Lessons from Classic

Tzumie

This is mostly aimed at Devs but I'm glad to hear what anyone has to say.
What lessons have you learned from the release and success of Classic WoW? If it has affirmed your current expectations for the game and what you see that can be done better? What can and needs to be done different?
(obviously these are incredibly different games but there are overarching themes and practices)

Ferryman

It is incredible, that a game so old can still be one of the best of MMORPGs. I personally stopped playing WoW in MoP, and reasons were MoP itself and the next upcoming expansion Warlords of Draenor. But now I have been playing Classic and really enjoyed the ride. Sure it is slow paced and leveling is a long process, but now that all feels more part of the whole experience. Classic has been a huge success, at least so far, and it just shows what people wants from MMORPGs. This will give Blizzard a good feedback when thinking the future of WoW franchise and which way it should evolve. I would say, they should go partly back to basics, and at least forgetting that instant progression and the easy mode. Other gaming companies should also follow Classics progression and maybe consider to borrow some ideas from there.

rolisxd

Gear/item drop rarity, how it matters whatever you get. Fighting mobs give some challenge and they are not just walking exp/gold if you are careless they will kill you.

Varkun

Risk verses reward has to some extent vanished from more recent MMO's something Intrepid wants to put back into Ashes of Creation. While some of the risk will be based around pvp there will hopefully be plenty of pve risk to go along with it.

Rem_

I haven't played WoW but from watching the millions enjoying classic it's clear its a success. Ashes is taking inspiration from around the industry, for example they've looked at WoW and seen what the LFG group finder in game has done. It has broken the community, taken challenge out of finding a group and diminished the need for any organized groups outside of the game. You can simply Que up for a dungeon or raid or whatever and get ported there instantly without doing anything. I really dislike this idea, coming across people or adventuring around to find raids and dungeons with guild mates you have on discord or teamspeak or whatever is a lot more fun and engaging.

Another thing I really dislike about MMORPGs that I've seen is how easy they are. I get that this can be relative but it seems you could pretty much level in WoW from 1 to whatever the cap is now without dying even once. I don't want the game to be impossibly hard but It should have challenge. Hecc even sometimes it SHOULD be impossibly hard to do some stuff to make it that much better or the items you get for doing it THAT much rarer. I hope Intrepid take notes, although I'm sure they already have with all the failures of WoW and other games like that.

Hartwell

1.) Death unites players more than anything. Make it dangerous to go alone.
2.) Keep good rewards sparse. Have them few and spread out.
3.) Have professions rely on each other to some extent.
4.) Let professions craft some of the best gear. Not all of it. Just some.
5.) Move the better loot to the last boss. Classic has a lot of people farming the first part of a dungeon and leaving when a side boss doesn't drop their loot.
6.) Dungeons don't need to be linear, but all paths must have the same amount of resistance. People take the path of least resistance to their goals.

George_Black

Instant progression and "end game" concepts are terrible

Magic Man

what @hartwell said pretty much however, one should note that the success of WoW classic was more to do with nostalgia than anything else.Tho It is always good to see some old school elements anyway

Ghoosty

The start of the the classic was a big success it is a fact. But I think it is too early to talk about 'what we learnt'. The start was only 1,5 month ago.
I do not play, I just read forums in my own language. The first 'everyone happy about it' is disappeared. More and more people talk about that they started to play at launch and still too low level. During the launch everybody talked about the classic. Now, there are much more BFA comments.