Blizz tells gamerrant they want Wrath to "Feel like vanilla"

[Aurumai-grobbulus]

@Ziryus-pagle

Once again do you think blizzard will really do the work to add new sets of achievements every phase in classic?

Yeah, why not? It literally took me like 2 minutes to come up with just those 3 challenges off the top of my head! I think it would be much more work for them to actually create a new difficulty and have to tune every single NPC and mechanic in every single dungeon than to just say “Hey, go into a a heroic dungeon and do this cool thing!”

@Ziryus-pagle

Keep in mind 5 mans already have a ton of achieves with a reward,.

Yeah, that’s true. Though most of the rewards from achievements are cosmetic, such as the mounts, titles or just bragging rights over your achievements. It sounds to me like they want to add some “tangible” benefits to dungeons, like better gear, or perhaps an additional source of badges/mats/gold.

@Ziryus-pagle

@Aurumai-grobbulus

The article said that you’ll always be able to get the “original” gear and rewards from the dungeons. Meaning that any changes resulting from this vague “interesting challenge” are going to be optional, and won’t affect the people who don’t pursue them.

Yes which directly implies there will be multiple difficulties.

I disagree. The only thing this implies is that there might be stonger versions of the rewards that already exist. Look at Ulduar hardmodes. They award higher item level gear, but you didn’t need to change the difficulty before you entered the instance. You just had to interact with some mechanic in each boss fight.

@Bungusxprime-area-52

huge difference between being a programmer and working at wendy’s

Why? The only difference is how much skill is needed for the job, and how much they’re paid because of supply and demand. A programmer working at Google is no more a personal buddy of Google’s CEO than a fry cook at Wendy’s is a buddy of Wendy’s CEO.

In all of these cases, we’re talking about people who are doing something to get by. Sure, the people who went to school for their jobs might be doing something they enjoy, or something that they’re good at, but it changes absolutely nothing about the dynamics between the corporate bosses and the workers.

@Bungusxprime-area-52

one can pick and choose where to work.

They both can. The only limitations are what skills their chosen job requires.

@Bungusxprime-area-52

If you’re willing to stay at a company after your boss is not only found out to be a sexual abuser but then STAYS AT THE COMPANY like multiple higher ups at blizzard then idk man thats pretty sad and I’d expect you to produce terrible work.

Okay buddy. Spoken like a true self-proclaimed victim. Something you’ll learn when you grow up is that almost everyone in this entire world has a boss. The only people who have a higher moral obligation in the work place are the people who pull the strings, like politicians and CEOs and directors who oversee large numbers of people.

Game developers are literally just doing their jobs, and they aren’t millionaires, and they’re not morally married to their jobs. The same thing goes for 99% of everyone else in the work force, no matter how specialized it is.

@Zaalg-ashkandi

There’s no reason for any of this. Don’t break what works perfectly fine.

How does adding an optional challenge to a dungeon “break” it?

[Tinkerfel-grobbulus]

Rather ridiculous

If I play Vanilla WoW, I want features that were in Vanilla WoW.
If I play TBClassic, I want features that were in TBClassic.
If I play WotLK, I want features that were in WotLK.

So why remove quest helper and RFD? They were in WotLK and true to the patch it’ll be based on. Blizz astounds me.

Edit: didn’t see Aggrends post. Still applies to RFD.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Aurumai-grobbulus

@Ziryus-pagle

Once again do you think blizzard will really do the work to add new sets of achievements every phase in classic?

Yeah, why not? It literally took me like 2 minutes to come up with just those 3 challenges off the top of my head! I think it would be much more work for them to actually create a new difficulty and have to tune every single NPC and mechanic in every single dungeon than to just say “Hey, go into a a heroic dungeon and do this cool thing!”

@Ziryus-pagle

Keep in mind 5 mans already have a ton of achieves with a reward,.

Yeah, that’s true. Though most of the rewards from achievements are cosmetic, such as the mounts, titles or just bragging rights over your achievements. It sounds to me like they want to add some “tangible” benefits to dungeons, like better gear, or perhaps an additional source of badges/mats/gold.

Like I said we’ll see, maybe blizzard will in fact surprise us. I’d love it if they came out with a complete new set of achieves for each phase for 5 mans with gear and cosmetic rewards.

I just doubt it.

@Aurumai-grobbulus

I disagree. The only thing this implies is that there might be stonger versions of the rewards that already exist. Look at Ulduar hardmodes. They award higher item level gear, but you didn’t need to change the difficulty before you entered the instance. You just had to interact with some mechanic in each boss fight.

Yes but ulduar hardmodes do not scale into TOGC and ICC. Also how is changing the difficulty any different than doing some gimmick? Indeed blizzard went away from the do some gimmick precisely because it was so gimmicky and unpredictable.

[Araki-grobbulus]

You’re right, I shouldn’t be surprised…

[Mozzer-pagle]

@Zaalg-ashkandi

Also, don’t you remember when Stratholme scaled up as you got better gear? It was so much more fun when you finally achieved full tier 3 and a Strat run took just as long as it did when you were a fresh 60. Because nothing says ‘hallmark of an rpg’ like stifling character progression and advancement.

Chef’s Kiss. Checkmate Atheists, etc.

[Wafectus-deviate-delight]

@Holystripe-pagle

How’s removing the core feature that brought players together makes the game more social? You’re literally splitting and dividing the playerbase…You just took away the feature that allowed you to play with others with ease. You made socializing in this game MUCH harder than it was.

The polarization is only going to get worse.

[Ellihs-dathremar]

Absolutely disgusting decision and just down right stupid with 0 logic behind it, just another attempt to try and make WoWs greatest expansion ‘his own’. Some one needs to stop the power trip

[Shygirl-grobbulus]

Doesn’t have to be creative, just has to be accurate.

