Classic WoW Has a Serious Problem...

Classic World of Warcraft is suffering because of Blizzard's monetisation philosophy. This affects Season of Discovery, Hardcore, Era and perhaps one day Classic Plus, which I doubt we will ever see...
Twitch: / vulgrinwow

[@vulgrin9573]

In a real ironic touch, this video cannot be monetised because of a 30 second clip showing the level boost trailer from Mists of Pandaria... Check me out on Twitch, streams are every Monday and Friday at 7PM UKT! Twitch: www.twitch.tv/vulgrinwow

[@Dropsey818]

this whole cant move on from classic wow shit is getting old, leveling is not fun after 16 versions of classic wow. maybe just stop

[@zoonal-gg]

​@@Dropsey818that's not even what leveling is anymore. There is even a new version of leveling coming out in TWW. It's not like FFXIV where you play every expansion and can't play end game without "experiencing the story"

[@anarchy8263]

Celebrities used to play Wow & give free media, now WoW pays to have Celebrities & content removed / scrubbed

[@krisztinarakosi666]

You can always get a job you know... Money for a game addict that can't move past a 20 year old game? U need help!

[@LurkinPT]

The way you say “years” pisses me off. We did this for yaaaawwhhhhhsss.

[@dan1ofoxx]

The first 5 years of world of warcraft were truly magical

[@vulgrin9573]

I used the way back machine a few times when working on this video. Checking out the old website from 2005 and 2007 really reminded me how different things were!

[@userdata5023]

What a time to be alive and have internet

[@plasticbudgie]

Yeah man!! I was i could go back to 2005.

[@ingainloggningsnamn]

@@userdata5023 Being 13, playing the beta and then full game with friends and my brother and his friends. We all had fiber connection and those first few years was amazing. I raided MC with a (mainly) British guild into the night, sometimes to 2 AM for me and my brother in Sweden lol. Unfortunately moved to my dad's a couple of years later who had shit ADSL internet. D:

[@MagicSpamDragon]

Cause everything was included in the subscription. Only things that had actual cost were server side services.

[@raze83]

Pro tip from a 40 year old: You can never go back. Just keep the memories and keep going forward.

[@Accelerate55]

40 year old millennials talking like they’re 80. You’re still a kid.

[@szneka12]

@@Accelerate55 In the kingdom of the blind one eyed man is king

[@Blind2D40]

Clinging to a 20 year old game will have you suffering.

[@lostsanityreturned]

Note. It is objectively untrue that classic doesn't make enough money, it is that it doesn't make as much money as they want.

[@charlespoteracke2896]

This game boils down to one thing: Gear Score. You need a gear score to advance in quests. Clearly Blizzard clearly doesn’t want new and returning players. I’m warning you to find a different game. I just returned and am extremely disappointed at being left out of quests where we’re supposed to get new gear. So how are we going to advance our gear score if we can’t join group quests. Do NOT come back to this game.

[@rarepepe4849]

@@charlespoteracke2896 wtf are you saying, you clearly never played the game

[@AiresLA]

​@@charlespoteracke2896"You need gear score to advance in quests" LOL Yeah, quests. The hardest level of content in WoW. We all struggle so much with them!

[@Raider19D]

More like.. it made more than they thought.

[@hellboy19991]

there is no such thing as "enough money" for a company...

[@kail_6019]

I've been taking breaks from WoW for about 3 years, with time getting bigger and bigger, and now I haven't played for like 6 months and after seeing Blizzard's dirty tactics with traiding post Token in Wotlk classic and not long ago, TWW Early Access, I'm even more disgusted with this game. I ignore the fact that I spent thousands of hours in this game because its value has dropped to the bottom and no longer means anything to me and it will only get worse

[@RadarFinsR]

You think that's bad there's numerous exploits in the integrity of arena in every classic release so far (tbc wotlk and cata) that blizzard have caused and then ignored. They basically killed SOD. The classic dev team has had anyone with any real talent leave because of blizzards policy of being a shitty company.

[@thatmidnightranger1105]

Time you spent having fun is never wasted time!!

[@tonythesopranos5310]

Blizzard dropped the ball with warcraft 3, and now with classic wow. Blizzard, all you had to do was recreate older forms of games you had already made! It really was the bare minimum, and yet they've still botched it. If you can't even recreate your own games, that's really rather damning isn't it?

[@heroofhyrule9778]

I cant speak to warcraft 3 but for wow its simply a company maxing profits. People will still play, so why would they waste more resources when they could just neglect the game and likely make more money for doing so (because many sod players were fed up enough to try cata and mop)

[@ftur.4139]

You mean with WC3 Reforged? WC3 is great.

[@NoLuckJustSkill1337]

What exactly did they do wrong with Classic Wow? They literally did recreate the older forms of the games? Classic was literally 1:1 Vanilla.

[@Mengeneful]

​@@NoLuckJustSkill1337😂

[@Alexander-fo7bx]

@@ftur.4139 Indeed, using warcraft 3 to create reforged.

[@Sunsworn]

I played for 18 years and no longer play, the last 13 years of playing was just hoping the game would feel like the first 5 years of playing

[@chevrecroustillante]

true...

[@user-bi1yw1du7q]

I feel the same

[@hizzousekakashi8836]

I believe it was Thor who said on a stream that the sparkle pony outsold the ENTIRETY OF STARCRAFT 2 for a mount that SHOULD have been earned from the raid.

[@jjstraka1982]

What raid?? It didn't replace any raid mounts. You can't honestly be suggesting people would have rather had this than the Rusted-Proto Drake.

