You know who knows more about “what the players want” than the modern devs and OG devs combined? The players.
Are you arguing that modern devs listening to what the players want is bad?
Yeah, sure, there were some really stand out itemization issues in MC I recall. For instance, I played Feral Druid. There is not a lot that’s good for Feral in MC. I think it was much the same for a lot of Hybrid Classes.
A lot of that was worked out with the release of BWL.
I didn’t feel like it was a lot of raids to run. I’m sure some people whose goal was to completely min/max or perfect their character felt differently. For me, I didn’t feel pressured to run a lot of old content, but when I did it didn’t feel pointless either. That struck a nice balance for me in that way.
There are some notable standouts where you might really feel a need to keep running an old raid with your progression team. Like, if you hadn’t gotten a DFT(s) in BWL for instance. You would have to be pretty unlucky for that to be a interminable issue for your raid though.
In either case, slimming the gap between gear tiers would make older content a little more relevant. If they strike the right balance, I do think they can hit that sweet spot between not being pressured/not feeling pointless to do old content.
Because the majority of players found Classic and TBCC waaaay too easy and wanted more of a challenge?
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Again that argument “it’s not wrath” lol. Listening to these forums, people will think that they eliminated Northrend, the Lich King is no longer the final boss, they implemented new raids, dungeons were scraps and replaced with BFA dungeons.
This is still WOTLK, these comments are massive overreactions.
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Are you arguing that they’re listening to the players?
Because they really aren’t.
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You say tedious and I say gives me a reason to actually play
The playerbase is divided, they ARE listening to the playerbase, just not the one you wish they would.
An ilvl squish is the wrong move since it affects class balance. Retuning boss numbers would be more appreciated, by me, but it seems that blizzard doesn’t care about authenticity in many regards anymore, E.g no comment about prof’s being overtuned by being in their 3.2 state. Why can’t we wait until the end of the classic trifecta to start destroying the game and turning it into a clown car? Why did it have to start with wotlk?
Luckily this will probably time up with the riot mmo release so I won’t feel as bad that blizzard screwed me out of my favorite xpac with all the changes they are making.
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You won’t find me disagreeing with you that blizzard have completely and irreconcilably deviated from their original mission statement of providing “a faithful recreation of the original WoW experience”. I originally wanted #nochanges. It became clear that we were not going to have that about 2 months into TBC.
As I’ve been told countless times, though, embrace change. I now have a scale of sorts, where blizzard can make as many changes as they like, and if the sum total of changes (as I perceive them) tilts towards “bad game”, then I just quit.
Surprisingly, though, blizzard’s success rate recently has tilted these scales towards the “good game” side, and this just tipped them even further.
If we had arena teams going into wrath but no RDF I would probably quit. Since you don’t pvp, it’s hard to express quite how badly arena teams stifle the spontaneity of being able to queue with friends. But conversely, the abolition of teams does far more for me than the removal of RDF harms me. I only ever supported RDF because I remain convinced that it helps the most disadvantaged in this game, those on dead realms or with very little play time and no guild or friends in game. Funnily enough, though, a vast majority of that very demographic are the most vehement anti-RDF posters I’ve come across. So whatever. I’m operating by my own calculus now.
I did, but that ship sailed in early TBC. Face reality.
This is not the WoTLK experience at all. Naxx buffed. No RDF at the start but dual spec. Talks of the squish to change the difficulty of the later raids. More people are going to experience gatekeeping driving them away from the game. Less people to forge relationships with without these people and the less number of dungeons without RDF. It is sickening.
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How does ilvl squish affect class balance any more than retuning a bosses numbers? Its the same thing.
Except one doesn’t have the side effect of randomly breaking mobs and pve encounters due to spaghetti code.
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It was mostly just that itemization was all over the place. Design decisions that didn’t make sense, and no real direction for if they wanted people to replace their gear in new raids or to do it piecemeal.
It was more of a guild thing. With 40 people, gear was a hot commodity, and those really good pieces were still really good and targeted - like the ring/belt off Ragnaros, for example. Thunderfury binding runs remained a thing throughout Classic, too.
Well, we hit nearly every lockout of Gruul from week 1, and I never got a DST.
The older content is still going to be relevant, mostly. Not so much T7 (as a lot of the gear isn’t great), but Ulduar for the trinkets and Val’anyr. The same with ToC for those trinkets going into ICC.
