With the World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, on its way, many "old" players are wondering if it will be able to bring the magic back of WoW's glory day.s In today's WoW Factor, we take a look at that notion. See what you think and then leave your thoughts in the comments.

With games like The Secret World, Guild Wars 2, Planetside 2 and so many others coming out over the next few months and into next year all trying to push the boundaries of what an MMO can be, I wonder if there’s still a place for the traditional theme park that is World of Warcraft. It’s likely still massive subscription count, though not what it once was is enough to keep Blizzard’s behemoth at the forefront of MMO gaming even if the hardcore folks like us no longer spend every day talking, thinking, and dreaming about it. But for how long? Can it ever take someone like myself, someone who’s long since begun exploring new worlds with newer mechanics, and bring me back into the same sense of love and adoration I once had for a world called Azeroth?

Read more of Bill Murphy's The WoW Factor: Can Old Be New Again?

Nope... it can not be new again, not for the people who usualy voice their discontent on sites like this and others. Because what they want back was never really there to begin with. It was not a tangible thing. It was a emotion and a experience and that they can not get back.

And world PvP is not dead.. it is just that people today are way to lazy to actually get something going. There are tons of ways to actually force world PvP but it takes work, just like it did back "in the days" but people have forgoten that part and just want it to happen, materialize out of thin air.

Now ofc these are my personal opinions and does not in any way shape or form classify a truths.

I could be convinced to go back, I likely won't, but I could. I really just want planetside 2 though.

" I would love to see some sort of open world dungeons, boss fights and all." this was the biggest argument that players had when they released cataclysm. Here the story was supposed to be the end of the known world and the threat was supposed to be immense, yet, there were no town raids (not even small ones) no attacker events nothing.even if it were a timed events like Rifts it would have been an overall improvement. 

IMO i think that Blizzard's Lead Dev Ghostcrawler is too arrogant to actually admit that WoW needs an overhall. Heck they didn't even add cosmetics until they lost 2 mil subs all at once some time ago. 

Their newest expansion is going to have to go a long way to actually catchup to the rest of the gaming world or they'll be left behind, even if people keep their subs they will be spending most of their time in other titles so why pay for WoW when they won't be using it??

"You can never go back home again" or something like that, the saying goes. I didn't buy Cata, but I played for a short time months after it released (free week or something they gave me to come back). It's still fun, but for me, the one thing I couldn't get over was the talent revamp. MoP looks to make it worse in my eyes, and I won't come back.

Character choices are too few for those of us who didn't subscribe to the FotM club. "Gimping" your character to fit your playstyle or roleplay style is gone.

Don't beat the old horse they say. 8 years=move on to something else new. Popular games in general(non-mmos) like CoD or some other big name move on to something new in 2 years.

I have to agree with WhiteLantern.  What World of Warcraft once was, it can't be again.  I remember watching BlizzCon 2011 and watched the talent revamp portion.  All I could remember hearing myself think was: "What the f***?"  Cataclysm was nice in thoery.  But in truth, it just didn't work out the way Blizzard wanted.

An earlier poster said that if Blizzard doesn't catch up, they'll be left behind.  I think it's already too late for that.  Blizzard has already fallen behind.  And people like Ghostcrawler and Bobby Kotick are not helping the situation, they are only exasperating it.

This is just my personal opinion though.

" But it seems like Blizzard is content not paying attention to others games’ successes lately and I wonder why they haven’t tried to bring forth some of their own “Dynamic Content” a la Rift or the upcoming Guild Wars 2."

Because GW2 isn't out yet and has sold no copies, and Rift has about 7 million less subscribers?

You never step into the same WoW-river twice....

Even if the game was the same, you are different.   Hence, much angst.

I agree with ScorpionOne, "  And people like Ghostcrawler and Bobby Kotick are not helping the situation, they are only exasperating it."

What blizz is doing, and have always done, which most mmo have fail to see, is to constanly revamp old contents , and adding little nice and different touches to this game here and there. eg, changing of spells effects.

Revamp the talents system is 1 of them, however personally i feel that they are making it worst.

And somehow i feel that blizz is still very stubbon in implementing more new things in the face of more and more competitions, say putting in player housing, its like they just wana prolong every function as long as possible, thus enabling them to sell more x-pac.

But if they dont start to pump out contents more and fast, this mammoth will goes down faster than i think.

Unless, of course they are super duper confident in their new mmo....

I will probably never go back even if it becomes FTP.  I played this game to death, and no new feature is going to bring me back.  Gameplay was always fun, but in reality the animations, character creation, and graphics are severely outdated and limited by today's standards.  I guess it's a been there, done that mentality.

