A final plea for Classic+, not TBC

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
81

Yes. Doing Karazhan, but now it’s a 40m/20m raid at level 60, is still just Karazhan. Rebalancing classes to make weaker specs better, but now without raising the level cap, is still just rebalancing classes. The best description that anyone could ever give as to what a Classic+ experience would be is all the content we’ve already seen over the past 15 years, but the level cap never raises; oh, and their personal list of “good” features being added while the “bad” features are left out.

It is a joke and the idea is for clowns, now go put on your face paint and honk your nose at children.

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82

I’ll say this, again and again:

Although I don’t believe it has a snowflake’s chance in hell of happening, I don’t see why you fail to see the appeal of the idea. Old School Runescape is exactly what Classic+ would be: you take an old game back to an arbitrary point in time (Blizzard chose 1.12, which I think was mistaken, but that’s another topic entirely) and then keep developing it independently from what happened to the game after that point. Forget the timeline you know and loathe. We never kill Illidan. We never kill Kael’thas. The entirety of Outlands looks like Hellfire Peninsula, like it did in Warcraft 3. The cringeworthy Arthas dialogue in Wrath of The Lich King, a point in which he went from one of the most interesting characters in Warcraft lore to a mustache-twirling supervillain? Varimathras’ betrayal? Gone. Never happened. You can, very selectively, pick a few features/dungeons from future expansions and add them accordingly, like OSRS did with the God Wars, but only after polling your playerbase extensively, and never to the detriment of the new game you are creating. Everything added is a completely new idea, or a completely revamped old one.

Blizzard would ideally take a look at WoW as it was right before The Burning Crusade and develop it from there. Which, again, is a model that can work if you put enough care into it, and communicate enough with your playerbase/poll your playerbase enough.

Which Blizzard doesn’t do.

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83

No, it’s not. OSRS has no previous lore basis driving the content development. There’s a clear story direction from WCIII into WoW, then into TBC, then into WotLK. OSRS can literally hold a vote on adding new things to the game, and it’s unrestrained by fitting any themes.

WoW’s story and the themes that new content needs to adhere to in order to fit into the game is not as open ended as OSRS and the comparison is ridiculous. You’re effectively asking Blizzard to write a x-15 year long alternate timeline to the one they’ve already developed for the sake of doing more content using vanilla systems.

That’s insane.

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84

Truth. Instead, the development path that WoW took showed us a game that increasingly was uninspired, gaming market theorycrafter driven, downsizing driven, seeing-players-as-robots driven, finance starved, shrink-to-fit garbage. What Classic+ players want to see is not these big poorly supported poorly coordinated expac releases, but a comfortably paced set of phase-like content additions full of hooks for future expansion … some day. The changes that did happen to stats and combat over the expacs did not require those major content overhauls to implement. Testing those combat design ideas could happen in any patch. So, there definitely could be stats revisions, combat ability and talent revisions, details to current content added, texture enhancements, quest revisions, even non-intrusive store bought QoL stuff. Certainly not boosters and gold trading. Because Classic+ would not inflate gold earned to offset RMT, devs would have to do a better job at actually dealing with the issue of persistent economy. Classic+ is the development path that truly is best in its result. Classic fans know this, so it is the reason we demand it.

85

Classic with class balancing and actually new content would be very interesting, but it’s not going to happen. Too many people want TBC, and Blizzard has already basically decided (if not already started work on) TBC.

86

Nah I want tbc. Blizz would never put more effort than needed on classic servers

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87

maybe if i type true it will happen

88

Its really not but Im okay if you want to believe that.

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89

I fear the problem is that the WoW team is full of people (Like Ion Hazzikostas) who are so convinced of their genius ability to design overly complex and interlocked game systems, and yet ultimately lead to frustrating dead ends, that any desire to add new content in the spirit of the vanilla design philosophy will invariably lead to a Classic+ being beset by the same mess we’ve been experiencing in retail for several expansions now.

90

You dont turn to the retail team to work on Classic +.

91

Yes, it is. Either you repeat the lore without increasing the level cap and try to convince everyone that this content is somehow better at level 60, or you go down an entirely different timeline of events that ignores the current lore, or you outright ignore the lore and create a completely new story.

Either way, you’re asking Blizzard to develop separate expansion packs for Classic in tandem with whatever they’re doing on retail. All the while, you’re deluding yourselves that adding new content isn’t an expansion so long as the level cap isn’t raised.

You people exist in a clown world, the things you ask for are ridiculous, the ideas you present are idiotic, and you need to stop.

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92

There’s a million ways they could go. Lets not limit them to the things you feel you can mock.

