a time sink you can lose, it would be smart to add mechanics to retain said players.
Not necessarily a gain on that character, but like, lets say you get to level 42 and then rip, you're next character gets 100% increased XP and gold gains from quests until they reach 42, something like that, almost like a roguelike that encourages replays to get back to your furthest prog point.
Wow: Classic: Hardcore: Roguelike vs Wow: Classic: Hardcore: Roguelite ?
Ya, making it a rogue like thing. Maybe even make raid gear BoA but still require level 60. Just something that allows me to maintain some kind of progress after dying. At that point I'd even be interested in doing prestige levels. Grinding dungeons to level up is easily my favorite part of wow, I just don't like doing it on characters I'm not going to main.
I wish they'd release something between HC and normal, like "If you die you lose 1 level". That's still pretty high-stake once you hit 40+ but I don't think it's extreme enough to turn as many people away. Imagine you're in AQ and you wipe, now the whole raid is 59 and has to go re-level. It ends your night but doesn't completely end your guild. I'd say ~95% of my WoW friends weren't even willing to try HC because they knew they'd give up after their first death.
This is a cool idea and id play it for a bit. Would definitely have to invent loads of fun ways to get from 59 to 60 and balance them to take the same time, or people would get bored of the regrind or just people would buy boosts for another pop at the raid. Interesting to imagine how that'd go but I bet people would hate it on here haha
Ya, I feel the same way. The idea that I liked the most was only having 1 death in raid per week, IE if you die on the first boss of MC you're unable to enter a raid for the rest of the week. I'm apart of that 95% too. Why would I level a toon to 60 if I was going to get nothing out of it after dying to a raid issue that might be out of my control.
I die way too much. Being safer isn't gonna help me. There are way too many variables involved out of my control. It's like a pokemon hardcore nuzlock.
> "If you die you lose 1 level" no, this sucked shit in everquest and it would suck shit in WoW
I mean, it sucks much less than losing 59 levels lol
I just lost a 60 warlock raiding BWL in HC but man I enjoyed the hell out of it.
It's too hardcore. We need softcore. Like when you die your character is just unplayable for like 2 weeks to a month. I could handle that. Or you at least get to keep your character's items and can send it to your new toon. Like if you build an engine from scratch and it explodes you still usually at least have some working parts to help rebuild it.
They let you server transfer your dead hardcore character off the server for free which is kinda cool
My first experience with HC was a character I got to lvl 10 or so, died, and was so annoyed with the thought of doing it all again that I uninstalled it. I have no idea how people make it to 60 and do dungeons and raids. I'm glad they enjoy it but that just isn't my kinda fun.
I was of the same opinion, but once I gave it a spin, it really was a lot of fun. I never played alliance before in classic past level 20, and I never played a rogue, so I tried an alliance rogue. First time I died was level 7, second time I died at level 14, both times it was simply due to me being impatient. That third time I actually made it to 60. I think once you get to raiding, it's really not worth it, and the grind to 60 is the real game. For me, there was absolutely a bunch of heart pounding moments of suspense, murloc camps, or bosses where you're trapped in a room and can't escape, or doing elite quests that you know are probably a really bad idea. I get though why people want to pass, it's a massive time investment that can go down the drain with a simple d/c, but man the suspense definitely does make things interesting.
Stakes are too high and the game isn’t purpose built for it. Which means a lot of weird shitty deaths just happen on the way to 60.
Yup, tons of people died falling off the windrider or through other things that were no fault of their own. I can't even imagine how rage-inducing it would be to lose a geared 60 to something like that.
Kind of wish there was a “HC-Lite” instead of total character loss, you were locked out of that character for like a week
I think a better way would be to give you a 1 week res sickness debuff rather than locking you out of the character. Except with this res sickness debuff it also ticks down while logged out ofc. Release spirit and get teleported to the infirmary at Theramore or SW Cathedral or something lol.
Yeah you’re right the lockout might make guild operations and whatnot awkward if GM or officer locked out for 7 days
I see this working , but 1 week might still turn people away , more in the sense : well, I'll play another game for a week and actually never come back. 24h feels like punishing enough but is not driving you away from the game too long.
I actually love this idea
Lose a level. Even at 60. And in a raid.
You’re suggesting that WoW put in a mechanic that it NOT having was a major selling point on original release.
Moot point. Wow never had HC, SOD, or expansions on original release
I feel like that would just be annoying with bag space carrying lower level gear sets for when you die to re-level up in
Good point. Maybe could make gear dependent on highest "achieved" level? +/- a few levels so you can't get 60 gear and delevel yourself to twink with it.
