Please reconsider your stance on retail/classic reward linking

[Iammyparse-thrall]

Why is the prestige of mounts that someone literally walked up to a vendor and paid gold for more important than the prestige of CE titles or mounts?

[Mogar-stormrage (Mogar)]

If I couldn’t laugh at some of these posts, I’d be banging my head against the wall. People who’s only interest in Classic is to unlock stuff for a different game…and they wonder why Classic isn’t being crafted for that kind of mentality?

[Scaught-akama]

Now I admit that I haven’t read all the way through this thread so forgive me if this has already been asked.

You said that there should never be a crossover between two separate things like retail WoW and Classic WoW.

Yet there are crossovers between WoW, Hearthstone, Diablo and Starcraft. But Classic should be the exception?

[Fesz-cenarius]

Why is the prestige of mounts that someone literally walked up to a vendor and paid gold for more important than the prestige of CE titles or mounts?

What CE titles or mounts?

Unless I am mistaken, the original CE did not grant a title or a mount.

[Syradaria-moon-guard (Syradaria)]

This is a fairly false assumption.

For instance, I played Vanilla. I have stuff from Vanilla that is no longer obtainable (a low end pvp title, some crafting mats, etc). I will probably play Classic on the side as an amusement, mostly for PvP.

One of the things that made Vanilla good was that there was a constant stream of content, new dungeons, battlegrounds, raids, quests, items, etc. After Classic reaches the end of its gate cycle (i.e. Naxx) it won’t have any of that–which is perfectly fine, except it means that eventually, say 2 years down the line, more and more people will have thoroughly played the content and gotten everything they want to get.

It would be nice if all that stuff you earned in Classic wow was then also available to enjoy if you decided a year of farming Naxx was plenty and you want to see what patch 9.2 has to offer in regular wow.

Which is to say, part of the value of earning things in Vanilla, was that those things moved forward. You got good dungeon gear to move into raids, and good raid gear to move into deeper raids, and so on. But Classic has no forward past BiS. You reach max character potential and then there is stagnation. It would be nice if instead you had the option to transfer that character over once you’ve thoroughly enjoyed what Vanilla has to offer, which subjective judgements of quality aside: is objectively finite. It is a mistake to assume people want to play just to unlock things for the live version of the game–what people want is persistence. I’d be nice to know that in 5-6 years I could enjoy the things I’ve unlocked on characters I am doing new content on, rather than that alt gathering more and more dust as the years go by, because there isn’t much more to do.

I also find the “we have to keep value in what people earned in the past” argument to be a pretty poor one for this particular case. We are not talking about Glad mounts. The vast majority of T3 that people have on live wow is not from the handful of guilds that pushed Naxx during Vanilla, it comes from BC when tons of people were doing Naxx at 70 in 70 raid gear. Ditto the removed ZG elements, which people were doing in both at 70 and 80. Many of these rewards were available long after the actual “earned” period, so there’s not all that much sense in preventing people from unlocking them in Classic. Someone who obtains T3 or a ZG tiger in Classic earned those rewards far more than someone who farmed them in BC in full T6.

[Fesz-cenarius]

Now I admit that I haven’t read all the way through this thread so forgive me if this has already been asked.

You said that there should never be a crossover between two separate things like retail WoW and Classic WoW.

Yet there are crossovers between WoW, Hearthstone, Diablo and Starcraft. But Classic should be the exception?

You cannot use any of the cards you obtain in Hearthstone in WoW. You cannot use armor that you obtain in WoW in Overwatch. You cannot use a piece of gear you obtain in Diablo in Starcraft.

What some people want is to be able to obtain rare armor, mounts, titles or other rare things in Classic and have them transfer to Retail. Unsurprisingly, most of those “requesting” to be able to obtain those rare items in classic are level 120’s (obviously retail players) who claim that “classic will fail” unless Blizzard caters to them and other retail players by ‘rewarding’ them to play Classic".

[Fesz-cenarius]

This is a fairly false assumption.

For instance, I played Vanilla. I have stuff from Vanilla that is no longer obtainable (a low end pvp title, some crafting mats, etc). I will probably play Classic on the side as an amusement, mostly for PvP.

One of the things that made Vanilla good was that there was a constant stream of content, new dungeons, battlegrounds, raids, quests, items, etc. After Classic reaches the end of its gate cycle (i.e. Naxx) it won’t have any of that–which is perfectly fine, except it means that eventually, say 2 years down the line, more and more people will have thoroughly played the content and gotten everything they want to get.

It would be nice if all that stuff you earned in Classic wow was then also available to enjoy if you decided a year of farming Naxx was plenty and you want to see what patch 9.2 has to offer in regular wow.

