They talk about questing, interface design, and at the very end:
Rob makes a comment, ulimately in passing, that expansion content could be unlocked by community effort (IE: AQ War Effort). Would unlocking new content that’s gated by community efforts be an interesting concept for you?
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6Lu3n9AbUM
I’m more interesting in classic +
Sod was REALLY good right off the start and then it went down hill really fast. Incursions were one of if not the most bone headed things to add.
Will they listen this time around?
everyone grab a shovel, we’re digging a new raid dungeon.
My first thought goes to the inevitable trolls who will make every attempt to sabotage the effort.
On regular servers that wouldn’t be an issue since your reputation matters. But on a megaserver it would be a problem. Then again on a megaserver you can’t really have server wide content in the open world anyway.
Sure you can. The AQ event was a “failure” in vanilla because of the lag it caused, but it was one of the coolest and most unique things that I’ve ever seen happen in the game.
I don’t think it would matter if it happened on a megaserver or not, assuming the lag wasn’t an issue.
Having things the players collectively work towards that permanently change the game world makes the world feel more alive, even if it’s all still on rails on the back end.
Blizzard could be way more creative with their world events I think.
This makes me wonder, will the AQ effort be over really quick on a mega server or will they tune it for the number of players ?
AQ event in Vanilla was legendary even with the lag.
But it’ll be a joke on Anniversary with 10 layers. The game was never designed for this nonsense. And it handcuffs the devs from making world content.
I think people are overthinking what layers would actually mean for a world event.
It doesn’t matter if there was 1 layer, 10 layers, or 100 layers. What matters is how many players and mobs the game can handle in each layer, and I’m sure Blizzard can think up a way to handle all the players for a world event.
Remember, the AQ event happened what, 19 years ago? There’s been a lot of advancements in computing and networking since then. I mean even the idea of layers didn’t even come about until WoD launch where they kind of had to jury rig it just to make the game even playable within a couple days of launch.
Layers generally hold around 1000 players.
The problem with WoW’s engine is that, on the backend, ability usage is exponential. Back in 2019 they actually attempted to solve this problem by turning off/batching AoE damage calculations per zone.
If you’re still grouping up in town to get World Buffs you can see that in action. (it’s still not great, lol)
Advancements isn’t the right word. Just because something is cheaper to maintain doesn’t mean it’s better.
The game was more enjoyable when there were server communities, when reputation mattered, when you knew the people you played with. Those are the things that make an mmo. You can look back 19 years ago and say the game was only that way because of the limitations of the time. But those limitations made a better experience.
19 years from now no one will be looking back at Anniversary in the same way. You can’t have epic, memorable events with this kind of setup. You have ‘efficient grinding’. This is what happens when WoW turns from a game about fun into a second job that players min/max the fun out of.
And the issue is both the players and the ‘devs’. The Classic team is lazy and lacks creativity and talent. And a lot of the players simply hate the game. Their entire goal is to get through it as quickly as possibly.
So long story short…the future of Classic is doomed. The players are miserable and the devs are lazy and have no vision.
And sorry to be a killjoy, OP. I just think these types of players and the Classic devs aren’t capable or interested in this type of thing. If you want a look at what a Classic+ might be, look at SoD. It would basically be Mythic raiding. Instanced content built for e-sport players. Casuals need not apply. Definitely nothing community driven.
I wish I could disagree with you, but it’s true. I play Classic casually, so I’ve just been enjoying the leveling process and doing low level world PvP.
But even in-game the chat is filled with WTB boost and WTS boost.
I really hope not. Retail is where people should go for the raid progression. I hope Classic+ has horizontal content updates, not vertical ones. I don’t want to play Classic+ just to get on another gear treadmill that never ends. I want to play it to see what the vanilla game could have been like had unfinished zones and quests been completed.
A lot of that has to do with the leadership. Holly is not a bad leader but I just don’t think she has the same passion that Omar had for the game. Holly leads by committee while Omar lead with authenticity and respect for what came before. Omar had the outlook that vibed really well with the oldheads.
I miss #nochanges, honestly.
Probably the most confusing thing to happen in SOD.
When it happened I was completely dumbfounded. They had made fairly good decisions up to that point, other than their complete ignorance of PVP balance.
If you didn’t know, Jeff Kaplan (Tigole) and Alex Afrasiabi (Furor) were huge in the Everquest raiding scene. They were guild leaders of the top raiding guilds, respectively the equivalent of “Method” in WoW. Each also had unhinged profanity filled public rants (google these, fun read) at the Everquest devs. They essentially got their jobs at Blizzard by being top raiders and convincing the EQ raiding scene to make the switch.
The two biggest problems with WoW have been power creep and the story after Arthas is killed at Icecrown Citadel. Azeroth and Draenor/Outlands is all you need to have a lot of content to do and story players can relate to. Game didn’t need all the weird fringe stuff shoved into it. How have they not done Scarlet Crusade content until now?
Ha… yeah… incursions were really bad.
Dang… first 2 phase of SoD were awesome
Anything making the game more interactive and community driven and less formulaic and “checkbox-driven” would be a win and that’s def one way to do it.
Now the question is how the classic community is going to manage to squash any fun out of the excercise through exploits and over-optimization.
There are two major things about classic that they flat refuse to acknowledge. I don’t know if its the blue hair wokness or they just genuinely hate pvp’rs.
The very best part about fresh classic is the world pvp while leveling. The world is literally alive in classic.
The second would be how immensely popular pvp is altogether how god awful wow is when they ignore it.
The incursions were a clear cut example of them just not having any idea what players want with classic even though they have had 500 years worth of feedback to ignore.
What does someone’s hair color have to do with wokeness, and why does blue specifically mean woke, and what do you mean by woke, and what does this have to do with vanilla?
The sad truth.
My vision for Classic+ has always been about open world, community driven content. But the reality is that this playerbase just sucks the fun out of everything. The experience means nothing. It’s all about cheesing in any way possible.
I don’t know how you attract more old school type gamers who just want to chill out, have fun, and soak in the experience. That’s really the most important step.
Best thing they talked about was keeping gdkps banned on every new server!