Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

I've noticed Blizzard hardly ever talks about their older content in a positive light, and the few times they do it's typically negative. I think the reason they do this is because their old content isn't their content. Most of the people who made vanilla either no longer work at Blizzard or they were transferred to Project Titan (which eventually became Overwatch). Those who were promoted saw this as THEIR opportunity to make WOW in THEIR image; to put their fingerprint on it so to speak. How did they do this? They started with Cataclysm. That expansion nuked vanilla content out of existence. I also think it would bruise their colossal egos and pride if they saw legacy servers becoming more popular than their main game. They would see it as insulting that people like old content more than the new.

I think what Blizzard is doing is basically stealing from me. In what way? They replaced the vanilla content with something completely different (Cataclysm) and then told me, "sorry but you can't play the vanilla game anymore. You think you can, but you can't." This doesn't happen with any older games I've purchased. For example I have an original copy of Wing Commander 4 that I can play anytime I want. I also own a copy of Project Gotham Racing and an original Xbox to play it on. There's also GOG which has tons of legacy content available. I think it's wrong for Blizzard to make about $100 from me for about three vanilla purchases and then deny me the ability to play it.

WOW's next generation leads have had THREE expansions and THREE chances to show they can drive WOW in the right direction and I believe they've failed. With Legion it looks like they have absolutely no idea what they're doing. If the current WOW Leads were a pro football coach who failed to bring the team to the Super Bowl three times -- and I'm not even talking about winning one, just getting there -- do you know what the owners would do? They would fire and replace him with someone else. I think in a similar sense Michael Morhaime should fire the WOW Leads and replace them with people who can drive the game in a better direction. If nothing else Mr. Morhaime should fire J Allen Brack for being an absolute jerk. "No. You think you do, but you don't". What kind of condescending person would say this to a fan?

Yeah in a way it seems like they hate it but somehow they keep re-using old content...weird.

I think it's the opposite. They keep replacing old content. They've just about revamp all of the old dungeons and raids. It's almost like they hate the old content because they didn't make it.

No I know what you mean and i get the same idea sometimes, I just mean having re-used classic raids/dungeons to the extent that they have always struck me as a little odd with that

Ah. I see now. My apologies friend. And yeah I agree. It's weird that they keep doing that.

During Wotlk, Activision bought Blizzard, and they wanted to completely change the game, mainly dumbing it down so that any brain dead monkey can get through it. Cata, the first 100% Activision content, totally changed the game to this end. They even went as far to fully change 1-60, pissing on everyone that originally worked on the game, and adapting it to fit their new zero effort easy mode philosophy, something WoW was originally never intended for.

But it's amusing to see a company doing exactly the opposite of what got it all the subs to begin with. By making the game difficult and time consuming, players had longevity, aka a reason to stick around paying subs every month. Now you can blow through everything in the game in less than a month, and will probably be bored afterwards. We original players subbed for YEARS. The casuals they replaced us with typically sub for a new expansion, run it for a few months, then quit until the next one comes out. Now which one is more valuable to a business? They thought that by catering the game to casual newbs, they'd attract new players. But with 12M subs, they basically already had everyone already. It makes more sense to maintain and keep what you have, not dump these for new people. Not running legacy servers for former patches further pissed away subs. With each expansion greatly changing the game, it's stupid not to host each one. And with the change of direction after Wotlk, they began to lose more than they gained.

With MoP, they drove the game further down the kiddy rabbit hole with monk pandas, which they ripped right out of Kung Fu Panda. This spoke loudly about who the game was now intended for. Their newer expansions just don't work because like George Lucas with his terrible prequels; they have no idea what originally made the game great or why so many people played it. They don't understand anything about its original design, why that was successful, or why the current one is a bust. All of the right minded developers that knew what they were doing were driven off years ago. What's left are chuckling Activision numnuts selling bobble head pets in between Hearthstone and Overwatch advertisements. But at this point not even they care about the game. They shifted to newer revenues, F2P and MOBA games, which are far more profitable on a revenue vs development scale. WoW is only around because enough players still play it to justify it running. If the subs ever dip low enough, they'll hock it in a heartbeat without bothering to try to save it.

WoW is done. As the MMO it was originally designed to be, it's been done for a long time. It's now a BG/arena MOBA, Facebook AP, and social network. And this is why MMOs in general are done. Not enough players want to actually go out in a world anymore. They want to sit in their city, their garrison, or whatever gaybob farm, and just click through menus to do everything. The most popular games on the internet now, other than MOBA shooters(ie CSGO), are MOBA lane games(ie Dota2). So MMOs, a fad of 2000-2012, are done. You're not going to see another decent proper MMO for a very long time. No one knows how to make one anymore, and no one even wants to try.

Fair wrote:Yeah in a way it seems like they hate it but somehow they keep re-using old content...weird.

They are drawing on the story, characters etc. You can see that in several of their games (Hearthstone, etc.) But they are not building on the MMORPG aspect.