⭐ Classic is Definitely not Vanilla

[Srspanksalót-sargeras]

@Darem-kargath

Hi,

Just an open question… from a 2004 Vanilla player.

If the true purpose of creating WoW Classic is to recreate the authentic vanilla experience - then why not focus on just that?

Player experience in this context is not always the same as static data.

The experience back in the day was for example that dungeons were unforgiving. This was actually one of many important components that made the original masterpiece.

In my opinion - If we want longevity in WoW Vanilla, if we want a standing chance of recreating the experience, then perhaps we should stop debating data and start discussing the experience instead!

Quotes from the original Blizzard WoW vanilla dungeon design philosophy:

“Experience feel meaningful”
“Sense of danger”
“sense of progression”
“pulling is a great way to show individual player skill”
“the path of least resistance”
“boom everything is dead”
The game design pillars of yesterday are the answer to recreating the player experience of the original Vanilla WoW back in 2004. They are timeless.

Watch the clips below - they are amazing! They touch on the subject rather well when it comes to recreating the WoW vanilla experience:

World of Warcraft vanilla Dungeon design

World of Warcraft vanilla Raid design

Down below are a few examples of the many nerfs made (to dungeons) on the way to patch 1.12. Raids have undergone the same treatment.

the 1.1.2 data is the only data they have, and they said they don’t wanna mess with it because it could mess everything up

[Darem-kargath (Darem)]

Hey man, once again.

The purpose of this thread is not to discuss the “how” but the “what”.

What is possible and not, what nerf to reverse and not is up to the Blizz. Classic dev. team.

[Srspanksalót-sargeras]

did you just log in once during 2015 after not playing since vanilla, or did you hit level 60 in 2015?

Edit: sorry I’m high, more curious than anything about why so many people say they played vanilla but didn’t, I didn’t, my first achieve was 2010, but most people who played vanilla had their first achieve launch 3.0

[Darem-kargath (Darem)]

Logged on after not playing since Vanilla.

This character have not been played since 2006

[Srspanksalót-sargeras]

Logged on after not playing since Vanilla.

This character have not been played since 2006

ah ok, a lot of people are lying on here

[Darem-kargath (Darem)]

Yeah unfortunatly…

[Srspanksalót-sargeras]

did you play private servers? I think some of the easy feeling is because most PSs were way overtuned

[Auddoras-nathrezim]

If blizzard un-nerfed I would say nobody would be downing AQ40 for a bit.

Because blizzard never seen C’thun as unkillable. They stated some ppl believe he was.

[Darem-kargath (Darem)]

Nah, never liked the idea of investing alot of time just to have it swiped away at any given moment.

[Moonraja-illidan (Moonraja)]

coming to this discussion late, I agree with the OP 100%. Regarding people saying we are remembering the game wrong…NO WE ARE NOT. 1.12 is too easy. Those questioning our memories, IMO, have no idea what earlier vanilla was like. In conclusion , eff the dolts that squawk about memories not being right.

[Darem-kargath (Darem)]

Right on brother

[Rubmyhorns-bleeding-hollow]

What is the answer to this? To me, the only hope is that classic WoW’s success serves as a indication to the investors as well as the content developers that players are hungry for a return to better (and less synthetic) game design and world building.

Less synthetic. Well put.

[Rubmyhorns-bleeding-hollow]

Thats because they have stated they do not have all of that data and would need to guess, which would make it no different than a private server at that point.

People asked for it to be accurate so that is what they are trying to do. If you are ok with made up numbers and other things they probably could do that, but Im going to guess you would be in the minority.

Maybe so. We’re just speculating at this point, unless one just believes outright what blizz is telling us about their data, but my bet would be they have a decent amount with significant gaps. Required some educated guessing and fine tuning (even post classic launch) to get right. Which in turn requires funding that activision probably isnt authorizing.

The overarching point though is that it’s going to be far riskier to the success of classic if content and leveling is absolutely steamrolled than if they tried to recreate a morr difficult progression but messed up a few numbers here and there.

