Has WoW lost its innocence?

[Bugger00]

Nice post and I'm completely in agreement with everything, not sure why I log in anymore but I still do. Maybe someday that will change.

Bugger.

[holmedog]

I'm sorry, but I have to completely disagree. We all see the past with rose colored glasses, and in this case, you are taking that to mean things were better. Take a look at your own post, read back to how you skipped levels by acquiring an account, how you bought powerleveling services. That's not playing the game as intended, and by that admittance alone, you are saying that even back then things didn't mesh with your idea of what was good.

I think the game is not the same as it was. But I also think that a lot of the ideas we had when this game came out just don't hold up to the standards we have now. It was expected that you had to have 72 people to raid in EQ. If you ever went after the key to VT, you know what kind of a grind was expected to get in the "candy store". We all thought for a long time that this is what defined "hard working" or "deserving" purples.

The simple fact is, it's not. If you want to sit here and tell me you bot, and then on the other hand tell me you wish the game wasn't easy mode, I'm going to call you a hypocrite. Go play another game that caters to hardcore only, because that is not what WoW is anymore. You can even set up your spambot and afk in their battlegrounds, to completely ruin the experience of that game. But, don't come to me whining about how it's not hardcore enough when you yourself do things to get around the "hard" portion of it.

[KuRIoS]

would help if you actually read what i posted...

I'm sorry, but I have to completely disagree. We all see the past with rose colored glasses, and in this case, you are taking that to mean things were better. Take a look at your own post, read back to how you skipped levels by acquiring an account, how you bought powerleveling services. That's not playing the game as intended, and by that admittance alone, you are saying that even back then things didn't mesh with your idea of what was good.

I didnt skip the levels because of the game not being fun, i loved the game at that time, but the account was give to me as i said ... I bought powerleveling after being banned because I wasnt enjoying the game anymore and i won a 2000 Dollar gift card to a powerlevel site, why not use it?

I think the game is not the same as it was. But I also think that a lot of the ideas we had when this game came out just don't hold up to the standards we have now. It was expected that you had to have 72 people to raid in EQ. If you ever went after the key to VT, you know what kind of a grind was expected to get in the "candy store". We all thought for a long time that this is what defined "hard working" or "deserving" purples.

Never played EQ so i can not comment on that. I just know that I felt pissed when PvP'ers were given bargain epics while we had to work hard for ours.

The simple fact is, it's not. If you want to sit here and tell me you bot, and then on the other hand tell me you wish the game wasn't easy mode, I'm going to call you a hypocrite. Go play another game that caters to hardcore only, because that is not what WoW is anymore. You can even set up your spambot and afk in their battlegrounds, to completely ruin the experience of that game. But, don't come to me whining about how it's not hardcore enough when you yourself do things to get around the "hard" portion of it.

I bot now yes, because I do not find the game fun anymore, nor do I think that anything Blizz does can make me enjoy it again, as i said.
Call me a hypocrite all you like, i dont care
It's not only Blizzards fault tho, as i said, we as a growing WoW community have a blame to be put on us as well.. every encounter is well described and well explained before its even in the instances of the Live servers.
This is to me one of the biggest reasons why you dont go into a mayhem whenever u down a new boss like we used to do. now its just, "GJ on first kill, move on - everybody read tacs for new boss and know where to stand?" <- that is the major thing of what i dislike.

[JD]

I must admit that WoW has changed a lot over the years and that for vanilla players the game may have become boring. Changes aren't made the way they should be and the raids aren't as hard as you would imagine the should be. I think the age level of the game has shifted to a lower age and that forces the developers to create easier instances / raids because well, let's be honest, 12 years old aren't, in general, as good as 20 year olds. Oh well, I'm still playing WoW, not for the competition because, well, there is none for softcore players like me. I like to read the WoW news but you don't see me runnign around with excell trying to figure out what instance to do next so I can get a certain amount of dps. If you DO do that you'll end up in the hardcore raiding guilds which can be fun for certain people but I play WoW because I can talk about it with my friends who play on my server and because it's fun to be playing a game with 5 of my friends. I don't see the game as a challenge but more as a, well, game.

