What was lost in regards to MMOs are the players. Back then, when WoW launched or other MMOs were young, the general feeling of the players was "Awesome! I can play with others! How cool is that?", whilst today, the general feeling seems to be "Oh no, I have to interact with others!". This, and, back then, people took MMOs more as simulated worlds, whilst today, they are broken down into the numbers and mechanics behind everything to a degree that everyone sees through the world, so to speak... this can't be brought back, I think. Also, as you said, the demise of server communities and a focus on solo players did their part, too. Why bother interacting with others when you can just find random people with the click of a button?
I played Classic for a little over two years. While it was fun, I can certainly see why they changed a lot of the stuff they changed. A level of commitment and time investment that was okay back in 2004 is not okay now by the standards of most gamers. For me, what really made me quit was the realization that I spend way more time trying to put groups together for dungeons than I actually spent running dungeons. Gearing depends mostly on luck or time invested. Basically, IMO. Classic WoW is for a guy who played back in the day whos life really isn't that much different that it was back then. If all you do is go to work and come home, Classic is fun. If you have a job, a wife, and a kid, it's going to be hard trying to find the time to do everything you need to do. A
"Progress" I'd call it "Regression" MMOs aren't the social games they used to be, they're solo oriented grinding games tailored to try and keep you playing as long as possible with tedious grinds and boring systems, the reason why people loved MMOs in the past because other people were around to play with, it was other people that gave you a reason to log in every day, not the off chance that your daily quest might give you a +5 increase to some arbitrary number that becomes obsolete in 3 weeks
There always was grind and the hunt for better gear. Thing is, now it is literally the only thing you do (that, and other extrinsic motivators like achievements, collecting x, y and z). As far as I'm concerned, they might as well just remove anything MMO from Live, make it into the party based single player RPG they originally planned WC3 to be. That could actually be a pretty decent game.
eh, idk not to be one of those toxic FFXIV people, but i play that game solely because my co workers, friends, and friend's friends play it. not to mention it has a nice story with memorable characters and events you can discuss with your friends. the game kind of has dailies but you dont really need to do them for progression, most of your progression comes on the weekends you play with your friends to take on raids, or see if you can carry randoms through challenging content, and in the process you may find new people to play with in the future you wouldnt normally since groups are cross server and there are featured to play cross server in FFXIV (but only within the same server set, north america has 3 server sets with more than 6 servers per set). you rarely play solo in FFXIV unless you are doing story, but in that case its nice beacuse you can read the story at your own pace without people telling you to skip the cutscene
I play FFXIV off and on, and while I like the community and connected story much more in FF. The gameplay in WoW seems years ahead in fun combat mechanics. Mostly talking about boss fights. FF introduced the common visual effects a few years ago, and it feels like every fight became the same, and I could go into a brand new fight and at best there might be one thing that might trip me up if I didn't know about it. While wow has fights where you are on a train, and might use a cannon on the boss, or passing a glowing ball back and forth to dunk it into a receiver at the end of a corrupted hall, or a tournament that gets interrupted. So I bounce as I get tired of each one. The mechanics in FF bosses look amazing, but for some reason, for me at least, just didn't feel fun.
@@krazer9515 have you played end game FFXIV raids? that WoW fight you just described sounds exactly like end game FFXIV fights, with many of them giving you unique objects and abilities just for that fight. tho tbh as you said lets be real, mmorpgs tend to get boring and its only the community that keeps you around and if not you just end up bouncing between mmorpgs, or other genres of game altogether. for me the WoW combat is pretty boring these days after they overhauled their combat system, though FFXIV did the same thing they at least didnt destroy 1/2 of the abilities, tho they did ruin certain classes like astrologian
I have played the later raids, though none of the savage ones. I thought about it a little and I think my issues come down to basic design of each game. FF is built around boss arenas and very linear, sequenced fights. Each group of mobs is distinctly split and the pathway through the instance, while they can be visually amazing, are pretty boring walks. The bosses themselves, again visually impressive, tend to have very standardized mechanics and after ARR, none seem to have really odd bits. WoW's instances, while still linear, break it up with climbing towers, or winding paths that overlap areas you were in to disguise that it is just a straight line. The bosses also have arena areas, but they feel less distinct because they are less often just a circular area to fight in. Also mob groups are positioned much closer together, so there is always the possibility of pulling more then you expected or needing to do more then charge in. I agree with you on the retail release of WoW and specifically the BfA expansion, I think the removal was because of bloat and to add space for more abilities later, but the removal got rid of a lot of flavor from each class. I am actually playing WoW classic, and enjoying that. Even without the massive quality of life improvements that came with later expansions. TLDR: Each game has its good points
For me it's all about that leveling is a journey point. With Classic WoW, and still in the first couple of expansions, the classes felt distinct, there was challenge to leveling, and the journey itself was enjoyable. Even if you never got to the end game it was still fun. There was incentive to make different characters to understand different classes and have the different experience they presented.
Very true end game ruined it for me picked on kicked out laughed at all because I just wanted play an have fun an doing 50k damage an having all the elite food/gear I didn’t have a crew to help me do all that stuff
i'll be honest i've never been a massive fan of WoW's end game. It's always been about the levelling for me, that's why I've really disliked the latest expansions where they rush you through as fast as possible. It doesn't help that there is little difficulty in levelling now as well; I only remember dying once or twice while levelling BFA and in Legion dying not at all!
my worst year I had 123days playtime in one year - high school, eat, sleep, play....I still don't know what really happened that year, but man it was a crazy ride
@@CriticalRoleHighlights when In was deep into UO (and a few other MMOs since, though never quite so addicted :P) the 'veteran' shard. Siege Perilous, was the only one I wanted to play on because it had some awesome features )like perma red and single character slots per account) but it was a primarily American server so I effectively became nocturnal - setting my alarm for 3 am to take part in guild events.
You perfectly summarized my feelings starting at 20:00. When classic launched, I had an amazing nostalgia trip for two weeks or so. After that, it became blatantly obvious how "optimized" everything was, and how this sucked the magic out of everything that made WoW. Everyone just farmed the same dungeons in optimized ways over and over to get their BiS items. As a contrast, I still have screenshots from 15 years ago where we were laughing about a bear having an arrow in its head, jumping into the sea to flee from 10 mobs that didn't stop following us out of a cave. Very simple things fascinated us, we took our time to discover. This magic is now just gone. I'm not even sure if the same experience is possible nowadays honestly. People will have optimized stuff within days and publish it on reddit, and then it becomes public knowledge. Information just didn't travel as fast 15 years ago, and it worked to the game's advantage.
Another thing that was catastrophic for the feeling of immersion in the game was the addition of personal flying mounts in the game after Cataclysm. Everyone wanted to have a flying mount ever since vanilla, and after everyone got one that resulted in streets and areas becoming deserted, since everyone was flying. I remember traveling those long wild distances, meeting strangers, facing players enemies from the opposite faction, discovering, socializing. Its all gone now.
in classic you're an poor adventurer and whole world is open for exploration, in BFA you're a literal god slayer that is task with killing some pigs in garden for 5g...
@@Dawnrunner42 its literally a COLOSSAL shame the direction they took during Warlords with the whole garrison thing. That was the beginning of the end for me, the prioritization of "make the player feel epic and rich" over "make the player feel like a real part of the world". Commander of a solo castle that is home to....just me? Why? Why would anyone want that?? When garrisons were announced i thought they were SURELY a guild thing, and thought it would be an awesome mechanic, having a whole fortress to you are your guildmates! Imagine how good that would have been, requiring some proper socialization and communication with your friends to advance in certain parts of the game! Paying for upgrades with the collective guild bank treasury, launching raids, doing world bosses.... Would have been so cool. Sadly they botched it and turned it into some dumb farmville style "log in, click click click, collect rewards, log out" shit
Or as Rob Halford sang it in the song "Resurrection": "I tried to look too far ahead, and saw the road go to my past instead". I don't think Classic will kill retail. I do however think that Blizzard's past is now a part of their future.
Well if you look at "twitch top games" it is kind of in the face of previous things that could have been Blizzard's. Dota and it's derivatives like LoL. The evolution of that with Hero Shooters. Looking at games/genre's that weren't influenced by Blizzard you're left with Battle Royale and a FPS or two. And you could argue that the card games on there aren't influenced by blizzard, rather it's HearthStone is inspired by them.
It would not kill it, but it may influence the next expansion design content. I found my self just sticking around to help people complete their part of the quest even though I already have mine, giving the healer a free mana potion because probably will not use it. A sense of community, rude people gets pushed out and you'll remember the person that helped out of a tight spot, or just stuck around to help you out with a quest.
Blizzard were getting "cancer" when they merged with activisoin in 2008 with Bobby Kotick as their CEO..... Nowadays it's just metastases of previously good company. No skilled and motivated game designers left in the company to create anything decent at least
I think there's various reasons why MMORPGs stagnated: ● Expensive to develop. ● Too many WOW clones. ● Too much themepark, little sandbox. Look how well Minecraft did. ● RTS derived combat is outdated. ● Game loop designed around keeping the grind alive. ● New monetization techniques, which made these games even more annoying. Blizzard cancelled Titan because it was WOW all over again and they already had the handle of that market. They realized that would have been predating upon themselves, so they did a MOBA, a card game and a hero shooter instead. Everquest Next wasn't launched because devs didn't really have the ability to execute their ambitious vision. They were barely able to develop the hard failure that Everquest Landmark was. Today we have gaming corporations wanting to make a quick buck with yearly releases full of mtx. I'm not holding my breath for the next big MMORPG thing anymore. Too much risk and investment.
I disagree on the theme park vs sandbox argument. Minecraft did well because you could build pretty much anything, including stuff the game didn't really intend to let you build, if you were creative enough. Sandbox MMOs never came close to that, and were more about freedom in interacting with the world that existed, rather than being creative. Sandbox MMOs have always been a niche, and will never have a future beyond that.
@@LasherTimora Ultima Online was very popular, but it didn't have much competence back then. Star Wars Galaxies had a lot of sandbox elements. EVE Online. Everquest Next had a big hype behind it and it was seen as the saviour of a stagnated genre... I'm pretty sure the next big MMORPG, if there has to be one, will have sandbox elements, like "build a castle with your friends" in "dynamic world" were you "make your own adventures"... but yeah, in a genre actually dominated by endless WOW clones, your observation is right. But those clones were developed because it's cheaper, easier, faster and everybody was/is chasing the WOW bucks. It doesn't mean the sandbox isn't viable.
Help! I'm spending 10-15 minutes per day with my child and I don't want him playing video games. I want him to get drunk, leave a girl pregnant, go to church, beat some homeless guys, play soccer and watch TV.
One problem I see in a lot of these types of videos is that they act like we didn't have the internet or things like thottbot or wowhead back in 2004. These types of sites were around back in the EQ days. It wasn't all a big mystery, you could still look things up online and it really wasn't that difficult to find information. WoW at launch was also substantially less punishing than other MMOs at the time and, comparatively, spoon feeds a lot of things. It's also been slightly disapointing to see everyone downplay the role of EQ, which was the WoW of its day, getting people into gaming and even made a few news stories. It seems to have been almost completely eclipsed by WoWs shadow. When it launched, nothing in WoW was really new, it just took things other MMOs did and added refined and polished them.
Agreed. The internet may not have been nearly as flashy back then, but the information was out there. All it took was a simple Google search for curious players to find what they were looking for. I didn't play EQ, but I remember it making waves outside of the usual "gamer" crowd. Hell, I saw trailers for it in theaters when going to see movies like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, marking the first time I had ever seen a video game placed on such a cultural pedestal.
