Add a Vanilla time option for leveling in Shadowlands?

Community General Discussion
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If I’m not mistaken, the leveling process in Shadowlands after the squish involves Chromie sending us to the time period (expansion) in WoW we choose, right?

What I think would be pretty awesome is to give us the old-school pre-Deathwing’d Vanilla world to choose to quest in if we want.

I’m not saying revert the game completely to Vanilla of course. The class mechanics and whatnot are available in Classic WoW for those who want that. Chances are today we’d be able to solo a lot of those group-style quests given the numbers and class changes we have today, along with things like heirlooms. What I’m asking for is to just be able to go explore the pre-Cata Vanilla world today in Retail, and to have the opportunity to go do those quests and acquire some cool rewards that have long been lost to time.

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You can do that though, at anytime.

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Great time for them to implement this! And bring back old BRD, Old scarlet monastery old school dead mines and UBRS!!! For time walking. :blue_heart::blue_heart::blue_heart::blue_heart::blue_heart:

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If you’re referring to Classic WoW, sure you can explore the world over there. But it is also the only world you get in that part of the game. What I think would be cool is to be able to do the Vanilla WoW questing experience, level up an alt through there, and then head on to the Shadowlands with that same character.

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Don’t most of the zones have a thing where you can go back in time?

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Only 3 zones have that atm but only brings you back to cata era. Not classic.

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A couple of zones where major expansion changes have happened, like Blasted Lands, Darkshore and Silithus, yes. But those time skips take you back to their Cataclysm’ed versions.

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So you want to do quests that have you running at slow speed accross the whole zone and back only to send you again accross the whole zone and back on the follow up ?

Classic questing is so horrid.

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Aye I’m aware, but it’ll be cool to have the option. Lot of old memorable moments I’d love to visit in my main, and all the old-school rewards that have been lost would be there to acquire once again.

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Sorry, merging Classic and Retail (which is pretty much what is being asked here) isn’t going to happen.

If you want Classic, go to Classic. Scratch the itch there. The work’s been done, it’s up and stable, happy day.

But trying to re-integrate the Classic terrain, mobs, and quest lines in too retail? No, way (way!) too much work, and maintenance, and everything else, for so little gain. Talk about costing a “raid tier”.

Now, if they wanted to explore a one way Classic -> Retail transfer service, yes, even for toons that get “Classic only” gear and items, that may be worthwhile. Make it for 60’s only, make it cost as much as a boost.

If someone get the ZG Tiger mount in Classic and transfers to Retail – bully for them.

Just make anything that’s brought over bound to the character (so folks can’t try and import stuff to be sold).

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Why so? The game is already made and could easily be re-implemented into Retail. Just add a time portal and boom. Can’t be that hard.

I would support the hell out of this, as this is the only thing that’d really make me interested in Classic again, but I can already feel the triggering by the classic NoChanges crowd.

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You’re hand waving nearly as much work as people were when they said they could stand up classic in an instant if they wanted to.
I can appreciate the desire, pre-cata plaguelands are something I’d love to see come back for this. But the work to reward ratio…as someone else said, we would lose a raid tier basically. Juice ain’t worth the squeeze.

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My gut feeling reads the motivation as going after no longer acquirable transmog and unique quest items that no longer exist.

That’s my reading into the request personally.

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Eh perhaps. I’m not a programmer so I can’t say for sure how much work that would entail. It probably would be more than a simple copy-paste job, but I can’t say how much more work than that. I’d love an answer for that one.

That’s precisely it. Along with just getting some quest completions in on my new main, which was created late Legion. I took the opportunity to get some of those long-lost quests done during Korrak’s and would relish the chance to do more.

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I’ve been wanting this since before Classic was announced. I have no interest in Classic, I was there when Retail WAS Classic and I do not miss the poor class balance, the lack of DKs, the lack of transmog, and the lack of many other systems that have been added to improve the game. What I DO miss is the Vanilla versions of EK and Kalimdor with their awesome quests and amazing dungeons, and I would LOVE to be able to level an Allied Race DK through that content.

No, I can’t.

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They have to reincorporate the quest lines, many of which duplicate, many of which don’t, many of which may have changed yet “be the same quest”. You also have just bloated up the game installation to handle all of that “mostly, but not quite” identical terrain.

Now, not only that, but you have to QA two entire LARGE “new” continents of content to make sure that it’s all working and correct, etc. etc.

You also have to reconcile folks that DON’T want the “Vanilla” mode, or may want to switch back and forth, and other odd interactions the game was never set up for.

For example, the Korrak quest in AV during the anniversary. I’m going to go out on a limb that the fact that you can do that quest in Zul’Drak is not by design. I did it on my Warrior.

Queued up for the AV Event, got the quest, deserted, flew out to ZD, joined a group (since I had already done the quests long ago), got the kill, queued up again, turned in it, cha-ching a shiny 400 weapon.

I doubt Blizzard intended this to be possible, but when it came to light, it simply wasn’t worth the trouble to make it NOT work.

Now, that’s just a single quests during a short term event. Now contrast that with two entire continents of content, some overlapping, some not, and think of Oh What Fun the cross dependencies and interactions of that would be.

Then consider all of the time and labor involved to reconcile and clean it all up (or not).

It’s a boat load of work.

Classic exists for those who want the Classic experience. It’s available to anyone who wants it. Blizzard has already paid for that and given it to us.

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So essentially you want to play vanilla in the retail version.

Game has moved past that and gave you a vanilla server. Use it.

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I would love to run the old content on a DH and DK. And sure, maybe a monk. How fun would running the old Dead Mines on a level 14 demon hunter or dk be? I think it’d be a blast.

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The Classic team already did all the work to get the Vanilla content working on the modern backend systems, all the Retail team would need to do is port it in.

A system already exists for that kind of thing, places like Theramore and Darkshore have Bronze Drake NPCs that allow you to switch between different versions of the zone.

Again, the Classic team already did the work.

The “Classic Experience” is :poop: imo, even though I loved it back in 2005. I have no interest in outdated systems, non-existent class balance, and lack of transmog, I, and I believe the OP as well, just want the content back that was wrongly and unnecessarily removed in Cataclysm.

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Yes, it’s on the modern backend system, but as a “standalone” project, not integrated and merged with existing retail.

It’s the integration that needs all of the work.

But not on the scale of two entire continents, all at once. Also, there is significant overlap between the Vanilla quest lines and the modern ones. The ones done today are completely different, with no overlap of the questing.

It’s like Layering that was added to Classic. Sure, it’s kinda sorta almost like CRZ and the other phasing techs, but it’s not the same, not at the same scale as what they did in Classic. This kind of stuff is not drag and drop.

All of the QA is the merging of the two experiences and how they affect each other.

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