• came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    20 hours ago

    nearly 20 years ago, when WoW was just about to launch, my friends and I had been looking for an MMO to get into that would be interesting, fun, and have pvp. and I distinctly remember the vibe being cautiously optimistic with"well, Blizzard is great. I bet they're going to do a great job."

    and they did. it was visually stunning, had lots to explore, very polished experience and it engaged us all for years.

    it's hard to reconcile those days with today, where if somebody told me blizzard was making some new major game, my first impulse would be to shrug and wonder why anyone still cared.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      ·
      20 hours ago

      I can't get over the enduring hype of "WoW Classic" where the entire gimmick is "roll back over a decade of content."

      Yes yes I get nostalgia and all that, but selling a product entirely on a lack of additional content still baffled me.

          • imogen_underscore [it/its, she/her]
            ·
            edit-2
            14 hours ago

            yeah. some years after beginning to phase out old sets and have a current playable season of cards, they added a mode literally called Classic Hearthstone... and sold packs for it presumably making millions. game is hardly 10 years old lol

      • Florn [they/them]
        ·
        13 hours ago

        My first experience with WoW was Wrath of the Lich King, and WoW Classic was the most fun I've ever had with the game. Granted I was also medicated for ADHD for the first time in my life but still

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          ·
          13 hours ago

          Lich King was fun for a time but also had some of the most obnoxious ass-pulls, like the

          spoiler

          "oh you and your party actually aren't epic enough to complete this raid fight with Le Epic Arthas, so down you all go and watch the DMPC step in and jerk himself off while you watch in presumptive awe"

          moment in the final battle.

      • Inui [comrade/them]
        ·
        17 hours ago

        Its not necessarily nostalgia, but like rolling back to a pre-nerffed bosses version of Elden Ring. The old content still existed but it was fundamentally not the same experience and was significantly less challenging with the way the game had changed. I can definitely see the case for it, but I also think stuff like Season of Discovery and Vanilla+ were what people were really after, like with Old School Runescape. Which private servers like Turtle WoW do better, but still. I don't think its weird except in a bizarre "people hate our changes so much they want to pay us to undo them" way.

      • GenderIsOpSec [she/her]
        ·
        20 hours ago

        I dont get it either, because I hated vanilla even though i played it for...too long...BUT it's basically a completely different game from the modern WoW. If you want you can imagine it's people wanting to go play Master of Orion 1, after not liking Master of Orion 3. emilie-shrug

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          ·
          20 hours ago

          I-was-saying Master of Orion 2 was cool and good, and I'd rather go back to that than all the way to 1, even if 3 was utter garbage.

          I feel the same way about WoW: some of the later content was good, especially pre-Cataclysm, and losing all of it in the name of "classic" seems like overkill.

          • GenderIsOpSec [she/her]
            ·
            20 hours ago

            MOO2 was really good, I played it for the first time 5 years ago or so and it's basically deeper than almost all modern 4x space games, with bad UI and the space combat becomes really tiring when you have large fleets but still

            why did they have to re-invent the wheel and remove all the spokes?? negative

            • UlyssesT [he/him]
              ·
              edit-2
              20 hours ago

              The MOO3 people were "shot in the arm" assholes, the kind of Bad Robot-style trust fund failsons that were getting handed IPs left and right to "reboot" shows, movies, and the like, and the head asshole of the bunch even bragged about how funny it was to kill off all the "furry" alien races off-camera before the game's start.

              • GenderIsOpSec [she/her]
                ·
                20 hours ago

                about how funny it was to kill off all the "furry" alien races off-camera before the game's start.

                ah a G#mer

                • UlyssesT [he/him]
                  ·
                  20 hours ago

                  Of course the primary new alien race addition was le epic space zombies. Which was the style at the time. And for way too fucking long.