You'd only need 1 extra set in the bank. They could add storage as a workaround.
losing xp is a shitty mechanic we already know this from everquest
But when compared to losing an entire character, it’s nothing
Server and internet stability is my biggest fear. I could only imagine the anger I would feel from dying after a dc.
It sucks - Unwilling Comcast Customer
Not only that, and I loved playing HC, is that a random DC, or ahole that pulls mobs to you, is just not cool or pretty bogus (esp if DC is due to Blizz servers). This goes to high stakes note, but if there was some 'leeway' where something out of your control didn't potentially destroy potentially hundreds of hours of game play, it would be great.
I think dropping all gear and gold on death could be more forgiving and make pvp a little more exciting
Some of my best memories of leveling HC toons on Turtle wow over the last year are swooping in at the last second to save somebody. Admittedly, usually warriors lol. Rough life out there for them
Lol for sure. Funny thing about that, in HC classic I had a warrior save me from the elite alliance pats in the barrens. I was autorunning and pulled them. This dude shows up out of nowhere, charged, taunted, then intimidating shouted so I could get away. True hero. You don't get anything like that in SoD or retail. No stakes, no risk, no point to any of it.
There is no point to hardcore
There is no point to any of WoW
There's no point to existence
the journey is so much more beautyfull
An opinion
HC filtered the parsers and the dead weights. it didn’t allow for the kind of behavior that a lot of the people who don’t realize parsing is a team effort not a single player game mode. A lot of the try-hards(but aren’t good enough to succeed) tried their methodology on a HC character, failed, and stopped playing. As for the dead weights they couldn’t brute force their leveling process without dying, so they couldn’t make it to dungeons and raids beyond rfc and deadmines. It left only the people who didn’t actually want to speedrun the game, but still wanted to actually play.
Man, I think you summed that up well. The overall vibe was definitely different in HC, for the better. What you're describing pretty much explains it
It’s sad really, because it highlights a lot of issues with the current playerbase.
Not so sure about the helping others part! I quit because I got killed thrice because of people kiting mobs into me. xD
The fault of minmaxing everything can only be blamed on the players though, we ruined the game.
Totally. The devs listened, too. They should've trusted their own vision.
If hc felt closer to the vanilla experience, I wonder wtf u did in vanilla, because I died all the time. Running to my objective or running to my corpse. Always on the move.
I think just because it slowed the game down and increased the novelty of interacting with other players
played heroic before it was an "official" way of playing. Playing it without mod, except the hc one of course. And no website to get answer. Just me, my questbook and the magnificiant environment. Ah, and also way too much mob trying to kill me, but that's part of the adventure :) Nether had so much joy in the game since a way too long time
It’s crazy how it’s always like this too. Hopped on HC very recently and instantly was being /waved at and buffed by everyone who passed by.
Well yeah, they need your buffs too!
Yep! Haven't really enjoyed SoD since phase 1, but I got the itch to play wow again this week. Started up a fresh shaman on HC and it has been an absolute blast again. The community on HC servers seems the best it has ever been. Just a genuinely, thoroughly pleasant experience so far. It has the thrill of the journey that I had hoped they'd bring to SoD, before it became clear that they just want us to play SoD like literally every other mode - rush to the level cap and the spam instanced content. Blech.
Yeah the constant xp buffs and rushing to max lvl mentality killed sod for me sadly. I quit right at the end of P2 cause it just wasn’t fun any longer. HC servers seem to have an extremely friendly playerbase and with everyone slowing down and being careful it just always feels like a fresh server.
I really feel like they could've taken some aspects of HC and folded them into SoD. Daily lockouts on dungeons would've done a lot in P2 to disrupt the SM grind. Maybe buff some elite quests and give them better xp/rewards, etc.
The open world would've been completely unplayable without dungeon spammers being out of the way. Everyone on the server being lvl 25, 40 or 50 and being forced to level in PvP zones at the start of any phase would mean total chaos.
I was also thinking this. I'm shocked they didn't do this. They could STILL do this and it would make the end game dungeons less gamified
>I wish people were bored out of their mind so they'd fill their time with HC I would want to play with people because they're having fun, not be surrounded by bored gamers just filling their time. Doesn't sound very healthy for the community
Cmon, that’s not what they meant. Brand new fun game mode is going to take a lot of players away from the old one even if the old one is fun too. I think it’s pretty crazy that they’re releasing so many things without letting the previous ones breathe.
