I Miss When World of Warcraft Was Just A Game - MadSeasonShow Reacts

[@Hundo_Mo]

WoW was so special to me. Me and my brothers were a full Dungeon team. I tanked, my next oldest brother healed, and the others were dps. That magic cannot be recaptured but it is one of my fondest gaming memories

[@mcfarvo]

Those times/memories are worth more than any achievements or rankings available in-game today

[@claytonsaxton6757]

That sounds amazing

[@leviathanlives4847]

That's a good gaming memory my dude. I used to play hide and seek with my niece in Stormwind, honestly thought it was gonna be boring and distract me from the grind, ended up being some of my favorite memories playing WoW.

[@machomandalf2893]

@@leviathanlives4847that reminds me of my raid teams in Destiny sitting around playing tower tag for like an hour before we ever started raiding lol. Ended up being a weekly thing after that.

[@Rinavani]

That sounds awesome. Literally the best thing I’ve read in a while.

[@CatOnALaptop]

This isn't really about WoW but it is about gaming as a whole. I didn't have the best childhood, I was in foster care for a long time but they had a game room with a Dreamcast. I remember playing Jet Set, Crazy Taxi, SA2, Rayman 2 and RE-C:V over and over until I was finally adopted. The wards let me stay up later then most of the kids at night and play because they considered me playing a way I coped with being abandoned by my mother. I still remember when the dean gave me my first ever GBC, it was a Pikachu one with the case and all the addons, I cried so much. She told my adoptive mother "He might play a lot but it's how he deals with his issues." I'm an adult now pushing 30 and wish I could still play games and feel like that little kid again, free of pain, free of stress, free of feeling alone. Gaming might have changed but I'll never forget that it helped me in my darkest times and was there for me no matter what happened when I was a kid.

[@TurboV8boi]

Damn bro I'm not crying, you're crying. Sorry it couldn't have been easier.

[@jamespadgett8660]

That's awful. I'm so sorry brother. I can relate pretty well to how you're feeling right now. Take care of yourself💪🏻

[@tipsyskeleton]

oh my god me too, i was also fostered but I'm way younger, I'm 18. I pretty much did the same thing. It's cool seeing people who've managed to make it out of the system because no one really talks about it.

[@strantheman]

Hope you're doing ok

[@Moe_Posting_Chad]

You're gonna make it OP! *We're all gonna make it!*

[@bqndata]

Games in 2000s - Come on it will be fun . Games in 2020s - Fuck you give me money !

[@tehfuqizg0inon588]

A game? You mean a weird nether realm that you just throw money into?m

[@PyromancerRift]

More like 2020 - i don't need loot there, i won't do it.

[@jedahn]

​@@PyromancerRiftit was always like that.

[@ZaerdinGaming]

Games were always about money, they simply sold fun to get money, and you've forgotten all of the absolutely terrible shovel ware games that we had. Plus, you had arcades to buffer that a bit.

[@zonedout3390]

​@@ZaerdinGaming There were alot of good games it was constrained by limitations of hardware. It's called an experience. Sure we had shovelware and still do it's called not being stupid with your money, it's not hard to not buy a crappy game If you can't tell the difference in a 30min time frame or shorter then you should just quit playing games and let real gamers who know better make the decisions.

[@blackbeing7864]

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game." And when developers mostly listen to the most optimizing players... well, you get a game that feels like a chore.

[@digbickhaver1302]

Thats literally just very very high end raiding.

[@NartrachGaming]

​@@digbickhaver1302 and what some ppl expect from classic

[@michaelkovalsky4907]

I think you greatly overestimate how many players actually do high end content. I think the issue is that people who are solidly hard capped at doing +5s at most are suddenly acting like they have to min/max everything the way a higher end player (or even someone who does +12s comfortably) does. If anything, WoW is very much NOT a chore. You can easily get sufficient gear from dungeons/lfr/M0 to easily nullify most of the open world and make it rather trivial. Once you get to that point, you can start doing whatever you want. RP, farm mats, run old dungeon for tmog, etc.

[@YumYum820]

​@@digbickhaver1302 the problem is the culture of the game trickles down so it becomes infested completely

[@JeyKalda]

@@NartrachGaming After last three years of playing classic, this is exactly what whole classic is. Everything is hyperoptimized, you make the slightest mistake and everybody immediatelly shits on you. You dont have full prebis first week of release ? what a loser. You dont have all the professions, enchants and over 100k gold ? what are you even doing, why are you playing ? This has been my experience for the whole time ive been playing classic.

[@N3mdraz]

First classic release 4 years ago people were rushing to lvl 60 and got pre bis gear in 1 week. Couldnt even play first 2 weeks because only 1 freshh server was up and full. This felt so frustrating and didnt feel like vanilla, i even quit. Now 4 years later i started classic at my own pace. No minmaxing, crafting own gear, no quest helper etc. It feels more like vanilla now because instead of efficiency, i emphasise on rpg and exploring. No quest helper means you have to visit every small building and use landmarks to navigate

[@seldomsane5278]

Great comment. Best to play at your own pace. Much more enjoyment that way

[@TheChaosTheory]

This is the way to do it right here. Not sure why people are worried about rushing through a 20 year old game even with new content.

[@ch-arts-us]

Yea just chill. It's fun.

[@NCArtVT]

Vanilla experience was so great! I briefly returned to classic after 13 years, players were min-maxing, rushing dungeons, skipping lore-rich quests, pressuring others to do the same. Completely different to my first time logging into WoW in 2005. To this day I still remember the time I walked into Darnassus, exploring every nook and cranny and running all the way to Redridge being chased by every mob along the way to play with my buddy. I met a gnome on the road to Dun Morogh who told me about this fire god that lived under a mountain. Doing the Deadmines, knowing nothing about the dungeon and nobody in the party knew what we were doing but still having a blast. The time my friend logged for some questing in Stonetalon not knowing it was the last time we would play together. The world was large and we were small. Those days will be remembered forever!

[@jacobtuttle4311]

I was actually curious about the current state of classic wow because that's the very reason I didn't want to get it at launch. My best wow experience was playing on a vanilla wow private server years ago with a relatively low population and I was able to level at my own pace with a supportive community that was happy to see new players. Apparently that's part of the real vanilla experience because when blizzard released it back in 2004 they didn't have the staff or servers required to support the huge influx of players and people were plagued with server crashes, DCs, long queue times, and stunted character progression. Knowing that it's at a steady point and that I don't have to worry about a level cap increase making all my progress moot makes me want to try it out again

[@RotanWarcraft]

Thanks for watching my video and providing your opinion and feedback on it. I think you killed it and really fleshed out the thoughts that I had. Love the comments here as well. Thanks all!

[@franciscotolley]

give this man a pinned commment xD=) Rotan is awesome good job on the vid!

[@blindspy]

Tbh your video is just regurgitating popular opinion and is a lazy formulaic view grab. Feels like every other bad “video essay”

[@franciscotolley]

@@blindspy no need to be mean man its also not true

[@Mythansar]

Your video is great! Keep it up! :)

[@No-Me3]

You went to a store and got a game. Now you buy a game and get a store.

[@thefacelessone74]

Just pirate everything it's easier

[@cococock2418]

Nah, maybe those are the games you play. Not me.

[@kobragangbit]

dont make me cRY

[@kobragangbit]

@@thefacelessone74 can u please teach me how i have PC can i email u or DM u on Insta?