Same thing with Ultima Online. And I think UO was even more "socializing" mmo, because of how crafting worked, housing system and other things. Still, WoW came and people forgot about it.
Many people don't realize how literally true this is. While they were designing WoW, part of the developers "homework" was to go home and play EQ to look for ways to streamline the game without loosing the MMO feel. Jeff Kaplan AKA "Tigole" (short for Tig Ol' Bittes) was the leader of a high end raid guild in EQ. He even posted a profanity laden rant at the EQ devs on the forums once.
I feel like the new age of MMOs will be retro-mmos that rethink classic MMOs like Tibia and RuneScape. WoW has become the quagmire that MMOs have never bothered trying to leave; even the freshest MMOs today are still insanely WoW-like and older MMOs are nothing like it, which makes you wonder what we are missing out on. But new game-design is only one facet of this direction, Minecraft proved that looks aren't everything, and another advantage of going retro means insanely easier visual design, it might even be possible for small independent studios to develop full MMOs that felt as expansive and awesome as Tibia did. All MMOs must be insane to develop, and I'm not surprised that many MMO projects simply run out of money. Going back to 2d sprites like tibia or simpler 3d graphics like RuneScape might be the development limitation that would make such projects financially possible.
It surprised the heck out of me when one of my students, a meager 15 years of age, explained that he played WoW Classic and was loving it. It was the first time I realized that it wasn't purely nostalgia that made people want to spend time and money on the re-release.
everyone is always talking about whether or not wow classic is just nostalgia but no one has talked about the people who never played vanilla and are playing for the first time, including me and 15+ of my school friends. The game is really good, it doesn't matter that it's not exactly the same experience
This is my case exactly. I started playing during Warlords of Draenor and always felt so disconnected story-wise (I badgered my husband about the backstory of certain places and why they were in the state they were in, for example). So with classic, I can kind of experience it all from the start and it honestly is exciting.
I played WoW 11 years ago. Skipped school for a week one time because I was on a roll. Good times. I couldn't keep playing when they introduced the Death Knight though, just giving someone a character that starts at level 55 felt wrong. Burning Crusade was the apex of the game. I pity the fool who didn't live through that. It was my Woodstock. Or something.
That's a funny analogy, because from what I'm hearing, Woodstock was actually a bit of a shitshow (literally, sometimes). Doesn't go for BC, though. To this day my favourite content and since the Cata f̶u̶c̶k̶u̶p̶ revamp the closest to the actual WoW experience.
Not really any big reason to be in the capital cities theese days as the main hubs are in the expansion zones. In Vanilla, BC, wrath, cata and mop, the capital cities were viable main hubs but thats not the case anymore.
@@ZUMTEZ It's still a reminder of the disparity between potential and actual community size. In a romaticised idea of MMOs you'd have your faction's capital and other areas on the road to the current expansion zones be filled with players and not let the whole game be a empty shell of vendors standing in deserted shops in the capital until you reach max level.
Well rounded overview of the recent mmo history. It was nice too see footage of some of the other games of that time, even though it hurts a bit to see all the failed tries. I totally agree that a case study about the differences between current and classic wow will make for an interesting topic, since the games are very different in design philosophy, structure and how it feels to play them. The most noticeable difference I've noticed so far is that classic really feels like a sandbox mmo instead of a theme park mmo, which emphasizes on the community aspect. It's not the exact same as it was then, but there is still a lot more player interaction, since the game is build to encourage it. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for the genre and how classic will hold up over time.
10 years ago i wrote my school finishing presentation on "biochemical reactions while gaming" here in germany in classes biology & ethics (yeah well you had to choose a 2nd class so i went with ethics - which is just as much a schoolsubject, here as religion and history) got only a B+ cause i didn't "put enough emphasis on the dangers" that came along with it. I finished it literally with the words; "...., but what hobby doesn't provide an escape from the real world". i felt like - and still feel like that sums it up perfectly.
excellent video, I've never played WoW, nor do i like MMO's, yet i was entertained the whole way through. You've quickly become one of my favorite youtubers, looking forward to every video.
Wow classic back in 2005 was and still is the greatest gaming experience of my life. There are simply no words to describe how immersive this game was, it’s the only time in my life I felt that my virtual self is more important than my real self.
man i level my night elf's aquatic from quest... the journey from darkshore to westfall through menethil harbor with lvl 35 mobs. i and some other low level druids prolly wouldn't have finished that quest if there was not that lvl 40sth druid in darnassus who grouped us up and escorted us there.
The thing about Classic it's that yes we have the internet to practically do everything and add ons to help. But I never cared or use those because what is missing in an MMO that I feel has lost, is the community and RPG elements. I started at Cataclysm and never experience Vanilla except for the liitle taste in Nostalrius before it got shutdown. Until now that is! The thing that companies and some ppl don't understand is that making the content harder and forcing ppl to work together for the same goal isn't a bad thing. That's how communities, friendships and even love is formed. But because modern MMO'S are essentially single player games with multiplayer elements, it kills the community and it isn't formed because there's no need to group up in the first place except for dungeons raids and a handful of quests.
I believe you are missing a step. It's inconvenience. Getting a group together to do a quest or a dungeon could be a pain (which leads to you wanting to join guilds and make friends to mitigate that). The introduction of LFG and later LFR solves the inconvenience but if the content is so difficult that the average group of randomly thrown together people can't beat it these features are useless. Who would want to use LF if the majority of those groups wipe?
@@luckygozer that's a fair point, and that's why the group finder was a double edged sword. Yeah it's mega convenient for leveling up characters, or if you're pressed for time, but you lose the social aspect that made wow so good back in the day. You had to talk to people to get along through the game.
@@luckygozer The problem with the LFG group finder lies in a few crucial issues: It was one of the first steps in killing off server communities, taking players from numerous different servers, servers you knew nobody on. Since you knew none of these people, they could act anyway they wanted, and there would be no reprecussions; no matter what they did, you would never see them ever again. Because of this issue, Blizzard simply made the dungeons so brainlessly easy that no incompetence could stop the dungeon from being finished, and they teleported everyone to the dungeon; it must not have mattered to Blizzard that removing one of the reasons to actually travel across this big world would be important, they just wanted to make sure dungeon runs with people who might as well be AIs would be able to function at all. The Premade Groups system that Retail WoW has today solves all of these problems; it's the group finder everyone wanted. You could choose which group you wanted to join based on who's in it as well as choose who can be in your own group, and it doesn't streamline the process of running a dungeon like LFD did at all; just the process of creating a group. It's a clear improvement over the archaic, outright aggravating chat channel spam process of finding groups that Classic has today, but unfortunately it was too little, too late for when it was introduced in Retail. WoW was fully integrated into the cross-realm philosophy that's hemorrhaging what little community is left today, and the entirety of the game outside of high-tier dungeons, raids, and PvP content was made to be fully solo-able. Nowadays, the fact that WoW solved the group finder dilemna is just overlooked, because there's not much of a point anymore in Retail. The tragedy is that the game a fantastic group finder system would benefit the most, Classic, is also the game that it's being pushed against the most, as many players despise the idea of a group finder out of fear that it will twist Classic into being more like Retail.
Excellent point. I'd also like to point out that things existed to assist with the game back in the day. If anyone remembers Thottbot, Petopia, DBM and AtlasLoot, you would understand the game better and not need to rely on reading as much. Also, the reason that classic is succeeding is not because of difficulty. It's really not a hard game, a lot of us remember it being difficult because we were new and young, but I am willing to bet that we have even more memories about the friends we have made. Classic enables the community to thrive and doesn't treat you like players in a kennel waiting for a quene. You have to build a reputation for yourself among your peers and even hold a good name to not embarrass your guild. The minute Blizzard took away the community aspect of the server is when they truly lost touch with the beauty that they had created.
The wealth of knowledge available about the game is a plus for me not a negative and so is the static content. I can now play and master every class with tons of resources to help me along the way. Then I can finish the game and do it again with a different class or spec. There is literally a decade of content here and I know because I've done it before. But this time around I get to do it with 15 years of experience behind me and really excel. I can't wait to do it all. There are no negatives here. :)
Idk man. I have to agree with the video, infrmation availability changed games forever. It takes out the discovery part. There is nothing new or nothing that wasn't already done and optimized. I think it trasnform the journey into a list of chores you have to do to get excatly where you expect to get. Its like rewatching a movie, not at all interesting if you know the plot left and right, or you just look up parts in advance you might forgot. I know some ppl is oke with that and actually watch movies multiple times for the atmosphere or play games similary but I can't help to be less excitedd for something I already know how it will play out. The more familiar the less interesting. (this does not apply to the competitive part, that one is perfectly fine and actually advised to be very well known for it to be enjoyable)
@@CraftyF0X I'm going to drop a two paragraph comment here that I actually just posted to help claim the point that I think information availability is not a significant problem when it comes to Classic WoW as opposed to modern Retail WoW. TL;DR: The information isn't shoved in your face while playing; sure it's available and easy accessible, but it's not automatically accessed. It's your choice to get informational add-ons or look up a guide. That choice is taken away in the modern game with an information-saturated UI. After watching this and then your video "How Mods Changed Gaming Forever", I can't help but point out that a massive portion of World of Warcraft's future features (I don't mean game content) were almost exact imitations of community made mods (or rather "Add-ons" in this case). Some of the most controversial features of modern WoW that stemmed from add-ons like automated Looking-for-group/raid, quest help, displaying of enemy health, resources, and buffs, PvE encounter help (Big Wigs/DBM) and many other previously optional UI elements. A big problem with implementing them all is it forced players to interact with the game by using them because everyone else was going to as well; the abundance of readily available information on the UI progressively dumbed down the difficulty and took away the experience of exploring an unknown world where you would have to scrounge for tactical information. Acknowledging the debate that the all-knowing internet will ruin the classic experience: the information about your quest, about the mob you're killing is not advertised in popups, its possible to abstain from googling your issue (or using Thottbot back in 2004) and instead ask another human being if they know in order to drive a social interaction. You don't get that choice in the modern game, all tool-tips and maps have quest info, LFG is the primary way of getting a quest group and the button for it is right there on the objectives tracker, and there is hardly enough people following suit to allow an individual to avoid the non-social experience.
@@gnomechewer1351 While this might very well be the case I didn't say it is particulary a Classic WOW problem, matter in fact I said generally it takes out discovery from all kind of different games and vanilla or not, neither of them are immune to this. And yes you are right in that one does not have to look up things if one doesn't wish to but, since everyone presumanbly does (because of the advantage of knowing right now instead of figuring out over time) you kind of put yourself behind the curve if you refuse to use "guides" or to look up optimal builds, best items in slots etc.
Really succinct and well spoken explanation of the whole situation. I especially appreciated the part where you talked about how MMOs have essentially branched off into several different genres like survival games, MOBAs and looter shooters, because that's something I've felt for a while myself. I don't know how long a game like WoW Classic can last in the current climate, but it was a product of its time and I don't think something like it is going to end up getting made again.
You have stressed the importance of the journey before. On our three week holiday in England, we had a family rail pass, and no itinerary. The object was to travel, explore, see, and sometimes stay awhile. Exploration is truly a big part of games, for me. Perhaps for other people as well.
@ageofbogyo I don't think players object to the "massiveness" of the games (check out world events and world-vs-world in GW2) but the design decisions in MMOs that make soloing a better choice than cooperating strongly with others. It's easy to be a lone wolf in a modern MMO.
