If you don’t wish to read the whole thing, I will summarize what I wrote below. However, this summary will not include a lot of context that is provided if you look at the whole article that I wrote. That is, if you don’t like one of these ideas, perhaps the context I include in the broader article may convince you.
Note: This already assumes things such as new zones like Hyjal, new raids like Karazhan, class rebalancing, etc, etc… (all the stuff they are obviously going to do).
Summary:
Must haves:
Double or triple the amount of time it takes to get to 60 (This will make early and midgame content relevant for a longer period of time, allowing more resources to be put into early/ midgame.
Achievements/ Collection logs (This is necessary to create an evergreen like game, think of OSRS collection log, accompanied achievements for various rewards described in detail below).
Leveling Raids (Necessary due to the slowed down leveling, raids at 30,40, and 50 would be good, 10 player, think of UBRS style stuff for midgame).
Revamp loot system for endgame content (This will be necessary for the collection log, similar to retail, how loot is assigned in LFR, I am open to the loot being tradable to avoid loot waste. However, in order to be counted for a collection log, the loot must be assigned, and bound to you by equipping it).
Profession rework (Reworked to match the pace of leveling, increase mat cost and interplay between professions, details/ Ideas below).
PVP rework (Something needs to be done to R 14 gear, it cannot exist as it does now. I believe 1v1 and/or 2v2 arenas should be added. rebalancing in the sense that, A good mage can almost always beat a good warrior, however, a good warrior can almost always beat a mediocre mage, that kind of philosophy…) (every class should have a counter)
World building/ gear rework ( I believe that good gear, as in greens or better, should be roughly about 2x as rare to get as it is now, across the board, total rebalancing of all gear at all levels, make crafted stuff good, but hard to get, make BOE’s good, but hard to get, make chests 3x as rare, but give them WAY better rewards, etc… )
Must NOT haves: (Summarized heavily, more detailed list below)
Flying mount type things
Mage boosting/ aoe lvling
GDKP’s
Wow tokens/ item shop
Melee hunters, heal mages, tank warlock/rogues… etc
Dual wielding enhancement shamans, hunters with no arrows
Nightmare Incursion type systems
Weakauras, combat logs, over saturation of addons.
Dungeon grinding
Major class stacking
B.S. honor farming (AV grinding)
There are two sections following these, which Include a section of fun ideas (Such as demon hunters, player owned housing, releasing classic plus in a Warcraft 2 world, stuff like that. Followed by a section of questions that I don’t have good answers for such as what to do with tier sets, should we have a poll booth? etc.. etc…
I did not cover every possible avenue, but I believe this substack may be able to convince you and give you some sort of idea where my head is at. comment and let’s discuss.
Must Haves
Double or triple amount of xp needed to reach level 60.
- I know, but if you want the game to have longevity, this is a must!
- For example, it could be something like… 1-10 is the same, 10-20 takes 1.5x the xp it usually takes, (20-30 1.75x), (30-40 2x),(40-50 2.25x), (50-60 3x), something like that. The journey is the game!
The new zones, Hyjal, Dalaran, etc… etc… not all endgame zones!!! - Nothing should stop Gilneas from being a level 30 zone… for example.
-This pairs well with 2x or 3x time to 60 to fill out the gaps.
—>ACHIEVEMENTS!!!<—
- Arguably the most important thing to add. Titles, cosmetics, mounts, non-power upgrades ( I will provide some examples of what I think this could look like below).
- A second hearthstone programmable to a second location for fully exploring every zone in the game.
- A wind rider pet / gryphon pet for unlocking every flightpath
- meta achievements like completing every quest in the game gives you an allied race equivalent for each race that fits thematically with classic but is badass! Undead elf, Fel orc, those green hinterlands trolls, night elf-> high elf, stuff like that.
- If you buy every night elf mount you get a bengall tiger, if you buy every gnome mount you get a fluorescent green mechanostrider, collect all mounts from all 4 races you get a cool faction mount.
- Complete all the achievements in BWL and get a cloak that matches tier 2 set, but make it look super cool, like the shaman one is a cool white wolf pelt that drapes over your shoulders, that is equal in stats to your BIS cloak that tier and it provides the same protection as an Onyxia Scale cloak, make a use for it later in another raid that requires dragonbreath protection, stuff like that!!!
