Keep Era going - WB Quests (US)

(US Forums Repost)

There is a thread named the same as this on the EU forums that has gained a bit of attention from Classic Era players. Unfortunately, US players can’t readily post there without an active account and leveled character. So I am linking it here and re-posting the author’s message so that US players can also participate in the topic.

Original EU thread link: https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/keep-era-going-wb-quests/347957

Hey there,

so I’m one of those rarly players that are on Era since day 1! I just love vanilla and I love to go with 40ppl in a Raid and try to get better and better every week! And since Era is meant to be a place, where vanilla is going forever, I see a danger for the far future for all motivated Era player - World Buffs.

As for me and a lot of other players, we try to push bountries every week by trying to get better and we do this with a full wordbuffed raid! Since the Cluster are not thaaaat great composed (sry Blizz^^) we will have a problem getting new Dragonslayer/Rend/ZG Buffs in the future because every player has done the quest and new people that level are kind of rare…

My idea for this.
Please Blizzard, make the Wordbuff Quest repeatable. Every Raid drops a Ony/Rend/Nefarian head, why shouldnt it be possible to turn that head in? Ofc without reward, thats only gainable at the first time :slight_smile:

And I also know, Era is one of the last things you care about at the moment but Vanilla is like the heart of Blizzard, its THE game where everything startet. Show those people who love this some love <3

Malloc - Vanilla enthusiast since 2005

I agree with this suggestion as both an active Classic Era player and as WoW veteran since 2006.

82 Likes

Alternatively: https://www.wowhead.com/news/chinese-servers-testing-wow-classic-world-buff-changes-319186
“3. World Buffs Constantly Drop Without Turn-Ins
This is what the Chinese realms are testing right now… players who are out leveling would constantly want to go back into town to pick up these buffs, which go out every hour…”

Either solution would be wonderful. IMO. Having the quest be repeatable (sans rewards) would be just as ideal, imo.

13 Likes

Blizzard, please look into making this change or something to improve the ability for Era to maintain World Buff drops. Our community, while small, is active and giving us an alternative to leveling alts for each buff drop would be a huge improvement to the raiding aspect of the game.

7 Likes

Thanks for posting this, Lovepony. I think Malloc’s original post on the EU forums is a wonderful solution. World buffs are a big part of the experience for a lot of players, whether it’s raiding with them or leveling another character to get them. It’s such a rush to play in a raid with 40-man (or 20-man) with world buffs. The stakes and intensity are high, and so is the fun.

I believe making the quests repeatable is a great idea. It ensures world buffs will continue to drop, but still forces the players to coordinate as a team, be in the right place at the right time, etc etc. Therefore, the feel/immersion remains, but the stress of running out of turn-ins goes away. To me, it seems like a win-win. Buffs from a vendor seem lazy and lifeless to me.

The Chronoboon is an example of an amazing new implementation to the game. Here’s to hoping that spirit of creativity continues on.

9 Likes

Either make the quests repeatable or drop them for free like on CN.

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@Blizzard

Please make the quests repeatable or provide free drops every so often during a day.

Regards,

Norum

6 Likes

I am highly opposed to sporadic, free drops or any means of purchasing the buff off a vendor. However I do support the implementation of the quest item (head/heart) turn-in being repeatable since this still requires doing the raid encounter/getting attuned etc.

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Malloc has an excellent idea. Having the quest repeatable ensures players will continue to enjoy raiding Onyxia/BWL/ZG and is akin to gathering materials for raid consumables. I only see positives that would come from this change!

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I personally am not a fan of the ‘regular interval’ wb dropping idea nor the ‘purchasable’ wb idea and do NOT support those ideas as solutions. When taken to their ultimate long term effect, handouts, serve to unbalanced the current sustainable game ecosystem.

As a player who played both during Original Release Vanilla and Classic Vanilla and now Classic Era Vanilla, even with Chronoboons, the current Classic Era environment more faithfully re-creates how it was originally.

Yes, Chronoboons were a brilliant idea and implementation, now more than ever being a wonderful addition for the game!