[@raminMTL]

Deep shit son

[@AKS-74U]

The flight paths have always fascinated me. I used to take the longest flight paths possible just to sit and watch everything below as a kid. The best memories

[@akamadmaxx8432]

My first toon in 2004 was a Dwarf Paladin. I didn't know anything about the game (same as everyone else back then) Most of the guys i meet in game stayed on the continent they started on. I had a class quest to go to the other continent. While i was over there trying to figure out what to do I decided it was a good time to try and get every flight path I could so if I ever had to go there it would be quicker. I stumbled across Desolace. I didn't think much of it but I got the flight path. A could weeks later I was struggling to kill things in a fast manner (paladin with the "oh that looks cool" spec choices) I was slaughtering every Magram around the lake and stumbled across a valley filled with undead that gave me exp I could use exorcism on. It's one of my earliest memories from WoW where I thought I had cracked the code.

[@thefacelessone74]

sorry you played such a shitty class like you said you had no idea.

[@PhenixEthere-vz7bp]

I love your anecdote :)

[@dmtaboo_truth7052]

One of my favourite things in WoW is still just levelling a new character and running Wailing Caverns with a level-appropriate group

[@moonasha]

i think we can all remember our first time going into wailing caverns. Mine was in spring of 2005, and I distinctly remember we had a druid tank, something that would never happen on a tryhard server today.

[@diamondrust4719]

Same honestly. I get that the endgame is something to aim for, but it often feels like everything is rushed so much that the leveling experience is nonexistent now. I'm not even someone pining for Vanilla, but it's gone too far now.

[@mrfrupo]

One of the first things they taught me in my college art classes was the use of negative space. Negative space is so important to the overall composition. Vanilla had the perfect amount of negative space and current has almost none. It's a jumbled mess of a composition. More is not always better, and often times it's worse.

[@jeffreymccann4050]

I think Blizzard made a mistake by focusing so much on end game content. They should have spent more time fleshing out the world and adding more ways to interact with it.

[@vitoramaral422]

The Final Fantasy VII soundtrack, your voice and the meaning behind it, me also being someone born on 1990, this hit all the marks. Thank you MadSeason, its is well past the point that I tell how much I love your content and what a wonderfull person and fellow player you are

[@madseasonshow]

I appreciate that, thanks for watching

[@iaobtc]

@@madseasonshow you're attracting a lot of haters and I have to say, that's because you're over the target. You keep your head up!!

[@Leonimy]

i remember being a level 16 night elf druid and swimming around darkshore for HOURS trying to find the thing for aquatic form. But it never felt like a waste of time once I got that extra form. It felt like a true accomplishment.

[@zonedout3390]

Except it was a waste of time, you aren't playing the game your wasting your time doing nothing important and not progressing. I will never understand this thought process, you had wiki guides, even Prima guides that were paper back that had a index to show you where to go or what to do by telling you in words. An accomplishment is killing a boss while your under leveled, or exploiting a bug to get free xp or using the ai pathing to your advantage. Learn to be a real gamer

[@TehMafiaTV]

@@zonedout3390 Peoples accomplishments are different, and searching for a reward is more rewarding to some over simply exploiting/ai pathing. Not sure if the AI pathing was a troll or not, but regardless, I think the original comment is true in the context of this video; I'd rather search for an hour or two for a new form, than having to do dailies for a single item or mount.

[@undertheflatsun]

The world has changed, games have changed and most importantly, we as gamers have changed. You can never replace that first time when everything was new and we didn't know what meta even meant.

[@carlosdelsol76]

nor content

[@heathmcrigsby]

Gamers haven't changed. Gamers are gamers. It's the tourists who want to change normal people. Gatekeep or gaming will die.

[@mcfarvo]

When videogames were worlds to explore and play in, rather than numbers to crunch and metagames to optimize...

[@ThisisCitrus]

Players constantly optimizing the fun out of video games.

[@zedorian6547]

Hard disagree on most of this. Only thing I really agree with is that you cant have the first time twice.

[@Krawurxus]

That anecdote about being 9, just playing games at a friends house, in anticipation of pizza being the best life was ever gonna get hit hard.

[@bohne8746]

right😢

[@strantheman]

I had vibes like this around 18-22 also. I literally got down on my knees and thanked God for those moments I knew full well that shit wasn't going to last.

[@korey8134]

Show - I hope you know that your videos got me into WoW and I look back on when I discovered WoW during Classic launch with your videos playing on the other monitor…that IS my nostalgia for this game and you are the reason I look back on those memories and now feel this way. thanks for the memories!! I remember playing on my laptop and listening the rarest items I own videos and making me want to go get them myself…until wee hours of morning when a Robin’s song would let me know it’s time to call it. All because of you man, hope you know a lot of us have similar experiences and appreciate you at the same level as you appreciate classic vanilla nostalgia

[@peterh1nguyen]

I remember accidentally running into the big green dragon ysera in duskwood as a low level and thought it was the coolest thing ever.

[@MSDGAMEZ]

I've learned to appreciate and cherish the times I had years ago instead of hoping to live through them again.

[@sidho582]

Gigachad memory man!

[@psyhense]

​@RichSmithson I'd change it slightly and say humans are chaotic. The world/nature is where humans need to look to regain their balance, or risk destroying ourselves and others.

[@dmtaboo_truth7052]

@@psyhense Humans are generally fine. Most of the chaos is orchestrated by small group of very evil oligarchs.

[@rundown132]

you never will lol

[@TheKingmanthe1]

He just needs to stop with the incest jokes, kind of suss

[@the_sandman__]

When the dude is talking about just hanging around in IF chatting, like literally just chilling, it reminded me of some my buddy and i used to do. Back in vanilla and into tbc, every sunday night at 10:00pm my best friend and i would go to booty bay and get a table at the salty sailor tavern, buy a bunch of booze in game, and just sit there, drink, emote, and so on, while on ventrillo talking about high school, sports, WoW, and whatever else. The best part was is that we were hardly ever the only people there, other players would be there doing the same thing, sometimes bar fights would even erupt. Man i miss those days.

[@phoebecross8514]

For a while there I had got a bunch of people to do this with me in WotLK Classic in Dalaran. Even motivated people to have their own RP outfits as I was a Pirate Priestess and this is how I met my boyfriend. My boyfriend and I even would do Zul’Gurub runs for booze runs as it is the strongest you can get, whilst farming for a mount we never had drop…

[@JeyKalda]

This is exactly what is still happening in WoW to this day from classic to Retail. You just gotta do it instead of remembering it or thinking about it.

[@dragonsfury8]

For me, even in classic releases, the biggest issue i've had is the change in the community. Community only exists in guilds and even then it's nothing like it was. I helped a person the other day do a rune ... i saw them addy in game for 2 irl days trying to get help with it. Being the person i am i stopped what i was doing and thought ya know what im going to help this person get this rune. Once i was done that person thanked me of course and we went on our way. EVERY SINGLE DAY i've logged in since he says hello and asks me if i have an alt that needs help with anything. That's the community i miss. That's my nostalgia. People are so self centered these days it's what turns me off from gaming sadly.

[@TheFloodFourm]

Ask someone for directions and all they want to do is get you to download an addon that turns the gameplay into an elaborate form of connect the dots.

[@babuschka6354]

So true...

[@fluffers7997]

Community definitely changed. During classic I was leveling a priest with a friend, so I was playing a rogue when they weren't able to play. Guy in guild was spamming for healer for 30min so I messaged him to let him know I could heal in ~20min when my friend got home from work. He just replied with f*ck you and eventually gave up...

