I have 45 minutes before I have to go do something, so I thought I would check out classic WoW since my old guild is getting back together. Blizzard has completely nailed the experience:
FFS, you had one fucking job and fifteen years to do it.
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Pharniel
But the suffering is the point.
WoW classic is just I Miss The Misery, the video game.
rikyrah
Afternoon Cole :)
Gravenstone
1600+ queue when I logged in last night. Took about 10 minutes to clear. The in game experience … shall we say mixed?
eta: but it looks like you and your guild picked a rather well populated server. Mine is only “high” capacity. Might jump to one of the new ones since I’m not exactly invested in 2 X 2nd level toons.
Tim C.
Curious to see how steep the drop off is going to be when people remember how hard classic was.
Doug R
That’s only half a day waiting. You could watch The Guild while you’re in the queue.
Kylroy
@Pharniel: I really don’t envy Blizzard getting hammered when they open this, and watching it turn into a ghost town in three months.
trollhattan
Retaining my slackjawed non-comprehension stance in the same fashion as “discussing” my kid’s Minecraft activities.
Don’t set the joint on fire and put away those clothes.
Eural Joiner
Have quite a few friends really pumped about the WoW thing which I somehow totally missed out on. Me, I’m a Destiny/Borderlands freak all the way – September 13 is going to be a magical (and very emotional) day! :)
Seanly
Ahh, the good ole days. I was in a raiding guild for a bit (though I didn’t raid much). While I used to game a lot, I could never devote five or six hours in one big block. I play Destiny 2 but have never done any of the raids.
raven
It’s times like this when I know you are young enough to be my son.
trollhattan
We get mail.
I’ll get out the John Denver and banjo LPs and see what she thinks. Distance squad, meteoric path up from the ashes!
Eural Joiner
@Seanly:
Same here! Every so often I commit to doing one…haven’t actually done one yet. Although I did complete Solstice armor sets for all three of my characters thanks to my summer/non-existent work load!
mapaghimagsik
Still on Champions Online. It’s fun for the most part, but there are times I wonder why.
Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan: I guess i don’t understand meteors, then.
dmsilev
@trollhattan:
Plummeting towards Earth in a fiery plume?
dlwchico
@mapaghimagsik: Have you checked out the City of Heroes private servers that are out there?
dlwchico
I spent a lot of time playing WoW over the years, quitting and coming back for every expansion, but Activision Blizzard laying off 800 employees after a record year of revenue soured me to them permanently.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic: @dmsilev:
Has to be an ironic, inside STEM joke. Right?
This one isn’t bad, some of the coach letters have typos, which is not the way into my kid’s good graces.
mapaghimagsik
@dlwchico: Briefly. I’m not a CoH refugee, and have a huge fondness for the Champions Pen and Paper game. I’ve enjoyed RP with the refugees I’ve found on CoH, for the most part. That, and I’m a sucker for builder type systems.
Martin
@mapaghimagsik: Obligatory.
Paul T
The good news is Rustbolt and Nazjatar are pretty much deserted and you can get things done there. Actually managed to get to several rares this morning. Compared to the usual “Rare UP/Rare Instantly Dead” because of dozens of players on it in a second, I consider your wait time as a good thing.
Leto
@Gravenstone: Yeah, queue’s over 10k reported on the most popular servers even with the layering that they implemented.
Cole: they might have had 15 years to get it right, but part of the reason WoW is in the shitter is what they implemented to reduce that “problem” directly contributed to WoW’s subscriber decline. The death of the individual sever community on live is what’s leading people to come back to Vanilla WoW. It won’t be the same of course, but nostalgia is a huge draw.
marc
Good god why play antiquated shite that still looks horrible? I never understood the retro thang.
Martin
So, the engineer who lead the Battlenet team back in the early WoW days is a friend of mine (Blizzard HQ is 2 miles from my house so I know of ton of Blizzard folks). I basically didn’t see him for 18 months, after which Blizzard basically bought him a new house since he pretty much never saw his old one. They were moving heaven and earth to keep Battlenet running, with members of his team at the HP factory grabbing servers as they came off the assembly line and then driving over to the datacenter to install them. They did this 24/7 all around the world. So the answer to the perennial question at the time of ‘why can’t they just install more servers’ was that HP and others couldn’t build them fast enough, and AWS didn’t yet exist.
