The Classic team has done a lot of great things, especially moving from 4 to 6 content release cycles. 1.12 AV works, it is just slightly inferior. So I’m not going to pretend that the world is ending. Anticipation for Classic is my life right now.
The annoying part is that as a developer I can picture why they would go with 1.12 AV: it’s part of the 1.12 package, it’s source-controlled to work properly with everything else, and tampering with that would introduce possible bugs or unknown variables. In other words, Blizzard’s AAA studio development procedures have become an inherent barrier towards creating the best version of AV.
I can easily picture the old vanilla team ecstatic to tackle such a project. It’s like creating a custom WC3 map. It sounds like a lot of fun. Private server developers tackled this project for free, and ironed out the resulting bugs. What’s the big deal?
Even if the Classic team is trying to meet the project release schedule, which we greatly appreciate, wouldn’t it be possible to experiment with a 1.5-1.8-1.12 AV hybrid in between content release patches assuming that AV would launch with the Phase 2 - Dire Maul in the first place?
Since when do unknown variables or the simple possibility of bugs stop developers from creating a fun map? Now, extend this logic towards the “need” for sharding, loot trading, right-click reporting – many of the biggest issues vanilla enthusiasts have relate to Blizzard’s quality control procedures and sanitization of the final product.
Why does everything have to be risk-free and controlled? Why do all classes in retail have to be streamlined to be the same, the loot system streamlined as personal loot to avoid unknown variables, gear stats streamlined to an equalized item level system with variable primary stats depending on spec, and so forth??