It's easy to look at my excitement at my last couple of posts and think that ol' Red here is all in on Wrath Classic. After all, I positively geeked out over the initial landing in Northrend from the Horde and Alliance side at Borean Tundra, and there's these that I did last night:
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| "Nice to see we're both on the same page, Sir." --Quintalan |
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| "Who the hell stuffed a ship up there?" --Linna |
And like an idiot I didn't realize there was a "Pets" tab in the character window --which is where the mounts live-- and I ended up submitting a ticket for "my Charger isn't in the spell window".
Oops.
This is all well and good, and yes, I was excited for a return to Northrend. That hasn't changed.
But what also hasn't changed is my sense of dread about how Wrath Classic will end up in implementation.
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Despite everything, TBC Classic had one thing going for it: I really liked the story. Okay, I also liked the setting and the class changes and even the grind itself*, I'm not going to dissemble here. The story in TBC Classic, much like Vanilla's decentralized stories, had so many enjoyable parts that you can tell there was a lot of thought that went into how to make two erstwhile allies hate each other, and how to bring them together. (And no, I'm not talking about the Queldorei and Sindorei, either.)
I wouldn't have written those Letters from... posts if I hated the content.
What I hated about TBC Classic had nothing to do with the game itself, but rather how people decided the game should be played.
That's a huge distinction, but the most important one if we're to understand what happened to TBC Classic and my own enjoyment of it.
Remember this video?
It showed up on my "recommended" video list again for some reason, and I thought I might as well listen once more while I was leveling weapon skills for Cardwyn 1.0.**
You'd think that I wouldn't necessarily want to revisit this, because it would remind me of the past year or so, but I also think that it's important to understand why things became the way they did in TBC Classic. Just saying "people brought a Retail mentality to Classic" isn't enough, because there's plenty of room for misinterpretation.
The crux of the video --for me, anyway-- was when All-Trades Jack presented a flowchart on what it took to raid in Shadowlands, and how if he wanted to raid with his guild when the raids opened three weeks after the expac launched he had to follow an insane timeline expressed in the flowchart.
"In order to raid with my guild, I first had to get to level cap in about five days. This was necessary so I could do end game dungeons and start grinding renown. I had to look up a class guide so I could pick out the best talents, the best covenant and find the best gear. I had to look up a legendary guide to help me identify the best legendary for Fire Mages and which dungeon or wing of Torghast I had to grind in order to obtain it. I had to look up a guide to tell me what my weekly checklist should be in order to make gold, stockpile anima, get soul ash, and farm consumables for myself and my guild. I had to look up guides to the Castle Nathria boss mechanics and make sure I was aware of what my role would be to counter them. I had to look up guides on my ability rotation as a Fire Mage and how to maximize DPS as a caster while constantly on the move in the raid. I had to download a list of add-ons that gave me a number of advantages that are necessary to perform at a raiding level... ...All of this just to join my guild in our attempt to complete the entry-level difficulty for Castle Nathria. Just this preparation was a commitment, and you know what? Even after doing all of this I was still third from the bottom on the DPS meter. My guildies were much more dedicated and skilled than I was."
--All-Trades Jack, "This Game Wasn't Meant For You | World of Warcraft vs. Casual Players"
Does that sound familiar? It tracks very closely with all of the attunements and gearing that everybody was blitzing through in TBC Classic just to get to raid Karazhan and Gruul/Mags.
Okay, maybe not "everybody", but it was the meta, and a lot of people were following it religiously. Even when I was about in Outland on Briganaa and I'd run into someone needing help with a group quest, conversation inevitably turned to the pace of getting through everything in time to raid. Some guilds used the buddy system, where guildies were in groups of five so they could run instances and level together, other guilds used what Valhalla did and said "just group up! And ask for help and we'll get you help!"
Narrator: For the leveling Shamans, they became familiar with the term 'New phone; who dis?'
But far and away, the meta was what people followed, and they did so with a goal oriented mentality more typically of what you'd find out of recent college grads gunning for an office cubicle at a Fortune 500 company.
I was no different, and as I alluded to with my snarky comment above, being a leveling Shaman/Paladin*** meant you had a longer road to travel than anybody else.
