Now That Warcraft Classic Servers Are a Thing, Would You Sign up for Neverwinter Vanilla?

If you only remotely live in the MMO world then it was hard to miss one of the more exciting news out of the BlizzCon last November. The market leader announced that World of Warcraft Classic servers will officially happen! It’s something many players applauded because the “vanilla” version of the game is still loved by the oldschool community. While nowadays most titles, including WoW, more and more cater to the mass-market, the original version of the game was much more simplistic, grindy, and ‘hardcore’.

Actually bringing back their “old WoW” was so appealing to some that the independent scene did what Blizzard refused to. They set up private illegal servers that ran the classic version of the game. First Blizzard tried, and succeeded, to shut down some legacy projects. But they eventually came to the conclusion that enough players wanted it to pull it off themselves.

It’s Not Only World of Warcraft

The announcement is in line of what Blizzard is known for. They are great at reacting to market tendencies and then release the best product in that segment. Classic WoW is no different. It’s not only that WoW players themselves wanted back the vanilla game, the whole genre has moved in such a casual direction that ‘hardcore’ suddenly became a viable niche. Just look what Pantheon tries to do.

[su_quote cite=”www.tentonhammer.com” url=”http://www.tentonhammer.com/articles/wow-classic-is-important-for-the-genre-not-just-blizzard”]I’m not suggesting that WoW Classic will offer limitless entertainment (players will inevitably reach “end game” and cry for more), but the days of MMOs that encourage team-work, communication, face to face discussion and physical travel are long gone. Everything players love about MMOs has been sanitised in favor of immediacy; much to the detriment of the genre.[/su_quote]

Would You Sign up for Neverwinter Vanilla?

The Neverwinter community is no different. Especially the guys that have been here since the start drool over the old days. Those long Castle Never and Dread Vault runs, legacy sets, unbound dungeon drops, less classes to balance, and more fun. The game of 2013/2014 is long gone and was replaced with a casual new version. Thomas Foss recently said they have since adjusted to “what the majority of players want”. And that’s apparently a very casual experience. Challenge nowadays is an unreal grind, rewards gated by RNG and not skill.

You can complain about that all you want, and opinions certainly differ, it is what it is. But that raises an interesting question: Would you sign up for Neverwinter Vanilla? Let’s ignore for a second how something like that could be monetized, or if it even makes sense (it does not). Would you play the legacy version? For a certain time? More hours than the live game? Why? What made the legacy version better (or worse)?


We’re interested in hearing your opinion! Answer the questions on our social channels, in the comments below, or visit the corresponding thread on our message board!

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14 thoughts on “Now That Warcraft Classic Servers Are a Thing, Would You Sign up for Neverwinter Vanilla?

  • March 25, 2018 at 11:30 am
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    Absolutely yes!! Those were times when the game was more fun, with a variety of dungeons, some with their own mechanics. And there was no dependence of the power creep as now.

  • March 25, 2018 at 12:41 pm
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    I would love to see if my best characters could now solo the old epic Dread Vault, Lair of the Mad Dragon, Throne of Idris and the original CN. Hell, I’d love it if ANY of my characters could even ENTER those dungeons these days, epic or not.

    But what do you actually mean by “Neverwinter Vanilla”? Open Beta, max level 60, no HR, no SW, no OP, no 2nd Paragon Paths, old school Feat trees? And not as many Professions?

    No, I would not sign up for that. I WOULD sign up for a separate server where I could load my current characters as they now are back into that world and run those old dungeons. But they’ve lost the graphics and codes.

    And don’t forget, it’s the end-game BIS players who asked for the crap we have now: streamlined dungeons, faster runs, huge areas of dungeons sealed off (no Daughter of Lolth etc) and new players having their fun destroyed by level 70 GWFs stampeding through Cloak Tower and other dungeons they should not even be able to get in.

    And it is those same Toxic Speed Run exploiters that put an end to unbound Boss drops and Loot rolls, where now parties even instantly auto-disband as soon as the Boss dies, so innocent victims cannot be kicked by Arseholes On The Spectrum.

    Nice idea, but ANGH.

  • March 25, 2018 at 3:48 pm
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    Yup, I would more than gladly go back to grinding for my (split)T2 sets and level 60 with all the good stuff still there…

    Aaaaah, those were the good ‘ol days on NWO 🙁

  • March 25, 2018 at 4:09 pm
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    Hmmm…I dont know. I would like a version of the game that avoids all the mistakes, screw ups, and crap they have done since mod 4 went live. Maybe a do over of some sort would be worth while.

  • March 25, 2018 at 5:45 pm
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    Sure make a vanilla neverwinter but shove it somewhere far far away.

    The same IL screaming still would continue, everybody wanting top tier geared toons to run with em. Or screaming experienced!! experienced!! how in the hell you gonna learn the dungeons if u cant get in?????

    Ques would be dead again, lfg would be full of master race players, nothing would change.

    One of the reasons why casuals wont look for groups or even pug harder content is because of the high tier players screaming IL 16k-18k all day long.

    And my god, if you ask can you join with your 14k toon, the slandering begins…been there, seen it. Many people think that to actually survive in the end game dungeons you have to be out geared as fk. Or even make a decent run.

    The end game players dont want any “lowbie” 14k players along to mess their perfect runs.

    Thats the freaking problem, if you are 14k player u can scream allday long in lfg for a group, and not getting any. Ques are dead for tong and spellplague, and everybody quits if they got them as random dungs.

