I think people are missing the point of classic

I’ve seen people say things like “remove 95% of solo content, bring back hit and expertise, bring back leveling weapons” and a lot of old mechanical things, but I don’t think that is what makes Classic feel good.

I don’t think the overly tedious stuff is what makes Classic the best thing ever, like do you guys even remember once upon a time when you wanted to herb, mine, or even pick up a freaking quest you had to manually dismount? It didn’t just dismount you, you had to physically remove yourself from the mount, THEN interact with whatever object.

That doesn’t make the game “better”.

Honestly I believe the thing people love about Classic is the challenge and REPLAYABILITY. In Classic everything is open ended, there’s about 5 to 6 different ways to get from 1-20 just on your OWN side, not to mention Alliance. There’s several zones for several level brackets and it’s not just one linear story, so you can level in Undercity zones once, then redo another character in Orc zones, then do another in Tauren zones, etc… Sometimes you can do all of Eastern Kingdoms, sometimes you can level in Kalimdor, and a mix and match of your favorite zones, etc… but there’s a BUNCH of combos.

Second leveling TAKES a long time, so it’s not being level cap in a few days, or at most weeks. It takes MONTHS to get somewhere, and that means the entire game is relevant. Level 10 is relevant because it takes 2 hour to get from 1 to 10 and it only gets more time consuming from there. Leveling is an integrated and meaningful part of the game: the entire game matters.

In addition, there were clever things to get players to replay old content, such as attunements, materials, crafting recipes and more that made you revisit the same dungeons over and over despite having cleared them, everything mattered and was intrinsically tied together.

Reputation grinds took a long time, but were not time gated to “make it feel longer”, you just got like 5 rep a kill and it took 15,000 kills so obviously that’s going to take forever. You CAN be a madlad and do it in one sitting but it’ll take like 7 days of NONSTOP getting after it. There was no need to timegate.

I believe Legion did SOME great things to bring a bit of this back: Legendary drop chances had people running every single raid from the very first to the very last the entire expansion and it was great. Things once again tied all back together, Mythic+ is another great way of keeping 5 man content relevant and still going long after level cap. These clever ideas help keep content in the cycle instead of being instantly dead.

I don’t think level scaling was the right choice. I think slowing the entire game down, back to Vanilla or BC levels and tying in all tiers of raids and other content, as well as making new expansion places multiple choice would go a long way toward replayability and player retention.

Make every part of the game meaningful, yes leveling too. Have incentives to keep running old raids, and otherwise make all parts of the game replayable and engaging.

Since, maybe MoP Expansions have had a linear leveling process of Zone 1, Zone 2, Zone 3, Zone 4, Zone 5 like on a railroad, that limits replayability. It is amazing for telling story, but perhaps an emergent story that is pieced together by each zone contained is better than hand holding you in exactly a straight line. I believe Vanilla was like that, each questing hub, each zone had a story to tell that filled out the greater story, but it didn’t hand hold you. It let you go and find out for yourself. This made visiting new zones upon leveling next exciting. Expansions can only be so big, but perhaps a more hodgepodge leveling style would go a long way to being more “alt friendly”.

I think there’s a careful balance though, Legion Artifacts tied behind RNG made alts unfriendly because you simply couldn’t compete on damage if you never got your best ones.

Overall, though, I think slowing the game down, taking it from a linear zone to zone handholding storyline style and otherwise incorporating incentive to return to old raids during the current expac would go a long way toward making the game loved again. Make everything meaningful, and it doesn’t even have to be by just making things obtusely tedious.

I don’t think having Tauren hitboxes being able to be melee’d from 15 yards away makes Vanilla amazing. I do think perhaps having more to invest in your character does. Perhaps weapon skills aren’t a bad thing, perhaps Lockpicking and other types of voluntary, but rewarding, systems you can put time into are worth it. Slow rep grinds that aren’t gated, you can go at your own pace, but it will take awhile. Dangerous leveling that has consequences, and pulling too many mobs means certain death.

Slow the game down, tie in all aspects of end game to being relevant, and non-linear expansions are the answers we are supposed to get from Vanilla. The entire game is meaningful, and completely replayable because you can’t beat it in a day. It takes months, and that isn’t a problem, I don’t believe. People also sink countless hours into Skyrim and other such games because things aren’t instant. I don’t think mindless tedium is what people find rewarding in Vanilla. I think it’s that it takes a long time and there’s multiple paths and way to play and the endgame cycle is tied together. You NEED fire resistance from XYZ before you can progress to the next one, etc…

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Edited cause didn’t read well enough.

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Challenge? Things taking longer does not make it more “challenging”

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This isn’t about Classic, it’s about how to fix retail.

If the fixes to retail are to dumb things down, but make them take a ton longer and be tedious, I don’t want them fixed.

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To fix retail, we need better devs. Nothing you do can change that

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No, but having to actually THINK about what you are doing does mean challenge. I saw an Undead Rogue stream where the guy literally has to think about every decision he makes. He even baited a high level skull ??? level mob out by luring it to another player so he could get an herb because he knew it would kill him.

He has to use the tools he has to survive in a dangerous world. 2 mobs can kill you, that’s a challenge, literally by definition. It takes longer BECAUSE it is challenging because you can’t just yolo leeroy jenkins mongoloid into everything face first and expect to live.

