I feel like the meta would just be 2 PvE specs and we wind back up here with people saying they’d pvp if only they had a 3rd spec!
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But they did give horde the alliance exclusive seal as well so that makes your statement moot.
Ehhhhhh Dual Spec wasn’t even remotely a defining characteristic of Wrath compared to Garrisons (which drove the primary story and legendary acquisition) or an entirely new race (Pandaren). Wrath was defined by the Lich King, Death Knights, Achievements, and hardmode raids. Dual Spec was about as meaningful as having the inclusion of profession-based dailies… which is to say it had an impact but it wasn’t something that made the expansion what it is.
You could slot in Dual Spec or some profession based daily quests into TBCC without altering much of anything (the quests would have bigger impacts than Dual Spec). You can’t say the same with retuned raids, Deathknights, etc.
So how GC talked about it in WotLK isn’t relevant to TBC, but how he mused about it years later is?
Bwhahahahahahaha
https://screenrant.com/wow-burning-crusade-classic-holly-longdale-patrick-dawson/
How did your commitment to no changes affect both the development and overall success of World of Warcraft Classic?
Patrick Dawson: “No changes” being our guiding principle for WoW Classic made it very easy to make decisions on it. We just went to the reference client and went to that. But one thing we learned as we went through the release of the content in Classic is that [no changes] may not always be in the best interest of the players. Putting back in things like spell batching made the game feel a little less crisp. It was authentic, but it’s not what modern players want. The community today is so different from what the community was back in 2007 that it had us take a different philosophy with Burning Crusade, where we actually started to allow ourselves to make some changes that were in the best interests of the players that will continue to develop alongside the community.
You can harp on this “advertising” all you like, but TBCC is not a mere faithful recreation in the slightest. In fact, Longdale specifically notes that despite going for a “faithful recreation” changes are still needed in response to players wants, needs, and reactions, and she still considers such a situation to be a faithful recreation. Dawson does as well.
See also:
Are you considering any other paid services that are offered in Shadowlands, such as faction transfers or race changes?
Patrick Dawson: We always take a look at what makes sense, but some of those things didn’t exist in Burning Crusade. We don’t have any plans for anything other than what we’ve announced here for the launch of Burning Crusade. If it comes to pass that there’s a lot of people that really need that faction change, or they are really interested in a race change, we can reevaluate that choice. But as of today, we’re not planning to do that.
You revealed that both Alliance and Horde Paladins will have access to Seal of Blood and Seal of Vengeance. Are there any other changes currently planned to prevent faction imbalance?
Holly Longdale: Nothing that significant yet. But once we get into beta, we’ll start looking at how things are shaking out. Everything we do is in response to the community and the feedback we get, particularly during beta. We’ll keep evaluating as we go, as we did in Classic. We’re very mindful of any changes that we made, but we also want to respond to issues in the community in gameplay.
As game developers, what do you find fun about developing a game that already came out in the past? And what has been challenging about doing so?
Patrick Dawson: It’s very interesting. One of the things about developing a game like Burning Crusade is you can clearly see the goalposts from the beginning. Whereas with something like Shadowlands, it’s a little bit murkier and behind some fog, and you have to clear that away before you can really see the end destination. That’s the beauty of doing something like this. The challenges are that restoring what people remember is very difficult. The technology of today is not the same as 2007. You want to take advantage of what you have today, with all 17 years of stability improvements and code. You’d like to be able to use modern code. And so that was the decision we made. But then you have this data that describes the game rules of World of Warcraft that existed back in Burning Crusade time. That is not a small thing to try to convert because that data has been converted year after year for 17 years. It was something around three quarters of a million records that we had to change to just to even get the server running. Then there is a portion of Burning Crusade development that is about checking nostalgic memories with the truth of what existed. We have these reference clients, which show Burning Crusade as it was on old code, with old data - everything. With that, we can take a look and say, O.K., people remember this ability working this way, when in reality, it worked this way. But now that we’re embracing some changes, maybe it should work that way. Let’s try to really hit that feeling of what Burning Crusade was in people’s minds and memories.
Holly Longdale: Another challenge that has been ongoing in Classic is that it is absolutely a faithful recreation. And then we discover that players figure out ways to do things in Classic the second time around that didn’t happen the first time around. So we have to resolve those issues as we go. Even though we were 100% faithful, you know, players are smart.
I particularly like this response because it follows up Dawson’s response about “embracing some changes” with further clarity that “faithful recreation” necessitates changes because players are simply smarter and more familiar with the entire setup. But it also includes “faithful recreation” in the same category as making changes that are not faithful but merely FEEL like they work better. That’s as open-ended as it gets.
The two bigwigs making decisions feel very differently, see above.
