With today’s patch, in addition to gameplay updates and bugfixes, you’ll now see an informational window on the character selection screen.
The new window contains some general information on what’s coming, and it can be hidden and revealed by clicking the circular Burning Crusade Classic button on the same screen. This is not the point at which you’ll choose between the two games (Burning Crusade Classic and WoW Classic Era). That decision will become accessible in the pre-expansion patch.
We don’t yet have specific dates to announce for the pre-expansion patch and Burning Crusade Classic launch to share, but we’ll let you know what those are here on the official site.
I see in the patch notes that seal twisting for paladins was intentionally preserved with the new 10ms spell batch.
Are there any other gameplay mechanics that relied on a 10ms batch window that were intentionally preserved? If not, what was different about seal twisting that warranted adding this workaround to allow the same behavior? How do the devs evaluate which gameplay mechanics and interaction are important to the game and should be preserved vs. which ones will be casualties to the new 10ms spell batch?
As a raiding Rogue, am I now going to find it 40x more difficult to vanish fears on Gluth or Nefarian, Web Wrap on Maexxna, etc?
I would really appreciate some clarity in this area. Thanks!
Y’all wanted changes, we told you they’d pick and choose what was ‘spirit of vanilla/tbc’ and that’d mean some would lose out. But no, everyone wanted the game to be like retail, with a group of out of touch devs fiddling with the authentic experience to make it align more with their vision.
Please give us at least a 2 week notice before the pre-expansion patch goes online. Some of us are levelling alts and would like to know in advance if they’ll make it to 58-60 before the clone option becomes available or not.
Knowing whether I’ll be 58 or not before the patch arrives dictates what I’ll do with the remaining time I have: Farming mats, raiding more with the toons I already have capped, or levelling more alts.
If this is referring to me, I have always been opposed to these changes. I like spell batching and have argued in favor of keeping it for the many unique strategies players have devised around it. 10ms spell batch has deep gameplay implications and wasn’t implemented in retail until WoD. The majority of players who have cried about spell batching are ignorant about how it even works, and usually the real reason they died is not “the game didn’t let me react quickly enough” but rather “I failed to anticipate what was about to happen”. In addition to changing the gameplay of every single class in PvP, the batching change is also a universal nerf to all PvE encounters, and encounter nerfs are the absolute last thing that classic needs.
I’m honestly not a fan of the world buff pokeball either. I don’t mind raid logging on my main, particularly when we are this far into the final tier of classic. I have alts to play for a reason. Also the pokeball encourages far worse min-maxing than before: get one buff → immediately pokeball it and log to wait out the CD → restore buff and get more buffs → pokeball again and immediately log to wait out the CD → repeat a few times → go to ZG isle, buy and use a zanza potion, then buy another one → get summoned to Naxx.
It also changes the entire PvP meta around world buffs. It is IMO a big change with massive implications, and I seriously doubt that the developers properly considered all of them.
And the buff priority system is a whole 'nother can of worms. How do the developers decide what buffs have priority? Where can players find this information? From the standpoint of players, doesn’t the relative priority of buffs depend on the gameplay situation? What should be prioritized if I have both ‘Evasion’ and ‘Earthstrike’ buffs? The ‘right’ answer can definitely change once the tank taunts the mob off me.
Anyway, there are a lot of reasons that I don’t play retail, and I really don’t support these efforts to make vanilla into a more retail-like game. I’m concerned about the precedent established by these changes as well.
TLDR: if you’re accusing me of anything here, I’ve been team #nochanges all along and I have not wavered in that.
Anyway, back to the original topic of my question:
Why did the developers single out only one mechanic (seal twisting for paladins) to preserve with the new 10ms spell batch and why were other gameplay interactions players have discovered and practiced over the years not also singled out for preservation?
What is different between a paladin seal twisting vs. a rogue vanish-immuning raid mechanics vs. a priest using SW:D in TBC PvP to break polymorph? What makes seal twisting more special than these other interactions?
They answer questions all the time. Go through any recent blue post in the Classic forums.
Examples:
All of these are direct responses to people’s questions and comments.
And again, this is precisely the place to ask questions. The Classic forums is where one would go to do that. Where else would you go to do that?
“You think this is an AMA?” is honestly kind of a dumb thing to say because yes it’s the closest thing we have as far as communication with Blizzard goes.