There have been many arguments about what made classic special and what Classic+ should be. Now that Blizzard is likely working on it, it is a good time to attempt and answer these questions, wall of text inc
WoW is the world, of warcraft, and a mmorpg - massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Classic doesn’t deviate from that and focuses on these 2 things: “world” and “massively multiplayer”. To keep Classic+ true to the spirit of the original game any changes that go against these 2 aspects should be reevaluated
With that in mind let’s review some of the things that were changed in later expansions
Pace of the game. The game was simple and slow, because it was simple and slow players had the time to look at and enjoy the environment, instead of looking at their weakaura timers
Reward structure. Epics were epic, abundance of high value rewards for completing easy tasks devalues rewards and achievements of the massively multiplayer type of content, reduces its appeal and importance
Flying mounts. Flying mounts take “world” out of the world of warcraft, along with any content (PvE and PvP) that is in it
Heirlooms, “joyous journeys”, any type of a boost or experience skip. Leveling in the world is a part of the game, it should not be skipped or reduced. Boosting should not be possible
Arenas. Same as for PvE multiplayer activities, 5 man group size should remain the minimum supported group size, 5v5 arenas - yes, 1v1 or 2v2 - no - it’s not massively multiplayer, it’s impossible to balance. Separate queues for premade and random groups, same for battlegrounds
WoW token. WoW token allows players to buy gold, which removes content from the game that players would otherwise experience to make gold - farming materials, using professions, and more - that goes against the “world” aspect. Buying gold also provides an unfair advantage over players who don’t spend real money - that goes against the “multiplayer” aspect
Store mounts. Store mounts provide an unfair cosmetic advantage over other players, which has a negative effect in a competitive multiplayer environment
Transmog. There’s a certain value in PvP, in PvE and in general, in being able to look at other players and tell what level and what kind of gear they have. Assessing someone’s combat capabilities and experience is more important than assessing how they look, it’s world of warcraft, not world of fashion. Transmogrification takes away that ability and should not be in Classic+
Achievements. Why not
Dual Talent Specialization. Ability to switch between PvE and PvP specs, or tank and healer specs, will boost multiplayer activities
PvP gear, PvP stats (resilience). PvE gear obtained in dungeons/raids should not be useless in PvP as was the case in TBC. The classic world of warcraft with its 2 warring factions ultimately is a PvP environment, world PvP is a part of the game, every type of gear should be adequate and impactful in PvP
Raid difficulty settings. Raids and dungeons are a part of the world, like any other zone there should not be 4 different versions of them. One size, two modes at most: normal - reasonably challenging, hard mode (ulduar style) - extra challenging, for titles, mounts, cosmetic rewards. There should not be an easy story mode, where players can ignore everything, it’s a game, not a movie
Dungeon difficulty/gear settings. 5 man dungeons and dungeon currencies should not provide previous raid tier loot or any raid level loot - that is what raids are for. That will keep every raid tier alive in all phases of the game, give players more raid content to do, make the game more massively multiplayer. Raids should not be nerfed or changed every time a new phase comes out. Natural gear progression: quests, 5 man dungeons → MC-> BWL → AQ → and so on. That is the classic model and it should be implemented in Classic+, instead of the retail model where only the latest raid release is relevant. Like normal raids, 5 man dungeons should be reasonably challenging for their gear level, no aoefests, no need for heroic 5 man dungeons
Flexible raid size. Flexible raids will allow for more players to participate. To preserve the integrity of the experience, difficulty has to be scaled, the size has to be capped (like 20%: 8-12 people for 10 man raids, 20-30 people for 25 man raids)
