The only thing crazy was I missed the mark on “Bring the player, not the class” being pre-launch TBC, it was pre-launch Wrath. But many of the associated design decisions were already being seen as early as TBC with Kara.
And I’m not alone in pointing to TBC on this issue:
I almost want to run that dev interview to see if I could get it verbatim from them as that poster indicates it was the WoW Devs who cited TBC in this case. But hey, you can believe what you want to.
So you’re wrong… again. And also, bring the play not the class does not mean class homogenization, they were referring to balance. Balance =/=homogenization.
Also, the quotes you are referring to are literally talking about blizzard removing class requirements for some bosses so that’s what started their ‘bring the player not the class’ campaign. This has nothing to do with homogenization dude, this is blizzard literally saying “We don’t want you to be forced to only bring certain classes”.
Jesus christ do you really not know how to comprehend what you read?
I don’t think you understand what homogenization means TBH if you think TBC or Wotlk had it.
It may have brought people back, but there are definitely retail players that are leaving for classic (I am one) hence its a fractured community.
Considering retail players that have left for classic and non-subscribers coming back for classic…it will again be a fracture if that group is allowed to choose to stay on classic servers or move to TBC servers.
This whole “fractured community” thing is a fallacy though. Retail and Classic both require a sub to play. They’re still getting your money no matter which client you choose to log in on. Same can be said for TBC or Wrath if/when those later get released also. No matter which version of the game we choose to play, we are all still a WoW community. My advice?? While taking the time to go on your adventures through Azeroth and you make some friends along the way…add them to your Bnet rather than the regular friend list…this way you can talk to them and give them a hand if they need it no matter which clients the both of you are playing on and swap as needed
Lol, …no?
If I dont talk to them and they dont talk to me (ie, we do not interact at all) we are not a community!
That might be true for retail, but it doesn’t hold true for Classic. People don’t ignore each other in the old game because there are so many things about it that encourage grouping
You said retail players paying subs to blizzard makes them a community with classic players playing a sub to blizzard.
You said a fractured community is a fallacy because both parties pay a sub to the same company…
My point, is that those who play retail, can’t afford to ignore people in Classic because the game mechanics won’t allow a person to do that without taking a much longer time to get things accomplished. There’s no dungeon finder for example, there are elite mobs that hit like a truck, there are single tag only mobs etc. It’s MUCH more beneficial to group up and these people know that if they were there in the beginning
Yes there will be people who will try to be a lone wolf but once they realize that certain things can’t be done without help, they will look to group up. As long as the more friendly people take advantage of that and add each other via Bnet, then communication is possible no matter which client you are playing on, therefore…no fractured community
Here’s the thing though…the first part of that sentence says it all. “If I don’t talk to them” Sometimes people are introverts and don’t necessarily speak to anyone unless spoken to, so if you don’t try to reach out, part of that failure in communication is on you. Let me ask you something…do you buff/heal players as they run by or when you see them busy fighting? Do you help them if they appear to be losing and about to die? This is also part of social interaction and making friends…you don’t necessarily have to be the first one to talk…if they are a good person they will speak first by saying “ty” All you have to do then is ask if they want help or what quests they are on…it’s really not that hard to socialize in Classic
Well, if you want to believe standardized testing results that are really old by now, I was in the 99th percentile on reading comprehension back then. 
But then, I’m just some some random guy on the internet posting on a female avatar who could be blowing smoke.
Although I’ll admit to possibly getting a little too practiced at “reading between the lines” over the years since then. Being fluent in parsing Bureaucrat, “Diplomat” and a lot of Tech Jargon as well sometimes isn’t a blessing.
I agree we’re probably using different definitions here. I’m also likely to be using a far more exacting measure for it than you seem to be.
It started in TBC, but most people didn’t notice it happening until Cataclysm. Just because many/most failed to notice didn’t mean it wasn’t happening.
But hey my reading comprehension has a history of sucking:
And then we discover in May that the Pets were carrying over. Huh. I guess I really missed the boat on correctly parsing Blizzard. Reading comprehension is hard.
How can you type so much, and literally say nothing at all.
If you think homogenization happened in TBC, give me one clear example of it present during this time. I’ll wait.
Obvious one is Shaman for Alliance, Paladin for Horde. 
Might go dig through the patch notes for 2.x but probably won’t. People were complaining about homogenization even in TBC, with the Arenas also getting a lot of the heat for it. Although that generally had more to do with PvE abilities getting nerfed because they were proving to be OP in the Arena. I’m not even going to try to suss that stuff out of the patch notes.
You did make me pop over to my TBC/Wrath-era guild forums to see if I get any indications from there. First mention of “homogenization” over there was in June of 2008 in regards to Alpha leaks for Wrath. Also mentioned were comments I evidently relayed from some Blizzard Devs regarding spirit/mp5 after coming back from Blizzcon 2007. (So excuse me if my memory was slightly muddied by being aware of some things potentially(and actually) coming about halfway through TBC, with it actually happening in Wrath)
The specific topic being discussed in this case was what turned out to be the transition to spellpower instead of the previous +Healing or +dmg/healing item stat. Also brought up were the Spell and Physical Crit/hit stats being consolidated into just being Crit or Hit so they did the same thing for physical and caster classes/roles.
