Now granted, I think Ghostcrawler did a better job than Ion has with either BFA or WoD but that doesn’t change my opinion about one thing. 3.0 killed immersion in a lot of ways. Now I know some would say they prefer 40 mans and that’s fine but the convenience level of BC certainly didn’t sacrifice much in the way of immersion.
In my mind, BC was in fact a much more natural evolution and expansion than any expac since BC. And that is not to say that I am disrespecting Vanilla. What I am saying is that it largely was what I would consider an acceptable sequel to Vanilla.
With that said, I truly hope classic kills it. Like really kills it. I would love to see Blizzard receive irrefutably evidence that they should not only release BC servers but have to make new content that is truer to a traditional RPG that isn’t completely accessible, that has innately dangerous group content, that has separate healing and DPS and tanking gear, that gives more power to pure classes, that doesn’t have abominations like Death Knights and Demon Hunters, that truly makes you more powerful in groups via buffs and debuffs, that doesn’t judge you solely on your ability to avoid fire and execute overwrought damage delivery systems, that requires you to watch your threat, that has PVP that is casual and not aimed at Twitch views, that has meaningful class customization, and most importantly doesn’t try to be too many things at once like BfA.
Yeah, I am following Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen as well. It looks to take MMO’s back to its roots. I wouldn’t even be bothering with WoW, but when I found out they were doing Classic I decided to play that until Pantheon releases. I’m over all the hand holding and participation trophies. If these games keep rewarding casual players then I just will not play anymore. “You get out what you put in!”
I think it will be successful, but I don’t think it’s going to be so successful that it’s going to usher in a new generation of hardcore MMOs that are going to thrive in the wake of it’s success. Classic will be successful because it’s Classic.
3.0 was wraths prepatch. It significantly buffed hybrid DPS, merged spell damage and healing into spell power, threat became a borderline non issue, you were expected to invest fully into a talent tree, and overall began what was known as “bring the player not the class” beginning the movement away from being stronger when grouped. While wrath didn’t outright kill that as buffs and debuffs still largely stacked, it was the beginning of accessible content with Sarth 3d being the first predecessor to heroic raiding and normal modes being an absolute cake walk. If it requires more than you, it should be hard imo. And that was the end of immersion, essentially when 3.0 hit and nerfed Sunwell into Oblivion.
Any pre-patch will cause a lot of turmoil in the game. Did you know that 3.0 obliterated healers’ mana pools so they had to nerf every TBC boss’s health and damage by 30 percent to compensate?
“Bring the player not the class” was a phrase that was used to counter the absurd class stacking required for Sunwell raid bosses. Raid comps were much more relaxed in vanilla than they were in TBC and “bring the player not the class” was an attempt to move back to that a little.
Sarth+3D was an amazing concept that was merely a refined version of the Bug Trio in AQ40. Hard modes were not new at this point. I agree that normal and heroic versions of the same raid are not very immersive, but heroics did not come in patch 3.0.
Threat being a non-issue is also a big one, but it wasn’t that much of an issue in TBC either (or 1.12 for that matter).
Prepatches have wrecked havoc since BC, but none merged healing and spell damage into spell power since. Spell scaling for both healing and damage was adjusted. Holy priests for example, due to scaling being based off plus healing needed entirely new coefficients. In essence, it was a complete rework that made healing gear the same as caster DPS gear aside from spirit and to compensate to hybrids shadow priests derived spell hit from spirit. Hit chance quickly became an afterthought since “misses weren’t interesting,” when you were getting resists up to almost full tier 5 gear for some casters without innate hit talents.
No, it was about the viability of hybrid dps and gaps between maximum sims on Patchwerk. Vanilla was certainly more flexible mainly because you had 40 people vs. 25. That doesn’t change the fact that locks were largely garbage in Vanilla and could cast a curse to debuff for the mages and basically AFK, Pallies could do the same with buffs, druids were there for innervate (resto druids in Vanilla are balance,) and enhancement was there for totems.
Bug trio didn’t offer higher power gear like Sarth did if I recall correctly. Sarth was a formal hard mode.
Um, this lock was working on M’uru when 3.0 hit and threat was a pretty big deal. Destro Sbolt crits were pretty bad for threat. Omen would be flashing even at 5 sunders on three crits in a row. MD on CD didn’t overcome that. Glaive Fury had a similar issue. Granted, they were leggos but still threat was an issue. Tank threat modifier multiplers were through the ceiling in 3.0 because Vengeance wasn’t a thing until Cataclysm if I recall correctly. Additionally niches were gone. Prot warriors suddenly were incredible AoE tanks. Pallies were gaining spell power from strength, and with it went alot of their drawbacks and they also got a lot of baseline tanking tools they were lacking. Likewise druids. And DKs just lol.
some valid points in there, I just think 3.0 was a bad example patch to start your argument with. What about 4.0? Butchered talent trees, ammunition removed, spec locking, the list goes on.
3.0 was still largely unchanged from the initial vanilla formula. They had to change some coefficients around and now there is a slight overlap between healer gear and caster gear for certain specs. Big deal.
I think you are down playing how easy it became to solo as a healer or tank and also what was effectively the beginning of accessibility as the primary design intent. It was a much bigger move from traditional RPG than you may think.
i seem to recall soloing sunwell many years later from its release, and the archers at the entrance, were so hard. they did percentage of hp damage with a huge haste, so that no matter how much hp you had, it wasnt going to be enough unless you could two shot them. i cant imagine tbc players being able to get past that area. must’ve been the first true dps check of the raid.
Personally, I think the disassembly of community (guilds and realms), through group finder and even more, so LFR killed immersion. I remember knowing players and guilds like pro. sports players/teams.