Porygon said:There are currently around 10,000 people playing classic wow on lightshope, and another 6,000 playing on Elysium. This in no way touches on the market of players that refuse to play on a private server either. Classic wow will absolutely be as close to vanilla wow as they can get and will have a huge huge fan base. It will 100% take players from pantheon and if you don't believe that you are not intelligent.
Dude, stop insulting people. It's rude, immature, and makes your point sound like nothing but a child pissing and moaning. It's uncalled for, stop it. Numbers do not make a good universally good.
You don't know what WoW Classic will be like because Blizzard hasn't released the info. How will they handle different server side code on the same clusters? They will need to rebuild all of their code AND rebuild the client. You'll need two games installed. Maybe they will do this, maybe they won't. No one knows yet.
Will WoW Classic appeal to some people more than Pantheon? Sure it will. No one said it wouldn't. What we said is that it's not going to HURT Pantheon because we believe there is enough of the niche crowd that DON'T WANT THAT **** and WANTS Pantheon because it ISN'T WoW, Classic or otherwise.
I mean this in the most loving way possible, and I'm going to word it differently than liav.
Alot of the people that are invested in pantheon are very quick to defend it by dismissing other games as garbage. It's like you're being or acting as an elitist for a game that yo uve never ever tried. I, as many other do, hope that it is everything I want, which is why I pledged. However, ignoring the timeline of other games releases because yoiu feel you're better than them is absolutely dumb.
A lot of people invested in Pantheon left EQ to play WoW because EQ was already headed down another path and found the game lacking. Myself being one of them. The game felt to me as a watered down kiddie version of EQ. It felt empty. It felt impersonal. No one talked in groups. No one cared to stop and enjoy the game. Everyone simple blasted through any dungeon or quest as fast as possible. It was a terrible experience. I hated that about the game. Fast travel (flight points) made the world feel small. The entire game felt like it was on rails. Follow the big yellow ! until you reach the end of the ride. Thanks come again.
Now, does that mean WoW is garbage? No, of course not. Many people liked the game and it was highly successful. Doesn't it mean that I thought the game was terrible? Yes, because it was terrible for me. It was not what I wanted.
I'm one of the players that has been waiting for classic wow for years, and I will absolutely play it when it is released. I just pray to the pantheon of Gods that it comes out well before or well after.
Good for you. Glad they finally got around to doing it and hope it turns out the way you want it.
TLDR. Stop dismissing other games it's a bad business model.
No body said WoW was a bad business model, it has the same damn business model as Pantheon. What we said was, that the game was not what we wanted and in our opinions for us the game was terrible. And that is the truth. For many people like me WoW is a terrible choice in an MMO. Because people like myself will find it boring and empty among other issues. It doesn't mean the game is BAD, it means I thin it is bad FOR ME. Nothing, absolutely NOTHING you can say will ever change that. Period.
You need to understand that your opinion of a game is not a fact that others must adhere to. WoW did things to their game that was directly in contrast to what many of us here wanted in an MMO. Whether that was a bad idea on Blizzard's part isn;t even an issue here. Because that cannot be quantified, as its subjective to one's personal epxerience with the game. Obviously for Blizzard it was 100% the right move because they made obscene amounts of money from it. Still doesn't make it good in my eyes.
WoW is not "The Best MMO EVER Bar None". There is no "Best MMO". The only thing you can quantify with pure facts is whether or not a game is a success (the studio makes a profit).
EQ was a success.
WoW was a success.
DAoC was a success.
Lord of the Rings Online was a success.
Star Wars: Galaxies was a success.
Etc etc.
There are many people, probably many people right here on this forum, that would tell you any number of those games listed were both good and bad. And they would all be correct. Thats how opinions work. They are neither right, wrong, and both at the same time.
CanadinaXegony said:Porygon said:There are currently around 10,000 people playing classic wow on lightshope, and another 6,000 playing on Elysium. This in no way touches on the market of players that refuse to play on a private server either. Classic wow will absolutely be as close to vanilla wow as they can get and will have a huge huge fan base. It will 100% take players from pantheon and if you don't believe that you are not intelligent.
I mean this in the most loving way possible, and I'm going to word it differently than liav.
Alot of the people that are invested in pantheon are very quick to defend it by dismissing other games as garbage. It's like you're being or acting as an elitist for a game that yo uve never ever tried. I, as many other do, hope that it is everything I want, which is why I pledged. However, ignoring the timeline of other games releases because yoiu feel you're better than them is absolutely dumb.
I'm one of the players that has been waiting for classic wow for years, and I will absolutely play it when it is released. I just pray to the pantheon of Gods that it comes out well before or well after.
