So, my wife and I rolled new toons on retail...

[Adwena]

Retail WoW is a facebook game now

[Sham]

Noone will ever convince me that vanilla quests are better then post-cata. Retail is missing sense of community and feel of world being full of players and alive. But in terms of quality and content it is so much better then vanilla/older expansions..

[Novae]

Noone will ever convince me that vanilla quests are better then post-cata. Retail is missing sense of community and feel of world being full of players and alive. But in terms of quality and content it is so much better then vanilla/older expansions..

I completely respect your opinion. I also like a lot of things about retail. What I'm here for is the kind of "roll your sleeves up" and get busy working and earning type of game. Personal achievement, if you will.

There are many aspects of retail that are really good. I don't hate on WoD like so many others do. One thing that seems to be getting lost on a lot of people passionate about things lately - we're not asking for an either/or situation. I like my retail game but I also want my vanilla/TBC fix.

[winfernal]

Noone will ever convince me that vanilla quests are better then post-cata. Retail is missing sense of community and feel of world being full of players and alive. But in terms of quality and content it is so much better then vanilla/older expansions..

The problem is that all solo/open world (also dungeons apparantly, lol) content is made trivial because of reasons OP described. For me, it doesnt matter how well made the quests are, if i can run around oneshot everything without worrying about pulling too many mobs and die for example, it just throws the quality of the quests in the garbage bin. Trivial content = low quality content for me. So i do think Vanilla quests are better that way, but story-wise etc they're not.

[Sham]

The problem is that all solo/open world (also dungeons apparantly, lol) content is made trivial because of reasons OP described. For me, it doesnt matter how well made the quests are, if i can run around oneshot everything without worrying about pulling too many mobs and die for example, it just throws the quality of the quests in the garbage bin. Trivial content = low quality content for me. So i do think Vanilla quests are better that way, but story-wise etc they're not.

They released 11 years of expansions and content. Can you imagine how much time it would take to level to 110 at same pace if it took at least 3 months to level to 60 during vanilla? And it would grow only worse with future expansions. Obviously they want people to get to cap fast and experience relevant content.

Only leveling quests and dungeons are easy in WoW (and only in older expansions). They are just the means to get to cap. If you want challenging content there is plenty in form of Mythic raids. And challenge mods in Legion look rather insane.

[bellerophon]

I would be the first to argue that not everything in Vanilla was better. But questing?

I understand that they have made a lot of technical advances in questing mechanics, and some/many Vanilla quests were quite boring. But Vanilla overall has way better questing than retail. Retail questing is too convenient, and too streamlined, and moreover, as others have pointed out, the open world has little to no danger and mobs are extremely weak compared to players. Vanilla quests made you go visit locations throughout the zone or multiple zones or even multiple continents when they mattered for the story. Quests weren't just all handed here and all done over there; the zone existed, the story existed, and the quests were something you did on top of that backdrop, leading to an interaction with a living and breathing world. All the flashy technology and cinematic that WoD brings still cannot compare to the true epicness of something like the Grand Masquerade.

It's mind-boggling how some retail players complain about BC quests being too hard and inconvenient.

The problem is that all solo/open world (also dungeons apparantly, lol) content is made trivial because of reasons OP described. For me, it doesnt matter how well made the quests are, if i can run around oneshot everything without worrying about pulling too many mobs and die for example, it just throws the quality of the quests in the garbage bin. Trivial content = low quality content for me. So i do think Vanilla quests are better that way, but story-wise etc they're not.

They released 11 years of expansions and content. Can you imagine how much time it would take to level to 110 at same pace if it took at least 3 months to level to 60 during vanilla? And it would grow only worse with future expansions. Obviously they want people to get to cap fast and experience relevant content.

Only leveling quests and dungeons are easy in WoW (and only in older expansions). They are just the means to get to cap. If you want challenging content there is plenty in form of Mythic raids. And challenge mods in Legion look rather insane.

Obviously, you can't give people the same pace of leveling and make them do it up to 110.

