Official release date announced:

[DeLindsay]

trying to get through Sunken temple.

While Sunken Temple was rough (from someone who started in TBC) it'll be nothing compared to Mara and BRD, The Guild Breakers. I still remember those 4+ hour BRD runs and we didn't even get TO the Lyceum.
[doublepost=1557910190,1557909820][/doublepost]

Of course it will never be as big as it was, but I wouldn't be surprised to see 200-500k active players.

Eve Online has thrived for a year longer than WoW and it averages 400-700K Subs, WoW could do the same. If they took their perfectly functional Scaling technology and applied it to the entire Game (Retail) where you could level in ANY Zone at ANY Character Level, like ESO is now, that would open up so much more replayability that they wouldn't have to keep pumping out Expansions but smaller quality of life Patches. WoW is large enough and has enough Content that putting it on a "Maintenance Mode" would work fine and they would still make money.

 

[Zemmix]

To be fair, this game is part of retail...So calling it retail like a pserver is a bit silly now.

And yeah, you don't need millions to thrive or be a good game.

I mean, EQ peaked at 550k. And that was considered the pinnacle of MMOs, and a legend.

And it's still doing fine, sorta.

 

[busgaga]

Give back Tyrs hand farming and heartGlen. Best elite farming place with tons of gold.

 

[Chops]

While Sunken Temple was rough (from someone who started in TBC) it'll be nothing compared to Mara and BRD, The Guild Breakers. I still remember those 4+ hour BRD runs and we didn't even get TO the Lyceum.

BRD was (is) my favorite pve experience in the game. In vanilla, my little guild would "raid" it on the weekends. There were only 4 of us so we always had to pug a DPS. But it was such a well designed dungeon and provided a full day of play. I very much look forward to doing that again.

Eve Online has thrived for a year longer than WoW and it averages 400-700K Subs, WoW could do the same. If they took their perfectly functional Scaling technology and applied it to the entire Game (Retail) where you could level in ANY Zone at ANY Character Level, like ESO is now, that would open up so much more replayability that they wouldn't have to keep pumping out Expansions but smaller quality of life Patches. WoW is large enough and has enough Content that putting it on a "Maintenance Mode" would work fine and they would still make money.

I look forward to the days when WoW has enough players for like 3-4 servers and goes into "small expansion every 5 years but content is just really gonna be built around world event bosses" phase.

 

[LecolaEU]

a full day of play. I very much look forward to doing that again.

Most of private server players (Nostalrius etc.) prefer a part of dungeon for a specific BIS item or for a chain quest inside. if same item is needed by another player, they leave group. Full BRD run was so rare as i experienced.

I think I'll try to find a group of players network who don't like rushing the content. I hope battlenet and discord will make this easier this time. I don't want to play with rushers.

 

[Vehemity]

The vanilla players who've found themselves on private servers, know that vanilla is a grind, but the difficulty is mostly due to imbalance. Current retail wow is way too tweaked and "balanced" compared to 1.12 (and especially patches prior to 1.12). Don't let it scare you though, most private servers PuG MC/Ony/BWL/AQ20+40 and even some naxx (especially 2-3 man trash grind). The whole "vanilla" experience is tainted by how skilled we've gotten over the years. New players will likely adjust a few weeks after hitting 60, if they can make it through the grind part.

 

[DeLindsay]

To be fair, this game is part of retail...So calling it retail like a pserver is a bit silly now.

And yeah, you don't need millions to thrive or be a good game.

I mean, EQ peaked at 550k. And that was considered the pinnacle of MMOs, and a legend.

And it's still doing fine, sorta.

When I use 'Retail' in this context I meant because they wouldn't use the current Scaling tech on the Classics Realms, only the standard Retail Game with whatever current XPac we're on at that time.

