![:+1:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/+1.png?v=6" ":+1:")
Itās called āconditioning.ā Over the years, Blizzard has conditioned the player base to expect X, Y, and Z if A, B, and C are completed. Start taking away X, Y, and Z, or modifying them so they are less than what weāve been conditioned to expect, and the pitchforks and torches come out as the mob marches to the town square ā¦
āA riot is an ungly thingkā¦ undt, I tink, that it is chust about time ve had vun.ā
(Inspector Kemp)
It was my favorite expansion for wow but then I liked having multiple difficulties.
I didnāt find tanking easy mode or the classes homogenized too much yet. Yes, tanks held threat better but you still had to deal with fight mechanics, which were just starting to get interesting again.
I also donāt recall the catchup mechanics unless you mean the heirlooms, which at the time were something you mostly had to earn on your main to use on alts.
But then, its all about opinion and preference. It appears to me you didnāt like WotLK, where as it was my favorite expansion. I also suggested WotLK as the point of return because of the many conversations I have had with people in the gaming community I belong wishing to return to that point in the WoW timeline.
I would also just point out that the discussion is about whether not Blizzard should move retail WoW back more toward classic if classic is successfulā¦to me WotLK seems like a good middle ground between classic and where retail is now without going all the way back to classic, since there will be a classic version of the game already out by that point.
Tier sets on vendors from badges. Tier 9 itself was one big catchup raid to gear everyone up for ICC.
it isnāt about the multiple difficulties though. itās about all of it. the problem with the multiple difficulties is they made the baseline difficulty so low that it was absurd.
remember Karazhan? now go look at the Naxx tier in Wrath. it was disgraceful how easy it was.
remember dungeons in bc and vanilla? now go look at dungeons in wrath and again, how easy they were.
i remember the first time i did a heroic in wrath. most the group was in greens and blues, had never been in the dungeon period on any difficulty, and i was expecting to wipe a lot and take 2 hours or so. we walked out in 45 minutes without a wipe, without using cc at all, and it was boring as crap.
every tier had badge rewards among other things that let you just go from hitting level 80 to raiding whatever that tiers raid was.
you must not have done dungeons pre wrath then. it was a joke.
as for homogenization
we went from vanilla/bc where some classes brought more damage then others, some had cc, some had aoe, some had self heals, some had utility and some didnāt to wrath where everyone had everything.
I guess I donāt really consider these catch up mechanics. You are still working toward gearing yourself up for the next level activity and if current level gear isnāt good enough for the next raid, I would think Blizzard would give you gear to earn that can prepare you for the next level activity.
To me catch up mechanics are increase xp for dungeon farming and granting a gear bag after each dungeon you run so you can level from 1 to 64 in 8 hours.
Again, just different perspectives.
I feel they are trying to not seem like they are putting too much attention to classic for that sake. They want to seem like they are paying no real mind to it but in all reality they are really freaking out to see if (when) it will succeed and how. But they question still remains of āis retail too far gone to try and pick up the pieces that made it great in the first place?ā
Specific to tanking, it was really really easy in Wrath.
Iām pretty sure although I cannot find a direct quote from Ghost Crawler that they made tanking really easy to get more people to play tanks. Of the four tank classes the hard one was Warrior and it was very dumbed down and easy compared to Burning Crusade.
Wrath completely removed Defense Skill from the game, and along with it mobs could no longer crit or crush a player. So while your overall Armor and Avoidance went down the mobs donāt hit very hard either.
it is a catch up mechanic. a catch up mechanic lets you get to the most recent content without having to go through all the content that existed before it.
you could literally hit level 80, run the ICC dungeons and then go into ICC without touching Naxx/Ulduar/ToC.
thatās getting you through the leveling process faster.
and you didnāt have to worry about breaking cc, or heck, even using cc.
i had never tanked anything serious before wrath (maybe a couple dungeons) and then one day my guild needed an extra tank, i logged onto my paladin, swapped in some of my tank pieces, changed specs, and managed to do a good enough job to get us through an entire raid with having NEVER tanked on my paladin beforeā¦
I mean all this comes down to not having a watered down game.
Community is what makes games great. None of this Auto match making / Auto Path / LFG - LFR / Que for BG anywhere you are and most importantly, WPVP is where it brings everyone togetherā¦
Noā¦Classic was made by motivated and passionate developers like Chris Metzen and Mike Morhaime. Classic was made by Blizzard, not Activision-Blizzard.
If they tried to make Classic today, it would have Loot boxes, store mounts, microtransactions, pets, it would release unfinished, and would cost $60 and come with a season pass, battle pass, and whatever other AAA-industry garbage Activision would ram down our throats.
Simply put, Activision-Blizzard could never make a game like Classic because too many corporate suits would ruin the game as they try to appease the shareholder by nickel and diming the gamer, and milking the franchise for every last penny its got.
I played WoW at the release of Vanilla. I played through cata and came back at warlords. I ran dungeons in everything and raided through WotLK so I have a pretty good foundation on which I form my opinions about what I like and donāt like.
Like I said, its a matter of perspective. I did not find any of the changes they introduced with WotLIK to be too game changing or game breaking. In fact, I liked a lot of the changes and the issues you raised werenāt issues for me.
I would also, again, point out, that we are NOT discussing classic, we are discussing the idea of classicās popularity driving a return to some older features in WoW and what might be palatable to RETAIL players.
Many RETAIL players wonāt accept a full return to classic but they might accept change to include features/gameplay as it existed at another point in time after classicā¦WotLK (regardless of whether you liked it or not) maintains more classic features than Cataclysm and beyond but at the same time has QoL features that RETAILER players have become reliant on. That is why I chose WotLK.
If you think another expansion would be a better point to draw upon for inspiration for future RETAIL expansions, please feel free to share your ideas.
that doesnāt say much. Wrath was still the beginning of the new.
Wrath is too much retail for my tastes. that was my point.
Point out something retail has - likely has ties to wrath.
yeah. Burning Crusade.
Vanilla style design with dungeons and raids being something other then pushovers.
tune up some of the under-performing specs from bc and call it good.
I would agree with you regarding the fact that it is more vanilla like but Iām not sure most retail players would be willing to leave their LFD behind. Thatās why I suggested Wraith. LFD was introduced with patch 3.3 along with battlegroups.
They also had two of the top three Everquest raid guild leaders as key developers. Jeff Kaplan (tigole) and Alex Afrasiabi (Furor), both were super famous in EQ raiding. Rob Pardo played in Jeff Kaplanās guild.
Classic was made for a different type of MMO player than games are today.
they get to retain better class balance then vanilla and flying. while gaining better class diversity.
Thank you kind sir
Retail is too far gone, it will never happen.
They created a situation where canāt make the game any more harder or a massive amount of people playing it mindlessly for pets and other stuff will leave, which is probably the big majority at this point.
And they canāt really make it any easier without axing the more hardcore community, that while smaller, has content creators and streamers and more leverage at their side.
Blizz walked into a dead end and thereās a truck quickly approaching, thereās no way out, at most they can slow it down with tons of mount releases (which they are) and what not but unless the next expansion is a heavenly gift (and maybe even then) I doubt people will keep caring about retail.
BFA proved that this quality was to be expected between wod and it, legion small improvements were an outlier and these same improvements became detrimental in bfa due to how the system evolved.
Your best bet is classic+ after naxx
With how bad 8.2 is going to force you to grind ap and not much is there classic will surge.