World buffs. World buffs (in cities, not SoD style) have a positive effect on the community, but can be very annoying to manage in raiding. Perhaps a compromise can be found
Phasing. The world of warcraft should be the same for every player, at all times
Portals, teleports, shortcuts. If a player can travel from one place to another, he shouldn’t be able to teleport there, other than using class abilities
Group finder. Group finder for dungeons, raids, pvp, will promote and facilitate multiplayer engagement. No auto-invite, no teleports
New races/classes. Any new race/class that did not exist in Warcraft RTS should not be added to this world. Pandaren were an April fool’s joke
Racial abilities. More balanced racials will allow for more players to participate in multiplayer activities without feeling at a disadvantage. A few new unique abilities should be added for some races
Shaman/paladin classes for both factions. Separation of shamans and paladins between horde and alliance made factions more unique, but overall it hurts multiplayer gameplay more than it benefits it
GDKP ban. Even if RMT is taken out of the equation, mostly single player activity like farming gold should not enable players to buy rewards in a competitive multiplayer environment, BoP items are BoP for a reason. GDKPs should stay banned in Classic+. Selling of multiplayer achievements of any kind for gold should be prohibited
And some silly suggestions from the blizzard’s survey:
Player housing. Solo instanced content? No
War Mode. Remove PvP servers? Lol no
Pet battles. Yes add a pokemon minigame, add a racing minigame, and a first person shooter as well to make it a total circus
And obviously what Classic+ is supposed to be about are new class abilities, class balance, new talents, professions, zones and dungeons. Thanks for reading, if I missed something important, post it in the comments
Good read. I did not agree with all of the individual points but definitely on board with the direction. I’d play it.
Pace of play (a meaningful journey), reward structure (gear is earned) paired with good class design and a ton of new content is really the core of it.
They do that well and they can show me where to buy the expansion
I have to agree with 95% of everything said here.
Only thing i would change as per my opinion is. Shamans&Palys are faction specific as that was a very unique thing and disadvantage or not, overcoming disadvantages and difficulty is part of life.
No comminication between horde and Alliance, no cross faction anything. We are enemies which makes it for much better more engaging and tense pvp and competition.
Add DK playable from lvl 1
Add Gladiator spec for warrior’s
This is one of those moments where business and the customer don’t mix. We don’t want this, but they’re increasingly likely to add more monetization just by nature of who they are. Don’t be surprised if we’re burned on this subject.
I’m personally a hater of transmog, but if I didn’t get my way, I hope I would at least get a toggle that controls what I see.
I’m of the belief that we should have multiple specs, not just two, but the third and beyond are painfully expensive. Dual spec is overwhelmingly popular, with only the fruitelf Eyr regularly crying about it on the forums.
This is no longer true (and wasn’t even fully true in the original run of TBC)
World buffs are the single thing I hate about vanilla raiding. This is going to go either way in C+ but I’d rather see them deactivated in raids. To improve their power, allow the world buffs to cast to all major cities instead of just one.
I agree with much of this. My biggest disagreement is the transmog issue. I really don’t understand why people think it’s so important to be able to see the actual gear someone has equipped. The situations in which this is actually going to matter are extremely rare. Lots of people care how their character looks. The constant benefit of liking the way your character looks far outweighs the incredibly rare and niche situation in which seeing the actual gear someone else has equipped will actually matter.
I would add that while I agree on not adding races or classes, I really like what Season of Discovery did as far as making certain specs more viable and adding tank/healing specs to already existing classes that did not originally have them.
