This was a beautiful post, spot on Theprofessy.
I was the guy in SM who stopped to read the books lying around.
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Plus, it took years for the slippery slope to turn into a drop off the edge. Maybe we could stop it early this time.
And by early we mean before changes even start.
Authentic.
Vanilla.
I agree. With reservations. If Classic was to last - say - five years, would it thrive untouched? I did have a vision of the Classic servers to always be classic, and we’d “graduate” to other servers with “Classic +” additional content, like WOTLK and maybe MOP. So, new players would always have the ability to play “Classic” as is. Would that be acceptable, Mat?
I made a thread and youtube video that looked a little bit at one aspect of world design, filling the in-game world with peoples, and I think there’s a lot that can be said about just how quickly we dropped off that edge in that regard. TBC slipped a bit, but wrath on it was like a lead balloon.
I’d like your views, if you’re a rpg design sort of person.
If you mean completely separate servers with each expansion i am fine with that.
If your talking about updating classic servers with expansions…not so much.
Agreed so much. B.C. was solid. Didn’t like flying or arena but i liked more specs being able to do more and hybrids not being completely train wrecks at dps.
Wrath went full retail.
Sadly enough, I’m just a player. I’m not much more than an interpreter, and not very good at telling stories. Well, not at making them interesting, anyway.
I want the thrill of playing WOW as I remember it, but I completely understand that after 2 years … 4 years … 6 years - I’ll probably not be interested in that anymore. However, as I mentioned to Mat, I think it’s possible to split worlds - to have a genuine classic server along with a genuine classic+BC server and a genuine classic+bc+wotlk server. It’s probably too much to ask - but just imagine being able to bounce between worlds. Would it spread us all too thin? Probably. And since I don’t really know what it takes to run all this, maybe it’s asking too much of Blizz to keep it afloat for $15/month.
Will certainly endeavour to take a look. Sounds interesting. Might not pass comment as it sounds like you are after more qualified opinions but still looks good.
Glad someone else came out and said about Wrath’s destructive influence. A lot of people always say WotLK was the best and hype it up like it was amazing. Realistically a lot of changes to accessibility etc made a really huge change to the design philosophy of the game which over years brought it to the situation it is at now.
Even Blizzard realised they slipped with difficulty of dungeons in WotLK and tried to amend it with Cata, unfortunately by that stage the player base was accustomed to the ease of content and made a huge uproar about it being brought back into line of where it should be.
At that point it’s almost like Blizzard realised they had gotten themselves on a slippery slope and ended up making concession after concession to make the game more accessible and more rewarding for everyone regardless of the content they were doing.
I want to either roll on a PVE server as an orc warlock and then rank up in BGs.
Or I want to roll on a PVP server as a troll shadowpriest and just cause problems for everyone.
That’s what I want. Regardless of what I pick, it’s gonna be ****ing great.
vanilla was the most I had fun with the game. but technically I think TBC was the best it was ever… (no activion lol…) The only thing I didn’t like about tbc was the shaman paladin crossover (terrible decision… pure laziness)
I started in BC but I liked the game systems better back then.
Lots of stats to juggle.
Spec switching discouraged (by cost) means more investment into main spec.
Solid progression through dungeons and professions and rep grinds and raids without so much catchup every tier that makes old content redundant even for new alts.
Big world with no flying. Travelling on the ground is epic.
Convoluted quests that traverse level ranges and continents, non linear = fun.
Hard professions, mats from raids, rare recipes, etc.
Hard quests means grouping is valuable, encourages communication, make friends, good times etc.
The themes: VC quests, dustwallow, plaguelands, dire maul, AQ, dragons, titans. Throughly enjoyed questing in the old world before Cata revamp.
You have a portion of the player base who are #noChanges. Any mention of changes triggers them.
I expect a lot of these irrational #noChanges people will throw their arms up and quit over something non-intrusive is added – like a toggle for updated graphics.
Let’s just enjoy the game and wait to see. After the irrational #noChanges players have left, we can see where we are at then make suggested updates to Blizz.
You sound so very objective in your representation of two options that comprise the entirety of what anyone might want! I would never have guessed that you would be for the second option.
That said: I want Classic back, obviously with bugs and glitches fixed (no one has ever seriously argued for a bug being left unfixed, only in strawmen by people who want changes). I don’t want Blizzard’s current design team to make changes to it. “as long as it stayed in the lines of classic and didn’t stray into the crapshoot we know as retail” is magical thinking; retail is what the current design team thinks the ideal version of WoW is. They can’t flip a “keep it ‘in the lines of classic’” button and automatically produce good content.
I’m not at all opposed to new content being added to Vanilla. There are actually things that were quasi-planned back then that never made it into the game. Its a tough debate though because of the nature that games are created. During real-time progression, new content is needed to keep things fresh and give new incentives to play. I never agreed to what happened in TBC on a personal level. I was always so in love with the old world, and trivializing the content aside from leveling was kind of a let down. Going to Ironforge and seeing 4 people outside the bank was so disheartening. That said, the end-game content was getting stale and I never gave a better solution much thought because it would just be a futile task. In a couple of years we will be presented this same dilemma, but do we know better now or not? I’m not sure.
I can say that after spending 1000+ hours on some pServers, the prospect of copying a character to a TBC server is fairly welcomed. This is just a tough call to make at this point.
I’m not on board with adding Classic-only content. That makes this WoW 2, not Classic WoW. Besides, the brain trust that made Vanilla WoW what it was is long gone. It’s enough for me that these newer folks are doing their best to just put back what used to be there as closely as they possibly can. I don’t want new ideas in this game…I just want what used to be there available again. If by some miracle I take a character all the way through Naxx, I’ll make another one and do the journey all over again or I’ll find ways to make my own fun with my friends in-game.
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Truth.
Shat never felt the same. Compared to that feeling of community you got in Ironforge/Orgrimmar it just was just a pile of Shatterath.
Classic is a strictly better version of wow than BFA, legion, and WOD. Other expansions shine in certain ways, but the class design has just been so grotesque since WOD dropped.
Why did hunters have to lose good AotC? Ranged SV? Why did they take away the insane flavor of MoP demo lock? Why did every spec become its own class outright? Why did professions stop being relevant? All prior zones? Why can’t I farm jungle remedies and use them to counter my counter class? Why aren’t bandages worth their inventory slot anymore? Why can’t I bandage without being a tailor?
For me it doesn’t have to be classic, I’ll play wow in any iteration other than the last 3 expansions.
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Sharding
1.12 AV
Loot trading
Right click report
Donald Trump
Dual spec
Transmog
No twinks
What they experienced on private servers even though they would NEVER play those.
Welfare epics
Battle .net comms
LFG
Battlegroups