Great idea held back by clunkiness

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
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Like many of us that have been playing Classic WoW since its inception and have continued all the way through to current Wrath, I’ve been hyped into playing SoD. The hype train has been strong and the idea of this being “Classic+” has been very alluring.

However, I’m having an existential crisis.

On one hand, I really want to enjoy the game. Having phases where levels are capped is genius. It has brought back part of the exploration/unknowingness aspect that made 2004-2006 WoW so captivating. The level caps make the game feel less rushed, and the promise of new content and quests is what a lot of us have been wishing for.

But, on the other hand, I can’t get over how clunky Classic WoW is. I’m not sure if I’m enjoying the game, or just the social aspect. After having gone through Classic in 2019, we remain here with the same exact client, as do Era and Hardcore. This limits the changes that can be made to be only surface level. Sure, we can add some new spells, some new epics, potions, etc, but the base game is intact with all its very dated gameplay, interface, interaction, base mechanics (i.e. mana ticks), and quirks. It limits the expansion of quests/interactions to kill and drops quests. It still takes 5 seconds to interact with objects, there are no shared mob tags, and so many dated aspects of an early 2000s MMO. Ancient UI, no grouping systems, basic auction house, rigid faction separation, no invite suggestion, can’t interact in shapeshift forms, etc. Obviously, some of these also apply to Wrath to a lesser extent. So many things can’t be fixed, like escort quests being limited to one group at a time, or named mob spawns, because it’s limited by its ancient client/backend or has to stay consistent for Era/Hardcore.

I just wish they would give us Classic with the good things taken from more modern versions of the game. I know a lot of you will tell me to go play retail, but I want a modernized Classic game without all the bulk of empty zones from 7+ expansions, tens of thousands of items and factions, annoying mechanics and weekly boxes and Mythic+, etc.

Anyway, once that novelty wears off, what am I really playing for? It’s just classic all over again, do we all want to play this dated version of the game in perpetuity? Anyone else feel like this or am I alone in this?

Cheers.

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Your suggestions sound pretty terrible.
Theres a reason no new MMOs have done good in the past decade+.

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Yes, we will tell you to play Retail, because a “modern” classic is just that… Retail… You can’t modernize classic and think it’s still classic. It’s clunky because IT’S CLASSIC and it based upon it’s original state that occurred almost 20 years ago.

“Anyway, once that novelty wears off, what am I really playing for? It’s just classic all over again”, if this is how you feel, then just quit now already, simply because it’s clear you weren’t interested in it to begin with. If you need to “try and get into it”, then it wasn’t for you to begin with.

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You are not alone.

  • I hate the UI I have no idea why they didn’t put retails in here.

  • I hate the graphics, the excuse was we are reintroducing Vanilla, TBC, and Wrath. But this is WoW2? So like WTH? No reason to play an ugly 2-D version anymore

  • Yield of Food and Water could be increased to stop the downtime of sitting drinking and eating for ten years.

  • Healthstone soul well & Conjure Table for health stone and mana biscuit distribution.

  • Buff Duration Increased off Food, Blessings(wis, might, kings), Thorns.

  • More Graveyards I love the BFD addition that needs to be for every dungeon/raid.

  • More Graveyards in general there shouldn’t be a 5-10 min walk because they FORGOT a alliance spirit healer in a zone.

  • More flight path nodes. (For example silverpine forest the dalaran mage area could use a alliance FP node because hello? Alliance is there.

  • A walking buff on roads to increase movespeed out of combat for a small amount 10-15%.

  • Redone class design. (tank shaman, lock, and rogue legit the only unique thing. Everything else is retail into classic)

  • harder dungeons with real mechanics not juss overscaled basic mechanics. BFD Keldris and last boss are only real mechanic-based bosses.

  • No 40-man raids gross. 20-25 is just fine or 10 man.

  • Crit off HoTs/ DoTs please.