 

[Selaya]

[ ... ] If they took their perfectly functional Scaling technology and applied it to the entire Game (Retail) where you could level in ANY Zone at ANY Character Level, [ ... ]

recycling raids would probably be more useful, i very much doubt too many players care about the openworld at all; its just random throwaway fluff as wow isnt a true mmorpg; most if not all the relevant and interesting content is instanced (dungeons, raids, battlegrounds, arenas)

 

[DeLindsay]

recycling raids would probably be more useful, i very much doubt too many players care about the openworld at all; its just random throwaway fluff as wow isnt a true mmorpg; most if not all the relevant and interesting content is instanced (dungeons, raids, battlegrounds, arenas)

As a Twink I'd KILL to be capable of doing all Quests in all Zones with my 10's or my 70, etc. Blizz HAS the technology and we know for fact it works, all they have to do is leave it on all the time. This would open up so much potential with WoW.

 

[Selaya]

that is true, but the amount of people who'd really care about that would probably be a single digit percentage ...
now, if they brought all mythics on par with the current tier, tho ...

 

[Chops]

As a Twink I'd KILL to be capable of doing all Quests in all Zones with my 10's or my 70, etc. Blizz HAS the technology and we know for fact it works, all they have to do is leave it on all the time. This would open up so much potential with WoW.

The only people that would care about this are currently in this thread.

In fact, I'd argue that doing this would further WoWs decline. One of their biggest problems is an extremely fragmented world that doesn't feel complete or whole.

One if the big appeals of vanilla, BC and even wrath was that the story and lore felt well cemented in a fully realized world through which content flow easily.

And cata both continued that but also started to fracture that. It changed the world, so you could see where past actions in previous expacs had actually had an effect. The world had moved forward with the story.

But cata was where it also started falling apart. It's hard to simultaneously keep older content around when the story moves on. MC makes zero sense right now. Why do BRD and MC still exist, from a story standpoint? Aren't the dark iron our friends now? Refreshing dungeons like deadmines and sfk and SM was cool, so why didn't all of instanced content get that refresh?

And then further expacs and experience squishing just made alot of that old content obsolete. Hell, entire expacs can be fully skipped, but their storylines are referenced in quests and dungeons that you experience while leveling. With no resolution.

If you're a new player, nothing makes sense anymore. At least not from like level 55-110.

WoW needs another full reshaping ala Cata. The world needs to make sense as a whole again. There needs to be a concrete sense of progression through stories. I'm 100% sure that players feel disconnected from the game because there is no overarching, complete story anymore. It's just a bunch of different chapters all written by different people who may or may not have read the chapter before theirs.

/Rant

 

[Allybeboba]

BUHAHAHHAHAHAA! You explore every location you might need to travel to BEFORE you hit your twink level, you accept and complete many of the gear quests before you hit your twink level, you do all quest mob killing dead when possible, you kill bosses while dead, you be CAREFUL about moving around in the world once you have made your tink.

You actualy WORK at it. Plenty of us OG tinks predate exp off and EXP in BGS by years and years of play.



Charged gears, my god all the charged gear runs I have done, no real risk of leveling unless you screw up mind you but man the number of run.

All very legitimate strategies for saving xp.
Don’t forget the part of reason why twinks got their names in the first place my friend.
You get a higher lever character to help you. And have the older more experienced character “gift” the reward to the younger less experienced one.

I couldn’t begin to tell you how many characters I have deleted just to get experience numbers for quests and exploring. As I am quite sure many of the old schoolers can attest, you add all that sh!t up before you ever even start out. BiS in Vanilla is a strat. You don’t just happen to get it. You have to PLAN for it. A few mistakes and it’s all she wrote for your character. You will either be leveling up to the next bracket or deleting in sorrow.

TwinkInfo used to have some very very nice leveling guides “back in the day”. There were some particularly nice rogue and hunter ones. Alas, they are probably gone forever.

/cheers

 

[Selaya]

The Twinkinfo Archive can be found here: https://xpoff.com/categories/ti-archive.234/
But, Twinkinfo's rise came at the end of the no-xpoff era; you're probably thinking of Pwndepot which was the twinking website before Twinkinfo.
That, we do not have archives for.
However, I'd recommend you to try out the Internet Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org

 

[Sanit]

But, Twinkinfo's rise came at the end of the no-xpoff era.

Wat

 

[Selaya]

Hm?
I thought Twinkinfo was created, uh somewhen around 2009?
That was at the tail end of the no-xpoff era (dawn of time - 3.2; and 3.2 happened, sometimes 2009?)

