Overall I’d be happy if SoD was carbon copied and had additional features in classic+, but if I have to specifically list some:
Keep flex raiding. It’s been such a blessing, especially with roster boss issues. Being able to keep a 22-24 player roster to account for call outs has made things so much better for me in phase 5.
Keep instanced world bosses. This one is a no brainer I feel like for almost anyone, as only .1% of the playerbase ever got to see these and just getting the kill on one was terrible with all the wboss griefing.
PvP events. Bloodmoon in specific. I’m not a big PvPer but I thoroughly enjoyed doing Blood Moon grinding and was sad when we didn’t see it carried over to level 60. I hope to see something like this back and keep the vendor updated regularly to keep the content current.
Class changes and making specs more viable. Class balance is kind of all over the place currently with certain specs, but I don’t want to go back to classic where certain classes just aren’t viable at all, and you only bring them if you hate the rest of your team; ie ret paladins in era.
Keep the new class quests/chains for long runes/items. I thoroughly enjoyed the extra lore and such added in with these new quest chains. They were pretty fun and overall didn’t run into a lot of problems with the few I’ve done so far.
I’m sure there’s more but thats the main ones right now. As for things I wouldn’t like to see carried over? The biggest would be the lower level dungeon changes into raids. I wouldn’t be against them staying, but give players the option to experience the 5 man dungeon version of these instances and just allow you to flip a switch if you want to go into the raids.
lol they’ve tried to make lightwell work for so long, and it never has. I recall retail having something that shot out projectiles from a well type thing, so maybe they could do that for lightwell, instead of having people click on it.
I just don’t like how big of a chore it is to obtain them, and change them out. Also it feels terrible when a piece of gear breaks and suddenly you’re missing a core ability.
I almost feel like it becomes a bit too cookie cutter at times. When given the choice between dispersion and pain suppression, it’s hard to imagine a situation where a priest is going to take pain suppression, even in pve, because the mana back to it. I also kinda dislike that classes with more than one spec basically gets no choice whatsoever what they choose for the majority of options. One resto rune, one balance rune, one cat rune, one bear rune… and there’s very little crossover between them. That aspect I find a bit lackluster.
I wasn’t sad to see STV get phased out, but given that it was optional, I definitely think it should have still been practical. I fancied the ashenvale event, and that thing got phased out immediately, which is sad. Blackrock mountain is make me not hate the honor grind nearly as much as i would otherwise.
I feel like this would be the play if it were the tbc prepatch. Some of the classes needed more than just a slight rework though.
Pretty disappointed in the new zones thing. Was hoping they’d open up hyjal, or kara krypts, or gilneas… and instead they just copy pasted the world in phased zones.
I feel like this might be more true for some classes than others.
I don’t feel like there’s a winning scenario on this front. No matter what choice they make, some group of people are going to hate it. If they do too little, people will complain about them being lazy. Unfortunately they kinda have to just, wing it and go with their best judgement… which isn’t always great.
I think vanilla is a solid base more or less. I just don’t think you can realistically take a classic + scenario type thing and do it 2 changes at a time. At that point it’s just an era server.
Yeah, kinda weird thinking about just how few people actually got to experience those bosses.
As wild as some of the class balance is, it gives me wotlk vibes in that, most things are overpowered in some way or another, making it a somewhat balanced imbalance.
If they keep the rune system I want it to have a better GUI. These things are basically MoP talents, so just use that. I don’t think MoP talents would’ve been so controversial if they were in addition to the traditional trees.
It’s fun having the expanded kit but I’m just not sure enough care has been taken into consideration as rune abilities interface (or more importantly don’t interface) with talent trees. No amount of runes is going to make the Arcane tree for mage better, so they need to actually rework the trees.
Agreed, and some classes have it worse off than others. Some runes kinda mesh alright with the talent trees. Rogues have it decent in that regard, but others… man. Seems like a wasted opportunity not to do a bit more with the talent trees.
In Wrath/Cata days Lightwell was awesome at one thing and one thing only: confounding people who were even worse at PVP than I was. In arena I’d drop it next to a pillar, run around the pillar with somebody chasing me like a derp, and just click it every time I passed it. I would do this without interference until my husband killed the derp’s partner. It never occurred to anyone that a Lightwell could matter, so they just disregarded it, but for a while there they’d buffed it so much out of desperation that the healing was actually pretty good.
Come to think of it, I was PVPing Holy so … they’d probably never even seen a Lightwell.
Those were fun days, but alas, we had to give up arena on the grounds that it was not good for our marriage.
The one thing I’d like to see added to future classic iterations is continuing to make professions relevant with new useful items like the enchant consumables but also crafted gear that is relevant both leveling and in endgame (even if its not full bis).