[@hizzousekakashi8836]

Look at the bosses in Ulduar, you got a single guess to get it right, it should have been a drop in raid.

[@jjstraka1982]

@@hizzousekakashi8836 if this had been a drop from Algalon, it would have been even MORE derided than it is. The mount was universally shit on for it's appearance. Moreover, Ulduar already had a prestige mount drop, which was Mimiron's Head. ICC didn't have two, but 3.2 was supposed to?? There is no evidence this was planned to drop from Algalon.

[@k9tirion927]

*wings of liberty.

[@Neogeozz]

Yea Thor said it made more then star craft so it made shit tons...

[@miroslavgruev8223]

my man Classic+ actually exists. A very passionate team of TURTLE WOW has done tremendous work, class updated, NEW ZONES, NEW QUESTS.... More viable classes, new set items... It's just the true classic+

[@rossstars4518]

Try Project Epoch it’s better than turtle wow.

[@miroslavgruev8223]

@@rossstars4518 is it not still in BETA TESTING?

[@000nikus]

turtle shills 💀

[@cococock2418]

turtle wow isnt classsic plus. sod is even better than turtle, private servers are dog water

[@miroslavgruev8223]

@@cococock2418 yeah sure, keep paying your sub and enjoy retail :)

[@raulamaral6104]

That’s why I switched to turtle wow and I don’t regret it at all

[@shoeby9273]

I've exclusively played vanilla since I quit in WoD on both private and classic. Era is no longer vanilla, it's Classic. We cannot force the large majority of WoW players to play like we did in 2004 or during the 2011-2018 pserver era. No one actually enjoys playing the game. Sitting here on Whitemane NA trying to fill a BRD group just watching someone multiboxing characters summon warriors to buy their items. It's identical to logging onto retail and seeing people advertise for various boosting services. It all got a lot worse when a large portion of players quit Wrath during the long Ulduar stretch and came over here. I genuinely do not want to play with 80% of WoW's current playerbase. On top of all the changes to the game that even were added before TBC launched, it's really just a timewalking raiding simulator.

[@_blasfemy]

this is why i haven't come back to era. i want to tho... 45k gold just chilling from years of playing. an army of max level characters.. waiting..

[@vulgrin9573]

Sadly I agree. The way the community has gone in SoD is really disheartening. I remember the pserver scene in those years well. I was there, on Feenix, Nostalrius, Kronos Netherwing... People cared about Vanilla and wanted to preserve the social scene from back in the day, which is what ultimately made the game so good. One ray of hope is that the fresh project I've joined on Zandalar Tribe EU feels very similar!

[@shoeby9273]

@@vulgrin9573 Even then we have chronoboon, 10ms spell batching, Wrath spell animations, Wrath spell functionality in Shaman's personal windfury. The game just doesn't feel like vanilla. Nice to see FRESH movements take the initiative but I don't think Blizz has the fortitude to host their own vanilla projects for vanilla players. It's mostly an amusement park for retail players to say they've killed KT or got R14. Someone I was talking to earlier didn't know what fixed honor caps meant and they were full T3. My only hope is Blizz selling licenses to the community so we can host our own servers with our own rules. Which probably will never happen.

[@Alienshroom]

Play on era PVE... Only way to find real grinders and people who consider themselves citizens of azeroth. auction house prices are fine. most none 60 BOE are well under 1k.

[@shoeby9273]

@@Alienshroom I occasionally have checked your free action prices and have been very jealous.

[@StretfordEndGaz]

I think there is also another problem, the player base, i would hazard a guess that 80% of the classic player base are those of us who were around , who played it originally, now, we are all 20 years older, the gaming environment has changed, now its about log in do things fast finish and go. For a lot of us that played the game this isnt the case we want that slower feel, that feeling of earnt progression, for the younger player base they want the instant gratification - see things like tik-tok/KZbin shorts etc, So companies like blizz want to feed into this. Blizz earnt their ££ from my generation they are merely providing the service that my grand children want today, and sadly the 2 types of lifestyles dont mix. We want a clear division of games when this cant happen because its not in Blizz interest, why pander for people like me who they will get their £9.99 a month from , when they can pander to my grand kids who will want X Y & Z its business. Its sad but i havent and cannot see a game that will ever be like it was - that is JUST a game, nothing else.

[@cococock2418]

this is a braindead boomer post. guarantee you parse grey.

[@TheMetalIsNeon]

Phase 3 killed my guild in SOD, and a good chunk of what's left has ended up moving to Cata Classic given how poorly Phase 3 has been handled. I really hope Phase 4 is at least better than Phase 3

[@vulgrin9573]

I sympathise. Fortunately my guild is just a small group of friends and with the streams we end up finding something to do. Right now we're playing Fresh Era. I think it will be hard for P4 to be worse than P3, but I've already seen some worrying signs. People will come back even if the delay goes on for ages, but they won't stay if it sucks!

[@TheMetalIsNeon]

@@vulgrin9573 I honestly think P4 will be better than 3 unless they decide to make raids after MC 40 man. 20 man raiding is partially what killed my guild cause we had to Pug too many people, and 40 man is going to make that a nightmare to manage

[@NICO-mr4ll]

well, shouldn't have ditched us in the ICC patch, ha ha

[@TheMetalIsNeon]

@@NICO-mr4ll I quit in ulduar cause no one would take a warrior tank despite being fully nax geared

[@slavsthetics2447]

Why the fuck they thought 20 man raiding would be viable? It literally killed every single pug and guild (including me, did few Sunken Temple runs) bored and left.