You were wrong in the other threads just like you’re wrong to assert it here. The “meta” didn’t exist in WotLK or Cata. You’re fearmongering.
Don’t be silly.
“Slippery slope is a fallacy lol”
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No one is reading that wall of tears. Go back to retail!
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Just poking holes here…. The gold sink issue… you said “most people aren’t respecing because of the cost “ but then immediately said you respec twice a week. So thats 100g/week. You propose 1000g one time fee for dual spec. So what you would pay in roughly two and a half months would pay for dual spec. Assuming this game lasts for another year or so thats 5200g/year. 5x more than what you’re proposing.
The fact is a lot of people respec for a variety of reasons, multiple times a week. That’s unlikely to change as people have adapted to what’s needed.
Dailies come out in two weeks. Gold will be much less of an issue.
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I read it.
Go back to Classic!
Gold sinks should be fun things that are optional that you can show off. Gold sinks shouldn’t be something that is necessary for the enjoyment of the game.
Nope, thats not the way things work. Gold sinks exist to keep the economy in check. By your logic its not worth it to buy talents, farming mats, repairs, etc. Having that system in place keeps people’s wealth in check.
If they won’t to introduce cosmetic rewards for gold then thats fine too but having gold sinks in the game are good thing to avoid excessive inflation.
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I don’t read it that way. This quote that you highlighted…
He is saying that they are trying to remake the game to be as people remember, even if that means tweaking mechanics to be a little different than they actually were. That is a form of authenticity. Authentic to our memories of how it was.
But I don’t remember TBC having dual spec, do you?
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I also don’t remember TBC having HvH BGs, faction-shared seals, Tinnitus, etc.
The community today is so different from what the community was back in 2007 that it had us take a different philosophy with Burning Crusade, where we actually started to allow ourselves to make some changes that were in the best interests of the players that will continue to develop alongside the community.
This is the relevant quote. From all of them taken together, the Devs are open to changes for the following reasons:
- Changes to adapt to the modern player to avoid harming the best interests with rigid no changes
- Changes to incorporate additional paid services as player needs/wants dictate
- Changes to balance factions as player needs/wants dictate
- Changes that directly contradict or alter what TBC factually was to what is could be, ought to be, felt like it should be, etc
- All changes are part of the “faithful recreation”
So to square all of these with the changes we’ve just had, we have to assume things like Paladin Seals, Tinnitus, fixed PvE difficulty levels, Arena changes, etc, fall under these stated categories/goals.
They aren’t bound by need.
They aren’t bound by TBC as a strict ruleset.
They aren’t bound by recreating 2007 community/player expectations and behavior.
Therefore, within the very broad statements attested to by both of these Devs, on top of the fact that forevermore Blizzard has been able to change/alter this game in any way it pleases for any reason it pleases without notice to us at any time… Dual Spec can easily be slotted into TBCC for no other reason than modern players really will enjoy having the tradeoff of luxury purchase for convenience. Blizzard didn’t even close the book on race/faction transfers, a decidedly significant paid service that is by no means needed (remember the quote didn’t limit to need, it included mere interest as well), so Dual Spec is fine.
You could also throw barbershops and even transmogs into that basket as well. I’m sure there’s a lot of folks who kept their tier sets and dungeons sets from WoW Classic who would love to wear them again as transmogs.
Right. The interview makes clear what everyone but the most adamant naysayers have known for a long time now: possible changes are as wide as can be and come down to a lot of player feedback and whatever else makes the Devs think “yeah that’d work nicely in TBC”
I’d love transmog, and it’d even make sense to add it since it was always an Ethereal-based system and TBC is our only interaction with Ethereals until… what… Legion? It certainly made no sense to just suddenly appear at the end of Cataclysm that’s for sure. Meanwhile Barbershops are just normal things that can exist in cities anyway.
I’m not holding out hope though for such changes in TBCC. Instead, I’m hoping that by the time we hit WotLKC, they go ahead and really dive into it hard to say “Yup, let’s do updated graphics toggles, xmog, the works!”
It’s simply an indication of his hindsight thoughts. I never said it was crucial to the discussion of whether dual spec should be added or not, I wasn’t the one that posted the implementation interview.
Point being: how he felt about dual spec when he implemented it in WOTLK isn’t relevant to whether it should be added to TBCC.
How he felt about the feature as a whole in hindsight, does carry some weight in the conversation of whether it’s a valuable addition.
It’s just his opinion though, he doesn’t develop WoW at the moment, nor did he develop TBC. It’s your choice how much stock you take in his opinion. I personally like his design direction and a lot of his philosophies.
Uh, not really. I pretty much feel exactly the same way as Kerg here.
The changes that they have made can logically be argued to have been necessary for the health of the game.