Just my twocents

[stoneharry]

A MMO is designed to be played over and over again without getting boring, but eventually everything gets boring. For me, WoW got boring because it was the same gameplay and systems with just more content, eventually it just got so repetative that everything felt like I had already done it, there was no longer an addrenaline rush or the feeling of mystery. This is the reason I got to emulation, I could make my own world and create it how I felt suitable; by this I am not trying to say I am better than blizzard, I am trying to say that WoW needs to change. Having the same PvP and PvE systems, having the same interfaces and such, it just gets boring. New players still find it fun and play for many years, but many of the old players are leaving now. I think this would relate to what you are saying as you say how you used to find it fun, but then you looked to botting/'cheating' for something to keep you interested within this good game.

[Hezpadooka]

In my opinion they should make a server and bring it back to Vanilla WoW, but maybe 3.3 updates.

[holmedog]

I bot now yes, because I do not find the game fun anymore, nor do I think that anything Blizz does can make me enjoy it again, as i said.

I'll counter that with saying that I believe you never thought the game was fun, you merely found it addictive. I'm not trying to come off as an ass here, I actually have many times sat and pondered the same things that you are, but you have to keep in mind that humans do not remember bad things in proportion to good things. Good things tend to get a heavier weighting in our memory, and as such, when viewing things like "How it was back in the day" we get what I called "rose colored glasses". It's the same reason we all fall in love with the first games we played, but when we go back they aren't nearly as fun as they were the first time.

To give an analogy, I loved Final Fantasy 4 when it hit stateside (final fantasy 2 here). It was the absolute best game ever. I go back and play it now on an emulator, and I use the fast forward option because the text is too slow. I use the state save because I don't want to find save points. Simply put, I cheat more, because I don't want to be bothered by the tedium that at one point I actually liked. And, that game hasn't changed in the absolute least (whereas WoW has continually tried to improve on the parts of tedium that we complain about).

So, to the entire point of this article, "Has wow lost it's innocence" I say no. WoW just has 5 year veterans now that are in some cases 10+ year veterans of the genre. The game hasn't lost anything, in fact it has improved on many things that we all hated at the time. The players, on the other hand, have evolved and changed.

[KuRIoS]

I'll counter that with saying that I believe you never thought the game was fun, you merely found it addictive. I'm not trying to come off as an ass here, I actually have many times sat and pondered the same things that you are, but you have to keep in mind that humans do not remember bad things in proportion to good things. Good things tend to get a heavier weighting in our memory, and as such, when viewing things like "How it was back in the day" we get what I called "rose colored glasses". It's the same reason we all fall in love with the first games we played, but when we go back they aren't nearly as fun as they were the first time.

To give an analogy, I loved Final Fantasy 4 when it hit stateside (final fantasy 2 here). It was the absolute best game ever. I go back and play it now on an emulator, and I use the fast forward option because the text is too slow. I use the state save because I don't want to find save points. Simply put, I cheat more, because I don't want to be bothered by the tedium that at one point I actually liked. And, that game hasn't changed in the absolute least (whereas WoW has continually tried to improve on the parts of tedium that we complain about).

So, to the entire point of this article, "Has wow lost it's innocence" I say no. WoW just has 5 year veterans now that are in some cases 10+ year veterans of the genre. The game hasn't lost anything, in fact it has improved on many things that we all hated at the time. The players, on the other hand, have evolved and changed.

I know you are not trying to be an ass, you merely look at it different than what i do and that is good My point with this article / blog / something was that i wanted a bit of discussion not just the usual asslicking.

However I must say that I enjoyed WoW and found it INCREDIBLY fun, not because of the addictive in it but because of the whole atmosphere in it. But i do, as you, believe that many only found it fun because of it being addictive.

[holmedog]

not because of the addictive in it but because of the whole atmosphere in it.

You've touched on this point, but I don't think the game itself has lost it's atsmosphere. In fact, I would say it draws me in more than it ever did with the cutscenes, the improved, linear quests, and the whole "really fighting the bad guy" theme in WoTLK. What has changed is the playerbase. We have sites like this that prosper. We have MMO-Champ, Wowhead, wowheroes, stratfu, just hundreds of sites dedicated to min/maxing. And, these aren't just for the cutting edge players anymore (think askchopper for UO for those of you with that much nostalgia).