I thought the same thing about business and customers not always mixing
I tend to be more in favor of them having cosmetics, barber shop, name changes, etc. in some sort of store. Non-game impacting things. Not because I want it but because it’s an easy way to generate revenue without having to build the core gameplay loop around it
At the end of the day the more money they make the more they can justify long term investment into C+ to their bosses at Microsoft (who do not care that Classic players don’t like micro-transactions)
It is not a niche situation, players look at other players all the time, it is a basic player interaction. When I look at someone I want to have some information and all I can see is your gear really. When I look at someone in transmog I’m getting nothing, because it’s fake, it doesn’t represent your current progress in the game. You care about how your character looks, I have nothing against that, but it’s not a single player game, player interaction is more important than your customization options in my opinion, sorry
I love how you immediately contradict yourself because of how silly your first point/anti tmog point was
Yes, assessing someone’s combat ability BY THEIR PLAYSTYLE is far more important than what gear they have on OR WHAT THEIR GEAR LOOKS LIKE, glad we agree
The vast majority of people making decisions based on what gear people have on are griefers and super sweaty dueling nerds, blizzard should never design around either of these people
The only anti tmog reason that even has a shred of relevance is immersion and that’s incredibly subjective
Racial abilities. More balanced racials will allow for more players to participate in multiplayer activities without feeling at a disadvantage. A few new unique abilities should be added for some races
If I don’t know you and it’s the first time I see you for 1 second, your gear is how I assess your combat capabilities, no contradiction here
I mean that’s highly variable depending on what the context is, if you’re talking a fresh 60 in full t3 yeah sure but in retail or mop there are tmogs that are locked behind achieving certain feats of strength and are locked to specific characters, that’s definitely indicative of progress
And in my opinion you’re placing way too much value on that specific player interaction and denying a whole bunch of people a ton of endgame content in a version of the game where there’s minimal endgame content outside of AV spamming/raid logging because you want to reinforce this desire:
I get all the information I want from damage meters and in pvp from decision making, not from gear
You don’t have to apologize for your opinion either btw
Transmog is a tough one. There is sense in both sides but you can’t have both unless they do some sort of on/off option…
One thing I always thought they should do is allow for more gear customization. Changing coloring on sets (dyeing your armor), adding faction logo’s (they could lock some behind achievements like Gladiator), etc…things that do not physically change the model but allow you to make all your janky mis-matched pieces look better
Transmog is fine if I have the option to turn it off
But when I suggest an off toggle anime pfp RPers who identify as a fox get upset at me
I don’t want to see your stupid naked pirate outfit. Lemme turn it off and I’m on board
But I still think transmog is unoriginal and zero effort. Just make there be ways to “add on” to your existing gear by adding spikes and chains or skulls, or arcane glows or runed pads or what have you, even dyes and maybe more “dangerous” looking skins of the same weapon
Kinda like army ranks and badges but translated to gear
Think rank 10 gear being private and rank 14 gear being sergeant, now imagine the r14 gear being even cooler and more sick as “colonel”
For whatever reason when people talk about classic + they don’t think about any original ideas and immediately reach to some other expansion they don’t want to play for ideas. It’s like they’ve never played any other game before and can’t think past the expansions that classic+ is not
“So what do you want to see in a new hypothetical version of wow?”
points at tbc, points at wrath, points at dragonflight, points at expansion that isn’t new when classic+ is supposed to be a new idea
I doubt it was bosses at Microsoft or Activision who decided to create and sell store mounts and other things, I think it was bosses at Blizzard
If funding is an issue, or if they want to get greedy, selling it as an expansion or increasing the sub price is a much better solution, than selling some mount every few months and poisoning the game. but they already did it once with retail
I was specifically talking about this justification that you offered.
The situations in which being able to assess someone’s combat capabilities at a glance in PVP (you can always inspect them if you are wondering what they can offer in PVE) are going to actually matter are niche and rare. It’s an absolutely silly justification for dictating to others how their characters should be allowed to look.
The information you are getting is about how someone wants their character to be represented to the outside world. It’s exactly that same as the information you get when you look at a person in real life because we get to control how we appear outwardly to others.
Why does your desire to know about someone’s game progress at a glance matter more than their desire to control how their own character looks? It’s not a single player game and your desires about how someone else’s character looks shouldn’t matter more than their own.
Your argument here basically amounts to, “I just don’t like it cause I don’t.”
It’s completely natural to believe that Classic + should include certain features from later expansions that people have come to enjoy, particularly when those features don’t negatively affect what made Classic great in the first place.
Transmog, in my opinion, is one of those features that only makes the game better and more enjoyable. I don’t know anyone who thinks what makes Retail not as enjoyable to play is the fact that people can transmog their gear.