[WoW-Vanilla] Nostalgia, predisposition, and inconveniences thankfully gone
This was before transmogrification.
Doone and Ahtchu had commented on the previous article that some people point out nostalgia as being detrimental to an objective discussion. I do not entirely discard nostalgia as having an effect on our view of the past games, even as we replay them, specially in the field of MMOs, given that those are much more dependent on the psychological marks that they imprint on us mainly through social ties. Still, when talking about individual features and the consequences they have on how we experience the game, I think that we can single out the nostalgic appeals and have a thorough discussion. In fact, what I consider that applies in this case is an issue of predisposition, rather than nostalgia.
If you tell the average Wrath-inserted player that she has to form her group through trade channel, and then work her way to the summoning stone, she will probably answer that she's got dailies to do, ciao. It could also be the case that she is interested in those revived mechanics because she has heard of the benefits of that artificial hurdle, and is willing to do the experiment. There you have it, willing. Veterans, when coming back to the previous systems, acknowledge those benefits in themselves or as opposed to the current system, and are willing to bear the short-term inconveniences. Precisely because most players required the antithetical view of the dungeon system in Wrath, they did not realise how successfully the previous system had been until then, which is why the returning experience can be better, or at least more mindful, than the original experience. It is not nostalgia, but the recognition of something that we have lost. Ee humans are keen on those sentiments.
That said, I think that it is in order to discuss those inconveniences that really were so, so that I stop sounding so nostalgia-addled. First and silliest, I miss my autoloot terribly. I have become used to holding shift while inspecting the loot by now, but then I hold shift in retail WoW and loot nothing, and that drives my perfectionistic self off a cliff. There is no inherent social gain on pressing another key while looting, and it could even be detrimental since I cannot chat while skimming the bodies of the dead.
A mechanic that I would like to pitchfork was actually the mp5 dynamic, albeit based on a personal dislike that may or may not be shared with other veterans. As a restoration druid in TBC, I never had the need to force myself into mp5-stasis, since my heals were rarely supernumerary as they were less potent and immediate but more long-term. I also had more mana regen than my envious priests. This is something I only realised after having played as a holy priest in Archangel, and having experienced the 'joy' of /stopcasting unless I was certain that the heal would land in full. On the other end of the balance was the unlimited mana pool that Wrath brought about, and the saddening consequences: healing would be less strategic and more jittery, reflex-based. It had some fun to it, there is fun in twitchy games such as Diablo 3, but I preferred the older model.
The design of the classes in vanilla is also double-edged. On the one hand, each class has a unique flavour to it, and hybrids are truly hybrids, being able to perform multiple roles almost simultaneously without excelling at any one. On the other hand, there is a very narrow range of choices for serious raiding: if you wanted to tank, you had to be a warrior. Bear tanks were rare, their gear being as uncommon as D3 legendaries; paladins were laughingstock, and forced to dress cloth to do what they were supposed to do, healing. It is a pity, because I wanted to play a blood elf *cough, vanilla*, a human protection paladin.
Then there is the "I could live without that" features such as transmogrification. Yes, it is nice to not look like a power ranger (see the early paladin tiers excepting Judgement), but from the perspective of a roleplayer who filled her bank with pretty dresses and weird tentacled staves (for Japanese e-rp, of course), it was never a necessity. I merely changed my looks upon entering the city, often on a daily basis.
Lastly, I cannot forget that WoW has also come a long way in the area of raiding. The early raids displayed mechanics that are now seen as easy and overused, and the bosses do not sport any fancy abilities that blow your mind. Compare C'Thun to the stepped-up flamboyance that is Yogg-Saron. And yet, how many variations of the "get out of the fire" mechanic are there in Cataclysm (dungeons, I haven't experienced the raids)? I came to expect one per boss encounter. In the early days, since people did not have telltale addons that informed them of upcoming shit on the ground, and since you could barely tell where you stepped on from the overcrowding of 30 active people and 10 afk bots, each one of this now requisite abilities (interrupt this, dodge that) constituted a boss encounter of its own. Now those are just the icing on the cake, because you are still expected to do a little dance while holding two gnomes on your shoulders, and keep pew-pewing yet another dragon.
What about you, what features do you deem indispensable now? What others are you willing to relinquish, for the sake of 2005 MMOs?
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“If you tell the average Wrath-inserted player that she has to form her group through trade channel, and then work her way to the summoning stone, she will probably answer that she’s got dailies to do, ciao.”