[@TerraWare]

My first mmo was Star Wars Galaxies which I got into about 2 years before WoW released. I've never felt that level of community in WoW as I did in SWG. The way the game was built, everything was player made, there was player housing, politics as a profession, every crafting profession needed the assistance of another. This pushed people to have to work together. WoW did this too to an extent, being in a hardcore raiding guild in vanilla there was friendships and connections but also resentment sometimes whenever someone got a piece of loot and someone else felt they were more deserving. I loved WoW but I also feel it changed the genre forever and not always for the better with the many clones. I still miss true sandbox mmorpg and wished we could get a modern one but dont know there'd be enough people interested in it since people want instant satisfaction these days.

[@seanwilliams7655]

This is why I stopped playing. I realized that, while I'd love for the community to be full of these types of people, I simply don't have time to BE this type of person.

[@arakasi1033]

Funnily enough, I enjoy MMOs by playing solo for 95% of the time. It is like real life to me. I love the option to socialize if I feel like doing it, but mostly I just want the world to feel alive. I like that there are other people around and I don't have to interact with any of them. :D

[@dirge7459]

Modern day WoW is more structured around being more of a "theme park", than an actual world itself, whilst old WoW was the latter, a world you could get lost in, and enough land to explore all the nooks and crannies, tid bits of lore, random monuments/objects you'd question for years on end. It doesn't help that modern day WoW changed to being akin to a theme park, but also the people playing it, going from wanting to explore zones/lore to "I need the latest item for my IL so I can do more dmg in this particular raid". WoW today has become more "hurry-hurry" and far less focus on keeping a steady pace (practically every facet of modern WoW bases itself on being some form of race to the finish). It also doesn't help that modern day WoW has forgotten it's older history/lands over time, favouring retcons and tiny tid-bit changes to old zones, rather than keeping the history alive, but adding more to the old zones. It seems each time we get a new expansion, we always get some brand new island that's "never been known/explored" before, and it just pops up on the map and we're expected to go there as some form of "vacation", only to forget about it years later (just like Pandaria has been forgotten, or most of Northrend/Legion/BA islands). Blizz need to stop treating WoW like a Disney theme park, and to also stop creating new lands every expansion, because it's become obvious that they don't want to change the world itself, they just want to add more imaginary content to it that'll get ignored after 2-3yrs (which isn't healthy for the long-term, let alone lore nuts).

[@MATCHLESS789]

It's worse than a theme park. It's basically a lobby with a bunch of adjacent rooms and you need to queue to get anywhere.

[@psygreg]

I think it's impossible to have that experience nowadays simply because you can be sure people will optimize the fun out of pretty much any game nowadays. I wish things were different.

[@nickforsythe6379]

Corporatism has killed humanity. Corporate = Dead. But here we are. On corporate devices and services. Fudge.

[@Time4theJuice]

Only hope is to play single player games, and even then you gotta play older games

[@psygreg]

@@Time4theJuice yeah, for single player games comes the Brave New World-esque times of today where everything is trying so hard to fire our dopamine receptors that everything feels numb

[@mancamiatipoola]

I was talking with my frends at one time about this effect and we came to the conclusion that WOW will never be like in the vanilla days because the community and gamers have changed. Nowadays young people rush into everything, they want things instantly and they dont stop to smell the roses not even for a second. This kind of zoomer gamer culture is actually anti-condusive to RPG games in which you have to take your time and get into the role in order to have a wonderful immersive experience. We can only find that magic in some single player RPG games that allow you a great freedom to play how you want. MMOs cant be like that anymore because AAA gaming companies want to make money and will simply chase all the gaming trends that are popular with the kids now just to make the most obscene amount of money possible.

[@throatwobblermangrove8510]

I remember swimming around the Eastern Kingdoms continent as a corpse back in vanilla. I thought the northernmost area, which was later made the blood elf starting area, was really cool. I know I swam for hours for literally no purpose other than just seeing what was out there.

[@op4000exe]

I'd like to remind people that prior to home games consoles, the way to game was the Arcade. A place wherein arcade machines did absolutely everything they could to make you put in more and more money. A system wherein gaming was perhaps not so much about having fun, but moreso about making people pay for a few minutes of gametime (sometimes even a few seconds at a time), or for a few lives. So the idea that games were just games in the past, is something that while true, is only true for the more recent past. Further back in time, games were in many ways similar to how they are now, which would also suggest that we can once again go from bad to better.

[@jellyfrosh9102]

big difference between an arcade for 0.25 and a gun skin in CoD for 25 dollars

[@Marunius]

Love this optimistic take!

[@Marunius]

​@@jellyfrosh9102difference in scale only, perhaps?

[@Neothunder240]

One should also remember that arcades caused the game industry collapse of the 80s that lead to the golden age of consoles in the 90s. Arcades weren't sustainable just like modern monetization isn't.

[@op4000exe]

@RichSmithson I am doing that. Because the incentive was the same, no the methodology was not the same, obviously different. But the incentive was to cause people to use as many coins to get to play as was possible. Also, I have played on arcades, as I am old enough to have experienced that, only the tail end admittedly, but I have experienced it.

[@LifeOfToyz]

I'm with you 100% about timers. Ever since playing this cursed board game, Perfection, as a kid I have hated timers in games.

[@zedorian6547]

XD so many yellow pieces

[@EnduroMarcel]

I will never forget the launch and the first year of WoW. It was one of the best times of my life. "Lan parties" all summer long. The excitement of discovering a new zone, just to get killed by a skull-level mob. The first time raiding a enemy city. Endless memories. But it'll never come back. I remember making a huge party in Ironforge with 50+ players celebrating something. Don't even know what. I only know it was amazing

[@crusaderssoul6272]

Truth the friends i found and lost vanilla is good till wotkl than its nah not my game anymore mho

[@Kshaadoo]

I remember the first time me and my friends discovered you can do /chicken on a chicken and that chicken gave you a quest in westfall and if you buy a special food for him, you can get a pet. That was so awesome, we didn't even care about raiding at that point, it was fun to find new things like that. Also easter eggs like Kerrigan's face on goblin shredder's, a lot of pop culture references, that's what was fun in WoW for me. It was a game, but there was so much humor and secret things added to it that just made it fun.

[@CommanderSal]

Madseasonshow is who I'm going to recommend my daughter to when she's ready to learn about WoW. I love your videos, man! All of them. Even the non-WoW related ones.

[@Marunius]

Would love a video from Mad that helps explain our partners/kids the whole phenomenon haha

[@natecw4164]

WoW came out right after I graduated film school. My roommate and I got way into it, had so much PvP fun, before BGs and when AV could last for 24+ hours. He has three daughters and a wife and a tour of duty record that dwarfs most soldiers. I have a very full-time job doing (sorta kinda mostly sometimes) what I love and otherwise a lot of my time is spent with the Mrs. She and I actually met on Nost, we tried Shadowlands and Dragonflight... We just don't love it anymore and it doesn't fit in our lives. When I'm done working my ass off, feeling 40 and mentally drained, I want something chill I can play on the couch and pause. Yelling "Sorry baby, I'm tanking!" was fine for us 10 years ago... Now it's just a fond memory. We'd rather have those hours back for movies, walks and even other games. I will say, the community sucks now. BUT... so do movies, top hit songs, fashion, language, damn kids won't get off my lawn etc etc etc

[@MjolnirsPower]

In your defense "music" Really is garbage today.

[@Laggerslam]

Stories like these make this channel so special. Thank you for sharing

[@SimonRobeyns]

Music does suck today, but that's been like that since wows release so no argument there

[@theophrastusvonhoenheim4022]

even lawns suck now

[@odgreen9113]

Similar story. Played wow with wife for a while but... many children later, many years later, it's just nice to sit around the table and play some settlers of Catan, face to face

[@phaethos]

"Smaller bite-sized stories" Eastern plaguelands with fiona's caravan, we need more like that tbh.

