My best memories of WoW were when quest gear wasn’t great, I had to walk on foot, and had a reasonable chance to die during questing. I’d really like an opt-in thing akin to War Mode with restrictions in place in return for TBD rewards. Maybe rep and currency buffs, maybe a couple mounts… I’m not asking for a full return to Classic levels of struggling, but I think I’d enjoy a mode leaning in that direction.
Here’s a few bullet points I could think of:
No heirlooms
Less gear given during questing, enphasis on a few items good enough that you keep them for a while
Flying removed in favor of a flightmaster whistle
Reasonably harder questing with a reasonable chance to die if you pull a few too many mobs
Slower leveling?
I absolutely realize this isn’t for everyone, which is why I’d want this to be entirely optional. I like the modern feel of Retail WoW but the game makes me feel like a superhero when I signed up to be an adventurer getting embarked on side quests, if that makes sense.
Probably genna have to ask for classic+ if you want anything like that.
Even if they took all your gear, took your mounts, nerfed potions, nerfed regeneration, nerfed defensives, took away all of your talents, and buffed every mob the questing would still be too linear to feel like old-school leveling.
I will say that I have enjoyed the experience in Classic and I think a lot of it comes from the deprivation you get from having to walk, having quests take ages, seeing others around you also struggling, needing a group to beat basic struggles (especially in hardcore).
I got gifted Jaina’s Firestarter on my Priest and it felt like I was given a million dollars with how much power it gave me. Retail has lost this experience and joy in the levelling process and every ‘classic-experience’ thread does have this point.
The reason I don’t think this suggestion won’t work in retail is it’s highly likely you won’t get the buy-in to make it enjoyable. I.E This may take a lot of developer effort to implement when other players have plenty of other slow-gearing options due to layering design you won’t see the same experience.
The unfortunate thing is that players inevitably optimize fun out of the game. Sure, maybe you’ll resist using your flying mount for a while. But with time you’ll feel a bit stupid not using it to get over that small ledge, then maybe just to go back to that one quest NPC, and before you know it, you’re back at flying above the world when the point was to explore it. Have you ever enabled all cheats in a game, only to have fun 10 minutes before promptly closing it? There’s a reason open world games like Zelda or Cyberpunk don’t just let you fly and tell you “Oh just don’t use it if you don’t want to”, and even more so in an MMO, part of the fun is the shared experience between players, you know when you meet someone that they’ve had the same difficulty as you completing that one quest or farming that one item.
That’s before even getting into the considerations of competitiveness in a multiplayer game setting: Anyone farming for materials or hunting for a rare will have huge advantages from flying.
You might be thrilled to know that these options are accessible in-game via console commands and most importantly, via AddOns such as DynamicCam
Part of the fun of questing in WoW is managing your time efficiently.
It’s literally like a walking simulator but a very busy one where you need to go to 3 seperate stores and plan things out carefully otherwise you might have to backtrack.
If you can just zip everywhere on a dragon it really just removes 80% of the fun from the game. It’s like a maze that’s already been solved.
What you are describing here isn’t Classic, but rather a version of Classic: Season of Discovery.
You get some of the powers that are associated with retail whilst also getting to rediscover the Classic world via a lens of “what could’ve been.” With classes being able to use runes to fully play into the fantasies that weren’t fully realized during Vanilla, such as Shadow Priests or Balance Druids.
Retail is a power fantasy and that is what is appealing to it. But what you are asking for isn’t that, but something which still allows for some of the pleasantries of retail but in the form of Classic. Which is what Season of Discovery is.
Cool you can have your slow tedium mode.
I don’t want that, so keep an option to fly from quest marker to quest marker in for me.
I happen to not really care at all about “exploring” or “journeys” i just want to get to the actual game as fast as possible and stay there.
But I would also like for them to have a Classic+++ where it’s retail, but with the classic levelling and questing. Like, retail graphics and some of the major QoL changes from later expansions.
