Have the dev's mentioned

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Honestly, if I was the lead dev for “Classic+” Classic actually wouldn’t be the start point.

So the 8 starting races, and the 8 classes per faction get to be the first casualty. But then, that’s part of why I’m a bigger fan of the “Walled Garden” idea and Classic+ seeing implementation through retail(and ostensibly the Bronze Dragonflight). We bring anything we want from the future back to “the Classic Era” while trying to maintain as much of Classic’s core gameplay as possible.

This means Shaman is playable for Alliance, and Paladin is playable for the Horde in Classic+.

While Bagspace management was a memorable aspect of Vanilla, and should be replicated in Classic. I don’t see a reason for it to persist in a Classic+ iteration. This means Guild Banks would be viable options, as would be the collection tabs, as initially implemented in Wrath. That means per character, not per account.

The BattlePet system is a little weird in my book, but I don’t see any particular reason to kill it with fire either. It could be brought across, or left behind, I honestly don’t care. As a mini-game within the game, it has its merits. Don’t like it? Play Classic, not Classic+.

It also means I’m able to pick and choose on some other items. Stormwind Harbor would likely be present in Classic+ from the start, as initially implemented in Wrath, complete with the undestroyed Park District.

Stormwind Keep would get an upgrade to its current form, complete with accompanying park that was used as a nexus for Cataclysm and MoP. Orgrimmar would likely see selective upgrades to it as well. If you want to see them in their original form, play Classic not Classic+.

The Classic Game mechanics are in full force, Classic Talent trees are the starting point. Any additional classes/races brought into the mix will have their trees adjusted to conform to the game mechanics paradigm of Classic(+). Talent tress will however, not be static, so re-balancing can, and probably will, happen. But every effort will be made to keep it within the bounds that the devs demonstrated up through patch 2.0 as it basically is a “bridge” between Vanilla and what TBC ultimately became in 2.4, because honestly, 1.12 is basically 2.0’s talent trees scaled to level 60 anyway.

I would likely allow many of the additional Flightpoints added to the old world in 2.x(not Cataclysm) to be brought into Classic+ that said, you’re still waiting for level 40 to get your first mount.

Phasing would get an overhaul, with some rules tweaked along the way. In many respects, it becomes war mode meets layering. Because yes, I would be using the ever-living daylights out of phasing, but only after some of its more annoying quirks(Especially for PvP) get sorted out.

Group content is going to be retuned as well because of these changes as well.

No (player controlled) flight in Azeroth.

LFG might be allowed on a per realm basis, or collection of realms in the event of low populations. But no LFG selection pools numbering in the tens of thousands.

The list would keep growing from there as other systems are considered and evaluated.

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For now, it hinges on Classic’s success. Blizzard has stated they’ll go through Classic’s patch cycles as it were in the beginning, but anything more is up in the air. Blizzard will see how Classic servers go and judging how much fun they’ve been having with the Beta… I think we could see some activities that might engage the playerbase…

They have said that they are looking at legacy servers for other expansions if Classic goes as planned as well.

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No offense to any of that, but it makes me feel a little bit physically ill if Classic went that route. Just leave it alone. It’s meant to recapture Vanilla, so let it do that. TBC and Wrath servers as separate options, fine. But I didn’t wait 12 years for Classic just to see it mutilated again.

What you and many seem to want is…well, WoW 2. So ask Blizz for that.

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Calling it now, they are going to do a TBC and WotLK server as seperate realms. Probably with payed transfers to allow progression from vanilla to WotLK. They already have all the assets and i would bet that in the process of creating “classic” they have made it relatively easy to transfer the old data onto the new sever architecture.

Not to mention that TBC and WotLK patches are well documented when compared to vanilla and there is a plethora of recorded video to serve as a reference.

I think classic+ is a horrible idea, especially if it meant that classic as it was became no longer playable. I would rather they work on making retail more like classic than classic more like retail.

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Subs flatlined at the beginning of wrath and the high point only came in the pre-cata sub boost. Any new players wrath brought in were matched by people leaving.

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Yes, they said they will add more stuff if there is community interest.

If community wants TBC, they’ll add TBC. If community says they want more content in Classic(like I do), im sure the devs will be more than happy to deliver.

They’ll probably talk about this in some Blizzcon. You could even ask them to get a concrete answer if you want, if their answer on expansions wasn’t enough for you.

That’s not true at all.

Classic is intended to appeal to people miss the old gameplay(not nostalgia) who can no longer play live WoW. Us OG Vanilla fans, as well as the people who fought for it on the private servers.

To these kind people, Classic is literally the only WoW game they can play. Not because it is perfect, or that it couldn’t be improved, but because nothing like it no longer exists on live.

Classic is NOT intended for tourists who want no changes and will play Classic once or twice for nostalgia and then quit. It’s intended for people who literally prefer the old gameplay to the new one.

If you don’t understand this, you’re clearly not in the target audience of Classic.

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I can understand and respect that. That’s part of why there is a clear delineation between Classic and Classic+/WoW2 as it were. Many of the changes are a fine line to walk. i think many of them could be done, and done well, without negative impact to the kind of game play found in Classic. People have honestly and likely attributed cause and effect to some of the wrong things.

Battle pets didn’t take away anything from the game, or do more than add a new mini-game to the game. Pet/Mount collections by themselves weren’t the problem, account wide linkages, and the in-game store are the real problem to be found there. Although the addition of the Mount collection did open a “cheap way out” for developers for “new rewards” to become increasingly common, so there are perils to be watched out for.

It isn’t the system that necessarily is the problem, but the implementation which requires refinement. This is something Blizzard historically has been good at making improvements to(although retail rightfully calls some of that into question). Taking game systems somebody else created, looking at them, identifying their strengths and weaknesses, and them pushing out an implementation with all the strengths, and few to none of the weaknesses.