[@letzte_maahsname]

Damn, it's been 14 years since I did those quests, and I only did them once, yet I still remember them. That is good game design.

[@rossgage9730]

@@letzte_maahsname the questline for Uuna was a bit of a heart string puller as a parent.

[@meatybtz]

There is actually a great one in, of all expansions, BfA, as alliance. You go up into the hills and meet a little girl, do some quests for her and just starts to get stranger and stranger, and you get lead along till it goes completely dark, evil, and off the rails. Compared to the rest of the expansion, that little gem really stood out as exemplar. Not there for loot, extreme gear, M+, it was a little pocket story that told a ton and had a great creepy vibe to it.

[@abbiejo6822]

@@meatybtz I assume you mean the one with the creepy little girl who sings ”our poor little village is dead / all the people have gone stiff or fled / there is no more noise / except me and my toys / just like all the dark birdies said”

[@meatybtz]

@@abbiejo6822 yeah, couldn't recall the name. I LOVED it.

[@ChessJew]

4:15 Well that's going on a soundboard.

[@Velgan83]

I had to actually go back to listen again the first time to see if it was just the brainrot that I accumulated or if I actually heard it correctly

[@hyruler036]

I love my sister

[@DisgustedAsmon]

@@hyruler036I lust mine

[@PeterDB90]

@@Velgan83 "brainrot that I accumulated..." lmao, I can relate XD

[@wile123456]

Game of thrones reference

[@k-ondoomer]

Wow it never dawned on me that i might be the last of the pre internet/ early internet era. You made me feel like i saw an ancient era and am now a questing npc lmao

[@TheLettuceGuy]

I have a fond memory of standing in the hallway with three other dudes looking at units in a StarCraft manual in 98’, we were so stoked about every unit.

[@TheGregoryodd]

Said for a few years now, one of the most telling inversions of the genre as a whole is the fact that the paid subscription for Fallout 76 lets you *play by yourself*

[@Jim90117]

I will never understand why anyone would buy FO1st in order to play 76 on your own, the map is big enough and has such few players per map that it feels like you're on your own anyway.

[@Kededian]

I remember back in vanilla i lvled an ud Warlock to lvl 35 i think. I felt invincible and started exploring the Eastern Kingdoms. Made my way to Ironforge thru Silverpine, Hillsbrad and the Wetlands wich was a hassle with all the dwarven patrols in Dun Morogh. It was a long walk because i didnt had a mount yet, but the exitement of the unknown and exploring was amazing. I never forget that expierence. Btw got near Ironforge and got camped by alliance so had to ress at gy and HS out. 😅

[@intzbk1]

Remember doing quests where you had to actually read them and look for the "Two big trees in the north" or whatever, the days before quest add-ons and sparkles showing you where it was located? Spending hours looking for a quest item led to a lot of exploration and made you feel great when you actually found it. I agree with almost all of these statements. I haven't played WoW for almost 2 years now and right before I left I was just playing Classic, I spent the last few weeks in Loch Modan, just exploring, farming, and not completing any quests. When the other MMOs were shown, I think I played most of them. I've talked about it before with my friends but I wish I would have kept a notebook of things I liked across all of them that when put together, would have made the greatest MMO of them all.

[@Valyn]

Not just "punished for not playing". "Punished for not playing correctly". There is to much feeling of playing inefficiently, as of your doing something wrong by going outside the expect part predefined by the devs and playerbase. Even gear choice is chosen for you. Which is why I've always hated set items. It over simplifies all gear choice. For a game and genre so based on gear, it makes gear extremely boring.

[@meteorwalkergg]

Every facet of modern WoW, from the player level to the developer level to the corporate sales level, incentivizes skipping + rushing as much as conceivably possible. That's not really the living-world 3D video game version of a tabletop RPG adventure that I'm interested in 🤷

[@FangTehWolf]

Gear choice? What gear choice do you not have now that you did back in vanilla? Wear fuckin' mail as a paladin, you're just wrong (even back then). No one is stopping you.

[@tiredguy2753]

Heh I feel the wow subreddit is a perfect example of this. Like god forbid you actually like melee SV hunter, then more than likely you will get posts upon posts about "SV is the worst hunter spec, it should be ranged again, if you like SV you are a bad hunter etc...". Like no, I am not really paying attention to the most optimized hunter spec, rather SV specifically melee SV is the most enjoyable for me and that is why I play it. It's like somewhere along the way fun takes a back seat.

[@HORDE36]

Was doing the world pvp quest where you have to subdue the birds or kill players recently. My DH got locked in an endless battle with a guardian druid that neither of us was ever going to win or lose. While emoting at each other, I jumped off the cliff to end our honourable duel and there, at the bottom of that cliff, the ocean stretching before me with a setting sun, I discovered a small cosy volleyball field. There's no reason to go there, no quests or hidden rewards; it just exists for its own sake. Nice to see Blizzard has started putting things like this in the world again and hope they do more of this.

[@SmithyD86]

Been saying this now for a few years. Playing Counter Strike and Natural Selection way back in 99-2004 before WoW. You'd go on the server - play - and then leave. No levels. No unlocks. We didn't even have friends list you used to just meet people on a server and got to know them. Just an amazing time to be alive honestly, and that was off the back of Goldeneye and Didi Kong Racing with the boys!

[@codycurtin2295]

I think our very specific demographic of millienials (born 88-94) it wasnt that we grew up before the internet but that we grew up WITH the internet. We were communiticating with protosocial media back when it was going to usher a new form of human communication. We could connect with more people more efficiently than ever before. We had new vistas to explore and people to meet (online communities, virtual worlds) but as capitalism seeks greater profits faster this way of communicating became just another vehicle for profit. We are so fortunate to see the golden age of the internet when cyberspace was going to evolve humanity rather than damn it.

[@drewkg14]

CAPITALISM!!!

[@a1175779]

Wut?

[@un1uckyirishman247]

@RichSmithson you missed his point

[@timberIII]

​@RichSmithsonThat is exactly what he means. "For a specific group of millenials (88-94)" he isn't saying that that age group are the only millenials just that's who he is talking about

[@patrikpass2962]

Try to remind people that the internet we have today do not reflect the people.

[@CruXM85]

At first WoW was my guilty pleasure. I started streaming WoW with SoD but it killed my love for the game. I wasn’t able to enjoy the game like I usually would. My chat was all about BiS and min max. I wanna chill, explore and do crazy stuff in classic. I wanna feel like a kid again. I will never ever stream WoW again.

[@jaengojones5300]

Back in the Days it sometimes took me 10 hours to level up a single time in Burning Crusade, i was just running around, discovering the map, chatting with people or doing funny stuff. God i miss these days.

[@anonimowelwiatko4455]

10 hours per level when you have only 10 levels to do is not a lot to be honest

[@bassface8580]

Yeah it took me weeks to get a lvl lol

[@nicolasmenendez2378]

One of my most memorable moments from WoW was when I was running through Kalimdor exploring all the zones I couldn’t see in the map and I stumbled upon thunderbluff (as a human warrior). Such an amazing time. Also cool way to do react videos! More vids like this!!

