What do you like In Classic, that isn't in BFA?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Hey everyone, we were having a discussion similar to this in General Discussion this morning, but came to realize that almost no one there is actually interested in Classic, so it turned sour quick.

So, I’d like to run a little experiment. Within this experiment, I’m very interested in hearing from specifically people who have played Legion and BFA enough to know what they were doing, but are going to be quitting specifically FOR classic, or at least will be playing it significantly less. Preferably, not just people who quit BFA because it wasn’t satisfactory compared to past expansions, but if that’s the case too that’s fine, as long as you are playing Classic.

If you are choosing Classic over modern wow, what would you say has made that decision for you?

I’d love to learn as much about this topic as I can, so it would be super helpful if you could be as descriptive as you have time for, and not just say the game sucks or something like that, like you typically hear in some discussions.

Also, if you are excited for BOTH Classic AND bfa, I’d love to hear that too! I feel like at times I’m the only person who is passionate about both, so will be cool to hear why.

So to start, I’ll name the things I’m excited about the most:
BFA: Mythic+ dungeons, Blood DK gameplay, and the competitive scene around both.
Classic: Very unique Class design (Classic paladin top 5 class design ever imo), leveling as a main focus of the game, and certain content especially Dire Maul (favorite dungeons ever) and Zul Gurub (favorite raid ever!)

I’ll abstain for commenting again in this thread to keep the results unbiased, then come back after a while and collect the results for further discussion.

Thanks for anyone who left their thoughts!

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Classes are much more unique and diverse in classic wow.
the world is more dangerous is classic wow and has a more strategic element to it (Knowing how and when to pull, actually using cc in combat, grouping up is all but required for some quests, etc).
dungeons are longer and actually require cc even at lower levels.
knowing who is on your server and your reputation matter.
having actual talent trees.
having access to most your spells and abilities no matter what spec you are (somewhere down the line a fire mage somehow forgot how to cast blizzard, frostbolt, and other spells).

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Well that’s easy… Modern WoW sucks.

I will elaborate later; but my initial statement will work very well for now.

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remove lfd/lfr and nature will take it from there

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I recently leveled a paladin in BFA. Took me a little under three days. All I did was sit in stormwind and queue for dungeons.

When I went out to quest the zones were empty. So it was very much a multiplayer game with different instances. It didn’t feel like an mmo.

Classic is the opposite. I remember I had a priest and I’d buff random people and they’d buff me when questing. Was lots of fun.

Except for the paladins. They only had five minute buffs! Not a fair trade at all for my 30 minute buff.

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Community, first and foremost. After that would be an actual RPG, not some sad lobby game that hands out epics as participatory rewards.

Fix those two things, and you’ll fix 90% of the problems in WoW.

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Community is a big one for me. I haven’t been part of a guild that I enjoyed since MoP. My current guild (not on this character) is great in discord but in game activity is lacking.

Secondly I miss the talent trees. So many choices and a small reward for every level.

Thirdly I only played 2 classes in classic yet so many people praise vanilla class design. Now I can finally experience some of those other classes .

Lastly I like attunements.

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Server reputation
Unique classes with actual talent trees
The original world and quests
A dangerous environment
World pvp

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I’ll answer both ways.

What I liked about classic is the dungeon design and general quest design. Some of my favorite dungeons were in classic and are now simply gone. I also like the bland generic questing in classic a lot more than trying to turn WoW into a single player story based RPG.

Now for the other perspective, as bad class balance is in BFA it’s tons better than it was in vanilla which I like.

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Ammo.
Pet loyalty.
Pet Happiness.
Hunter pets not Auto leveling with you.
Pet’s having unique abilities you have to get through taming different animals.
Hunter’s having ranged weapons and melee weapons.

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I miss how there was just one version of the dungeon and raid. With that came one version of the armor. No random titanforged crap. The talent tree made it a more immersive experience leveling. Like someone said earlier you can just spec as a tank and Q all day in a city now. I miss pvp servers. As much as I hated ganking it made the world feel dangerous and you had to be careful. In vanilla the honor system was better that was my era of pvp.

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Oh my goodness, soooo many things. But to name just a few…

I really enjoy the familiar community aspect of closed server communities versus the teeming, sea of nameless, faceless adventurers we have now with LFR, LFD and CRZ. This alone is why I feel I have not been able to enjoy any other new MMORPGs in so many years as well, because everything now has group finders, rendering the people you meet along the way expendable and unmemorable.

Past that behemoth issue, I really liked purples (and even blues) being so much harder to get. They meant more, and during their drawn out pursuit, you didn’t mind your greens so much. I mean, some you wore for so long they became as bizarrely dear to you as one’s comfiest, most worn in hoodie.

