Forums » Off-Topic and Casual Chatter

Classic WoW and Pantheon

    • 313 posts
    June 9, 2019 9:24 AM PDT

    There was a post on reddit the other day expressing concern about how WoW Classic might affect Pantheon's release, but in my opinion, WoW Classic is one of the best things that VR could hope for.  Sometimes in economics, it's beneficial for your competition to succeed (just not too much lol).  One good example is genre movies.  If some studio makes a great sci-fi, fantasy, or superhero movie, when you put out your movie in the same genre, they remember the good time they had and are more likely to come see your movie.  An example in the opposite direction is something like the E.T. videogame for Atari which many people credit for contributing to the collapse of the videogame market in the 80s.  People were so disappointed in how bad and expensive E.T. was that it made them less willing to spend money on other games or systems.  

    I think you can draw some strong parallels between the later example and the current state of the MMO genre.  Having an MMO come out and be very successful, should that be the case for WoW Classic, could be very good for the genre even if it's technically a re-release.  Furthermore, there are some specific things about WoW Classic that make it suited to drive interest in Pantheon.  I know a lot of EQ fanatics look down on the game for its implementation of instancing, solo-friendly design, and the lack of punishing death mechanics, BUT it also emphasizes many of the same core game tenets that Pantheon is being built upon. 

    Below I have linked a few youtube videos from prominent WoW players talking about their experience in the WoW classic beta and why they have found it so enjoyable and superior to the live version of the game.  I highly recommend giving them a watch because it’s so cathartic seeing them echo the exact same reasoning that makes us yearn for Pantheon but in relation to a game that will be available to everyone in 3 months.  The difficulty, the importance of community and immersion, meaningful progression, slower more strategic combat, etc etc.  And these guys were wow classic SKEPTICS (at least the first two).  I think that’s important for dispelling the idea that the draw of classic is all nostalgia and old guys looking to relive the past.  The success of WoW classic will be validation that there IS a meaningful audience for this game and that Pantheon isn’t necessarily a super niche game.  If WoW classic builds up a large audience, many of them might be attracted to Pantheon if it offers a similar experience but with new content.

     

    Why has Classic been so fun for me?  - Preach Gaming

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C8lcUSQHjk

    I was WRONG about CLASSIC! Here's Why – Method Venruki

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k5K4a-teWo

    CLASSIC WoW vs BATTLE FOR AZEROTH - A One Hour Experiment in Both Games! - Nixxiom

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKCk6ivjWWc

     

    Anyway, hopefully this gets some people pumped about WoW Classic, and I’d like to designate an unofficial Pantheon community WoW Classic server.  I set up a discord for players and guilds from the Pantheon community to discuss their plans, recruit, etc. 

    https://discord.gg/D6SXQDP

     

    So what does everyone think?   Are you excited about WoW Classic?  How successful do you think it will be, and what will be the effect on Pantheon?


    This post was edited by zoltar at June 9, 2019 12:34 PM PDT
    • 3852 posts
    June 9, 2019 10:03 AM PDT

    What do I think? 

    I suppose if WoW had been one of my first MMOs I would be all excited about going back to old school WoW but it wasn't and I am not. 

    I do not remember WoW at release as a classic experience - I remember it as a reasonably well done MMO with a pathetically immature and often toxic community.

    • 90 posts
    June 9, 2019 10:11 AM PDT
    I think it'll be good for MMOs in general, as the mainstream, modern gamers will get a taste of what a community based, and social game is about.
    That will open the door for more games like Pantheon, in which building relationships with fellow players makes an actual difference.

    As far as WoW having a toxic community? That didn't happen until after BC, when the dungeon finder and such were introduced. This put less focus on building relationships, and shifted it to a race to raid.

    I look forward to trying it out while we wait for Pantheon. I suspect VR will have a leg up on the competition as their development for this type of game is already far advanced, and they will likely be able to cash in on players wanting a more social experience where connections and reputation matters.
    • 313 posts
    June 9, 2019 10:42 AM PDT

    I can't say the WoW community wasn't toxic, but I don't think it was extraordinarily or unexpectantly toxic.  It wasn't much different than what I experienced in Asheron's Call or from what I've heard about EQ for that matter.   The only MMO's I've played that seemed to be outliers were City of Heroes and LOTRO (both in a good way).

     

    Honestly, the worst is Xbox Live.  Funny story, when I first got Halo 2 on Xbox Live I was playing it and my best frriend from HS was visiting.  He gives it a go for the first time, and he gets into the pre-game lobby.

     

    My friend:  "Uh, hey guys.  This is my first time online.  How's everyone doing". 