Blizzard is following the same pattern with all of its recent games: At release they are great, they impresse the playerbase with a good and deep gameplay and they promise large potential. And then, after a while, the same happens: The accountnants step in. They want to make as much money as soon as possible, they get greedy and destroy the soul of said game. After this the game is bare boned, lifeless, dull, it has become way too easy to be interesting and only serves the purpose to bring as many new players in as possible. It is a shame what this company has become. I will always have Diablo 2 and Brood War, though.
Exactly this. Those greedy goblins aren't happy with making money. They need to make ALL of the money and while your favourite dev making a profit is a good thing, being disrespected for the sake of a few dollars crosses a line that will damage your reputation forever.
@@kurtkrusader Frankly, I'm not even sure it's only the money making, but a complete and utter misunderstanding what made their games so unique and beloved. To me, the fascination in Starcraft was never the PvP and pure game mechanics. It was the beautiful world building and stunning atmosphere they created with such simple means as talking heads, some written text and a couple animated cut scenes. Same goes for both Diablo games (DIII is not Diablo). People kept talking about loot and killing monsters, but the core of the Diablo experience was its setting and story. WoW is just the most jarring example - game design completely driven by numbers and the fear to keep player's limbic system unengaged for even a second. And by removing the ebb and flow of combat and travelling, they essentially ended up with an experience that is flatlining.
@@darkfyraproductions7958 Don't get me wrong, I'm very much for taking in any lore and story a game has to offer. But it has to be worth my while, I'm past wasting my time on boring, badly written exposition. You want my attention as a writer/game designer? You better earn it. I'll appreciate your effort, but only if you respect my time. I didn't play SC2 past the first couple missions but didn't get any of that "Starcraft" feeling from it, so can't say much about its story. Writing was certainly ... hrm. As for Diablo 3, I respectfully disagree - can't remember reading anything good about the story and writing. They certainly have the highest production values and try and put lots and lots of lore and fluff into the game, but to me, nothing ever came together. I'd rather have another Diablo game with one tenth of Diablo 3's exposition and scripted events, but with some meaninful world building and an actual story worth telling.
@@darkfyraproductions7958 Starcraft 2 does not have a strong story. It is basically a race to make Kerrigan human again, only for her to be at first very happy about it and then suddenly changing her heart about the whole thing for no real reason and changing back to be the Zerg Queen again. The rest is just show and wants to give the player many incentives to blow shit up. And now compare that to the story of Starcraft 1. I cannot really explain how you can come to the opinion that SC 2 has a great story. Did you even play that game? The same is true with Diablo 3. They kill off Cain for no fucking reason just to give you more incentives to play on and kill those cultists responsible. He does not even get killed by a real boss, just the henchwoman for the first real one. And then the whole farce with Zoltan Kull. The whole 2nd act you chase down his body and he can see that you are basically an unstoppable killing machine. And what is the first thing that he does after he is finally alive again? He attacks you for no reason whatsoever, just so you can have a boss fight. The whole story is plagued by villians that are acting like they are complete and utter morons. In Act 3 you are fighting "Hell´s best general, a tactical mastermind, the one that the forces of Good fear the most for his cunning plans". This is the enemy who constantly tells you what he wants to do, even when he has caught you by surprise and has the advantage and can really mess with you he appears out of nowhere and is telling you his master plan at the right moment so you can thwart it. And the big twist right at the end? If you have any sense of how story telling works you know this almost from the start of the game, it is plainly obvious right from the start of the game that this will happen eventually. Dumbed down and disrespecting the intelligence of his players, this is what Diablo 3 was. There is a reason this game has been dead for years. This disgrace of an ARPG harmed Blizzard a lot. This is no comparison to the beloved Diablo 2 I play for 18 years now and what I still adore and cherish despite its age and dated graphics.
@@darkfyraproductions7958 You got my intentions wrong, sorry. I was not planning in attacking you or insulting you even. In the end it is just video games, a product we use for entertainment and maybe some emotional relief. I am a bit older, so I played those games back in the day. You know, before the big war, when we still had an emperor. :-) I understand the pattern of the gaming industry, but I do not like it as greed disgusts me. With Blizzard especially it is hard for me because in my 20s this was MY studio, the one that made all of my favourite games. And now I am old and disappointed and therefore maybe bitter. I want to recommend Larian Studios to you for the best indie products out there in the last 5 years. They are a lof of fun, and if you are looking for great contemporary RPGs, pls try Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2. Great games both of them.
I made friends with two random players from my server yesterday. I played with them for hours. I know about their personal life now. This just doesn't happen in other games.
really? i have these experiences playing basically any online game. i met some of my best online friends through League of Legends, Apex Legends, and especially gacha games like FGO that have active discord communities
@@authenticinari-fox8164 yea but it is different when all of this happens in a massiv multiplayer online WORLD. Sure you can make friends literaly everywhere online but that's not the point, its's the world and the interaction in the game which makes it so unique.
@@ijachoel eh is it really? i am actually an mmorpg player that played the original EverQuest and WoW when they released (granted i was only in elementary school when i played EverQuest lol and middle school when i played WoW) as well as Runescape, and ya the interactions were cool especially since i was an RP server main, but you get that same experience playing DND with your friends (ya i am a nerd sry), and there are services where you can play DND online now to itch your RP needs. i honestly think the MMORPG experience can be found anywhere if you bring that same mentality from mmorpg over, to be a good teammate and to immerse yourself in the lore.
There's also people who will play one or another but not both while now people can only play vanilla, it's also a way to split community, but I don't see it's a bad thing anyway.
While copying would be better, idk if I can trust blizzard to make that an option. "we told you you didn't want to. You can start a new on a new server or keep playing classics"
Thank you very much for this amazing video ! It could be interesting to make an after-video because even you're not the only youtuber about the subject, you have a propoer type really enjoyable
7:51 "Titan" was never officially announced - the rumours were based on a leaked internal time map. Instead we got Overwatch and later they said it was made from the scrapped Titan.
The success of these games is in their ability to create a community that can become a fandom, not necessarily in any specific mechanics. That’s my guess anyways. The next big thing will probably be something that encourages a good community.
What I figured to be one of the biggest things why WoW always was on top of other mmos is the fact that other mmos try to get you hooked/addicted asap while wow hooks/addicts you very naturally whole you play.
Good vid. That lack of mystery leading to eventual frustration is probably why I for one have not been rushing to play Classic. The past was another country.
Very interesting video. You should do one about the games that came before WoW. What was the first MMO and how did it eventually lead to WoW? I think that would be very interesting .
I started playing WoW mid Wrath and never played vanilla when it was current, but I started playing on vanilla private servers in 2015 and really fell in love with the old school game design philosophy. What I love about vanilla is that you can tell the designers LOVED old school pen and paper rpgs and they thought deeply about how to design that game.
I never played WoW but I was a Lotro veteran for over 10 years. This hit really deep. While I’ve moved on to team-oriented shooters and mobas, which give more of a short-term sense of satisfaction, at least once a year I get that MMO itch. It’s a struggle. You know the ship has long sailed for MMO’s but you still hope that the next big thing is going to come out. I made great friends over time and even flew to other continents to meet them. But it really feels like we’re never going to get to experience that kind of thing again and it saddens me profoundly.
I play on a lotro legendary ( classic) server. Every 3 months the roll out previous expansions and it offers player a chance to play max level content when max level was far below 120.
If I’m having this much fun in classic in 2019 imagine booting it up in 2004...no wonder people ruined their lives playing it non stop. Can’t wait for whatever the new wow is
I expect an alternate history for Classic. New expansions rather than the older ones. And I hope that the core gameplay will stay the same, if they choose to do so.
12:55 I made friends leveling and raiding in vanilla WoW that lasted years. I am still pals with some of them on social media today (many years after I stopped playing in WotlK). The game was tuned so well to forming relationships to do group quests, world PvP, dungeons, raids, crafting, auction/economy, etc. I'm glad to see Classic out there giving players new and old to vanilla the chance to have that adventure.
Fun fact regarding Star Citizen, it was never pitched as an MMO originally. Personally I am only really interested in the singleplayer element to any great degree (being an old freespace fan). Howevvvveeerrr, I will give it a bit more leeway in that it has given me experiences even in its weird state that no other game has. I have certainly got my base pledge worth of enjoyment and time out of the still in development game.
13:45 - My WoW Classic experience as a new WoW player : Day 1 : D-Day. Full of hopes & hype. I group with a player for questing. Day 2 : I sent them a PM...Insta blocked. Trough of Disillusionment. One of the worst feeling I had *ever* had. Players are older now.
I find it natural in the way you propose it that the MMO genre has died down. It's been pushed to the limits. Just wait till the first VR MMO comes out, and its going to be WoW all over again, just with complete immersion.
I'm a but sad you didnt being the parallel of runescape and old school runescape and the now shut down runecape classic (rip). Wow should go the osrs route and develope classic wow and retail wow separate
Doubt that'll happen. Theyve repeatedly called Classic a "museum piece". Not to mention there are a lot of purists who want an unaltered Vanilla experience, and messing with that could send much of the Classic playerbase back to private servers (especially considering most dont trust modern Blizzard to not screw up new Classic content) Plus, thatd entail a second continuity for lore multimedia moving forward and i just dont see Blizzard doing that
@@BroadwayRonMexico I mean maybe u didnt say this but the runescape community was the same as the wow community before osrs. They had runescape 3 and classic runecape (the first version) many people went to runescape classic for a while and they did 0 updates to keep the purists happy, that game is now gone because everyone got bored of the same thing. When they made osrs it was under a user vote and any and all content put into osrs is voted on. If wow voted on everything they would have guaranteed people staying if they vote yes for no for changes like in osrs.
@@umadbroimatroll7918 Private servers like Nostalrius have proven that pure Vanilla servers are more than capable of maintaining stable, sizeable populations after 15 years of "the same thing". WoW and Runescape are different games with different communities made by different companies. If Blizzard wants to keep the ball running when Classic loses some of its steam, i think theyre *far* more likely to roll out TBC and Wrath servers (both have a decent population of private servers, so interest is there) rather than turning Classic into a separate progressively updated MMO. Modern Blizzard is one of the most hated and distrusted companies in gaming, but old Blizzard is still beloved and nostalgia releases still make them a lot of money. TBC and Wrath servers are the obvious course for them to take
"Machines harvest our bioelectric energy for all eternity" It turns out humans actually don't have that much bioelectric energy. So the machines would probably just cut our brains out and put them in jars to run scenarios past us to utilize our human intuition and common sense. WHAT A COMFORTING THOUGHT
My headcanon on this is that even the underworld and resistance in The Matrix was just a higher level simulation. We're talking simulaception. And I hope exploring this idea is where that new Matrix movie is going.
2:20 - Well, that IS pretty accurate.... 22:00 - You also seem to forget that classes in classic are A LOT STRONGER than they were in vanilla, since all classes have access to talents and abilities that were introduced during the lifecycle of the expansion, and buffing all classes by a significant amount each time. This in turn makes the content a LOT EASIER than it used to be, since by virtue of having players be stronger than back in the day. Something like Shamans starting out with chain heal, the best heal in all of vanilla which was introduced after BWL, is a really big deal towards ensuring everyone survives and other classes have similar abilities to help make things easier. As such, players wont really be competing on equal terms to players in vanilla until we get to AQ40, by which time these buffs had already been released in live wow.
I only ever played (to max level) 3 classes in my prior run through WoW: Druid, Shaman, & Mage. To circumvent some of the "been there, done that" feeling you described, this time I am playing completely different classes: Rogue, Warlock, & Hunter. So for me there is still some discovery.
