Open World : Retail should learn from HC classic

Community General Discussion
1

As you can see from my history, I’m a supporter of a much improved open world, and I’m more of a single player.

Except that every time this subject comes up, some players try to gaslight me by saying I just want a skyrim. And in the year I’ve been on Retail, I’ve incorporated this idea that maybe I just want to play another game.

Except that lately I’ve been trying my hand at WoW Classic HC. I having never touched that version in my life (I started WoW during the DragonFlight expansion).

And now I’m confident enough to say that I don’t want Skyrim, but elements of Classic HC in retail, because in that version there are exactly the qualities I expect from an open world MMO.

Classic HC is more punishing but less difficult
Overall, this version is much less difficult. Rotations and gameplay are much simpler than on retail. On the other hand, the open world is much more dangerous. Every enemy has to be taken seriously, and attacking several mobs at the same time requires preparation. The result is a much slower pace, with players moving at their own pace.Which has several consequences:

  • Each unlock is meaningful

Whether it’s unlocking a flight path, a new skill, a copper coin or completing a quest, all these unlockables are meaningful and progress our character. Increasing your weapon or defence skills, gaining a single level, is a real gain that can be played in sessions of an hour or 5 hours at a time. Consumables are useful too. And that’s exactly what’s missing from Retail. You can unlock a lot of stuff in REtail, but most of the time it’s insignificant. It’s not going to improve my character, or even make my life easier. And even if it does, it happens so quickly that you don’t notice.

  • Player Agency

Given that there are so many ways to progress and everything is useful (even professions!), as a player, every day that I log on, I can choose my objectives and my path. It could be finishing a quest. Levelling up. Working on my professions. Exploring a new zone. Earning money to upgrade my armour. I’ve always got something to do, and that’s going to progress my character in some way.

In retail, these choices are reduced to a minimum. For leveling, you only choose the zone and whether you want to do mainly quests or dungeons, with the same goal in mind: to reach max level as quickly as possible. For the end game, everything converges on the instances, to achieve exactly the same goal: increasing your ilvl.
In the end, I don’t have much choice about how I play. End game is the real game. Whereas in Classic, the game begins at level 1.

  • Open World MMO

What really shocks me the most is that the open world is alive with players everywhere. The game is so slow, the players’ objectives so vast, that even on Classic HC, even if we share the same goal of reaching level 60, it’s not a race. You have to get there, but being late has no impact on your enjoyment of the game. So people progress at their own pace, and we’re always meeting new players. And it’s good to see that general chat is alive and kicking. It’s an interaction I enjoy when I can help another player I don’t know. Receiving a blessing from a paladin who’s just passing by.
In retail, when I make old content, everything goes very fast. We kill mobs too quickly to “waste” time with another player. Even at hubs, I see players get on their mounts and leave too quickly to have time to write “hi”.

I think these are the 3 main elements that make the open world so much more enjoyable in HC classic than on Retail. Retail’s mistake, I think, is believing that the open world enjoyers would absolutely want to be in the same zone as the instances enjoyers. This poses insoluble problems. How do you give open world players a continuous progression without making the M+/raids pointless?
Classic responds to this by offering a very long leveling experience for these players, where each stage is meaningful.
On the other hand, I think Retail could have potential. There is more content. Pet Battle. Transmog and the whole collection aspect. Some QOL as share loot without grouping.

Blizzard could absolutely sit down for a few seconds and think about a way of making the whole Retail game, every zone, every loot, meaningful. A whole system that could be in another version of the game (another server for exemple : Ironman Retail mode).
Inspired by classic. Classic contains some frictions that I think are brilliant ideas. The fact that you have to buy skills. Having to train with a new type of weapon. The fact that I have to look at grey objects because they can be a way of improving my character.

Making retail a slower, more dangerous adventure, with progression through the whole WoW story, through all the expansions, would make it a great game. Which would of course suit a different type of gamers to those who currently enjoy retails. But Classic shows that there is an audience out there.

It’s a win-win situation. I couldn’t see myself being forced to make instances and wasting the time of M+ players. My subscription time would be much longer instead of being interrupted because one-shotting mobs gets tiresome very quickly.

