Blizzard seems to have been slightly surprised by the popularity of WoW Classic. Hints were available in the form of illicit private servers allowing people to play the 15-year old game instead of the more recent incarnations.
I played WoW since the beginning and have slowly become jaded with the game. Granted, the game has become prettier with the years. But the game play had been gradually watered down to a series of voiced-over semi-interesting stories that mainly just made you the Hero of everything. Progressions of skills, proficiencies and abilities likewise became simpler and simpler to a point where we as players basically just got put on rails towards "progress" and I'm surprised skill values haven't just been replaced with value-less progress bars yet. Grouping for quests, battlegrounds, dungeons and raids are as casual hookups as can be without going full Tindr. Although I except that to be implemented for the next expansion. While that has made casual hookups for end-game content a thing and even easy, it meant the slow demise for some of the guilds I have been in or running over the years as member of The Older Gamers.
Now Blizzard, as usual great at grabbing the best ideas of mods and incorporating them into the game, has launched WoW Classic. And it is beautiful, fun, slow, grindy, cumbersome, difficult, frustrating, and the best fantasy MMORPG game experience I have had in ages. I find myself enjoying the runs across Barrens, the long searches for materials, the overly complicated skill trees, and just the way things slow down and allow me to immerse in them. I sometimes switch to the retail game and do a few dailies and realise I hardly see what's going on; while everything is pretty everything is also super fast and does nothing to engage the brain. Then I go back to Classic and have fun gaming again.
Elite Dangerous is still more like WoW Classic. Hopefully it will stay that way. The faster, simpler and easier things get, the more the game will lose my interest. FDev will hopefully take note that there is a market for games that doesn't cater for the instant-gratification crowd.
S
I played WoW since the beginning and have slowly become jaded with the game. Granted, the game has become prettier with the years. But the game play had been gradually watered down to a series of voiced-over semi-interesting stories that mainly just made you the Hero of everything. Progressions of skills, proficiencies and abilities likewise became simpler and simpler to a point where we as players basically just got put on rails towards "progress" and I'm surprised skill values haven't just been replaced with value-less progress bars yet. Grouping for quests, battlegrounds, dungeons and raids are as casual hookups as can be without going full Tindr. Although I except that to be implemented for the next expansion. While that has made casual hookups for end-game content a thing and even easy, it meant the slow demise for some of the guilds I have been in or running over the years as member of The Older Gamers.
Now Blizzard, as usual great at grabbing the best ideas of mods and incorporating them into the game, has launched WoW Classic. And it is beautiful, fun, slow, grindy, cumbersome, difficult, frustrating, and the best fantasy MMORPG game experience I have had in ages. I find myself enjoying the runs across Barrens, the long searches for materials, the overly complicated skill trees, and just the way things slow down and allow me to immerse in them. I sometimes switch to the retail game and do a few dailies and realise I hardly see what's going on; while everything is pretty everything is also super fast and does nothing to engage the brain. Then I go back to Classic and have fun gaming again.
Elite Dangerous is still more like WoW Classic. Hopefully it will stay that way. The faster, simpler and easier things get, the more the game will lose my interest. FDev will hopefully take note that there is a market for games that doesn't cater for the instant-gratification crowd.
S
