TBC Classic and #goodchanges (remove racials)

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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It is my understanding that the reason we got a relatively unchanged version of Classic is that many people asked for #nochanges before Classic was launched. Now that Classic has been out for some time, a lot of people in the #nochanges category have seen rampant dungeon AoE farm abuse, dungeon boosting, world buffs, undertuned content, and imbalanced racial abilities. Because of this, many people who had a #nochanges mindset have changed their Classic philosophy and believe that there should have been changes made to the game.

Moving forward, I think there are many aspects of TBC Classic that could be changed from how it was during Vanilla TBC to make the game better. One of the biggest changes myself and many others would like to see in TBC Classic is the COMPLETE removal of racial abilities/bonuses from the game.

Imbalanced racial abilities are a huge cause of faction imbalance in TBC, something that many people consider game-breaking. People figured out since WoWs creation that Racial abilities are very important and that Horde have better racials for the most part, and as such, almost every PvP server is heavily Horde dominated. With the addition of arena in TBC, this imbalance will only get much worse.

Aside from racials causing faction imbalance, they also make the game simply feel worse. A PvPer choosing to Undead because the racial Will of the Forsaken is overpowered, when they much prefer the aesthetic and animations of a Blood Elf FEELS bad. A PvEer wanting to stay Alliance to play with his guild, but becoming objectively underpowered as a result of not being Horde FEELS really bad. Winning arena games because of racially-tied abilities does not feel rewarding. Losing arena games because the enemy team had better racial abilities feels awful.

Priests specifically could get the ability to choose 1 Major priest-specific racial, and 1 Minor one. A Major one could be Devouring Plague, Desperate Prayer, Hex of Weakness, Shadowguard, and Starshards. A Minor one could be Touch of Weakness, Elune’s Grace, Feedback, Chastise, Symbol of Hope, and Consume Magic.

Overall I think the game is a lot more satisfying when the only thing gained from your race is the cool aesthetic, animations, and lore behind them. Making power tied to your race is an entirely outdated system that I am amazed is still in Retail today.

I am hoping topics like this can get enough steam to potentially catch the eye of Blizzard, and allow for some changes to better our TBC Classic experience.

#goodchanges #removeracials

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No. If you want retail then I suggest you purchase the Shadowlands expansion…I hear it’s coming out sometime in the New Year.

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Nobody wants retail but kill drums. Kill them with fire. In fact, put in sated and exhaustion. People want hardcore, kill mu’ru without drums.

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I have zero problem with racials, and that is coming from an alliance player who knows 50% of his faction will probably be rerolling.

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If the point is to provide TBC, there are no “#goodchanges.” Any change to TBC is a bad change. Just ask for a new expansion instead of TBC with changes.

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I didn’t. It’s not about making a good game, it’s about showing history. If you hate history, you should be able to see why, instead of rewriting it and creating false memories from it.

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What is this understanding based on?

I have zero insight into how any decisions were made, so I can only contribute my opinions. If I do contribute my opinions, it would be that making no (or as few as possible, given the constraints that were defined by management) changes would be the easiest path forward.

According to Ironforge.Pro numbers, which are based on raid logs, for PVP servers in North America, it’s something like 46:54 Alliance:Horde https://ironforge.pro/servers/?locale=US&realm=PvP-PvP%20RP

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Everyone knows horde have way better racials. One of the only selling points of alliance is having Stoneform(which no longer works on blind in tbc) and fear ward(which is handed out to all priests in TBC). There is no reason to pretend most of these people didn’t choose horde to abuse these racials and will make up any nonsense possible to justify keeping it.

If people would stop their nonsense of wanting an unfair advantage and would actually stop n consider this could help keep pvp servers alive and not have most of them be 99% horde it would be great.

So yes good and obvious changes would be:

  1. Give both paladins both seals.
  2. Nerf Blood elf racial, straight up disable racials in arena/bgs or allow people to just choose racials.

Anyone arguing against either of these changes doesn’t want a balanced game and wants their cheap advantage over others.

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Well for one, they had to try to recreate Vanilla spell batching on the Legion client instead of simply letting Legions spell batching roll over onto Classic, which definitely wasn’t the easiest or cheapest way to go about things. These days I can’t think of a single person who is still in favor of spell batching, despite it being in the #nochanges category. If Blizzard were to poll players on whether or not they would like to see spell batching tuned down or removed, I think an overwhelming majority would. Just because it existed 15 years ago, doesn’t mean the majority of players want it in the game today.

Racial abilities being tied to player power feels just as bad, if not worse, than spell batching. It just seems like a bad, outdated system that doesn’t feel good to interface with. Most people in Classic have created characters of “the best” race for their Class, and that’s probably the biggest reason why someone wouldn’t want to see them removed. But overall from a game balance and enjoyability perspective, racial power doesn’t make sense.