[@cajintexas7751]

One thing, to me, is emblematic of the difference between Vanilla and retail: dying in Vanilla while questing was an emotional and sometimes even soul-crushing experience. Even though you didn't really lose anything, you had to gauge the costs and benefits of rezzing at the graveyard or running back and risking a rez in the same area where you just got killed. You had to reasses your approach to whatever you were doing. Maybe that node you had discovered will already be gone, or that quest mob was killed by someone else while you ran back. Now, in retail, if dying ever even happens, it's annoying and slightly embarrassing, but it hardly slows you down. And taking the rez sickness is just an excuse to go empty your bags or something. It's a game, so the risks are always minimal, but there's not even theoretical risk anymore.

[@El_Dusty_]

I remember playing oblivion and wandering through the woods. I stumbled upon a house inhabited by a family of orcs. They gave me a side quest as I looted their home. I was blown away that someone went to those depths for me to possibly explore that house. ❤

[@tgs7515]

One of the major reasons for the rise in anti-social behavior in MMOs, WoW especially, is the toxicity. People don’t want to interact because they expect to have a negative experience if they do. They don’t ask questions, don’t reach out, and don’t try to be social because the likelihood of it being a negative interaction is pretty high.

[@moonasha]

seriously. It's so insanely sad today. I was playing on turtle recently (the pserver), which has a much better community. I was trying to find a group for an elite quest in Tel'Abim, found someone, but it wasn't enough. Then I saw a random 60 doing quests nearby for some reason, and I asked them if they wanted to do it, and they said yes, and we went on a pretty long adventure and finally beat this elite quest. Because I talked to players in the world, we joined up and went on a little adventure to overcome something. That's the magic of MMOs, the magic of making friends out in the world and doing things together. And it's completely lost in today's games. Back in 2005 I made so many friends just talking to people I came across in the world, one guy/girl I would group up with every day for a year just to do stuff, I even took a break from leveling when they went on vacation or something. When I played classic when blizzard did it, it wasn't even remotely the same.

[@gavvy8434]

I feel like that’s the biggest issue with online gaming as a whole anymore and it really sucks.

[@bersabrie]

"Hey does anyone know about this [completely ambiguous topic to question in an attempt to start an amicable conversation and hopefully make friends] spell rotation?" Them: "Google is your friend, mUh GuY. " "Oh, okay... "

[@DeplorableSnowman]

I think the toxicity and unwillingness to help someone is a symptom of the game monopolizing your time.

[@subcitizen2012]

I was a GM in wow started in Sept 2007 and was there for 2 years. It parallel much of my experiences with the game with regards to the social aspects - I got to experience the game as a bright eyed bushy tailed been at home, and I got to see what was under the hood of Wow's "society." I just went and looked this up to figure out the timing. Heath Ledger died January 22nd 2008. We were getting reports of corpses in the game from trial accounts that were named for heath ledger. Seems and feels innocent today, funny, edgy etc. At the time - and I was 24 back then, I remember thinking that was so disgusting and disrespectful. And it was part of my job to go in game and delete the bodies, usually at the entrances of the major cities etc. it was some sort of innocence lost for myself, the game, and for our broader society - mocking the dead, especially a beloved and respected person. It was no longer a bridge too far. I remember my roommate, coworker, and good friend at the time remarked how that was the underbelly of the internet, 4chan related culture, spilling over into other areas of life. Boy was he more right about that than I think anyone could've anticipated was possible from the time. Things changed very fast and troll culture became culture itself. Then the harassment reports. Back then at least (not sure about today, I'd imagine it's similar level), I'd estimate that over half of what we did as game masters back then was taken in harassment reports and doneharever we needed to do with them. So an 8 hour shift was 4 hours of talking to players about what they reported, sometimes to the people they reported, and then dealing with (or not dealing with) the "paper work" we did for the harassments. During lich King the game was so inundated and popular that they basically stopped doing anything about casual harassment related tickets, and we'd clear them out and notate them by the dozens, or even hundreds at a time. Was a waste of everyone's time, basically. Related to that, but different game. I think it was probably 2011 the first time I played League of Legends. Couple friends invited me to check it out. The first public bot match I ever played, one of the other random people on the took it upon himself to not only spam and curse us out, me specifically for being new, (despite it being a low tier, non competitive bot match and we won anyway lol), proceeded to spam us for like half an hour all caps after the match lol. So we were trolling him back of course. But it was a level of internet autism (nothing against autism or the internet) I hadn't seen before by that time, but had only begun to realize it was the norm. And I can't tell you how many random dungeon groups go south for no particular reason and everyone had that similar chip on their shoulder. You should quit, you should die, blah blah blah. Maybe life was always like this and for many of us we were younger and more innocent. But it's hard to say. It certainly felt different back then.

[@sccampbell]

@11:48 the problem with MMOs has always been that all the incentives are to play as many hours as possible and there's no incentive for players that play 3+ hours every day to go back and play with those that only play 3 hours a week. ALL of the social group oriented gameplay is locked behind 10+ hours of leveling and gear progression. If I can only play 3 hours a week, I can never raid with my friends if those friends play 3 hours a day because by the time I get to max level and the raiding ilvl in the new expansion, those friends have already cleared the raid. There's no character progression for those friends to help me level or do Normal dungeons with me.

[@GMoDiLLa]

I remember when in original WoW I got my 8/8 transcendence. I was so stoked. I’d join random 5 mans to heal for them, because it was fun. It didn’t hurt that I’d often get my e-peen slobbered on when they saw they scored a geared healer. Gear meant something, the community meant something, accomplishments lasted more than two weeks and you could proudly don that gear or mount and actually get noticed for doing something hard. Good times, I’m glad we got to experience them at least once.

[@mrcaterpillow9926]

This still happens lol

[@FangTehWolf]

@@mrcaterpillow9926 Exactly! People are crazy with this nostalgia gurgling lmao

[@soulsharts]

I feel that statement about us being the last generation that got to experience the world before the internet age and I even remember saying that to a friend a decade ago or so, and I have this serious sense of nostalgia seeing people's home videos from the 90s and it actually makes me feel somewhat sad but blessed at the same time that I was able to live it. The current generation cannot understand it, and it's not their fault, you just had to be there. All this said, would I be willing to give up my computer? Unfortunately not. While as kids we found endless ways of keeping ourselves entertained, my computer is almost my sole source of entertainment these days. There's no going back to how the world was before the internet, save for a rogue solar flare or EMP being used that knocks out all electronics, but even if one of those events were to happen, I feel it's still too late because as humans we've changed drastically and we're all victim to it.

[@DaTrixie]

For me in 2005, it wasn't a "place per say". Long story short, Dwarf/gnome starting zone, towards it's end is a quest. You have to lure out a polar bear. The memory of the details is vague but the moment that huge orange-con bear roars down at the hill out of no where, the are covered in bones and gore of dead guards and consumed wildlife... When that massive white beast, the first white bear I had seen at the tender lvl of 8. Seeing here come to BRUTALLY kick my dwarf ass (this was a typical vanilla quest, i.e. you find other folk to help, kinda like Hogger). When I seen her, and found out at lvl 10 as a hunter I could actually have my own companion??? My goal was set. I would have this savage den mother! The time came many hours of leveling (that's right...hours). I returned. TIF, has never left my side to this day in 2024. That moment MADE WoW for me.

[@FlasKamel]

I remember that area with the Dark Portal statues in Duskwood as well! That really stuck with me! I LOVED all the unanswered mysteries in Classic, and it's why I spent most of it just exploring the world. That's the feeling I want from a game, and I don't know that it's really possible for a dev to consciously give someone that feeling. In DF I actually got the same feeling when flying to a random island when bored, and it got me thinking that maybe it's not as much about current WoW as just my desire to look for things? But at the same time a too polished game (world) does feel less intriguing.