TLDR. Stop dismissing other games it's a bad business model.
Wayyyy before Pantheon was a twinkle in Brad's eye...I had this opinion of Wow. Remembering that the original Devs that made Wow, came from EQ. :P I didn't like their artwork, I didn't like their laissez faire attitude toward killstealing, griefing, harrassment (their Gms) I didn't like the...walk two steps to the next exclamation mark to get a cookie and a pat on the head for making that tiny, unchallenging effort. :P
Cana
This is off topic, but it is interesting that you brought up that WoW devs played EQ. I was on The Nameless with them. Originally they were in a guild called sdrawkcaB ehT, but eventually became Legacy of Steel. I was in a rival guild, Sanctuary. Sometimes I wonder if my life would be different had I gotten myself into LoS. Several of those guys, like Tigole, went to work for Blizzard after having met through EverQuest. Also interesting that they recruited Furor (Alex Afrasiabi) from FoH. They really wanted to get a passionate MMORPG team together to create WoW.
Had a bit of drama with Ariel (Rob Pardo) at some point. Didn't learn who he was until years later. Ah, memories...
If I ever applied for a job with Blizzard and mentioned playing EverQuest on The Nameless, I'm not sure if it'd be a good or a bad thing once they found out what guild I was in and who I was. ;)
I suppose that is one thing we can look forward to with Pantheon--that old feeling of guild rivalries and racing for, sometimes even leapfrogging, content. Batphones!
The original Wow Devs came from EQ...period. They helped create Wow..they didn't just play EQ. I remember that guild name Sanctuary, they were on Xegony too along with Inner Circle, and Illuminati. Some of those Blizzard Devs split off and created other games too...rpgs like Torchlight and Torchlight II. And ArenaNet (ex Blizz Devs) made GuildWars. (the first one)
WoW Classic, if using the original assets, is goign to look extremely dated and have antiquated mechanics. I'm not saying it won't be popular. However, I think Pantheon is going to be the right blend of old and new mechanics and it's visually more my style. Pantheon is going for a semi-realistic look where WoW is just really cartoony looking.
For me they are two completely different kinds of games, I'm interested in both however for the same reason more or less and Pantheon offers it better. I hated when WoW went from 40 mans to 25 mans during TBC. I like playing in large groups for PvE. I also dislike solo leveling and the fact that in WoW, including classic WoW, outside of instances there are very, very few points in the game where you even need to consider a group while leveling. I find grouping in WoW while leveling outside of instances to be slower.
WoW's classes are also overall underwhelming IMO. They are very basic at their best. My Warlock almost never used his pets during a raid other than as a passive buff bot. I would expect that pantheon classes will be a ton more interesting and a ton better. I also know it's going to have a better grouping experience with it's lack of instances.
In the end we also have to consider that many people have already played through all the content in Classic WoW, they haven't played through pantheon's content. Even more importantly, Classic WoW will be stuck at the same point forever unless they decide to slowly add the expansions back in or they for some reason decide add Classic style content to the game which I doubt it. Pantheon will constantly be adding in new changes.
I think in the end classic WoW will take very few people away from pantheon, even classic WoW is likely to be too casual for the players who really want what pantheon offers. An MMO that never updates isn't going to keep players interested for a very long time either.
"WOW classic" depends upon your definition.
The first iteration of WoW was EQ-like but very soonafter became a dumbed down clicky interactive cartoon and attracted 12 million players.
So, if you are talking before they dumbed down the interface and mechanics (punctuation guides, quest handholding, etc.) then these are competing. But that didn't last long in the WoW world and WoW went to a totally different market segment.
EQ1 and TLP-servers are the real competition
Can't speak for anyone but me, but no new or rehashed MMO that follows the post-WoW formula will ever get my money and time again. As someone else already said, WoW does WoW better than anyone, and if that was experience I wanted, I'd be playing WoW right now. Even my two nostalgic faves (EQ1 and AO) are faint echoes of the games they used to be.
So WoW Classic has nothing whatsoever to offer me.
Never played WoW. Played EQ, EQ2, Vanguard, LoTR, SWG, SWToR, DDO, a few others. I will play Star Citizen for sure.
Most of my friends and family do not put WoW in the same catorgory as a EQ. It's not even close.
I think it's silly to assume that the official release of WoW Classic won't attract any players that are currently awaiting Pantheon. We're not in some vaccuum where every single person waiting for Pantheon is an EQ die-hard that refuses to be tempted by any other MMO's release.