Repeatable World Buff Quests would be another.

Classic Era players don’t need a free ride, they need solutions to existing problems that don’t create new ones nor sacrifice the long term good for short term gains.

Leave ‘Easy’ for Retail… not Classic Era.

12 Likes

Being a dungeon junkie, I’d love the original proposition to be implemented. More folks to run UBRS with at random times or more ony/nef heads to go around = fun. (the whole reason I’m back on and enjoying classic era is because of the active player base).
I will say that any forward progress to help ease this problem, would be a step in the right direction. I do not think that freebies or handouts are ideal but I also think it is a better solution than them not doing anything. IMO
I DO fully support the original proposition though. Fully. Hopefully Blizzard can start re-visiting a lot of these issues or at least give some signs that they care, again. Community engagement… something. The old Wow forums would have blue posts on threads exactly like this. With thoughts and opinions directly from people who could help make these changes.

3 Likes

It would be awesome to see some love for classic era servers. The people who are playing still are some of the most dedicated players to WoW I’ve ever seen.

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I’m opposed to World Buffs being so common. The rarer they are the more valuable they become. People already have a Chronoboon where you can pick and choose where to use these buffs so constant world buff drops, even by repeatable quests, is even less necessary.

You’re not supposed to always be able to get world buffs. That’s kind of their thing.

Also, no raid boss encounter requires world buffs. If you’re having trouble without world buffs then adjust raiding strategies.

If we’re gonna start shifting towards the direction that everyone needs to have world buffs before a raid, and we can’t raid without them, then let’s just auto-add full world buffs when you enter a raid.

3 Likes

You bring up some good points, Holsum, but I think you’re glossing over some ways to mee in the middle.

World buffs aren’t necessary to clear a raid instance, you’re correct, but for competitive guilds doing speed runs or with players trying to parse they are required. For more average guilds they make the instances a bit easier, and yes to the point where those guilds may not clear a raid without world buffs; with the current population of classic server clusters, having guilds fail to clear any raid instance is detrimental to that guild, and subsequently detrimental to the server cluster.

For competitive guilds, they have people leveling alts specifically to do the quest for buffs. They always have it one way or another. This is pretty much what this change fixes.

As it stands now, when a world buff is dropped that buff cannot be dropped again for a set period of time. Some adjustments could be made to prevent the reapplication of world buffs for a set period of time to prevent rebuffing if a raid wipes, and make the buffs feel a bit more rare.

Auto adding buffs is not a great idea - a big part of the game is keeping yourself alive, and losing buffs for the night is, in my opinion, a reasonable consequence for dying.

Repeatable quests work well when, for instance, nef only drops one head each week.

1 Like

I understand.

Should we really change buff mechanics again to make it easier for hardcore speed running guilds? We already did that with the Chronoboon. With it you also eliminate all the risk of losing the buff by dying until the 1 encounter in the whole raid you want to use it on.

Adding even easier world buff acquisition will probably take away the “hardcore” part of these guilds too. Doesn’t “hardcore” mean you do difficult things and dedicate much more time than regular guilds to achieve above average results? If we have world buffs dropping every time then everyone is a speed running parsing guild. This was the case with most of Classic but with no Chronoboon so save them from wiping on trash.

I understand for regular guilds that not being able to complete a raid is detrimental, but that’s what progression is. Not being able to complete an encounter without world buffs means the encounter is above the current raid’s overall level. You get better and come back to try again.

For parse chasers, sure. I’m no expert but I imagine the clock for a speedrun starts the moment the first pull is made and that taking a break to refill buffs would wreck their cleartime. Its also my personal opinion that rebooning shouldn’t be possible mid-combat.

I think there is like one guild on the US servers that is actively trying to speed clear faster than guilds in other countries doing the same. To my knowledge these speed clear guilds that exist are trying to beat the Chinese guilds, who have a lockdown on speed clears - obviously their ‘buy-a-boon’ giving them an unfair advantage.

The rest of the guilds are a lot more, dare I say, relaxed. The Naxx clearing guilds are doing it in like 4 hours or taking two days to do it depending on wipes. They aren’t trying for the sub 1.5 hr speed clears.

