Why is Classic World Of Warcraft so successful?

[Raserisk]

https://youtu.be/uNa4_GW_hkg?t=186

Check out the rest of the Blizzcon 2005 videos and you'll see a development team that is complete polarized from the one today. I believe that they bring up a lot of great points from that time period of why Nostalrius was able to emulate the same success and why so many players strive for that same experience.

[Vaulken]

The original game has pacing (a game design principal) that was slowly diluted until completely removed.

What is pacing?

When ever you do something interesting you get a nice kick of stimulation out of it, it feels real good, you want more, and getting more often makes you need a higher kick to feel the same intensity of sensation as the first. It keeps climbing till you're numb.

Pacing is downtime, preventing activities that could cause this stimulation creep. It comes in the form of:

- Back tracking
- Slow regeneration
- Larger monster health pools
- Corpse running (another form of backtracking)
- Spontaneous world pvp
- Mob tagging
- High respawn rate rape zones (Dun Garok - honestly fuck this place <3)
- Low respawn rate quest monsters
- Low drop rates

Among many, many more things. It is the main drive in forming community by creating bottle necks of progression causing groups of levelers to coalesce in areas to simply have the chance to interact. But its main use is gives a higher value ratio of time spent in game. You remember things better because the higher investment required gives it meaning.

This is basic systems design. This is why mobile games tend to have long cooldowns on high stimulus game interactions. It gives you a large kick and then takes it away for a fixed amount of time, the alternative is to give you down time activities with low stimulus.

Vanilla used this principal very well. It's not present on retail.

[Reserverue]

The original game has pacing (a game design principal) that was slowly diluted until completely removed.

What is pacing?

When ever you do something interesting you get a nice kick of stimulation out of it, it feels real good, you want more, and getting more often makes you need a higher kick to feel the same intensity of sensation as the first. It keeps climbing till you're numb.

Pacing is downtime, preventing activities that could cause this stimulation creep. It comes in the form of:

- Back tracking
- Slow regeneration
- Larger monster health pools
- Corpse running (another form of backtracking)
- Spontaneous world pvp
- Mob tagging
- High respawn rate rape zones (Dun Garok - honestly fuck this place <3)
- Low respawn rate quest monsters
- Low drop rates

Among many, many more things. It is the main drive in forming community by creating bottle necks of progression causing groups of levelers to coalesce in areas to simply have the chance to interact. But its main use is gives a higher value ratio of time spent in game. You remember things better because the higher investment required gives it meaning.

This is basic systems design. This is why mobile games tend to have long cooldowns on high stimulus game interactions. It gives you a large kick and then takes it away for a fixed amount of time, the alternative is to give you down time activities with low stimulus.

Vanilla used this principal very well. It's not present on retail.

Really Low Drop rates / Long respawn timers for Mobs I didnt like because it didn't allow me to play the game.
I actually like downtime in the game, but if the Mob isn't elite or rare,(Or part of a 'rape zone') and it has a respawn rate of over 5-10 minutes then I feel like

warcraft?
waitcraft.

Low drop rates I can understand for 'world items' or blue items from bosses(above<10%)
but when your doing a quest that requires more than 12-15 of something and it only drops off of one mob with a >5-10% drop rate then you spend the whole level doing it and I feel that is more laziness of the designers to not create more quests for the level to help immerse the players

Also those 'run around the world' quests where you go to like 5-6 different zones to complete a chain annoy me if its not lore significant or has a decent $/item/rep/xp reward

But otherwise I agree completely with your point

[Docholy]

Oh how funny the modern world of the internet makes politicians and corporations eat their past words.

[Junmi0043]

They looked so passionate about their game back then.. .

[Vaulken]

Really Low Drop rates / Long respawn timers for Mobs I didnt like because it didn't allow me to play the game.
I actually like downtime in the game, but if the Mob isn't elite or rare,(Or part of a 'rape zone') and it has a respawn rate of over 5-10 minutes then I feel like

warcraft?
waitcraft.

Low drop rates I can understand for 'world items' or blue items from bosses(above<10%)
but when your doing a quest that requires more than 12-15 of something and it only drops off of one mob with a >5-10% drop rate then you spend the whole level doing it and I feel that is more laziness of the designers to not create more quests for the level to help immerse the players

Also those 'run around the world' quests where you go to like 5-6 different zones to complete a chain annoy me if its not lore significant or has a decent $/item/rep/xp reward

But otherwise I agree completely with your point

In classic you hop zones a lot because there are varying level brackets per zone so it's not like you can't weave them into your route. It's more punishing when you're not aware of what to do when (or in which order), especially with how expansive things are, the scope is probably impossible to make a mental plan.

This rolls into progression, the vet will know optimal pathing, able to weave this into a leveling route unhindered while the rookie gets lost in the world as they should.

[Gankfest]

Because I can be an AV whore, and no one will judge me... I miss week long AV's.

[Krumz]

Because Vanilla is a giant fuckin Skinnerbox and we are stupid, little rats

[Pocky]

Because World of Warcraft was a casual MMO that appealed to the masses and became a trend. And before anyone starts crying how hard vanilla was please compare it to the mmorpgs before it like Ultima Online and Everquest.

[metrolol]

Its not. You just never played TBC or Wrath.
Classic is horrible compared to them. Its fun, but its not in any way successful.
If you think the few thousand people here (from all over the world, as opposed to one region like on Live) proves otherwise, you aren't objectively looking at the game.
Almost every change TBC made shows you the imperfections of Classic.