[@christianstephan7301]

And that's the sad reality of gaming. A lot of players hate cash shops or are at least not fond of them. Some players actually leave the game for those kinds of monetisation. But the amount of players that actually use those new ways of making money outweight the losses the company made by introducing them. So at the end of the day those things are profitable. Blizzard isn't a company anymore that makes games for players, but marketable products for investors.

[@falco1758]

WoW Classic is very profitable for blizzard because it doesn't really cost them anything. I remember an interview with Ion Hazzikostas - it may have been with Preach within the past year, he posed that question and Ion hinted along the lines that classic is so successful it basically funds retail development alone.

[@heroofhyrule9778]

separate sub for SoD would bring them even more money but hold them accountable for delivering on their products. Its a win-win in theory but I believe they genuinely lack confidence in their ability to produce anything good anymore, probably smart

[@Omegalux]

I'm currently playing Classic Era, but have been terribly disappointed in Blizzards care of the classic side of the game. SoD seemed detached from the spirit of classic, and the Era servers have zero maintenance. The expansions just arn't as good as the Vanilla world, and I would rather chew nails then play retail. The fact that certain private servers are performing better than a billion dollar company, really puts Blizzard to shame. There are ways to monetize Classic WoW that wouldn't utterly destroy it's integrity, such as cosmetic spell effects that stay true to the theme. But that seems beyond Bliz's comprehension.

[@vulgrin9573]

The suggestion I have always played around with in my head is them going down the OSRS approach and allowing people to vote on additions to the Vanilla game, with a 70% positive requirement for any vote to pass. I would make it that to be eligible to vote you'd need to have some sort of special Classic sub or something like that. But honestly, that is a flawed idea for many reasons, especially due to it unfairly making Classic players pay more for their game. There's no super convenient solution it seems!

[@bohne8746]

07.07.2024 big Turtle WoW news check their KZbin for the teaser:)

[@McPeror]

​@vulgrin9573 sadly players dont understand what makes vanilla good and will vote it into abomination

[@AkiRa22084]

Zero maintenance? Classic Era is working great.

[@wormy3811]

They generally make more money at the start of any bs they release, people sign up out of their own morbid security, there is heaps of ways to enjoy classic as it is, I myself have just poached friends to play at my time, my wife played retail as hunter likes how easy it was, now she hates it and loves healing in classic. As I say no reward without punishment.

[@violetlight1548]

I know at least 6000 players have dumped Blizzard all together for a certain reptile-based private server, and frankly, I don't blame them, when, like you said, the small private server developers are putting more thought, effort and passion into their projects than Blizzard has for more than a decade now. I didn't mind so much when it was *just* cosmetics -- I was a proud owner of a Sparkle Pony. However, level boosting, even heirlooms just seemed to cheapen the experience, and I was PISSED at the level crunch. I had *earned* all my levels the old fashioned way, through playing the game. It's sad. My now-husband and I got through a long-distance period in our relationship through playing WoW together. Overleveling dungeons was our date night. Now, I can't even him to play the reptile-based private server.

[@Zhohan-]

I have played on the reptile-based server since day 1 before anybody knew about it. It’s always had a far superior community compared to Blizzard WoW. Hope you can get him on board. It’s the most fun I’ve had playing WoW.

[@ftur.4139]

I'd love to play on it but the server has issues that are something I can't deal with. Maybe epoch.

[@Jediwarlock]

One thing that has really puzzled/disappointed me is the lack of new territories on the map to explore in SoD. In the trailer they teased "new and hidden areas" but everything that is used (i.e. the Arathi dwarven farm) ALREADY existed in Vanilla. The map and terrain literally has not changed at all apart from server-side objects like quest items you interact with... I guess this monetization tyranny inhibits what the Classic team is actually able to do.

[@vulgrin9573]

Hey man, thanks for dropping by. It increasingly feels to me that with SoD, they try to squeeze as much meaning into as little actual work as possible. Runes are new and interesting despite most being pre-existing spells from other periods of the game. The "new" raids are just reworked dungeons. Almost all the new items are reskins. It just screams "making the most with as little as possible".

[@Jediwarlock]

@@vulgrin9573 That's a good way of putting it! Hoping for some "NEW" new stuff in Phase 4 and beyond :D

[@vulgrin9573]

@@Jediwarlock We can hope!

[@Shiirow]

Anyone who believes vanilla wow was the best the game has ever been is as delusional as all the people who thought the game was difficult back then.

[@Zhohan-]

It won GOTY 2004. It was highly social, created lasting friendships and marriages. It changed MMORPGs forever. Compare that to the modern game that is antisocial and toxic.

[@Jahvdjybejhehdvhdzxuduwiksjd]

@@Zhohan-it’s the players being toxic.

[@jmcke802]

I quit SoD right before p3 dropped due to IRL circumstances. After a few weeks, I ended up trying Turtle and am having a blast. I have a 60 war and a 55 sham and have enjoyed the new leveling content, dungeons, and kara10. Very excited to move at my own pace through Naxx and into the new t3.5 raid Kara40.

[@NorthernWalks]

Turtle is great management but the server is fully progressed, cross faction also which ruins it and not very well planned out on the new content etc but they have the right idea and you just kinda get boosted through the raids

[@Neffyu]

I NEVER knew that the 223% increase in subscription revenue from 2019 was STILL less than the month BFA was released. That is crazy, and really shows why Blizzard has no interest in putting resources in a Classic+ version on the Era client.

[@vulgrin9573]

Let's not forget that the cash shop has grown since then too, and I'm sure the next retail expansion is more hyped than BfA was, an expansion which most of us knew would be poor months before it released. That Classic/Retail earnings disparity will only grow with time...

