Quote Originally Posted by LisSquid View Post
Wow those are so rose tinted glasses. Need I link the thousands of old "why vanilla was great" threads saying so because it encouraged community through making the solo experience difficult? The class quests (warlock comes to mind) that needed a full party to take you through?
You have to remember that at the time WoW launched the competition was group-only MMO's such as Everquest 1 & 2. Then WoW came along and compared to both Everquest 1 & 2 it was *extremely* solo friendly at the time. While you are right in that vanilla WoW is not as friendly to solo players as the current version is, that's not relevant since I'm talking about the state of MMO's back in 2004-2006.

Don't know if you played either Everquest 1 and/or 2, but there's been enough post's in this thread by those who have... to attest to just how much those games were "group or don't bother playing" (heck, EQ2 had 'solo' content that had to be done in groups... pffft!).

Perhaps they will let raiders skip normal and go straight to Savage like every other game.
Unless it's been changed (possibly it has, it's been like 5-6 years since I've played it), WoW always required you to complete the normal version of dungeons & raids before you could tackle the harder versions. So in that respect, XIV is just like the big daddy of all western MMO's... requiring players to finish normal/story mode before doing hard version.

Question - what MMO's let you bypass the normal/story version of a dungeon, trail, or raid, and go directly to the harder versions?

I humor you and say, yes, you are still not reading my posts. Who knew wanting alternative options for different people meant I wanted to lock the story away only for me?
I quoted you as what your post said was relevant, but my original post was directed more about what the OP & thread are discussing. I will say it is less relevant to you, as from what I've seen you've more pushed for the ability to skip doing normal mode and not about locking content away from normal players.

Edit: also while it is hard to determine how many people cleared content on WoW before AoTC, you can tell that participation isn't small enough to even say that solo players dominate the game. You can even see key clears, which are arguably more difficult on higher tiers, have more participation than raiding. Definitely not a "solo" experience.
I see you're not reading my post's: I gave out 100% accurate stat's regarding raiding %'s back in original Vanilla and BC - 6-7% of the player base in total ever even set foot into a raid. LESS than 10% of the players. Which means 90+% of the players NEVER went into a raid at all, let alone the harder-mode's of raids. The %'s I stated were provided by WoW's dev's, based off their own metrics and player tracking - thus can be considered 100% accurate as of when they posted it.

So yes, WoW was massively SOLO dominated, and likely still is - despite the fact that current stats are skewered terribly due to LFR being shoved into the main story to force players into raiding. I also doubt WoW dev's will reveal the #'s & %'s of players raiding outside of mandatory raids forced upon players. I say this as I highly doubt things have changed that much - in that the majority of WoW's playerbase are still non-raider's doing solo content and/or dungeons in groups, while the 'visible' base on forums and such is still the raiders.