What does why people play have to do with what Classic is, why it’s here, and how it got here? The purpose of Classic was clearly outlined by the devs themselves when announcing it at Blizzcon. The fact that a whole wave of Retail tourists have come over and are demanding changes that have nothing to do with that vision doesn’t change anything. They are going to leave eventually anyway (and in consistent form would be the first ones complaining at the effects of any changes they demanded if they got them).
Now, does Blizzard have the integrity and understanding to stick to the original vision? That’s a different discussion - probably a short one.
There are so many things that are broken though. That aren’t what people look fondly upon and are arguably bugs.
For example:
Quest items not being consumed - particularly common if you are at 18/20 and then get a drop of 3. 20 are consumed, 1 stays behind in inventory. This isn’t “fun” and arguably a bug. Maybe an addon can fix this?
Moving professions over to their own tab. Honestly that general tab is unbelievably cluttered. Not particularly game changing to clean that up. Maybe an addon can fix this?
There are many, many, many others. Not game-play changes - just things that boggle the mind.
Too late. Classic completely missed the boat on not being a hybrid. Modern addon API, Battlenet integration, starting out on patch 1.12, tons of bugs and odd behaviors, layered servers, and so much more. It’s already a hybrid of Vanilla and Retail.
We’re playing in a very poor Vanilla simulator, it might as well have some improvements that aren’t against the spirit of Vanillla.
They changed wind serpents to be more consistent with other pets even though the change in retail didn’t happen until a later expansion originally. That one was just in my recent memory from earlier today.
Of course that is true, but that is not an argument to pile on more frivolous, subjective, whimsical changes. The whole goal is authenticity within the constraints of all the changed tech.
My guess is that will happen on some servers, while others will be persistent. But it’s a long way until that even becomes an issue. We’re still in Phase 1 - Phase 1! You guys need to settle down and play the game as it is and stop all the whinging.
I want(ed) classic to succeed so they reconsider where they are taking retail.
I honestly have no interest in retail right now just due to how much of it is tied to RNG, retention mechanics and the “illusion” of progress.
Gear rains down but is mostly just trash.
That being said - what is it about classic that you like? Is it really the warts? Or do you like it in spite of them?
I would argue quest items not leaving your inventory is a flat out bug. Period.
The general tab thing … sure you can call that wart if you want. Not sure it “enhances” the game or is “one of the things you missed about classic”, but whatever, I can concede this is one of those “warts”.
Arguably yes. Literally every change Blizzard made to retail was believed to be enhancing the game or making it better in some way. Blizzard wouldn’t deliberately add things they felt were disastrous to the game.
Titanforging and Warforging is the end result of people thinking that the best gear in the game is locked behind raids. This is something people complained about since Classic with “I don’t have time to raid and earn loot in a guild! I want it now!” Is it the immediate next step? No, but it’s what lied at the current place in the road. It went from all the good gear shouldn’t be locked behind raids, to adding newer difficulties of dungeons for casual content that allowed you to get gear that was better without raiding (Heroic dungeons and later Mythic dungeons were a good idea left alone)
This then later became the system in 3.3 where you could attain the raid gear farming dungeons. You bought both tier 9, and your tier 10 base set in ICC with badges from dungeons. Granted Emblem of Frost you could only get I think four a day if you just did dungeons compared to the like 50 it took per piece.
This system later became the LFR which answered another problem in their minds of “Well players not in guilds aren’t seeing the raid content! Think of the 1%ers in Naxxramas days!”
Then it became “Items can warforge randomly and add 6 item levels to themselves” (and yes it was initially just 6) because no matter what the gimmie gear just never was good enough. Then it became it can roll random attributes, then it became titanforging.
AP fixed the issue of people feeling there never was enough content in the game to justify them keeping a subscription when they reached the point of logging in once a week for their content slam then never being seen again. This wasn’t an issue in Vanilla because people were all over the place, but even now when people chew through content months before it can be added since we all know this stuff you’re seeing the same complaints.
It made people who weren’t able to get normal gear feel good about it upgrading because they felt like they got a better reward and earned it. It’s a stupid system for even more stupid people but it achieves what they wanted it to. Look how many people screech on the forums now that Blizzard has subtly hinted Titanforging is getting reined in with 8.3. They’re crying that Blizzard is catering to elitists who want to gatekeep everyone.
Gave you a reason to continuously farm the world quests and feel like there was something to do. Without paragon rep the minute I hit exalted on those factions and was of a high enough ilvl to not realistically see upgrades from World Quests I was done with them, as were most people.