But that’s gear homogenization not class homogenization, except if you’re reducing the number of stats that ALL of the classes/roles are using, well…
There is a mention of “Class Homogenization” in July of 2008 by my guildmaster(not me) but doesn’t provide an example.
Later than my claim of it starting in TBC, but earlier than the alleged claim that “it didn’t happen until Cataclysm.”
And one that should really seal it, how about from Ghostcrawler himself in February 2009?
So now, let us get back to:
Gonna have to disagree here, guy.
I’d rather see new content developed with the mindset and tone of the original game rather than WoW Classic turn into EQ’s progression servers.
Your path begs the question of “where do we stop” because if you’re just going to start following OG WoW’s releases, you’re going to end up back at WotLK and Cataclysm all over again.
BC was the era of the raid where you had to have a warlock and a magetank, and the Black Temple boss who you needed rogues to tank, so I think anyone who said, now or then, that it was homogenizing the classes the way WotLK did is wrong. In WotLK class homogenization was plentiful, from Replenishment to…other things I can’t be sure if they were added in WotLK or Cataclysm (Hex, for one); you still needed a death knight for some fights (notably Malygos) but I can’t think of any fights where you really needed a class that wasn’t the sparkling new hero class.
What Ghostcrawler said was interesting, not for scoring some kind of point with “look, a WoW developer thought there was homogenization!” but for observing that, in 2007, the official stance of WoW’s development team was that homogenization was a bad thing; I wonder when they reversed that attitude.
As a former mage tank on illidari council, I’m almost cynical enough to wonder if bt spellsteal mechanics were to make sure mages kept a raid spot.
Anyways, BC’s problem wasn’t homogenization. Outside of Sunwell you could run quite a lot of comps. It’s problem, and to this day, is that the “world of warcraft” became the “world of expansion-craft” (woe) and hence classic+ (or WoW2).
/facepalm… that’s not class homogenization.
Ok I’m done, your incompetency got the best of me again, you don’t even know what the subject is you’re talking about how can you even argue for it lol
there are 14 servers for classic wow the community is already all on different server…how is that any different?.
If Blizzard is smart, they’ll stop at Wrath. Cataclysm was hot garbage and everyone knows it. But the idea of asking for extra content in the form of Classic+ is bad for two reasons.
First off, this is not the old Blizzard that gave us the game we’re getting as Classic WoW, so to even ASK or EXPECT ActiBlizz to be able to deliver new content done up in the old style and actually make it feel authentic is sheer lunacy. Ion and his goonsquad have already proven several times over during the last several years that they are incapable of making good content that will keep players coming back for more as is evident by the vast number of people who have quit the game and are only just now finally coming back. You can try to claim otherwise and point to everyone playing retail right now, but the reality is…some people just don’t want to give up on the game when they’ve invested so much time and effort into their characters…especially if they’ve been playing from day 1, not to mention all of the money they’ve spent in sub fees for so long. And the number of people who are still playing retail PALES in comparison to how many have quit and are now returning, particularly those in the private server communities.
The second reason, is even IF the attempt was made by Blizzard to give you this new content…can you really be certain they could pull it off without screwing something up and ruining the Classic project entirely?? What happens when these vanilla private server players and the players who quit because of Cataclysm or some other expansion suddenly don’t like this new content?? How many of them do you think are going to jump ship and ruin it for the rest of us?? These are the factors that Blizzard needs to keep in mind when faced with whether or not to make changes or add content, because without a vast loyal player base, it won’t be sustainable for long. This is the reason they offered TBC instead, because it was the most logical solution in the form of content vs cost/time/effort.
Keep in mind however, that it won’t be progression based this time…not when they spent so many months painstakingly fixing bugs and graphical glitches to bring vanilla wow back. TBC and anything else will be put out on separate clients/servers just like swapping from Classic to retail so it will be entirely optional whether to move on or not
Guys. Stop feeding the nuts in this thread. They vanish into obscurity and stop repeating the same crap over and over if you just let them alone.
The Homogenization quote from Ghostcrawler was February 2009, which was early into Wrath. He acknowledged they had homogenized, but that they didn’t want to proceed further down that path.
Want to or not, they ultimately did(Cata and later). It’s also very pertinent to what he was disputing with me. He was asserting the homogenization started in Cataclysm. So good to see at least somebody else who agrees it was clearly happening in Wrath, even if you didn’t check the timestamps properly on the Ghostcrawler quote. 
No, I’m not mistaken, I was not suggesting they were the same thing. I was saying that “Whether they do Classic+ or TBC or both, that doesn’t mean we have to lose 1.13.”