Greetings,
Recently I've experienced an interesting line of thought I wanted to share with you guys. I was having a cup of warm tea on a calm, late Saturday morning, my wife was doing something unrelated, home was absolutely quiet and outside - it was gently snowing. Really, a moment of tranquility. All of the sudden I've caught myself thinking that at least right now life in general feels OK, there is nothing to worry about too much and you can let yourself just be for a minute or two.
And then it struck me.This was absolutely the same feeling I've had when on same late Saturday mornings back in 2005, I was running through Ashenvale, or queuing up for low level battlegrounds, or searching for uncommon bracers on the auction house. It was the feeling of having no serious responsibilities, job, mortgage, wife, kids and other things included with adulthood. Blissful passage from childhood to early adolescence.
This feeling of inner freedom and light-hearthedness, being alone at home and having all the time in the world, most of us experienced in our life when we were 12-14 years old playing videogames, and which is now lost when we're close to our 30-ties, is up there within the original log-in screen and intro music, soundtracks, animations, quest text lines, even tiny sound effects. Or it should be, right?
We are all longing for this feeling, emotion, state of being that is long gone. This is what we are looking for in a Classic WoW.
Aren't we?
I totally understand where you are coming from when you say this, and I think it is part of it but certainly not all of it. But I would certainly beg to differ. Of course classic WoW will not be the same as original Vanilla, even if they took the old code and client and booted it up on the original servers (which is impossible now since they auctioned them all off for charity) and you played it on a 2006 era PC on a CRT monitor. Because all the wonder and mystery is largely gone apart from AQ40 / Naxxx (even then we have member of this forum alone who entered these), our WoW innocence is done and the community involved in WoW has drastically changed.
Going back to a simpler time is part of it, but the original trilogy of WoW, especially Vanilla and TBC goes back to a totally different Era of gaming in general . An era were progression was tied to time and dedication. In MMORPGs social interaction and skills were key. Things made sense and were not based on slot machine mechanics and games were not ashamed of catering to mature players. This isnt just from WoW but the industry in general, you just wouldnt get games like Vampire the Masquerade, Star Wars: KOTOR or even more action/arcadey games like Tony Hawks Underground today in 2019. Because games were designed to be fun, in depth and experience back then. True art forms in storytelling and creative in mechanics. The only exception I can think of is The Witcher 3.
Games these days are designed around seemingly the business aspect. How long can we delay progress and is there a way we can get away with putting in an option to pay to skip it. How long can we milk something before we have to pay our creative team to come up with something new. If you just look at the sheer amount of quality timeless titles that came out between 1995 - 2005 and compare it to what we have now its very depressing.
I think Classic WoW up to Wrath represents those last years where games were good again, and everything including our beloved WoW was soiled forever
Your appreciation of it derives from the ability to engage you on all levels of activity (from casual to hardcore) and in all matters relating to engagement (PvE, PvP, exploration, social interaction). This is tied strictly to the mechanics of the game and how the game is constructed. The reason we are not getting the same feeling in retail anymore is because the game failed to properly adapt to be meaningful beyond a:
Anything on top of that ties to you and your personal views, successes, failures etc. in life. The fact that you're chasing the feeling of having no responsibilities and all that is not game related as much as it is "real life" related - just as if, with no bad intent on the analogy, if you're excited about watching porn when you get home from work it's less to do with the porn and more to do with your wife (or how you view her).
I have no serious responsibilities and I get a different feeling than that which I got back then. As an adult, I have a different experience as a result of a different understanding of the game. Yes, I don't have the same awe I had for the game when I was first playing it but that's not strictly a bad thing, it's just a different thing. Being stupid can be a fun and exciting adventure, but not getting to experience a lot of leveling areas, lore, PvP and PvE because I was a stupid kid wasn't. There's pros and cons in everything.
Greetings,
Recently I've experienced an interesting line of thought I wanted to share with you guys. I was having a cup of warm tea on a calm, late Saturday morning, my wife was doing something unrelated, home was absolutely quiet and outside - it was gently snowing. Really, a moment of tranquility. All of the sudden I've caught myself thinking that at least right now life in general feels OK, there is nothing to worry about too much and you can let yourself just be for a minute or two.
And then it struck me.This was absolutely the same feeling I've had when on same late Saturday mornings back in 2005, I was running through Ashenvale, or queuing up for low level battlegrounds, or searching for uncommon bracers on the auction house. It was the feeling of having no serious responsibilities, job, mortgage, wife, kids and other things included with adulthood. Blissful passage from childhood to early adolescence.
This feeling of inner freedom and light-hearthedness, being alone at home and having all the time in the world, most of us experienced in our life when we were 12-14 years old playing videogames, and which is now lost when we're close to our 30-ties, is up there within the original log-in screen and intro music, soundtracks, animations, quest text lines, even tiny sound effects. Or it should be, right?
We are all longing for this feeling, emotion, state of being that is long gone. This is what we are looking for in a Classic WoW.
Aren't we?
I don't think so.