    Random dude:  "Shut the %#% up f&^^ot"

     

    ...  /smh   At least we still laugh about it to this day.  So thanks for the memory Mr. Random Toxic Biggot.


    This post was edited by zoltar at June 9, 2019 10:43 AM PDT
    • 1584 posts
    June 9, 2019 10:58 AM PDT
    Wow classic toxic? No it really wasn't I mean were there toxic people playing the game yeah of course but I also know there were toxic people in EQ as well but I wouldn't say EQ was a toxic game either. And as for WoW classic effecting Pantheon one way or another I don't think it will at least not really, for one Pantheon easily has 1 1/2 years in front of it before release so that's simply just to much time in between the 2 releases for them to directly influence each other imo.
    • 1584 posts
    June 9, 2019 10:58 AM PDT

    Double post


    This post was edited by Cealtric at June 9, 2019 10:59 AM PDT
    • 1584 posts
    June 9, 2019 10:58 AM PDT

    Double post


    This post was edited by Cealtric at June 9, 2019 11:00 AM PDT
    • 1479 posts
    June 9, 2019 11:06 AM PDT

    I had no negative memories of classic wow's times, the community (back then, on a roleplayer server) was great to average and it was good memories and a more active gameplay for classes like rogue and warrior compared to EQ.

    Anyway the point is not to show it like a good competitor against EQ back when it started because EQ was already doomed and into OoW release (so, 5 expansions after the release of the controvertial -yet pleasant to me- SoL). It was simply the best place to hang out and play due to EQ beeing dying and focusing solely on raid and top geared community from Velious to what it was in OoW. (not even speaking of the lore...).

    I will wait here for sometimes, maybe years, until Pantheon comes out. If I had any alternative choice I would probably boycott the fact they re-release a game I already played and paid for 10 years ago but the truth is : There is currently no alternative that isn't plagued by the rushrushnow mentality scaled to player's desire to grow fast and effortless, so, until pantheon open it's gates (either in fully opened alpha or beta, or in release), me and my half will have little choice but to wait on something enjoyable.

    • 264 posts
    June 9, 2019 11:09 AM PDT

     The thing about this situation is Pantheon is not gonna release anywhere near WoW Classic. That was my original concern because WoW Classic would take all the air out of the room so to speak...it could have been disastrous. Players will be clamoring for something new by the time Pantheon releases, and will hopefully have learned the lesson from playing WoW Classic that the older MMO design was better. That will make them primed for a game like Pantheon. As for my views on WoW Classic I am not that excited because the company running it is not the same company that made great games for so many years. I'm concerned about stuff like sharding/phasing, about cash shops being put in etc. I will still give it a go and have some fun on a PvP server. As to what I enjoyed about vanilla WoW there was no flying, no dungeon finder, no raid finder, the dungeons were actual dungeons not just hallways to bosses, far more RPG elements to the class design, better lore, no arenas, and no transmog. I think the only thing I preferred in the expansions over vanilla WoW was the raid content...BC raids were the best imo followed by Wrath. Cata was a bridge too far and made me quit the game the raid quality was slipping imo and that's all I had left to enjoy.

    • 313 posts
    June 9, 2019 11:46 AM PDT

    Ziegfried said:

     The thing about this situation is Pantheon is not gonna release anywhere near WoW Classic. That was my original concern because WoW Classic would take all the air out of the room so to speak...it could have been disastrous. Players will be clamoring for something new by the time Pantheon releases, and will hopefully have learned the lesson from playing WoW Classic that the older MMO design was better. That will make them primed for a game like Pantheon. As for my views on WoW Classic I am not that excited because the company running it is not the same company that made great games for so many years. I'm concerned about stuff like sharding/phasing, about cash shops being put in etc. I will still give it a go and have some fun on a PvP server. As to what I enjoyed about vanilla WoW there was no flying, no dungeon finder, no raid finder, the dungeons were actual dungeons not just hallways to bosses, far more RPG elements to the class design, better lore, no arenas, and no transmog. I think the only thing I preferred in the expansions over vanilla WoW was the raid content...BC raids were the best imo followed by Wrath. Cata was a bridge too far and made me quit the game the raid quality was slipping imo and that's all I had left to enjoy.

     

    Great post.  Blizzard is doing something called layering for the release of Classic.  In order to make the game playable during the initial massive spike, they're putting players into layers that are kind of like shards but more permanent.  You'll see the same players since you remain in the same layer from session to session, and eventually the layers will merge into a single server as the population becomes more stable.  Seems like a necessary compromise if the alternative is endless queues and server crashes.  