The irony of my position on this is that I didnt start until late 2006 which means i only played 1.12+. So in a sense I’m not even arguing for the re-creation of my original experience, to your point earlier. Otoh i did find the game difficult at first bc i had no idea what i was doing. Blizz cant recreate that naivete, but that can simulate it thru more challenging content.

[Kurwen-stonemaul]

Don’t bother with him. My quote is directly from blizzard and their classic panel. He knows this too. Just wants to view things his way and claim anyone who disagrees isn’t using critical thinking.

[Caelle-exodar (Caelle)]

Here is the problem though, people have started moving the goal posts now that they have figured out their brain may not have been as reliable as they thought. From a development stand point I’m sure it takes planning and a goal in order for the thing not come off the rails.

When this thing started all people were yelling was for it to be accurate. People asked for it and Blizzard is trying their best to give it to them. The problem is we are figuring out that accurate is way easier than we all remember because we actually know what the heck we are doing and how the game functions.

Remember that whole " you think you do, but you don’t " bit? Sure they got nailed for it, and they should have, but maybe they weren’t as silly as we all believed at the time.

What we are figuring out is that people don’t actually want a fully accurate Vanilla ( or at least the patch in this case ) but what they want is an idealized version of what Vanilla was for them. This is the point I was trying to make in my earlier posts, whose idealized version are we going with? Everyone’s is different.

This is why Blizzard has picked a point in time they can recreate and are sticking with it. They know what the numbers are, they have a reference they can look back to and at the end of the day there can be no argument that it was what we had during 1.12.

I’d have loved a patch by patch progression, but they stated from the start that wasn’t going to happen, so there is no reason in wringing my hands over it.

[Earnil-hyjal]

What we are figuring out is that people don’t actually want a fully accurate Vanilla ( or at least the patch in this case ) but what they want is an idealized version of what Vanilla was for them.

Well, I don’t know about anybody else, but I would never have claimed to want a fully accurate vanilla patch 1.12.

I can live with it, though. If it does well, I would not be surprised if Blizz did try to re-create an old patch and maybe create a new server or two running it.

[Caelle-exodar (Caelle)]

You personally might not have, but in the initially stages of this thing years ago that is what people were yelling for, because private servers weren’t accurate.

[Aladonia-bleeding-hollow]

Don’t bother with him. My quote is directly from blizzard and their classic panel. He knows this too. Just wants to view things his way and claim anyone who disagrees isn’t using critical thinking.

It may be a quote, but the message you’re pushing goes against the entire premise of capitalism. Businesses exist to make a profit by meeting consumer demands while minimizing costs.

Why do you think there are these threads complaining about layering if Blizzard is already quoted saying that they’re going to implement layering? Because if Blizzard perceives an issue as being severe enough to hurt bottom line, then they’ll make a change.

[Aladonia-bleeding-hollow]

I agree with most of your post, but:

What we are figuring out is that people don’t actually want a fully accurate Vanilla ( or at least the patch in this case ) but what they want is an idealized version of what Vanilla was for them. This is the point I was trying to make in my earlier posts, whose idealized version are we going with? Everyone’s is different.

Sure, everyone is different. But there’s an “average player” or “most players”, and we actually have years of data to go off of.

Kronos 1 was relatively Blizzlike in terms of tuning and players constantly complained that it was too easy. Meanwhile, Nost was overtuned to have a healthy level of difficulty and became much more popular.

You can dodge the issue by talking about subjectivity, but it doesn’t mean that there isn’t an issue with 1.12 (dungeon/raid difficulty), that could definitely be improved.

[Aladonia-bleeding-hollow]

You personally might not have, but in the initially stages of this thing years ago that is what people were yelling for, because private servers weren’t accurate.

Exactly this. One of the reasons why the #nochanges was so strong is because a lot of players had great experiences on Nost and other Nost-clones and they didn’t want Blizzard to screw it up, not realizing that group content was overtuned on these servers.