Ah, the old open world pvp days. What your asking for is what players assumed we would be getting around the timeframe yo mentioned. I remember my friends and I discussing what kind of new open world content they would add for PVE and PVP. Seeing 200 players mauling a dragon open world is eternally more unique than the instanced stuf. Sadly blizz went with instances, and more instances, and less open, and more scripted, and cross relm instances (effectively killing the game for many players). Your actions never had much impact in the game, not it had none. Your actions are now the same as everyones. The open world is dead, players log in, pick insance, go. It's gone from being a MMORPG to a MMODC.

What wold it take to get me back? Open world content focus, more aesthetic customization (8 years and we have the same char options, pathetic, the barber shop was a HUGE let down), more chance/risk/reward-stop holding our hands.

The player base has gorwn up, were more mature, we can handle consequences, sadly WOW didn't gow p with us, it attempted to make a world where everyone is the winner, which results in everyone being the loser. 

While I don't think I can be convinced to play WoW again, what is old can definitely become new again.  I went back to EQ1 a few years ago and played for about a year and it was definitely a refreshing experience.  Just the amount of freedom allowed to you and you have the real sense that you are playing a RPG (not everything is streamlined at the sake of immersion/realism).

As MMO's continue down the "action combat 1337zorz" 16 year old after 6 Mountain Dew's lane...I can see how some old school MMO's would tire of it and want something different after a while.

"Remember me the way I used to be"

I have a lot of fond memories from Vanilla. The game world was awesome, everyone was learning the game, mobs were not too easy-not too hard.

I belonged to a horde guild named "Dreadnaught" on the Greymane server and we had a riot. We were shit disturber's and we were always attacking Alliance town and cities "We were the Horde" and we played the part.

Our guild leader made a forum challenge "Dreadnaughts were going to invade Iron Forge" and if the Alliance could kill any single one of our member's, our guild would leave the server. Our guild leader had created an alliance guild named "Dreadnaughts" instead of "Dreadnaught" and had us all create lvl 1 Gnomes with an "s" after each of our names and we all went running into Ironforge with about 300 Alliance watching and waiting for an epic battle. After we fullfilled our challenge, we gave them what they were waiting for at about 6 fps lol.

 Our guild leader was a fun and entertaining guy, he made the Alliance hate our guts and I loved every minute of it lol.

Thats the way I want to remember WoW. The game today cater's to a different crowd and that's ok.

I will never go back.

Cheers

Gorum of  Dreadnaught 

I played World of Warcraft from the time it was in early family and friends beta!

All through release, the so called vanilla stage, through the launch of Outlands, Wrath of the Lichking, and finally Cataclysm. I took a few breaks here and there but I experienced all the end raiding for each of those expansions, and in Vanilla I was both engaged in the pre-xrealm pvp and in AQ raiding as well.

I can honestly say I appreciate very well the way WoW operates as far as content and game mechanisms go, and that there is ABSOLUTELY nothing remotely interesting to me, about wow at this time. When I read that the next expansion was going to be Pandas I just threw my hands up and said to myself, well there goes one mmo addiction atleast. On to the next one. 

The game is now same old, same old in my eyes, and I know I can't be captivated beyond an eventual level race at the start of an expansion, and that means it isnt worth purchasing or paying a sub for. Gear races/grinds are just not enough anymore. In a way I guess I thank WoW for having so exhausted that end game concept that other games are now looking at different ways of keeping the player interested. About bloody time is all I have to say.

So in short, NO.

Originally posted by alexmino

" But it seems like Blizzard is content not paying attention to others games’ successes lately and I wonder why they haven’t tried to bring forth some of their own “Dynamic Content” a la Rift or the upcoming Guild Wars 2."

Because GW2 isn't out yet and has sold no copies, and Rift has about 7 million less subscribers?

false GW2 isnt even out and sold a lot of copies already...get your fact straight

I'm just doing the Ironman Challenge (currenlty lvl 61...go go go!!). I'm not really interested in the expansion.

NOUP for the reason that wow alwais try to change himself  and change all games trying to making look new but basically messup the gameitself, wow is the only old game still out there  but changing other and other again the mechanism and system trying to making another game it just not good they would save that for wow 2 or so but its going to die cause of that and later will run out of ideas ;/ sooo sad

There is no point in playing WOW anymore.  The road to 85 is just an artificial grind.   Back in vanilla, being 60 meant something.  Now being 85 means absolutly nothing.   Back in vanilla gold had value, now gold is worthless.   I remember back when 500g was a ton of money at level 60.   Now these days 100k is pocket change.