    If you suggest to go in tong with a 14k group, everybody thinks youre retarded to even suggest it.

    So basicly the playerbase itself doomed this game to be divided and casual and also a big thanks to the massive powers we still have.

    Well this became a long rant, but this is pretty much my experience.

    PS. A way to fix this, devs need to catch up the power creep, endgame dungeon IL should be on par with the IL players can get with the game gear.

    We are now around 5k over the endgame dungeon IL, hmm, i wonder whats wrong.

  • March 25, 2018 at 8:31 pm
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    I think for the first time ever Blizzard will actually flop. What players really want is not the old vanilla WoW, i started playing right around the time when they introduced WSG, back when the game was small enough that we actually had GMs running fun little events on almost every server, so i am quite familiar with vanilla and what it had which was really little to nothing.
    In terms of balance it was garbage.
    Almost every class was forced to play a very specific build in end-game, certain specs were basically useless, in fact there was a class or two that were never welcome in end-game raids.
    Shamans and Paladins were faction-restricted.
    Certain classes/specs (sub rogues / pom pyro mages just to name two) were one-shot wonders in every word of the sense, did not matter how good someone’s gear was, they’d oneshot you and then run around for 2 minutes hiding because even if a leaf were to drop from the tree and hit them, they’d be dead since there were no pvp stats, in fact for a long time the best pve gear was battleground grand marshal or high warlord sets – which didn’t really help in what little of pvp there was back then.
    It’s the nostalgia that players want, those very first few weeks a brand new player spent in a world that previously was only accessible through their RTS games.
    They don’t want vanilla, they want the ability to travel back in time and re-experience the whole thing for the second first time.
    It’s debatable whether or not WoW and MMOs in general have gone the right way, it’s all personal taste and preference, but generally speaking for every MMO the worst part has always been the very first year or two, and the day the game shuts it’s door.
    e/g vanilla wow was never good, playing for the first time, seeing Ironforge for the first time, making your very first character, finally grinding that absurd 1.000 gold sack of coins to purchase an epic mount, that is what players want.
    Sure, brand new players might experience what a lot of us did back when wow first opened it’s doors, but for those who have spent more than a decade playing the thing, some of us might pick it up just to remind our selves what the game was like way back when, and then call it quits after few days.

  • March 26, 2018 at 12:02 am
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    Go back to the beginning of NWO, for god shake NO.
    Find back the old dungeons as they were, without all the exploits, adapted with the actual “difficulty”, YES.
    After the random dungeons category, devs can make a Legacy category with the old stuff, old dungeons, Valindra assault, etc.. So old chaps can find back what they miss, and newbies can also have a taste of the “good old days”.

  • March 27, 2018 at 6:44 am
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    Stop generalising all end game players into one big group. There are many who don’t care about TIL and the reason you don’t see them as much is because they have less trouble finding players to fill in their groups. Those idiots asking for 15-16k will scream at the top of their lungs for 10-15mins+ because of the very reason you mentioned, they ignore anyone under their requirements and takes longer to find someone. Those who don’t ask for a TIL, will often only have to ask once and the spot will be filled.

  • March 27, 2018 at 7:57 pm
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    I’d love to see classic dungeons brought back, but as LvL 70 tier 3+ dungeons. Would love to be able to run Dread Vault, Lair of the Mad Dragon and Throne of Idris again, but what I’d move love to run is the original Castle Never with 4 boss fights, massive amounts of mobs.

    I don’t pretend fo be an expect coder by any stretch of the imagination, but since that code is still there would it be all that difficult to get those dungeons up to snuff? I mean we went right into mod6 with Lostmauth, Valindra’s Tower and Malabog’s Castle ready to go. Shouldn’t they be able to get that stuff ready to go reasonably quickly, like mod14-15?

  • March 28, 2018 at 5:31 am
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    @Vretzen I have close to 0 knowledge in coding but I think it’s more of a question of will than technicality. I 100% endorse your desires of bringing back old dungeons updated to tier3 for Lv70s, I wish Cryptic/PWE would make it happen.

  • March 28, 2018 at 12:05 pm
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    I would PAY MONTHLY FEE to play NW vanilla!!

  • March 29, 2018 at 7:25 am
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    ” Toxic Speed Run exploiters”?
    We don’t give a damn about your kinds opinion! You butthurt legit warriors should take off from the highe horse!
    Peridot/Dragon’s hoard botters, unified element exploiters, gateway botters and invocation botters were the ones who fucked up the economy and the game! sometime even whole guilds..
    Those were the ones who sould have gotten permabanned!
    Not a few guys who used some tricks which was in some case very hard for average players!

  • March 29, 2018 at 7:36 am
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    Hell yeah!
    I say that then I say that now! Module 4, artifact equipment and Dragon’s hoard botters was the ones whose ruined this game!

    Actually hard dungeons with actual loots? And not just salvage? Not just some skirmish-like short dungeons?
    Skill actually matters?
    You actually have to cooperate, caring about your position and your rotation?
    And not just “do the dps when buffs up” type of game…
    Nowadays dps players are like Pavlov dogs and starting to slubber when buffs up! We wouldn’t have used most of them in the old days…

    No power creep? Dungeons were actually a challenge for weeks and months?
    And can’t be done in overgeared parties the first day when it was released on preview?

    3dps+2support parties instead of 4buff+1dps parties?

    That would be yes!

  • April 10, 2018 at 2:55 pm
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    I’d like to be able to play it so that people could see just how much worse the current version runs and how much more laggy it is.

Comments are closed.