But at least, getting from 1 to 100 (in WoD) should be comparable to getting from 1 to 60 in Vanilla, right? Like in BC where getting from 1 to 70 was no joke.

Getting from 1 to 100 is a complete utter joke in retail and that includes 90 - 100 content which belongs to the current expansion. You can spam dungeon queues and don't even have to quest after hitting 15. Dungeons aren't just easy, they're complete faceroll.

But guess what, level 100 dungeons are only harder than leveling dungeons if you play Normal, because people who join Normal dungeons at 100 for the most part suck at the game and aren't overgeared. Heroic dungeons are literally easier than leveling dungeons, and Mythic dungeons aren't much better for the demographic that is actually incentivized to do them.

Having Mythic raids and Challenge Modes, which most of the playerbase isn't encouraged to even think about doing (there are three other difficulties of raiding), doesn't excuse the game from being completely faceroll in every other aspect.

[Xaverius]

I would be the first to argue that not everything in Vanilla was better. But questing?

You could say that vanilla was about questing, but post-cata is about the story. Each zone got a story, with lots of scripts and streamlining, everything flows nicely and some of them gave great climax (Redridge).

Vanilla has, while not being particularly full of story, those quests you could call epic. You travel from one end of the world to the other, often discovering new locations you've never been into (at least not on this char) before. And going through a location on foot or a mount is something entirely different than just fly to a preset flightmaster. It's long, and eventually it can become annoying (that's why Bli$$ard axed these quest eventually), but you have the feeling of an actual adventure and that you're undertaking an expedition.

For me, this particular feeling is exemplified by quests that send me to Kalimdor as an Alliance. It's a land vast and untamed, and to an Alliance member mostly unknown and makes you feel like you could ride for days and not meet civilization and get totally lost. Sure, that's not true as there's a quest hub or two in each zone, but post-cata has seven.

[Sham]

Vanilla quests made you go visit locations throughout the zone or multiple zones or even multiple continents when they mattered for the story

Ya, because it's so fun to run all over continent for hours as an errand boy, having your quest log full with quests you barely remember where the hell you took and what the hell you need to do. Fk that. I couldnt force myself to get warlock to 60 on Nost. Endeded up being 58 after a year just because it was so tedious and boring to crawl through vanilla content.

Cata made every zone has its own storyline with very good quests flow and great design mechanics. I would personally love if they added optional leveling mode where quests difficulty is much higher and everything is scaled to your level. But in quests design retail >>>>> old wow. Even more so in MoP/WoD/Legion where its now with great cutscenes, animations, voiceovers.

[bellerophon]

I would be the first to argue that not everything in Vanilla was better. But questing?

You could say that vanilla was about questing, but post-cata is about the story. Each zone got a story, with lots of scripts and streamlining, everything flows nicely and some of them gave great climax (Redridge).

I'll admit that post-revamp Redridge isn't bad, actually pretty good even. Duskwood (one of the best Vanilla questing zones), on the other hand, has been nerfed to the ground.

And it's really not just the quests themselves (though there are specific cases in which the Vanilla versions are clearly superior), but the overall leveling experience.

[winfernal]

The problem is that all solo/open world (also dungeons apparantly, lol) content is made trivial because of reasons OP described. For me, it doesnt matter how well made the quests are, if i can run around oneshot everything without worrying about pulling too many mobs and die for example, it just throws the quality of the quests in the garbage bin. Trivial content = low quality content for me. So i do think Vanilla quests are better that way, but story-wise etc they're not.

They released 11 years of expansions and content. Can you imagine how much time it would take to level to 110 at same pace if it took at least 3 months to level to 60 during vanilla? And it would grow only worse with future expansions. Obviously they want people to get to cap fast and experience relevant content.

Only leveling quests and dungeons are easy in WoW (and only in older expansions). They are just the means to get to cap. If you want challenging content there is plenty in form of Mythic raids. And challenge mods in Legion look rather insane.

It's just as easy/trivial at max level questing, except that you usually don't oneshot.