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World of Warcraft used to just be a game to me, something to get lost in and wander around purposefully for fun, to enjoy myself. Nowadays I find myself more concerned with my or others’ performance in raids, dungeons, and any facet of the game really.
I’m experiencing a personally longing for the simpler days of exploration for the sake of seeing something new, not being rewarded extrinsically.
Let me know if you feel the same.
Take care!
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Wow, I'm absolutely blown away by the response to this video. I'm humbled and affirmed to see that so many people feel so similarly to me. Thank you all for your comments! Please keep them coming, I'm loving the stories.
What memories or gaming moments of just playing around do you have?
I'm even more buoyed and inspired by all of the stories you have shared in the comments, the vulnerable emotions you've expressed, and the personal solutions you've given and had success with to combat the feelings I have been having.
There seem to be two schools of thought, and I agree with both of them.
On one hand, I can point the finger at Blizzard, as this is the way they've designed things as time has gone on. But they've only designed it this way because I consume the content this way more than I did before. So really it's an indirect finger pointing at myself.
On the other hand, I can point the finger directly at myself. I can combat my own feelings of "not being good enough" or "missing out" or "wasting my time", and return to true and pure "play". If I can get over that internal battle, I can recapture the magic and love and wonder and awe that is presented right in front of me.
So I've been working on doing just that. I am doing some deep exploration in WoW right now, for no other purpose than to have fun. And I'm going to share that here on this channel moving forward.
Join along if you'd like, and thank you all again for your comments!
you should just play conan exiles
Great video. Great sentiment.
Try LanternEQ When that comes out.
You need to get a job at blizzard and fix this game. I miss it so much. You are absolutely right. Its the reason i lost my passion for it.
The zoomers are finally waking up after voting in their loot pinatas and ruining retail
I've been playing a bit of hardcore classic (I've not played another version before) and it's been pretty fun. Playing paladin and grouping up with other paladins to get the quest lvl 20 quest hammer was the first quest in a game that really felt like an actual quest, it had risk, required patience and teamwork, the knowledge of my fellow pallys, and ended with a meaningful reward and resolution. It will continue to be a fond gaming moment for me for a long time to come.
Project: Gorgon!
Don't read anything about it and just try it 🙂
I made another comment but decided to agree. I loved exploring and becoming a tank. After I knew what I was doing? It turned into WORK. Cataclysm is going to flop harder the 2nd time. Blizz is in for a hard several years.
Finally someone that gets it! Yes i enjoy struggling on basic quests for hours or meeting players who like dancing on top of trees. Games used to be fun because we didn't know what we were doing and we didn't care. But now, to play Mmo it feels like you're expected to be min maxing or reading guides and be rushing through. Where have all the players who like talking, exploring and failing often?
U just said everything that devs needs to creat ANY amazing game.
I agree 120% with u dude!
You have captured the exact reason why when I go back to WoW these days, it never sticks. Im yearning for a time that's passed, without realizing it, but I think you put it to words really really well
all these comments crying about nostalgia etc, I've played since vanilla and I still enjoy the game for what it is – change is the only constant in life, and you have the memories
I miss when WoW was a way of life
There's multiple societal factors to weigh in here:
1. The rise of the internet fostered more novel businesses such as bloggers, database and forum sites, content creators, and streamers to attract players and discuss better ways to play the game
2. Technology allowed for more complex games to exist than ever before
3. Culture not only put a spotlight on internet gaming but made it the cool thing to do rather than the nerd/loser hobby
4. Economic competition fueled the minds and hearts of dozens and dozens of game dev companies to be as successful as Blizzard in the MMORPG space
5. Over time players mature in their personal lives as well as their gaming lives making the difficult tasks of years prior trivial due to experience and repetition
I won't call it nostalgia and Andy syndrome that makes us want the simplicity of our early experiences in WoW. It's just something that has gone and went and won't come back in that form of media. A new thing will take over and give us that kick again. Just enjoy your life for what it is and it will come in time. And never forget the good times we had together in Azeroth.
what you are describing and looking for is not found in a game… its a man's desire to explore, live, love, and build. this can only be done in the real world without leaving a gaping hole inside your heart. Please dont take this as a slight, because I COMPLETELY identify with what you are saying as someone who played wow like a religion. I got the exact same feelings you got when i played vanilla.
but through the journey of life i found that i cannot escape this anxiety that wow scratched unless i get out and explore, meet people, got into FPV, got into 3d printing, traveled the world, had kids. Even though I watch your video and get DEEP longing and nostalgia, i finally can feel peace without it. because my journey is more fulfilling and meaningful those magical yet draining years i spend in (amazing) video games
I'm in my mid 40's and have been avidly playing video games since maybe '86 or '87.
