Thoughts on Season of Discovery

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
1

I’ve been asking for Vanilla+ since TBC ended, and SoD really isn’t what I was picturing, but I am still pretty excited to see how this goes. Perhaps naively so.

No Apparent Retail Features
I’m always worried when Blizzard adds new ideas to classic because Blizzard has a tendency to turn whatever they touch into retail. This is evidenced by what they did to Wrath Classic. WotLK was always Retail-Lite, but you’d think if they made any changes it would be to take away any retail-ness, since it was played by so many people who had just come from enjoying Vanilla/TBC Classic, but instead they added all these new features that made it feel even more like retail.
Anyway, despite their failing with WotLK Classic, I didn’t see anything in their presentation about ruining SoD in such ways. I saw no mention of badge gear or other welfare epics. I saw no mention of RFD or Mass Summons. So things seem okay on that front.

Runes
When the majority of people ask for Vanilla+, they are naturally asking for a few tweaks/changes to class balance. Small buffs that would help make classes have more than one raid viable spec. You know, something simple like reducing the cooldown on StormStrike from 20 seconds down to 8 seconds. I don’t believe that anyone was asking for a total revamp of every class. The extent of these changes, according to my limited initial impression, seems like it’s going to make the game feel more like “+” rather than “vanilla+”
Although this isn’t what anyone asked for, it would be hard for me honestly say that these class changes don’t seem very cool.

Discoveries
This sounds like a cool idea to get people exploring all the nooks and crannies of the world, but I’m a little skeptical that this will last more than a week. I doubt it will take very long for guides to go up online that show you exactly where to go for 100% of the discoveries. It wasn’t clear to me, but it seems as though since the level cap starts at 25, they aren’t immediately implementing all the discoveries. They’ll first add the ones for zones up to Ashenvale, and then add more to other zones as they raise the level cap. To me, this seems like a shame because for a moment I was imagining people putting together raid teams to try and explore Stranglethorn at level 25.

Faction Homogenization
Horde get Windfury and Alliance gets Paladin Blessings. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. I saw that Druids are gaining windfury. I didn’t see anything about Horde getting kings, but I don’t want to see any of this. Find a unique way to balance the factions.

Out with the Old
The new things they’re adding look fun, but I don’t want the new things to make the old things obsolete. I would look forward to a level 60 Dire Maul Raid, or a level 60 Karazhan, or some new raid in Hyjal or Uldum, but if they add new loot to these raids that make it so nobody would want to run BWL or AQ40, then I would have a problem. Again, that’s when you start to move away from it being Vanilla+ and have it start feeling like just plain plus.

2 Likes
2

I wonder how classes talents will be balanced around these new abilities. having gone over the talent calculators it feels like they are out of sync completely with the new abilities and idea of balancing classes/ possibly specializations as well.

1 Like
3

SOD is what happens when the community asks for a chisel and Blizzard responds with a jackhammer.

3 Likes
4

Dont worry about balance they never really balanced. thats the reason why warrior was that far ahead on the meters. Just enjoy the game.

5

Here’s the rub: They won’t be.

The Lava Burst rune alone is worth like 20 talent points to elemental shamans. It’s a joke.

6

Nah it’s an interesting way to dive into this issue that is the player base wanting classic wow 2 electric buggaloo. People want balance, these new abilities won’t last long with the way the talent trees work. Just having gone over a ton of different possibilities based on the little information available about the runes at the moment. I don’t think its a fool-proof plan, I just see this clashing already. Especially with melee hunter and survival hunter being an idea based on the new rune abilities, but the talents are actually bad for anything outside of pvp. Many of the other class trees work out with the new abilities, warlock especially looking juicy. Relying solely on the new abilities might work out fine, but it’s just another way of masking the issue, as has been the case for over a decade with blizzard.

7

Them making a live beta that includes all ranges of players shows they are interested in listening, before losing a huge part of their consumer base. I am hoping to see them listen thoroughly to the people actually trying to see wow classic 2, and ignore the trolls upset about reinventing the wheel.

8

You trying to say those didn’t exist in OG Wrath?

9

Say hello to a complete imbalance in faction. Literally gave alliance the ONLY thing that horde had to their own… in turn… gave horde NOTHING.

10

Horde are getting Kings.

Keep up.

12

“Lots of chatter about horde not getting equal treatment in SoD. It was never true (again, youve only seen low level stuff) but we’ve already prepped changes since blizzcon to allow horde to get kings by level 25. Horde is gonna be great. We are listening. More info to come!” - Aggrend on X

It’s not over yet, blue boy.

13

Dont worry alliance feels the same way with horde racials. Have you seen troll/orc racials compared to any alliance ones?

14

Blizzard saw all your whining and complaining and gave Horde kings. Don’t worry, you guys are effectively the strongest again with racials and buffs. I hope that means you’ll actually play the game and it’s not 80/20 like SoM since you Horde players have the advantage.

15

WTT all four Orc racials for stoneform pst.

16

No, I’m saying that Wrath’s extensive selection of badge gear and welfare epics are one of the things that make Wrath feel like retail-lite. TBC introduced the badge vendors, which wasn’t good, but at least they didn’t go off the deep end with it like WotLK did. Since the whole idea behind classic was to cater to players who hate retail, I was expecting them to dial it back with the welfare gear to feel more like vanilla but they actually decided to double down on it and make tons more.

17

Yea I would have liked to see them take a different approach here. Instead of directly giving druid windfury, maybe they could have actually made it on spells or something. Asymmetrical abilities between factions is interesting to me. Their power levels should be relatively balanced but copies are kinda meh. It’s an experimental thing though so I’m ok with it.

18

We all know the rune “Discovery” locations will all be Googleable a week after launch. What I’d like to see to mitigate that is the discovery location “Rune Reward” to be randomized between account characters. That way players can’t just google min/max runes and go directly to the discovery location that drops it. They will have to explore and find which location has the rune they are looking for.

19

Good game!

20

Balance druids need a comeback in classic. I wish for them to be better. What can help is if they change the Fury of Stormrage rune to instant healing touch OR Starfire… They made that spell completely useless in the game and phase. it should be an essential part of the Balance Druid rotation.

21

All seems good so far, we’ll see how scaling goes with melee going forward