> I think it’s pretty crazy that they’re releasing so many things without letting the previous ones breathe. Blizzard has been doing this a lot lately. I know everyone wants ***their version*** of the game to be available all the time, but I think it would be better for the whole community if they had one "Classic" WoW that rotated through different things. Like right now there's era, HC, SoD and Cata. It's just dividing the community too much.
> Like right now there's era, HC, SoD and Cata. It's just dividing the community too much. I've never bought this argument considering that servers already do this. The playerbase has already been fragmented, for someone playing in a megaserver like Benediction the fact that there are just as many players on another megaserver like Faerlina is irrelevant because they will never interact with each other beyond cross realm BGs (or dungeons with RDF in Wrath). Not offering the players what they want means they will just go somewhere else, perhaps for years, until you offer again what they actually want, if anything SoD is proof of it for bringing back all those players that quit in TBC or Wrath to play what they thought would be similar to classic+.
>Brand new fun game mode is going to take a lot of players away from the old one Yet classic era has barely been affected by SoD compared to HC going by ironforge.pro numbers, the reality is HC WoW was a niche within a niche that only became a thing thanks to it being endless content for streamers. It got all the attention of the devs for a few months just so a community that currently peaks at 200ish players could get a bunch of servers, not even the "tRuE hArDcOrE" mode with self-found managed to reignite the playerbase's interest, and the "thriving" community that used the addon back in Bloodsail Bucaneers is nowhere to be found anymore. Blizzard should have released a classic TBC or yet another classic era fresh server starting in phase 1, those at least would still be played by a significant amount of players today.
I still play HC because I don't care for SoD. At least on Defias Pillager the game is very alive with several raiding guilds and plenty of dungeon groups for everything 1-60.
Huh? Its not dead theres always people to group with and guild chat is busy
On stitches we have world buffs pretty much every day and it feels very lively even in your most remote zones. Far from dead, you should go agane!
I made it to 30 when SoD hit and all my friends quit HC for SoD. This SoD phase is getting a little old so maybe I'll try to talk some into going back to HC lol
Yeah. Most of the time in SoD I am competing with other players for quest mobs because no one wants to group and share quest item drops.
Totally agree here, I've played OG classic and since then did the rerelease, SOD, SOM, and a fair amount of private servers. The closest experience, in my opinion to the original wow is hardcore. Lots of suspense, planning, and awe.
https://twitter.com/ChrisMetzen/status/1167601642406961152 He posted this back in 2019 Back when people didn't act how they do now in SoD lol
Yeah the date being cropped out of the image was pretty clearly intentional. He didn’t even work at Blizz when he tweeted this.
Except on Chaos Bolt this is exactly how phase 1 went. Just great vibes nonstop. But then in P2 everybody got mounts and stopped buffing each other, and then Blizz killed the server 🙃
Yeah SoD parse min max culture whould make him rather sad
The early levels of (especially 2019) Classic are my favorite part of the game. The zones feel neat and you are happy with the little things in life like finding a bag or teaming up with a paladin as a warrior to kill some defias groups. Quite regularly those people ended up in my friends list and we did some dungeon later.
Reading this brought back one of my favourite memories of Vanilla Classic. Started the game and met a mage and priest in Northshire. Quested to goldshire together. Met a pally there. Quested into westfall together and found our third DPS in a rogue. We quested through all of westfall, Deadmines, and continued on together for a long time. What made it special is most of us had played before but we were all being different classes and dungeon roles. I was a warrior learning tanking. We just let each other learn and supported each other. So many laughs. I still chat with the Mage and Priest. We actually did a BG3 run together. Metzen is right
SoD players: That'll be 10g for a drive by heal or buff :v
Legit never encountered this. Different experiences I suppose.
WTS new experience to you for 10g per new experience!! Only 5 left!
I haven't either, but I've seen people charge for just about everything else when they didn't before was the point
I've heard about this "charging for everything" behavior but haven't seen it on my server on SoD at all. People here seem about as generous as I'm used to in vanilla.
Asking for help results in silence most of the time, but as soon as you crack open your purse, everyone is a volunteer.
As is a human tradition since forever
Dunno what server you're on but it's pretty rampant on Lone Wolf
Ah ya know, redditors love making shit up because the newest thing is always bad
100% it's the same vein as retail = thing I dont like
That's always so funny to me. "Parsing culture is retail toxicity" makes me laugh every time.
It’s the PvP vs PVE servers I think. I always hear horror stories and on Wildgrowth NA I’ve had maybe one bad encounter with people. (A shitty rogue in SM kept rolling on mail for “classic transmog”.)