From an outside looking in the older content remaining relevant is a good thing, but it’s less so for those in guilds where they do feel obligated to clear it for the benefit of the raid and the individuals who still need it.
Well i guess if you feel that way you should probably find something else to play 
Scaling will be different. Some specs only really come into their own late into the game, and may take longer (if at all) due to a lower power level of gear overall.
Blizzard should stop trying to hide everything and be more transparent - put polls in game to actually see what the playerbase wants. The decisions they’ve made have never once talked about a majority, and never actually described how many people wanted something.
This is entirely the dev team’s decision, and that’s not a good thing for a project like Classic. OSRS is so successful because the team has a respect for the content and the playerbase. Blizzard seems not to for either based on how they’ve treated Classic and the players so far.
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You enjoy the same boring bossfights taking 2-3 minutes longer, with no other changes?
Just for the sake of argument, haha:
One very small example i can think of is Armor Pen. That is a stat that gets better the more of it that you have.
So, if you’re Marks hunter (that’s their stat IIRC?) it might be significant in some way.
Man, it’s a weird feeling indeed when I’m liking consecutive Nocht posts.
Yes, they’re finally starting to listen to the players complaints about Vanilla and TBC being too easy.
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And what about the players that knew it’d be easy before it even launched, and didn’t care because they wanted it to be authentic?
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I refuse to do the last sentence. I will not condone further changes just because others have been implemented.
This philosophy is what led down the dark path to what is now retail. We don’t want that here. “True to Classic” is the only objective standard that we have. If we start relying on the “Well, I like it and you don’t” philosophy then we’re already fighting an unwinnable battle.
I do, in fact, PvP. For whatever reason this forum doesn’t want to find my Classic character, so here I am.
Secondly, you can invite multiple people to a 2’s team last I checked. Sure, the team/personal rating is wonky, but you can still do it, and if your skills are all around similar levels then the ratings should eventually level out.
RDF was in 3.3.x. No changes. Period. It’s a hill I will spirit rez on.
The reality is they haven’t implemented more of these nonsense changes yet. Being silent is not going to stop them. Talking? Might. We’ll see.
I’m going to copy/paste myself on this from another post because typing it out again…no thanks.
"No, no, and no. It’s one of those things that is not only true to the game, it’s a thing that’s going to impact the balance of it. QoL is one thing, balance is another. We do not want nerfed versions of our ICC gear. That is not Wrath. It’s not even “classic”.
I’d appreciate it if someone told everyone in favor of these “changes” to stop. They’re starting to treat WotLK Classic like Retail in terms of “We can change whatever we want”. Balance should be 100% where the line is drawn. It’s already problematic enough that we don’t get appropriate class updates with each patch and just set the talents/classes on a 3.3.5 balance patch.
And for clarification, yes, it is bad to do this. 3.3.5 was set up with ICC gear in mind. To put the ramifications simply: classes that did not scale as well got buffs whereas classes that did, simply put, got nerfed. Classes with, again simply putting it, higher base values put in to help them scale in ICC will be over-tuned in the early versions of the game whereas the nerfed-scalers will do poorer than they should. Scourge Strike for instance did garbo damage on plate in PvP in the ICC patch because armor values were higher (higher quality of gear gives more armor) and with extra resilience. The base damage of Scourge Strike (the weapon damage percentage) was put higher to account for its new physical damage portion because Scourge Strike in the past dealt pure shadow and had a lower base damage because of it.
Lower base armor values at the start of the game with a higher base damage on Scourge Strike (because it deals physical) I can guarantee will result in the ability shredding anyone who wears cloth. This is just one example and I’m sure there’s more.
My overall point is: we’re already dealing with an inappropriate “balance change” due to the talents/classes operating on a 3.3.5 foundation in an early version of the game.
I’d appreciate it if you’d let the other council members know (who’re in favor of the squish) as well as Blizzard that the “squish” is a terrible idea not just for the finger-in-the-pudding unnecessary changes regarding WotLK (that people do not want (the ideological “stop changing things” component of this argument)) but that these changes are also a very bad idea for the overall balance of the game as well.
Mucking with QoL is one thing (Dual spec, RDF, CWF tome, etc.) and is already “not” WotLK-True, but balance is the bedrock. Highly suggest not mucking with the numbers. It’s one reason why I avoid retail because they’re notoriously terrible at it."
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