Please reconsider your stance on retail/classic reward linking

[Dishonestry-thrall]

You are doing a great job!

[Mddsteve-crushridge (Mddsteve)]

You confuse me with someone who cares about whether my opinions are liked. I’m talking about many, many, people’s desire for more transmogs and mounts in modern WoW.

What does this have to do with Classic? Read the thread title. I don’t owe you explanations, troll.

Don’t you get dizzy with all that twisting?

[Mddsteve-crushridge (Mddsteve)]

The underlying desire in all of this is classic mounts, pets, and mogs in retail. This is something you should support and strongly identify with, since I’m sure you are quite passionate about the nostalgia those items bring. You don’t have to agree on the source, which you clearly don’t, but it would help both you and them to steer them to a solution that benefits both sides.

[Mddsteve-crushridge (Mddsteve)]

“It’s discussion over already” Thanks for setting us straight!

Why can’t you learn from this situation rather than trying to dictate people’s desires?

[Derka-wyrmrest-accord (Derka)]

Blizzard said time and time again for years that Vanilla realms weren’t happening. So you can see how the community doesn’t put much weight in a statement from a Blizzard CM stating there’s currently no plans. The community knows that with enough persistence, Blizzard will change their mind because Blizzard is in it to seek your dollar, not your gaming experience.

A big part of the community is persistently against doing this. Since Classic WoW has zero to do with money, this horrible precedent doesn’t really apply at all.

[Mddsteve-crushridge (Mddsteve)]

“Classic WoW has zero to do with money” is not accurate. There will be many people currently not subbed grabbing subs to play Classic.

[Derka-wyrmrest-accord (Derka)]

“Classic WoW has zero to do with money” is not accurate. There will be many people currently not subbed grabbing subs to play Classic.

And since none of them have retail accounts that they care about anymore (hence the re-subbing for Classic) this issue doesn’t affect them in the slightest.

[Mddsteve-crushridge (Mddsteve)]

Probably not those particular people, but there are also millions of active retail players that will also ‘acquire’ Classic upon launch.

There’s a diverse community from those who played Vanilla and still actively play retail raises hand to those who play retail, never played Vanilla, and want to see what all the hype is about.

Many original Vanilla players quit because they got married, had kids, got busy with work, etc. You’re kidding yourself if you don’t think Blizzard intends to addict some of these Vanilla enthusiasts into buying BfA.

[Starz-boulderfist]

Well they aren’t doing it so probably a good idea to get over it. Once again, classic isn’t a mini game for retail players.

[Mddsteve-crushridge (Mddsteve)]

I’m not an advocate for a Classic cross-over, but if you’d been reading and following along, even loosely, you’d understand that.

[Katerina-mannoroth]

The thing with that is is they have to link Cache data between two completely differently wrote-over scripts. The code and progamming ALONE to connect the two data-cache’s and to have them linked via rewards to retail and with classic would be staggering.

Somebody either didn’t watch a certain BlizzCon presentation, or took poor notes.

WoW Classic is running on the Modern WoW Engine. The above mentioned conversion, such as it is, has already been done.

Now the DB Merge has not, but operating on the theory of Classic as Classic and only Classic. They have no real compelling NEED to keep “BfA - Retro Vanilla” texture/item “cache authentic.” So they could simply stick to the existing game cache for that, only merging in/updating things(mainly NPCs and world objects) which may no longer exist in BfA(the loot drops should still exist; even better, unless they specifically pruned the data, from what I recall regarding the Achievement and Transmog system, they even still have the quest completion data for all BfA characters who quested in the old zones. So “other options” exist even there, as well as other Developer headaches).

They would admittedly need to “massage” the map data further obviously, as I think the Classic WoW DB points to exact same things when it comes to “the Classic zones.” As such the Vanilla zone-version would likely need to be shunted over to new zone IDs, in order to minimize disruptions in the current live content. But that should be “comparatively easy” in that it basically amounts to generating two new continents by shifting a few DB pointers.

In the release statement for classic they are currently redoing WoW for the platform they are using because it’s changed. They are refitting and plugging in lines so instead of “a b v d f h i” you bring it back to “abcdefghi” and have it find all the correct information.

And they already have in order to realize Classic WoW, but when you move away from Classic WoW as Classic, and start moving towards a hybrid with Retail, they can start making other additional adjustments.

Really though, I’d hope that aside from timewalker style raids and dungeons, that they don’t just auto-magic everybody back to psuedo-60 in (insert zone here), as they should need to “earn” at least part of it–getting to level 60 by Vanilla standards, not BfA ones(option 2: They make re-leveling in the Retail version of Vanilla an optional Achievement in its own right. I’d jokingly suggest “Pure Vanilla,” but anyhow.). Of course, that brings us back to the matter that the quest completion DB from Vanilla presumably still exists, which means they’d have to figure out what to do with that…

The biggest challenge in a Retail <-> Vanilla crossover implementation is that I honestly think they’d need to

1. Implement a more in depth(not a vehicle derivative) means of having two very different Talent Tree and World-Game rules operating in paralell to each other within the same game client. Classic dodges this by simply only having one ruleset-Classic. Any such Crossover would need both, even if they tweak many/most things on Vanilla’s side.