Lastly, I enjoy having a clear linear path toward a specific goal, rather than RNG from many sources determining many goals at once for me. That’s overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time. In the past, picking one thing to work toward and grinding it out, knowing that my time was bringing me closer toward the reward, even if quite slowly so, was relaxing.

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  • Classes actually feel like classes rather than Melee DPS/Ranged DPS/Tank/Healer with tiny differences. Utility is still a thing, rather than being pruned in favor of MOAR DPS ABILITIES in BFA. Unique abilities and random meme spells like Eyes of the Beast exist even though they have little practical use. Class fantasy is alive and well.

  • There are more than four stats on gear. Hit %, Crit %, weapon skills, spell power, Resists, Block Value, Defense, class-specific items such as Totems and Librams, and so on. Gear is diverse.

  • Dungeons arent meant to be speedruns while chain-pulling and AOEing everything you see, they’re meant to be heroes fighting their way into the lair of their enemies and defeating the bad guys against all odds. You arent invincible, and it shows.

  • Leveling is more fun because you get to explore so much more of the world than in BFA. Enemies are actually a threat, and players are encouraged to group up and socialize rather than just run around alone while ignoring everyone.

  • The world feels larger because so much more of it is important. Everyone needs to level professions, and they need to start at level 1 to do it. Meaning Copper will always be useful. Wool will always sell. Level 5 green items can make you money from Enchanters trying to get mats. Even dungeons and raids that you first cleared at level 50 might be revisited much later after you reach level cap because there are items that are still useful in them. Quests send you all over the world rather than two feet down the road to the next hub.

  • The faction conflict is more grounded in reality. The old wounds are still fresh, and we have no reason to trust one another. The Horde has reasons to hate the Alliance, and can still reasonably be called honorable and misunderstood savages. The Alliance isnt just a bunch of humans talking at each other, people actually play Dwarves and Gnomes because there’s a reason to roll those races.

TL;DR: Classes feel like distinct choices rather than coats of paint. Item design is superior. Dungeon design is more interesting because it isnt a Diablo 3 speedrun like BFA. Content lasts longer because gear is so varied that stuff from 10 levels below cap is used several raid tiers deep. The world matters literally forever. Leveling feels challenging and yet rewarding. The story is more believable.

I could go on.

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Sharding and cross server makes me feel like I’ll never see the same player again, so I don’t feel like there’s any punishment for poor social behavior on my or another player’s end of the table. Having a server and server community, where players are known and have reputations is really important. The human brain can’t parse the sheer number of players playing the game at one time, but it can parse the population of a server.

It’s great to develop as a crafter, pvper, raider, dungeoneer, etc, and have every path of progression heavily supported. In retail, it feels like the only viable progression path is iLvL, for the majority of players, unless you’re playing hardcore PvE or PvP. Blacksmithing and only blacksmithing, only doing content that enhances your blacksmithing, was a viable way to play classic WoW. If you are only a blacksmith in Live, you can’t do anything useful. You don’t provide a necisary service, you don’t contribute amazing gear to raiders, you don’t provide strong QoL to non-raiders. You hardly even make good gold doing it now. Back in the day, being a good blacksmith, engineer, enchanter, etc gave you and your character serious value in the game. Now, the only thing that matters is your ilvl and the fingers playing the character. In classic, the Character matters more than the player.

Part of this multi-part progression is the social element. Maybe you are a warrior, but dont have blacksmithing, you wanted alchemy for healing potions, but there’s a good Blacksmith that you know. He has all the recipies for all the items you need. Why not add him to your friends list? Or maybe you ran a dungeon with the guys in the best pvp guild on your server one time, you joined coms, everyone had a great time, and now and again you get into their battlegrounds if they have a spare slot.

The game is slow paced enough, and demands enough social interaction, that you benefitted greatly at all levels of play for being social and developing relationships, even if they are just semi-professional, with other players.

WoW is a MMO, and a fundimental part of MMO play is player interaction. on Live, you have no reason to group or guild unless you are pushing ranks in mythic raiding or arena. There’s not a lot of gameplay incentive to play with others on Live, but in Classic, you really do need to interact with other players if you want the best experience with the game. Characters have many defined strengths and weaknesses that you cannot possibly have all of your bases covered at once in Classic. This isn’t a bad thing, because other players can have immense strength in the areas where you lack, and where both of you are flawed individually, together you can overcome much greater challenges.

Classic is a very social game, live WoW is an incredibly antisocial game. I can only enjoy live WoW as a super hardcore game, but in Classic, I feel like I can just hang out and enjoy the ride. There are going to be times when I play both. I will probably play 8.2, I will absolutely play classic.

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I’m not choosing WOW Classic over Retail. I quit Legion before Blizzard even announced that they were going to do WOW Classic.