I would argue that the game hasn't ruined itself, but that the atmosphere has significantly changed thanks to the increasing ease of spreading information to the players. Imagine if we had the content we have now, but no DBM, recount, questhelper, wowhead, tankspot, AJ, EJ. That's how it was in vanilla.

[T@rget]

Well written, I started playing around patch 1.8 myself, and went to live realms at around 1.9. I was quite a slow leveler and had my first 60 after 3 months or so, wich got epicly banned for AV botting (Hmm I was about 13 back then, kinda struck me). But after a while I made a new acc (I think about 2 weeks :P) And leveled it to 60 again, around 60 TBC came out so I never really got to do all the cool vanilla stuff. Altough I can imagine pretty good what it must've been like.

[ßetray]

I agree that after vanilla, it appeared as if wow got easier (especially for leveling and gearing up), BUT you have to keep in mind, the difficulty of the raids (SSC [Boglord trash Bosses], TK [Kael], Hyjal and BT Attunement, Sunwell upon release).

None of those were joke encounters. Many guilds spent weeks on bosses as they did in Vanilla content.

And lets not forget that rotations for classes went up pushing 1-2 buttons to 3-4 buttons.

But I do agree that they nerfed the content at every patch and it all became easier so more people could see it [My guild didn't down KJ until after the patch].

Even so, I can see how you are bored of the game. I played casually in vanilla and more seriously in BC but I've had my moments where I'm bored of raiding and pvp.

Maybe Cataclysm will bring something for you with Blizz bringing back PvP Ranks.

[KuRIoS]

You've touched on this point, but I don't think the game itself has lost it's atsmosphere. In fact, I would say it draws me in more than it ever did with the cutscenes, the improved, linear quests, and the whole "really fighting the bad guy" theme in WoTLK. What has changed is the playerbase. We have sites like this that prosper. We have MMO-Champ, Wowhead, wowheroes, stratfu, just hundreds of sites dedicated to min/maxing. And, these aren't just for the cutting edge players anymore (think askchopper for UO for those of you with that much nostalgia).

I would argue that the game hasn't ruined itself, but that the atmosphere has significantly changed thanks to the increasing ease of spreading information to the players. Imagine if we had the content we have now, but no DBM, recount, questhelper, wowhead, tankspot, AJ, EJ. That's how it was in vanilla.

well we have pvp as well now, which i dont like as well, I dont like the whole pvp for gear thing... but thats just me, other than that... Yes if we didnt have those sites, WoW would be fun again maybe, as instances and new encounters would take some effort.

[ToR]

I completely agree. I started playing WoW in july 2005 and I still miss the old level 60 days.

Raiding is just pathetic, a good portion of today's raiders would not stand a chance in MC/BWL/AQ40/Old Naxx if there was a "vanilla" wow server, you used to have to do more than just aoe down the trash and move out of the fire on bosses. I can't even think of a single boss where you get 1 shotted/wipe the entire raid if you make a mistake (probably because I quit raiding 6 months ago). Aggro is simply not a problem anymore, EVERY class has a way to drop aggro/get out of the fight if they **** up. I cleared 90% of level 60 content (didn't quite finish naxx) and those were the best few months in my wow "career".

Don't get me started on the PvP system >_> BG's were awesome at level 60, for months on end I played WSG/AB to get Rank 11 on an undead priest and I enjoyed every single day of farming honor.

I've quit wow 2-3 times now, for several months at a time and I keep coming back because I simply cannot find a replacement, I tried aion beta for a bit but could not get into it as it just felt like another wow copy, why bother play something trying to be wow when you can just play wow?

Even though I absolutely hate a lot of the changes blizzard has made my subscription is still active and I still login nearly every day.

[Found]

It's not very fun anymore, im sad /cries/

[Confucius]

I started WoW a couple months before TBC came out and I was so angry about the level cap because I was leveling as fast as I could to play with my RL level 60 friend. Now leveling is way to easy imo even more so with RaF, you could do 1-60 in a few days now.