Mike Morhaime steps down - Page 7

On October 07 2018 21:42 Clbull wrote:

Tell that to the players who flocked en masse to Nostalrius and propped up its registration numbers to almost a million before Blizzard shut it down - not because it was a free pirate server but because they were sick and fed up of WoD.

As somebody who didn't start playing WoW until early TBC who spent some time on Nost, it really isn't the rose-tinted goggles effect that every modern WoW apologist claims it is. The game was just objectively better back then, even despite class balance being in a terrible spot.

Old school WoW didn't force you to wade through loads of boring, repetitive, immersion-breaking and overly scripted quests that tried to build you up as this final hope for Azeroth like the last few expansions have. Instead, you were an unknown adventurer and the game world felt far more organic and far less contrived. The best part is that you often had the freedom to grind mobs, run dungeons and explore the game world rather than ride the conveyor belt to the next quest hub like you did from Cataclysm onwards. This is because there weren't that many quests around and they actually weren't the most efficient levelling method in the game.

Old school WoW didn't have resource nodes like herbs and ores that would randomly despawn from the game world because you wandered into a different phase of a certain subzone - one of my major complaints with modern WoW that Blizzard still can't be bothered to fix.

Old school WoW had complex stat sheets where almost every primary and secondary stat did something beneficial for your class. Primary stats also had a lot of varied uses unlike in modern WoW where they're an overglorified "make your attacks hit harder" stat. How successful do you think Dungeons & Dragons would have been as a tabletop RPG if your stat sheet looked like this? The answer is 'not very' because tabletop gamers don't want to play Fisher Price™ My First Tabletop RPG.

The issue is that Blizzard have dumbed down the game for the lowest common denominator and alienated the core audience that fell in love with the original version of the game, and I think part of that can be connected to Activision's acquisition of Blizzard back in 2008. Ghostcrawler made a very interesting quote about his time at Blizzard after he joined Riot, where he stated that it was refreshing to work on a game where he didn't have to worry about whether his grandmother could play it.

On October 04 2018 08:36 hexhaven wrote:


Server problems or design problems?

On October 08 2018 00:40 Cyro wrote:


Mostly design, shipped way too early

On October 07 2018 21:42 Clbull wrote:


Old school WoW didn't force you to wade through loads of boring, repetitive, immersion-breaking and overly scripted quests that tried to build you up as this final hope for Azeroth like the last few expansions have. Instead, you were an unknown adventurer and the game world felt far more organic and far less contrived.

On October 08 2018 00:29 Tappo wrote:

Remember when you played that new game you havent played before and everything was new? Remember when people were using Alakhazam for those deep immersive quests? Remember when people were spamming AOE/INV PLS(That was socializing. You are probably gonna post a pic of people lining up) for 30 minutes when about 100 people were trying to tag that one elite for that deep immersive quest? Remember when people were stuck looting for 5 minutes? Remember having to wait 4 hour for an BG just to meet the only BG farm group? Remember waiting in front of/on top of AH because there was nothing to do? Remember the ninjalooting? Remember 50 gold respec cost?

Remember when stats werent important because you would wear the newest gear anyway because you just got it? Remember 8-9 pieces of Set that wouldnt give you room for other gear? Remember not being able to catch up in gear besides having to form a new 40 man raid? Remember when people were talking trash on molten core because it was just a boring cave? Remember how Onyxia Scale Cloak and Resistance Gear would GATE(!!!!) you out of content? Remember when Legendarys were so game changing yet so luck based? Remember when people were using decursive for automatic targeting and auto decurse? Remember when people were pissed when that was fixed because it made it IMPOSSIBLE to decurse? Remember having to buff 40 man by hand?

Remember when low tier dungeons were so big yet so useless? Remember how people avoided them because they werent worth it? Remember how people got nothing but frustrated in those?


I bet you dont remember all those things. Some reason

Good thing that you remember that you could grind mobs for leveling as a positive thing. Which you can still do. You can also level through grinding Herbs/Ore/Fish. Or through PvP. Hey, its like this game gives you the freedom to do whatever you want

On October 08 2018 02:11 207aicila wrote:


Tappo I don't understand your angle in this thread. You're here point at potential, hypothetical reasons why you believe that nostalgia is the driving factor behind people wanting vanilla WoW back. And that's all well and good, and you might not be wrong either.

But here's the problem: it's not a debate on hypotheticals. People clearly do want it. Because they did and still do (on small servers that have escaped the wrath of Blizzard) play it. If you had been correct, most of them would have stopped after a few days, but this is very obviously not the case. If you had been correct, Nostalrius would never have become large enough to warrant legal action from Blizzard, but this is very obviously not the case.

So I really don't get what you're trying to accomplish here. Like yeah it wasn't perfect but clearly enough people are okay with those imperfections.

On October 08 2018 02:25 Tappo wrote:
By the way: WoW was formed by player feedback

On October 08 2018 17:29 207aicila wrote:


I mean this is just factually wrong. I don't understand why you're choosing to ignore the thousands (tens of thousands?) of people who are playing on vanilla private servers literally right now.

Again. People play it. People are playing it. So many people played on Nostalrius that Blizzard felt it was in their best interest to take legal action. Why are you making all the hypothetical arguments for why people wouldn't or shouldn't play it when it is a simple observable fact that they do play it?

On October 09 2018 00:24 Tappo wrote:

Tens of THOUSANDS who are playing for FREE. Odd that you would ignore this fact. But understandable. I should have typed and/or, right? God damnit, they always find a loophole!

On October 09 2018 02:16 Godwrath wrote:
Best of lucks to Mike Morhaime.


It seems like you are a bit lost, this isn't MMOChamp.

Playing for free or not is irrelevant since there is no option for a paid version, therefore we can't conclude shit about it. If blizzard is doing classic (whatever it ends up being) it is obviously because they see an opportunity in the market, not for altruistic means, so maybe you could just shut up and wait until you actually have the information needed to enlighten us with something more rational than your current ramblings.

On October 09 2018 03:47 Tappo wrote:


You just said that player numbers on those private server have nothing to do with the fact that its free.

On October 09 2018 03:47 Tappo wrote:
There is a simple rule: Everything bad in Classic = Good. Everything bad in retail = Bad. Its the same as in "Starcraft 1 vs Starcraft 2"

On October 09 2018 04:46 Godwrath wrote:

No, that's not what I said. Re-read what I wrote and if your faulty reading comprehension can't figure it out, then you can be my guest and continue with your strawman.

Yeah it's called personal preference and people being an ass about it. Then you grow up and stop caring about what other people say about your entertainment choices. Like does it fucking matter that Willy thinks that classic is best and Billy disagrees?

On October 09 2018 07:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:

Probably not, at least not based on that drop alone; that drop is consistent with the cycling that ATVI has been doing over the past year.