[@Polterbun]

@@vulgrin9573 It's actually crazy, I had never thought about the earnings disparity before but it really explains so much. Loads of people I know were surprised that I didn't play SOD, because it sounds a lot like something I would enjoy. My reasoning for not is just the fact that compared to some private servers, it's pretty bare bones, and this made me realize why. I was literally talking to someone yesterday about how crazy it was that the blizz hardcore servers were so immensely bare bones too, no special achievements or challenge options, just the absolute minimum of making it a playable game mode with less griefing capability. Well, now it all makes sense. To Blizzard the investment has to be absolutely minimal since to them the return is going to be negligible.

[@mrillis9259]

Its bare bones or retail. Governt only makes one type of cheese.​@@Polterbun

[@AkiRa22084]

If you look at the graph, it' the steepest drop in subs in history as well. Even worse than SL. People thought they would liked it, but it was only nostalgia, so most of them percent left.

[@riounar1006]

However, while earnings are less, the cost is also massively reduced for Blizzard. You can Tell that the Team behind SoD is Not big, but I'd think this Team ist profitable in its own niche.

[@bananajoe9951]

Leave classic alone, end retail WoW, start WoW 2 already.

[@dannyp9210]

I think you're right. Just play private servers, where they have actual passion and dedication for the game and the community. We probably won't get a proper Classic+ from Blizzard, because it's not profitable enough compared to the effort required.

[@420OngBak]

Lmao right passion and dedication and you mean where you can PayPal the people who run the server money for all sorts of benefits that eclipses the micro transaction model of retail and classic? Server owners of pservers wish they had a bigger playerbase to exploit financially. You people are insanely delusional

[@dannyp9210]

@@420OngBak "eclipses the model of retail and classic"...what? In Blizzard's games you can literally buy gold, which you can then spend to buy carries. Their games are P2W. They refuse to do much about bots and RMT. AND you pay a subscription on top of this! Sure, there are loads of pservers that are P2W, but at least they're free, and there are several servers to choose from that isn't P2W.

[@420OngBak]

@@dannyp9210 Yes thank you we agree that both private servers and retail world of warcraft do the same thing in offering microtransactions. The difference being that blizzard gouges you for mounts and private server admins give you entire sets of gear for hundreds of dollars. The point is that you can't use the but muh token!! argument because private servers are far more guilty of exploiting their playerbase for financial gain.

[@dannyp9210]

@@420OngBak You're generalizing. There are private servers that are fine; not all of them are scummy. You're free to go to another server if you dislike the one you're on.

[@cococock2418]

private servers are objective worse in every way, and thats saying a lot

[@TE-eq1dc]

Never forget the salt pouring on the head of the king of the attic goblins which started his path down the bald side for the heart of the aspects

[@aleksabroad]

I’m glad some of y’all’s parents paid the subscriptions, my parents thought all this stuff was from the Devil including pokemon , I started experiencing WOW for the first time as a 34 year old and now am 36, having a freaking blast !!

[@Zhohan-]

Hey we had the same childhood lol

[@lgates644]

The new mic is great btw. I've been waiting for you to get one and knew you would eventually. Does a lot for the quality of your production. Also, your b roll usage is noticeably getting better too. Appreciate the content.

[@vulgrin9573]

Thanks so much mate! It's the same mic, but I changed where I recorded and have started to spend a lot more time in the production stage on audio. I really appreciate the support though, it encourages me to work further on it!

[@mrillis9259]

The majority don't care and can't tell the difference.

[@lgates644]

@@vulgrin9573 oh nice, I definitely thought it was the mic. Nice to know that a location change can make that type of impact on sound quality. Can you put an eargasm warning on your vids if you ever do get a new mic? Otherwise, we may have a epidemic of people unexpectedly writhing out of their chairs all over the world. If this were to happen in the workplace it could be catastrophic in nature. With great power...

[@windatar6351]

I play SoD, I may dabble in Era on deviate delight. I am a SoD player, the day Blizzard shuts sod down is the day I end my subscription. If they want it or not is up to Blizzard.

[@shneersh3110]

As someone who didn't get to play original BC or BC Classic I'm honestly really hoping they release a seasonal server for BC and maybe even Wrath Classic, though since this is blizzard I doubt it will happen :(

[@RadarFinsR]

One of the big problems with sparkle pony is that it was the beginning of buying this off the AH means you'll never have to purchase a mount on any of your alts ever again, and not just your epic ground mount, every ground speed and every flying speed saving you roughly 500g per character, which in a game that was becoming increasingly alt focused seemed a bit of a forced move for your average player even though people didn't like to be seen on storemounts. Like Thor/Piratesoftware says it didn't just make money, it made more money than an entire SC2 expansion.

[@vulgrin9573]

Thor was spot on. The sad reality we all have to face is that these things do sell. Enough people buy them to massively inflate the profits Blizz make regardless of how poor the quality or integrity of their game is. Sad stuff really. For most smaller devs, or indie developers, a huge monthly return plus boxed copy sales and character services would be enough. For a publicly traded company with shareholders to please? No profit is great enough when more money is out there to earn.

[@NICO-mr4ll]

hope we are wiser now >

[@MateuszPieniek]

1:53 - Wow was monetized in three ways. The third were boosters with cards that could contain special codes with unique pets

[@vulgrin9573]

That's a very good point, thanks for reminding me. I do wonder though how much the trading cards brought in for Blizz, especially given how people would sell them on Ebay and stuff. They always seemed super niche to me back in the day. But they were also cool, unlike today's microtransactions!