Perhaps your life is more complicated than mine but I really don't have many responsibilities besides cleaning the house, paying rent and going to work. I live comfortably in a valley in Ohio. I don't have a lot of money and I don't really crave it. Everything I own can be packed into my truck within a day and I can go anywhere. I've got nothing holding me to this place. In fact the plan is to move sometime in the summer ( I super hope it's before classic launch). I guess things are different when you ground yourself to a place but I never have.
Everyone craves escapism IMO. In today’s mad and fast-paced world I love getting completely lost in something - whether that’s a game, a book or working on the site here and talking to you guys.
Razor I think that Classic is also going to immerse me to the same level you are talking about. Not so much because it reminds me of a time in my life but more so because vanilla wow is just a damned good video game that provides suspension of disbelief :smile:
To give an analogy, there is no fundamental difference in experiencing a multiplication problem as a 2nd grader versus a calculus problem as a high-school student. The exploration of ideas, applying methods, thinking with either conventional methods or outside the box if you can, etc. is the same.
I can think of a wonderful math problem I solved when I was in 9th grade and how awesome I felt solving it. If I were to attempt it now, I could find possibly two more ways to solve it and way more ways to apply it. I think my experience now (as an adult) versus my experience then (as a teeanger) is way more awesome. Yeah, I'm not amazed by the result and the quest to find whether or not there's a mathematical proof for that issue - but I can now do way more amazing things with that proof than I was able to back then. I can teach these methods to others. I can do so much more now.
Do I have to do it though? It's up to me. When I was a teenager I did whatever I thought was best for me to do and that did not change as an adult. If you're feeling like those choices have not lived up to your expectations - that's a different subject and a bit too personal really.Nothing to do with the game though.
Interesting thoughts, especially about life being complicated and thus Classic WoW becoming a certain way to escape, a safe shelter. This might be the case to some people and it most probably should be treated more seriously then, as such sentiments are certainly not OK. However, it could be experienced on a softer level - like remembering having ice-cream with your childhood friends on a bench. It's nothing special, yet romanticizing it in your brain over time makes it seem special. For me it's the same thing with coming back to those careless times, however it does not mean that life today sucks. On the contrary - it's an amazing journey. Inner desire to come back to what has passed does not mean exchanging one for another (present for past), yet more like complementing it, making what we have today even fuller. In other words, reliving the emotion we experienced when enjoying this brilliant video game for the first time is something that can make our current lives richer.
Really good points on technical differences between the current state of retail and Classic WoW, I never thought things have gone so far - the last time I've played was the Legion. I've managed to level my rogue a few levels and then simply dropped it due to boredom. As it seems from your statements guys, it has become even more unappealing. In this case - Classic WoW is certainly a better executed game.
Very neat thought, I really enjoyed reading it and wish you the best of luck trying to reminisce in that feeling. And as I am sure you found out with the responses here, your feeling or emotion is true to you, but not most.
If I were to reference myself and my anticipated "feeling" of playing the game it is immersion. Not the idea of immersed in the world and its lore, but the idea that I will be able to immerse myself into the game and to learn its in's and out's and enjoy it for what it is. (I should mention that I did not played Vanilla back then.) I've immersed myself in two different games with long indulgences into others that I never fully grasped. These two games being COD4 and Clash Royale (Yeah, I know its a mobile game and all that, but DAMN I love it.) COD4 was a huge part of my childhood, I'm in my early 20's now, and I have never played a game like I did then. The hours I put into that game... Since COD4, my taste in games has changed drastically and I tend to float over to strategy or grand strategy nowadays.
I've always wanted to play and be immersed in an MMORPG because of what it can be, and Vanilla seems like a perfect opportunity to me. I will admit however, that I did hop on a private server recently to see what class I'd like to focus on with the intent to level up to 15 max on a couple of classes. This was to keep the official vanilla launch as fresh as possible and to keep some insurance I will enjoy whatever class I end up picking. You know feel out the class just a tiny bit. Well... I lost track of time... and levels... got pretty close to a 40 Paladin and several other low level characters before I realized that I had totally forgotten why I was trying a private server in the first place. I had become immersed in the game and this is what I wanted, the feeling that I desired from COD4 especially. Total game immersion.
I just hope I didn't ruin it by playing on that private server.
In response to the title of this thread, I'd say I'm anticipating both the feeling of the game and the actual game itself.
I agree that many of us will play Classic WoW because we're longing for a certain reminiscent feeling, I suppose there's some truth in that. But I do believe that it's totally dependent on the individual themselves.
For example, someone may play Classic WoW for a short while, realise that they don't enjoy it quite so much now that they're considerably older, and stop playing - and that's okay.
On the other hand, I know I (and many others) will be playing Classic WoW for the actual content. I've dabbled with private servers for years, and strictly Classic WoW ones. I've played countless other promising MMORPGs only to always be let down. I've tried other genres, too, and I have never replicated the feeling Classic WoW gave me. To me, Classic WoW is the only game I've ever truly and utterly loved. It's just fantastic. To me, it's the best game that's ever been made.
I know I'll be playing Classic WoW for a long time. I'll be playing because it's a truly superb game.