[@srmatrong]

5:07 the RP’er in me is actually In love with this little spot. The spot is the shiny

[@ryankelly8428]

I started playing Vanilla WoW when I was 14. I had just moved several hundred miles away from my home town to a bigger city, and I didn't have any friends yet. World of Warcraft was my home away from home. I didn't need to be grinding or doing everything possible to keep up, I could just login and exist. I made friends in the game and we would roam around together, doing whatever we wanted. The best times I ever had was killing guards and npcs in Goldshire until some alliance came to stop us, then we would fight and run for hours. Spontaneous random fun was the best part of classic WoW, and nothing I've played since has ever come close.

[@wcjerky]

I think that explaining to my future children that WoW in 2005 - 2007 was only partly about killing ferocious enemies and was 70% about balancing social relationships where you could make friends with different views than you, could fall in love, could be hit on, could have a fan club and a hate club, spew utter vitrol and then say 'cya tomorrow', and explain the dynamics to family who were also playing all while looking for the tank for a dungeon is going to be a VERY interesting conversation.

[@johnhavardvalebrokk6151]

10:33 what you begin describing here. That gets me thinking about the TBC dailies. Y'know, Ogri'la, Netherwing, shattered sun offensive (quel'danas), Sha'tari Skyguard. They were always available to do. They weren't required for character progression, but they served as something to do on the off chance, they were cosmetic. Like, Netherwing to exalted only gives a mount. I mainly did 'em to have a steady income of gold, while of course also getting that mount in the end. Wrath daily areas gave me the same feeling. Even sons of Hodir, even though they had enchants, those enchants were accountbound so I only really "needed" to do Sons of hodir on 1 character. That's where I think MoP fails as the dailies in MoP awarded Valor Points, so they were required to do for weekly valor cap. Though there were other ways of getting to that Valor cap, the point still stands. MoP isn't exactly the worst offender there though.

[@wuzittooya]

An MMO that you describe that breaks the mold would need to punish players who try and push through content for end game. Too bad these players are the ones that devs seem to favor, for whatever reason.

[@ericmccarty2369]

The control you feel in Classic is an illusion. Retail still has plenty of areas you can explore. You just gotta unplug from the raid, and go check it out.

[@mojotmn]

We built something like this on era, Firemaw cluster. We do SR runs, no gdkp bullshit, just chill raiding/dungeoning/etc with friends with same mindset. You literally have to work on it and find players you are enjoying the game with. The Era magic is noone is rushing anywhere, game is frozen in time and you can play with your own pace and that's amazing!

[@afarius]

Name of your guild?

[@mojotmn]

@@afarius Fancy

[@Axafolis]

Great vid! 💙 I can relate so much on the social aspect and ingame chat, because i was there at the beginning. Started playing in april 2005. Between 2005 and 2008 was the best of days. It's sad to see where the MMO has gone, so that makes me extra grateful having played before everything changed... LFR, LFG and Flying Mounts that made the world less relevant and smaller and did not make the world any better. I grew up before social media and the rise of the internet as well. I love my gaming and tech, but man is it important to remember to walk outside, enjoy the small moments and see and hug your family and friends.

[@Clav_]

Damn it’s so sad that most kids nowadays will never get to experience video games as they were back then. MMO’s were still mostly casual and mysterious. Don’t even get me started on the atmospheric single player games like silent hill. It’s still possible to have such experiences but you would actually have to lock yourself in your room, turn off your phone, fight the urge to google, not have any prior knowledge of the game, and try your hardest to capture that experience as it was meant to be.

[@medikor9190]

It's downright depressing. I see gamers today talk about how they want remakes so they can play the classics they always heard about. Its like people being unable to bring themselves to watch black and white movies. Gaming is the only industry I've seen where people insist it be respected as an artform yet demand classics get modern remakes to replace the old "dated" versions.

[@TheFloodFourm]

WoW Classic had the old community for about three months then you couldn’t even get a duel outside orgrimmar. I never played the Vanilla and those three months were some of the best gaming experiences I ever had.

[@Star88701]

Fuck that opening hook is the epitome of how I feel. Goldeneye, pizza, sleepovers, man those were the days. Life was simple, and I'd give just about anything to get that life back.

[@TheBappin]

me sitting here with my idea for a mmo ive crafted in my mind over the last decade+ but zero dollars in my bank account.

[@Marunius]

Let's get a job at Blizzard and change it from the inside. :P

[@PrideNverDie]

They wouldn't let you even if you had a great idea like that. It's all about maximizing profits. Creating a good game is not on their radar.

[@MikeyPaper]

​@@PrideNverDieyep. Pretty much

[@SLSAMG]

The feelings of melancholy and nostalgia evoked by this video is quite overwhelming. The saying, "I could endure poverty if I had never witnessed such wealth," resonates deeply, and it is indeed true that the path to ruin is often lined with well-meaning intentions. This is one of the more comprehensive videos I have encountered on the topic. It is astonishing to realize that a decade has passed since the release of WoD. I started playing during TBC, and I immediately noticed the shift. Bobby Kotick wreaked such havoc on this franchise that my perception of Blizzard is forever tainted - I can never see them in the same way again.

[@anon12549]

I think you would enjoy how the philosopher Kant talked about beauty, if you don't already. The first part of the video reminded me a lot of what he talks about. "The Pleasant, the Beautiful, and the Good, designate then, three different relations of representations to the feeling of pleasure and pain. That which gratifies a man is called pleasant; that which merely pleases him is beautiful; that which is esteemed by him, i.e. that to which he accords an objective worth, is good."

[@Zhohan-]

Do you have three examples of beauty that would fit those descriptions to help people understand?

[@anon12549]

@@Zhohan- I think using the N64 game with rooms was a good example, to me. There is no purpose or usefulness to those rooms, but they add a quality of beauty to the game without having a defined purpose. "Beauty in nature appears to the cognitive faculties to have purposivity, but its beauty has no purpose." - Some random summary not kant.

[@Maccelerate]

Skip Kant and go full Aristotle if you're looking for The Good, The Beautiful, and The Truth. The examples of beauty are gone over in great detail in Nichomachean Ethics in Aristotle's concept of Eudaimonia.

[@anon12549]

@@Maccelerate I don't think Aristotle went in the same depth as Kant did, for me. The examples are not what Kant is about. Kant teaches you how to philosophize. The way Aristotle talks about size, symmetry, and measurements loses the meaning of beauty in the definition of Kant, for me.

[@Dragomire]

What a high quality reaction video, not just with your face in the corner but actual analysis clips of your own. Great work man.

[@ninjasamwallin]

I just think that games have existed for long enough now that the magic has been lost a little, and that's a point of no return. I remember me and my dad freaking out about griffons and the Ironforge/Stormwind train. Me and my friends and even family would talk about what we would do with a hearthstone if we had one irl. But nowadays that's just fast travel. Graphics get better and games get bigger, but the feeling of "oh shit you can do that in this game?" is something I haven't felt in over 10 years. Even when something cool happens in games now it's just good programming, the magic is gone, we know what games are capable of.

[@your-username-here2308]

I disagree. I have the same feeling by playing other Games. Runescape and Everquest did it for me. If you look at WoW, besides competitive instances there is nothing else to do. And Open World Content is just meaningless. And im in ym 20s, so i never played the older stuff during my youth. They maybe have alot of yank, but they are the better Games and i cna understand why everyone talks about them in a good way mostly. There is fun stuff to do, Housing, Exploring, Raiding and i can decide what to do. While being in a Virtual World. Thats all i need/want, a fun Game in a cool Setting. Plus the Games back then forced People sometimes to Group up, making Social Interactions into a tool for convenience. Wich is good. Its better that Players get forced into Social Interactions from time to time. Like in Real Life.

