Hacker News Reader

Comment by carwyn | Hacker News Reader

I really wish I could find a game that captures the 5-person PvE experience that was early WoW classic without it turning into a grindfest or a raidfest. You don't even need the loot or the crafting elements. It was the beauty of the tanking, healing, crowd-control and strategy. I've not really found anything that captures this out there (suggestions very welcome!).

Many suggest games like Diablo but it tends to play more as a scaled single player game than a genuine balanced composition group game (i.e. if you're not hearing/feeling "Need healer/dps/tank"! it's not what I mean). MOBAs brought this for PvP but there are many out there that simply like good ol' PvE co-op with character and strategy.

View on HN

I'm sorely disappointed by modern games throwing out class roles. Even WoW got rid of support roles and only left healers. And then there are games where I can't play a healer at all, which simply annoys me - I'm just bored out of my mind if all I can do is shoot at people or be DD. The Division 2 was the latest massive disappointment. Where the first game let you spec into being a tank or a healer, which was incredibly awesome for the setting, the only real meta in TD2 is damage, damage, damage.

Is that really the new trend? That’s sad. Support and healers being separate was cool. And then tank and varied attacking classes (direct and mage-like). Sorry I don’t remember terminology that well. But this could also just be nostalgia talking. And I didn’t enjoy rogue type of classes ever.

Don't underestimate how the 'meta' of a game can change even if the game itself would be static. A gaming community evolves, learns, adapts and discovers.

The game's fans have been playing competitively on private servers that preserved/recreated the pre-expansion releases all this time. Stepping into 5-person PvE in this Classic release might be a very different from how it was 15 years ago, even though the game mechanics itself were meticulously designed to be just like the original.

I'm really excited to play Classic and I'm worried about this. Everyone talks about how difficult Vanilla was, but there was also substantially less well-organized information about min/maxxing, boss fights, strategies, etc. The info existed, but it was messy, scattered, and a lot of folks didn't even know it existed. In 2019 WoW-focused YouTube channels and Twitch streams are a dime a dozen, there are quite a few sites focused on min/maxxing, and we've also got past experiences to make Classic substantially easier/smoother than Vanilla was.

But like I said, I'm worried about that. So I'm trying to avoid as much info about Classic as I can. I pre-registered my character based off of my first main character in WoW, rather than what's raid-viable. I aim to avoid guides and stay the hell away from easy-mode addons (Quest Helper, DBM, etc.). I want to recapture as much of my original experience as I can.

Destiny 2 doesn't map 1:1, but I've found it to be a pretty fun, shooter riff on World of Warcraft while taking significantly less time. Titans are tanks, Warlocks are healers, and Hunters are DPS.

(Yes, it has a bad launch due to balance and content issues. The past year or so has been great.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com