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Let's not make any bones about it: was it fun?
“And yeah, players will still complain about anything that slows them down because players want to consume as quickly as possible, but complaining is just what MMO players do. Really, modern MMO players are so goal oriented that they never seem to consider what’s actually fun. Players just chase their goals and hope fun will follow as a consequence.”–Neverknowsbest, from “How to save the MMO genre once and for all”
For some people, yes. Or at least they put on a happy face about it.
For others, including me, no. It was a grind that, once you got to the end of leveling, you began grinding again so you could get the attunements and then the gear necessary to raid. Once you began raiding, there was pressure to 'keep up with the Joneses' and raid as much as you could to clear all the content so you could do it all over again on the next phase of raiding. The feeling of doing something greater than yourself, of being a part of something big, and truly accomplishing something was lost in the constant race to get ready for the next raid.
As I've alluded to in the past, the Classic WoW team did nobody any favors by accelerating the timetable for TBC Classic and effectively forcing progression oriented guilds into a more pressure packed environment than they signed up for. Sure, a lot of progression teams wanted this --or they said they did-- but quite a few imploded under the pressure. And even more had to constantly plug holes in their raid team as people burned out and left. To use a sports analogy, there were those raiding teams that were like the University of Alabama's football team, who have their pick of the best players, and there's everybody else, who have to work hard to just stay afloat.
One of my fellow leveling Shamans that dropped out last November told me recently that TBC Classic was not what they envisioned it would be; she felt too much pressure to level and get things done than what she wanted, and she was enjoying life in Final Fantasy XIV far more than she did in TBC Classic.
It was only when I began leveling Linna and Neve in Outland that I truly began to enjoy the expac itself, but it was far too late to prevent the entirety of TBC Classic from being tainted in my memory. It just goes to show that it wasn't the content itself that I disliked, it was how I was pressured into approaching the content.
I wanted to raid, and I was given the opportunity to raid lead as well, and I wanted to make the most of this opportunity. Was the price worth it?
From where I stand now, no.
I have derived more enjoyment from exploring Outland and leveling alts than I did on my main. Withdrawal pangs aside, I have gotten more enjoyment out of not raiding than raiding. This includes the Friday Karazhan runs, which would frequently give me heartburn while I made sure we had enough tanks and healers before raid time itself. It was a very rare occasion indeed where I didn't have to get on the guild's LFG channel and ask for people to join the raid.
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This brings me to Wrath Classic.
I have enjoyed the Beta so far for two reasons: I am under absolutely no pressure to level quickly, and there aren't that many people out in the Beta, either.
My questing buddy mentioned the lack of raiding when she told me how much she was enjoying the Beta, because for her she'd been in "raid mode" for over a year. When you take that burden away, you can simply start to breathe again and enjoy things that you used to just rush through because it was a roadblock to the next item on the checklist.
Among the many topics my questing buddy and I chatted about the last time the two of us were out in the Beta together, we discussed the choke points for leveling. Having had her second toon out there leveling in Borean Tundra, she pointed out the various areas where there were going to be choke points, such as killing those mini bosses scattered throughout the zone. Typically those are at the end of a three or four quest cycle, and if there isn't a crowd it's no big deal. But imagining what it is going to be like on release day on these megaservers, it's going to be an absolute nuthouse. There's going to be a lot of frustration trying to down these mini bosses and keep pace with leveling.
Or, as I suggested, people are just going to make a beeline straight into Utgarde Keep and just level exclusively through instances up to L80 and then quest for gold making purposes.
Because a critical mass of players consume content like locusts.
For me, however, if I keep my mains on Myzrael I'll be able to avoid the crush of people trying to get to L80. My questing buddy will be able to farm for herbs without dealing with the constant camping and bot activity on the megaservers.
Additionally, not being in the franken guild that is the merged guild means I won't have to read about how fast people are blitzing through content, seeing the cliques ignoring each other and remaining in their own silos, and people pushing hard to be raiding as quickly as possible.
I will be attempting to hold onto that sense of wonder that I had when I first took the time to look around in Northrend without rushing from quest to quest, and simply say "Wow. This is amazing."