 

[Sanit]

Hm?
I thought Twinkinfo was created, uh somewhen around 2009?
That was at the tail end of the no-xpoff era (dawn of time - 3.2; and 3.2 happened, sometimes 2009?)

Xp in BGs happened late august 09
Tinkinfo was around since early 2008 from what I remember, though the forums may have come a bit later than that.

Bgforums/pwndepot definitely predate tinkinfo, no question there. I did think tinkinfo existed earlier than 08 tho, so that's my bad

 

[Zemmix]

The only people that would care about this are currently in this thread.

In fact, I'd argue that doing this would further WoWs decline. One of their biggest problems is an extremely fragmented world that doesn't feel complete or whole.

One if the big appeals of vanilla, BC and even wrath was that the story and lore felt well cemented in a fully realized world through which content flow easily.

And cata both continued that but also started to fracture that. It changed the world, so you could see where past actions in previous expacs had actually had an effect. The world had moved forward with the story.

But cata was where it also started falling apart. It's hard to simultaneously keep older content around when the story moves on. MC makes zero sense right now. Why do BRD and MC still exist, from a story standpoint? Aren't the dark iron our friends now? Refreshing dungeons like deadmines and sfk and SM was cool, so why didn't all of instanced content get that refresh?

And then further expacs and experience squishing just made alot of that old content obsolete. Hell, entire expacs can be fully skipped, but their storylines are referenced in quests and dungeons that you experience while leveling. With no resolution.

If you're a new player, nothing makes sense anymore. At least not from like level 55-110.

WoW needs another full reshaping ala Cata. The world needs to make sense as a whole again. There needs to be a concrete sense of progression through stories. I'm 100% sure that players feel disconnected from the game because there is no overarching, complete story anymore. It's just a bunch of different chapters all written by different people who may or may not have read the chapter before theirs.

/Rant

Pretty much entirely true.

There is absolutely zero sense of the game world making sense of current game time except the zones introduced in the latest expansions.

So if you are new to the game, you are basically leveling through a weird mix of everything that has happened since Cata, which is almost a decade of content ago with countless huge changes in lore.

A big problem here is that Blizzard has always, but increasingly so has just focused on endgame. The story is all focused around end game, and not based on developing a story while leveling to get there. The entire experience basically starts at endgame.

 

[Chops]

The entire experience basically starts at endgame.

This is the crux of the problem. And this wasnt a philosophy during the creation of vanilla

An engaging leveling process and well thought out world is what people miss about vanilla. Not the game mechanics.

 

[Zemmix]

This is the crux of the problem. And this wasnt a philosophy during the creation of vanilla

An engaging leveling process and well thought out world is what people miss about vanilla. Not the game mechanics.

Yep.

But they've been very clear, not just in their actions, but their statements...It's a linear experience, and they want the focus to be on endgame.

So they have pretty much done everything they possibly can to fast track everyone to endgame, and have everything before it basically be breezed through. And with doing that, they seem to feel no need to focus on the journey to endgame. And since they've got it designed that way, it really doesn't give them any reason to want to focus on what comes before endgame.

 

[Chops]

Yep.

But they've been very clear, not just in their actions, but their statements...It's a linear experience, and they want the focus to be on endgame.

So they have pretty much done everything they possibly can to fast track everyone to endgame, and have everything before it basically be breezed through. And with doing that, they seem to feel no need to focus on the journey to endgame. And since they've got it designed that way, it really doesn't give them any reason to want to focus on what comes before endgame.

Yup

And I sympathize with that. You want new players to feel like they're playing the actual game, not content that's years behind their peers.

But I also feel like it could be done in a better manner. Maybe slow the content releases down a bit and have every expansion essentially "remake" the world to catch it up with the current story. You wouldn't need to redo every zone but you could bypass/redesign some of the old xpacs. No reason to go to Outland, no reason to go to draenor. Make those optional side content. Northrend could be redesigned as a battle over the resources of the continent now that the Lich King is defeated. Same with Pandaria and the broken aisles.

Just spit ballin, but they can do alot better than just slapping content on at the end and leaving the rest untouched for over a decade.