Anon plays World of Warcraft
(midwest.social)
đšEarly to RISA đ§
GreentextI 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.
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 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 remember trying wow in their 10 hour demo being like âIâm just killing spiders when does this get fun?â
Then a friend told me âit takes 20 hours to get to the fun bitâ. I then uninstalled and never looked back.
It doesn't take 20 hours to get to the fun but, it just wasn't for you.
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.
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.
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.
Barrens compared to Goldshire was so garbage in vanilla at launch. Alliance aesthetics was so much more developed and implemented
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.
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.
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.
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.
Me, a refined person, playing Guild Wars instead.
Guild wars 1 and 2 are good games. The second one is still very active.
GW1 my beloved, how I miss you.
I got GWAMM like 3 years ago before I started playing ff14.
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.
Now, games have aggressive monetization through battle passes and gotcha mechanics! Truly we have improved.
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.
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 to 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.
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.
I'd heard about Turtle wow for a while. I decided to try it a few months ago. Loved it. But you know what happened.
To be fair, it was Turtle wow'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 advertising Turtle WoW on Blizzard's pages on social media. Turtle WoW 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.
This is a friendly reminder that Warcraft stole from Warhammer's IP
Apparently Blizzard does have a choice when its Ascension doing all of that?
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.
It was more because it was a virtual chatroom and community in an age where such things were not widespread
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
So only every 25. boar has a liver there?
Nah, you just keep instinctively stabbing them in the liver to kill them.
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.
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! đŠ"
Now I kind of feel guilty for enjoying Crime Scene Cleaner. At least in my defense, my house is not covered in blood.
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
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
Pride And Accomplishment⢠đ¤¤
Surely you are referencing the EA comment, yes?
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.
I honestly miss playing WoW. It was a fun game, especially if you had a group to raid with. If only I didnât have to give Blizzard money to play it.
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.
https://youtu.be/S5Hzh43k330?is=O1TimTrGk1hx1pI5
My feels...
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
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.
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.
I dropped out of college because of this game. And honestly, it was worth it.
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.
Learned this exact same lesson and quit.
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.
there are private servers that don't require blizzard money
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?
https://www.warmane.com/
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 am literally in WoW classic killing boars for their snouts while reading this on the other monitor.
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 havenât 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
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.
Where is Mankrik's wife?!
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.
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.
I sentence you to 40 vanilla Barrens zebra hoofs.
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? đ¤ˇââď¸
A recent video the origins of the term grinding placed abundant blame on Evercrack.
EQ was fucking brutal, most of the game was just grinding, killing the same mobs over and over. While quests did exist, it wasnât the main thing people did. I didnât play much wow, but it did strike me that the game had more questing than EverQuest.
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.
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.
It kinda boils down to chucking rocks in the river alone vs chucking rocks in the river with friends.
Bruh this reminds me of when I played The Mana World
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.
Never got into the end game. The levelling is the fun part.
Different strokes for different folks, and catering to multiple playstyle is what made it so popular.
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