It’s more like a Sam Fisher game of making decisions and how to get to where you want to go than just flying in instantly AOEing everything down and flying out. It’s literally a challenge. 1v1ing Hogger is an actual challenge, if it’s even possible back then.

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To me it is. I want a more cerebral game and less of a twitch game. I want to build my character and have my characters power level determine the outcome of a fight moreso than my ability to dance around and avoid things or execute a rotation to perfection.

More RP style game and less fps/console kinda game.

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I’ll edit my post then. You might want to think about a different title and a TL;DR. I skimmed a lot as it was long and took a second skim to figure out what you were trying to say.

Though I will give my two cents on the overall concept: WoW needs to move forward, not backward. Some things may have been nice back then, but those concepts need built upon for new things. Which I believe covers some of what you were saying.

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Yes, if you are in the open world and you go into a higher level area to herb, you have to “think” more. I don’t care about people trying to collect resources in an area they are under leveled for.

I care about actual gameplay challenge. Dungeons and raids. Classic had the simplest form of both.

Herbing in areas with higher leveled mobs isn’t going to keep WoW sustained.

It takes longer in Classic not because its challenging, its actually quite trivial. It takes longer because the game was designed to take longer.

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Things have been dumbed down in BfA and the last few past expansions. Tossing that kind of shade won’t get you any points.

And please, don’t ask for pointers where this dumbing down has happened. It’s been explained already. Not getting into that debate. If you want to know, do a search and read up.

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Classic is still even more dumbed down, and more simple.

When auto attacking and wanding is a legit part of your rotation. And raid bosses/dungeon bosses are more simple than WQ bosses.

BFA pruned abilities? Classic prunes entire specs.

They only reason you can use many horrible specs in Classic still is because the content is so dumbed down you don’t really have to try.

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Basically TL;DR I believe Classic was successful due to replayability.

  • Constantly running all end game content was a thing, everything was interlocked whether due to attunements, needing keys, needing recipes, needing gear, or whatever. Progressing wasn’t necessarily a set of stairs but a cycle.

  • Leveling wasn’t linear from Zone 1 to Zone 2 to Zone 3, there were a bunch of different ways to level and there were multiple zones for multiple level brackets so there was always a choice on how to replay the game for another character.

  • Every part of the game was meaningful. Leveling was equally as important as end game raiding which again brings in retention and replayability.

  • Being able to replay the game in a meaningful way that takes investment is what made the old stuff good. We can KEEP the QoL stuff as long as we find a way to recycle the content so that it’s fun to do the 100th time. Everybody likes leveling in the older zones but as soon as you hit the “there’s 1 way to do this I’ve seen this story already” that’s when people start to feel the game isn’t “alt friendly”.

  • Too much RNG in current, in Classic you got what you got but it took awhile, but it WOULD happen. You COULD get the best sword it didn’t depend on RNG on RNG on RNG on RNG with titanforge and gem slots and attributes etc…

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I feel like nearly all people that complain about this aspect are never in position where this actually matters.

As in, people complain about the RNG in getting BIS weapons, but aren’t clearing Mythic BoD / Crucible.

“I am never going to get my BIS gear because of TF/Sockets!”

“No, you are never going to get your BIS gear because you aren’t doing the hard content”

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You’re missing the point I feel like there’s a 100% guarantee you didn’t read the post. I am NOT saying Classic as is is GREAT, I’m explaining WHY I believe people LIKE it. It’s because of the replayability and the fact that content has a long life span, leveling has a long lifespan, end game raiding has a long lifespan and it’s constantly interconnected and intertwined increasing replayability. It’s not disposable. You can’t beat classic in 3 days and get the highest ilvl possible then scream BORED. NOTHING TO DO.

You can’t do that in BFA either.

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Here’s the thing though, MMO were a huge thing back then, and people were acostume to those things.

The playerbase that is left won’t sustain this company and yes, yes I know you hate the mobile thing but let’s be honest if the company wants to die with us then they might do it that way otherwise they need to change and adapt to a new way of “thinking”.

Classic is coming and you can play that. Retail won’t come back to what classic was.

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That’s not the point though. The point is that in the past there was a checklist you could work for that made people feel accomplished and it was set in stone.

You looked up your Hunter BiS for your spec in WLK and it was literally that. It took a long time to get because RNG, but it was what it was. Guides now adays are like “Well there’s no BIS because Titanforging is a thing, sim yourself, figure it out” and it’s a nebulous kind of “When am I wearing what’s best for me?” feeling.

They let you get gear instantly then let you gamble to get the same thing BUT BETTER instead of the old way of just 3 things drop, if it’s not for you try again next week but when you get that piece you’re done. Collect all the slots and congratz you have the best gear possible for the moment. It took 5 months. Nice. Fun.

Classic was where it started. It wasn’t “dumbed down” as you keep saying. It was ORIGINALLY like that. And it was improved upon from the start. So, your descriptive is incorrect. Maybe call it primitive, because by today’s boss standards, it was. But “dumbed down”. No, that doesn’t fit. And remember, as much as those bosses sucked, and the classes sucked… So did the original players, computers and internet of the time compared to now.

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I don’t want to play Classic. It’s not a good game. I just believe I know why people enjoy it and why legion was such a success.