If you think dual spec is necessary for the health of the game, then that’s fair enough but we’d simply disagree there. The only reason people have an issue with it is the 50g cost and that obstacle will be mitigated significantly as this expansion continues with dailies and easy ways to get gold (for those who are too lazy to farm the gold raw to respec now without dailies).
Blah, blah, blah…
This is all just your interpretation of their words, and we won’t have a definitive idea on what they truly meant unless they came out and made definitive statements on each specific change and if it fits their criteria.
So we’re stuck debating the value proposition of adding dual spec separate of whether the devs will, can, should, or could do it.
You think the value proposition is high, okay, cool. I think it’s poor.
Agree to disagree.
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Sure it is, because the reasons it was added in WotLK can be applied to TBCC, or any other period in WoW’s history. Nothing in the GC/Neth interview is so constrained as to be WotLK and WotLK-only.
Not particularly, he’s not designing the game any longer and has no skin in the game.
You agree because it is convenient, and Kerg only looked at a single quotation out of the many.
But the interview explicitly includes “player interest” as reason enough to incorporate a change, not necessity. It isn’t even something you have to infer, they outright say it.
I don’t, but necessity is by no means required. See interview.
These are the criteria they literally put forth in the interview.
Read better.
Their criteria is ambiguous and it’s convenient for you that it is because you can just vaguely apply it to almost anything.
They probably made it ambiguous on purpose so that they don’t lock themselves out of any possibilities.
Again, I don’t really understand why, ever since you entered this conversation, it’s so important to you that you keep harping on the “could” factor. It’s been your main thrust from the beginning, but after some thought, it’s completely irrelevant and is just a waste of talking points, because it doesn’t matter all of what Blizz could do. They “could” do anything. It completely handicaps the focus point of the conversation to being about where the red line is, instead of whether dual spec is actually a good move for TBCC or not.
Make a value proposition for dual spec that considers its negative effects, and leave it at that. Stop hinging every single one of your posts on the hierarchy of Blizzard’s development framework and the power they have over their game. Yes. We know. Blizzard could decide to add Candyland as a new continent to TBCC tomorrow. They can do anything they want. We get it.
You think dual spec is valuable for the game, and contributes to positive health.
I think it is a detriment to important design facets and ultimately becomes a non-issue thanks to dailies, and thus adding it in would be arbitrary and simply move the game further away from their faithful recreation.
All we can hope for is Blizzard to be on our side, logic-wise, because whoever’s side they’re on is probably what they end up doing.
So far they haven’t said a peep on it, and they didn’t add it in at launch either, which to me says that they haven’t felt the need, unless of course you’re arguing that it completely slipped their mind to this point.
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I know what gold sinks are, but gold sinks do not need to be mandatory.
Look at gold sinks in other games and in retail. Mounts, Cosmetics, player housing. Things that the wealthier players can afford to have, but for the day to day casual players they won’t be affected.
These things can enhance a players experience, but the overall enjoyment of the game won’t be dependant on them.
Which means they aren’t bound by necessity as you keep demanding people prove up.
Because you and others keep creating additional criteria beyond “could” for people to prove up. Stop substituting your whims for Blizzard’s stated criteria.
Yes, including add Dual Spec. /thread
“Do what I say!!”
No.
…and?
I think it’s a pretty fair assumption that any change they make has…a justification of some kind. Whether I agree with it or not doesn’t matter, but they haven’t made changes to TBCC out of pure arbitration. Every change comes attached with it a definitive reasoning as to why, and that applies to everything they’ve done.
If they add dual spec, they will have a reason.
If they never do and never say why they won’t, all we can do is guess the reason but it probably lies somewhere within the arguments already made against dual spec in all these various threads. I can’t really imagine what reasoning Blizzard would put forth for not adding it that hasn’t already been mentioned.
We aren’t, this is just your vapid interpretation of it because it suits your argument style to focus on the objective finite rather than the subjective estimation of the situation in a circumstance where we simply don’t have enough information to make a definitive call as to whether Blizzard wants to add dual spec, right now.
Lol, well then stop being a hypocrite and let people infer Blizzard’s intentions based on what they’ve already done and said. Don’t tell them what to do.
Basically, all said and done, you think your interpretation (and yes, it’s simply an interpretation) is objectively correct and everyone else’s is wrong and has no factual basis for existing.
Sorry, but people disagree with you. No amount of “you can’t disagree with me! it’s fact!” is going to change that, nor is it actually going to make your argument fact. Repeat it as you please. It doesn’t change the reality that you don’t know how Blizzard feels about dual spec, but there are at the very least, indications that potentially paint a picture of how they might feel. You won’t think so, because it doesn’t suit your narrative. However, plenty of us who do not want dual spec are hopeful currently.
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Fasc vs Zipzo Volume 6