Som is made by people who dont understand classic and by people who dont enjoy the game. Dual spec should never be in classic, it kills class identity. Pvp battlegrounds from the getgo has ruined phase one. Everyones sitting in AV, afk in IF. Rank 12 gear on the third week of classic lol. It boggles my mind that people were praising some interview with Brian Birmingham, when he ruined the original classic release with his lack of bot fixing, layering that let to the economy getting ruined on the first week by hardcore farmers. And then disappearing after bwl.
He should be despised by vanilla players.
Everyone knows activision likes botters, since it makes the game look more attractive to investors. Ive given up any hope
Why would they buff mc? Mc is meant to be a home for the casuals, where u get drunk and high and just hang out with the homies. Bwl and beyond should have been buffed.
Blizzard needs to stop making decisions to improve vanilla, because their dev team is incapable of making changes that dont destroy the game. They killed phase one, they overbuffed mc (nobody wanted buffed mc, we wanted better cthun), they buffed rogues, they killed memespecs since theres no worldbuffs. They made som like this sort of leveling race competition, and all it screams to me is… the creators dont love vanilla and they are making a game to appeal to non vanilla fans.
The ship has probably sailed on this since it’s already on the PTR. Best you can hope for is for them to buff Sunwell.
That said, we should take a moment to actually consider who Classic should be catering to. Since retail already has difficult raid content, I think Classic should be an alternative to that. Let the Classic dads have their easy raids (well, unchanged from what they were back then) because people who want a challenge have another option.
I think there are a lot of people looking forward to LFD, so I think that should stay how it is. As a copromise, maybe they can do a gradual rollout. When Wrath drops, have LFD for pre Wrath dungeons. Then in Phase 2 or 3, add Wrath normals. Then phase 4, and Wrath Heroics.
If they did this, the heroics wouldn’t be that much different than the TBC heroics in that most of the challenge would be on the tank/healer. You’re probably not going to get actually hard heroics again until Cata (assuming they go pre nerf).
I love classic, mainly era and SoM, but I really wish there was a better method for dealing with the excessive amount of bots.
I do “my part” and report while providing a general description of the behaviors I observe. Sometimes I get an in-game mail stating one of them has been banned; other times, I watch the same bot farm mobs or instances whenever I’m online for months. I even continue to report it as I become increasingly frustrated it’s still around.
Please… do something more about the bots. Thank you!!
Edit: Yes, I know about “ban waves,” but it does not help the feelsbadman observing a bot farm for months.
On Botting:
Like it or not, bots count as a sub and do reflect the success of certain games. They’re a losing battle to try and consistently catch and ban. If bots were going to be “banned”, they need to be consistently manually banned until they cannot keep up with a potential WoW token.
On RMT/WoW Token:
Anyone you ask has been associated with “RMT” in some way. If you ever went to a gdkp, buyers are 99.99% of the time using bought gold. People that have grown disinterested with logging in between raids also will buy gold. It’s a “hush hush” thing that people are only now vocally saying “yea I bought gold for x y z during Naxx”. Just put a WoW token in to keep Blizzard happy with sustaining servers and putting more effort into them.
Raid Nerfs:
Absolutely unnecessary across all tiers. The content isn’t difficult if you give any effort towards the game; you shouldn’t cater to people that have no vested interest in playing if your content is “too hard”.
People cleared all tiers of content on CRT monitors and dial-up. I’m sure they’ll find a way to improve.
Economy:
Seems fine. Again, bots keep the prices and abundance of resources pretty high and at stable prices.
Server Xfers:
In a perfect world, you just shouldn’t have paid server transfer. The second you allow people to freely transfer between servers, you’re going to make every pvp server an imbalanced nightmare. Capping server population on one “layer” and keeping transfers out of the equation is the only way to ensure every pvp server is as close to balanced as possible.
While this is going on, you need to keep tabs on server population, and gauge whether a “free transfer” off dead realms is necessary for people trapped there.
tl;dr, “Transfers” became the RMT that Blizzard has in Classic, when it should’ve been WoW tokens. Transfers destroyed server health.
I would like to preface this by saying that I do not want anyone to think I don’t want people to enjoy Classic, Classic TBC, Seasons of Mastery or Retail. I have seen too many posts and discussions putting down people on both sides.
I see no issues whatsoever that people want WoW+ or “somechanges”. I think this will be refreshing option for people that want something different out of Classic Era WoW. But there is also a large crowd (whether they advocate it here or not) that enjoy Classic Era or Vanilla for what it is. They don’t want massive changes or a deviation of what Classic WoW was/is. They understand the pros/cons, benefits/ disadvantages, and what to expect.