[@MeritRaXIX]

I miss the days when leveling was the adventure, not a race to be able to access the game. That ended in TBC, smaller world, only 10 levels, and many things locked behind max level. 17 years later, I still discover new things in the old zones leveling new toons. Most of my friends from the old days stopped playing. some are not here any more. But I make new friends every day, I do get AOTC and KSH every season, and I have las 25 alts, because I enjoy leveling in the old world, slow, exploring and enjoying the game. I wish to feel like I did when all started, but I can't, I know so much of the game right now that it's impossible.

[@literallywho1440]

I know I'll never get that feeling of magic when exploring every nook and cranny, finding some random guy playing too and us leveling together, first guild, first dungeon runs, my first WoW friends. That absolute elation when experiencing things with said friends will never be replicated, but I am so glad I grew up in a time where I was able to enjoy it to it's fullest when everything was new. Even now I hear certain zone music it can be incredibly sad, but also incredibly happy that I'm able to still able to relive those memories. I'll always cherish it & the memories I made, and I thank old Blizzard for allowing me to experience it.

[@shimapanzer9930]

bro... your pfp isn't the real araki gif.. right..?

[@SirMalorak]

I used to smell ALL the roses as a teenager when playing WoW. I just went everywhere, derped around, ran deadmines on my hunter to get the full defias set cause "It looks so cool", tried clipping through walls everywhere to see where it'd take me, I loved WoW as a game but also as a world. Later on I wanted to do the more goal oriented stuff. I wanted to do ENDGAME: And in TBC I finally started it. And I loved it! I still do, raiding and dungeonrunning is superbly fun gameplay. So I kept going and found myself in MoP where I joined a high level, highly time-demanding guild for raiding. The people were fantastic! Kind, helpful, super chill when we wiped, but we went HARD on the game. Nowadays I know a TON there is to know about the game, but I hang out in more social guilds. I want the game to be fun. To be a chill thing to do whenever I crave that gameplay loop and socializing. It's also why I joined english servers despite bein German, the appeal of speaking to people all over is just so dang cool still. And I just hang out with em. I do duels, help people with low level stuff, chat with them about all sorts of things, even though (And this'll sound arrogant) I could easily join another super sweaty tryhard guild, do all the heroic raids in Cata in the first week, or do Retail raiding and do all mythics etc. But I don't think I wanna do that anymore. Progressing with chill folks and maybe even teaching them a thing or two is way more fun to me now. I don't wanna sweat over itemlevel too much anymore. I still consider all these game-y things but that's just cause it's a thing I can do without looking up too much. The main fun is still in the social interactions. This type of play still exists, it's just VERY much relegated to social guilds - and even then, you gotta find a good one and be way more sociable than ever before. I still love WoW, but it definetly changed. This whole ordeal was just...The natural state of 90% of the playerbase. Now I need to actively seek social, chill, online 3rd place guilds. PUGs are worse than ever, everyone wants to selly you ways to skip doing stuff ingame, it's draining, but I try to ignore it and focus on my own fun. If you read all this, have a good day friend. Maybe see you ingame in cata classic, I'm havin a lotta fun on my DK :)

[@fredrikstaffansson4473]

I felt alienated the first time I saw a player with a "time per level" addon - and he was really happy to see that he sped through a level faster than ever...

[@Takagi_san]

For me it was... "parse raid searches for power house DD"... What the

[@Dirkei]

That’s how he enjoys playing the game, and it’s not your thing

[@divinecomedian2]

​@@Dirkei which would be ok if it the game wasn't an MMO and that behavior didn't consume most people playing it

[@pnjdumal]

The closest I've ever been "back" with that kind of feeling was playing horde on Wow Classic, it was a total discovery and i took me 150 hours to get 45 because i was taking my time and exploring. SOD is so cool for me because it gives me the chance to rediscover this game i love

[@ohmyglobohmyglob]

I remember when I first came across Uther's tomb. I don't know how to word what I felt but it was something like a sad longing. As if I came across a tomb of an old friend.

[@Woodstarritt]

Especially after playing WC3 and getting to kill him. Arthas did him dirty. Poor Uther.

[@ohmyglobohmyglob]

@Woodstarritt another reason why wow was so good! Coming off from wc3! The story now is so convoluted and complicated I don't care AT ALL about it.

[@s3riousf8ce]

On my first wow character, Night elf hunter, i must have been in Teldrassil for weeks, exploring and doing quests 1 at a time. I had never even right clicked the map to know there was more than just the default M’s worth of map. So i walked out onto a wooden path by the harpies just exploring, and when i realized i was walking on a big branch at the top of a massive tree and i was on a tree the whole time, it broke me. I’ll never forget it.

[@imnackeredsirnackered948]

I think both the community and the game has changed. Back from 2005-2007 I never really played wow serious as I had made friends in the game and we would just level characters, duel each other and type to each other for hours. We used wow as more of a social gathering where Goldshire was the place to hang out, duel, talk to people etc. It wasn't until mid TBC was when i started playing wow more seriously. By after wrath I notice people begun hanging outside cities less to socialize and duel each other and social gatherings in the game was less of a thing. Guild chats begun to die more and it was becoming harder to find a social guild. On top of that the game started to be designed that encouraged less socializing and less community building.

[@cyanmage1]

I noticed this really starting to be a thing at least on my server at the end of icc and even more so in cata when everything got hard and random players were seen as a liability so people started to form more tight nit groups, that and social media kinda took off around that point so the social aspects that you used to really only get in mmo's were available elsewhere and at a much larger scale but everyone just ignores this and blames dungeon/raid finder

[@crusaderssoul6272]

Till wotkl it was fun than cataclysm and i lost good friends even guilds and i left in panda was not my game anymore mho

[@TheDarkmining]

Back in the early 2000s chatting with other people online was so excited that we spent evenings huddled in front of one computer to chat and have fun and troll people in online chats. When in 2004 WoW came out and I saw my neighbour running around in the game world together with me, that was just mind blowing. Nowadays other players seem to be viewed almost as distraction from the „game“ aka doing your dailies as efficient as possible.

[@despot666]

One thing I hate about modern gaming (and maybe life in general) is that everything has to be optimized. That’s not healthy.

[@cyanmage1]

once I learned to just play how I wanted and stop looking at meta guides games became more fun granted I don't play wow anymore and ff14 is way more forgiving and has more content a super casual like me can enjoy now that I'm nearly 40

[@Sharkofspace]

People complain about excessive optimization, but also complain about having their time wasted. You can't have it both ways.

[@Chaooo]

10:32 That's something that I really like about FFXIV. There's not a lot of dailies to be done outside of the Challenge Log (which isn't tied to endgame progression, just helpful bonuses of money or experience), and the dailies that do help with character progression are limited to 12 quests a day, and they are specifically tied to expansions. Therefore, if you have two combat jobs in the level 80-90 range, you can only do 3 dailies for that level range max; doing the dailies from other expansions won't give you as much of an EXP boost and are only really worth doing for the reputation grind. You have the daily Duty Roulettes (dungeon/raid finder) you can do, but they are only really helpful for leveling alt jobs or getting a specific currency that you spend on leveling gear or entry-level endgame gear, but there are other entry-level endgame gear alternatives as well. That's pretty much it. If you want endgame progress on FFXIV, you actually have to participate in endgame stuff. Otherwise, I don't really have to care about "oh no, I lost an entire day of dailies because I wanted to focus on something else/another game!" since it'll just be "whoops, I lost out on some leveling EXP for my other classes, oh well."