2. With increased difficulty being added by also needing to “item filter” in both directions all things considered. “Retro Vanila in Retail”(henceforth ReViR) should prohibit non-Vanilla items from coming in(potentially no Heirlooms, among others-although for something like ReViR I might be inclined to grant dispensations for heirloom use in (re-)leveling), as well as preventing Vanilla consumables and materials from crossing back into normal retail.

Easiest solution is to likely maintain seperate item inventories between ReViR and live, with a specific and deliberate mechanism to be used to “time-shift” items between the two. But that means a LOT of back-end work would need to be done.

edit: switched some uses of Classic to Vanilla to remove some potential chances of mis-understanding. Probably should go back and make more use of ReViR instead, but stuff happens when you come upon a solution halfway through the writing process and decide to be lazy.

[Starz-boulderfist]

I honestly think I clicked on the wrong name to reply because reading what I responded to makes no sense lol.

If people need any reason outside of playing classic to play classic… then they don’t want classic.

[Mddsteve-crushridge (Mddsteve)]

I agree, but the desire for more/all Classic items in retail is very real. Other means need to be determined for the source of these items.

[Katerina-mannoroth]

Because of the cache data not being compatible with a direct link to the further cache data of current BFA and in linking the two you open up for damaged code and operations between two completely different places to pull from.

Uh, you do realize that practically every single item that existed in Vanilla WoW, in particular the items which had art assets(read: gear) still exists in the Item Cache in BFA today, otherwise a player who last signed into the game in 1.10 would be crashing everybody in Stormwind when they next visited the place.

Really, all things considered the Item Cache argument is perhaps the most bizarre and ill-informed objection to implementation in Live I’ve seen yet.

What doesn’t exist in Retail, and has no need to ever exist in Retail, are the textures and models as they were in 1.12.x during 2006. Particularly when that is the purpose of Classic WoW.

The Problem Retail has with a straight copy of the 1.12 data otherwise would be the items brought up in the BlizzCon Panel discussion. Items which have already been handled as part of the Classic WoW development process.

The “new variables” for Retro-Vanilla-in-Retail would be the paralell use of different mechaniics, from different talent trees, to different character levels, as well as different item and world rules.

[Katerina-mannoroth]

Do you realize the amount of coding that would need to be done to link the two games in such a way? Sorry. I’d rather them deliver classic on time then put in the necessary code so you can get your pet.

I’d be surprised if it took more than 10 lines of “new code” to implement the CE Pets into Classic WoW. And most of those 10 lines would be likely to have no more than 3 characters on them aside from whitespace.

[Katerina-mannoroth]

any CE that they have done has included items for all their titles. This has nothing to do with anything being transfered.

My Diablo 2 and Warcraft III CE’s would like to know where their cross-game stuff is at, the Vanilla and TBC CE’s as well.

For that matter, I think my initial Starcraft purchase technically was billed as “a collectable” at the time of sale as well, although that didn’t include any extras at all beyond a themed retail box.

The one argument I would hold to in regards to my Vanilla CE is that I bought the Vanilla Collector’s Edition in order to play Vanilla WoW, not BfA. Last I checked, Vanilla WoW doesn’t exist as a commercial product right now, BfA does.

[Starman-zangarmarsh (Starman)]

I agree, but the desire for more/all Classic items in retail is very real.

And very irrelevant

[Nightsëa-nemesis (Nightsëa)]

OMG these retail players make me agree with Starman.

[Leishaan-azjolnerub (Leishaan)]

Uh, you do realize that practically every single item that existed in Vanilla WoW, in particular the items which had art assets(read: gear) still exists in the Item Cache in BFA today, otherwise a player who last signed into the game in 1.10 would be crashing everybody in Stormwind when they next visited the place.

Really, all things considered the Item Cache argument is perhaps the most bizarre and ill-informed objection to implementation in Live I’ve seen yet.

What doesn’t exist in Retail, and has no need to ever exist in Retail, are the textures and models as they were in 1.12.x during 2006. Particularly when that is the purpose of Classic WoW.

The Problem Retail has with a straight copy of the 1.12 data otherwise would be the items brought up in the BlizzCon Panel discussion. Items which have already been handled as part of the Classic WoW development process.

The “new variables” for Retro-Vanilla-in-Retail would be the paralell use of different mechaniics , from different talent trees, to different character levels, as well as different item and world rules.

Pretty much. People argue that people shouldn’t get transmogs from Classic to use in Retail. Why? Name any Vanilla content that any class cannot solo once they get to level 80+. That’s 100x easier than trying to gather together 40 people together to beat their head against a wall to work together to overcome the simple mechanics of Vanilla. The only exception I can think of involves a certain mount whose quest line changed in Cataclysm to provide a certain reward.

The in-game CE bonuses are still there, why not provide them to those who currently already have them? They weren’t that much, just a little bit of fun. I know, because I have them (the only CE I bought).

[Mddsteve-crushridge (Mddsteve)]

Irrelevant to what?