     

    I agree with a lot of what you said about vanilla.  I left in the middle of TBC to play LOTRO which I thought had better RPG elements.   Came back for Cata, and I actually enjoyed the raiding quite a bit (especially the first 2 tiers).  The heroic dungeon difficulty was also fun.  But hey, different strokes for different folks.  :)

    • 627 posts
    June 9, 2019 11:56 AM PDT
    Agree wow classic will only last a few months not years. Players go back to get an old school wow feel and slower gameplay. In this way it could benefit Pantheon a bit, if ppl who played wow classic are looking for another mmo that has slower progression and feeling, they might find Pantheon and will try it out.
    • 313 posts
    June 9, 2019 12:11 PM PDT

    BamBam said: Agree wow classic will only last a few months not years. Players go back to get an old school wow feel and slower gameplay. In this way it could benefit Pantheon a bit, if ppl who played wow classic are looking for another mmo that has slower progression and feeling, they might find Pantheon and will try it out.

     

    It's inevitable that there will be a huge spike at the start, and it will probably fall off to a certain level.   But I'm not sure that it will only last a few months.   EQ progression/legacy servers have been going for a long time.   I think there's a decent popluation that will play it for a couple of years, maybe longer, then look for something new.  And a smaller subset will just keep playing.  

    • 313 posts
    June 9, 2019 12:34 PM PDT

    If anyone tried the discord link and found it expired, I've updated the link with one that shouldn't expire.  

    • 125 posts
    June 9, 2019 2:18 PM PDT

    People saying classic wow is gonna compete with pantheon is absurd, there will be people that hide begins their decade old machine with this mentality for sure.
    • 801 posts
    June 9, 2019 4:27 PM PDT

    Its just a subscription, EQ had it first and many players from TLP already wanted in on Pantheon. I know i played it all.

    So i figure who cares, i dont see lots moving to DOAC either.

    • 1785 posts
    June 9, 2019 9:52 PM PDT

    Gamewise, I think WoW Classic is indeed validation, in some small way, that Pantheon is right to be focused on bringing back an older style of experience.  Those videos speak a lot about gameplay and how things have been streamlined so much much in games over time that they've lost something along the way.

    If I felt like re-enabling my Battle.net account and giving Blizzard money again, I'd probably do WoW Classic for the gameplay.  It was not a bad game in Vanilla.  Truly.

    However - even though the gameplay can be changed relatively easily, the community cannot.  I understand exactly where dorotea and others are coming from when they talk about their experiences with the community in vanilla WoW.  I had those same sorts of experiences and for a long time they tainted my view of the entire WoW franchise.  They still do, to an extent.

     

    To be fair, I'm not saying that WoW Classic has a bad community.  But I think it is probably like every other current MMO out there.  People have established guilds and friendships, and they will primarily stick with those as they play.  After years of avoiding toxicity and establishing cliques, good people don't trust strangers enough to reach out and bring someone else into their group unless it's just through happenstance.  Anyone who comes to the game without a pre-established group is going to struggle with that.

    That's not jsut a WoW problem - it's every game's problem these days.  It will be a problem in Pantheon as well.  How many of us in this community already have a guild of fellow supporters that we're planning to play with?  Or a guild of interested people that we'll bring with us?  No matter how much we want to turn back the clock to the days when everyone was willing to trust a random in their adventuring group and open up and be friendly with them, those days are long past for the most part.

    I think it's up to both games and players to fix this problem.  The games can do it by pushing community and interconnectedness with other players as much as possible.  We players can do it by making a conscious choice to be open to meeting and playing with new people - not just sticking with the people we already know.

    Anyway, I think *that* is what we should really look at in WoW Classic, if we want to use it as a litmus test for Pantheon-style values.  Are people that play it going to come out of it saying things like "man, the Classic servers have such a great community!"  Or, are they going to be saying "wow, that was fun, my guild and I really missed the older style of doing things".

     

    • 2756 posts
    June 10, 2019 2:03 AM PDT

    I remember WoW Classic being a pretty fun and positive place to play.  I remember actually forming groups with strangers to do dungeons and having a good time.

    I also remember doing a load more solo than I really wanted and it feeling generally too easy.  I remember the open world PvP being like open world PvP pretty much always is... a gank-and-grief-fest.  I remember things being made easier and easier until my friends lost interest (because grouping made pretty much everything trivial) and, so, I lost interest.

    As for the OP's point, I think WoW Classic will be great for Pantheon.  It'll be like a 'training version' of what a challenging MMORPG can be like hehe.  If new players like the way WoW Classic is compared to WoW Live then maybe they will appreciate something even more 'old skool' like Pantheon.

