Classic Fresh - upcoming changes concerns

[Thebigbeanis-arugal-935057]

WoW Classic Season of Mastery Coming Soon - WoW

NOTE: This post contains opinions.
As stated in this blogpost, there will be #SomeChanges regarding Blizzards re-release of World of Warcraft: Classic. I wanna highlight some things that have been bugging me at the top of my mind and I wanted to see if anyone else wanted to discuss it/share the opinion. You can read the list of changes in the link I provided but I wanna highlight the changes that stick out to me and I would like to offer my suggestions for other things aswell.

-Meeting Stones will be converted to Summoning Stones.
Previously I’ve stated that Warlocks will be less desired due to Summoning Stones, I had to debate with myself on this topic but with the Twin Emperors needing a Warlock to tank/Garr fight. I neglected to mention this because memory was a bit fuzzy at the 6AM I’ve posted this but thank you to those who mentioned it. It has pros and cons for Warlocks, yes and that’s up to the players.

-Levelling will be on par with TBC in terms of EXP rates.
I’m also a bit concerned about the EXP rates being a bit higher compared to Classic, levelling will be a bit easier and as such, there may be no need for Elite quests. I barely reached 60 in Classic with my Warrior without Elite quests, now I’m able to skip most of the group quests and level in TBC Classic without touching a dungeon. The need for interaction between players to defeat a common enemy/goal is diminished and the community will be less connected.

-Will Naxxramas bosses be buffed?
As stated in the post, Raid bosses will be buffed and missing mechanics will come back. I thought Naxxramas in Classic was a perfect raid, with the right amount of challenge and need for gear from the previous Raid tier and consumes. I understand if Naxxramas is to be buffed, as 1% of guilds ever finished Naxxramas back in Vanilla. But at the same time, I don’t want to brickwalled by a unstoppable boss with a mechanic that wipes half the raid if not dealt within half a second. Then again, it’s up to the players and myself to decide if they do release Naxx with buffed bosses.

-Will boosting be nerfed, and the bot question.
Boosting, we all love it. I am not talking about the boost that Blizzard has provided in TBC but instead I’m talking about paying a mage to boost a lower level in a dungeon. It has become a controversial topic regardless, but I feel like I’m in the minority of people who 100% despise boosting. I haven’t seen a single thing about mage powerboosting in the Fresh announcement and it worries me. Classic had sorta died for me later on (especially during Phase 4/5, AQ/Naxx) since nobody was ever levelling in the Old World and instead was paying to be levelled by a mage. I do not know what other realms are like but Arugal-Oceania LFG chat is nothing but spam with people advertising SP boosts and I see less and less people advertising for normal dungeons between 60-70 as everyone else is getting boosted. Boosting no matter what form-paying Blizzard, a mage or otherwise kills levelling. Levelling is such a big part of the game for me and the reason why I continue to play Classic besides Battlegrounds with my higher level characters. With nobody doing questing, the world has felt desolate and automated; a reason why I stopped playing retail in the first place. My only request for this is to nerf dungeon EXP with higher levels in the group, same goes for TBC aswell. Another thing aswell-more moderation on Bots. Bots have jacked up the economy in my realm so much to the point where some epic BoP items have reached 15,000 gold. I am not kidding, it’s that ridiculous. If bots aren’t dealt with accordingly in Fresh, expect Edgemasters and black lotus for for 30,000 and 800 gold each respectively.

These are my thoughts, and I’m willing to change my mind accordingly, but I wanted to put my voice out there.

[Nachodaddy-sulfuras]

@Thebigbeanis-arugal-935057

-Meeting Stones will be converted to Summoning Stones.
I’m on the fence about this. While convenient (there’s that word), it does sort of make Warlocks less useful. One of the primary attributes of Warlocks besides their big DPS/fear was their summoning spell. Summoning required a soul shard and three people effectively cast the spell. With Summoning Stones Warlocks will be less desired in Raids, and I’m willing to bet that Warlocks will be only brought for the Garr fight for their banish spell, which will be unhealthy. However, time will tell and maybe Warlocks will be as popular as they were in Classic/TBC?

It has pros and cons for warlocks, first of all they don’t need to carry 200 soul shards to summon their raid, but it also makes it so they’re not just taxis.

@Thebigbeanis-arugal-935057

-Levelling will be on par with TBC in terms of EXP rates.
I’m also a bit concerned about the EXP rates being a bit higher compared to Classic, levelling will be a bit easier and as such, there may be no need for Elite quests. I barely reached 60 in Classic with my Warrior without Elite quests, now I’m able to skip most of the group quests and level in TBC Classic without touching a dungeon. The need for interaction between players to defeat a common enemy/goal is diminished and the community will be less connected.