→ COLLECTION LOG <—
-THIS IS A MUST! you need a collection tab for rare mounts, tabards, pets, cosmetics! There should be achievements linked to the collection log.
Leveling raids! 10 player
-Gilneas castle level 30 ish
-Scarlet monastery (crunch all the dungeons into one mega dungeon)
-level 50 (I don’t know, make a raid themed around a new zone that is appropriate… karazhan crypts dungeon? We will get to that later…)
-These are an important compliment to the slow leveling, if leveling is slowed down significantly, these gear upgrades will be impactful for longer.
-Dungeons can be run a maximum of 3 times a day, leveling raids reset either daily or every three days, id say daily… max level raids still reset weekly.
-I am going to use the Scarlet Monastery as an example of how one of these raids should play out difficulty and gear progression wise…
These raids should be roughly an equivalent difficulty of somewhere between Molten core and ZG. Something, if you ran with a scrub pug, you could clear it in 3-4 hours, with a good group, 1-2 hours. All gear should be blue quality or above in these raids.
Lets use the theoretical Scarlet Monastery raid as an example. All interim bosses, interrogator, houndmaster drop 1 blue quality item. Blood mage, Arcanist Doan , drop 2 items each(wing bosses). The final bosses, Herod, Morgraine, drop 3 pieces of loot. Morgraine having a chance to drop a mount with roughly the same drop rate as the zulian tiger in ZG. Scarlet charger… whatever. Rare chances of dropping epics, 5%? Them being whitemaines chapeau, Herod,s Shouldier, Ravager, and Scarlet Commanders crest??? They drop but they are rare…
with upgraded rewards from the Into the Scarlet Monastery with a BIS something option for every class/ spec combo, and maybe a few other quests. Rare pet 5% or less, achievements, etc…
Dungeon and Raid Progression
-I think that dungeons, leveling raids, and raids should follow a difficulty / loot progression something like this:
Dungeons level 10-20- roughly the difficulty of SFK, first few bosses drop 1 item, 50% chance green, 50 % chance white. The 3rd to last boss has a 75% chance to drop green, 25% blue. 2nd to last boss 50/50 split blue or green, last boss 100% chance blue… basically think deadmines. I believe the last bosses in these dungeons should be a step up in difficulty, roughly the difficulty of an early MC boss.
20-30, similar difficulty AS 10-20, think like an RFD level of difficulty. Early bosses have 100% green drop chance, last 2 or 3 bosses have a chance to drop a blue, last boss maybe drops 2 items.
Level 30 raid, each boss drops 2 items. The first few bosses, both loot rolls have a 50% chance to drop a green or a blue. Last 3 bosses 100% blue drop 2 items. These bosses can drop a rare tabard and pet in whatever way makes sense thematically (Stuff like this is what you are seeking for collection logs/ achievements). The last boss has a small chance, around 5 %, to drop an epic, something like a tidal charm or dead man’s hand that everyone can use. This should be the first epic available, and only one for a bit. ( excluding super rare world drops that can stay kind of as they are)
Dungeons 30-40, I think loot cadence is perfect already, maybe add another sul’theze type epic to one of the dungeons. These dungeons should roughly be the difficulty of molten core, maybe a bit easier.
Level 40 raid- we discussed this above, these items should be sort of BIS until level 45, and remember, with the slow leveling, these will be powerful and impactful upgrades. And things like the scarlet set, epics, being equivalent to roughly level 50 gear with maybe 1 or 2 items being pre raid BIS.
Level 40-50 dungeons. Slight difficulty boost from 30-40. Keep loot cadence roughly the same as it is now in era.
Level 50 raid- all blues, some epics sprinkled in, EPICS SHOULD BE RARE. add some rare cosmetic rewards, recipes, rare crafting reagents. Maybe a final boss quest drop ( Think Ony head) that provides a weak world buff… +5 to all stats and underwater breathing, something like that.
50-60 the loot for these dungeons should follow a similar cadence that they follow now, basically all blues, rare epics. Difficulty of these dungeons should be roughly the same as AQ 20/ ZG, maybe the level 60 ones being a BWL difficulty. You need to craft specific items like Ony cloak esque… etc.
-The first raid should be about as difficult as karazhan, and they should get progressively more difficult, maybe capping out at a Tempest Keep type difficulty.