Another thing I wish they would change: I was disappointed to find that they took a game that, in its very original form, did not revolve solely around raiding and gave us a version that once again revolves around raiding. Want to PVP? Gotta raid. Want crafting mats? Gotta raid.
There is plenty to do for people who don’t like raiding, but then they go and tie all those things to raiding. I know they work hard on their raids and want to force us all to experience them but my dudes, no means no. (And this is Classic; we’ve already experienced them.)
This is easily solvable by adding things like resilience. Create a path to the gear required for an activity from within that activity rather than in a raid. Seems like a no brainer.
It’s more that I think making mass sweeping changes to the game is how you end up with SoD. You put in a bunch of good changes and then a bunch of bad changes and sometimes the good changes end up on the chopping block due to the synergy with the bad changes.
Example: Frostbite, I hate Frostbite. I hate Blackout too. I’d rather see these removed and potentially replaced (but only if the replacement is actually needed). We have alternatives to them that already exist. They just aren’t using them. While Deep Freeze and Psychic Horror aren’t 1 to 1 replacements of Frostbite and Blackout, arguably stronger depending on design, they are better from a gameplay health perspective if the class needs an additional source of CC.
If you make changes like that, and then also look to more or less patch up holes in itemization rather than make mass formulaic changes to the itemization, you end up with a healthier gamestate without destroying the heart of the game.
And the heart is pretty important considering it’s why we’re playing it in the first place.
I’ve been playing primarily Vanilla for the better part of the last 11 years. I could easily play another 11 years of it. That doesn’t mean I’m blind to the flaws of it’s design. Prot palas not even having a taunt for example. But you also can’t just throw things into a completed game without accounting for the effects they have, that’s how we got P1 Paladins with Avengers Shield being a daze…
It’s why they’ve given up on balancing the PvP and just keep throwing DR’s at it. It’s gone so far they can’t fix one thing and even begin to resolve the issues because they made too many changes too fast.
Blizzard should make gold sinks themselves. GDKP effectively turns BoP best in slot items into something you can buy with gold. If the idea is to allow players to buy BoP raid items, why not just make them BoE?
I’m not gonna argue whether GDKP is good, either from a game health perspective or an ethical one.
But I will say most GDKP’s aren’t people getting carried to gear or whatever. There are obvious cases of this (fresh 70 warrior in quest gear with Glaives? c’mon man lol) but it’s more the exception than the rule. The majority of GDKP’s just want to clear the raid with people who will actually be present the whole time.
Because if you’re just trying to coast through most GDKP’s will withhold your cut at the end.
GDKP is a more fair loot system for most people, you go in, if nothing drops for you, you didn’t waste your time in the raid because you got gold which you can use in the next run or whatever you need. And yes, I consider going to an SR pug and not getting to roll on anything because my SR didn’t drop to be a waste of my time.
For example, if Blizzard created a new currency that dropped only at the end and allowed you to purchase gear with that currency, that problem would be solved without massively increasing the value of gold - which benefits gold sellers.
The nature part of Mark of Chaos (by adding nature component to Curse of Elements)
Crusader Strike
reduced cd on Stormstrike
same hots/dots applying from multiple players
new dungeon
updated Gnomeregan, BFD, Sunken Temple (not as raid, might need adjustments for 5 player groups)
Nice to have
new events around the world:
Stranglethorn PVP Event
Ashenvale PVP Event
searing gorge quest hub
incursions
PvP events should not rewards rep for existing bgs. There should be max level PVP rewards (no rank 14 level weapons, but maybe some off pieces that are not available yet, e.g. rings, necks, cloaks, bracers, belt. Definitely keep the mounts)
PvE hubs have to stay inline with other questing areas, so decrease the rewards a lot. Acquired currency should also have max level benefits in form of consumables like Winterspring JuJus, Blasted land buffs, etc.
Definite No
instanced world bosses
multiple tier sets for the same class (just add enough non-set items to support each spec. It’s ok for warriors to wear a leather items or moonkins to wear a cloth piece)
overcharged set bonuses (incredible set bonuses just show the lack of balance)
all other runes not mentioned by now: no mage healers or rogue tanks.
all of the new loose ends (Men with sun glasses, Shadowy figure). Remove them or add a satisfying conclusion
overpowered gear from ST/BFD/Gnomer
Blackrock mountain PVP event
Needs to be reworked
mana management: some classes have decent abilities but cannot sustain enough mana for a bossfight. Classes that come to mind:
Moonkin
Shadow Priest
Enhancement Shaman
Elemental Shaman
Ret Paladin (not sure on this one, but spamming consecration is pretty expensive)
No infinite mana, just a little help so that demonic runes and mana pots keep them running.