[@Buffalo_ill]

I'm still having fun on Fairbanks cluster, and it seems plenty of other people are too. I think people will continue to come and go, taking breaks here and there. It's nice being able to gear once and have a relevant character after taking time off.

[@vulgrin9573]

The Firemaw cluster I was on is also doing well, but it's quite difficult to start over on Era servers with such late game economies. You will always be at a disadvantage

[@fankrys]

I actually had a great time in WoD. Great expansion for casual player not able sink hundreds of hour per month farming for raid. I had my garrison, my garden where i grew specifically plants i needs to craft potion and flask, and followers to send in mission to get gold, ressources and sometimes even gear. But i understand how different it was to old school wow, where everything is hard to come by and therefor more valuable once you get it.

[@sealboy1211]

Sounds like a single player experience.

[@fankrys]

@@sealboy1211 i was raiding, in a guild at first, but because of my schedule, i went full pick up then. You still need each other to progress. And you are interested in mythic, you will still wipe, learn and progress, a lot. It's just the game has a lot of convenience so you don't really need to do much "chores" in between raid. They went the exact opposite with Legion and beyond, where raider constantly needed to farm their artifact power, azurite etc... Perhaps if you were a very dedicated player, playing a few hours per day, WoD felt like there wasn't enough to do, but as a casual, WoD hit the spot for me. The exact amount of content without overwhelming me with tons of menial tasks.

[@brandonkruse6412]

I agree, WoD is still my favorite expansion right up there with Legion. It gets a lot of hate for the Garrisons but I think people forget how awesome the PvE and PvP was. Those class trinkets were awesome too.

[@user-ub8lo1zh7n]

WoD PvP was also my best experience ive ever had. Im purely a pvp player. WoD PvP was just insane.

[@user-ub8lo1zh7n]

Legion killed it for me, when the prepatch came, i didnt know my warrior anymore. I was like what the shit is this.. I miss WoD since then.. almost 10years ago. Great pvp times in WoD packt with emotions, had great duels with other ppl. It was just insane.​@@brandonkruse6412

[@AnaniGalabov]

There is still many pirate servers, where you can enjoy game as it was before and don't have monetisation.

[@brandonlewis3379]

In the end it's going to end up being private servers unfortunately.

[@nuclease2739]

Back in the day gold seller already existed. Sure blizzard didn't go with in game transaction, but it wasn't something foreign. i remember a tank from my guild getting 1K gold this way. His wife got him 1k gold for his anniversary. He decided to buy the book for quel'serrar with it x).

[@bspus]

Playing sod now but I have high hopes for project epoch. If that fails too, I suppose it's time to drop wow for good

[@tlew360]

Yup, the main reason I’m playing SoD is because I never got to raid vanilla raids in progression. I missed out on 2019 classic due to life, school, and work. Now that phase has pasted, I’m able to game more often. SoD gave me one last chance to experience vanilla progression with a twist. But once it’s over I’m personally done with wow, because I myself even see that blizzard is more motivated in their micro transactions, so much so they made retail lvling experience so bad that you are even more tempted to buy a boost. The idea of paying to not play has become more and more and more true. It’s honestly sad because we had such amazing games that were designed to just play and have fun.

[@kingerz]

The early magic experience brings tears to my eyes

[@Draconyx84]

To use the classic vanilla vernacular, I believe the term is "QQ more". Us classic fans have had another 5 years reliving the old days and that was all we wanted.

[@trisnics]

I missed Vanilla and now I miss Classic 2019. A lot. Hardcore was close but most of the stuff since then just hasn't been as fun. :( I stopped mid-Wrath and have no interest in Cata. Yes the monetization is huge and really does explain a lot of Blizzard and the devs direction.

[@cameron5948]

Never watched you before, but as someone who has started in 19 classic and tried retail throughout, you hit the nail on the head for me.

[@vulgrin9573]

Glad you enjoyed the video mate!

[@remcoheijnen8427]

Fun fact the Celestial Stead generated more Money then Starcraft 2, which came out that same year ! Great Video honestly, you got a new sub !

[@UnitedWeStand1985]

I absolutely love the Private Server side of World of Warcraft. You can see the passion for the game from most of those developers who host those servers.

[@justinmarkwilliams]

the moment they add a store in classic wow is the moment i stop my sub. yes i will not play cata due to its store. and burning crusade died the moment they added the token. I dont play retail, i quit after wrath.... and with the re-release of classic i re subbed. almost 20 years away and i only returned once there was no ability to p2w.... i will only sub if there is no p2w. i know it makes less money without p2w stuff.... maybe im just old and stuck in that old way of playing games.... but games suck if u can p2w, its not a level playing field.

[@tytygreenrich9407]

Glad someone finally articulated the issue we all subconsciously knew

[@matagin]

Now I don't know whether to play SoD or Classic Era servers or just go back to private servers.

[@fi9751]

Well i know now i dont need to start any blizzard wow anymore 😂 imo after vanilla they went already down the wrong path..... We werent finished with azeroth when we already moved on to outland. And in cata they ruined the spirit completely 😅

[@missy7619]

I'm currently having fun with Turtle WoW (not shilling). It does have a donation shop for quality of life stuff but it's by no means p2w and they're very good about banning gold sellers and making sure there's no way to buy player power. It's essentially a vanilla+ server which keeps the design philosophy of vanilla but expands on it in more significant ways than SoD while remaining lore-friendly.

[@joekendrew1482]

You already know I agree with everything we've spoken about before regarding WoW. But it's really good to see the video getting hits, clearly we aren't the only ones! "Pay to NOT play"- nail on the head!