- Don’t be afraid to add midgame content throughout the lifecycle!!
**!CONTROVERSY ALERT! **
ENDGAME RAIDS MUST HAVE A LOOT SYSTEM SIMILAR TO MODERN WOW!
-No rolling, no master loot. You have a x % chance to get a drop on any given boss, make that percentage so on average the raid gets between 2-4 pieces of loot per boss, idk, however they do it in retail… butttt LOOT SHOULD BE RARE… ISH.
-This is essential for the collection log system to work and create longevity in the content.
- If you want to fill up a collection log, it has to drop in your name! I’m not necessarily opposed to keeping the 2 hour trade window active on this loot, so it can still be distributed to avoid waste, but if you want it in your collection log, it has to be dropped for you, and equipped by you.
Profession rework!
-Add Jewelcrafting!
- Professions should slow down like leveling! 3x material cost! But the rewards are better.
With the long leveling, again… these item upgrades will be more impactful. I think that professions should all intertwine, MORE THAN THEY DO NOW!
For example, a belt a leatherworker makes may need a belt buckle, made by a blacksmith, that takes 10 iron bars to make one belt buckle. This belt also takes 20 silk threads, made by a tailor at 2x silk cloth each, and an oil made by an alchemist… And it requires like 20 tanned leathers, to make one good useful belt.
-Good profession items SHOULD FILL GEAR GAPS FROM DUNGEONS AND LEVELING RAIDS.
Let’s say that the SM raid has a serious lack of good leather caster gear. It should drop rare patterns off trash and bosses that fill that gap, think of how in Deadmines and Wailing Caverns that the caster gear is lackluster. Fill that gap with crafting. - Add rare profession items like arcane crystals, for gathering professions, used to make blues in early and midgame crafting.
I don’t think you should be able to craft epics until very late game (55+)
-For the end game.. I think every raid tier, there should be 1 or 2 BIS items that are craftable for half or more of the class/ spec combos.
They should be in gear slots that don’t make your character look ugly. I don’t know about you guys, but it pisses me off when I have to break my warlocks badass tier 2 set and put the ugly Bloodvine robe on, make it bracers or something!
KEEP GROUND MOUNT LEVEL 40.
- And double the price! You heard me… longer leveling higher price. Get lucky and get the SM mount, make 2 or 3 rare mounts between 40 and 50 that are 65 or 70 % move speed… idk.
You can reduce the price with reputation, if you’re revered with your faction you can get it for 100g, but make this difficult to achieve at level 40.
PVP OVERHAUL
-As far as pvp goes… I actually think it is in a good spot in a lot of ways but could use a few tweaks.
As far as lower level pvp gear from the various battlegrounds, I think the gear is itemized excellently and is an appropriate reward for effort put in. Think of the level 18 neck from WSG, 28 boots from AV… those items.
- As far as pvp balance… its interesting. I think in an ideal world it’s ok that a good mage beats a good warrior most of the time, but a good warrior should be able to beat a mediocre mage.
I think with tweaks to the balancing like that, is really all that’s needed.
-For example, I think an appropriate hunter ability to add would be a disengage type ability, and maybe get rid of the dead zone. I’m only using hunter as an example because that’s what I mained in classic.
- As far as the r14 grind goes… idk, rank 13 get a mount, rank 14 get the weapon skin or something, I don’t know how to fix it but it’s degenerate and needs to change. It should definitely not be like it is in anniversary either.
- I heard a rumor one time that there was an mysterious rank 15 title, that was supposed to be awarded to the #1 pvper of each faction per server. It gave a unique title based on what race you were. I think this would be an incredibly cool thing to give the biggest degenerate on every server, kind of like the black bug mount, but you only keep it for as long as your #1 in… arena?! Yes… Arena! 1v1 and 2v2 only! I guess the title could go to the highest ranked team on the server.
-1v1 arena in classic? Badass, make sure that every class has at least 1 counter.
Like the best mage can dominate everyone, except when they face a chad druid or something like that.
- IDK what max level pvp gear looks like in classic plus… but some damage mitigation may be nice. I think for arena to work in Classic Plus, everyone would need to have 2x as much mana as they have now, and take half as much damage,… Roughly.
- 1 kill in a bg=:1 honor + a win bonus, 1 kill in open world=10 honor, with diminishing returns to avoid cheesing.
