I’d be interested in hearing impressions of WOTLK Classic from those who, like me, played on WOTLK private servers before coming here. I love WOTLK and have been playing it on private servers the last 7 years or so, and here are my impressions as just a casual pvper:
Positives:
Peak hours of Classic are on NA prime time. This is huge for NA Classic players, since the private servers are all in Europe, and for years we’ve had to get used to the servers being past peak hours after we got home from work at night. It’s so nice to be able to log on after work and see the action just getting started, for a change.
Higher quality of play in bgs (assuming not too many bots). On the main WOTLK private server, the regular bg scene was dominated by packs of fully-geared no-lifers, some of whom literally had more than a million HKs and who wanted nothing more from a bg than to add to that tally. So in an AV for example, they would just be farming gys all game, not caring a bit about towers or objectives.
On Classic, the human players mainly seem to be there to win the bg, often in order to get their daily bg win and associated arena points. That gives the bgs a much better “feel” and it’s very refreshing.
Negatives:
Huge numbers of bugs and bots. It almost seems laughable in hindsight, but I was looking forward to Classic in the naive expectation that I would see some bug-free gameplay and experience WOTLK the way it originally was. In reality, the truth is that if Classic were released as a private server today, it would be regarded as well below average in terms of bugs and scripting. And of course it’s overrun with bots as well- on my private server I once sent in a video of a bot following me in a bg, and he was banned within 24 hours. I doubt a human GM would even look at my video on Classic.
Completely MIA devs. This is related to point #1 but it really surprised me. When’s the last time we had a blue post here? When’s the last time the lead dev tweeted about Classic? This has the feel of an almost abandoned project- kind of ilke “well, we gave you some buggy, in-the-same-ballpark approximation of WOTLK, so take it or leave it- we’re out of here!”
Bottom line:
For me, the positives still outweigh the negatives- otherwise I’d be playing on private servers right now. Instead, I plan to stick with Classic as long as these servers are active, since having a large and mostly good NA playerbase trumps the negatives with the devs and scripting. I sure wouldn’t mind seeing Blizzard invest a little time and money in improving the quality of this game, though.
Wmame is definitely much better at dealing with bots & customer support.
Granted, the playerbase is only 10,000-20,000
at peak times, there are more pug raids than on Pagle at peak times.
When it comes to playerbase itself, there are toxic players everywhere. In my years of pserver, before coming to retail (and now classic), i’ve met a fair share of toxic people/guilds/pugs, but Classic+Retail is no different.
I just gotta say, the 1-70 leveling scene is a lot more active on a 10k Lordaeron server. There is also RDF that groups people together to do dungeons in between quests.
I’m on pagle. Perhaps there are people in the world too, but none of them are in LFG as travelling to dungeons is usually a complete waste of time .
There is also no weekly downtimes.
pservers are also static in progression, unless its a seasonal realm. You earn your T10 bis and you stay with it for many many many years,.
TLDR -
Pservers are better at dealing with bots and more responsive.
Rest is the same.
RDF > no RDF.
I’m curious as to which bugs you are referring to. I’ve noticed issues with the item set thing, particularly if I try to delete a set.
Also with regards to bots, what are you doing that you’re running into a bunch of bots all the time? or rather, what can I do to find a bunch of bots? I haven’t noticed any, but I certainly haven’t gone looking either (not sure where to start).
Yeah. It’d be nice to see things get better, especially if we could agree on changes that are for the better
I personally am not one of those guys who pays minute attention to what this or that talent or ability is doing, but there are guys who do that and they say Classic is very buggy.
For example, I watch Homerjay’s stream a lot, and often it is seemingly a non-stop parade of him and his partner noticing this or that ability or talent that is bugged:
Homerjay is most annoyed by the hunter trap arming time in Classic- he says it should be a second at most but is often significantly longer, which I have personally noticed as well. That allows even properly trapped targets to often escape cc.
Just o name a couple.
Pet health bug, Dismount and falling to death on some transitions bug, those are the two that get me alot, but there is also quite a few others that pop up from time to time.
Blizzard just comes off as cold and removed from their player base. As most Pservers have doing it for some time they know what players expect and they can deliver. Blizzard as a corporation just seems no where in sight. Those players all wanting RDF, i feel:
A. A private server wouldn’t have wasted their time removing RDF to begin with.
B. Even “if” they had, (that’s a very loose if) removed rdf, some dev/mod, someone in public relations would have made an official statement.
A lot of private servers have teeth and don’t mind swinging back and keeping the community in line. Blizzard, they act their heart and balls both have been removed. I feel bad for the employees. Blizzard just gets walked all over.
the community knows it is illigal and can be shutdown at any moment good luck or gets mad and leaves pop up a new server under a new name advertise that community comes back or you just leave. blizzard hears about it for the next 10 years because of it they need to be alot more cautious,
B. If you host a private server in certain countries, Blizzard can’t touch you. Like Russia as our relations with Russia are a bit intense at the moment. There are other countries too that are out of the US’s reach. So “illegal” could be realitively subjective.