    Let's face it... *we* know that truly challenging group content if the best gameplay experience there is, we just need players than haven't experienced it before to give it a go and they will make that realisation too.

    I know, I know, a lot of people truly *do* prefer a spectacular rollercoaster of solo unchallenging but 'entertaining' content, but *shrug* there will always be games for them.  There are enough people that actually enjoy a 'challenge' and a social game that Pantheon (and WoW Classic) will do great.

    I can't wait!  (and I will try WoW Classic in the meantime).


    This post was edited by disposalist at June 10, 2019 2:04 AM PDT
    • 1281 posts
    June 10, 2019 5:53 AM PDT

    The only thing WoW Classic tells me is that MMO developers now days should probably start saving more of their assets from point in time snapshots.

    But no, I don't think WoW Classic will impact Pantheon -by definition. WoW Classic can't evolve while Pantheon can. However, see my first comment.


    This post was edited by bigdogchris at June 10, 2019 5:53 AM PDT
    • 1428 posts
    June 10, 2019 9:13 AM PDT

    there is nothing to be excited about with wow classic.  it was a good game, but the elephant in the room is activision.  let's been real for a moment.  diablo immortal flopped, they killed heroes of the storm(which didn't even have competitive gameplay design yet they tried to push it to have an esports presence),  diablo 3 is on life support, they are trying to prop up overwatch(the only reason the game is still going is character design- top notch i'll give them a bone and franchising, but when those investors pull out gg), sc2 scene is a shadow of what it use to be(due to a shift in game type popularity) and their most successful current standing game is hearthstone. 

    bfa isn't as good as everyone thinks it is.  okay so the story is there, but the actual game itself pfft.  i call it the 'invested in wow' syndrome.  ppl don't want to leave the game even tho its crappy because they have become attached to their characters.  it's like an abusive girlfriend you don't leave because you've been you know what whipped.

    and that's the problem with publishers/investors because they sacrifice design for profit.  do i blame them?  nope.  consumers need to be smarter about what they put their money into because that's just the way the machine works.

    pantheon is going to be fine.  there is a huge amount of drifting mmo players out there.  everyone is hyping wow classic, BUT IT IS THE SAME OLD ENGINE.  if anything it should be encouraging for vr about how they are going to do.  unity is very robust and there's alot you can do with it.  i am curious to know the extent in which they have altered it, but they should definitely keep that top secret.

    i know a controversial thing to talk about is pvp in pantheon, but a wow became very popular because of it.  just having players talk about memorable encounters with other players, good and bad, is what you want to have.

    i agree that they need to pve focused and pvp should be an afterthought.

    and i could have summed this all up with a meme, but i think they are illegal here >.>

    • 59 posts
    June 10, 2019 6:20 PM PDT

    If WoW anything is competition for Pantheon, which is supposed to be bringing the Old EQ style back, then something has gone very very wrong. That should be an apples to oranges kind of thought.

    • 2 posts
    June 10, 2019 8:03 PM PDT

    Yeah, I'm going to hop back in unless something unexpected changes. It will be some fun nostalgia, probably play with some friends. And I think I may try and dust off some long-rusty tanking muscles.

    • 388 posts
    June 10, 2019 8:59 PM PDT

    wow classic won't hurt Pantheon at all imo.  Classic is going to fun for about 5 minutes.   1-2 years later..... Classic will be cold dead. 

    pantheon won't be out for 2+ years. Nearly No one will still be playing wow classic or live in 2 years.

     

     

     


    This post was edited by Flapp at June 10, 2019 9:00 PM PDT
    • 233 posts
    June 11, 2019 2:28 AM PDT

    BamBam said: Agree wow classic will only last a few months not years. Players go back to get an old school wow feel and slower gameplay. In this way it could benefit Pantheon a bit, if ppl who played wow classic are looking for another mmo that has slower progression and feeling, they might find Pantheon and will try it out.


    This is wrong, people will play wow classic forever as they have been doing on private servers for over 10 years.

    • 233 posts
    June 11, 2019 2:28 AM PDT

    Flapp said:

    wow classic won't hurt Pantheon at all imo.  Classic is going to fun for about 5 minutes.   1-2 years later..... Classic will be cold dead. 

    pantheon won't be out for 2+ years. Nearly No one will still be playing wow classic or live in 2 years.

     

    Wrong, people will play classic forver, they have been playing on private servers for over 10 years.

     

     

     

    • 233 posts
    June 11, 2019 2:30 AM PDT

    Classic wow, Ashes of creation and pantheon.
    All with subscriptions.
    I think ashes will be ****, but if im wrong i will need do jump between the three of them.
    Some will go f2p hopefully in a year or two.