Even though I couldn't care less about MMOs and WoW especially, I am a simple man... I see NeverKnowsBest uploading a new video, I click play and like. And I never regret that impulse!
Though I started playing the game in TBC, I definitely have the fondest memories in Wrath - it's the expansion where I *really* took off as a raider. I'll never forget the journey I had in Wrath. I started off as a nobody who joined a random guild for Naxx on a whim, as a shadow priest with the intention of eventually gearing up as a healer - and ended the expansion as the disc priest on the realm first kill of Heroic Lich King. Man, what a highlight - there's no feeling like downing the iconic end boss of the most popular expansion of all time and having your name spammed across the entire server to everyone who was online at the time. Dalaran was so populated on a Friday night it was actually nuts. I remember having to install an addon called Spamthrottle because without it, trade chat would literally scroll so fast that you wouldn't be able to read it.
wow dude.... now thats what i call a good video! Nice sounding voice... a good informative and catching script. I really enjoyed that, so thank you alot! And for all classics out there , enjoy it for as long as it lasts :) Have fun and be nice guys! See you in Azeroth!
13:35 I'm not fully convinced about this, I've made a number of friends in games like PWI but I dont think this had anything to do with the 'journey'. Imo, I think it was more to do with the fact that I was clueless when I played my first MMO and that made me rely on friends and people around me to progress. I doubt newer games can achieve this to the same extent because most players might have played other MMOs and know what they're doing. Making players focus on story is a bit tricky because most MMOs that have stories are mediocre at best (GW2 is a good example for this). I think Archeage is a great example for a game with a terrible story and great end game content, players still make a lot of friends through guilds and teaming up for common objectives since the maps are equi-populated through trading mechanics. Teaming up/ meeting other players is really important but I think it should be solved with well designed end game systems to encourage players to communicate with other players. Nice video btw, I think our best bet is hope we get developers that can look at their game from the eyes of their players because personally I think the biggest issue is that devs lose the passion they started out with and once it's a multi-million dollar business, their priorities change and are no longer willing to take risks.
I think the best thing they could possibly do with wow classic is to make it an "alt-history" version. Make all new expansions, hire the old writers and let them go nuts with what-ifs, craft a whole new world history line. New quests, new actors, new events but be very careful about touching the mechanical side of things. If they manage to understand the attraction of vanilla but also the flaws in rehashing content they could possibly create a new golden age for the game.
@@konradvonschnitzeldorf6506 No way transmog. Not seeing what you wair? That is much worse than flying. Like not LFG is the core problem but disconnection of instances from the world. Searching is ok, getting ported in + finding all quests at the entrance is killing the world.
@@KVPMD It gets stale 2 weeks after new content when everyone has the exact same gear. Transmog adds another dimension to the game. And a reason for players to run old content
eh I've got tons of hours in that game, and it's great the game is fun and and the story is enjoyable it's just it doesn't feel like an MMO to me at at least, to how live wow is let alone classic
1:35 I'm nearly 7 years clean from WoW, but every time I see an ad for a new expansion, I think "Oh, maybe I should try it out..." I don't think it ever truly goes away.
What World of Warcraft was that it worked well with Human Nature. Humans are designed to struggle and overcome obstacle, to socially interact with other people and make friends, to invest their time into something and see the fruits of their labor. Today world of warcraft has become a Solo game where everyone gets trophies for putting no effort in because a small group of people dont like to put effort into anything. This is why WOW today has a dwindling player base. The direction that WOW took to make the entitled crowd happy killed its game. MMORPGS of the Future MUST work well with Human Nature. No they do not need to be like UO was where getting 100% in a skill like Provoke or Taming could take a year. However They do need to be close to Vanilla WOW where leveling takes time, you have to naturally interact with people to accomplish goals in the game, and yes the game needs some time sinks. Think of it this way. If tomorrow computers and Robots did everything Humans needed to do to survive what do you think would happen? Over the course of several years people would start dying off in large numbers because their lives would have 0 meaning. There is no Utopia where Humans can have every need catered to them and Humans do not devolve into a mess. Humans by nature are designed to struggle, have work to do every day while they are capable, and need to continually to invest themselves into life. We are not some Elf like race that can take to the trees and be happy singing all day and doing nothing else. That is not how Humans are even though nut jobs think that would be great because they dont want to lift a finger to do anything. These are the people that tend to die early because their lives have no purpose. MMORPGS NEED to have a purpose and need continued investment.
I agree. Though the irony is WoW achieved it's massive success by being more convenient with more instant gratification than it's predecessors. So I'm not surprised Blizzard tried to keep ahead of the competition by becoming more casual over time. In the process though the entire MMO genre just died out. I have some hope for Star Citizen because if it sticks to it's gun about being a real sim it has a chance. So long as it doesn't cave, and add fast travel or easy ways to make money. If it ever comes out that is.
John Croyle people like you are laughable. There is scientific data that shows that humans need struggle and purpose in life. There is no Utopia for humans as much as people want to tell you otherwise.
I think Blizzard has done reasonably well recently in encouraging social interactions in recent years. The 3 big pillars of content in WoW currently are raiding, mythic+, and rated pvp. None of these can be joined via a queue system and require you to form you own groups for them. There are tools in game to facilitate finding other people easily for this however since you are forced to manually create groups you are more likely to play with people you already know or pick names you remember seeing before. Additionally as you increase in difficulty level in these activities requirements for coordination, and thus communication, increase. I think this is a good balance because it lets new players dip their toes into easy content anonymously.
22:00 one thing of note, pretty much everyone agrees that dungeon and raid content seems to be de-tuned from vanilla, combined with the fact that private servers OVER tuned things
I think its a combination of significantly better computers. 144 fps locked with no drops and much faster internet. Combined with a lot more experience from most players. A better understanding of how to properly play makes all the raids and dungeons way easier than it was in vanilla. The game is super simple when everyone knows what to do ans how to do it properly
@@rockymack1083 Not quite, there's a lot of anecdotal reports of certain bosses using abilities significantly less often or not at all, and I think some folks even did hp comparisons
So, I know the video is meant to focus on Classic and what it could mean for the future. But. It seemed odd that with all of the MMOs you showed which "failed", you neglected to show the one which succeeded. The one which in many respects may actually be outpacing the more modern version of WoW in popularity and playerbase. Final Fantasy 14. Something I've come to realize after watching so many videos on vanilla WoW is that once upon a time content came at a rather steady pace, and this is something FFXIV is excelling at. On top of this a big complaint I've always heard about FFXIV is the GCD, but playing Classic has made me realize vanilla WoW's GCD didn't feel much faster at all. There's a lot you can compare between Classic and FFXIV, in how at an early level you feel slow and as you reach higher levels things feel so much quicker. Although I'd argue FFXIV does a much better job of making each of their classes feel exciting and relevant than Classic ever did.
There's also a comparison to be made about the journey aspect. For FFXIV it is mainly story focused, with some playing purely to experience it rather than framing the end-game as the "beginning".
Good overview. After not playing the game since the end of Pandaria, I was convinced to dip into classic. It holds a slight bit of rosy nostalgia, but it’s not the same. I’ve changed, the way I want to spend my time has changed. So many quality of life changes have yet to be made. I think my character will be stuck at level 34 forever.
It's funny how I don't have dungeon queue but I don't mind going around "LF2M Deadmines" getting a full group together, running down to the dungeon entrance as a team, then chatting and working together figuring out how to beat the challenge that was Dead Mines.
So between his overwhelming lack of understanding for the desire of Classic, and the botched launch of WCIII- refunded... is this J. Allen Brack fellow a knob, or does it have more to do with Activision? Whats going on with this guy?
What was lost in regards to MMOs are the players. Back then, when WoW launched or other MMOs were young, the general feeling of the players was "Awesome! I can play with others! How cool is that?", whilst today, the general feeling seems to be "Oh no, I have to interact with others!". This, and, back then, people took MMOs more as simulated worlds, whilst today, they are broken down into the numbers and mechanics behind everything to a degree that everyone sees through the world, so to speak... this can't be brought back, I think. Also, as you said, the demise of server communities and a focus on solo players did their part, too. Why bother interacting with others when you can just find random people with the click of a button?
I played Classic for a little over two years. While it was fun, I can certainly see why they changed a lot of the stuff they changed. A level of commitment and time investment that was okay back in 2004 is not okay now by the standards of most gamers. For me, what really made me quit was the realization that I spend way more time trying to put groups together for dungeons than I actually spent running dungeons. Gearing depends mostly on luck or time invested. Basically, IMO. Classic WoW is for a guy who played back in the day whos life really isn't that much different that it was back then. If all you do is go to work and come home, Classic is fun. If you have a job, a wife, and a kid, it's going to be hard trying to find the time to do everything you need to do. A
Well, looks like I’m gonna have to poop for 30 minutes.
Say hello to hemorrhoids for me
With Wow Classic on my laptop, I can poop for hours!
"Progress" I'd call it "Regression"
MMOs aren't the social games they used to be, they're solo oriented grinding games tailored to try and keep you playing as long as possible with tedious grinds and boring systems, the reason why people loved MMOs in the past because other people were around to play with, it was other people that gave you a reason to log in every day, not the off chance that your daily quest might give you a +5 increase to some arbitrary number that becomes obsolete in 3 weeks
There always was grind and the hunt for better gear. Thing is, now it is literally the only thing you do (that, and other extrinsic motivators like achievements, collecting x, y and z).
As far as I'm concerned, they might as well just remove anything MMO from Live, make it into the party based single player RPG they originally planned WC3 to be. That could actually be a pretty decent game.
eh, idk not to be one of those toxic FFXIV people, but i play that game solely because my co workers, friends, and friend's friends play it. not to mention it has a nice story with memorable characters and events you can discuss with your friends. the game kind of has dailies but you dont really need to do them for progression, most of your progression comes on the weekends you play with your friends to take on raids, or see if you can carry randoms through challenging content, and in the process you may find new people to play with in the future you wouldnt normally since groups are cross server and there are featured to play cross server in FFXIV (but only within the same server set, north america has 3 server sets with more than 6 servers per set). you rarely play solo in FFXIV unless you are doing story, but in that case its nice beacuse you can read the story at your own pace without people telling you to skip the cutscene
I play FFXIV off and on, and while I like the community and connected story much more in FF. The gameplay in WoW seems years ahead in fun combat mechanics. Mostly talking about boss fights. FF introduced the common visual effects a few years ago, and it feels like every fight became the same, and I could go into a brand new fight and at best there might be one thing that might trip me up if I didn't know about it. While wow has fights where you are on a train, and might use a cannon on the boss, or passing a glowing ball back and forth to dunk it into a receiver at the end of a corrupted hall, or a tournament that gets interrupted. So I bounce as I get tired of each one. The mechanics in FF bosses look amazing, but for some reason, for me at least, just didn't feel fun.
@@krazer9515 have you played end game FFXIV raids? that WoW fight you just described sounds exactly like end game FFXIV fights, with many of them giving you unique objects and abilities just for that fight. tho tbh as you said lets be real, mmorpgs tend to get boring and its only the community that keeps you around and if not you just end up bouncing between mmorpgs, or other genres of game altogether. for me the WoW combat is pretty boring these days after they overhauled their combat system, though FFXIV did the same thing they at least didnt destroy 1/2 of the abilities, tho they did ruin certain classes like astrologian
I have played the later raids, though none of the savage ones. I thought about it a little and I think my issues come down to basic design of each game. FF is built around boss arenas and very linear, sequenced fights. Each group of mobs is distinctly split and the pathway through the instance, while they can be visually amazing, are pretty boring walks. The bosses themselves, again visually impressive, tend to have very standardized mechanics and after ARR, none seem to have really odd bits. WoW's instances, while still linear, break it up with climbing towers, or winding paths that overlap areas you were in to disguise that it is just a straight line. The bosses also have arena areas, but they feel less distinct because they are less often just a circular area to fight in. Also mob groups are positioned much closer together, so there is always the possibility of pulling more then you expected or needing to do more then charge in.