So, about 37 years.
Now, my background in "playing" is fundamentally different than a lot of younger gamers, and I say that with confidence mostly because we still largely played with traditional toys while video games became the juggernaut that it is now.
That not only took time but our method of "playing with" video games was informed by our background in playing with toys.
So to this day every game I play involves a certain level of internal imagination and make believe that is part of my gaming as if I'm playing with toys.
Call of Duty? That's just playing "war" in the backyard and alleyways with neighborhood kids.
RTS? That's playing G.I. Joe's and Army Men in the yard.
RPG? Yeah before I ever saw Link swing a wooden sword I had a small armory of wooden swords and cardboard shields my dad made from shop scraps.
(My little sister had a purple shield adorned with Lisa Frank stickers. )
Although I have been known to sweat over the years ( looking at you Unreal Tournament and Total Annihilation ) gaming has, by and large, been about continuing to play with toys. It's borne out of the same place of excitement for, say, a new action figure or a new plastic gun or a new vehicle playset.
The barometer for a new video game was whether it was as cool as playing with stuff out of the toybox- many games required much imagination on your part.
That little sprite image on screen didn't look like E.T. but the toy I had looked pretty darn good, you know?
Over time the fidelity of games increased to such a point that you could allow the developers to suspend your disbelief for you rather than having to rely too heavily on imagination to fill in details that simply weren't possible with the tech.
I say all of this not to say that I think my imagination is " better " than yours because I'm old and remember seeing new games on the Amiga 500, but rather that gamers of a certain age aren't required to rely on theirs as much and therefore the manner in which you're " playing " with a video game, as a toy, is somewhat different.
You grew up with video games increasingly laying out exactly what you're supposed to do. How you're supposed to play- the manner in which you're supposed to play.
The developers tailor the experience in a clearly defined way.
You know exactly what to expect, you know precisely when it's missing, and you expect the developers to replace or repair it until it meets your experience expectations.
That was not my relationship to video games for many, many years.
A game was what it was and your enjoyment, or at least my own, could be derived not from what was explicitly designed but what I could imagine they were trying to create.
In other words, the bucket of Army Men figures never moved on their own, but that's ok, I can make up what's supposed to be happening.
That was my relationship to video games for a long time.
And people just don't have to do that anymore.
So I makes sense to me that people would look at a game and feel like the fun is lost somewhere in the trophy/achievement completion checklist.
One of the best ways to have fun is by the way you have fun; not how someone says you should.
Modern games are streamlined and that can easily point you down a path of engagement that simultaneously feels efficient and unfulfilling.
Approaching a new game like its a code that needs to be broken is just really unfamiliar to me.
I could also be way off base; I don't know.
But I do know that I'm never chasing metas, never worrying about leaderboards and whether my strategy for this season's content will keep me competitive.
So if you see me prone in Battlefield bursting an LMG down range, I'm not camping.
Give pantheon a try. It gives me the feeling you described.
weirdly enough, this is why I still play wizard101 from time to time. Its a fun world to just explore, and im nostalgic for the game as well
I miss when games were games, and not live service community experience extravaganzas. I miss when players just played games and didn't try to become the best of the best, trying to crack leaderboards, and upload their montages of epic skill to YouTube. I miss when communities shared their subjective enjoyment of a game instead of instructing each other how to play correctly. I miss when the worst gamers were seen as was nerdy and introverted, not incel racist entitled manchildren.
I miss when gaming felt like my space. My niche. My little part of the world where people like me gathered and had things in common and could hang out.
Man o man..this sums up my feelings towards WoW and the MMO genre as a whole. Well said!
In classic, there were many highs and lows.
Then players complained about the lows.
