Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft • Hacker News Board

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#51

Post by monk_e_boy » Fri, Apr 24, 2015, 7:09 PM UTC

abakker wrote: post #41

FlannelPancake wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're clearly correct about the game beginning at max level, but I don't think heirlooms or exp boosts changed anything. Even in vanilla, there were accepted "do this to level as quickly as possible" routes. No one really hung around silithus pre-AQ, with the small exception of people who chose to level there (and there were much better zones to do that). WoW and mmos in general just don't encourage explorat…

Good point - Silithus ALWAYS had a low population, because it sucked to get to, and sucked even more to level there. The quests are almost all formulaic, (kill 10 ant monsters, etc.) and there are few plots in any of the quests. Once you hit 60 in the original game, there was plenty to do in _any_ other area that made it worth leaving and never coming back. I did some leveling in all the areas that were available at…

I remember playing it over and over. There were a few characters trying to max out their lvl 60 toons. There was some strange quest line that got added before they bumped the max lvl up to 70 (I seem to remember) so some people wanted the quest items while still at 60.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#52

Post by fishercs » Fri, Apr 24, 2015, 7:10 PM UTC

Back in the day I used to farm Azshara like it was my job. that place was desolate back then, it's good to see the developers make attempts to make all of the zones useful, the game has just gotten so massive I can see how certain zones would still be under utilized.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#53

Post by monk_e_boy » Fri, Apr 24, 2015, 7:11 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #40

Interesting note: every ghost-town of a zone in WoW, and some of them were ghost-towns immediately, cost N fully realized software startups to develop. (Like, mid-single-digit million dollars per zone.) It's one of those things to keep in perspective when folks say "Why did anyone sink $1.2 million into $A_FIELD_I_DON'T_CONNECT_WITH?" I don't know, but that's literally less than it cost to put that mid-30s swamp leve…

They were used and played to death. I remember getting so bored of them, and they are still there for other people to discover. It makes the world feel so big, part of the compellingness of wow.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#54

Post by joshuaheard » Fri, Apr 24, 2015, 7:17 PM UTC

I found an old folder with screenshots of multiplayer maps from Team Fortress Classic where I had played many hours with friends. Looking at the pictures, I realized that I had an emotional connection to the virtual places just as if they were real places.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#55

Post by leemac » Fri, Apr 24, 2015, 7:19 PM UTC

RexM wrote: post #49

leemac wrote: post #9

My WoW experience started with Vanilla. Long hours were spent but I had so much fun. Looking back, I had so much free time and no concept of getting older. MC raids were a blast and getting ganked in STV was a daily occurrence. Today, I'm nearing my thirties and can't seem to get into the game for more than an hour at a time. I'm a very happy homeowner, married and kids are in the plans in the next few years. I have…

There are private servers that try to be as close to Vanilla as possible, however that does mean that you have to put in the hours to get to level 60. Valkyrie is fairly populated. https://valkyrie-wow.org/

Thanks for the link. I dabbled with private servers a bit, but that was when BC came out and still retained some Vanilla feel. Might pop back on one now that Vanilla WoW is so long ago.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#56

Post by throwawayorc » Fri, Apr 24, 2015, 7:20 PM UTC

Almost two months ago, an unofficial (completely reverse engineered) Vanilla WoW server called Nostalrius launched. I had a blast reliving the time I spent on the original game as a teenager, but had to wrest myself away after sinking a few too many days into it...

Last I checked, the server was averaging between 4000-6000 players concurrently, so I had quite the opposite experience from what the author was describing: for the first day or two after launch, it was very difficult to find mobs to kill at all, when you're sharing starting zones with literally hundreds of players! It got better over time, as people grinded at different rates, distributing their numbers more evenly, but even when I quit, it was pretty rare to find a zone without a decent number of players.

I recommend anyone with fond memories of Vanilla turned off by newer versions of WoW check it out. Or, maybe I shouldn't, having experienced first hand just how great of a time sink this 10 year old game can still be...

https://en.nostalrius.org/

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#57

Post by spiritplumber » Fri, Apr 24, 2015, 7:23 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #40

Interesting note: every ghost-town of a zone in WoW, and some of them were ghost-towns immediately, cost N fully realized software startups to develop. (Like, mid-single-digit million dollars per zone.) It's one of those things to keep in perspective when folks say "Why did anyone sink $1.2 million into $A_FIELD_I_DON'T_CONNECT_WITH?" I don't know, but that's literally less than it cost to put that mid-30s swamp leve…

Thanks, you are my deep revelation for today.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#58

Post by sgt101 » Fri, Apr 24, 2015, 7:26 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #40

Interesting note: every ghost-town of a zone in WoW, and some of them were ghost-towns immediately, cost N fully realized software startups to develop. (Like, mid-single-digit million dollars per zone.) It's one of those things to keep in perspective when folks say "Why did anyone sink $1.2 million into $A_FIELD_I_DON'T_CONNECT_WITH?" I don't know, but that's literally less than it cost to put that mid-30s swamp leve…

I played wow from beta. I quit in Cata, came back in Panda and have quit again in WoD. In vanilla I saw that there was much money in the game and lo, I did say, arriveth the $$ arriveth the MBAs.

And so it was, much sadly for all when Tigole went off.

But here are the sums.

They've lasted for (on average) 5 years. 30 * $10 * 200 = $60000pcm * 60 = $3,600,000.

That is a NPV of 3.

Can i haz MBA?

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#59

Post by toxican » Fri, Apr 24, 2015, 7:28 PM UTC

ecdavis wrote: post #42

I'm not sure what to make of this. It seems as though there were ~20 players in each of the zones he visited and 91 zones in total. 91 * 20 = 1820. Are player populations much higher than that on WoW servers? I was under the impression there were ~3000 active players per server at any given time. Evenly dispersing players over the world is a pretty big design consideration when it comes to MMOs. When I played WoW I w…

WoW handles questing/grouping terribly, imo. GW2 (and maybe GW1? Never played it) does auto groups where if you jump in and help someone kill those 20 bandits, you get credit toward your quest for that. Whereas in WoW, if someone hits the bandit first, and you help, they get all of the credit. So there's zero reason why anyone should help anyone at all. And there's also the issue of loot. I can't count how many times I've been in active WoW zones (I'm thinking Westfall, here)and a group of 5 or 6 people are trying to snipe kills off eachother to get that last bore snout or whatever. In GW2, if you helped kill it, you get the exact same loot as anyone else. And to help prevent lazy assholes who do one shot, then sit back and wait, you get varying levels of loot and exp depending on how much you helped.

And because of all that, there's just zero incentive to quest in WoW with other people. Maybe you'll have a guildie or friend quest with you, but you're just not interacting with strangers at all.

That being said, we have seen Blizz go in that direction in the last two expansion. The daily island was largely dependent on team work (albeit through the archaic manual group forming functionality) and there are a lot of rare mobs in Warlords that share kills/loot with anyone who inflicts damage. So hopefully that'll become the norm going forward.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#60

Post by zorked » Fri, Apr 24, 2015, 7:30 PM UTC

ecdavis wrote: post #42

I'm not sure what to make of this. It seems as though there were ~20 players in each of the zones he visited and 91 zones in total. 91 * 20 = 1820. Are player populations much higher than that on WoW servers? I was under the impression there were ~3000 active players per server at any given time. Evenly dispersing players over the world is a pretty big design consideration when it comes to MMOs. When I played WoW I w…

I believe these days WoW merges underpopulated zones so those ~20 players per zone are across a bunch of servers while ~50 players in a zone may be all in one server.