[Kurathis-pagle]

I fail to see the accuracy.

[Shygirl-grobbulus]

Cool

[Kurathis-pagle]

Aaaand, flagged as trolling. Enjoy your evening!

[Shygirl-grobbulus]

I’m harmed.

[Aurumai-grobbulus]

@Ziryus-pagle

Like I said we’ll see, maybe blizzard will in fact surprise us. I’d love it if they came out with a complete new set of achieves for each phase for 5 mans with gear and cosmetic rewards.

I just doubt it.

Why are you so doubtful? I mean really, don’t you agree that creating a whole new difficulty is a much bigger overhaul than just implementing a simple challenge into each dungeon? Not to mention, a higher difficulty really doesn’t seem like it would agree with Wrath’s design.

@Ziryus-pagle

Yes but ulduar hardmodes do not scale into TOGC and ICC.

Sure, but I highly doubt they’re talking about adding anything in the game that will make 5-man heroics difficult for people in BiS. Remember, they’re basically just talking about keeping these dungeons from being utterly boring once we’re geared. So far, there’s been no talk of “scaling” content up, and certainly they haven’t explicitly mentioned adding more difficulty with every single phase.

I’m thinking that they will probably just add 1 challenge to every dungeon when the dungeons themselves first launch. Or MAYBE add a few challenges, perhaps 1 per boss? It doesn’t sound to me like they’re talking about scaling.

@Ziryus-pagle

Also how is changing the difficulty any different than doing some gimmick?

2 ways that I can think of:

Logistically
The fact that everything in a heroic mode is adjusted for higher difficulty. So from a logistical standpoint, adding an additional difficulty level (like Mythic) would require a lot more hours spent on development. You’d have to adjust the numbers for every single NPC in the instance, and if they’re being serious about it being “interesting”, then they’d need to add more mechanics to the boss fights (like heroic modes do). That’s a LOT more work than just designing a system to check if you’ve beaten a boss while facetanking extra adds, or ignoring a certain mechanic.

Aesthetically
Yeah, gimmicks for activating hard modes weren’t necessarily the greatest idea because a lot of people didn’t even know they existed. That being said, they were fun. Many people remember them pretty fondly. And if you just think about how the WoW team is trying to bring back “the classic feel” of earlier game design, I can’t think of a better way to do it than creating a system that’s basically a hybrid between Ulduar hard mode activators and the dungeon achievements that already exist. It’s not necessarily good, modern game design, but it would definitely feel a lot more appropriate for Wrath than them just slapping a new difficulty into the game.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Aurumai-grobbulus

Why are you so doubtful? I mean really, don’t you agree that creating a whole new difficulty is a much bigger overhaul than just implementing a simple challenge into each dungeon? Not to mention, a higher difficulty really doesn’t seem like it would agree with Wrath’s design.

No what I have done is questioned what blizzard considers a challenge mode. And how much effort they are willing to put into it.

That is very different than doubting that it can be done in a cool way.

[Elorael-remulos]

@Tinkerfel-grobbulus

Still applies to RFD.

Razorfen Downs?

I think you mean RDF.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Aurumai-grobbulus

Why are you so doubtful? I mean really, don’t you agree that creating a whole new difficulty is a much bigger overhaul than just implementing a simple challenge into each dungeon? Not to mention, a higher difficulty really doesn’t seem like it would agree with Wrath’s design.

I actually think that just scaling up health/damage and adding generic affixes is easier than creating all new achieves, mechanics etc…

@Aurumai-grobbulus

Sure, but I highly doubt they’re talking about adding anything in the game that will make 5-man heroics difficult for people in BiS. Remember, they’re basically just talking about keeping these dungeons from being utterly boring once we’re geared. So far, there’s been no talk of “scaling” content up, and certainly they haven’t explicitly mentioned adding more difficulty with every single phase.

Okay so they have also failed to define what is “once we’re geared”. Which also evades the problem. When I’m in say ToC BiS but ICC is out, well i’m not in BiS gear but 5 mans are completely trivial. However making those dungeons even remotely challenging to my gear puts them out of reach of a fresh 80.

[Grayner-draka]

The community isn’t exactly on the same page either. I expect that Blizzard is trying to differentiate the classic expansions from the retail product.

[Piezuri-benediction]

Which isn’t a good idea, since the entire basis for Classic was the original product(s).

[Elorael-remulos]

@Grayner-draka

differentiate the classic expansions from the retail product.

They’re trying to diferentiate Wrath from Wrath though. If people wanted the “Vanilla experience” they’d still be playing Classic Era. They don’t. They want Wrath, the most popular private server in the game. They want Wrath because it had the QoL changes that ironed out the bugs, before the QoL changes became the game. They want Wrath because it had the full content of 3 expansions, without boiling everything down in the game to “You raid, or you quit”. (With Mythic being no different after Legion)

[Aurumai-grobbulus]

@Ziryus-pagle

No what I have done is questioned what blizzard considers a challenge mode.

Uh. In the quote that I was responding to, you said:

@Ziryus-pagle

Like I said we’ll see, maybe blizzard will in fact surprise us. I’d love it if they came out with a complete new set of achieves for each phase for 5 mans with gear and cosmetic rewards.

I just doubt it.

Anyways, we probably shouldn’t even use the word “mode”, to be honest. Nothing about a different mode or difficulty was mentioned in the article. I think I said “challenge mode” a couple times, but that wasn’t a great idea, because people in this conversation might get the idea that that’s specifically what’s on the table.

We just don’t know yet.