[@dwahnaslowdown8887]

It seems to me that the target demographic of Retail has shifted to 12 year-old girls. I cite the Disney-esq character animations, the "my little pony" mounts, the googlie-eyed companion pets and the "let's play dress-up" transmog system (including the monthly trader thing) as evidence.

[@Dschinjo]

yeah that was amazing, buying wow, installing it, downloading 2 days. But i remember so good when i first pressed "enter world"... i really entered it

[@taylorhawkins9568]

Just randomly came across this video and wow, very well put together and articulated imo. Definitely got a new subscriber outta me man 🔥

[@ololometer536]

NPC auto-leveling and "group finder" feature killed WoW. Auto-leveling killed any reason to progress. "Group finder" killed any reason to explore the world and compete quests, because you'll get more experience and much better loot in 5 minutes for literally doing nothing in a dungeon than you would from doing quests for hours. You don't need even find a dungeon! You can be teleported to any dungeon by clicking a mouse. Modern WoW is all about waiting in queue for nonsense grinding the same mobs in the same nonsense dungeons to receive nonsense loot. Game is totally broken. Plus microtransactions. But looks like it's exactly what people want :)

[@SovereignVoid]

I feel like we should do the same thing we did for the initial classic launch. Create a petition and get a million people to sign it. We need to collectively create a list of the things we want to see in a purest version of the game and a classic plus. Season of Discovery is not classic Plus. I think the more specific we can be the better. - No Phasing / Sharding (Is WrathGate/Content Progression phasing okay? What about clusters?) - No Level Cap Increase - No Cash Shop (Or any other monetization outside of the monthly sub) - No Server Xfers - No Faction Changes - No LFD/LFR - No Improved Flight Paths - Class identity preserved - Arena Added - No deprecation of old content - All new contents must be in Azeroth I'm sure there's a lot more but we could definitely build a pretty elaborate list of things that we want to see.

[@xsteelersx6]

I think I ran out of juice for it. Years of disappointments grate against the massive wall of nostalgia, joy, and good will the game brought me over the decade+ I've spent in azeroth. The constant imposing presence of spending money over actually spending time with the gameplay is a huge part of that for me. There's a part of me where I *want* to try War Within, or the latest SOD phase. And yet, I haven't been subbed since January, despite keeping up with a lot of news on the series as a whole(retail and classic content creators alike). Whether it's the constant pull for your money or time, I just feel conflicted when considering booting it up again, even though I think about it often. Other games don't effect me like this, so I just spend time on them instead.

[@vincentp.2280]

I think you can compare WoW's path with Google or Facebook. First there's an idea with passionate founders and developers. You then ensure that as many people as possible get to use your product. Then you start thinking about ways to make money from it. Allthough this has consequences for the experience of your product, there's no way back. Investors want their money back and greed is taking over. We had our moment to relive the old times, and it wasn't the same experience. Blizzard will go further and monetize the product according to the modern era. I guess we'll have to wait for a new startup project with passionate people who just want to make a great game. And in the meantime, private servers will meet the needs of vanilla trilogy diehards and a true Classic plus experience.

[@vulgrin9573]

I think the one thing I'd add is that this phenomenon exists across AAA gaming, but at least with other genres, it's quite possible for indie devs to bring that passion and be rewarded for it. Unfortunately, mmos are such massive beasts that they require either AAA resources or insane levels of determination and community support. That's why Blizz have a captive audience

[@kratos8448]

After SoD and people giving it the Charme of retail, I went back to classic, hardcore especially. I found a very active guild with Lots of friendly players that still teach you stuff and Not Expect you to have a knowledge of everything. It's my cup of tea now.

[@ScottKent]

I still expect that after having been bought by Microsoft, the introduction of experiments like Season of Discovery, the introduction of Console Port, and a few other clues...they are going to announce another release of Vanilla (+) but with X-Box and possibly mobile included. I think it might be a 20th anniversary announcement. With all of the money that is being left on the table with mobile, and the current computing power of handhelds...it is just too much to keep passing over. Sure, raiding may have to be modified (or maybe Raid Leaders will restrict tanks and healers to using something other than mobile), but that would be for the players to deal with...they would just be providing more platform options. Think about all of the mobile devices, Steam Decks (able to run WoW native for once?), X-Box, or handheld computers that could join in...what better time for Classic +? And yeah, I think this version of Classic would start with micro-transitions.

[@ntall123]

All they had to do to make SoD good was to bring some of the meme specs up to the others and it would have been a "new" vanilla. Instead, they got delusions of grandeur, not only in their own abilities to create good content, but on the amount of resources blizzard was willing to give them. Personally, I don't think, even with unlimited resources, that the current teams at blizzard are capable of creating quality content in any version of their games.

[@pedrogutierrez1547]

I don't understand the bad rap Cataclysm gets. Its got the same Classic gameplay, but a bit more streamlined/consolidated (I'm thinking of the spells here).The raids and dungeons are awesome, Talent tree, glyphs, I mean, way too much to list here... It seems like LFR is what most people have a beef against, which happened at the last patch (Dragon Soul). Devs are strongly considering leaving it out, which I don't like, but can live easily live with. I always found Cata to be a good marriage of both new and old. It holds up very nicely even today.

[@slackerZ1]

Omg the battle chest... Where it all began

[@highlordaideren6579]

I call bs! they totally make more then enough to make new content for a 20 year old game that doesnt even take near as many pixels and processing power to make. Plus most of the assets are so much easier to make then retail. BS! Also Classic ends in Cata not wrath! Wrath ends WC3, Cata ends vanilla wow wrapping up most of the major arcs of Vanilla. Vanilla wow was about the Elementals and the black dragon flight, as well as the old gods. It set up these guys in Vanilla thus making it the story of WoW. Not Arthas or Illidan they belong to WC3.

