I played classic for months, and it was fun for a while. The pre-cata Azeroth feels like a real living world. The old leveling, class design, and social aspects made me care about my character in a way that retail hasn’t been able to in over a decade; however, classic has some key problems that need to be addressed in a way that TBC has been proven to be capable of. The class balance in classic is terrible. Specs like Shadow, Enhancement, Feral, and Affliction are barely usable, and other specs like Balance and Subtlety are downright deadweight. The pvp is terrible, with AV being a total waste of time and world pvp being little more than a meme. The pve isn’t much better either as 40 mans are a chaotic mess, and the raids and bosses are wholly uninteresting. Beyond that, there really isn’t much to the game. Classic seems designed for raid-logging, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.
TBC lessens or fixes all of these problems. Class balance is miles ahead of classic, with nearly every spec being desired in some context. Arenas provide meaningful pvp for those who want to push themselves and, despite the memes about flying, the zone objectives and farming locations in Outland provided a solid foundation for engaging world pvp. 25 mans were way more fun than 40 mans, and the raids themselves were consistently better in TBC (Kara, SSC, BT, etc). Beyond all that, TBC brought in rep grinds and attunements that you could plug away at in your downtime without becoming the centerpiece of the game like in retail.
There’s really no area where classic was better than TBC. Class design was better, in part by introducing now iconic abilities like Spellsteal and Avenger’s Shield. Raiding was accessible, but difficult, and much more engaging overall than at any point in classic. The world/zone design was top-notch, with zones like Zangarmarsh and Nagrand which have yet to be topped in terms of visuals and atmosphere. I could go on and on about all of the advantages of TBC, which I know because I have several times among friends.
Obviously Blizzard is thinking about doing TBC and probably Wrath behind the scenes, but with classic winding down into its final few phases I think it’s time we start making it clear to Blizzard what direction we want them to go once phase 6 is out. I’ve unsubscribed because I’m done with classic, as have many of my friends. I can say without a doubt that we would all come back for TBC, and for all the reasons listed above I’m confident that we’ll stick around a lot longer than we did in classic.
The sooner we start having real discussions about the details of TBC like what the phases should look like, how the transition from classic should work, and what should be done differently from classic (like removing spell batching) the better chance we have of making TBC classic the best it can be.
