Nostalrius vs. WoW

[Xaeminos]

Me, personally I'm here for the social aspect and the social aspect only. But, from a research/paper for class, this might be an interesting perspective.

1) For some, I think there is a sense of "unfinished business" here. From what I can tell, there are many people that are in their mid 20's. That makes them low to mid teens when they started playing Vanilla. Chances are, they didn't know as much. They're now back with a better understanding of the game to kick some butt.

2) A sense of superiority. There are things that Blizzard got right in WoD. Not many, but some. The mythic raiding content is getting more and more complex. Getting carried for epics is no longer an option. If you're not carrying your weight, you're going to get exposed. Same goes for PvP. Teams will be playing others of their level. No more squashing terrible PuGs. Again, if you're on a rated team/arena and don't carry your weight, you'll be exposed. Some people don't like this. So what do they do? They go to a game where the skill is less, but it's one where they may know better than others.

Now, I don't think this is the majority. I believe most of us are back because of the sense of accomplishment, the community, or just never having experienced Vanilla wow. But, just saying. The above could be contributing factors also.

[Wizerino]

In order to get some "scientific" results you need to make a poll which is properly designed.
Back to drawing board pls.

he can actually create his own poll based on our answers. please don't next time. just, don't.

[Marcusius]

The questions should be : "why does anyone play on retail anymore, when it's clear that it's an easymode piece of watered down shit?"

[Wowzers]

The only thing I could add is something that became clear to me recently while playing on Nost.

I've played WoW retail from mid-BC through CATA. Raided Wrath. Skipped MoP and leveled characters in WoD but didn't go further than a few 5 mans.

What became clear to me in Vanilla is this: when you have a challenging situation, you can ALWAYS make it easier by simply coming back to the quest after leveling a bit, or getting some gear. All challenges are solvable, given time in the game. You can't make it more difficult in a satisfying way.

I say satisfying, because you can always take your gear off, ignore upgrades, use no weapons and whatnot -- but that isn't a satisfying way to play the game.

Essentially, with things "tuned difficult", all players can solve all problems...eventually. When you want a challenge or that feeling of satisfactions, you can bang your head against the challenge as much as you'd like. Or forego the challenge and come back to it a few levels later, or with a group, or with twink gear, or whatever. Lots of options.

In retail, the baseline challenge was tuned to "easy" and no "make it challenging" option was offered.

I'd probably be playing retail still if there were things like optional heirloom shoulders that re-tuned the difficulty and XP gain for leveling those alts.

I will admit that I had moments of challenges while leveling in WoD, and early in 5-mans in Cata, but they were pretty easily overcome and nowhere near as satisfying as BC (and now Vanilla on Nost.)

[Muhsogyny]

The questions should be : "why does anyone play on retail anymore, when it's clear that it's an easymode piece of watered down shit?"

Personally, I'd find this topic for research more interesting. I have real life friends that still consider retail WoW to be a good game and I cannot understand where they get such horrible standards.

I started playing March 2005 when I was around 14 years old. I saw the signs of the game fundamentally changing starting in WotLK, it greatly accelerated in Cataclysm and I didn't even play MoP because of it. Removal of talent trees was a disastrous decision regarding immersion and "choice-making." WoD was a really cool concept for me so a few months into it I came back and leveled my 85 warrior to 100.

While leveling I realized that Overpower had been removed from warriors. The beloved ability that gave warriors some edge over shitter hunters and rogues. All mana drains had been removed from the game. Many abilities had been removed from the game solely to reduce the number of buttons (complexity), which by all means no one has to even have on their bars if they CHOOSE.

I then watched a video from Asmongold about how much the state of the game had changed. I was fairly high and the realization that the game I went through adolescence with had fundamentally changed for the worse hit me pretty hard. The game was dead to me.

I play on Nostalrius not so much because of the nostalgia, which is nice, but because I need the quality and challenge of a game that actually has a soul.

[Jaykylls]

The familiar but original world is backed by true role play mechanics is why I like the first World of Warcraft. In my experience, Nostalrius is populated with people who respect the challenge and enjoy the gameplay before changes to the core workings of character development; of this I have am accord.