*eating in shapeshift

  • show buff durations and vendor prices and npc hp and jesus for the love of god. Everyone uses all these addons I have no clue why it isn’t just baseline. Why make new players and old set this crap up over and over again. When EVERYONE IS USING IT.
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The issue with this statement is the fact that everyone has their own ideas on what constitutes “good things”. For example, you might like the idea of lowering riding requirements to level 20, but another player thinks it would be better changed to 30 and I prefer it at the current level. What’s fun and good is entirely subjective.

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The absolute unparalleled genius of SoD is that it evokes that golden age MMO vibe.

I didn’t play Classic when it re-launched because I played vanilla back in the day and the “No Changes” meta meant the game was absolutely not actual WoW. WoW is a game in motion, always. Always always always. WoW is always changing, so “No Changes” was a complete rejection of the original spirit.

SoD captures that spirit by being what Vanilla originally was in both form and in spirit.

However, it is important to note that “change” does not mean “becomes like Retail”. The new runes are definitely a step away from Retail but feel very “classic” like. Making Ret stronger and an actual spec in the meta makes Horde and Ally have completely different vibes from one another in PvP/PvE for instance, and even more-so once enhance gets dualies (the rune grind probably gated a lot of enh players).

I reject a lot of what you propose as improvements for instance. Cross-faction has no place in SoD. Yuck. Yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck. Yuckx10.

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Nope the facts are epic riding is 60. So you half it 30 should be normal riding.

But the problem why people think it should be lvl 20 is purely because of Graveyards, flight paths are slow, and walking speed is slow.

  • Faster flying on gryphons
  • 10% move speed buff when walking out of combat on roads.
  • More convenient graveyards.
  • More flight path nodes.

These things I cannot possibly think of anyone complaining they couldn’t walk 5 extra min from hillsbrad to silverpine as a alliance because u wiped in SFK.

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I dont think cross faction has a place. But I do think the servers need to be merged and not like this juggling for cash grab server xfers.

Its disgusting actually. To even allow a mega server to exist like how they did in TBC. Then they didn’t do anything to help dead servers because u needed to buy a xfer.

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I’d be fine with a speed boost on our ghost forms.

But that’s just my opinion, I’m sure some would disagree…it’s all subjective

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Aside from how extremely stupid the Ashenvale PvP event is, this is 10x better than anything I’d have guessed. Nobody cares about your wishlist of Retail features that didn’t make it.

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I’m not arguing whats the best level to allow riding. I’m pointing out that what you believe is good or fun is subjective. Because someone else is going to have a completely different opinion.

So, what do we replace aspect of cheetah with, if everyone gets this as default?

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But telling him to go play retail is just stupid. There’s no reason we shouldn’t have an updated UI, a better group finder (not asking for rdf here), etc, etc… these things have no impact on the gameplay besides making things less annoying. People use addons to get around a lot of it, yet if people ask for Blizzard to improve what’s in the default game other people freak out. Doesn’t even make sense…

Because you know a bad ui is not what made vanilla, vanilla succeeded despite it. If we’re going to be switching up the game now with sod there’s no reason some of these things can’t be made less tedious.

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There’s a line here that shouldn’t be crossed and it’s hard to know exactly where it is.

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Those who don’t like SoD, don’t play – no one is forcing you but you.

There – I fixed all your problems.

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For me a lot of enjoyment of classic comes from that old age “clunkiness” largely because it makes every action feel more “meaningful”.

I definitely think there would be a group of people who would enjoy a classic era server with retail QoL. But I at the least enjoy classic without the QoL.

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ESO (2014) and FFXIV (2010 but really 2013) would like a word

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this is supposed to be a reinvented classic version of the game, so i don’t get why there are people advocating for no changes or no qol improvements from retail like mob tagging for example

if you want to keep your boring no change version, play normal classic and let classic + evolve in a new version of the original game

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Era still feels less dated than retail imo

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I get people say its to “encourage grouping” but even back in 2004 we really didn’t group for quests outside of elite quests.

Feel like open tagging (faction only for classic) would ADD to the social structure, not take away from it. Nothing more frustrating then losing tags to instant attacks when you have none.

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Bingo it seems you finally realized what is going on