So this has been on my mind the past few weeks. Through various conversations with various people, a lot of the old guard, vanilla players have been a bit disillusioned with the current game. From one perspective, I do believe Vanilla sucked compared to the game now. Here I gather my thoughts in this blog / essay listing my reasons for thinking how WoW has improved as a game overall from Vanilla to Cataclysm, but has suffered from an MMO standpoint as a result.

1. Theorycrafting

How it improved the game?

Back in the old days, it was... pretty random. Gear had like every single stat on it. Dodge gear on dps gear, spirit on everything, talent trees were full of fluff that were useless (utility) talents. It's as if there was no focus, stuff slapped and glued together just cause some designer thought it'd be cool or something.

But, the fanbase started learning. They saw which stats benefitted them the most. They complained about all the fluff. They figured out what was the best possible way to bring the most out of their characters.

And Blizzard listened. They went through class revamps. Talent revamps every expansion. Buffs, nerfs, balancing acts. Right or wrong, they kept fiddling with the knob to find a way they can all be satisfied with.

As a result, with our streamlined gear and talents, we've all become far more powerful characters.

How it became a worse MMO?

Everyone's become a pretty powerful character, even tanks and healers. The old days before dual specs, or when gold was hard to scrape together, alts were used for the purpose of farming, or those non-dps had to find help to get anything done.

Instead of forcing players to need to seek help from others to get farming or whatever done to raid. Everyone has become perfectly self-sufficient.

2. Consumables

How it improved the game?

Back in the old days, every single buff stacked. You can drink like 50 different elixirs and mind control mobs to get extra fire resistance buffs. And pretty much all of those buffs of course disappear on death, so you'd have to farm stacks and stacks of the stuff for a raid night of wipes. Run up and down Felwood for four hours getting everything you need.

It's what the progression guilds needed to do to kill content. The ones that were able to farm for hours had the advantage.

So now, it's all stripped down to 1 flask, 1 food. Flasks persist through death, food is relatively easy to obtain. Everyone can easily be fully buffed with minimal time devoted to farming. Can use time for other ventures, find other fun in the game.

How it became a worse MMO?

Remember when Felwood was a warzone. And like the previous section, healers and tanks needed help farming. How it was pretty much impossible for most guilds to have people farm up everything they need all by themselves?

Consumbles needed the power of a guild to achieve. Guilds would send out a collection notice. People would farm what they can the best they can, pool the resources and redistribute the consumables. Perhaps even give them arbitriary amounts of the DKP so they can feel virtually rewarded.

Every boss, every wipe, every kill represented hours that the guild itself put into farming. That was your reward for camping that lotus spawn point for hours. And there's a bit of comradery knowing most of the people around you did something similar.

3. Server Transfers

How it improved the game?

It opened the door for guilds to recruit. No longer stuck on finding people on the same server with possibly several guilds all competing for people. You have the ability to go out and seek a gem who's not having luck on their server.

Or perhaps you are stuck on a server without a guild that fits you. No longer forced to re-roll and start everything from scratch. You can seek out better pastures.

How it became a worse MMO?

Before you can server transfer, there was a time where reputation mattered. You an asshole? Ninja some piece of gear? BAM! You're labelled by the server and your social endgame options become very limited.

You're almost pretty much forced to reroll starting over. Have fun, was it worth it? This used to be that deterrent.

None of that matters anymore. Shit for rep here, transfer elsewhere. For the most part, no one's gonna stalk you trying to spread your old reputation. And even then, most would give the benefit of a doubt to the server transfer a clean slate to start over.

And you can do that again. Over, and over again.

4. Badges of Justice

How it improved the game?

Or Valor Points as they've evolved to today's system. In its earliest incarnation it was a raid boss drop only. Collect the badges, exchange it for gear for slots you have trouble filling. Good thought, in case the RNG gods are against you, you can still get something suitable for it.

Then, it spread to heroics. The 5 mans were dead, this gave reason for people to head back into the heroics over and over again. Farm the badge, collect enough, get gear.

This gave a nice channel for alts, potential raiders, etc to more quickly catch up in gear to raid, or whatever.

How it became a worse MMO?