I think it would be foolish on Blizzards part to not condense all Era servers to 1 or 2 remaining and have a fresh Classic Era server that resets every few years.
This would net most private server players, players that do not want changes that Seasons bring and players that want a more traditional experience. Private servers that have been running for 15 years using the vanilla client are proof enough that players will continue to reroll each time. Whether that is for a fresh experience or aren’t a fan of changes.
Classic Era is mostly polished and the maintenance on a fresh server would be minimal in regards to phases or content. The population would be less for sure that would help with layering and overcrowding.
I’m not here to split hairs and say that adding artificial MS in order to create Vanilla WoW is necessary or other silly changes like that. Combatting botting and breaking mage boosting is fantastic for every iteration of the game.
If you mean arena, then maybe. But pvp in general you have 100k total on PVE realms vs 200k on PVP realms, so taking all types of pvp into account, you’re off.
Two wrongs don’t make it right. It’s better to continue to combat gold sellers and give gold buyers caught permanent bans instead of slaps on the wrist.
They give bots/gold sellers/buyers permabans on pservers, and bots continue to thrive there. I can’t stress how much of a losing battle it is, and giving an alternative that could result in more staff on classic servers is a win overall.
I agree. But adding WoW tokens to retail surely didn’t put a dent into the bot issue.
Giving WoW tokens to Classic would be an easy out for Blizzard to not deal with the bot issue and instead give them a bandaid that would shut players up temporarily. Plus WoW tokens in Classic would go over like a lead balloon.
I’ve learned that the classic community has no idea what it wants. They wanted MC to be more challenging in SoM, while having an easier/earlier ranking schedule, and the result is people spending hours longer in MC while rankers get better gear with 2mil honor caps.
For the most part, the community has been the most destructive to the game.
Absolutely. SoM is and will continue to be a failure.
While not the best product in the world, Classic Era was successful and can continue to be for both Blizzard and players alike. Vanilla has been repeatedly emulated on private servers with great success. Enough so that Blizzard made their own product.
Like I stated above, condensing all Era realms to one or two servers would help the remaining playerbase there. It gives SoM crowd a place to migrate after the season, and if Blizzard was smart, they would do a Classic fresh restart.
That would satisfy all players that have no interest in SoM, would net the private server crowd as a safe place to invest time, and would be a continual revenue for Blizzard with little effort on their part, as the game was already written.
Leave Chronoboon in and that’s the middle ground for anti World Buff players. The world records were already run so the crowd for a fresh Classic era would be less sweaty IMO.
Here are the changes I would love to see for TBC and Wrath further down the road:
Dual specialization. At this point, this seems like an essential feature to increase the abysmal PvP participation AND tanks/healers drought in dungeons of all kinds.
Sated. X being funneled more lusts than Y or Z creates unnecessary frustration and an uneven playing field for competitive players.
Battle Squawk. In the same way that LW was deemed mandatory to rotate drums, Gnomish Battle Chicken and Battle Squawks introduced the same problem, except 5 times stronger. Having all chickens proc feels like you’re a god, having a couple of activations fail feels like the end of the world. It’s just not fun and only creates frustration/blames/resentful interactions. Please make the buff unique or get rid of it altogether.
Full-on cross-realms retail-like LFG tool. Several servers are beyond dead at this point and groups successfully starting a dungeon per hour can be counted on one hand. Heroic Keys still require an absurd amount of reputation and dungeons to grind which is basically impossible on some servers when you combine the tank drought + the useless current LFG tool. This is a much-needed change to breathe new life into the game and make alts.
Accept more Classic players’ applications in the Community Council. I know of plenty of great players of all backgrounds who applied and would be excellent voices to represent the hardcore raiding community. Why are there 2 Classic guys for 40 retail representatives? That’s insulting.
I would love to see T6 raids tuned up because as of now it looks very underwhelming and non-engaging for good players, but I’m not holding my breath for any change this close to release. I’m afraid it’s too late to save T6 and a lot of people will be bored out of their mind.
Hi basil! Congratulations on the community council! Is there any chance of finding out what the plan for server Xfers for SoM are? My server is dying at a rapid rate as most people are rerolling to jom. My level 60 is already full pre raid bis and I’d love to not have to restart from scratch. Im more than happy to pay and I know a lot of others are too!
Cheers!
I’ve learned that the classic community has no idea what it wants. They wanted MC to be more challenging in SoM, while having an easier/earlier ranking schedule, and the result is people spending hours longer in MC while rankers get better gear with 2mil honor caps.