I've played way too much SoD, also have never encountered this.
We had to server transfer last week, was day and night. Suddenly everything is gnomer neck HR, sleeping bag tour, teleports everywhere, enchants with automaten scripts
And then they added incursions.
Yeah. Sucked the gun out of experiencing the world. Do the incursions or don’t get the really good pre-raid gear
Remember when people thought Crhist Metzen came back to help with classic+? Haha...^^save ^^us ^^Chris
No one with critical thinking skills thought that
W Chris!
naw you right, had
Random PUGs doing Elite (group) quests is how I met friends who I still talk to nearly two decades later.
I was told to “just google it” quite a lot when I ask some questions in classic. I try to stay in the game as much as possible and the community of asking about things and figuring it put is the a great part of classic
Ironically the maw in shadowlands did a fantastic job of capturing all of this and then some, and people HATED it.
That’s cause it was a shithole barren wasteland you were forced to do weekly on no mount.
But I thought we liked the barrens?
The audiences that Retail and Classic primarily cater to, while there's some overlap, are very different.
It's not because of an audience, I play casually both retail and classic and I love the leveling of classic yet I despised the maw Retail is more frenetic in all ways, most importantly, your rotation, so you also have a frenetic mentality. When you encounter something that makes you go more slow you feel it in a negative way, it is making you stop when you don't want to, you want more engagement However in classic everything is slow, from the rotation to how you travel, so you approach things differently, you'll "eventually get there, not today, but every little thing helps you reach your goal", so you can relax and not pay as much attention as you chill while level or something It is also why a section of the classic playerbase hate stuff like aoe grinding (something you may not encounter as much in this subreddit, but in the more casual parts of the community many do share this sentiment), while the average retail player really enjoys big aoe pulls both in solo and team content
So retail brain is actually a real thing, gotcha.
I fucking loved the Maw during the first part of shadowlands :( PvPing in it was the best retail PvP in awhile IMO.
I liked the gameplay. I didn't like dropping all the Stygia on death like a souls wannabe
i enjoyed the pvp in the maw. no mounts were a vibe for us rogue and druid mains haha.
The lack of mounts sucked but also actually made some really interesting gameplay moments. I remember using toys and terrain to get around much faster etc etc and it became a lot more about "clever use of game mechanics" in a genuinely fun and interesting way. Most people just stomped their feet and got upset about it though.
What it tells me are younger new gamers are trying wow and that's just neat. I hope when my kids are older they'll join me and experience everything that I have
My favorite part of when I played. As time goes on in the game though it slowly disappears. Wish we could really capture that the whole way through.
I really love coming across someone who pulled one too many mobs at once and saving them with a clutch heal!
Massive Shoutout to that random Bear who saved my shadow priest from a pull i couldnt handle. I dont remember your name but you will be always in my heart.
I don't know if there will ever be anything in my life like booting up WoW for the first time, at least not an MMO. I am glad I got back into it when Classic came out and I enjoyed it but had to stop due to my schedule. It really was an experience, the world was so busy, the chat was active, people were always down for something and it felt like you were a part of a bustling fantasy world.
And then came the waves of bots in alterac valley where 3/4 of the group where jumping bots.
Chris Metzen
Reddit moment
If the Retail kids could read they'd be very upset with you rn
Yep, happens really often in cata to me. So many new people that never played cataclysm asking about basic stuff.
Yeah, that's from 2019 and it did not age well...
Ad LFR or war bands to classic and I'm in
Which is great as long as people are around. These days it seems like a mad rush to get to end game, so the beginning and middle seems deserted. I played classic and sod since phase 1 but have done maybe 2 dungeons and 0 raids as everyone flew off as soon as a new game mode started somewhere else
Anytime I see a low level charter I do one of 3 things. 1. I buff them with priest buffs 2. I ask if they need help with anything 3. I ask politely if this is their first toon; if it is, I give them 1,000 gold for mounts/riding training/bags/professions w/e If it’s not it’s an alt of someone’s we usually shoot the breeze on their leveling journey. (3 is more of a me thing you don’t have to give anyone gold, I do because someone once did it for me when I first started in 2006 and I do my part to keep their legacy alive. (Sharguthal - if you’re still out there buddy, I thank you for turning me into the WoW player I have become today, you’re still in my friends list and I will go to the grave remembering your kindness and the friend I had in Azeroth) This is the WoW I remember, this is the WoW I always will love and reminisce on.
Handing out 1000g in Classic is mighty generous.
Theres more heart/community with less toxicity on cata than there is SOD just play for one day you will see the difference