Class reworks!
- So I am going to use 2 examples, hunter and shaman and just tell you what I personally would like to see fixed, and you can extrapolate this philosophy to other classes if you like how I am thinking, I am also going to talk about how I feel like class balance should be in general.
- So lets take a shaman for example, I see my classic + enhancement shaman, WITH A 2H, if they duel wield then you can suck it, 2H only.( for dps), add shamanistic rage, and maelstrom, thats it!!! Possibly 1 more filler ability to make the rotation more interesting, but really that’s all you need.
- Elemental- fix mana, give em shamanistic rage or something. Add elemental blast which you can cast if you use all three different shocks on your target within 1 minute, you can get real cool with it and make it so it changes what it does based on what order you do the shocks in. Give them a good root or stun for pvp, done.
-Resto shaman? I am not a cuck so I dont heal, they seem fine. Give em spiritwalkers grace for pvp, and give them all the ability to get instant ghostwolf if they talent appropriately.
-Shaman tank? Yes! Make a baby with the SoD Enhance tank and classic enhancement shaman and make it like that.
-Hunter! Hunter is pretty good, it actually has a few cool gimmicky things you can do to maximize dps that makes the rotation interesting.
(Again, I am just using these classes as an example because these are the ones I know, it is more to illustrate the design philosophy I think they should have when reworking the classes)
- I think marksman should be the best dps for hunters in most raiding situations. Add disengage, done.
-Survival, make it a melee WEAVE hunter, I dont think that pure melee hunter is good thematically. Make it a high skillcap hunter spec that does about 80-90% dps of a marksman hunter but provides good raid buffs, make 'em slap in pvp.
-They can use traps in combat, trap launcher, add a new trap with good utility thats survival only, make it so like after 3 arcane shots your raptor strike does double damage and you can cast your mongoose bite whenever your raptor strike Crits.
- Give them improved stings and aspects, but don’t give them range bonuses you get in marksman, idk, something like that.
- Make it hard to play, if you want to be pure melee, be a warrior or rogue.
- Beast master… idk I dont play BM. But I feel like class changes like this would be appropriate and stay true to classic plus.
Class Balance
-The pure dps classes… Warlock, Mage, Rogue, and Hunter, do the most dps in general, but dont provide a lot of raid utility that improves combat performance.
They can provide some utility by changing specs. For example arcane mage maybe doesn’t do as much damage as fire, but it can make buff food that is BIS food, but you can only get the effects if the mage is in your group, and he does 80% of the damage as fire in most cases. And yeah, fire mages do no damage to ragnaros, but do a lot in other places.
- The classes that have 2 roles.. priest, warrior. Do slightly less damage then them but are still useful for whatever reasons.
-And the hybrids… Pally, Druid, Shaman do the least dps in most situations. But there should be at least 1 or 2 fights in every raid where this order fluctuates. For example, an elemental shaman and an arcane mage can pop off on chromaggnus, and maybe there is a boss that is super armor heavy but has low shadow resistance and a shadow priest can pop off.
GET RID OF A LOT OF RAIDS AND DUNGEONS, REPLACE THEM! Controversial!
- we do not need to run Molten Core as it is again. You should keep the three fan favorites (ZG, BWL,NAXX) generally intact, but the other raids can all suck an egg and go.
-Lets say you need to keep MC because you want to still have thunderfury, gut the raid! Redo it entirely, top to bottom, you can keep lore necessary bosses, like ragg barron and garr, but make the models unique, change it! New raid entirely!
-Same thing with the AQ’s. Make em dungeons or something… idk. Stockades… gut it.
- A cool idea I had is, lets say like the third raid you open the dark portal, we enter a revamped Hellfire Peninsula, you can only wander through hellfire.
Hellfire Citadel raid with Magtheradon as the last boss, no flightpaths, no innkeeper. Keep it as much of a part of the world as you can. - HARDMODES HARDMODES HARDMODES!, Ulduar style only, that’s the only proper way.
- Use things like the ZG shoulder enchant, bindings, DFT, to keep raids relevant, there should be multiple of these types of items in every raid! For example, Let’s say Naxxramas becomes the new tier 2, the Naxx tier set can have similar stats, but have damage bonuses to undead tacked on, so in future content involving undead, many of the pieces are part of a BIS set for that content, even though it may be two tiers old.
