Aestu wrote:
Logging on occasionally and whimsically doing something is not "playing the game". You don't need to play five hours a day, but your perceptions are so far out of whack it's clear that you don't have a proper frame of reference.
Don't be silly. "Logging on and doing something" is exactly how one plays an online game.
Quote:
Yeah, I did, thanks for asking, and no they weren't, instances and levelling were way less grindy in Vanilla compared to Cata. That's not my "opinion", it's objective fact, and it's objective fact as demonstrated by measurable reality.
Which measurements, specifically, quantify the relative grindiness of the game now and then?
Quote:
A modern instance, all modern instances, are endless packs of between three and five mobs, and the occasional super-elite, going down a really long hallway. Wipes are rare and usually the result of general failure. No communication is necessary and the challenge is very marginal.
Strat/Scholo/BRD, and every other vanilla instance, had diverse layout. Even instances like SFK/WC/RFC/SM, which were in principle long hallways, did not feel as such because the environments had a more complex, detailed and organic layout. There were random pats and odd mechanics that required learning and communication, quests that required cooperation, etc.
BRD did have an interesting layout. It also took about 7 hours to clear if you took advantage of that. Strat was treated as two different dungeons, both of which were essentially linear. Scholo had a few forks to reach optional bosses, which is cool, but modern dungeons have optional bosses too. There were some cool mechanics in those dungeons (eg. Eyes of Stratholme), but those were still the exception. Most of the time in a dungeon consisted of pulling packs with no interesting abilities, and few of the bosses were anything but tank and spank. I agree that the difficulty of modern dungeons leaves something to be desired, but most of the wipes that I recall in lvl 60 dungeons came from tight spaces and mobs that ran away at low health (or people being dumb and fearing/walking into other packs). The kind of difficulty in something like the heroic TK instances was much more interesting and fun.
Quote:
Cata levelling, same deal. The revised classic world, to a far greater extent than its original form, consists of endless and vastly more predictable permutations of
-kill X non-elite mobs
-kill this one "!" mob
-kill X mobs and collect Y item
-bombing runs and Simon Says
Yes, vanilla questing was time-consuming. But what made it less grindy was that quest chains weren't so predictable that you could know what the next quest would ask you to do before even seeing it. That has nothing to do with years of experience but the simple fact that vanilla quest chains were fundamentally unpredictable in a way Cata chains are not. Good example would be the Fenris Isle quest chain: no amount of experience would allow a player to guess each step of the chain or expect the head to even drop off those gnolls.
You seem to be redefining the word "grind" here. Almost all vanilla quests were exactly what you describe, as well as the occasional "kill yetis until you get 5% drop rate item" (which they thankfully got rid of), many weren't even part of interesting chains, and many of the good quest chains involved long periods of flying between zones and travelling between continents. There were also a number of levels where the only efficient way to get XP was to grind mobs, and you can't get any more grindy than that. Quest chains now are considerably tighter and there is never a time where you can't get a set of decent quests for your level.
Quote:
None of that is strictly my opinion, based in some way on my own interpretations. What I have described is the material reality of the game content.
When I say that it is clear that you are out of touch with the game, this is what I mean. Your view of the game as "improved" or "more balanced" or "less grindy" is only intelligible in the context of taking platitudes at face value without any meaningful experience to compare them against.
Laelia wrote:
Class abilities were generally terrible, for a time you could take 40-man raids into 10-man instances, clearing those instances with appropriate numbers took hours and hours of clearing dull trash before you reached dull bosses, gear had bizarre stats (spirit on warrior plate), PvP wasn't close to balanced and getting any rewards took a ridiculous amount of grinding. The fact that you're praising it retrospectively just proves my point #1.
No, what proves #1 is that all those flaws you cite were less consequential than what Vanilla did right, which was establish an immersive and compelling game world that was worth playing.
Instances (of all formats and difficulties) have never been more dull (no, never), and balance doesn't count for shit if the game isn't compelling.
What about Vanilla made it more "immersive and compelling" than it is today? It was fresh, and you had friends to play with. Neither of those has anything to do with game quality.