Bottom line up front is; There will be players who have no interest in WoW Classic and will avoid it to play Pantheon. There will be players who have been waiting for Pantheon that will opt to play WoW Classic instead. There will be players who play one and dabble in the other. Now that's not to say that any significant number will be taken away from Pantheon, but the pull of WoW Classic is nothing to write off.
I dismiss WoW over Pantheon in exactly the same way I dismiss pro soccer over pro hockey.
I don't like soccer. There are a myriad of reasons, but at their core they are simply two very different games. The general concept is the same; you move the object from one end of the play surface to the other and try to get it into the goal which is protected by a gaurd. But so much about the games and the cultures that surround them are completely different.
I would never argue that hockey is going to kill soccer, or the reverse. I would never argue that someone that watches soccer is an idiot, and would rightfully tell them to **** off if they said the same of me and hockey. They are two different markets targeting two different types of fans. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
My problem is that with MMOs with the market for WoW-like games being so enormous (like soccer), there's so often the argument that all soccer-like games should be more like soccer, and that there shouldn't be a market for hockey at all. If you want hockey, well STFU, watch soccer because it's better.
VR is making hockey. I like hockey. Let me have hockey, damnit.
Nevron said:I think it's silly to assume that the official release of WoW Classic won't attract any players that are currently awaiting Pantheon. We're not in some vaccuum where every single person waiting for Pantheon is an EQ die-hard that refuses to be tempted by any other MMO's release.
Bottom line up front is; There will be players who have no interest in WoW Classic and will avoid it to play Pantheon. There will be players who have been waiting for Pantheon that will opt to play WoW Classic instead. There will be players who play one and dabble in the other. Now that's not to say that any significant number will be taken away from Pantheon, but the pull of WoW Classic is nothing to write off.
I agree players are tempted to try other MMOs. I have dabbled, but always disappointed. But in my circle of friends and family the overwhelming consensus is there isn't a MMO that can reproduce the early EQ experience.
The reason I am here and paid up is because VR's commitment to bring the best elements of the MMOs back. I am waiting. I gave up on MMOs until they can get back to doing it right. until then, I play single-player RPGs.
P99 is the only place to go to get that experience back. The players there are awesome. But at this point, I want more out of a MMO without taking away what was so great about them in the first place.
I bet WoW classic will be like P99. Wow players will go back for nostogia, but when Pantheon launches everyone will drop what they are doing and will play.
Wandidar said:The simple reality is that any game releasing at roughly the same time as Pantheon is a potential competitor for players regardless of the genre of that game or the platform that game is provided on.
I agree, with a caveat : Unless someone is making another hockey game (see above post) rather than soccer (and no one else is), it's not a competitor for my money.
It's also worth it to say that when talking about computer game players in general, they will generally dig deep for a brand new game. Given the choice of something brand new, with new unknown adventures, and new experiences, over a replay of what I already did a decade ago, I'll go new every time. If I already did it, and I already waited a decade to do it again, waiting till I get bored with something brand new doesn't seem like a choice to me.
Wow never satisfied the itch that EQ did, not in Vanilla or any incarnation after, just compltely different games in feel, in experience, in community, basically in all ways. I don't see it as competition for Pantheon, the people that Wow will satisfy likely won't engage in Pantheon.
-Jexxy
Played wow from beta. I sure people will play one or the other or both.
That said. WoW Classic, to me, just shows how affraid Blizzard is of Pantheon.
For them to time Classic to release Very close to Pantheons release, means they are affraid they will lose 1+ million subs.
As far as all the **** talk in this thread, play what you want to play. WoW classic is going to be WoW no matter how you slice it.
I played WoW before release in beta. I thought the game was easy as ****. dungeons and raids in wow is dancing. its not skill.
I have no desire to play a game where 5 people get in a group and never says hi, bye, or kiss my ass the entire dungeon. or where someone can be a troll and a dickhole to everyone and still have a guild or group.
I will definitely subscribe to WoW Classic. When it comes to priorotizing time, though, I feel far more interested in Pantheon. I do love vanilla wow but after playing on private servers for 5+ years I feel a bit been there done that.
It seems to me that these two games are more in direct competition with each other than they would be with any other MMO on the market. Pantheon has been getting quite a bit of hype in the vanilla wow community. Sure, they're different games in many ways but a lot of people value the same aspects of vanilla wow that others do of EQ, such as needing to socalize, form groups, more of a slow burn pace (compared to modern MMOs) and lack of all the built in "qol" features that most modern games have.
For the perhaps broader potential Pantheon audience that has never played EQ, WoW Classic is going to look like a similar option and maybe they'd pick WoW then just from brand recognition. /shrug
fazool said:"WOW classic" depends upon your definition.