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93

Give one example. Lay out one direction Classic+ can go that doesn’t either become TBC at level 60, or otherwise demands that Blizzard start creating separate expansion packs for Classic. Detail why issuing an expansion without raising the level cap is fundamentally different from the expansions that were released.

If there’s a million ways to execute this idea in a way that can only be called “Classic+”, then pick one as an example so the rest of us can understand.

94

Id rather just say its Classic +, not WoW Classic the Hollywood Reboot.

I can only tell you how I would do it if it was up to me so take it for what its worth, which isnt much. Listen up Blizz.

For starters, Id take a peak at what was left on the cutting room floor from original vanilla and see whats viable there and doesnt conflict with any content seen in later expacs. For example, I wouldnt put Kara the instance in there although something different could be done with that area - maybe an open world dungeon (like a Jintha Alor) instead of a raid but again, ideas are limitless. Do something with that underground dungeon there that was never finished, I dunno.

From there I would take steps to make sure content couldnt be trivialized - so no world buff metas or dungeon boosting. Bug fixes and tweaks. Old school AV, no cross server queues. Make improvements to quest reward gear (the NPC will always have something your class can use). Introduce better itemized sets for less popular specs and just slap them on the bosses loot tables. Flesh out any unfinished zones and/or quest lines. Add that BG we never got.

Basically, I would build on whats already there without drastically altering the entire landscape. Changes to raid size, raid encounters and an increase in raid boss drops are not off the table to me.

From there, instead of introducing new story arcs and the like I would simply have GMs run newly created events that stay within the context of the current game world - Like Northwatch (from the guns of northwatch quest) is, for a weekend, a level 55-60 area that requires the defeat of a few elite mobs and completion ends with a nice blue reward - maybe a choice of new gear enchants or new patterns. It will have both solo and group quests blah blah. Thats just one tiny example.

Im also a big fan of dynamic spontaneous content like a new world boss spawning randomly somewhere - or the barrens centaur are tired of being stomped by horde lowbies and now theyre raiding crossroads for an hour to get revenge.

Add a new profession.

I could go on and on but I think you get the idea.

Edit: Just wanted to add I would overhaul the honor system and add more ranks and gear. Id also put Wpvp objectives in every zone and rework existing ones.

Edit2: Ive always had my opinions about how I wouldve done arenas in WoW and Id try to get a version of that in - but there wouldnt be any kind of official ladder or rating.

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95

TBC is pretty true to WoW Vanilla in how the classes function and feel.

What would you do for Classic+? No new content and just do the balance changes of TBC? That still wouldn’t be enough.

Now, I have no issues if they did a Classic+ but a TBC+ would be vastly superior. Main thing with a Classic+ would be removing the world buffs, lifting the buff and debuff caps, balancing the classes out better probably by adding in TBC changes and then going further. Along with the BG changes to make sure players actually get more from the BG than from farming the midfield.

With TBC+, you get much of that baked in with more content that is also very fun and you got heroics and, in a TBC+ server, you could potentially include heroic versions of all the old stuff too opening up all those for further endgame content and gearing options.

96

The simple fact is Blizzard will not chance it with an unknown when they have the known success model right in front of them. TBC was a huge success and it will be again. Classic+ runs way too many risks for the cost. Cheaper and known success or risky and expensive alternative… if this was your money which would you go with?

97

the reason so much of that stuff was dropped from Classic and put into TBC was the fundamental issue with classes. People talk about how much better the raiding but but they also talk far more about how all the classes suddenly were viable and the raids, as we saw in vanilla, didnt devolve into Wars Rogues Mages. it would be IMPOSSIBLE to discount the fact that meta classes would continue. And before you say you said something about that…

Overnight you would undo the exact thing that made the game playable for servers like skeram since they are just one faction server. The same for the one faction alliance servers. I also like how you took the TBC approach to world buffs. Even though for the most part the content was not hard because it was 1.12 and we know literally everything about it.

Yeah all those GMs that are not bot hunting are magically going to show up and run events. I get this is your dream server but even thats far fetched. That would go over with the comunity like a lead baloon.

What you actaully want is a new expansion since it had all the things you wanted you just dont want to admit it.

98

The idea that a Classic+ that is faithful to Vanilla while opening it up some and adding new things is an impossible feat is absurd.

Its not going to happen for other reasons but it being literally impossible is not one of them. Whose the extremist again?

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99

Well, yes.

Again, I think Classic+ would be a great idea if we still had most of the original team, as OSRS does.

100

Merge Skeram with a server with 100% Alliance, why do we tolerate the existence of “one faction PvP servers”?

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