I am choosing WOW Classic because it is vanilla WOW, the game I started playing in 2006 and kept playing well past actually enjoying it (before Legion, I quit early MoP because I “woke up” and realized I was not having fun, I was logging in and logging right back out.)

Specific things in vanilla / WOW Classic that do not exist in Retail:

  • All talent trees available from the first point you get until you’re level 60.
  • Starshards / Hex of Weakness (priest’s race-specific ability)
  • A rare quality item (blue) being valuable, an epic quality item (purple) being hard to get without serious investment of time and effort, a legendary (orange) required group effort
  • +Healing Power, +Spell Hit, +Block, +Dodge - and so many other stats to find interesting ways to work with
  • Enough questing to keep me engaged for years. (Legion zones lasted me less than two months over two characters, and I couldn’t stomach doing them again.)
  • Full dungeons that aren’t timed races - with elites outside guarding the portals, patrols inside, and dead-ends or circuitous routes that took time to learn.
  • Maximum level of 60, max profession level of 300

There’s also a pretty hefty list of what is in Retail that was not in vanilla that adds to the above, but this is already getting long.

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I’ll go through all my reasons…

The leveling experience is more immersive and is built more like a classic mmo. The game today feels like nothing but the endgame matters. In vanilla your professions actually mean something as you level(If you so choose). The length of time it takes from 1-60 is long and the economy is balanced in all stages of the game.

The talent system, to me, is fair more superior. You get rewarded 1 point every level, so leveling actually means something. I also love spending hours and hours theorycrafting various different weird builds. It is also a avenue for customization and roleplay for a character.

Dungeons felt rewarding. Overall the game felt more rewarding. I can’t pinpoint the exact reason why, but I think it’s because rewards were fewer… and a lot of the time required a lot of figuring things out. As a new player attunments were not easy to figure out, nor where all the quests were, all the items either. Today’s wow, rewards are frequent and they all come in an easy to predict formula.

Pvp was my favorite thing to do in classic wow. It was sooo much more fun to me. Why? I think the damage to health ratios were lower… meaning having initiative advantage on an opponent meant a lot, and lucky crits were quite amusing and changed the coarse of a fight significantly. At first, even me back in classic wow thought that was a bad thing… but in hindsight it really wasn’t. It was fun. Today pvp is more predictable, longer, and though there may be less RNG… it’s less fun in my opinion. I liked being one-shot… inflicting a one-shot… dive in a group of 20 enemies and suicide AoE bomb them ALL to almost death.
I also liked how different classes were from one another. Each class felt significantly different in style in pvp.

I love the roleplay elements. I like having to buy bullets, huge cost in buying mounts, 1 hour hearths, slow health regain, limited bad space, being owned by wild mobs, no LFG tool, attunments, weapon skills, proffessions, trainers, skill buys, talent pt respec penalty, long ghost runs, etc. etc.
I love us all suffering together to accomplish a long goal. The journey is not meant to be easy… we see a level 60 and we know the things they had to go through.

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Wow…where to start.

  1. OLD ALTERAC VALLEY.
  2. 40 man raids.
  3. Player reputation has meaning.
  4. PvP is down and dirty, no immortal healers and players are very fragile.
  5. Slower pace of combat where the game doesn’t feel like Street Fighter 2.
  6. Long, complicated dungeons.
  7. CC is required to progress through dungeons.
  8. Elite quests are actually tough.
  9. Long quests that span multiple zones, such as Linken.
  10. No store bought mounts or pets.
  11. Leveling curve is long. Level 60 has far more meaning.
  12. Old talent trees.
  13. Rotations are simple.
  14. Epics are rare.
  15. Classes were very unique and brought unique abilities.
  16. Some hard quests made you get help or wait till you leveled more.
  17. No flying.
  18. Earning a mount was a big accomplishment.
  19. Class quests like Pal/Lock mounts, Priest MC staff, etc.
  20. Sense of server community.
  21. Being in a guild served a purpose.
  22. You don’t replace gear nonstop.
  23. Enchanting system was much deeper and involved.
  24. Tanks had to have skill to hold aggro and gain threat.
  25. Good DPS players knew when to hold back for fear of taking aggro.
  26. Resist gear was needed for certain fights.

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. I’m sure I could come up with a lot more if I thought about it.

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gold and professions are actually meaningful, that hasnt been true since mop now for the retail game. mission tables were a bad idea for an mmorpg

i also liked having just one or two version of dungeons and raids. im ok with an easy and hard mode, but not infinitely scaling and i dont like the time limit either

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This is also a big one for me. I havent enjoyed PvP in WoW since AV got gutted.

Large-scale warfare > Pillar humping.

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also worth repeating, because its one of the biggest down falls of bfa-

classes feel the same now, with melee, ranked tank and heals being the 4 roles. even stealth doesnt feel very unique, its gap closer

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