The first iteration of WoW was EQ-like but very soonafter became a dumbed down clicky interactive cartoon and attracted 12 million players.
So, if you are talking before they dumbed down the interface and mechanics (punctuation guides, quest handholding, etc.) then these are competing. But that didn't last long in the WoW world and WoW went to a totally different market segment.
EQ1 and TLP-servers are the real competition
Vanilla Wow was better I agree. :)
I agree that classic WoW is much closer to EQ than it is today, but it's still far away from what Pantheon looks to offer. WoW was never a great grouping or community experience, and in fact, outside of doing dungeon runs - which are instanced, by the way - the entire leveling experience is solo driven. All the way to max level. The "real" content is also all at end-game, so the entire leveling experience just becomes a tedious, obligatory grind towards the real game.
There really aren't that many positive social systems in vanilla WoW as people make it out to have. In fact, the major reason vanilla WoW had the sense of community was its single server system that was pretty standard at the time. 40 man raids, instanced group content, solo leveling experience and mounted/flight travel made the reliance on others for most things minimal. No SoW, no Druid portals or friends to keep you safe while traveling required. Interdependence is not a key word for vanilal WoW for your every day activity.
I mean, I make vanilla WoW sound horrible, which it definitely was not, but I just don't quite get the comparison with Pantheon, because I find the relation between the two MMO's to be pretty minimal. My expectations for the classic servers is that they'll be hugely popular to begin with, and then fade into relative obscurity due to being viewed with rose-tinted glasses, static content that's been exhaused a million times already by the community, and 2/3's of the available specs hardly functional.
If you think there is no social aspect to vanilla (or classic) wow, you ate gravely mistaken. You can level to 60 solo all you want, butnonce there you'd better make some friends or you will not be advancing your character at all. If you don't communicate in the higher end dungeons, you will not succeed.
Every single player that decides to play another game instead of pantheon hurts us in the end. Because every single player has the potential to recruit friends, family, ex guildies etc... regardless of how strong you think the community is currently, it can always be larger and stronger. The more subs, means the more resources at VRs disposal, meaning the better CS, patches, content etc we will get.
Also, as someone who has experienced high end raiding in era during both games, wow raiding was and still is significantly harder and less forgiving than eq raiding. I honestly don't see how someone could even think otherwise.
Porygon said:If you think there is no social aspect to vanilla (or classic) wow, you ate gravely mistaken. You can level to 60 solo all you want, butnonce there you'd better make some friends or you will not be advancing your character at all. If you don't communicate in the higher end dungeons, you will not succeed.
Every single player that decides to play another game instead of pantheon hurts us in the end. Because every single player has the potential to recruit friends, family, ex guildies etc... regardless of how strong you think the community is currently, it can always be larger and stronger. The more subs, means the more resources at VRs disposal, meaning the better CS, patches, content etc we will get.
Also, as someone who has experienced high end raiding in era during both games, wow raiding was and still is significantly harder and less forgiving than eq raiding. I honestly don't see how someone could even think otherwise.
The social aspect that is missing is during the meat of the game. During leveling. Making a game that starts at max level makes the entire leveling experience boring, lonely, and just a job you have to work to get to the "fun stuff". That is where the social aspect is missing. Even now in WoW you do NOT need to make friends to get into raids. They have random raid group queues. The game has many tools that promote anti-social interactions.
Every single player who chooses another game really isn;t one lost for Pantheon. There will be many people out there that will never try Pantheon because it's not the type of game they want. Pantheon is touted as a return to old school hard social MMOs. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who think Vanilla WoW was an old school hard social MMO and will try Pantheon thinking it will be like Vanilla WoW, and those people (i hope, because I don't want Pantheon to be anything near Vanilla WoW) will end up disappointed I think. They will expect the hand holding and guidance, they will expect the anti-social lazy dungeon finder type of LFG tools. (where you get ported around).
Same as the friends I got into EQ because they wanted to see what an "Old School" MMO was to me. They bitched that they didn;t know where to go or what to do. Couldn't find quests. Had no idea how to use abilities. Couldn't find the dungeon finder. Wanted to know where flight points or other quick travel options were. Then they proclaimed the game grindy and bad because they were lazy. This is the type of person I see never even thinking about Pantheon because it isn't their game. IT's not what they want. Which is fine. Pantheon isn't for everyone, just like WoW isn;t for everyone.
I still don't see Pantheon and WoW in any form really competing directly. They will be competition as much as games like maybe Anthem would. They are games that might release around the same time so there might be competition for the player's time, but they are not the same game in any way, shape, or form.