The problem Retail has, which Classic+/WoW2 wouldn’t have, is they’re not contending with “Legacy issues” from the V1 implementation needing to be supported. Instead, they get to deal with the reflexive response from players like yourself who recoil in horror because you’ve had bad experiences with V1, and are not willing to contemplate a good implementation as even being possible.

And you’re probably right, Ion probably isn’t going to be up to that task, 90+% of the people on the current & former WoW Development team are probably not up to that task. They likely need someone from “outside that bubble” to come in and handle such re-implementations. Just hope like nobody’s business that the person they get to do it is a fan of Classic’s game systems rather than the later iterations.

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It is 100% impossible for them to create new content that continues the feel of Classic.

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I could take it a step further. Mounts as initially implemented were actually somewhat harmful to the community. Very good odds that a lot of the “drive by buffing” that a lot of players have been commenting on in the Beta drops off by a considerable amount as soon as players start moving around on mounts… Because they’ll have to dismount to buff, as such, that is not happening. (And didn’t happen in retail, unless you were near the bank, AH, or some other structure where players were already dismounted for other reasons)

Flying mounts just took it to another different level, by allowing bypassing of content(flying way over it). They were also bypassing fellow members of the community and forgoing opportunities to interact with other players.

That player who just got swarmed by a patrol they failed to notice and is about to die? Sorry, no help is coming. The player that might have saved them just flew over the top of the event at 10,000 feet and didn’t even know it was happening.

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This terrifies in a wide number of ways. Least of which being this is essentially how WoW found itself in the situation it is in today.

Players kept asking for things, Blizzard said no.
Players kept asking for that thing, Blizzard caves and gives it to them.
Players then turn around and complain about how the thing they asked for ruined the game.

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Define “the feel of Classic” please? And good luck at doing so.

It meant different things to different people. It’s a moving and very malleable target. Even the 1.12 reference client cannot deliver your vaunted “100% recreation of the feel of Classic” for you, or most other players.

The goal is to do things “in the spirit of Classic” with mechanics that obviously belonged in Classic. Mechanics that only get lip service in the game that is current Retail. I believe there are some people working at Blizzard who could pull it off, but I also suspect those people either aren’t currently working on WoW, or have little to no say in what goes on (design wise) in WoW currently if they do work on it.

It’s definitely not 100% impossible, it is certainly possible. That doesn’t mean it would be easy though.

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I think they do have a skeleton of a plan for further Classic releases at present. (TBC, Wrath, etc) but they haven’t committed to them yet.

I think Classic+(or variants thereof) is something that may be getting discussed, but no decisions have been made, and those discussions have likely “punted” the time for making such a decision to some point further down the road. Such as after they establish whether or not “Classic has legs” to stand upon.

Throw in the whole legal angle involving abandon ware on top of it, and somebody Specifically asking about plans for “Adding new content to Classic” and you just the door wide open for Ion to reply “Absolutely not.”

Because Classic is intended to be a museum piece. That isn’t to say they can’t create a fork that branches away from it. It just won’t be under the Classic Label. Ion gets to be 100% truthful multiple ways. Classic isn’t getting new content. So “Absolutely not” is correct.

Also, they haven’t made a decision as to whether or not it is “worth their time” to create such a “fork in the road” for that kind of content, so no plans exist at present except for the intention to evaluate things later. So once again “Absolutely not” is a demonstrably valid response for him to give at the time the interview was given.

It doesn’t mean he ruled out the possibility of such a thing happening in the future. He was simply making clear such a thing was not happening right now.

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They also said that classic was out of the question too a while back…so…

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Classic isn’t out yet and already the requests for content beyond classic start. No, there should NOT be any because then they’d be running two full games side by side. If they’re going to do anything they should totally revamp the current retail and return it to a more classic state. That would make sense, trying to run two versions of the game does not.

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I would actually like to see them take wow classic and now take it into another direction with future addons. Make it essentially wow alternate timeline, basically wow 2.0. Use the art and assets from expansions but keep them to strict vanilla design guidelines.

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I don’t recall them ever saying that. There was never a definitive ‘no chance.’ It was always ‘no current plans’ or something like that.

But to change Classic and abandon their promise of delivering an authentic Vanilla recreation would mean they lied to us about their intentions. Look, I understand the desire. Honestly I’ve thought about the possibilities of adding new content (dungeons, raids) and how that might be interesting. But then I read long posts by players about adding this feature, that feature, balance changes, homogenization, convenience elements, etc, etc. And you see how it can (and will) go horribly, horribly wrong. Much safer to just release TBC and perhaps Wrath servers. Capture those pieces if history as well.

And then perhaps work on another new mmorpg. I never thought Blizz would do that again…and still don’t. But perhaps if Classic is a huge success it’ll show them that the genre can still be very profitable and worth the investment.

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It’s really not. For example, my latest suggestion, the Hunter Pet Un-Homogenization Idea, captures the design aesthethic and feel of classic WoW perfectly.

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Not only am I not going to look at it, I am absolutely certain that whatever you came up with isn’t even close.

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This proves my point. This is precisely why it’s not possible.

You’re talking about mechanics and spirit like they’re just plug-and-play formulas they have kicking around. They’re not. There’s an attitude…an ethos…a mindset…a particular time and place. There are thousands of thoughts and feelings that fed into the decision-making process that ended up creating Vanilla WoW that are simply not things that can be felt or thought again, even if you took the same exact people who made Vanilla WoW and had them do it all again. Those people think and feel things differently now than they did 15-18 years ago. Whatever they produced could be amazing to engage with but any feeling like “Oh this captures the spirit of the old days” would be purely anecdotal and a whole host of people might just disagree with you.