And Atheren, if and when Myz is shuttered --or maybe even before then-- I might move some of my toons your way. Bloodsail Buccaneers is the only RP PvE server in North America, and since it serves such a niche role, it's not likely to go away.
*Except the Nesingwary quests. I hate those, despite that they're great if you're a Skinner and need leather for leveling Leatherworking.
**Or the OG Cardwyn. Not sure which one I prefer.
***Or leveling a new toon with a different class entirely.
EtA: Fixed some grammar.
Almost two decades into this, and I'm still scratching my head over what the big hurry is. I'm not going to argue anyone's numbers or flowchart or spreadsheet here, I'm certain those numbers are accurate and irrefutable.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm wondering what happens if you take a week longer? Do you get gkicked? Does your guild dissolve in a puff of anguished smoke?
I've said it before, I'll keep saying it until I fall over; I already have a job.
I know when I first went through TBC and Wrath when they originally came out, our guild didn't exactly take their time, but they did only focus on 10-mans so, ya know, Kara in TBC. Filthy casuals and all that. But at least we had fun. What you're describing doesn't sound like fun, or even a job I'd want to keep.
I honestly don't get it either. Having seen both sides of the issue, both as a raid lead and just a raider, it seems silly to rush like this and burn people out. But at the same time, the WoW Classic team's push to burn through TBC Classic so quickly catered strictly to the multi-day raid teams that could push hard and fast, and created a false sense of urgency in everyone else. It's incumbent on everybody to not fall into the trap of "gotta do it all FAST", but it's also incumbent on leaders especially to highlight that they operate under a different set of standards than what others are pushing.
DeleteWell, that's a very good point. You kind of get who they're catering to with the push push push release schedule, given that.
DeleteWhich is kinda diametrically opposed to how I approach playing Classic-anything. It's all been done! Take the time to smell the winos in behind the Slaughtered Lamb!
I really, really, really hope this nonsense comes to an end with WotLK. I doubt it will, but I can hope.
Well, if the Classic team pushes hard again, they'll find a ton of people simply jumping ship after Wrath ends. Why cut off a decent portion of your player base just to push hard? For what, Cataclysm?
DeleteThen again, I've seen Cata apologists popping up in LFG chat from time to time now, talking about how "Cata wasn't that bad" and "the raids were good". Etc. etc. My guess is that they're going to start pushing for Cataclysm Classic because people are fated to repeat history.
It it was all about raids I wouldn't care. But it's the world outside of those insular spaces that I'm interested in. We ALREADY have Cata-level Azeroth in Retail. If we wanna see what that was like we just have to go have a look. But Classic's promise, to me, was the the world of Azeroth would exist as it was pre-cataclysm.
DeleteI don't want the Cata world back. I like Feathermoon just the way it is now.
Bloodsail Buccaneers is a really good realm. It reminds me of Blackwater Raiders on live before it got swallowed up . Lots of new people there. We don’t raid but lots of guilds do. See you on the other side, brother! Atheren
ReplyDeleteI'll catch ya on the flip side!
DeleteAye Red, the 'push push push' blew up a couple of guilds I was in during the run of TBC. I watched as the 'Need to be ready for xxx' became the be-all and end-all of one's time playing. Hell, one guild basically dissipated because people wanted to go from 10man Kara to 25 SSC but couldn't recruit enough to get over the hump. After trying unsuccessfully to guild merge with 3 different guilds, the leadership took the obvious way out.... go play different online games.
ReplyDeleteAll good though, happily I've joined a bunch of other older farts in playing, and while inexperienced, they're enthusiastic. They played BC original, but this is their new foray into TBC.
A bunch hit 70 with the xp bump yesterday, so their eye is on Kara, and the excitement is right there.
Great timing for me, an opportunity to get into more Kara with some alts that hadn't seen it yet.
Progression? Bite me.
Bill
Yes, I know that there are guilds that pretty much stay in their lane and don't go crazy in progression, but the FOMO is real.