I personally believe that vanilla WoW servers will be beneficial to Pantheon. If Blizzard was making a brand new game based on oldschool mechanics and all that jazz then maybe they would be a direct competitor. As it stands, classic servers appear to me as a "better late than never compromise" from Blizzard ... but they have already lost large chuncks of their audience who have moved onto greener pastures where that style of game is a priority rather than a compromise.
Porygon said:If you think there is no social aspect to vanilla (or classic) wow, you ate gravely mistaken. You can level to 60 solo all you want, butnonce there you'd better make some friends or you will not be advancing your character at all. If you don't communicate in the higher end dungeons, you will not succeed.
Every single player that decides to play another game instead of pantheon hurts us in the end. Because every single player has the potential to recruit friends, family, ex guildies etc... regardless of how strong you think the community is currently, it can always be larger and stronger. The more subs, means the more resources at VRs disposal, meaning the better CS, patches, content etc we will get.
Perhaps I could've been a little more clear, when I say social, I mean meaningful bonding interaction. Not all communication is of that nature, and even though communication is of key to be successful in group/raid content in was both then and now, it has never been a great venue for forming lasting friendships in WoW. That's not saying that doesn't happen or never has happened, but I do think it happens and happened a lot less frequently than in a game that purposly have downtime for the sake of more "small talk" and bonding social interaction.
Group content focus vs. 40 man raids
Group leveling vs. solo leveling
Traveling experience improved by player classes vs. flight paths
Contested content vs. instanced content
Dangerous world vs. mostly soloable world
You tell me which is of these is more likely to bring people together. The more I think about the differences between Classic WoW and Pantheon, the less I think they share much resemblence, really. I'm sure there'll be overlap in demographics - as there always is within the same genre, but I am not to worried that Classic WoW will have lasting impact on what Pantheon is to be. Pantheon will rise or fall on its own merits.
Also, as someone who has experienced high end raiding in era during both games, wow raiding was and still is significantly harder and less forgiving than eq raiding. I honestly don't see how someone could even think otherwise.
I never argued otherwise, but perhaps that was aimed at someone else.
kellindil said:The social aspect that is missing is during the meat of the game. During leveling. Making a game that starts at max level makes the entire leveling experience boring, lonely, and just a job you have to work to get to the "fun stuff". That is where the social aspect is missing. Even now in WoW you do NOT need to make friends to get into raids. They have random raid group queues. The game has many tools that promote anti-social interactions.
I think you might be confusing classic wow (vanilla) with the wow that is avaliable now. Classic is not a game that starts at max level nor a game where it makes practical sense to try to solo the leveling apart from a select few classes (hunter, warlock, mage). There is no random raid or dungeon finder at all, you need to talk to people to form a group for raids and dungeons. Your reputation matters a lot in fact. There are quests of course but there are no pointers on the map or anything like that, it requires you to read the quest and figure out where to go. If you are indeed soloing a mob you better make sure to not accidentally pull another one or you are likely to die. For a new player, even if that player tries to be as efficient as possible to level up, it will take 200-300 hours. For most people it will be more than that.
And yes, I agree with those who say EQ and/or Pantheon has more incentives to bring people together/form groups than classic wow. I do think its quite odd, however, to assume that those used to (and missing the days of) classic wow will ***** and moan over the difficulty of Pantheon, I actually don't think they will at all. Even if the game is much slower, classic wow is still way closer to old EQ than it is to modern wow or virtually any modern MMORPG. Trying to point out how, while as anyone who played classic wow as opposed to any of the expansions would know the game is far from antisocial, Pantheon will promote social behaviour MORE than classic WoW does is splitting hairs and really missing the point of the comparison in the first place. The point of the comparison is that when both games are out, they will be the only two high profile MMOs on the market that embraces an older philosophy and will provide a similar fix for a vast number of people, at least similar to each other when other alternatives are considered.
Believe me, I'd love for there to be a bunch of games with older design choices to the point I could say classic wow and pantheon are nothing alike but as it stands all new games now are just like modern wow. I hope Saga of Lucimia turns out well, that'd be another option too.
Imo options are great and with the mainstream pull of the Warcraft franchise, a number of younger people will discover that they indeed do like MMORPGs, just not what they are in 2017. Hopefully we can look back at 2017/2018 in MMOs the same way we can look back at 2013/2014 with CRPGs and the return of the late 90s style that Divinity: Original Sin, Wasteland 2 and Pillars of Eternity provided, a genre that is now very much alive and kicking again.