14 Likes
2

HC will not be crowded and alive next year. It’s simply a new way to play that has been requested since the very launch of wow. HC players will move on.

25 Likes
3

make retails ow the difficulty of vanillas lol

1 Like
4

We have classic since 2019, and it’s not dead (without a single update).
I find this kind of statement crazy when the facts show that there is a demand.

4 Likes
5

drops Classic into the Maw where it belongs

20 Likes
6

Maybe I’m in the minority but I enjoy the open world content and don’t mind at all that it’s not dangerous usually. I don’t need every encounter to be a Dark Souls boss, I enjoy the more relaxed gameplay.

15 Likes
7

For as much as folks like to complain about retail, it’ll always be the most ‘alive’ version of the game. And I say this while my friends are playing Classic.

Why? Well because there’s new stuff. Always, on the regular, updates will occur.

Hardcore is new and being played, for now, but remember Classic’s Season of Mastery?

That died, lol. They didn’t bring it back, either.

16 Likes
8

Classic bores me. it was fun when it was new.

10 Likes
9

Well, I’ve wondered, and that seemed like a good sum up. That said, we have choices, and choice is always good.

2 Likes
10

I really like how the OP put open world in the title as the premise for their post and then proceeded to talk about everything else. I thought they were going to compare the open worlds in Retail and HC Classic.

9 Likes
11

Because it’s everything else that makes the open world what it is. Not the zones themselves.

2 Likes
12

Um, no. The open world is defined by the geometry, events and quests. I couldn’t find any of that in your post. You just talked about the systems in Retail and about how they’re bad.

8 Likes
13

I think the biggest difference in mindset between Retail/Classic is that in Classic the focus is on the adventure. It’s the process of getting to the end, and all the choices and agency we have along the way.

In Retail, however, everything is focused on rushing players through to the endgame and then grinding it on repeat. There’s no love for the process.

It’s part of why I’ve been thinking for years that the whole “leveling” process needs to be scrapped. If we remove the arbitrary “levels” concept from the picture, it’s less about getting from 60-70, or 70-80, and more about focusing on what we do in the game instead.

Making certain content exclusive to max level means that anything below that is less valuable, and therefore less worthy of investing time into it.

14

It would be fine as an option but you don’t want it to be mandatory. There are a lot of people who play this game who do it basically for fun. We don’t see it as a new job or a calling, it’s just a way to blow off steam once in a while.

Make it too hard and it will be impossible for the lower level players to play. And they won’t come to the forums to complain, they will just move on to something else.

And bottom line? There are just not enough top players to pay the bills and keep the lights on. Without the causal players, just about any video game would go belly up.

3 Likes
15

Classic has had a season to try to keep interest and now an HC mode to try to keep interest. BC failed and was shut down. Wrath is still unlocking patch content.

It’s great people still play, but let’s not kid ourselves here about the need to add things to keep it interesting.

Every game needs different modes or content or something to keep it interesting.

2 Likes
16

I think Classic should mind its own business and just do its own thing.

7 Likes
17

Split the base, split the base! There is no more factions war in Warcraft, just expansion wars, classic vs. standard edition, aka retail.

18

If dificulty is what many of you want then the easiest solution is global button that lets you chose between three dif modes. Thses modes will change all mobs in the world to diff levels.
Reg the level of xpack when it came out (for farming),
Current the current level we are at (so people can level in any zone)
Elite all mobe glbaly are elite level
HardCore perma death and elite mobs

But the truth is many of you just want he game to be played the way you want it to be played and worse you everyone else to be forced to play it your way.

1 Like
19

Era being focused on leveling is unique to era.

As expansions progress less and less people want to focus on leveling.

We see it a lot even in Wrath classic (expansion 2) not to mention DF (expansion 9).

Not to mention the mass proliferation of boosting due to the high demand on wanting to skip leveling. So much boosting that Blizz had to make changes to curb it.

20

Retail is fine, they would likely benefit from adding a seasonal ironman (not HC) leveling mode though.

Put a tasty carrot at the end of it and it’ll def have it’s audience.

2 Likes