[@xsyzz]

"call your mom and dad" if you just lost your dad hits hard.. so guys...call your parents,if you live with em' hug em', give em a kiss.

[@dylunr3143]

My mom died 4 years ago and I still get angry and sad when I wake up and remember she isn't here anymore.

[@ANDELE3025]

I disagree with the point at 22 by Rotan, the highest stakes were already reached in WOTLK, much like how all the feats in Dragonball after blowing up the moon didnt actually change the scope of the stakes. The problem is Blizz was already in the process of retconning the culmination of a character arc that spans from ones actions as the Slayer from orc side in WC2 along with ALL but except for the Orc campaigns in WC3 to slop (based on the book of someone who didnt even play either of the games nor WoW till a year or two prior) with the few leftover things of the real canon left as footnotes that got ignored.

[@Wallcraft_Official]

WoW is still fun, especially vanilla. But not when blizzard is holding the reins. Private servers are the last bastion of true WoW.

[@nickforsythe6379]

Blizzard Response: Cease And Desist!!

[@Wallcraft_Official]

@@nickforsythe6379 My response: No. 😎

[@ChrisMansplainer117]

Is there a nost like private server active? Everlook is full of Russians and glitchy. Recommendations?

[@jarlfisk]

Rip. I miss Nost ,:(

[@iaobtc]

@@ChrisMansplainer117 BlizClassic and its s*mps have basically emptied out the scene... but playing on a sparsely populated private server has a charm all of its own. It's like playing WoW in the alternate timeline where it never took off and became the unholy abomination it is now.

[@Electric_]

One reason I like single player games is you can still play them “blind.” There’s no obligation to other players, and you can just enjoy the game for what it is. I do still play WoW and push beyond 3000 rating in M+, but I am starting to think WoW should be reformed to be more similar to how it was in Vanilla.

[@usedcolouringbook8798]

My fondest memory is from TBC, I was exploring the Badlands mountains and trying to find spots I could climb. I found nothing but was able to climb to the peak of a mountain where I could shadowstep from and gank lowbies.

[@lukascoufal8656]

3:55 made me chills... Our guild held RP events at this location. We met many times in real life at the RP meeting in a medieval pub for beer. We are still friends with several of them and visit each other, but now as families. We lasted until the end of the Lich King. The most beautiful period in the game.

[@Samurai-jakk]

I actually loved Battle For Azeroth. The city of Boralus was one of the best things about that expansion, its so rich in detail that I found myself exploring every nook and cranny and then catching a ride on that one fish sellers boat and just chilling there for hours.

[@Moe_Posting_Chad]

2:02 You did not need to get so personal! Oh my word! I feel attacked that I am presented with such a familiar screen from Guild Wars 2.... It really was the wow killer, but that means it was also its own worst enemy... Destined to be the middle child...

[@caerdwyn7467]

Yep. This is why I've entirely left the MMO genre. Hell is other people. Single-player or private-server only. No microtransactions. No online requirements for single player games. No anti-cheat rootkits. An ever-growing list of "never buy from these rotten companies". If that means going forward I only play older games, so be it.

[@netherlim]

this is not what he is saying. You're mostly doing private server because you can't deal with the stress of competition.

[@caerdwyn7467]

@@netherlimThank you for exemplifying the kind of person who has turned MMOs into a social landfill.

[@iaobtc]

Nah other people are mostly fine Hell is actually people that pay for MMO subscriptions in 2024

[@ashrasmun1]

I believe you are one of the very few people who are still in contact with people from 20 years ago. I've played wow throughout many years, and most of the time people just vanished after certain period, especially when a new expansion dropped. It was a rare case to see people actually fostering a closer bond after they were done with the game, and leaving the game almost felt like having a funeral, because one bid farewell to everyone like it was exactly that.

[@joshlowery2250]

4:14 that.... took a turn....

[@Boozsted]

it was weird asf

[@Isingyoudie073]

For the worse….

[@thalanoth]

can't lie, I am very confused as to what the joke was lol... some sort of alliance inn joke? Dunno, always played horde, so if it's a quest that hints at such a thing I have no idea, but I guess goldshire is just... weird?

[@zaatas]

​@@thalanothI think it was a game of thrones joke?

[@thalanoth]

@@zaatas oooooo

[@NeilRoy]

Oh, and I 100% agree with you on timers! That will often cause me to stop playing a game. As for your comment on friends in the game, spot on! I met one woman who played the game, we had good times many years ago. She stopped playing, but I am still friends with her. She has since married, had children... our guild runs together were hilarious, win or lose. That was KEY to my best times in the game back in the day. You're killing me with nostalgia here! Your description of that first flight over Burning Steppes was exactly what I experienced! And my amazement at people actually down there. I remember me and a friend running through there on foot at low level just because we had to... and being chased by skull level spiders. heheheh

[@pimpinace_175]

everyone runs around in world of warcraft like crackheads doing chore to chore and back in the day we would go to westfall just to kill ally now people say that's so dumb, it pisses me off so bad

[@placeholdername0000]

Another example. The Mulgore redesign in Cataclysm. The Red Cloud Mesa used to be connected to the rest of Mulgore with a mountain pass that forced you to walk the long way around. That artificially made the world bigger by taking you on a winding path. The walk to bloodhoof village might very well have been doubled, leading to new players getting the feeling that the world is much bigger than it actually is. And then in Cata they made a ramp that allowed you to take the short route....

[@divinecomedian2]

I don't get how one can complain so much about the current state of WoW yet KEEP playing it. Rotan needs to step away.

[@brandonm3744]

Man, I remember playing swords on lockout when Halo 2 came out. Me and all my buddies just sitting on the couch without a care in the world. You're so right about not knowing those were the best days of your life until they are far behind you.

[@dreioo8759]

I despise 3rd party chat clients and Discord in particular. Sure it's great for forming communities and getting to know new people but it truly ruined in-game interaction

[@zedorian6547]

I could not agree with this more!

[@apocalyptechgaming]

Yeah, most game guilds even in mobile games have "Discord required" a bit ridiculous

[@tylerblue9691]

Discord is just the new in-game interaction though lol

[@zedorian6547]

@@tylerblue9691 but Discord isnt in-game.

[@skidmok6481]

Yup, i was there when WoW launched on Day 1. My first character was a Druid and I remember exploring the area where all the Naga were and just being in awe of the vast world. It was pretty awesome. I remember doing my first dungeon with one of my friends and we had no idea that we needed a tank, healer, and 3 dps. It was still fun dying in that low level dungeon because we didn't have a tank.

[@VoidheartVT]

The closest experience you'll find to Vanilla WoW today is in the official Hardcore servers oddly enough

[@KontrolStyle]

until the pull goes bad then it's everyone for themselves.

[@Malinkadink]

Roach out

[@adventurekobold]

Theres a spot in the north west of Wetlands that has a sort of night elf shrine in an unusual tree grotto. I think it might be used for a few class related quests, but you have no idea how much as a fantasy obsessed young teen I spent thinking about what this little alcove and why it was there and what it was for, the unspoken "history" of it.

[@Curbstompextraordinaire]

Good video What I would say is that - the only person stopping you from playing a game just for fun is yourself.

[@Lancor84]

This. Classic WoW is horrible today. People there pressure each other soooo much. Retail is far more relaxed right now.