World Building!
-There is a cool thing that project ascension is doing with mobs where they drop green boe’s that are the gear they are dropping, like Defias Wizards drop robes and staffs that are the ones they are carrying.
I think this should be implemented for most, if not all, boe world drop greens. You can make it part of the collection log, would be super cool.
- Rare spawns should take 2 or 3 people to kill if you’re within like 5 levels of them, and drop good, solid gear.
Some drop rare pets of themselves, etc etc, collections! You should double the amount of rarespawns in the game, keep 'em rare, but not super rare, well… use your discretion. Some rare spawns should be like dungeon bosses where you need like 5 people.
-Make chest twice as rare, but guaranteed green+ item, it can be gear, rare profession mats, but make them good.
-Make like 5 more outside dungeons, like the place in the hinterlands, give them dope quests, maybe put some of those " boss" rare spawns in them.
-You should make BOE items obtainable in these cool ways, but make them twice as rare to get as they are now, gear= hard to get= meaningful.
but also… it is classic, you should not get rid of all the troll items entirely (Vendorstrike, Lei of Lillies).
RACIALS
- Don’t get rid of Will of the Forsaken, give the other races cooler racial abilities that are as good or better. give Trolls a hex that slows, give Tauren a charge that just makes you ram 20 ft ahead on a 2 minute cd, stuff like that.
-Imbalance is ok in my opinion. The priest thing where they all have a different ability is fantastic, embrace this principle, do it with all race/ class combos.
THINGS THAT ARE NO NO’S (fight me)
. NO flying mounts
. NO boosting
. NO Mage AOE farming/ leveling (SMD)
. NO GDKP
. NO WoW tokens ( I am ok with them selling realm transfers, race and faction changes, I don’t like it, but they got to make money, give them like 90 day cooldowns each or something)
. NO Mounts/ cosmetics for sale
. NO tank warlock/ tank rogue
. NO heal mage
. NO full melee hunter
. NO DUAL WIELD ENHANCEMENT SHAMAN (If you don’t understand this, you shouldn’t be designing classic plus).
. NO Alliance shamans/ horde paladins ( I love that there are faction specific classes)
. NO buyable level boosts
. NO level 70, at least for like 4 or 5 years.
. NO Weakauras
. NO Damage logs
. NO making leveling faster like a year from now
. NO dungeon grinding ( dungeons limited to 3 times per day, may make an exception at max level for collection purposes)
. NO raids with 50% warriors.
. No nightmare incursion type systems.
. No runes.
. No summoning stones .
. Discourage AV type honor farm methods.
. Do not gear all new content for endgame, 3/4 of all new initial content should be for early and midgame, 1/4 should be endgame, new content afterwards should be about 50/50.
. Do not let the economy get out of control! Goldsinks goldsinks goldsinks!
. 0 tolerance gold buying policy.
.no scalable content, other than leveling raids possibly, im ok either way with that.)
.No 40 man raids! (10 mans/ 20 or 25 or 30) only! I think 25 is the sweet spot.
.NO LFD/ LFR (Obviously) dungeon finder is ok IMO.
. No getting carried through dungeons by 60s! (Nerf the xp, don’t allow quest progression, just doing it for loot is ok I guess)
. No cross realm play! If realms die, merge them, merge realms for BG’s only when necessary, try and keep it same realm the best you can.
.no major faction imbalance! Enforce faction balance, should never go past like a 60/40 split on pvp realms.
. Do not make all the new zones endgame zones! MOST of them should be lower level zones to accompany the longer leveling journey.
Some cool ideas that are not must have’s and must not’s, but just some maybe’s
New classes- Undead death knight/ Night elf demon hunter
-So, I’d like to go the opposite direction of most, and create an even greater faction divide, I love faction identity. My problem with the new classes they add are that they keep trying to make jack of all trade classes, monk and evoker… not everyone has to tank, not everyone has to heal.
I don’t want the new classes to be so much better than the others, I don’t want them to be so much flashier than the others. Creating these and making them fit into classic may be tricky, but I think it could be done, don’t make them heal…
Economic intervention!
-If an item gets totally out of control, pump them into the AH to get the price down to where you want it, if there is an oversupply of peacebloom or whatever, cut the spawn rates/ buy out the AH stock and destroy them.