DeleteIt just goes to show that it wasn't the content itself that I disliked, it was how I was pressured into approaching the content.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, this is very much how I felt about BC Classic too. The content was honestly as good as I remembered it to be, but the attitudes were so changed that there wasn't much room for my kind of fun.
I still haven't entirely puzzled that out, but my general impression is that a lot of people who played original BC went into Classic with the mindset of doing it "better" this time, by getting their attunements done in time, getting the right gear etc., which I can understand to some degree, just not why it always had to be so fast fast fast. And in a social game it's hard not to have the pushiest people set the pace, because I saw many players who rushed repeat the content exactly until they had all their drops and then never again, which meant that if you were behind, you had fewer tanks and healers to play with. And so on and so forth...
Yes, and those people who rushed ahead, did all the spamming of Heroic instances until they got attuned, and then burned out on running instances and stopped, took a huge toll on everybody else who followed in their wake. And then there were people --I know a few offhand-- who spam ran the same instance 20 or more times to try to get the one drop they wanted. Me, I just said "if it happens, it happens".
DeleteWhen I was told about week or two before I announced I had to step away from raiding that I had to "get X, buy Y, have Z made, etc. etc." I looked at the "go get the totem from Mana Tombs" and laughed. I'd never gotten it to drop, and the only place that people wanted to run less than Heroic Mana Tombs was Heroic Auchenai Crypts, which was where another item I was supposed to get was located.
And when you're entirely dependent upon finding a tank and/or healer who wanted to run those... Well, good luck with that.
I do think that people are now so conditioned to simply go to Icy Veins and Wowhead to find out what they need --and just assume that is the path of "fun"-- that they just went ahead and did it. That is what I meant when I said the Retail mentality was being applied to Classic.
There's a comic I saw on Reddit some months ago that had two panels, one "Original TBC" and the other "Classic TBC", that had hunters with their pets. The Original one had Hunters with all sorts of pets, and the Classic one had Hunters with all of the exact same pet. I laughed, but I kind of cried inside, because it was true. Everybody followed the meta, and there was no room for creativity.
Maybe it's the old school elitist raider in me speaking, but I take a little offense at the parts you quoted.
ReplyDelete> I had to look up a class guide so I could pick out the best talents, the best covenant and find the best gear. I had to look up a legendary guide to help me identify the best legendary for Fire Mages and which dungeon or wing of Torghast I had to grind in order to obtain it.
"had to look up a guide". Unless this is your first time, you know where to go, Wowhead or Icy Veins. You can 100% skim it and look for a few key numbers.
The bit about the legendary is fair, except that we didn't hold it against anyone who didn't get theirs yet.
I don't even remember how long I usually needed to get to max level (probably on my blog) but I never felt more pressured than I myself wanted to reach this 'milestone'. And at least in SL we did raid the first week, but only on the weekend I think.
"I had to look up a guide to tell me what my weekly checklist should be in order to make gold, stockpile anima, get soul ash, and farm consumables for myself and my guild."
yeah no shit, either you naturally discover how to get anima or you look up a guide. If you weren't going for optimal, winging it was fine.
Just that gold should absolutely not be a problem, even if this was your first raid and you were casual before. Gold is plenty. Consumables alos weren't a big problem
"I had to look up guides to the Castle Nathria boss mechanics and make sure I was aware of what my role would be to counter them. I had to look up guides on my ability rotation as a Fire Mage and how to maximize DPS as a caster while constantly on the move in the raid"
Again, that's been par for the course since TBC, only in Vanilla could you show up completely unprepared.
"Even after doing all of this I was still third from the bottom on the DPS meter. "
Now I'm just scratching my head. New expansion, maybe new class, new meta, no practice, and the expectation was to rock the meters?
The other one isn't much better, or it simply does not match my 15 years of wow...
“And yeah, players will still complain about anything that slows them down because players want to consume as quickly as possible, but complaining is just what MMO players do."
Mostly people I know are saying "wish the tier lasted a little longer so we could get a rekill in for the people who missed it". Sure, some people will speedrun and then chill, but I actually don't remember playing with these "OMG NEXT EXPANSION WHEN" folks.
"Players just chase their goals and hope fun will follow as a consequence."