I agree with you on the retail release of WoW and specifically the BfA expansion, I think the removal was because of bloat and to add space for more abilities later, but the removal got rid of a lot of flavor from each class. I am actually playing WoW classic, and enjoying that. Even without the massive quality of life improvements that came with later expansions.
TLDR: Each game has its good points
For me it's all about that leveling is a journey point. With Classic WoW, and still in the first couple of expansions, the classes felt distinct, there was challenge to leveling, and the journey itself was enjoyable. Even if you never got to the end game it was still fun. There was incentive to make different characters to understand different classes and have the different experience they presented.
Very true end game ruined it for me picked on kicked out laughed at all because I just wanted play an have fun an doing 50k damage an having all the elite food/gear I didn’t have a crew to help me do all that stuff
i'll be honest i've never been a massive fan of WoW's end game. It's always been about the levelling for me, that's why I've really disliked the latest expansions where they rush you through as fast as possible. It doesn't help that there is little difficulty in levelling now as well; I only remember dying once or twice while levelling BFA and in Legion dying not at all!
abnormalplainz
HAHA - Ralph from the Simpsons
@@kevinworley7096 That was Nelson.
Asmodeus Azarak
Good looking out. Saved a good joke partially!
A dangerous 16hours a day, haha those are rookie numbers.
my worst year I had 123days playtime in one year - high school, eat, sleep, play....I still don't know what really happened that year, but man it was a crazy ride
@@danielmerka4883 I didnt get that into WOW but I was a total Ultima Online addict in the late 90s - I pretty much dedicated 4 years to it :P
Yup. I had 6 days straight, Wednesday morning to Monday morning, at LAN parties on a regular basis.
yeah fucking casuals. True gamers play 32 hours a day.
@@CriticalRoleHighlights when In was deep into UO (and a few other MMOs since, though never quite so addicted :P) the 'veteran' shard. Siege Perilous, was the only one I wanted to play on because it had some awesome features )like perma red and single character slots per account) but it was a primarily American server so I effectively became nocturnal - setting my alarm for 3 am to take part in guild events.
You perfectly summarized my feelings starting at 20:00. When classic launched, I had an amazing nostalgia trip for two weeks or so. After that, it became blatantly obvious how "optimized" everything was, and how this sucked the magic out of everything that made WoW. Everyone just farmed the same dungeons in optimized ways over and over to get their BiS items. As a contrast, I still have screenshots from 15 years ago where we were laughing about a bear having an arrow in its head, jumping into the sea to flee from 10 mobs that didn't stop following us out of a cave. Very simple things fascinated us, we took our time to discover. This magic is now just gone. I'm not even sure if the same experience is possible nowadays honestly. People will have optimized stuff within days and publish it on reddit, and then it becomes public knowledge. Information just didn't travel as fast 15 years ago, and it worked to the game's advantage.
we need some giga chad that develops a guide resistant system and implements it
Another thing that was catastrophic for the feeling of immersion in the game was the addition of personal flying mounts in the game after Cataclysm. Everyone wanted to have a flying mount ever since vanilla, and after everyone got one that resulted in streets and areas becoming deserted, since everyone was flying. I remember traveling those long wild distances, meeting strangers, facing players enemies from the opposite faction, discovering, socializing. Its all gone now.
in classic you're an poor adventurer and whole world is open for exploration, in BFA you're a literal god slayer that is task with killing some pigs in garden for 5g...
That's the one point in classic that always makes me come back to the older WoW expansions.
Underrated post
@@Dawnrunner42 its literally a COLOSSAL shame the direction they took during Warlords with the whole garrison thing. That was the beginning of the end for me, the prioritization of "make the player feel epic and rich" over "make the player feel like a real part of the world". Commander of a solo castle that is home to....just me? Why? Why would anyone want that?? When garrisons were announced i thought they were SURELY a guild thing, and thought it would be an awesome mechanic, having a whole fortress to you are your guildmates! Imagine how good that would have been, requiring some proper socialization and communication with your friends to advance in certain parts of the game! Paying for upgrades with the collective guild bank treasury, launching raids, doing world bosses.... Would have been so cool. Sadly they botched it and turned it into some dumb farmville style "log in, click click click, collect rewards, log out" shit
@@QW-lm1ie the beginning of the end were the panda bears
@@whinegummi6329 No.
Imagine blizzards past killing their own future.
Chromie would be proud!
Or as Rob Halford sang it in the song "Resurrection":
"I tried to look too far ahead, and saw the road go to my past instead".
I don't think Classic will kill retail. I do however think that Blizzard's past is now a part of their future.
Well if you look at "twitch top games" it is kind of in the face of previous things that could have been Blizzard's.
Dota and it's derivatives like LoL. The evolution of that with Hero Shooters. Looking at games/genre's that weren't influenced by Blizzard you're left with Battle Royale and a FPS or two. And you could argue that the card games on there aren't influenced by blizzard, rather it's HearthStone is inspired by them.
It would not kill it, but it may influence the next expansion design content. I found my self just sticking around to help people complete their part of the quest even though I already have mine, giving the healer a free mana potion because probably will not use it. A sense of community, rude people gets pushed out and you'll remember the person that helped out of a tight spot, or just stuck around to help you out with a quest.
Blizzard were getting "cancer" when they merged with activisoin in 2008 with Bobby Kotick as their CEO..... Nowadays it's just metastases of previously good company. No skilled and motivated game designers left in the company to create anything decent at least
I think there's various reasons why MMORPGs stagnated:
● Expensive to develop.
● Too many WOW clones.
● Too much themepark, little sandbox. Look how well Minecraft did.
● RTS derived combat is outdated.
● Game loop designed around keeping the grind alive.
● New monetization techniques, which made these games even more annoying.
Blizzard cancelled Titan because it was WOW all over again and they already had the handle of that market. They realized that would have been predating upon themselves, so they did a MOBA, a card game and a hero shooter instead.
Everquest Next wasn't launched because devs didn't really have the ability to execute their ambitious vision. They were barely able to develop the hard failure that Everquest Landmark was.
Today we have gaming corporations wanting to make a quick buck with yearly releases full of mtx. I'm not holding my breath for the next big MMORPG thing anymore. Too much risk and investment.
I disagree on the theme park vs sandbox argument. Minecraft did well because you could build pretty much anything, including stuff the game didn't really intend to let you build, if you were creative enough. Sandbox MMOs never came close to that, and were more about freedom in interacting with the world that existed, rather than being creative. Sandbox MMOs have always been a niche, and will never have a future beyond that.
@@LasherTimora Ultima Online was very popular, but it didn't have much competence back then. Star Wars Galaxies had a lot of sandbox elements. EVE Online. Everquest Next had a big hype behind it and it was seen as the saviour of a stagnated genre...
I'm pretty sure the next big MMORPG, if there has to be one, will have sandbox elements, like "build a castle with your friends" in "dynamic world" were you "make your own adventures"... but yeah, in a genre actually dominated by endless WOW clones, your observation is right. But those clones were developed because it's cheaper, easier, faster and everybody was/is chasing the WOW bucks. It doesn't mean the sandbox isn't viable.
Not even close pal
"Games are dangerous" is code for "I'm incapable of raising my children"
CapitalDColen “help my teenager is moody!”
@@dustinsmith2021 "Help I am completely in denial how I was as a kid"
Ever wondered why people are such worthless A-holes Today? Its MMOs, bad limp bizkit albums and HBO. Parents nowhere to be found.
Umm, maybe don't let them play all day?
Help! I'm spending 10-15 minutes per day with my child and I don't want him playing video games. I want him to get drunk, leave a girl pregnant, go to church, beat some homeless guys, play soccer and watch TV.
I've heard so many whispery British accents on CZcams they've become indistinguishable from each other
atariDC_ it's a mystery yet to be solved why CZcams recommends all these British accounts
GGFOTN
good content
Some of them may be voice actors..
Americans are more persuaded by British accents. Get a British guy to say anything and a stupid American will believe him.
Whispery Brits > American "HELLO GUYS, SMASH THAT LIKE BUTTON!!!!!!!"
I burst out laughing when I saw the estimated launch date for starcitizen on their kickstarter was in 2014, hahaha
One problem I see in a lot of these types of videos is that they act like we didn't have the internet or things like thottbot or wowhead back in 2004. These types of sites were around back in the EQ days. It wasn't all a big mystery, you could still look things up online and it really wasn't that difficult to find information. WoW at launch was also substantially less punishing than other MMOs at the time and, comparatively, spoon feeds a lot of things.
It's also been slightly disapointing to see everyone downplay the role of EQ, which was the WoW of its day, getting people into gaming and even made a few news stories. It seems to have been almost completely eclipsed by WoWs shadow. When it launched, nothing in WoW was really new, it just took things other MMOs did and added refined and polished them.
Agreed. The internet may not have been nearly as flashy back then, but the information was out there. All it took was a simple Google search for curious players to find what they were looking for.
I didn't play EQ, but I remember it making waves outside of the usual "gamer" crowd. Hell, I saw trailers for it in theaters when going to see movies like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, marking the first time I had ever seen a video game placed on such a cultural pedestal.
Same thing with Ultima Online. And I think UO was even more "socializing" mmo, because of how crafting worked, housing system and other things. Still, WoW came and people forgot about it.
@@sentrysapper45 simple Google search? I'll stick with hotbot or metacrawler thank you very much
Many people don't realize how literally true this is. While they were designing WoW, part of the developers "homework" was to go home and play EQ to look for ways to streamline the game without loosing the MMO feel. Jeff Kaplan AKA "Tigole" (short for Tig Ol' Bittes) was the leader of a high end raid guild in EQ. He even posted a profanity laden rant at the EQ devs on the forums once.
I feel like the new age of MMOs will be retro-mmos that rethink classic MMOs like Tibia and RuneScape. WoW has become the quagmire that MMOs have never bothered trying to leave; even the freshest MMOs today are still insanely WoW-like and older MMOs are nothing like it, which makes you wonder what we are missing out on.
But new game-design is only one facet of this direction, Minecraft proved that looks aren't everything, and another advantage of going retro means insanely easier visual design, it might even be possible for small independent studios to develop full MMOs that felt as expansive and awesome as Tibia did. All MMOs must be insane to develop, and I'm not surprised that many MMO projects simply run out of money. Going back to 2d sprites like tibia or simpler 3d graphics like RuneScape might be the development limitation that would make such projects financially possible.
[1. Barrens - General] Where's Mankirks wife????
With Chuck Norris.
She's dead.
I saw this ad on ESPN the other day.
"do you want to help find makirk's wife?
Subscribe now for Classic wow!"
It was like a 13 second commercial.
Mankrik *
Southern barrens.. Inside a ruined hut.
It surprised the heck out of me when one of my students, a meager 15 years of age, explained that he played WoW Classic and was loving it. It was the first time I realized that it wasn't purely nostalgia that made people want to spend time and money on the re-release.
everyone is always talking about whether or not wow classic is just nostalgia but no one has talked about the people who never played vanilla and are playing for the first time, including me and 15+ of my school friends. The game is really good, it doesn't matter that it's not exactly the same experience
Straight up, I'm just excited to do all the content I couldn't do because I was too young when vanilla was released
This is my case exactly. I started playing during Warlords of Draenor and always felt so disconnected story-wise (I badgered my husband about the backstory of certain places and why they were in the state they were in, for example). So with classic, I can kind of experience it all from the start and it honestly is exciting.