[@colinpritchard2067]

What’s crazy is that I no longer care about the WOW token. I did, for sure, but we had Chinese gold farmers before that. So, people who wanted to pay money to get gold already did. When I was a kid, I got got by it. My account got hacked, and I lost everything. So, I'm happy they made a safe way to do it, which is in the game's rules. The last point is that you can play the game however you want. I play a slow grind and don't really dip too much into the end game because I really just want to relax after a day of work. If someone wants to skip some of the grinds for gold, then who cares? It doesn't mean you can't do raids and what not.

[@Azalis1701]

The thing is, Classic turned into this within weeks anyway with botting and people buying gold. AFK Boosts were being sold almost from release and soon after sale runs and GDKPs. I actually want to play the game, but it seems like everyone else just wants to pay in whatever way they can to boost.

[@easycake3251]

I remember seeing...hard to say now. I want to say it was during MoP maybe or Cata ? I saw an ingame store for FF I think it was. And it looked awful. Like the stuff that was being sold just made the game look bad. And I remember thinking this is insane, thankfully my game will never do this because Blizzard has style. Shows you how much of a different time it was even tho there were like 2 pets on the Blizzard store, and you could not access it in game.

[@kittan5450]

I wouldnt care about a mount shop inside classic+ if that means getting content and proper care

[@andrewbonning6615]

Are we forever going to be chasing that first time feeling? But I agree with what you said especially at the end.

[@Leonjrxx]

I don’t think you need to be chasing a first time feeling. Just playing the old games, vanilla / sod / cata (tbc, wotlk) just feels like a better mmo than retail.

[@vulgrin9573]

I agree. I think it's easy for people to claim nostalgia is the reason why Classic does well but ultimately I know many people (myself included) who never played Vanilla when it was live but see it as their favourite era of WoW. It's just a particular kind of mmo which is now rare, but is beloved.

[@lofilevelling7830]

Fresh Everlook Server June 29th. Lets go again!

[@mikfhan]

Eventually players only have classic season or coordinated chromie time servers. "When classic plus is ashes then you have my permission to die" :(

[@Dmeister406]

I'm an OG Vanilla player, who has mained the same hunter since 2005. When Classic was released I was busy playing retail but started another hunter on Classic and levelled up to 35 or so. Then Dragonflight was released and I went back to retail for the next year or so. By the time I got sick of Dragonflight, I went to go back to my hunter on Classic and found that I had been transferred over to TBC!!! I was like WTF, I never received an email or in-game message saying that this would happen. I don't want to play TBC or wotlk or any other expansion, to me "Classic" IS Vanilla! Season of x, y, z is not Classic either imho and I don't want to play that either!

[@jaysinrd]

Amen! Great video, I’ve also stopped playing much lately cause I only wanted SoD and vanilla fresh, don’t like cata mopremix or retail

[@mikki7522]

They could at least give us a few fresh servers every now and then, I think the classic community is big enough for that.

[@elcurrante3707]

Everlook pserver is launching fresh classic realm in 10 days

[@SirKanti1]

The biggest problem wow has is that the majority of the player base old and don't have time to play the game as if they were back in highschool with endless free time, and the game hasn't been able to adapt it's game desgin for it's new audience.

[@jozefbania]

There is no blizzard its like company that bought piccasso paintings will brand their paintings picasso.

[@proxyboxie5584]

Fairly certain you could download wow and not buy the disk by getting the trial version and then getting a key. I think.

[@skyhavender]

I really dont line SoD for one reason... Exp boost. Why? Thats completely going against the classic feeling. Oh yeah, and the emerald bullcrap nightmare.

[@earthboundretro]

Sorry about your video game addiction lil bro

[@ballooned]

I want fresh Vanilla>TBC>Wrath servers :(

[@Barsee23]

11:08 these were only launch numbers and don’t take into account player/sub retainment, so classic wow still may’ve generated more revenue overall, also BFA charged $50 for the expac while classic was included for free so it’s probably going to be a bit more of a moneymaker in that regard

[@RackAttack101]

Dude, a sub is a sub. Lots of people float between games and go from classic era to retail and such. I think you are overhyping the situation.

[@k9tirion927]

We can't know for sure but the rocky P3 in SoD, delayed P4 and buggy cata launch sure show that the classic team is overworked/understaffed.

[@SirKanti1]

That's why they don't ban the bots.

[@JuanRamirez-fx3tf]

Are you worried about microtransactions and not GDKPs? I have met people who preferred to buy gold and then go to GDKP to purchase gear and they talk like they are achieving something. As of today, we have 4 flavors of classic, I do not see the problem associated with investment in them.

[@conanmcclanahan1069]

The now "hidden" like/dislike ratio is still so telling in how people emotionally connect with information that is directly associated to them. I'm not a numbers geek by any stretch, but seeing nearly a 1/6th likes/dislikes on a video with only 25k views is a WoW-specific anomaly. I genuinely fear that Blizzard has done so much damage to their brand that content which once fell under their "limelight" is now effectively cushioning their downfall. Something like diminishing rage returns being distributed between all content creators instead of stockpiled against them specifically. I hope people recognize that this company now regularly block outside creators monetization, while running a literal ~black-market~ ~currency-manipulation~ ~NETWORK~ in their video game... Something I am still not even sure how they are legally allowed to operate.

