Agree with OP.
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One thing to remember is the Council is for both Retail and Classic and there are people in the CC that are for various subcategories within those too, there are some really niche topics discussed sometimes. I don’t know what the breakdown is but maybe there ought to be invitations toward people who are more classic orientated. It might also be that there is generally less to discuss. A lot of the things surrounding core gameplay design which you might see discussed about Retail are not things that are likely to be changed.
Right now the top threads on the Council forums are discussing things like feedback on the newest content patch in Retail. These are topics which would (potentially) influence future design decisions. Giving an opinion like “I prefer multiple but shorter raids like in Tier 5” isn’t going to really have any impact. The content is already made and we have to live with the very core and fundamental design decisions made back in 2008 for better or for worse.
There is a post up for the WoW Token introduction as well as Classic+.
I personally main retail although I do play Classic from time to time when I get the urge to. I really respect Classic and really enjoy the early versions of the game for what they are.
I asked about RDF in the CC meeting, I would never in a million years want to see RDF added to Era, or any fresh Era releases, It doesn’t fit in with the game. But it’s clear to me at least that by the time of Wrath, especially in the way people play the game now, RDF isn’t the sinful catalyst of the game’s downfall but pretty much the only way you’re going to fill a dungeon group at level 38 even on the largest servers. My experience levelling an alt in Wrath a few months ago wasn’t a very fun one and I had no meaningful social interactions despite my efforts. It’s a ‘hi’ if you’re lucky and a ‘sum pls’ if you’re not, with a ‘gg ty’ at the end.
I did have some meaningful and memorable interactions running dungeons in Classic 2019-2020 as well as in Era because I think the way the dungeons themselves are designed and how the game plays has infinitely more impact on the way people socialise than RDF does. Whilst both Vanilla and Wrath are ‘easy’ to a modern gamer, the old dungeons certainly require more of your brain to be functioning than the Wrath ones do for the average comp. You’re not running in to Deadmines and pulling 3 packs at once and watching your dps just aoe it all down. If you do that you will die in Era, because the tank would lose aggro and your mage would be clobbered in the face. You have to be more methodical in your approach. Another thing is the general layout. You don’t have massive sprawling instances which are a complete adventure even if you know them like the back of your hand. The average heroic takes something like 10-15 minutes. Even Stockades was more conducive to building social bonds, after all, everyone knows not to leave the group afterwards, right? Otherwise you’ll be seeing those same people at The Attack! fifteen minutes later and pitifully asking to rejoin the group.
My view on RDF is that I think they should’ve added it on launch for 15-79 and when the Titan Rune dungeons came for the regular Heroics. I’m okay with Titan Rune Dungeons not being added to RDF. Just like how in Retail you need to form your own group in order to do Mythic+.
Sometimes there are changes that need to be made that would better replicate what the original feeling was trying to capture. I think a good example of this is the changes they made in SoM in relation to what had been going on in Classic with dungeon boosting.
Whilst boosting always has happened in Vanilla in 2005/2006, it was not anywhere near to the same scale and never commercialised and as spammy as it was especially in the latter stages of 2019-2021 Classic.
The changes they made in SoM so that you would receive a redundant amount of xp if you have a high level in the party, as well as some of the snare changes were done to preserve the spirit of the game.
As to why those haven’t since been backported to the Era realms is truly beyond me. It also took them months and months to add them to TBCC once they were on SoM too if I remember correctly.
On WoW Token, ultimately, I don’t think it’s the answer, and certainly not in the way they did it. To drop probably one of the biggest newsbombs on the game without really any discussion or engagement with the community was a big mistake. The post they did eventually put up after people went up in arms should’ve been made weeks ago and in an ideal world it would’ve been accompanied with a poll.
I don’t believe that their current way of tackling these issues is remotely within either the ‘Spirit of Classic’ or within Blizzard’s own values of ‘Gameplay First’ or ‘Play Nice; Play Fair’.
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First thanks for some of the questions and showing up to that.
Definitley felt a little uncomfortable for everybody at first, but for a first time meeting i felt it was okay.
I liked it when things went off script and i could hear unfiltered thoughts, however there was a tension regarding some questions because they most likely couldnt, and shouldnt respond as they arent in charge of said avenue when it came to bots.
I wish there was a question regarding new or old cut content. Wintergrasp air battles were present in beta and would definitley rekindle an interest among one to mention.
Or a question regarding alternative means to RDF. New quests? New dungeon quests? New incentive system to do dungeons in the first place?
Inherently even with RDF, by month 2 or 3 queue times will be at an hour +. This is one of the main reasons im against RDF as i vividly remember wanting to do dungeons but just doing the same thing over and over again can only be done so many times.
I wish there was more of everything honestly im bored of leveling in storm peaks as by the 3rd time the slog of flying across the zone for 1 quest 5 times back to back is off putting. Ice crown is similar with long flights across the zone to start a hub.
