Saying ‘no’ to QoL features just for the sake of them being from retail does not make any sense, unless the ‘no’ comes with a better reason than “it’s from retail” or “we don’t trust Blizzard.”
Let’s argue for or against certain QoL features from retail. Below is my understanding of the features, but everyone has different opinions, so what do you think? What QoL features did I forget to mention?
Good QoL features from retail:
Auction House - why is an inferior AH better for classic?
AoE loot - this is a no brainer. I could see ppl say it’s bad because it makes bots’ lives easier, but let’s not design the game around bots and farmers.
Zeppelin and boat timers - literally no reason not to have these
Account-wide mounts and pets - what makes character specific mounts good?
Heirloom tab for heirlooms - what makes having to keep track of heirlooms so great?
Unlimited specs - almost everyone has multiple classes to make up for whatever their raid is lacking, so it makes 0 sense to limit players’ specs with single spec or dual spec
Rated Battlegrounds
Questionable QoL features from retail:
Random Dungeon Finder (RDF) for normals - RDF for normal dungeons could be good, maybe even necessary because forming a group that might never happen cuts into questing time.
Looking For Raid (LFR) - this was introduced to “let people SEE the raids”. People can see them in retail. Classic doesn’t need this, although some will argue they want it.
Random Dungeon Finder (RDF) for heroics - make heroics harder, like mythic dungeons, and make manual group creation necessary
Cross-realm interactions - megaservers exist because of no cross-realm activities. Retail still has megaservers such as Illidan because raids are not cross-realm (this might have changed but not sure). Anything that isn’t cross-realm will make players flock to the highest pop server for their desired activity so they experience less friction when forming groups.
Easier open-world mobs - make the monsters in the world no easier than they are in classic vanilla, TBC, or WotLK. WotLK already has less threatening open-world mobs, so let’s not make them even easier.
Dungeon difficulty - dungeons in Cata were made harder initially than WotLK dungeons, which upset some casuals and made Blizzard make them easier. Perhaps normals can remain easy, but heroics should have some deadliness.
So I agree and disagree with some of your points but as I’m at work right now I’m only going to pick one to talk about. The auction house, I never use it honestly but selling is simple enough. Then you go to buy and holy crap….sat there for 30minutes scrolling just to find the cheapest way to get some gems to lvl my JC. It was awful.
The auction house is an enjoyable mini-game for some people. If not a mini-game, it’s for sure an essential way to make money, especially with professions. Getting enchants used to be annoying until the introduction of vellums.
But removing things that were in OG Wrath is? And adding things doesn’t have to be done now… or even during the last phase. This is after the last phase of WotLK Classic. I know it’s tempting to be lazy and try to make Cata Classic a thing but many will not move on to cata classic.
I think QoL features made the game worse. It has nothing to do with them “being from retail”. The game shouldn’t make everything easier or play itself. That makes it a lot less fun. I prefer the grindy nature of classic. I much more enjoy getting that first green… or getting your first epic from a raid over doing raid progression only to leave and see steve the hunter decked out in LFR epics. I hate Legendries being given to everyone. I hate the homogenization of classes. I hate LFR. I hate RDF.
I had no problems getting enchants prior to vellums. Some of you need to seriously join a guild. WoW is not meant to be a solo game.
But WotLK itself is easier than TBC and vanilla and it’s not a bad thing. So the argument that “easier is bad” is proven wrong by the existence of WotLK.
I speak for myself, I want to play the wrath we had, not some mixed version of devs and retail, there is too much changing the original as it is and whist I appreciate all those things in retail, I don’t want them in wrath, just what was actually here, it’s not retail 2.0.
Some of your “suggestions” are even an upgrade, but they have their place in the line.
The things that SHOULD be here like LFD yes, I agree, I don’t know if it’s too many people asking for changes or just stubborn devs, but they just needed to just sell it how it was, we do not need retails QOL until the exapc they were brought in on. assuming classic lives that long.
Unfortunately, I am fast losing confidence that the current dev team can deliver without the “We want attitude” that has been the (dev) issue of retail for so long, one that the retail team are slowly starting to realise, hopefully these will too before too long, there may be hope yet.
I don’t want anything from retail brought into this game. That AH has a user interface that matches the tiny font user interface that retail has everywhere. It’s a totally different feel.
I am not saying easier is bad. WotLK is still a metric ton better than anything retail. In shadowlands people were max level in 5 hours. You’re leaving out clear differences and I think you’re doing it on purpose.
You give no good reason except “#no changes” which is not an argument. It’s just stating you don’t want changes, without explaining why. Please explain why each thing is bad… otherwise you’re just being vague and can’t be taken seriously.
Well because I don’t want changes, I cannot be more specific than that, I want to play each exapac how they told us we would have them, as faithful replicas, so far that has not been the case, but I do not see any benefit of putting in retails systems for the sake of it.
further I even miss some of those, but they do not belong in a faithful replication, any more that bucket seats belong in an old holden. its no longer a faithful replica/restoration.
Auction house is fine, cross faction would be fine, but not cross servers absolutly not, and keep the current desing, the retail order system sucks.
AOE Loot agree
Zeppelin timers eh, is what it is why not
Account wide mounts and pets NOOOOOOO, unless the stipulation is, this excludes crafted mounts because when account mounts became a thing, it killed a major money maker for a lot of professions overnight.
Heirloom tabs, sure
Unlimited specs, no you get 2. dont need to change that
rated BG HEEEELLLLL NO. Rated BGs are a horrible nightmare of chaos in retail and are miserable, and if you recall, when they were first introduced they were horribly HORRIBLY plagued with win trading.
Classic is not a faithful replica. Not even private servers were faithful replicas. Sometimes changes are needed. Obviously we don’t want to go hog wild with stuff like transmog.
An example of a needed change that Classic Vanilla got was the chronobeacon that allowed players to store world buffs. Storing world buffs prevented the need to be logged out to save world buffs for raid.
Please explain how “faithful replica” is worth not being able to play your character until raid time?
Pretty sure I said that its not and NO we do not NEED changes to systems, you are just being obtuse, those are not the same thing.
Yes I said you are being obtuse, not you are FYI, before you start on the name calling again