I don’t like easier leveling either for similar reasons that you listed.

@Thebigbeanis-arugal-935057

-Will boosting be nerfed, and the bot question.
Boosting, we all love it. I am not talking about the boost that Blizzard has provided in TBC but instead I’m talking about paying a mage to boost a lower level in a dungeon. It has become a controversial topic regardless, but I feel like I’m in the minority of people who 100% despise boosting. I haven’t seen a single thing about mage powerboosting in the Fresh announcement and it worries me. Classic had sorta died for me later on (especially during Phase 4/5, AQ/Naxx) since nobody was ever levelling in the Old World and instead was paying to be levelled by a mage. I do not know what other realms are like but Arugal-Oceania LFG chat is nothing but spam with people advertising SP boosts and I see less and less people advertising for normal dungeons between 60-70 as everyone else is getting boosted. Boosting no matter what form-paying Blizzard, a mage or otherwise kills levelling. Levelling is such a big part of the game for me and the reason why I continue to play Classic besides Battlegrounds with my higher level characters. With nobody doing questing, the world has felt desolate and automated; a reason why I stopped playing retail in the first place. My only request for this is to nerf dungeon EXP with higher levels in the group, same goes for TBC aswell. Another thing aswell-more moderation on Bots. Bots have jacked up the economy in my realm so much to the point where some epic BoP items have reached 15,000 gold. I am not kidding, it’s that ridiculous. If bots aren’t dealt with accordingly in Fresh, expect Edgemasters and black lotus for for 30,000 and 800 gold each respectively.

They said that they’re “looking into solutions” for this but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

[Schittstein-sulfuras]

@Thebigbeanis-arugal-935057

-Meeting Stones will be converted to Summoning Stones.
I’m on the fence about this. While convenient (there’s that word), it does sort of make Warlocks less useful. One of the primary attributes of Warlocks besides their big DPS/fear was their summoning spell. Summoning required a soul shard and three people effectively cast the spell. With Summoning Stones Warlocks will be less desired in Raids, and I’m willing to bet that Warlocks will be only brought for the Garr fight for their banish spell, which will be unhealthy. However, time will tell and maybe Warlocks will be as popular as they were in Classic/TBC?

I don’t care about this change either way. I will say, I didn’t enjoy being a summon bot in Classic, and if you’re concerned about warlocks, don’t be. They would still be brought along for their curses, and they are also very important for Twin Emps in AQ. Additionally, there were actual guilds that had a rule against summoning people, a rule I wish was more common. In short, warlocks will be fine even if summon stones are added.

@Thebigbeanis-arugal-935057

-Will boosting be nerfed, and the bot question.
Boosting, we all love it. I am not talking about the boost that Blizzard has provided in TBC but instead I’m talking about paying a mage to boost a lower level in a dungeon. It has become a controversial topic regardless, but I feel like I’m in the minority of people who 100% despise boosting. I haven’t seen a single thing about mage powerboosting in the Fresh announcement and it worries me. Classic had sorta died for me later on (especially during Phase 4/5, AQ/Naxx) since nobody was ever levelling in the Old World and instead was paying to be levelled by a mage. I do not know what other realms are like but Arugal-Oceania LFG chat is nothing but spam with people advertising SP boosts and I see less and less people advertising for normal dungeons between 60-70 as everyone else is getting boosted. Boosting no matter what form-paying Blizzard, a mage or otherwise kills levelling. Levelling is such a big part of the game for me and the reason why I continue to play Classic besides Battlegrounds with my higher level characters. With nobody doing questing, the world has felt desolate and automated; a reason why I stopped playing retail in the first place. My only request for this is to nerf dungeon EXP with higher levels in the group, same goes for TBC aswell. Another thing aswell-more moderation on Bots. Bots have jacked up the economy in my realm so much to the point where some epic BoP items have reached 15,000 gold. I am not kidding, it’s that ridiculous. If bots aren’t dealt with accordingly in Fresh, expect Edgemasters and black lotus for for 30,000 and 800 gold each respectively.