To be fair, I think the LFD system was an improvement overall, but it was of the 5 steps forward, 3 steps back sort of thing. We gained more than we lost, but we definitely lost server community/reputation and more active friend lists. On the flip side, we gained not sitting around for an hour in Ironforge trying to find a tank or healer with the very real possibility of never finding someone. We gained not losing a person or two in the middle of Mauradon and spending 30 minutes getting back to the instance AFTER we actually found a replacement (assuming that even happened).
“On the other end of the balance was the unlimited mana pool that Wrath brought about, and the saddening consequences: healing would be less strategic and more jittery, reflex-based. It had some fun to it, there is fun in twitchy games such as Diablo 3, but I preferred the older model.”
Did you try healing in Cataclysm, particularly near the start? Mana was absolutely brutal at times. From what I’ve heard, I think you’ll like Mists healing.
“What about you, what features do you deem indispensable now? What others are you willing to relinquish, for the sake of 2005 MMOs?”
Not having to land at each flight point and then manually continue.
Not getting strength/intellect cloth gear or agility/spirit leather gear or strength mail gear at 60.
Not being unable to at least get an estimate of how people are doing via Recount/World of Logs.
Not having to get a dozen different elixirs and potions for raids to stack all at once.
Not having casters scale terribly because their stats only increase mana pool.
Not having to gather resist gear for every member of the raid for something like Nefarian (hello Onyxia cloak) or Princess in AQ40.
Balkoth recently posted..8/8H at 0%, MoP is Coming, and More!
One thing I miss in a lot of newer games is “doing the impossible”. I loved when I was able to play the game, often against popular opinion of how to do it “properly” and do something amazing. In vanilla WoW, I played a feral Druid. That’s right, when it was mostly a joke, I did it. In our small group, I was mostly a caster, but I could swap gear and offtank. The thing is, though, it took a group of people who knew what my limitations were and what situations were appropriate. But, that’s one reason why I stopped playing at max level in vanilla WoW, because good Druids in raids were healers (well, really, mana batteries for the “real healers”, priests, if they bothered to take you along). Also, itemization sucked and people got cranky when my druid kept asking for rogue gear. I was really shocked when I returned for TBC, and right out of the gate someone was asking me to tank an instance, but that expansion felt like it had the most love for feral Druids in it.
Or in EQ2, I was playing a Necromancer and put a lot of AA into the “healing” abilities. One time in a high end dungeon, a bad pull had the healer go OOM, and I was able to step up and carry the healing for the last little bit. I wasn’t going to displace a real healer, but I could chip in a bit like that.
The only game that it kinda feels I can still do that with is DDO, which is probably why it’s my game of choice currently. I really want to see more options for making interesting characters that don’t conform to standards, and let me do something cool.
Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green recently posted..Why Steam’s Greenlight is a failure
As Psychochild says above I miss the sense of playing a character your way instead of Blizzard’s super-optimised paths of today.
I played Balance druid from late vanilla, never in progression raiding but we heavily hit the heroics in every expansion from TBC onwards and did some casual raiding. I was known for being a ‘support’ caster in my guild. I could CC, single target nuke, combat res, give an emergency mana boost or even off-heal if needed. I loved having that much flexibility and that many tactical options. Nowadays it’s all about the deeps, the class is barely recognisable anymore with the increasingly straight-jacket like eclipse mechanism.
In general the loss of class individuality is very sad. I understand that the communities, especially raid organisers, helped to push this by making some classes mandatory or excluded in the earlier days. But the evolution to today’s totally homogenized buffs, mirrored abilities and general class complexity nerf was a major overreaction.
I do not miss 10 minute pally buffs with material components though!
Telwyn recently posted..The importance of community
I love the idea as well, but as you have acknowledged, hardcore raiding forcing us into the optimal patters made it impossible, even laughable nowadays. At least there was some support roles in TBC that were considered viable by both the players and Blizzard, such as the Shadow Priest. I wish those had prevailed, so that the DPS classes shared at least some responsibility with the rest of the Holy Trinity.
Those pally buffs were indeed nasty – who the hell thought of that??
“At least there was some support roles in TBC that were considered viable by both the players and Blizzard, such as the Shadow Priest. I wish those had prevailed, so that the DPS classes shared at least some responsibility with the rest of the Holy Trinity.”
How does the latter sentence follow from the former (and I’m speaking as a person who has played Shadow since the end of Vanilla, even helped write the original book on spriests at EJ: http://elitistjerks.com/f77/t16977-tbc_shadow_priest_101_how_melt_faces_effectively/ )?
The support roles were removed because they were brought solely for buffs.
“Yo guys, we have an Elemental Shaman who wants to join.”
This led to one of two responses:
1. “Hey, we don’t have one. As long as this guy has a pulse, bring him in!”
2. “Sorry, we have one. All they bring is a caster group buff and we don’t have room for a second.”