I on the other hand personally feel, what you want do… i am more then willing to give my money to someone else who will. It’s not illegal to play on a private server. So go cry to the many out there that are still up that are either under the radar or out of reach.
Definitely agree. Better than having to queue at 2am.
Definitely. Been stomping WSGs running 3- to 4-man premades with guildies. Feels just like MOP, in that we’re able to contribute greatly to the team.
Seems like there are more bugs on the official servers than on PS. Crit-able DoTs ignoring resilience, Shadowmeld being utterly broken, random DMF stacks consuming massive amounts of cards. Pet-health dismount bug. Random server zones causing dismounts. Gear sets disappearing.
Whoever thought you should be able to get a fresh DK at 58, and -didn’t- think that it would be overrun with botting accounts should be fired. Additionally, Trade Chat is plagued with gold-sellers advertising RMTing non-stop 24/7 with 0 repercussions since launch. Sub-70 BGs are 99% bots. Inexcusable.
I was REALLY optimistic about this, because we actually had fantastic communication during the first few weeks of Beta, on Twitter with Bryan Birmingham. Then it seems like they went whole-hog on DF, and everything ceased. We didn’t know when pre-patch would be, we didn’t know when Joyous Journeys would go live (after they RANDOMLY gave it to Retail a week before Classic???). Then the Bug Report forums went dark, no Blue posts, etc.
It feels like Classic got half-baked, shipped, and put on maintenance mode.
TBH, I’m convinced the only reason a LOT of people stay on the official servers is:
1.) BattleNet integration with friends,
2.) Official servers aren’t subject to randomly being shut down, and
3.) RMT being more accessible.
all this is completely irreverent to the fact that private server do not need to be accountable for their actions blizzard does. you just proved it by saying they are evading the laws blizzard can not do this.
anyone who plays a private server knows that the server can just up and leave all the money you gave them gone not their problem what you gonna do about it ? “hello this illegal program i was using scammed me please help?”
warmane tbc player here. I agree with everything you said in OP
Wish they had just re-released the game as it was. Too many weird changes. I am still having a good time though. Unsubbed when queues got crazy but they did fix that (or the players did idk). Probably will resub long as I keep havin fun
Warmane customer service and latency were both miles ahead of blizz
I have seen several bugs regarding the layers, for example that day a colleague did not change to our layer, also the halloween event is bugged and never starts, the dragons that are used in eye of eternity I have seen that there is a bug with the self healing as it consumes combo points
Yeah, back in the day that’s exactly what Molten did. Stole all the money and burned down the servers (literally). As a avid private server over the years I’ve been very cautious about the money i spend there. The longevity and reputation and stability of those servers tends to be my key to rather i donate to them. If the server is trash i won’t give a dime to them.
Even with all that said you make the arguement that Blizard is subjective to the law: true. However, they may be at risk of fines, but realistically that’s the biggest worry of the law. They’ll never face prison. To many lawyers for that to happen. Also it doesn’t stop them from releasing terrible content and making terrible decisions with game play. Thats why me, my wife, and friends all bailed on Shadowlands and went to a really interesting, different type of private server that does classless wow in tbc and seasonal vanilla. It was so cool and fun.
not a issue on retail servers they will be here till the games dead. i made this account in 2009 only joined the forums for the first time tho this year come back years later toons all there,
all this because of an announcement or word spoken on a forum. are you just gonna do this when ever or when it actually worth taking the risk on?
people get mad and file law suits what ever they might be all trash but its still alot of headache to deal with because they do have to deal with it.
When the game dies is subjective to the individual. Sure servers might be up, new content comes out, but for me for example; wow died after the death of the Lich King. Cata was dreadful, MoP was meh but better, Wod made me cry. Legion was okay, bfa was just boring, and finally Shadowlands, terrible game play, terrible systems, weird to terrible story, and many other issues. DF? I’m not heavily interested in it but out of good faith i wish Blizzard the best of luck.
I’m not following your point here…
Blizzard has lawyers and people have short memories. I’m not at all convinced that anyone at Blizzard high enough to be concerned aren’t all that concerned about lawsuits.
My final question to you is, why do you care what other people do? You act like some Blizzard paid employee that’s shilling for them.
im with you here i did make it to mop but some many changes etc not even close to the same game though i wish they did this sooner TBH but that null and void now.
ok maybe i’m explaining it wrong. lets take this for instances i hear alot “don’t you have a mobile phone” that was one dude who said something he was not supposed too as a result some people would have quit the game right there “blizzard does not care about the player and this shows it” even though it was just this guys opinion. this was a few years ago and i still see people posting about it today. this damages their reputation, then they had to pay a PR team to try and calm people down because he went off script.
again this is just extra money being spent for no reason that should never have been spent. little things can escalate extremely quickly in this day and age.
If they had I wouldn’t have gone to private servers. Let that sink in.
The reset is just business. Even private servers individually have had their bumps in the road and some have paid dearly for it. Others run themselves really well and a tight ship.
You never answered my final question before; what is it that interest you in what other people donwith their time, energy, and money?