As Nachodaddy stated, Blizzard said they are looking into solutions. But I will address your point about the economy. If anything, bots lowered the price of Black Lotus and Edgemasters. Edgemaster’s is expensive because it is highly sought after but an extremely low drop rate. With bots farming places like Mara 24/7, they increased the amount of Edgemasters available, so with a surplus of the gloves, the prices would be decreased. Likewise, bots being able to farm black lotus spawns 24/7 meant that the supply of black lotus was always farmed to efficiency. What causes black lotus to be so expensive is the fact that it is tied to a rare spawn. The real way to lower black lotus prices is make it more widely available, and the way to make it so that bots aren’t seeing all the gains is, as mentioned in other posts, make black lotus more like arcane crystals rather than its own herb node.

@Thebigbeanis-arugal-935057

-Levelling will be on par with TBC in terms of EXP rates.
I’m also a bit concerned about the EXP rates being a bit higher compared to Classic, levelling will be a bit easier and as such, there may be no need for Elite quests. I barely reached 60 in Classic with my Warrior without Elite quests, now I’m able to skip most of the group quests and level in TBC Classic without touching a dungeon. The need for interaction between players to defeat a common enemy/goal is diminished and the community will be less connected.

My experience, leveling three different characters the old fashioned way without mage boosting, has been that I would usually run out of quests, then have to grind mobs for a few hours to be a high enough level to reach the next zone. As you might imagine, I’m a big fan of the TBC leveling rates, and I also view it as having the advantage of being competitive with mage boosting when questing is able to be so efficient.

[anon78845968]

I mostly agree with everything you’ve said.

I’m also on the fence over meeting stones… they might turn out to be fine and even encourage world pvp… They might also be bad for warlocks and make people flaky. Part of the charm of Classic is actually travelling through the world to get to where you want to go. Is it tedious? Sure… but it also makes the world immersive and real. Ultimately, nobody was complaining about this. So why risk screwing it up?

I’m also not really on board with boosting the xp… Sure, there were times where I wished levelling was just a tiny bit faster, but it’s also arguably some of Blizzard’s best content. It’s part of what makes Classic great. Why rush through it?

I totally agree with you on boosting. This one is obvious.

[Buno-benediction]

Thanks for the post, I was looking for a chill discussion that wasn’t people yelling insults at each other for liking/not liking the world buff meta xD

Meeting Stones: Warlock is my favorite class and I played it in OG vanilla and the classic re-release. I second the opinion that being prepared to summon an entire raid as a warlock never was a great/fun experience and I don’t mind doing with out. That said, this time around I won’t be playing a warlock. Waiting for 4 other people to get to BFD/SFK/WC as alliance can really add hours to a dungeon group and even make it so the group is never realized. I think its cool it will be easier to do some content like this, but I think there should be a higher penalty like you need three people to use the stone (similar to a lock needing 3 people total). Then, three people are always required to travel through the world and add that flavor, but the group still gets going faster because the last 2 summoned. In addition, I don’t see warlock demand dropping for three reasons. (1) Warlocks provide three key curses that will be very important to have up considering bosses will be harder this time around and there is no debuff cap - reck for melee, shadows for warlocks, and elemental for mages. (2) Warlock DPS is not bad, especially since now the debuff cap is increased (removed?) more warlocks can use dots like corruption that gives free shadow bolts in certain specs. I am very interested to see how warlock damage increases thanks to more debuff slots that always held them back. (3) Warlock gear needs to go to someone- remember how bad it felt when only druid gear dropped and no druids to take it? Imagine if that was gear other players could use. If you have 6 mages, your raid will be geared slower than if you have 3 mages and 3 warlocks, if that makes sense, because a lot of gear is class locked.

Leveling: I also don’t love the increased leveling rate. I think the leveling experience is part of the fun personally. I understand that some people found leveling really hard though, so I guess if this is really important to a lot of players and increases the player base, I’m okay with that. I am guessing casual players can’t grind out the levels fast enough to reach end game content they want to see? What might be cooler is if they made rested XP better, allowing it to add up for more than max 2 levels to help casual players catch up.

Boosting: I reeeeaaaally hope they do something to nerf boosting. I thought boosting was so lame when I found out about it. I’ve leveled 1-60 in less than a week with no boosting (shout out to alt-a-holics) but when I learned about boosting it just kind of killed the fun of leveling for me. It’s like, if one person does it, everyone does it and the world is suddenly empty. I love leveling content/questing/dungeons and I think its an important part of the classic experience, and can be just as fun as end game content. Just hope they don’t nerf mages as the solution.