Blizzard criminally mishandled their expansion system... Invalidating old content? WHY?!
This was a fantastic video! As someone who doesn't really get MMOs, I feel I understand the situation much more clearly, thank you!
I played WoW 11 years ago. Skipped school for a week one time because I was on a roll. Good times. I couldn't keep playing when they introduced the Death Knight though, just giving someone a character that starts at level 55 felt wrong. Burning Crusade was the apex of the game. I pity the fool who didn't live through that. It was my Woodstock.
Or something.
Burning Crusade is to MMOs what Empire is to Star Wars.
That's a funny analogy, because from what I'm hearing, Woodstock was actually a bit of a shitshow (literally, sometimes). Doesn't go for BC, though. To this day my favourite content and since the Cata f̶u̶c̶k̶u̶p̶ revamp the closest to the actual WoW experience.
Wrath had the best endgame content imo.
Loved Bc
Couldn't you only play Death Knight if you already had a character at level 55?
God that empty Orgrimmar broke my heart.
Not really any big reason to be in the capital cities theese days as the main hubs are in the expansion zones. In Vanilla, BC, wrath, cata and mop, the capital cities were viable main hubs but thats not the case anymore.
@@ZUMTEZ It's still a reminder of the disparity between potential and actual community size.
In a romaticised idea of MMOs you'd have your faction's capital and other areas on the road to the current expansion zones be filled with players and not let the whole game be a empty shell of vendors standing in deserted shops in the capital until you reach max level.
Well rounded overview of the recent mmo history. It was nice too see footage of some of the other games of that time, even though it hurts a bit to see all the failed tries.
I totally agree that a case study about the differences between current and classic wow will make for an interesting topic, since the games are very different in design philosophy, structure and how it feels to play them. The most noticeable difference I've noticed so far is that classic really feels like a sandbox mmo instead of a theme park mmo, which emphasizes on the community aspect. It's not the exact same as it was then, but there is still a lot more player interaction, since the game is build to encourage it.
It will be interesting to see what the future holds for the genre and how classic will hold up over time.
10 years ago i wrote my school finishing presentation on "biochemical reactions while gaming" here in germany in classes biology & ethics (yeah well you had to choose a 2nd class so i went with ethics - which is just as much a schoolsubject, here as religion and history) got only a B+ cause i didn't "put enough emphasis on the dangers" that came along with it.
I finished it literally with the words; "...., but what hobby doesn't provide an escape from the real world".
i felt like - and still feel like that sums it up perfectly.
excellent video, I've never played WoW, nor do i like MMO's, yet i was entertained the whole way through. You've quickly become one of my favorite youtubers, looking forward to every video.
Wow classic back in 2005 was and still is the greatest gaming experience of my life. There are simply no words to describe how immersive this game was, it’s the only time in my life I felt that my virtual self is more important than my real self.
I'm still struggling my way to level 20 on my druid so that I can get cat form for improved leveling speed. I got aquatic form last night.
Aquatic is pretty useless for how hard it is to get tbh.
man i level my night elf's aquatic from quest... the journey from darkshore to westfall through menethil harbor with lvl 35 mobs. i and some other low level druids prolly wouldn't have finished that quest if there was not that lvl 40sth druid in darnassus who grouped us up and escorted us there.
I remember those an the warlock mount quest
@@4everMaxty It's not the quest that is hard. It's low-level druid question that is painfully slow.
@@abnormalplainz3981 ffffff warlock green fire quest is masochist's wet dream
This was an AMAZING video. The way you divided the sections for this video is wonderful.
Blizzard and other MMO companies need to see this.
This is lowkey one of the best gaming channels on this platform.
Totally agree
***highkey
This video is so well done. This guy deserves money. But i only get ads om douchetuber vids. Reaaly well thought out and worded.
Yup, he deserves more attention.
The entire Critique community is a blessing.
Blizzard needs to hire the guys from jagex who figured out how to keep osrs progressing without making everybody unhappy.
It actually isn't any single for couple guys but the community itself nothing goes through updating without a community poll on it.
They added the GE back in almost immediately and killed any "old school" future the game had.
@@OSRSBrachydios yikes
The world is a lobby for instanced content.
Underrated comment 😂
Severely underrated channel.
Thank you so much for this video!
The thing about Classic it's that yes we have the internet to practically do everything and add ons to help. But I never cared or use those because what is missing in an MMO that I feel has lost, is the community and RPG elements.
I started at Cataclysm and never experience Vanilla except for the liitle taste in Nostalrius before it got shutdown. Until now that is!
The thing that companies and some ppl don't understand is that making the content harder and forcing ppl to work together for the same goal isn't a bad thing. That's how communities, friendships and even love is formed. But because modern MMO'S are essentially single player games with multiplayer elements, it kills the community and it isn't formed because there's no need to group up in the first place except for dungeons raids and a handful of quests.
I believe you are missing a step. It's inconvenience.
Getting a group together to do a quest or a dungeon could be a pain (which leads to you wanting to join guilds and make friends to mitigate that). The introduction of LFG and later LFR solves the inconvenience but if the content is so difficult that the average group of randomly thrown together people can't beat it these features are useless. Who would want to use LF if the majority of those groups wipe?
Take a look at Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen.
@@luckygozer that's a fair point, and that's why the group finder was a double edged sword.
Yeah it's mega convenient for leveling up characters, or if you're pressed for time, but you lose the social aspect that made wow so good back in the day.
You had to talk to people to get along through the game.
@@luckygozer The problem with the LFG group finder lies in a few crucial issues: It was one of the first steps in killing off server communities, taking players from numerous different servers, servers you knew nobody on. Since you knew none of these people, they could act anyway they wanted, and there would be no reprecussions; no matter what they did, you would never see them ever again. Because of this issue, Blizzard simply made the dungeons so brainlessly easy that no incompetence could stop the dungeon from being finished, and they teleported everyone to the dungeon; it must not have mattered to Blizzard that removing one of the reasons to actually travel across this big world would be important, they just wanted to make sure dungeon runs with people who might as well be AIs would be able to function at all.
The Premade Groups system that Retail WoW has today solves all of these problems; it's the group finder everyone wanted. You could choose which group you wanted to join based on who's in it as well as choose who can be in your own group, and it doesn't streamline the process of running a dungeon like LFD did at all; just the process of creating a group. It's a clear improvement over the archaic, outright aggravating chat channel spam process of finding groups that Classic has today, but unfortunately it was too little, too late for when it was introduced in Retail. WoW was fully integrated into the cross-realm philosophy that's hemorrhaging what little community is left today, and the entirety of the game outside of high-tier dungeons, raids, and PvP content was made to be fully solo-able. Nowadays, the fact that WoW solved the group finder dilemna is just overlooked, because there's not much of a point anymore in Retail. The tragedy is that the game a fantastic group finder system would benefit the most, Classic, is also the game that it's being pushed against the most, as many players despise the idea of a group finder out of fear that it will twist Classic into being more like Retail.
Excellent point. I'd also like to point out that things existed to assist with the game back in the day. If anyone remembers Thottbot, Petopia, DBM and AtlasLoot, you would understand the game better and not need to rely on reading as much.
Also, the reason that classic is succeeding is not because of difficulty. It's really not a hard game, a lot of us remember it being difficult because we were new and young, but I am willing to bet that we have even more memories about the friends we have made. Classic enables the community to thrive and doesn't treat you like players in a kennel waiting for a quene. You have to build a reputation for yourself among your peers and even hold a good name to not embarrass your guild.
The minute Blizzard took away the community aspect of the server is when they truly lost touch with the beauty that they had created.
I love classic wow its like my childhood came back to me
Your videos are very well made.
I'm thankfull for your work and dedication.
The wealth of knowledge available about the game is a plus for me not a negative and so is the static content. I can now play and master every class with tons of resources to help me along the way. Then I can finish the game and do it again with a different class or spec. There is literally a decade of content here and I know because I've done it before. But this time around I get to do it with 15 years of experience behind me and really excel. I can't wait to do it all. There are no negatives here. :)
Idk man. I have to agree with the video, infrmation availability changed games forever. It takes out the discovery part. There is nothing new or nothing that wasn't already done and optimized. I think it trasnform the journey into a list of chores you have to do to get excatly where you expect to get. Its like rewatching a movie, not at all interesting if you know the plot left and right, or you just look up parts in advance you might forgot. I know some ppl is oke with that and actually watch movies multiple times for the atmosphere or play games similary but I can't help to be less excitedd for something I already know how it will play out. The more familiar the less interesting. (this does not apply to the competitive part, that one is perfectly fine and actually advised to be very well known for it to be enjoyable)
@@CraftyF0X I'm going to drop a two paragraph comment here that I actually just posted to help claim the point that I think information availability is not a significant problem when it comes to Classic WoW as opposed to modern Retail WoW.
TL;DR: The information isn't shoved in your face while playing; sure it's available and easy accessible, but it's not automatically accessed. It's your choice to get informational add-ons or look up a guide. That choice is taken away in the modern game with an information-saturated UI.
After watching this and then your video "How Mods Changed Gaming Forever", I can't help but point out that a massive portion of World of Warcraft's future features (I don't mean game content) were almost exact imitations of community made mods (or rather "Add-ons" in this case). Some of the most controversial features of modern WoW that stemmed from add-ons like automated Looking-for-group/raid, quest help, displaying of enemy health, resources, and buffs, PvE encounter help (Big Wigs/DBM) and many other previously optional UI elements. A big problem with implementing them all is it forced players to interact with the game by using them because everyone else was going to as well; the abundance of readily available information on the UI progressively dumbed down the difficulty and took away the experience of exploring an unknown world where you would have to scrounge for tactical information.
Acknowledging the debate that the all-knowing internet will ruin the classic experience: the information about your quest, about the mob you're killing is not advertised in popups, its possible to abstain from googling your issue (or using Thottbot back in 2004) and instead ask another human being if they know in order to drive a social interaction. You don't get that choice in the modern game, all tool-tips and maps have quest info, LFG is the primary way of getting a quest group and the button for it is right there on the objectives tracker, and there is hardly enough people following suit to allow an individual to avoid the non-social experience.
@@gnomechewer1351 While this might very well be the case I didn't say it is particulary a Classic WOW problem, matter in fact I said generally it takes out discovery from all kind of different games and vanilla or not, neither of them are immune to this. And yes you are right in that one does not have to look up things if one doesn't wish to but, since everyone presumanbly does (because of the advantage of knowing right now instead of figuring out over time) you kind of put yourself behind the curve if you refuse to use "guides" or to look up optimal builds, best items in slots etc.
Really succinct and well spoken explanation of the whole situation. I especially appreciated the part where you talked about how MMOs have essentially branched off into several different genres like survival games, MOBAs and looter shooters, because that's something I've felt for a while myself. I don't know how long a game like WoW Classic can last in the current climate, but it was a product of its time and I don't think something like it is going to end up getting made again.
The only game I was ever really addicted to. And yet, I really miss those times, exploring this world with my friends.
Well done. An astute, detailed, and comprehensive critique. Worth the watch. 👍
You have stressed the importance of the journey before. On our three week holiday in England, we had a family rail pass, and no itinerary. The object was to travel, explore, see, and sometimes stay awhile. Exploration is truly a big part of games, for me. Perhaps for other people as well.