He doesn’t work there any more. He ran off and founded a new studio. And AWS does exist now, so why the long queues? Nostalgia is the only answer that can be given, really.
zhena gogolia
The Kamala Harris and Bret Stephens threads come while I’m deeply asleep.
Martin
@dlwchico: Activision couldn’t let WoW go unruined now, could they? They peaked with Pitfall in 1982. It’s been all downhill since then. I’d be tempted to give them credit for Goldeneye and Tony Hawk, but they don’t deserve it.
mapaghimagsik
@Martin: Never seen it. That was hilarious. I made a character named Bow Jest, but I don’t think anyone ever mentioned getting the reference.
Leto
@Martin: Part of the reason of why long queues? Multi-faceted.
– They’re still literally adding servers to meet the demand as it was greater than expected. Easier to add servers than take them away.
– They didn’t have Streamers back in 2004. Streamers have been planning which servers they’re going to, their followers are piling on there, which in turn affects the regulars. Again with not enough servers…
Blizzard saw the gold mine of the WoW private servers and decided to cash in. Game play peaked with MoP, but community peaked with Vanilla. Give it six months, tops, before they start consolidating the few servers they have.
Martin
@mapaghimagsik: Yeah, that’s a book that hasn’t really received much modern reference. Maybe Disney will make a superhero movie out of it.
PenAndKey
And this is why I mostly play Ultima online for my mmo fix. That or smaller minecraft survival build servers.
As for the whole “why do people play retro” bit? Because it’s fun, easy on the hardware, and familiar, mostly. Retro includes everything up to and including games like Stardew Valley and Hollow Knight, so it’s hardly lacking in quality content.
justawriter
Here’s a link to a review of my current game. Lots of grinding though, takes forty hours just to earn one value token and the health potions don’t work very well.
Mnemosyne
@trollhattan:
Is she considering Cal Poly SLO? My brother’s goddaughter went there and kicked ass. Now she’s using her master’s degree in chemical engineering to build nuclear bombs.
My friend’s son who’s also going into engineering decided on UC Irvine. SLO reminded him too much of suburban Michigan where he grew up, and he wanted a change.
JPL
@zhena gogolia: Stephens is an ass and that’s all you need to know. I hope Morning Joe mocks him and doesn’t let him get away with his bullshit.
Another Scott
In other news, Reuters:
Cheers,
Scott.
zhena gogolia
@JPL:
I read the whole thread and was fascinated. And somebody posted at the end of the thread a great article about it in Wonkette. But it was all over by the time I woke up, so I couldn’t get into the fun.
Leto
@PenAndKey: I mean, I get it too. Nostalgia is a cool thing at times. The WoW Vanilla private server community has been a big thing for almost a decade. After the success of Legion, Blizz shit the bed with Battle for Azeroth. With continuing subscription declines they needed something to both keep current accounts playing, entice back older players, and get new players in. Vanilla was a huge fucking thing. It was an incredible time. But like all good things, it was a momentary experience and we’ve all moved on. Personally, I have all the achievements from that time period. Did all the raids, killed all the things, grinded all the reps… none of the people I played with want to go back and do that shit again. We already did it. We wouldn’t mind poking around a bit but there’s nothing there that will keep us playing. On top of that, the majority of us have simply grown to love all the QoL features they’ve introduced to make the game easier/nicer to play.
I don’t know, we’ll see what happens. Most expect the “shiny” to wear off after a few months and only the dedicated hardcore purists to keep playing. I guess we’ll see.
Mary G
The provost Bret Stephens bitched about the bedbug comparison has clapped back:
Basically. fuck off in polite language.
mrmoshpotato
@JPL: I’ll take a loud fight between Bedbug Stephens and Morning Trash. Where do I put my cheering-for-injuries recliner?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mary G:
The provost’s response was a little too subtle for some in that thread, who apparently think the invitation is genuine:
What an idiot.
Darkrose
I’ve played City of Heroes, Rift, Aion, Elder Scrolls Online, and a whole lot of Final Fantasy XIV, but never WoW. Just never got interested, and everything I heard about the community scared me off.