[Chuckscap-sargeras]

I’ve been playing mage in vanilla / classic for the past four years. I think boosting needs to go. Gold buyers and sellers too, insta bans. I 'm glad world buffs are gone. Naxx is going to be harder and that’s great! Hard mode baby

[Astandrelyne-trollbane]

Your opinions are pretty trash. Can tell you really don’t understand the game. Oh, well, not many people do.

[Réynn-emerald-dream]

You all are never happy.

[Roomys-faerlina]

why did this dude write so much nobody in EU writes this much NA freaks me out

EU: “This sucks man wtf”

NA: Lord of the Rings Trilogy

[Thebigbeanis-arugal-935057]

LOL! Next up, star wars trilogy.

[Kiereco-blackhand (Kiereco)]

@Thebigbeanis-arugal-935057

One of the primary attributes of Warlocks besides their big DPS

@Thebigbeanis-arugal-935057

With Summoning Stones Warlocks will be less desired in Raids

Pick one.

@Thebigbeanis-arugal-935057

Levelling will be on par with TBC in terms of EXP rates.

The server is roughly a year active before who knows what. It’s okay to have 25% more quest XP.

@Thebigbeanis-arugal-935057

Will Naxxramas bosses be buffed?

No comment on this, other than it might go back to it was when it original launched and not world buff stacking turbo rushing meta we had.

[Enzeala-area-52]

@Schittstein-sulfuras

I didn’t enjoy being a summon bot in Classic, and if you’re concerned about warlocks, don’t be. They would still be brought along for their curses, and they are also very important for Twin Emps in AQ. Additionally, there were actual guilds that had a rule against summoning people, a rule I wish was more common. In short, warlocks will be fine even if summon stones are added.

Honestly, this is the least concern for locks to me. I’m more interested in how the removal of the debuff limit moves afflocks up the dps meters. Gonna be going hard as a lock this time around to see what I can push since I’ll be able actually use DOTs

[Arielba-sulfuras]

@Thebigbeanis-arugal-935057

As stated in the post, Raid bosses will be buffed and missing mechanics will come back. I thought Naxxramas in Classic was a perfect raid, with the right amount of challenge and need for gear from the previous Raid tier and consumes. I understand if Naxxramas is to be buffed, as 1% of guilds ever finished Naxxramas back in Vanilla. But at the same time, I don’t want to brickwalled by a unstoppable boss with a mechanic that wipes half the raid if not dealt within half a second. Then again, it’s up to the players and myself to decide if they do release Naxx with buffed bosses.

I for one am looking forward to people whining about naxx being too hard lol.

[Jeddite-thunderfury]

Not once, in the history of ever, has an actual Warlock player stated with any ounce of good faith, that he/she resents Summoning Stones because summoning players is a Warlock ability.

[Thebigbeanis-arugal-935057]

All fun and games until the first boss of the Spider Wing knocks the tank up and evades to full health LOL

I’m looking forward to it too, if it is to be buffed. I’m just as intrigued too if it wasn’t, either. It’d be interesting to see what it’ll be like for players this time around.

[Grarg-netherwind]

Summoning stones are my biggest concern of the announced changes. Summoning stones will lead to fewer people in the world. This is the only thing so far making me wonder if I’ll bother with SoM or not. Just sounds like hell to me. All the quality of life changes made throughout expansions are a big reason for the game’s decline in my opinion.

[Axxi-faerlina]

@Thebigbeanis-arugal-935057

Blizzards re-release of World of Warcraft: Classic.

There’s a forum for WoW Classic Season of Mastery Beta. The intended design of SoM is unrelated to WoW Classic (Classic Era).

@Kaivax

Design Intentions

First, it’s important to explain what the Season of Mastery is, a little of what it isn’t, and our overall thoughts about Seasonal WoW Classic. The main goal for the Season of Mastery is provide a WoW Classic experience that brings about “Faster Progression and More Challenging Content”. This is our core design pillar that speaks to many of the changes we’re testing in the Beta, and you can see this reflected in adjustments such as increased quest XP, a 12-month content release cycle, and the Honor System and certain Battlegrounds being available from the launch of the game.

We’re increasing the difficulty of raid encounters, restoring raid mechanics removed in early iterations of certain encounters, and we’re prohibiting the use of world buffs inside raid instances. Of course, these are just the changes we’ve announced so far, and we’re still reviewing feedback and suggestions from the community. There’s certainly room to include additional adjustments if they’re consistent with this season’s design goals.

• While these are significant changes, we want to make it very clear that these adjustments aren’t intended to become a permanent change to all versions of WoW Classic going forward. When the Season of Mastery launches, existing WoW Classic Era realms will remain configured as they are now.