Ditto Boomkins. Ditto Arms Warriors. Ditto Spriests. Ditto Enhancement Shaman.
People were brought because of their spec instead of ability or personality.
Shadow Priests were actually in one of the better spots because our main utility (mana return) was directly tied to our DPS. Of course, our DPS was also bad as a result and the running joke was “If anyone is below Balkoth on Brutallus, /gkick.” We straddled an interesting line where you could often remove a healer or two due to our mana return and healing if you gave us to the healer group or remove a DPS or two by giving us to the warlock group spamming Shadowbolt.
But there wasn’t any special responsibility beyond “Actually attack the boss” and “Use your spec buffs.”
Balkoth recently posted..8/8H at 0%, MoP is Coming, and More!
Support roles weren’t removed because they *only* provided buffs. They were removed so that the game could streamline group formats into *strictly* dps/heal/tank. It’s the reason traps, sheep, and other crowd control are absent from common gameplay and why buffs exist homogenously. They made every class, spec, and role more 1-dimensional to simplify their game and support the DF, not for any other reason. In TBC, tanks tanked, healers healed, and DPS CC’d and DPS’d (its true that tanks and healers also occasionally did some CC). Now everyone has strictly 1 role.
So in TBC, support was very important. It wasn’t advisable to do dungeons without CC. Today that’s one of the most clear differences from then to now.
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DF? Dungeon Finder? Only Heroic BC dungeons were ever an issue, and maybe the Heroic Cataclysm ones initially.
And in MoP, DPS will definitely be required to CC in Challenge Modes.
“Support roles weren’t removed because they *only* provided buffs. They were removed so that the game could streamline group formats into *strictly* dps/heal/tank.”
How exactly were those enhancement shaman, elemental shaman, arms warrior, ret paladins, and boomkins doing anything besides DPS? I guess Boomkins could Innervate, but they can still do that.
Or am I misreading that?
Balkoth recently posted..8/8H at 0%, MoP is Coming, and More!
Efficiency is the enemy of expression.
Offerings in the post 2006 era of MMORPGs are chock-full of efficiency. ‘Quest hubs’ are a clear indicator, contrasted against the Test of Lore questline which took a character all over the world to places that had no other concurrent quests taking place.
Talent point systems, as mentioned by others. The list can go on and on.
We play these games for fun, and part of that fun is being expressive of ourselves and *our* chosen playstyles, not the ‘optimized’ or ‘dictated’ one. This is why we are witnessing the pushback we are today.
My fondest memories weren’t downing 4HM in classic, it was duo-manning all of DM W. I was a 0/30/21 druid who tanked and HoT-healed while a 31/x/x lock took care of CC and dps. You won’t see this kind of play in any modern game.
The games are too efficient. It stifles creativity.
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You are right. The reason behind efficiency being invoked by the elitists in the first place was the ramped-up difficulty of raids that allowed for zero mistakes from the participants, which in turn was provoked by an increased use of addons by the hardcore population, deeming the raiding mechanics obsolete. Why do we see now so many mechanics piled on top of each other, creating such a convoluted ‘dance’ against the bosses? Because everybody and her grandmother runs addons such as DBM (me included) which alerts them of fire on the ground and interruptable spells, thus depriving them of the attention factor that they had in the beginning. Couple that with the role efficiency that you mentioned, and you will find ever more difficult raids that prevent players from expressing their creativity, and of course from being human beings and failing now and again.
“Couple that with the role efficiency that you mentioned, and you will find ever more difficult raids that prevent players from expressing their creativity, and of course from being human beings and failing now and again.”
Er, I’m pretty sure that’s called “heroic versus normal modes.” If you want to be more “creative” or have mistakes be allowable, do normals. There’s a ton of margin for error and sub-optimal play.
If you want to be pushed to the brink of what is possible, do heroics.
Balkoth recently posted..8/8H at 0%, MoP is Coming, and More!
I’m not sure Ahtchu or Milady are talking about difficulty. They’re talking about fun and how it’s been systematically streamlined *out* of the game since circa 2006. I believe Milady is saying that as raid difficulty went up, the need for more efficiency also increased which made the experience less fun somehow. As if the efficiency was draining the creativity from the gameplay.
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Of course it was draining creativity from individual players, because it was possible to calculate the optimal gearing strategy/gems/talents/etc.
Anything other than those strategies were, say, 2-3% worse, and guilds wanted players who care enough to be the best and help the raid succeed.
Not those who thought it was fun to be special, sub-optimal snowflakes.
You can’t have encounters tuned to within percents coupled with free expression. People will figure out the optimal solution and go with it.
Balkoth recently posted..8/8H at 0%, MoP is Coming, and More!