You can still have a decent time in Guild Wars 2 or ESO but I don't see any successors for them.
FFXIV has done wonders actually. If you haven't tried it, I'm loving it right now :)
@@kurtismcpherson8144 ffxiv that syncing bullshit ? nah dude
@ageofbogyo I don't think players object to the "massiveness" of the games (check out world events and world-vs-world in GW2) but the design decisions in MMOs that make soloing a better choice than cooperating strongly with others. It's easy to be a lone wolf in a modern MMO.
Blizzard is following the same pattern with all of its recent games: At release they are great, they impresse the playerbase with a good and deep gameplay and they promise large potential. And then, after a while, the same happens: The accountnants step in. They want to make as much money as soon as possible, they get greedy and destroy the soul of said game. After this the game is bare boned, lifeless, dull, it has become way too easy to be interesting and only serves the purpose to bring as many new players in as possible.
It is a shame what this company has become. I will always have Diablo 2 and Brood War, though.
Exactly this. Those greedy goblins aren't happy with making money. They need to make ALL of the money and while your favourite dev making a profit is a good thing, being disrespected for the sake of a few dollars crosses a line that will damage your reputation forever.
@@kurtkrusader Frankly, I'm not even sure it's only the money making, but a complete and utter misunderstanding what made their games so unique and beloved. To me, the fascination in Starcraft was never the PvP and pure game mechanics. It was the beautiful world building and stunning atmosphere they created with such simple means as talking heads, some written text and a couple animated cut scenes.
Same goes for both Diablo games (DIII is not Diablo). People kept talking about loot and killing monsters, but the core of the Diablo experience was its setting and story.
WoW is just the most jarring example - game design completely driven by numbers and the fear to keep player's limbic system unengaged for even a second. And by removing the ebb and flow of combat and travelling, they essentially ended up with an experience that is flatlining.
@@darkfyraproductions7958 Don't get me wrong, I'm very much for taking in any lore and story a game has to offer. But it has to be worth my while, I'm past wasting my time on boring, badly written exposition. You want my attention as a writer/game designer? You better earn it. I'll appreciate your effort, but only if you respect my time.
I didn't play SC2 past the first couple missions but didn't get any of that "Starcraft" feeling from it, so can't say much about its story. Writing was certainly ... hrm.
As for Diablo 3, I respectfully disagree - can't remember reading anything good about the story and writing. They certainly have the highest production values and try and put lots and lots of lore and fluff into the game, but to me, nothing ever came together.
I'd rather have another Diablo game with one tenth of Diablo 3's exposition and scripted events, but with some meaninful world building and an actual story worth telling.
@@darkfyraproductions7958 Starcraft 2 does not have a strong story. It is basically a race to make Kerrigan human again, only for her to be at first very happy about it and then suddenly changing her heart about the whole thing for no real reason and changing back to be the Zerg Queen again. The rest is just show and wants to give the player many incentives to blow shit up.
And now compare that to the story of Starcraft 1. I cannot really explain how you can come to the opinion that SC 2 has a great story. Did you even play that game?
The same is true with Diablo 3. They kill off Cain for no fucking reason just to give you more incentives to play on and kill those cultists responsible. He does not even get killed by a real boss, just the henchwoman for the first real one.
And then the whole farce with Zoltan Kull. The whole 2nd act you chase down his body and he can see that you are basically an unstoppable killing machine. And what is the first thing that he does after he is finally alive again? He attacks you for no reason whatsoever, just so you can have a boss fight.
The whole story is plagued by villians that are acting like they are complete and utter morons. In Act 3 you are fighting "Hell´s best general, a tactical mastermind, the one that the forces of Good fear the most for his cunning plans". This is the enemy who constantly tells you what he wants to do, even when he has caught you by surprise and has the advantage and can really mess with you he appears out of nowhere and is telling you his master plan at the right moment so you can thwart it.
And the big twist right at the end? If you have any sense of how story telling works you know this almost from the start of the game, it is plainly obvious right from the start of the game that this will happen eventually.
Dumbed down and disrespecting the intelligence of his players, this is what Diablo 3 was. There is a reason this game has been dead for years. This disgrace of an ARPG harmed Blizzard a lot. This is no comparison to the beloved Diablo 2 I play for 18 years now and what I still adore and cherish despite its age and dated graphics.
@@darkfyraproductions7958 You got my intentions wrong, sorry. I was not planning in attacking you or insulting you even. In the end it is just video games, a product we use for entertainment and maybe some emotional relief.
I am a bit older, so I played those games back in the day. You know, before the big war, when we still had an emperor. :-)
I understand the pattern of the gaming industry, but I do not like it as greed disgusts me. With Blizzard especially it is hard for me because in my 20s this was MY studio, the one that made all of my favourite games.
And now I am old and disappointed and therefore maybe bitter.
I want to recommend Larian Studios to you for the best indie products out there in the last 5 years. They are a lof of fun, and if you are looking for great contemporary RPGs, pls try Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2. Great games both of them.
“Modern Blizzard will be destroyed by its own past” - that’s some prophetic words that ring too true on August 30, 2021. RIP Blizzard.
I made friends with two random players from my server yesterday. I played with them for hours. I know about their personal life now. This just doesn't happen in other games.
really? i have these experiences playing basically any online game. i met some of my best online friends through League of Legends, Apex Legends, and especially gacha games like FGO that have active discord communities
@@authenticinari-fox8164 yea but it is different when all of this happens in a massiv multiplayer online WORLD. Sure you can make friends literaly everywhere online but that's not the point, its's the world and the interaction in the game which makes it so unique.
@@ijachoel eh is it really? i am actually an mmorpg player that played the original EverQuest and WoW when they released (granted i was only in elementary school when i played EverQuest lol and middle school when i played WoW) as well as Runescape, and ya the interactions were cool especially since i was an RP server main, but you get that same experience playing DND with your friends (ya i am a nerd sry), and there are services where you can play DND online now to itch your RP needs. i honestly think the MMORPG experience can be found anywhere if you bring that same mentality from mmorpg over, to be a good teammate and to immerse yourself in the lore.
Very thought-provoking, thank you for sharing this.
The character doesn't need to be transferred to a TBC sever, it only needs to be COPIED, so there is no need to split people up.
There's also people who will play one or another but not both while now people can only play vanilla, it's also a way to split community, but I don't see it's a bad thing anyway.
While copying would be better, idk if I can trust blizzard to make that an option. "we told you you didn't want to. You can start a new on a new server or keep playing classics"
The last two minutes of this were emotional and very well written! Thanks!
Thank you very much for this amazing video !
It could be interesting to make an after-video because even you're not the only youtuber about the subject, you have a propoer type really enjoyable
7:51 "Titan" was never officially announced - the rumours were based on a leaked internal time map. Instead we got Overwatch and later they said it was made from the scrapped Titan.
The success of these games is in their ability to create a community that can become a fandom, not necessarily in any specific mechanics. That’s my guess anyways. The next big thing will probably be something that encourages a good community.
What I figured to be one of the biggest things why WoW always was on top of other mmos is the fact that other mmos try to get you hooked/addicted asap while wow hooks/addicts you very naturally whole you play.
Good vid. That lack of mystery leading to eventual frustration is probably why I for one have not been rushing to play Classic. The past was another country.
Amazing video, very well reasearched and written, congratulations and thank you!
Blizzard nowadays looks at a gem and says: "Oh, a stone."
that's really good
World of Warcraft has to rescue its father from the belly of the whale!
Clean your room, bucko. Communists are as bad as National Socialists.
You gotta clime the dominance hierarchy and attain the rank of grand marshal.
All my thoughts over the past couple of weeks, condensed into video form. Excellent work.
Very interesting video. You should do one about the games that came before WoW. What was the first MMO and how did it eventually lead to WoW?
I think that would be very interesting .
2021 Update: You were uncharacteristically optimistic here, and sadly, it was unwarranted.
Oh, stop it with Mankirk's wife! That was an easy quest. The burned-out house was right next to the road! Newbs!
I started playing WoW mid Wrath and never played vanilla when it was current, but I started playing on vanilla private servers in 2015 and really fell in love with the old school game design philosophy. What I love about vanilla is that you can tell the designers LOVED old school pen and paper rpgs and they thought deeply about how to design that game.
I never played WoW but I was a Lotro veteran for over 10 years. This hit really deep.
While I’ve moved on to team-oriented shooters and mobas, which give more of a short-term sense of satisfaction, at least once a year I get that MMO itch.
It’s a struggle. You know the ship has long sailed for MMO’s but you still hope that the next big thing is going to come out.
I made great friends over time and even flew to other continents to meet them. But it really feels like we’re never going to get to experience that kind of thing again and it saddens me profoundly.
I play on a lotro legendary ( classic) server. Every 3 months the roll out previous expansions and it offers player a chance to play max level content when max level was far below 120.
If I’m having this much fun in classic in 2019 imagine booting it up in 2004...no wonder people ruined their lives playing it non stop. Can’t wait for whatever the new wow is
I expect an alternate history for Classic. New expansions rather than the older ones. And I hope that the core gameplay will stay the same, if they choose to do so.
They should really just copy osrs
12:55 I made friends leveling and raiding in vanilla WoW that lasted years. I am still pals with some of them on social media today (many years after I stopped playing in WotlK). The game was tuned so well to forming relationships to do group quests, world PvP, dungeons, raids, crafting, auction/economy, etc. I'm glad to see Classic out there giving players new and old to vanilla the chance to have that adventure.
One of my fried found the love of his life in WoW and now they are married with 2 children...
Fun fact regarding Star Citizen, it was never pitched as an MMO originally. Personally I am only really interested in the singleplayer element to any great degree (being an old freespace fan).
Howevvvveeerrr, I will give it a bit more leeway in that it has given me experiences even in its weird state that no other game has. I have certainly got my base pledge worth of enjoyment and time out of the still in development game.
*guild wars 2*
*looks up*
*spins the camera back and forth*
yes i too tried looking up my characters skirt
The first 3 versions of wow was the greatest game of all time
Jesus Christ your subbed to Stefan Molynuex
@@RiceBenderson me too. Humans grow.
Great video!!! Thank you putting this out there.
13:45 - My WoW Classic experience as a new WoW player :
Day 1 : D-Day. Full of hopes & hype. I group with a player for questing.
Day 2 : I sent them a PM...Insta blocked. Trough of Disillusionment. One of the worst feeling I had *ever* had.
Players are older now.
I find it natural in the way you propose it that the MMO genre has died down. It's been pushed to the limits. Just wait till the first VR MMO comes out, and its going to be WoW all over again, just with complete immersion.
I'm a but sad you didnt being the parallel of runescape and old school runescape and the now shut down runecape classic (rip). Wow should go the osrs route and develope classic wow and retail wow separate
Doubt that'll happen. Theyve repeatedly called Classic a "museum piece". Not to mention there are a lot of purists who want an unaltered Vanilla experience, and messing with that could send much of the Classic playerbase back to private servers (especially considering most dont trust modern Blizzard to not screw up new Classic content)
Plus, thatd entail a second continuity for lore multimedia moving forward and i just dont see Blizzard doing that
@@BroadwayRonMexico I mean maybe u didnt say this but the runescape community was the same as the wow community before osrs. They had runescape 3 and classic runecape (the first version) many people went to runescape classic for a while and they did 0 updates to keep the purists happy, that game is now gone because everyone got bored of the same thing. When they made osrs it was under a user vote and any and all content put into osrs is voted on. If wow voted on everything they would have guaranteed people staying if they vote yes for no for changes like in osrs.