Which is to say, part of the value of earning things in Vanilla, was that those things moved forward. You got good dungeon gear to move into raids, and good raid gear to move into deeper raids, and so on. But Classic has no forward past BiS. You reach max character potential and then there is stagnation. It would be nice if instead you had the option to transfer that character over once you’ve thoroughly enjoyed what Vanilla has to offer, which subjective judgements of quality aside: is objectively finite. It is a mistake to assume people want to play just to unlock things for the live version of the game–what people want is persistence. I’d be nice to know that in 5-6 years I could enjoy the things I’ve unlocked on characters I am doing new content on, rather than that alt gathering more and more dust as the years go by, because there isn’t much more to do.

I also find the “we have to keep value in what people earned in the past” argument to be a pretty poor one for this particular case. We are not talking about Glad mounts. The vast majority of T3 that people have on live wow is not from the handful of guilds that pushed Naxx during Vanilla, it comes from BC when tons of people were doing Naxx at 70 in 70 raid gear. Ditto the removed ZG elements, which people were doing in both at 70 and 80. Many of these rewards were available long after the actual “earned” period, so there’s not all that much sense in preventing people from unlocking them in Classic. Someone who obtains T3 or a ZG tiger in Classic earned those rewards far more than someone who farmed them in BC in full T6.

Any rewards obtained in Classic will always be usable–IN CLASSIC. IMO, those rewards obtained in Classic should remain in classic and NOT be transferred to retail.

Fortunately, Blizzard shares this opinion.

Those retail players who do not have those rare items they covet will have to be satisfied with having them only in CLASSIC.

[Starman-zangarmarsh (Starman)]

CE titles or mounts

No such thing.

[Creencia-proudmoore (Creencia)]

It’s good to see that this is still the Starman and Fesz fighting back and forth post.

[Weili-wyrmrest-accord (Weili)]

The vast majority of T3 that people have on live wow is not from the handful of guilds that pushed Naxx during Vanilla, it comes from BC when tons of people were doing Naxx at 70 in 70 raid gear.

I wouldn’t even be that generous, personally. I’d guess that the majority of T3 you see mogged on current players comes from the BMAH.

But Classic has no forward past BiS. You reach max character potential and then there is stagnation.

There are two things to address here.
The first is that Blizzard has been firm from the start that the Classic project is intended to be a kind of playable museum. Therefore you guys who are all about forward progression and nothing else need to wrap your minds around that.
To that end, there are paths open to Blizzard to keep a static Classic experience available, with a strong base of players, that doesn’t involve opening the project up to the things that you guys imagine are the only things that will “save” Classic.

The drop off in 3 weeks, and at 3 months will be huge. Unlocks help encourage some players to remain. Their mere presence will, in turn, bolster the dungeon and raid rosters of many other players whose experiences would suffer without company to share it with.

The addendum to point two is that you guys are 100% severely underestimating the size of the Classic community. I am not just talking about the number of people who play on private servers who might roll, but the larger number of non-private server ex-WoW players who plan on coming back.

A dropoff by 3 weeks is expected by most, I think. That’s because everyone and their brother from the modern game is going to try it out and some are going to freak out when they find out that the Defias guys in the Northshire vineyard can actually kill them. The rest will be business as usual and will not need you and yours to “save” them in any way, shape or form.

You don’t have to agree with or say you are doing what the fans say they want something… but you should at least acknowledge that they are being heard and what they say is being pondered…

If the idea is not, in fact, being pondered, then that would be a dishonest thing to say, wouldn’t it? It would give you a false sense of hope.

Would it be to hard to simply say, “I understand that this is something that some of you want, but at this time we are not going down that path, but we will pass your thoughts onto the development team”?

Given the fact that he first posted on this topic a week (?) or so ago with a slightly less door-slamming tone-- he was using phrases like “at this time” etc.-- and then came back yesterday with this very firm answer after letting us fiercely debate the issue for a while, I think that this is exactly what he did. Passed our thoughts on to the dev team and got an answer from them. Just my opinion.

[Gnocci-emerald-dream]

Not trying to call you a liar, but with how the CMs have treated the player base in the past and how they currently treat the playerbase, no one is going to just take your word for it.

Pretty sure I’ve never once lied to any of you. Nor would I do it if asked. I can’t speak for other CMs in the past, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never done it and I’ve never heard of them doing it either.

If I had access to the old forum I would link you Fangtooth’s boldfaced lies.

(I am kidding of course, it being 10 or more years ago…)

But in all seriousness, you CMs need to start being more like Caydiem and less like Fangtooth.

[Valhalian-trollbane (Valhalian)]

I would try to seperate in your mind retail and classic. Something you buy on retail shouldn’t give you something in Classic, or vice versa.

Surprised no one has said this, but this statement currently as far as we know is false. Unless stated otherwise, I can buy a token in retail, and play both retail and classic from that game token. I know this isn’t precisely what you’re talking about when using items in game, but token purchases in retail are going to have an effect on Classic.