Argh theres so much i want to ask to pivot the direction of wrath into something interesting rather than just running into the same issues from back then.
Im extremely worried what happened in wrath during togc will replay, i dont want to see half my guild raid log because everything is boring and theres no reason to do it.
Community council was never for us. Classic did not get its own section for any game and rarely do any of the topics in that section have anything to do with these games. You have to dig through dozens of retail threads to find 1 for classic or wrath. We also have practically no users from classic/wrath that can even post in that index. They cherry picked who can post there, and it’s 99% retail users. It’s a pretty much worthless forum index as far as we are concerned. I predicted all this as soon as it was announced and pointed it out immediately after seeing there was only 1 section (meaning it’d be for retail, not us).
The token sat well with me just nicely, even if I know it disenfranchised others; polarized demographics.
You talk a big game about supporting RDF and even then, I don’t like your reasoning as I am in favor of it for max level, but where was all your day and night campaigning for our cause?
It took the token to make me more optimistic about finally getting RDF; and our constant championing of it on the Wrath forum should it ever come to pass.
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Why not 15-80? It’s hard to find groups on some of the lower pop servers. It takes a while to find a group for regular heroics at 80 because everyone wants to do H+. They can simply not add the orb inside of a group found via RDF. That takes care of the issue of activating the rune inside the dungeon.
And while I don’t like the 15-79 idea,
I can compromise and accept it; however…
No compromise on the automated, X-realm functionality. It will have it.
Something would definitely have to be done to accommodate you such as CRZ or realm-consolidation.
Just make RDF max-level none +, make it easy on all of us.
I was invited to the council about a week ago.
That’s essentially what I said, apologies if my wording was poor. I would’ve liked for them to have added RDF at Wrath launch for levelling content, and when the first patch happened for Ulduar, introduce it to the baseline Heroic dungeons which like you said, are very hard to find groups for because H+ exists.
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You don’t have to take it out of context to refer to solely yourself.
Your sentiment seems like it is shared by the entire council, prior to your arrival.
Well the CC in general was pretty much just a PR stunt at least originally, Blizzard got people who would just parrot their position but really weren’t an accurate representation of the community as a whole. So basically just blue posters working for free.
It seems like they’ve gotten some new member who actually stand up to blizzard recently.
The thing is running dungeons on a fresh server at launch is very different than running them later on. And that applies to classic era just as much as wrath. Running dungeons early on in classic era was great(it was early in wrath’s launch as well). But by the end of classic era, or more accurately as it got closer to TBC launch, dungeons were just as dead there as they are in wrath particularly while leveling. And RDF would have solved the exact same problems it would for wrath.
As for the socialization, I never noticed any real difference between era dungeons and wrath dungeons. They’re so well known there’s no real need to talk about strategy or how to do them.
Now from a #nochanges perspective not having RDF in classic era makes sense, but inversely not having it in wrath classic doesn’t make sense.
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Peach said as much. Apparently they had tried this whole “Council” crap in the past.
Anyone who thinks a company is going to listen to its customers over shareholders is a fool.
Thank you for taking the time to sift through our thoughts and for making a reply.
The veil behind the thought processes of things is always great to see whenever we are able.
I think that the RDF for that range you proposed is a very good idea, as I play on BSB and it’s a lower population server.
I think that maybe CC could propose some sort of official polling system for things that we could all vote on to add to the game, such as dynamic gaming features like RDF.
Again, thank you for reading through all of this.
Blizzard is garbage, dude. It’s been a long time coming; main account went down on the 25th, this one going down on the 31st. These aren’t even games anymore, they’re haphazardly produced online services with the sole purpose of making money.
These idiots have predated on our familiarity for far too long. Let’s all go out and touch some grass, or play games that don’t make us feel “disappointed” or “angry.”
Why do we keep lining rich CEOs pockets when they don’t even try to mask the fact that they are running a scam on this massive community?
Their agenda won’t fit what the community wants. That’s why we hardly see any polls, even less public polls.
Polling the community is such a good idea, but ignorance is bliss and it’s easier to say “community wants X” without asking the community.
How are you unsure of where the game is going? What has you confused and angry?.
Very easy to make statements about nothing just to rile people up. Please explain what you are talking about. My guess, nothing.
Perfect reply. The comment that RDF is ok in wotlk because of how ppl play but would nerver fit in classic era is redicuouls. You did a great job of replying that the issue and need for it is THE SAME for each. lol. some ppl just don’t want it in vanilla. good for them i disagree. but just say that, don’t make up some special reason that its ok in wrath but not classic.
Oh ho, this might be me
#NoChanges was never under consideration. This was known well before the 2019 launch. The retail progression realms are in their authentic endstate: garbage.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think there is a single a CC member that plays Classic Era exclusively.