The stated (or implied?) of my current guild is: We want to beat the Heroic raid before the next tier and get the Ahead of the Curve achievement. We raid 2x2h per week and there are basically no exceptions. We take everyone who wants to raid, and try to help them improve if they're really, really below the average. I think we sat out 1 person on 1 fight out of 22 bosses because literally wiping us every single attempt on heroic. I don't see how raiding more casual is even possible, given people of this skill level who need a modicum of practice and aren't ex mythic raiders.
I'm sure I've a thick enough skin to handle the criticism, Nogamara. I mean, I've read the forums and seen the LFG chat, and by comparison you were nice and polite.
DeleteWhat All-Trades Jack was alluding to were all the steps that a new player would have to become familiar with in order to actually raid on normal when Castle Nathria opened. An experienced raider would have already internalized all of these steps, but for someone who is new to raiding these are not always immediately obvious. If you want to raid and do things more complex than LFR, you have to either figure this out yourself or be part of a guild who can help point you in the right direction.
The usage of guides and walkthroughs to actually play the game with an eye toward end game content is so prevalent that it's easy to forget that a new player won't know about this at all. And it's also very easy to forget that none of this is actually put out by Blizzard; Blizz assumes that third parties will put this stuff out so they won't have to.
During my original leveling, back in 2009, I had absolutely no clue at all about any addons until I got to Northrend. And only then was I aware of how crappy my output was, and I was only exposed to the concept of BiS gear once I hit level cap. My initial exposure to it was while hanging around Org one day after having gotten to L80, Souldat told me to inspect a particular Paladin nearby, telling me that was the sort of gear I should be aiming for. I took a screencap and jotted down the gear names, and he told me to look at Elitist Jerks. That was pretty much it.
I've been in instances back in Wrath and Cata where puggers would crap on people for gear, tell them to 'get gud', and initiate vote kicks. I mean, all of the worst stereotypes were up for display, and that's a big part of the reason why I'm a bit reticent about coming back for Dragonflight.
As for the quote from Neverknowsbest, I certainly have seen that sort of behavior --bitching about releasing content faster-- in Classic. I've seen it in LFG chat, in pugging instances, and even out in the field when grouping up to tackle group quests. I know the Monday raid wanted a slower rollout, but the Tuesday/Thursday raids were effectively "done" with each Phase's raids (except for Sunwell, apparently) at least a few weeks in advance. They were geared enough that they could burn through BT and Hyjal in one night and take the other night off (for either ZA or just to screw around). By comparison, the Monday raid never officially downed Archie --they never had enough Shamans to counter his mechanics-- they just moved on to BT just to get the better gear for the raid. If they had another month or two, they could have fully outfitted the raid and had a good chance at Sunwell, so when I read people in LFG chat bitching about the (lack of) speed in phase releases, it really ticked me off.
But I also remember people complaining in Retail in Cata and Mists about how slow content releases were, and how "they had nothing to do". So this is not a new phenomenon.
See, you only quoted the posts, the others wrote it ;)
DeleteSo if we can agree that at some point Raiding is THE (PvE) end game content for the games that support it I just don't see where the problem is that you kinda have to play optimal and that after 20 years of "group of players against monsters" this would not be complicated enough that it warrants reading a guide.
Maybe I'm actually being dense here, but I usually go there once per class, skim the whole guide, adjust spec and talents, then jot down stat prio and what legendaries to get. That's it. I'd say that takes 30 minutes of prep and then it's learning how to play, that's the hard part - so I don't really get the focus on the guides. A lot of the guide stuff can still be found out ingame, or inspecting others, or talking to people.
I see your point of someone who has never raided in any game, but even then I find the barrier quite low. Or at least not higher than in any other game. SWTOR? Comparable. WildStar? Was much harder. Guild Wars 2? Actually not sure, could be easier there, could be harder. FFXIV? Definitely comparable.
Again, maybe my point of view is skewed because I generally very bad at games[tm], but if I wanted to speedrun a platformer, I am pretty sure I'd need just as much prep work and then actually more time to practice for some sort of success. When I did my first raid in Destiny 2 I also had no idea what I'm doing and the others kinda dragged me through (thanks, random strangers).