Does anyone else find it baffling how hundreds of thousands of people are desperate to play a game that was released in 2004? It's almost insulting how for 15 years, and with all the incredible technological advancements, we still want to play a game that was created when the internet was in it's infancy. It shows how crappy the gaming industry has become.
We are all longing for this feeling, emotion, state of being that is long gone. This is what we are looking for in a Classic WoW.
Aren't we?
I mean, I was playing on Nostalrius with my buddies when it was still up and it was just like the old days again.
Some things aren't dead and gone, just waiting to be enjoyed once again.
For me, it is mostly the feeling derived from experiencing (a flashback) of my teens all over, paired with the insane amount of exploration and atmosphere that Vanilla provided, something that was lost at the very latest after WotLK.
At the same time I am also looking forward to the overall more complex loot/gearing mechanics, vastly diverse loot, buffs, items and quests overall, and the social community experience that WoW has lost since the introduction of LFG/LFR.
Vanilla hype tastes good!
Having built raiding guilds in actual vanilla then on 2 different iterations of private servers I can absolutely say that I'm missing the game and the feelings it fosters. This isn't just nostalgia, Vanilla wow is a better game than retail in my opinion. Retail has a lot of great aspects to it but they are all mostly packaged in with a bunch of crappy aspects and even at its best it feels like a single player game where you just happen to be playing with other people.
For me vanilla is a multiplayer/social/team experience at it's heart. Building and being on those teams create the feeling that we all love in vanilla so yes, it's a feeling we are looking forward to but it's a feeling created by the game we are looking forward to.
We are all longing for this feeling, emotion, state of being that is long gone. This is what we are looking for in a Classic WoW.
Yes and no, I'd say.
It was a feeling that came with Vanilla, and what will come with Classic, if Blizzard lets Classic come as close as it can to Vanilla.
Different people, different careers, different lives.
I can personally say that my life is probably as—if not more—calm than what it was when I was a teen in school. I went to school 7 - 8 hours a day, and it's the same hours now when I have a job. The difference is that I don't have any homework to do, which gives me a lot more free time. I don't have any kids, and don't plan to have any for at least 5 - 6 more years. I have a girlfriend, and we find plenty of time to talk and do things together when we feel like it. No stress there.
I can certainly find that feeling or emotion when I play games that are good, even today, and having played private servers, as well as aiming to play Classic, the feeling will return I'm very sure.
I haven't been able to get into a video game for years now. Every time I try to sit down and try to play something new, I just don’t seem to care. I got other things going on in my life that I’d rather be doing. But for some reason I can log into a private server and play Vanilla for 10-12 hours at a time without missing a beat.
I don’t even really like video games. I just like this video game. Classic is just a damn good time all around, and I don’t think its escapism for me. My life is just fine outside it and I have no need to escape from it. I’m just looking forward to having a blast with my friends again in Azeroth, and to see if I have what it takes to run a successful guild this time around. I guess if I’m chasing a feeling, I’m chasing the feeling of being ‘in the zone’ pulling off difficult dungeon pulls and working well with others in a small team environment. This game plays like a team sport. I’ve gotten the same feeling playing things like flag football or pickup games of basketball down at the court. There’s just a special feeling when you’re performing well at a task in a group environment that takes a lot of teamwork to pull off. And there’s something special about this game that lends itself towards putting yourself in those situations.
I’m not looking forward to escapism here, I’m looking forward to having fun with my friends in team environments.
Greetings,
Recently I've experienced an interesting line of thought I wanted to share with you guys. I was having a cup of warm tea on a calm, late Saturday morning, my wife was doing something unrelated, home was absolutely quiet and outside - it was gently snowing. Really, a moment of tranquility. All of the sudden I've caught myself thinking that at least right now life in general feels OK, there is nothing to worry about too much and you can let yourself just be for a minute or two.
And then it struck me.This was absolutely the same feeling I've had when on same late Saturday mornings back in 2005, I was running through Ashenvale, or queuing up for low level battlegrounds, or searching for uncommon bracers on the auction house. It was the feeling of having no serious responsibilities, job, mortgage, wife, kids and other things included with adulthood. Blissful passage from childhood to early adolescence.
This feeling of inner freedom and light-hearthedness, being alone at home and having all the time in the world, most of us experienced in our life when we were 12-14 years old playing videogames, and which is now lost when we're close to our 30-ties, is up there within the original log-in screen and intro music, soundtracks, animations, quest text lines, even tiny sound effects. Or it should be, right?
We are all longing for this feeling, emotion, state of being that is long gone. This is what we are looking for in a Classic WoW.
Aren't we?
Though I'm a bit older I will certainly agree with you on the joy it was to play WOW in it's early days. I quit playing 9 years ago but during that time I though a lot about wanting to relive the original game. I am so elated Blizz is doing this for those of us that truly enjoyed it in it's purest form. What's weird is I can still remember where I was in Ashenvale when I received a phone call that a dear friend had passed away unexpectedly. I intend to return there and have a moment of silence and remembrance of my good friend.