This is a dumb arguement. Using a token has an effect on the players real life. It doesnt have an effect in game (unless used for cash shop purchases) which again is going to be retail only.

[Gnocci-emerald-dream]

Would it be to hard to simply say, “I understand that this is something that some of you want, but at this time we are not going down that path, but we will pass your thoughts onto the development team”?

Why would they need to do that? It is assumed that those like yourself would prefer classic be more like BFA than vanilla. It would be cosmically redundant to pass every one of your requests to the devs.

[Gnocci-emerald-dream]

Since the work to implement Classic is already being done, do you think the Devs might be willing to “double dip” on that investment?

What I mean is, you’re already getting the old zones, dungeons, npcs, quests, items, etc. up and running on the modern client for Classic. Would it be too much to hope that Modern WoW could get that old content added back in, say via a caverns of time portal to “Old Kalimdor” and “Old Eastern Kingdoms”. Obviously Flight would be disabled in the old versions of the continents since they aren’t updated for flight, but that’s a small price to pay to have access to the classic versions of everything, yet still have the features of Modern WoW.

Doing this allows Blizzard to basically tout the old zones as a feature added to Modern WoW for those who don’t want to play in the Classic Ruleset environment, but still would like to do the old quests/dungeons/raids/etc.

This would also add a huge amount of content for mog chasers, pet collectors, and mount farmers, and it helps justify the time and effort being devoted to Classic, since its also adding “content” to Modern.

Is it not enough that they are handing you as a current subscriber the entirety of classic for not a cent more than you were already paying? Behold, the type of player that blizzard gifted classic to, ever so deserving of it.

If I couldn’t laugh at some of these posts, I’d be banging my head against the wall. People who’s only interest in Classic is to unlock stuff for a different game…and they wonder why Classic isn’t being crafted for that kind of mentality?

The people with that mentality are being gifted classic in the first place, cannot forget that gem. Expect it to get even worse come release.

[Gnocci-emerald-dream]

The addendum to point two is that you guys are 100% severely underestimating the size of the Classic community.

Also to consider are the numbers of vanilla fans who would intentionally hold off their start in classic until the dust settles, the tourists leave, and they can choose a healthy server to play on. Wait 3 weeks to avoid the worst of the worst tourists and sharding? Sign me up.

Personally that is the plan I am leaning toward (IF they do a proper recreation of earlier AV). I don’t care about server firsts as much as I do stable and long term population and community.

[Malfosa-whisperwind]

“The fans told us continuously that they wanted this, so that got us thinking that we should see if it’s possible. When we saw it was possible, we couldn’t wait to give them what they had been asking for.”

Yeah. And at the same time their copyright protections on Vanilla were in jeopardy as the Library of Congress was considering removing all DMCA protections for abandoned games as part of its mandated Section 1201 review.

The lawyers had more effect.

[Nicodemùs-argent-dawn (Nicodemùs)]

Hey don’t get me wrong. I’m very grateful for Classic. I am planning to play it extensively when it releases. But at the same time, it just struck me as an obvious easy way for Blizzard to get double the return out of a single investment.

I don’t have any skin in this. I was there for vanilla. I got Grand Marshal back then. I’ve got the mogs and mounts I wanted. I can strut around in my Necro-Knight’s Garb anytime I want (and I do on occasion). So its not like I made the suggestion from a position of selfishness. Rather I made it from a position of practicality and good business sense.

If you’re already making an investment, and you see an opportunity to get significantly more out of that investment with minimal additional investment or risk, why wouldn’t you? Obviously there may be other factors that I am not privy to that would make them decide not to, but it doesn’t hurt to suggest it.

[Narya-kirin-tor (Narya)]

“Minimal risk” is a huge assumption on your part. Lots of Classic players, aka people who are not otherwise giving Blizzard money, would continue not giving Blizzard money, whether on private servers or through continuing to not play at all, if Blizzard announced “also, we’re going to take steps to have Classic inundated with Modern players who don’t actually want to be playing it, and will disappear once they’ve gotten the raid drops they want or given up on getting them.”

[Malfosa-whisperwind]

Rather I made it from a position of practicality and good business sense.

Exactly. The accusation that “people will just be selfish and ruin it” is stupid and made by people who probably never even played Vanilla. You still have to do all the work to get it. You don’t just waltz into Naxxramas willy-nilly with 29 other random people grouped by the LFR system. You need to get 39 other people wgi get along and can work together, get geared from BWL/AQ, get attuned, and you need to clear it.

And since PL won’t be a thing 99.99999999999999999999%, you’ll have to either win roles or have the loot assigned to you by the ML.

The people who come in for “selfish reasons” probably won’t even make it into Molten Core. Heck, I doubt they’d even make it to 60 considering the months it takes.

[Narya-kirin-tor (Narya)]

I’m sorry, are there non-selfish reasons to want an Atiesh in Modern?