Then Blizzard removed all the "lows", making it only "highs", thus draining the soul right out of the game…
We've all be asking for this for a long time. Good video Rotan.
I fundamentally disagree with practically everything in this video. Fascinating.
Making a game for a fun of it is still game design, and every game ever released underwent through a design process. However, game design has gotten utterly formulaic over the years, which focuses on stuff like retention instead of fun. And it sucks.
One of the coolest things ever in Classic Wow was playing a Tauren & always seeing Thunder Bluff in the distance. It was a goal to make it there but you had to do some work first. So the whole time you're running around Mulgore, Thunder Bluff is there, looking down at you, challenging you to make it up. That was a really nice experience. In modern Wow, as soon as you start a Tauren they zip you straight to Thunderbluff immediately. It really sucks the fun out of experiencing the land & working your way up.
I always thought quest 64 was cool. My sister was cracked out on it. Definitely one of a kind.
I pretty much disagree with this video.
His whole premise is running away from the cold hard truth. The game is old, The lore is tired. It's done all it can after 20 years of storytelling. No amount of "I want to go back to days of normal hunter killing boars" is going to help.
Sorry but not sorry it is nostalgia you're wanting. The only way for WoW to actually start again would be a complete reset either a prequel (Pre sundering) or a retcon of some large lore event so we don't ever enter into the massive lore dumps like every other expansion. The amount of disconnect there would be going from the past 20 years of lore to regular person lore would be such a bad transition it would feel so artificial.
Yeah, the champions of azeroth are getting old
I'm pretty sure this isn't a nostalgia thing (as much as some try to suggest), because millions of people, including many WoW players like myself, had this exact feeling of exploration in Elden Ring. We literally just want fun, chill games with great exploratory worlds.
I loved quest 64!
You really should try FFXIV… I feel like you're describing it exactly.
I'm with you!
Love this video – and fully agree – the mystic wonder of Northrend is what miss in WoW
When I was 11 my favorite thing in Perfect World international was to just fly around and look at things and parkour around on top of them. And I sat down and chatted with people in the in game chat. And runned around for fun with people. And I heard people talk about some monster hunter game where the most fun part was to sit back and look at the cat people bake bread etc.
I love the houses and lore in games but they need to put more tought into the world I don't mean quest content but more like I happilgy go into a "empty hallway" but I want small things there like a random mdairy yo u can read, a family portrait etc tidbits that tell a story about the room and potentional people living there I want the npcs life to have meaning beyond the quests and bosses etc. I actually WANT TO get to know the npcs but I can tell u right noe I dont remember a single npcs name or clothes etc from wow… But I can tell u that I remember every single nook and cranny from traverse town in kingdom hearts 1. Because it was all quirky detailed and had hidden puzzles that gave u nothing super fancy but still that green-red hotel room part where you have to slam the clock and look at the paintings etc for clues was fun…made me wonder who rented the hotel rooms and who the mysterious voice selling the tickets was…
We we're kids back then, it was fun and personally, I'd leave that feel to remain untouched rather then login to wow and destroy it in order to pretend having fun. Fuck that!
SoD phase 1 was the best thing in WoW in over a decade. The new content wasnt data mined, people were just exploring and sharing what theyd found. You could play very casually and still complete the raid available, do the PvP event, and probably level up an alt a bit.
Then Phase 2 came out and the players had to destroy it like they do everything else. Everything data mined, simulations for builds running, race to be world first, and then complain theres not enough content after the first week. So Blizz releases Phase 3 sooner than expected and up difficulties of raids, and the players squash any remaining natural progression.
I feel bad kids today wont ever know the joy of our boring games.
I miss the days where gaming and this universe was not mainstream.
0:58 if you care about these stuff, then its your problem. When Im playing WoW, I dont care about these stuff and I play just for fun. So you are the problem why you feel that way
I'm may be biased, but, if you want to explore the world, the little details, the beauty of the world and even use the rp walk, why you don't start rp? There is still ab big community, who loves the world of world of warcraft. We don't care, if the newest content sucks, the m+ dungeons are unbalanced. We just sit and talk as our charakter would. You can choose your class, way more, than the engine classes. Blizzard give so many toys, lore and other stuff, to pretend being our character. There is still a world just waiting to get explored.