There are probably tens of thousands of people at this point playing as a race that they don’t like simply because they wanted some racial power bonus.

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I wish there was an Engineering item – basically a goblin rocket launcher – that could be crafted (say, 5 charges each) and used to knock down players who are AFKing on flying mounts. This would be something like EZ-Tho Dynamite, so it could be sold to non-Engineers. Doesn’t always work. Inflicting ~1000 fire damage with a chance to dismount the player (causing them to crater).

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Yes TBC fixing some of the classic problems. But TBC has its own major issues. And YES this time we NEED adjustments to the game early on. Removing the Racials AT ALL is not necessary. But Blizzard needs to do at least:

  1. Fixing racial imbalance: Buffing Alliance racials / nerfig Horde racials to get at least 40%/60% Server Faction Balance
  2. Fixing Professions: Leather working to overpowered, fix to drums needed
  3. Fixing Facerolls : Don’t bring all of the Instance and Raid nerfs up to 2.4.3 at the Start of the Expansion to keep fun and the feeling of progression
  4. Fix world pvp and daily questing: Find a different solution for the smaller world map than layering or at least config layering that it has semi faction balancing for doing daily quests in the world

#fixTBC

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No. If people are going to swap from the character they put there time into in order to be 1-4% better on DPS charts than you have a bigger problem tan trying to balance racial and literally one seal in the game. What i see above is people asking for Wrath Bring the player not the Class ideal show up already. The Great Homogenization that killed the unique things class brought as they started to wrap them up into all the other classes.

There is only one fix that should be made and thats how drums work. Drums probably need a longer CD Or Sated so it comes down to one person using it. That or a nerf to the outright power they have. This will have more effect on damage output and make the fights better overall.

I would also like to see a nerf to gem stacking on some level so that stacking a single gem is less effective but thats just a personal outlook.

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Actually not. Hardcore gamers will always play the best possible spec / race / class setup avialable. Take a look at the speedruns stacking warriors.

They need to balance racials and/or better Layering Solution. Otherwise you will let the alliance die slowly.

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What part of the horde gets better in TBC overall? The only major change is going to be a Seal for paladins and a AOE interrupt for pvp. People looking back chose horde because of the pvp aspects but that changes again in wrath with Every man.

This has more implications for Fresh servers than it does for live servers as people who have the advatage currently will still have it going forward with t3 loot. Get them raiding that much sooner and into content as opposed to reroll unless blizzard does paid Faction changes. Once that comes about all bets are off.

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But I thought TBC magically fixes all of classic’s problems? Arenas are a wonderland where real skill is tested instead of people abusing imbalances like they do in classic no? PvP takes real skill in The Burning Crusade or is it still just about abusing broken things?

Surely forum posters couldn’t be misrepresenting or exaggerating when they say that TBC was better than vanilla or will be better than classic right? :slightly_smiling_face:

Btw for anyone that’s actually new to Warcraft or has never played other Blizzard games like Warcraft 3 or Starcraft… races have always mattered. Starcraft’s depth has always depended on whether you choose to play Terran or Zerg or Protoss and the dynamics of games have always been different based on whether it was Zerg vs Zerg or Protoss vs Zerg etc… WC3 is the same situation where racial differences add depth and nuance to the game except that game has 4 races instead of 3.

If you want a watered down game where every class plays the same, every faction plays the same, and every race plays the same you must be living in la la land or just not know anything about old school Blizzard. Retail sounds more like your game.

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The best change they could make is keeping shaman horde only and pally alliance only.

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What issues are you having with spell batching? Do you prefer the spell batching tuning in Retail?

The poll is an interesting idea. Sometimes what people say they want, and how they actually behave are different.

It may well have been the easiest way to go about things.

This is an interesting one. Some racials are definitely better than others in some situations.

Indeed, how class/racial decisions have such long-term impact on a character is something I personally prefer about Classic over Retail.

I actually deleted a max-level, female UD warlock (my first ever max level character) during BC, because I regretting not having rolled male.

This is also something I personally prefer about Classic over Retail. In Retail, I could delete all my characters, start fresh, and not lose much (other than potentially the current gear, that will be replaced in the next tier anyway).

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People are easily saying “haha no” don’t realize the negative repercussions of unbalanced faction racial. While the solution of “no racials for anyone” is a little extreme, minmaxing meta is going to create a convoluted faction balance where in horde is better in both PvP and PvE in TBC.

We should learn from our mistakes in the past to ensure the health of the game imo.

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I may have missed this – but when was TBC Classic announced?

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It hasn’t been announced. The only thing people are going on is a poll blizzard sent out asking if players would be interested in TBC Classic. For all we know the responses could’ve been a majority of people saying no, but for some reason people think it’s a sure thing.