It's become too easy to get epics. Which, makes epics... less epic. And in that sense, raids drops are no longer the only source of omg drool gear. You can almost create a perfectly viable endgame set of gear without ever raiding.

The value of raid gear drops relatively and no longer has that shining luster to it like before.

5. Dungeon Finder

How it improved the game?

Instead of sitting in trade chat all day or where ever to look for a group, or that tank/healer that doesn't exist on your server. You enter this, the game finds people from cross servers, fills it for you and you can go go go.

Pop in the queue, leave the city, go farming, do dailies, even if you're a dps, eventually usually within 20 mins or so, you'll have your group.

Heroics farmed, valor points obtained, rinse, repeat.

How it became a worse MMO?

You used to have to find a group. You may start to know tanks and healers on the server. You may even become friends with them. Maybe even recruit some gems you find in these groups you happened to put together in trade chat.

But no, you don't have to put any effort into making a dungeon run anymore. Push a button, get in, and your group may even know all the fights and what to do, and say absolutely nothing at all the entire run. It's like a single player game, except your sidekicks are silent instead of trying to make witty observations over and over again.

6. 10 Mans

How it improved the game?

Everyone's that's managed a raid probably hates it. A thankless job that always has you wishing you can just trim the fat so you can win the game easier.

From 40 mans, you wished to trim those 10 afk dead weight. From 25 mans, you wished to trim those 10 dead weight. From 10 mans, you wished to trim those 10 dead weight, oh wait.

But still, each time the raid was trimmed, your idealistic side went thinking, goodbye dead weight, let's burn content quickly. Logistically it did become easier and easier to handle, simplying loot systems each and every time.

Managing less people is generally easier, and more groups were formed to see content.

How it became a worse MMO?

By the time it trimmed down to 10 mans, each became their own self-sufficient group. They likely became the people you interacted most with. That big guild feeling was gone. 10 people isn't a guild, it's like a group of friends.

At least with 25s or 40s, there was a guild feeling with a clique you'd interact with most, and then there's other cliques you'd simply work together with to down a boss.

With a big raid, recruiting was almost constant. People came, people left, people waitlisted, everyone wanted to be a part of it and there was never enough room.

These small raids, each self-sufficient entities, no real loot system, so no drive to wait around, only recruited when absolutely neccessary. That resulted in more stagnation, membership wasn't much in flux, people left, but not always people replaced them.

7. Raid Finder

How it improved the game?

Most people love it. Push a button, wait a minute, get into a raid to see end game content.

Use it to improve your gear before your real raid. Use it to see the raid mechanics so you have a general idea of what happens before your real raid.

Endgame content for everyone.

How it became a worse MMO?

Endgame content for everyone. So part of my motivation to raid was to see content. And now I've already seen it all ends on 2 toons. This did indeed compromise that motivation.

All that's left in the "normal" raid is to kill it while taking more damage, maybe a couple new tricks, with people I know, rather than a group of strangers.

No longer is it, beat the challenge, see the content, it's now content is accessible to everyone, challenges are optional.

Afterword

Thus, the crux of the matter is social interaction. No longer are we forced to painstakenly find groups for ourselves to obtain help. No longer do we need to band together as a guild to scour the world for resources to take down a big bad boss. This game has improved in every way from a single player perspective, any single player can effectively do it all without interacting with anyone else. Only those optional challenges should you choose to do makes you reach out into the MMO community to create social bonds.

And so, I don't believe WoW will ever outright die. There will be no single WoW-killers. WoW will likely exist for years to come, but no longer enjoy their perch on the monopoly. The old guard of WoW will likely have found other ventures to try. While WoW will just settle into one of the many niches of the MMO genre. Perhaps trying to attract the ADD adolescents with Pokemon and easy quick rewards vs effort ventures that can all be done solo without much need for social interaction.

I think I was the only one psyched to take the picture.

Old-timey raids rise again.

Assuming we have the balance and such required, we will be doing Sunwell Plateau.  Otherwise, we will hit such classics as ...

AQ40
BWL
MC (maybe)
AQ20
ZG
Onyxia

Should be heaps of fun.  Be there or be whatever.

Raid starts at 6:30pm server time.