Stuff that should’ve been in SoD
finish all the questlines that abruptly end. So many questlines do not end in a satisfying way and generally feel unfinished. There are a lof them. A few examples:
the missing Diplomat
Nothing But The Truth
Defiant Orc Head
finish zones that feel empty:
Swamps of Sorrows
Blasted Lands
Azshara
Hinterlands (Alliance Side)
Burning Steppes (kinda ok, but could use some love)
add Hyjal. One of the most important locations in Warcraft 3 Lore and it’s still missing
more loose ends. blocked off portals:
multiple in Stormwind City
one in Darkwhisper Gorge
There is so much potential that was not used in SoD. I would’ve preferred focus on these topics instead of complete new stuff. But just by writing this list I realize that this would require more dedication by blizzard. Anyway, this is what the goal they should strife for.
I agree with most of this; the one hard disagree though is not having instanced world bosses. It’s been nice actually being able to do the bosses that only .01% of the playerbase actually ever got to fight because they were camped 24/7 by guilds ready to snipe tags the moment that they spawned. Then dealing with people griefing and resetting it. The one miniscule argument could be WPVP, but if thats the case then just give instanced world bosses to PvE realms and let people fight for them on PvP realms. Or at the very least make their spawn rates extremely quick so anyone has a chance to fight them.
Yeah, I don’t picture there being much they could do about it in any case. I was moreso criticizing the fact that no one ever actually manually clicks it other than the priest that knows it’s down. =P I was a disc arena healer back in the day.
likely lol.
I honestly don’t know how you didn’t end up divorced after that lol. Arena can be a very frustrating prospect if you don’t manage to find someone around your same skill level / temperament, and even then it still can be. =P
Feels like they’ve kinda failed on that front in SoD. Some profs got special treatment, some felt like they got dumpstered.
To be fair, it mostly revolved around raiding before too… though PvP gear had its peaks where it could be the BiS at least in vanilla. In sod they’ve entirely stripped that away, especially for the weapons, and have just made it trash gear that is not at all comparable to the pve gear, especially set bonus wise, which is frustrating.
That’s my problem, I don’t want to deal with raiding. I don’t enjoy it, i don’t want to deal with a guild, I don’t want to deal with a set schedule or drama… Why pigeon hole us into something we don’t want to do?
They had the absolute perfect opportunity for resilience too. Everyone is doing wayyyy too much damage… You know what would fix that? Resilience… oh wait… no, no… let’s just do a flat damage nerf for casters and melee in pvp for free, that just benefits the PVErs more than the pvpers because they actually have gear that blows through those damage reductions. Frustrating.
Deciphering good changes from bad is the real trick. I think the team needs a whole lot of forethought when deciding what to do, otherwise things can go sour quickly.
Realistically, they needed to nuke RNG stuns, nuke RNG stun resists, and apply TBC DRs and durations for CC. There were a lot of changes that needed to happen on that front.
I think part of it is that it’s a seasonal server, so they’re a lot more careless and flippant with the changes. I’m hoping they slow things down a bit with classic + if it happens in that regard. They’ve made some extreme changes but I think that’s solely because it’s temporary.
agreed
fair, though it’d encourage ninjaing probably.
Yeahhh SRs can feel very hit or miss. Not getting to roll on anything feels pretty bad too.
Agreed more or less. There’s always going to be the wallet warriors who circumvent that, but I’ve known people to buy gear like that and they still were going tryhard mode.
This is a good idea since there are no pvp off pieces currently.
I dunno, the notion of certain guilds controlling the entire world boss encounters isn’t healthy imo, especially if it were a boss like thunderaan in the game where he has BiS weapons.
I honestly can’t really figure out why you’d be against this. Seems dumb for only one spec of a class to get relevant gear.
no it isn’t. There’s enough rogue competition out there as it is.
In some ways I like them, in some ways I hate them. I dislike greatly that PvP gear gets left out in the cold as a result. I like the game changing elements to it, maybe not attach it to tier though.
Rogue tanks have been such a disappointment at every turn. I’m sure they can be great at high end, but on the way there it just felt terrible.
I think having one of these in the game, and having a pause there is acceptable. It feels rewarding to be super decked out leading into the final phase of leveling. It doesn’t, however, feel good stopping every 10 levels.
I don’t hate it, but I’m a rogue. i feel like there could be a bit more to it, buuuut, I’m not super bothered by a just cluster pvp event.
This is pretty disappointing they haven’t done more with the old zones.
Hopefully a classic + gets a full commitment instead of a side project commitment that SoD has gotten.
Everything has been pretty good except the part where ret pallies are unstoppable killing machines with 0 counterplay. Soooo if they could do everything except that…that would be great
This is still probably more balanced than original vanilla. At least there’s multiple crazy OP classes in this. Comes across as a wotlk feel, where everything feels OP in some way or another.