I’m kind of hoping that WoW Classic release will help mitigate the login queues on FFXIV though.
A Ghost To Most
@Martin: I’m showing my age, but in the late 80s-early 90s, I worked with Akamai to build/tune the network used to support one of the first publically available multi-player online games, Air Warriors. It ran on GE’s GEnie network.
Wapiti
@Mary G: The provost’s next note needs to contain some wording about the cost of Stephen’s visit, something like “We’ll pay nothing, not even the honorarium, which I would like you to put up.”
Kylroy
@Darkrose: If you’re at all interested in City of Heroes, it’s back and free.
mapaghimagsik
@Kylroy: Champions Online is free to play as well. @Martin: Every once in a while I’m surprised by the rare player who recognizes book/movie titles. Some people have done some very clever costume work as well, which is far better than those running around in floss.
Steve in the ATL
@trollhattan: reminds me of the recruiting letters I got from Deep Springs College. Of “yeah, no” had been a thing then, that would have been my response.
MisterForkbeard
My wife and I are considering getting back in.
We were both vanilla players, and we got together during WotLK. She likes to say that she really appreciated me (dedicated Horde player) starting an Aaliance character and leveling to 80 with her.
Main question now is we’ll have time. If we do decide to get in, I’m betting we’ll have a very lively discussion about Horde v Alliance.
Lok’tar Ogar.
MisterForkbeard
@mapaghimagsik: The Nemesis system in that game is still brilliant. Can’t remember too much else about it other than the opening desert area was super boring
Bostondreams
@mapaghimagsik:
So CoH is back, sort of. The ‘rogue servers’ are up and doing pretty well! Always able to find a team and have some fun, though I prefer Red Side. :)
mapaghimagsik
@MisterForkbeard: Thankfully, the desert area is no longer the start, but Canada is. The area needs a refresh as most of the jokes have gone kind of stale. The Nemesis system was pretty cool, but of course, I would design villains that didn’t fit well. I think the costume system is pretty great, and wish I was more into costumes. There also was a ‘writing group’ which sometimes made my eyes bleed, but there’s enough going on to simply avoid the crap.
Ked
So while waiting to get your WoW revival on, go over to Homecoming and play City of Heroes. WoW certainly was the most influential game of its time, and early CoH was a little thin, but the end-of-service product that Homecoming has iterated on is a joyous mess of beautiful mechanics and (mostly) powerful player character experiences. Yes, fine, it’s a pirate server, but NCSoft deserves it.
And when you get tired of *that*, check out Final Fantasy 14. You only ever need one character – it’s a classed system, but each char can learn all the classes. And the plotful setting does MMO-as-story better than anything I’ve seen, even LOTRO.
Juice Box
Coco Gauff is playing at the US Open right now. That little kid sure can hit a tennis ball.
Gravenstone
And my DSL goes down again, less than a week after getting it back after 10 days outage. Frontier really does suck all the rocks…
Have fun leveling without me.
lee
DIdn’t know about vanilla WoW. Had I known I would have looked forward to it and had your experience.
Glad I avoided that. I’ll give it a few weeks for the hype to die down and give it a shot. I’ll probably need a guild….
aj
I spent about 10 mins in the Night Elf starting area (huntards 4evs) and think I may have satisfied 98% of my nostalgia.
pinacacci
I wonder if there will be BARRENS TALK. Off to download.
Darkrose
@Kylroy: I created a character, but so far I find it very difficult yo play. I always had issues with the camera angles making me dizzy, and it’s gotten worse with age. Maybe I’ll try a ranged dps class instead of a Brute.
Darkrose
@Ked: Shadowbringers has some of the best writing I’ve seen in a video game—single player or multiplayer. Ishikawa and Oda are brilliant, and the lore team has done a phenomenal job of making plot hooks from A Realm Reborn—and even 1.0–pay off in a big way.
Rick Taylor
I miss what EverQuest II used to be like in the early days. Sadly, they didn’t save it in a way they could entirely recreate what it used to be like.
Chris Johnson
@A Ghost To Most:
I played that! Great game. Thank you :)