[@NomicFin]

I used to play EVE Online, and they have a system called PLEX (Pilot License EXtension) which worked basically the same as the WoW Token long before WoW Token as a thing, and it actually worked for that game. EVE is a game that is much, much, less forgiving than WoW (for starters, if your ship gets destroyed you lose it for good. At best you might be able to salvage some equipment from the wreck but the odds are the people who killed you looted it themselves), so if some noob sold a bunch of PLEX to buy a super-expensive battleship and best weapons for it, they'd still get ganked by a group of people who actually knew what they were doing and lose all the stuff they just bought. EVE is also a game that was built with the idea of having a fully functioning player-driven economy in mind, so being able to fund your subscription by making in-game money fits in with that mentality.

[@vulgrin9573]

I wish I was more interested in space sims because I'd love to play EVE, certainly as it was back in the day. I watched the 6 hour long Fredrik Knudsen video on it a few months ago and it looks absolutely amazing. I hope we get mmos with a similar approach to player-created content and conflict.

[@gscgold]

Ever since classic came out in 2019 I mainly played classic I rarely ever went back to retail and since season of discovery released I have completely quit playing World of Warcraft all together. The next time I play is going to be probably Two Weeks before the release of the War within and Then maybe 1 or Two Weeks of the initial release and Then after that I won't play Anymore I've been playing since 2007 So it's time for me to move on.

[@chainclaw07]

the subscription should be enough for continous play and access to all features in the game. sure them making an expansion and having you pay for that - I get.... but to ALSO have a store with exclusive items only available for extra money is as greedy as you get and it erodes any sense of integrity for the gameplay experience

[@devinoverstreet9184]

turtle wow is just on another lvl where classic can’t compete

[@Davivline]

I've been playing since early 05, everybody says 1.12 is finished but i still dont agree with that. 1.5 AV doesnt have to exist in our memories, we can just recreate it and iterate it...or make resistances as a whole work. SOD still has a chance to add more to the world and turn the ship on the right direction, the ship hasnt crashed...yet. Before i write an essay lol, ill just mention that the idea of servers as a whole is outdated technology that we've bound ourselves to. Wow has always been a lobby of sort, ive spent too many hours riding my horse around the stormwind gate just chatting. A fundamental change to how we interact with servers and versions of wow as a whole could be changed dynamically. Or all the players blizzard pissed off forever with 8 hour queues in *checks notes* not fucking 2005. I had to remote in early on a shift and just press like space bar or something once an hour, still miserable experience.

[@Moldylocks]

It's interesting they just needed to copy paste old code and still messed up, trying to add new things and spice things up only to cause massive bugs in all other expansions because it's all spaghetti coding. And the only bug they care to fix is the ones who will directly influence their money boosting services. Y-axis bug since 20 years ago they just couldn't care less, even for HC servers didn't fix that. Embarrassing.

[@michaelmclaughlin261]

I let my subscription lapse...tell me, is it possible to play 'just' Classic BC or is the game just 'locked' into a 14 year previous version of itself (currently Cata, soon to be Kung Fu pandas.)

[@fanofcodd]

Greed ... In the past , in 2005-6 , it wasn't poisoning everything. Blizzard dev team was closer to what a private server is today. They had a great customer service , non predatory payment pattern , sure they were making a lot of money , but it was by providing a good game so it wasn't bad for customer. Win win situation for everyone. But once you add more intrusive shareholders , it no longer works because now the word is "profit". Cutting corners everywhere , one team for cata and SOD ? Let's go , no need to pay two dedicated teams. Dev loose in means to do their job , player loose in term of experience , only shareholders get their short term profits.

[@SwagMonztr]

Existed for yurrs

[@Jesse3beards]

Even though Classic may have made less money than BFA, it can be seen as a loss leader

[@simonramos5553]

Grew by 223% since last months numbers but was still less than battle for Azeroth The thing is people want something to feel legitimately new and therefore hypable Bc classic was a rerun mostly that was harder for classic despite it making a return after being so old. The modern gamer doesn’t mind their effort and time ingame being devalued and paying to skip these features of playing the game to level up to max level or doing dungeons to get the pre raid BiS. And forget attunements or rep grinds However saying it doesn’t make enough money, how much do they need? When they released SoD they had 5 million characters created in a month. I forget sun count When they released classic 2019 they had 3-4million subs gained additionally in what would have otherwise been a lame duck month 45-60 million dollars a month isn’t enough to make it so there aren’t empty plots of land on the map, balance a cpl classes, finish a good number of the dead end quests that went nowhere with a sensible conclusion Maybe another battleground or raid too Like karazan crypts that sat there for ages or azshara crater that was teased in game files and never released

[@rarepepe4849]

bro acting like its shocking that people rather buy boost than level themselves for the 50th time aintnoway

[@keblin86]

I'm with ya, I kept putting up with the frustrations but Remix has finally flipped the switch for me lol. What should of been an awesome event just turned bad for me. I came back when Remix launched and I've barely used my sub. Finally decided to stop playing. I am not saying I won't ever return but this is the first time I've felt like I won't, for a very long time at least. I'm not even excited for TWW and I don't want to support Blizzard right now. Hope everyone does have fun but a weight has honestly been lifted for me since I stopped :D

[@Cohenny0015]

Why are you ignoring the microtransacrions in wrath but highlighting them in cata?

[@420OngBak]

Because he's a wrath baby shill that hates cata for no good reason other than that someone told him dragonsoul was bad once

[@DuxAKADuke]

Video starts at 10:10

[@politelyupset]

Cataclysm is great so far EVEN with the overwhelming amount of bugs. Probably staying for MoP but for the life of me won't touch Warlord of Draenor. Sure hope there will be something like Burning Crusade SoD by then.