Maybe I am actually misunderstanding the problem, and only Vanilla had this "it's like a 5man, but harder", no prep necessary. But was it, really?
I'd consider this the same way I consider FPS games like Call of Duty. You don't need a guide other than knowing what the keys on the keyboard and/or controller do to play, and you don't even need that to play well, but if you want to play competitively or at a higher level than a purely casual environment...
DeleteBut that also brings up another thing: if you're new to MMOs and only know the (frequently derogatory) stereotypes, then you're in for a surprise. Blizz loves to trot out just how many people have created toons over the years, but that's a very small percentage of the number of overall gamers out there. MMOs are a niche market, and there's a higher barrier to entry for WoW than, say, CoD.
I've written tons of documents for work over the years, and when you write instructional documents, you have to make one very basic assumption: that the person reading it has absolutely no idea of what they're reading. When I tried to explain this concept to my coworkers in India, they all laughed. They had absolutely no concept of someone potentially logging into a server with no knowledge of UNIX or LINUX, and what the steps were to have that person ask for access to a server. In my case, however, having 20+ years experience of dealing with people repeatedly asking the most basic questsions about this stuff, I knew to write the documentation with them in mind. And that's why I can appreciate those YouTube videos' explanation about the hurdles a (potentially new) casual player has to overcome. Even the lingo found in game, as a 13 year veteran of WoW, will throw me for a loop. If that confuses me, imagine what it's like for a new player; they'll feel like they started reading Dune without the appendix in the back.
Comment was too long anyway but I'm 100% with you that in Classic they seemed to be catering to the loud minority and it sounds horrible. I mean, I checked out long ago because I was still leveling when people were one-nighting Karazhan already, so make of that what you will.. Kind of have to chuckle a little, if you compare this experience to my other comment about retail and SL, but maybe they changed so much that by doing a little prep work and playing it smart... you can actually get by with so little time invested in retail as compared to classic... I know I wouldn't have had it in me to rush to 70 and do all the attunements and the grinding again, at the start of SL some things were tedious if you wanted to nolife them (and I did), but you didn't have to, most of my guildies didn't (I just wanted to start with a good weapon and had no luck).
ReplyDeleteOh, and please don't take this as some sort of I-told-you-so, but even back then I never entertained the thought of rerolling and starting from level 1/55/x at the start of an expansion in order to raid because I'm exactly too lazy and unfocused for blasting through that kind of chore and I admire all the people who tried.
Shintar might be onto something when she suggested that people might have gone into TBC Classic thinking they were going to do it "better" than they did the last time, because people in guild were posting class guides back in January and February for TBC Classic, long before an announce date was even set. Even now, there were people in guild who were farming insane amounts of gold and mats so they could powerlevel Death Knights and max out professions for Wrath once it drops. Ironically enough, those are the ones left holding the bag when the guild server transferred, and needed help from "mules" to move their copious riches over.
DeleteAs far as the leveling race goes, I didn't want to level a Shaman in TBC Classic; if anything, I wanted to continue playing on Cardwyn and just be a Mage for the expac. But the raid needed Shamans, and we had four potential mages for the raid (including Card), so I volunteered to level a Shaman. I couldn't ask someone to level a new toon and not be willing to do it myself. Because of it, I learned firsthand what a crappy hand the leveling Shamans/Blood Knights were dealt, and I got to know what being in a progression oriented guild was really like.
One of my guildies, who had a toon in another guild, told me in an instance a year ago that his other guild wasn't planning on doing anything raiding wise at all, and actually told their guildies to go out and enjoy the expac and they would re-evaluate after June was over. It was only then that they'd set a timeline for raiding. On the other side of things, Variance and a few other hardcore pushing guilds were clearing Karazhan from practically the first couple of weeks into the expac, but a lot of the hardcore guilds set specific timelines to start raiding Karazhan (first week of July, last week of July, etc.). If you wanted to get there, you had to bust your ass leveling and getting your attunements done as quickly as possible. So for a guild to say "hey, enjoy the expac and we'll circle back a month later", that would have been relaxing and freeing. But alas, that was not the norm among the progression guilds.
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