One of the main reasons I left Wow Classic was the community, and that is nearly all Blizzard's fault. They underestimated how popular classic would be, even though they were told over, and over, and over again, and they released a very small amount of servers and relied on this thing called "Layering" to bail them out later when "the population fell off", which they predicted would be two or three weeks after launch.
The population is still growing in classic WoW, and there are no signs of it stopping. The layering makes it so horrible as you don't see everyone on your server. You can be in the same zone as someone on your server, talking to them, and you won't see them unless you invite them to a group and get on their "layer" with them.
I was trying to buy an axe off someone in Stormwind last week and we both forgot about the layering and were standing in front of each other, but couldn't see each other. Anyway, part of the draw to classic WoW for me was the community. But it's not much of a community feel when you never, ever see the same players more than once. There are over 5,000 players per server on classic WoW, and Blizzard stated before launch that they would remove layering by the 2nd patch, which would be about 3 months after launch.
That was Blizzard's promise when the community went up in arms about layering. There is no way that they are going to be able to do that with the amount of players per server at the current moment. They should have made more servers at launch and worried about the "population decline" later. They did nothing but make it worse.
But on top of that, I never realized how much of a difference 1.1 WoW was compared to 1.12.1. It is VERY easy! I played on private servers from 2010 on and I was under the impression classic WoW was more difficult than what it is, but it wasn't. 1.12.1 is a dumbed down version of the classic version of what was a great game. You can practically sleep while you play the game.
And I see a lot of people citing the "quality of life changes" that Blizzard made to WoW that improves some things over EverQuest. While I sort of agree that they are quality of life changes, they are exactly the sort of thing that kills the MMORPG genre. I always believed that they should make another genre of the MMORPG genre because there weren't any after Dark Age of Camelot.
When you reduce downtime, it may be a good thing, but you eliminate the time it takes to have a decent amount of human interaction. When I was playing WoW classic, I didn't even have time to get up and get something to drink. It's fast and it's chaotic. Some people may like that, but I believe that the actual core of the MMORPG community does not. When you trade quality for convenience, you get the MMORPGs that exist today.
The game is not supposed to be easy! Where was this train of thought conjured from? Challenge is what keeps people logging on! The type of player that wants to play the type of game on a mobile device now plagues our genre. And make no mistake about it, this is OUR genre! It was just hijacked by money. I guess there was nothing we can do about it and it was inevitable, but that doesn't mean I have to to be happy with it.
WoW classic is also all about numbers and cookie cutting. I have already made several posts in this thread about how I was shunned from groups because I did not put my talent points into the talents that the WoW community deems appropriate. There are six races that can be a Priest in WoW classic (Wow classic's main healer) but only one of those races (Dwarf) gets a ability called "Fear Ward". This ability allows the priest to make it's target immune to fear.
It is helpful in about FIVE encounters......five.....
But that doesn't matter. It was all over the forums prior to launch, by the min-maxers of course, that you HAVE to be a dwarf if you're going to be a Priest or you will not be welcomed into groups or raids. An ability that is helpful in five out of the thousands of encounters in Classic WoW is something you "have" to have........lol...what?
So what was the result? All Priests on the alliance side were Dwarves. I would get invited into groups and everyone would just get their items that they were in the area for, and leave. No one even said a word to each other. In WoW classic, players do not group just to group, or to get experience. They group for convenience. Meaning they group to get what they want out of the game, and then promptly leave. And if they did not need a group for that quest, they would never group.
And that is apparently clear in the retail version of WoW today. It is horrible! I had to level a character up to level 10 in retail WoW just to post on their forums. It took my roughly an hour and I could fight six MOBS at a time. No lie! It was mindless. Not to mention, I started a Priest and they didn't even get a healing spell until level 5......
The main healing class of the game......didn't get a healing spell until level 5....smh
I could go on forever about this, and little to those that believe that I am, I am NOT bashing classic WoW! I am just talking about the blatant changes that were made that do not work...
Again, When you trade quality for convenience, you get the MMORPGs that exist today. And that is why we are here, isn't it?
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