Chronoboons weren’t about helping raid progression per say, they were implemented more to allow people to play the game instead of boon-logging and decrease purge-griefing as well. Most people don’t make tickets/forum post because they wiped, but will largely do so when griefed.

The side effect was the influence on raid progression. Yes, allowing guild to save them when struggling. Or to allow for power speed clearing timed stuff too. These have enhanced the game, not detracted from it.

A bigger side effect became how they help Classic Era endure. It’s not about parses for the rest of the guilds here. We use them when we’re SHORT ON PEOPLE and lack sufficient numbers to down an encounter. It’s not just my guild, other guilds that want to survive have adopted the Invest-in-People philosophy now. It takes A LOT to finally give up on a player.

Players that were readily discarded in other incarnations of the game, are now worked with on levels largely not seen before to help them. It’s a whole different ballgame now. This is a good thing.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

World buffs dropped regularly during original Vanilla WoW. During Classic Vanilla they dropped like clockwork - this is why the meme ‘late’ was born. During Classic Era WoW we’re lucky to get them multiple times A WEEK. On my previous cluster, we dropped them 1/month.

In order to drop world buffs now, players have to actively level alts.

Classic Era is not SoM.
Classic Era is not Retail.
Classic Era is not Classic the Burning Crusade (at release or now).
There never were bots here.
There never were boosters here.
There never were campers here.
There is no super economy here to buy discount BoE’s and enchants to power up.

Classic Era is the most brutal environment to level up a character in the history of WoW.

Right now that is the principle way we are acquiring world buffs, mainly alts, rarely new players.

Blizzard planned for people to get this buff regularly as other people leveled up and played thru the game/raided. That is why there is no limitation on receiving the buff. You aren’t flagged for it and can never receive it again. Nor is it player_only buff. It hits everyone in range. This is all intentional.

What they didn’t plan on was the game to be ‘self contained’ and expansion-LESS like Classic Era is.

Blizzard was in direct competition with Everquest, released 5 years before WoW. By the time of WoW’s release in Nov 2004, Everquest had released 8 expansions.

Yes. You read that correctly. The game Blizzard was trying to out-do had already release EIGHT EXPANSIONS by the time WoW was on shelves.

At the time of Wow’s release, I was an active game developer working on a CRP title in direct competition with Diablo and the forthcoming Diablo II. We were very aware of what their Blizz’s intentions were with WoW at release.

Not just from a developer point of view, but even investors knew WoW as emulating Everquests model. Because of course they were, EQ was literally blowing up the scene and making ‘mad money’ for the time. It was the first real MMO to explode on such a level.

You didn’t do that, people didn’t want to give you development money.

CASE IN POINT

This is why the CRPG I was working on was planned and released as ‘episodic’. Original game release and then 5 expansions.

6 Likes

This is a good idea, and I support this. Would appreciate if the Classic Era devs can make this change.

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i think i’d like to keep my som toon going after som 1 ends. would be great if they could facilitate a higher population by whatever means possible. consolidate all servers to 1 pvp 1 pve, for example. there is enough of us to fill it…i think.

I’m confused to why this is a discussion? A huge majority of the population were against world buffs. To me it seems a little ridiculous that in order to keep era going we need to have world buffs.

Literally all they would have to do is drop a new dungeon and every player since 2006 would be queing up to play.

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The squeaky wheel gets the oil. The ones who fought and cried the loudest against World Buffs got what they wanted with SoM. Those players have no intention on ever returning to Classic Era.

We are talking about Classic Era, whose overall population is stagnant and is at the mercy of brutal attrition. Those that stayed behind either really enjoy the original formula, or just want to “complete” their characters. In Classic Era, you can pretty much 100% at a steady pace, but it still requires community participation to achieve some of those goals.

If a casual guild can only muster 20 players on average, there’s no chance to make it much further than Molten Core. Most might have never seen past MC/BWL. World Buffs help compensate for those situations where numbers/comp lack, but the World Buffs are too finite to keep trying push attempts.

1 Like