Nostalrius vs. WoW

[FreddyLunch]

Hey guiz,

I'm writing an undergraduate anthropology dissertation on the boundary of the physical and virtual world. I use the nostalrius server as a fieldsite and am studying players of the game in both the physical&virtual world.

Currently, I'm curious as to the reasons people choose Nostalrius over the fully updated and modern version of World of Warcraft. Why do you play on the Nostalrius server rather than the most recent update of WoW?

All feedback is appreciated

Fred

[stif]

i enjoy the strugle of vanilla more that the modern wow but thats just my choise
but for the most part i gues its more like sentimental thing for most of the players and the dream of staying in the happy place of the wow expansions

[PanTheSatyr]

I played from Open Beta to BC and quit, came back for WotLK and quit for good before Cata. Here are the main reasons I play on private realms:

1. Nostalgia. I remember the "good old days" and want to relive them.

2. Less casual. The current retail version of WoW has changed radically from what the game was originally. The majority of those changes favor the casual player and, unfortunately, have made the game less appealing to people like me who like a bit of a challenge - or at least a sense of accomplishment.

3. Depth. There is just so damn much in retail WoW that if I were to start again, I'd have to learn about all the changes and systems added since WotLK. I don't want to be completely clueless in an established ecosystem.

4. Level cap. Retail WoW is designed to get people to level cap quickly - or at least until the beginning of the current expansion. I would basically blow through 90 levels and miss out on all the work already put into the game just to focus on 10 levels - still not understanding everything added to the game since the last time I played retail.

[Druzzil]

Hey guiz,

I'm writing an undergraduate anthropology dissertation on the boundary of the physical and virtual world. I use the nostalrius server as a fieldsite and am studying players of the game in both the physical&virtual world.

Currently, I'm curious as to the reasons people choose Nostalrius over the fully updated and modern version of World of Warcraft. Why do you play on the Nostalrius server rather than the most recent update of WoW?

All feedback is appreciated

Fred

Don't let anyone fool you. We all come here for the ladies.

Talzia is our currently ladycelebrity and, let me tell you, that is one sexy Night Elf.

[Mdmadam]

1) F2P. Subscription model is dying, why WoW is still grasping at it after it has lost over 50% of its player base (most of which are NA players) I will never know, I believe they're simply in denial of their decline.

2) Older is better. The quality of games in general, not just WoW, have gone down noticeably since around 2008-2009. Developers reveal they're in it for the money and sell out to big corps, just like Blizzard did with Activision. Activision can't even keep the quality up of its flagship, Call of Duty which is just the same game with a different title and campaign every year.

3) Older is harder. Difficulty is what keeps true gamers coming back for more. We want our moneys worth. Nostalrius gives us that without charging a dime.

4) Community and support. As much as people complain about the trolling and toxic behavior on this server compared to other private servers, its much worse in retail. And if you ever played retail back in the day you'd know that barrens chat was still barrens chat, even more aggressive back then, everyone was younger and more immature. If you have a thick-skin like you should when you go online then everything will be fine.
Also technical support and general Blizzard support for retail is absolutely atrocious, these are not volunteers, they are paid regardless if they solve your issue or not and 90% do not have a college education of any sort and aren't properly qualified to be answering your questions, but they're cheap to employ so thats the business world for you.

[softclocks]

Rewards: Much prefer the old reward system, where epic gear is more difficult to get a hold of. Never enjoyed the introduction of "welfare epics". It was bad enough by the end of vanilla, but got ridiculous in later expansions.

Class/race disparity: Shaman and Paladins were exclusive, not every race had access to everr class. The classes also played very differenty. Now every class has access to heals and so on.

Challenge: The vanilla version is much more challenging, and quests are more demanding. The raids and instances were more difficult.

Aesthetic appeal: The design is much more streamlined and it feels like the game is designed by a singular vision. The later expansions are a smattering of different design choices and influences. Vanilla had a kind of 'quiet awe' which completely disappeared in subsequent expansions, things you especially bad in mists.

Numbers: The power creep is getting absurd. Characters currently have a million hp and the numbers, though arbitrary in vanilla as well, have lost all meaning.

[Setup]

There isn't one single change that made me abandon retail, it was actually a series of very small changes that rubbed me the wrong way, gave me the sense that the game was moving further from what I wanted.

One element of my disenfranchisement originates from Blizzard's philosophy of everybody wins all the time, which really started taking over during and after WOTLK. Rare rewards are no longer special when they're given to everyone, but that's exactly what Blizzard does these days. If the vanilla content had been released 18 months ago, by now they'd have given black scarab mounts to a third of their population.

They eliminated many of the more important social difficulties in the game.

They've undermined community entirely. You don't need a guild to raid, you don't need to make friends to group. You hit a button, are assigned random strangers, and never speak to them again because they're not part of your community. This is a trend that started with x-realm battlegrounds, but kept building in other areas over time.

They never took PVP balancing seriously, and produced new PVP content at an abysmal rate.

They removed a lot of apparently trivial game elements (soul shards, arrows in your bag, using types of consumables, slower world travel), those types of elements actually add something.

[Backintheda]

Going against the grain here a bit, but hopefully you appreciate a diverse pool of replies.

I play both Nos and retail still. Both have their likes and dislikes for me.

For Nos, like others have stated, it's reliving what got me into Warcraft in the first place. The original was, and still is an amazing game. It's simple and like another member said, kind of a 'challenge' mode as it's much more difficult than retail.

There is a greater sense of community. In Stormwind, and the zones alike, you will always run into someone. Always.

I jumped on retail this morning, and I kid you not, in Stormshield, it was pretty much a ghost town and I am on one of the higher pop realms, too. I enjoy retail for the sake that I have a lot of characters that are established and that I've invested 100s of hours on, I can't give the game up that easily.

For me, they're both great games, but for different reasons.

[gotmilk0112]

It's right in the title of the server, OP. Nostalgia.

This server is running a version of the game from 10 years ago, and people are playing it to re-live those childhood memories of the early days of WoW.

WoW has radically evolved with every new expansion released, and people are wanting to play the old versions of the game, the same way they remember it being when they first started playing 9-10 years ago.

[Santana]

I enjoy retail for the sake that I have a lot of characters that are established and that I've invested 100s of hours on, I can't give the game up that easily.

You're like that bruised girlfriend that everybody pities because she always goes back to her abusive boyfriend.