@@umadbroimatroll7918 Private servers like Nostalrius have proven that pure Vanilla servers are more than capable of maintaining stable, sizeable populations after 15 years of "the same thing".
WoW and Runescape are different games with different communities made by different companies. If Blizzard wants to keep the ball running when Classic loses some of its steam, i think theyre *far* more likely to roll out TBC and Wrath servers (both have a decent population of private servers, so interest is there) rather than turning Classic into a separate progressively updated MMO. Modern Blizzard is one of the most hated and distrusted companies in gaming, but old Blizzard is still beloved and nostalgia releases still make them a lot of money. TBC and Wrath servers are the obvious course for them to take
Brilliant and insightful commentary as always!!
This was really well made and spot on!
"Machines harvest our bioelectric energy for all eternity"
It turns out humans actually don't have that much bioelectric energy. So the machines would probably just cut our brains out and put them in jars to run scenarios past us to utilize our human intuition and common sense.
WHAT A COMFORTING THOUGHT
My headcanon on this is that even the underworld and resistance in The Matrix was just a higher level simulation.
We're talking simulaception. And I hope exploring this idea is where that new Matrix movie is going.
Classic+ is the way to go. OSRS style. Same game mechanics and gameplay loop, new bosses, professions, armours, weapons, and areas.
2:20 - Well, that IS pretty accurate....
22:00 - You also seem to forget that classes in classic are A LOT STRONGER than they were in vanilla, since all classes have access to talents and abilities that were introduced during the lifecycle of the expansion, and buffing all classes by a significant amount each time. This in turn makes the content a LOT EASIER than it used to be, since by virtue of having players be stronger than back in the day. Something like Shamans starting out with chain heal, the best heal in all of vanilla which was introduced after BWL, is a really big deal towards ensuring everyone survives and other classes have similar abilities to help make things easier.
As such, players wont really be competing on equal terms to players in vanilla until we get to AQ40, by which time these buffs had already been released in live wow.
I only ever played (to max level) 3 classes in my prior run through WoW: Druid, Shaman, & Mage. To circumvent some of the "been there, done that" feeling you described, this time I am playing completely different classes: Rogue, Warlock, & Hunter. So for me there is still some discovery.
Even though I couldn't care less about MMOs and WoW especially, I am a simple man...
I see NeverKnowsBest uploading a new video, I click play and like. And I never regret that impulse!
I watch his vids even for games I have never played. They are all interesting.
Personally, I would love to see Blizzard releasing more CLASSICs, such as TBC and Wrath.
For me, WoW was at its peak with Wrath.
I'd be hesistant to do Wrath, I really hate death knights as a caster. TBC was my jam thou.
Though I started playing the game in TBC, I definitely have the fondest memories in Wrath - it's the expansion where I *really* took off as a raider.
I'll never forget the journey I had in Wrath. I started off as a nobody who joined a random guild for Naxx on a whim, as a shadow priest with the intention of eventually gearing up as a healer - and ended the expansion as the disc priest on the realm first kill of Heroic Lich King. Man, what a highlight - there's no feeling like downing the iconic end boss of the most popular expansion of all time and having your name spammed across the entire server to everyone who was online at the time.
Dalaran was so populated on a Friday night it was actually nuts. I remember having to install an addon called Spamthrottle because without it, trade chat would literally scroll so fast that you wouldn't be able to read it.
Dude wtf I have had this whole conversation with myself many times.
You hit every point, very well done subbd
wow dude.... now thats what i call a good video! Nice sounding voice... a good informative and catching script. I really enjoyed that, so thank you alot! And for all classics out there , enjoy it for as long as it lasts :) Have fun and be nice guys! See you in Azeroth!
13:35 I'm not fully convinced about this, I've made a number of friends in games like PWI but I dont think this had anything to do with the 'journey'. Imo, I think it was more to do with the fact that I was clueless when I played my first MMO and that made me rely on friends and people around me to progress. I doubt newer games can achieve this to the same extent because most players might have played other MMOs and know what they're doing.
Making players focus on story is a bit tricky because most MMOs that have stories are mediocre at best (GW2 is a good example for this). I think Archeage is a great example for a game with a terrible story and great end game content, players still make a lot of friends through guilds and teaming up for common objectives since the maps are equi-populated through trading mechanics. Teaming up/ meeting other players is really important but I think it should be solved with well designed end game systems to encourage players to communicate with other players.
Nice video btw, I think our best bet is hope we get developers that can look at their game from the eyes of their players because personally I think the biggest issue is that devs lose the passion they started out with and once it's a multi-million dollar business, their priorities change and are no longer willing to take risks.
I think the best thing they could possibly do with wow classic is to make it an "alt-history" version. Make all new expansions, hire the old writers and let them go nuts with what-ifs, craft a whole new world history line. New quests, new actors, new events but be very careful about touching the mechanical side of things. If they manage to understand the attraction of vanilla but also the flaws in rehashing content they could possibly create a new golden age for the game.
And keep away from LFG/LFR flying and much more. Basically just add transmog lol.
this is what Jagex did with Oldschool Runescape and it worked out extremely well for them
@@konradvonschnitzeldorf6506 No way transmog. Not seeing what you wair? That is much worse than flying. Like not LFG is the core problem but disconnection of instances from the world. Searching is ok, getting ported in + finding all quests at the entrance is killing the world.
@@KVPMD It gets stale 2 weeks after new content when everyone has the exact same gear. Transmog adds another dimension to the game. And a reason for players to run old content
@@konradvonschnitzeldorf6506 When everyone has the same gear after 2 weeks there is a lot broken and cosmetics is not the cure.
"Modern Blizzard will be defeated by their own past". This aged like fine, fine wine.
Terrific video and analysis. Well done sir.
I'm surprised that you skipped over talking about FF-14 which is probably the most successful MMO outside of WoW.
eh I've got tons of hours in that game, and it's great the game is fun and and the story is enjoyable it's just it doesn't feel like an MMO to me at at least, to how live wow is let alone classic
I'm from the future and this video needs a major update.
1:35 I'm nearly 7 years clean from WoW, but every time I see an ad for a new expansion, I think "Oh, maybe I should try it out..." I don't think it ever truly goes away.
The closing statement was beautiful, great exposé!
What World of Warcraft was that it worked well with Human Nature. Humans are designed to struggle and overcome obstacle, to socially interact with other people and make friends, to invest their time into something and see the fruits of their labor. Today world of warcraft has become a Solo game where everyone gets trophies for putting no effort in because a small group of people dont like to put effort into anything. This is why WOW today has a dwindling player base. The direction that WOW took to make the entitled crowd happy killed its game.
MMORPGS of the Future MUST work well with Human Nature. No they do not need to be like UO was where getting 100% in a skill like Provoke or Taming could take a year. However They do need to be close to Vanilla WOW where leveling takes time, you have to naturally interact with people to accomplish goals in the game, and yes the game needs some time sinks. Think of it this way. If tomorrow computers and Robots did everything Humans needed to do to survive what do you think would happen? Over the course of several years people would start dying off in large numbers because their lives would have 0 meaning. There is no Utopia where Humans can have every need catered to them and Humans do not devolve into a mess. Humans by nature are designed to struggle, have work to do every day while they are capable, and need to continually to invest themselves into life. We are not some Elf like race that can take to the trees and be happy singing all day and doing nothing else. That is not how Humans are even though nut jobs think that would be great because they dont want to lift a finger to do anything. These are the people that tend to die early because their lives have no purpose. MMORPGS NEED to have a purpose and need continued investment.
I agree. Though the irony is WoW achieved it's massive success by being more convenient with more instant gratification than it's predecessors. So I'm not surprised Blizzard tried to keep ahead of the competition by becoming more casual over time. In the process though the entire MMO genre just died out. I have some hope for Star Citizen because if it sticks to it's gun about being a real sim it has a chance. So long as it doesn't cave, and add fast travel or easy ways to make money. If it ever comes out that is.
Your argument that humans are nothing without struggle is a fallacy. Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
John Croyle people like you are laughable. There is scientific data that shows that humans need struggle and purpose in life. There is no Utopia for humans as much as people want to tell you otherwise.
@@gavin58582 Lets see this data, I've already mentioned the work of Maslow. Also the Greek golden age is a perfect example.
@@johnmalvent2189 Maslow's self actualization at least is about what you achieve against obstacles.
Classic wow is the wowkiller
I think Blizzard has done reasonably well recently in encouraging social interactions in recent years. The 3 big pillars of content in WoW currently are raiding, mythic+, and rated pvp. None of these can be joined via a queue system and require you to form you own groups for them. There are tools in game to facilitate finding other people easily for this however since you are forced to manually create groups you are more likely to play with people you already know or pick names you remember seeing before. Additionally as you increase in difficulty level in these activities requirements for coordination, and thus communication, increase. I think this is a good balance because it lets new players dip their toes into easy content anonymously.
22:00 one thing of note, pretty much everyone agrees that dungeon and raid content seems to be de-tuned from vanilla, combined with the fact that private servers OVER tuned things
I think its a combination of significantly better computers. 144 fps locked with no drops and much faster internet. Combined with a lot more experience from most players. A better understanding of how to properly play makes all the raids and dungeons way easier than it was in vanilla. The game is super simple when everyone knows what to do ans how to do it properly
@@rockymack1083
Not quite, there's a lot of anecdotal reports of certain bosses using abilities significantly less often or not at all, and I think some folks even did hp comparisons
You are the most salient game analysis youtuber I know, up there with Noah Caldwell
Noah Caldwell is trash
@@henrycrabs3497 edgy
@@TheNumberOfTheBeast666 I saw your name and thought the same thing
@@henrycrabs3497 just a battlestar reference my guy
I wanted a WOW killer so we could get Warcraft 4. I guess Warcraft Reborn will just have to do.
Love your videos. Nice work!
I thoroughly enjoyed the video. Thank you.
I love how the wow killer ended up being more wow
So, I know the video is meant to focus on Classic and what it could mean for the future. But. It seemed odd that with all of the MMOs you showed which "failed", you neglected to show the one which succeeded. The one which in many respects may actually be outpacing the more modern version of WoW in popularity and playerbase. Final Fantasy 14. Something I've come to realize after watching so many videos on vanilla WoW is that once upon a time content came at a rather steady pace, and this is something FFXIV is excelling at.
On top of this a big complaint I've always heard about FFXIV is the GCD, but playing Classic has made me realize vanilla WoW's GCD didn't feel much faster at all. There's a lot you can compare between Classic and FFXIV, in how at an early level you feel slow and as you reach higher levels things feel so much quicker. Although I'd argue FFXIV does a much better job of making each of their classes feel exciting and relevant than Classic ever did.
There's also a comparison to be made about the journey aspect. For FFXIV it is mainly story focused, with some playing purely to experience it rather than framing the end-game as the "beginning".
Good overview. After not playing the game since the end of Pandaria, I was convinced to dip into classic. It holds a slight bit of rosy nostalgia, but it’s not the same. I’ve changed, the way I want to spend my time has changed. So many quality of life changes have yet to be made. I think my character will be stuck at level 34 forever.
It's funny how I don't have dungeon queue but I don't mind going around "LF2M Deadmines" getting a full group together, running down to the dungeon entrance as a team, then chatting and working together figuring out how to beat the challenge that was Dead Mines.
So between his overwhelming lack of understanding for the desire of Classic, and the botched launch of WCIII- refunded... is this J. Allen Brack fellow a knob, or does it have more to do with Activision? Whats going on with this guy?