I distinctly recall my first 1.99$ trial DVD that I purchased, back in mid 2006, before the Burning Crusade had come out.
The environments were lush and immersive, there was a player community that seemed vibrant and plenty of action was happening on the server. I leveled as a Rogue and by the time my first Deadmines run was completed, I was HOOKED. The loot, the showing off to other people, the displaying of ones skill via the dps meters. I wanted loot, and what I needed to get it was other people, and what they wanted was me to do was dps well and avoid stuff that kills you, and so I forced myself to get better at the game. I wanted to feel like the dude in Ironforge who's sitting on his mount and has the coolest shit you've ever seen and people just stare at him in wonder.
I got my wish into Burning Crusade, became a top raider, got to see all the content before most anyone else, got to kill illidan and archimonde and almost got Kil'jaedan. I burnt out and quit as the guild I was in was progressing on him, because I just didn't give a flying fuck about it anymore. I had transferred servers a few times because the guilds I was in had become stuck and were unable to move forward.
I played some more in WOTLK, and a tad more in Cataclysm, but that was it. For the past four years I have not even picked up WoW, and have not really wanted to either. The truth of the matter is that I was tired of the time commitment to be a top raider, it seemed like the main thing you needed to invest to get them purple pixels was time. Time is a valuable commodity and I can't feel good about spending it on a relatively fruitless hobby.
Recently I heard about a Vanilla server called Nostalrius, I heard about it on a suggested Youtube video, so I tried it out.
To my surprise, I found it to be very addictive (at least initially). The reasons for this are as follows:
- Vanilla WoW was HARD and required you to group up to get anything meaningful done (Elite quests, questing in general, pulling more than 1 mob at a time is dangerous for most classes, etc)
- The time commitment in Vanilla was intense, such that people with full dungeon sets were committed, you could tell who was a serious player just by their appearance, the speed of their mount, the way they enchant their gear, what gear and spec they use, etc. While it is harder to get things, getting them becomes that much more meaningful as a result.
- The need to communicate with your fellow players: because there is no dungeon finder, no server transfers, no name changes, etc, you HAVE to network, you HAVE to converse with others, you HAVE to play nice. You must ingratiate yourself into the community otherwise you don't get very far.
Overall my experience with it made me realize quite a few things. The reason we liked hard mode WoW was because it felt rewarding. When I rejoined in Cataclysm and saw how easy it was to gear, how brainless the Raid Finder raids were, I was kind of disgusted. It defeated the whole purpose of Vanilla WoW, it undid the entire initial motivation to play.
Once everyone could get epics, epics didn't feel epic anymore. Here on Nostalrius, having a good set of Blues feels like an accomplishment, you feel GOOD about it. But it takes a lot of time, time that most people with an active life cannot accommodate.
I find it interesting that WoW changed because of the periphery of players that could not keep up with the hardcore players. As such the game changed and became much more casual, and so the Hardcore instead of being WAY ahead of the casuals, were just slightly ahead, such that a casual could jump into a raid with the Hardcore players and be geared enough from casual content to contribute right away.
The demise of WoW, once it does finally happen, will be blamed largely on this I think, and it makes me wonder why we place so much importance on having something someone else does not, particularly in a virtual setting in which real skill is very hard to determine.
I raided Sunwell when it was super hard, when you needed to chain drums of battle constantly, when you needed to pop haste potions on cool down for every progression fight. When Felmyst was a fucking PITA. I can tell you that it was challenging, it was fun, and when it all clicked for your raid and the boss went down, it was awesome, but the hours upon hours I sacrificed for this, I can never get back and I goddamn well know I could have spent them doing something more productive.
Furthermore I would argue that skill in a PvE setting is largely a matter of practice and having basic reflexes. Being a competent high level Arena player requires FAR MORE skill and twitch reflexes, and so the purple pixels largely represent time investment, not gaming skills, but networking skills.
I can't blame Blizzard, their purpose was to hook us, take our time and our money and capture our minds, enslave us in a manner if you will, and in so doing they rake up the cash. Once again I can't blame a business for acting like a business.
And as the game got older, they reduced the time commitment needed to achieve the same goals, such that those goals got less and less rewarding when achieved. And now you can't even get that feeling playing retail WoW anymore.
This has led me to conclude that the time commitment needed for these games to feel rewarding is what will destroy them. Nostalrius recaptures this quite nicely, the game makes more sense this way than it does with the easy as pie retail model, but I fear becoming one of these junkies again, raiding all day, eating when I can, not catching up with friends, letting my life deteriorate for a few fucking pixels is simply something I will never do again.
If you never got to experience Vanilla or TBC and only joined in WOTLK and onwards, I strongly suggest you try Nostalrius, and if you want to relive the past, you can play around as well, but if you're a casual gamer, I would stay away, you'll only end up frustrating yourself with this one.
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