Transmog!
-Not in the way it is now, but I would like some sort of way to change the look of certain pieces of gear to show off achievements. For example, What sod did with enchanted weapons is great, lets say if you complete an specific achievement in Tier 1, there is a vendor you can trade your tier 1 pieces into and get a recolored version. These mogs should be very difficult to get.
Mid game world bosses!
-Rarespawns that require 20+ people of appropriate level to kill, I don’t know how to avoid level 60s from just snagging these and have not really worked out how this would be implemented, but a giant loch-ness monster type worldboss in Loch Modan would be cool.
-self found/ hardcore modes!
This one will obviously happen in some form, I just wonder if it will have to be separate realms or not, you can have hardcore realms, and also have a soul of iron type buff on normal realms and just make it an achievement with some cool reward.
!SUPER CONTROVERCIAL ALERT!
-Now this is super extra, but you could just throw baby out with the bathwater and make the whole thing a prequel, make us play in Azeroth during the earlier horde alliance wars, during the legion invasion and there are just demons everywhere, during the scourge invasion and there is a Silvermoon raid where we have to fight the scourge starting in the Ghostlands, that idea is wild and would be tough but if done right, would be super cool.
. Deadwind pass zone fleshed out, Karazhan and Karazhan crypts is a giant indoor/ underground zone with accompanied raids/ dungeons. Think about it!!! Giant crypt and castle as an open zone, absolute chaos!
. Northrend/ outland endgame zones.
- like I said earlier with Hellfire Peninsula! These would be endgame zones, restrict them to one or two zones per continent( hellfire, and Icecrown only, for example…) no flightpath, no innkeepers, you shouldn’t make it so people are just here all the time, maxed players generally shouldn’t want to spend more than like 20 percent of their time here.
Attunements!
-They don’t all have to be Onyxia, but they should be harder than mc attunements, make an attunement for every raid, every level up raid, northrend and hellfire.
BOA trinket
- Now, there should…possibly… maybe be a boa trinket that works like heirlooms, that costs like 3000 gold, only obtainable after your first 60 that increases alt leveling speed… gives no stats, in fact just takes away a trinket slot, but it makes the leveling speed possibly similar to 1-60 on era. This could also be locked behind some crazy achievement ( like reaching an exalted reputation with all 4 races) or something like that.
Player Housing
-This would be nothing more than a goldsink used to display gear and achievements (Nefarian head on the wall, for example)
It could possibly have some sort of utility with getting rested xp, being storage for full sets of gear you have, teleports. But it CANNOT have any sort of power/ economic benefit, no AH, no bank.
Questions I still have
What do we do with Tier sets?
-Should there be tier sets for all 3 specs? Maybe different raids tier sets are geared toward different specs? Like, Maybe tier 1 warrior set is a tank set, some pieces are good for fury / arms, but your mostly using offset pieces, then in tier 2 the tier set is a DPS set and you just get some random off pieces for tank.
Can we get rid of any of the raids/ dungeons?
- I don’t know the lore well enough to just be like…. Ok no AQ 40…. But this seems like something that almost definitely needs to be done, we can’t just keep recycling the same raids and tweak them a bit.
How would pvp rewards work?
- I dont know how you could make pvp gear scale, I think resilience is a hot take for most people, I think pvp may have to be just mostly for cosmetics and achievements.
Is expanding AT ALL to Outland and Northrend a slippery slope?
-It feels dirty, but also could be awesome if done well.
If I get my wishes, should non- end game dungeons be free roll/ master loot? Or should it all be auto- loot random chance like retail?
-If we want to get sweaty with it and have a near infinite collection log, I’m just worried about people getting funded collection log gear and trivializing it.
Should there be unobtainable items?
-It would be cool if the world changed, like there is a massive scourge invasion that lasts for like 6 months and there are unique rewards, kind of like pre expansion events? Is this too much? Too far?
Should there be a poll booth?
-Well, OSRS does it, I feel like if we needed a 70% consensus, the no changes would terrorize and make classic + basically nothing.
Can vertical progression be evergreen?
- I don’t think so, but this is my best attempt at making it such.
Should this be more ALT friendly?
- I don’t think so, in the sense that you shouldn’t be able to fast track your way to the end on your second go around. I feel like I may be in the super minority on this one. But who knows.