I mostly stopped playing classic once wotlk ended, I keep an eye on it here and there.
I’m just curious on what caused their philosophy to change. When classic was first announced at Blizzcon I always thought the original intention was to keep it as authentic and close to the original experience as reasonably possible, even as the expansions progressed.
I understand there had to be some unavoidable changes due to modern infrastructure/networking which is understandable, but besides bugs/exploits I figured we’
But as each expansion released we started straying further and further away. Original features are being removed or turned off, and people are starting to even ask for brand new features that never existed in the expansions. End-of-expansion patching used for the entirety. But some of those deficiencies or flaws were just part of the game at the time and should be fully embraced
Why can’t we have retail, the authentic (or as close to as possible) classic playthroughs, and then some 3rd version of the game (classic+ or whatever project is coming after lessons learned from SoD where you can ask for new features or ask them to leave off undesired features)?
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The biggest reason if you want my guess is that players asked for most of it. Even now people are asking for more changes when they’ll make tbc anniversary and vanilla anniversary also had more changes than before.
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“You think you do but you don’t”
Thats why
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just a lot of #nochange peoples and what I feel like is a lot of classic people who are getting a bit bored of the same classic expacs and want them changed up a bit
You can only go through some of the old slug so many times. I’m sure many didn’t want to level up again in Vanilla but many wanted to do it the first time for example. And it’s also not something that wasn’t done, many private servers now make more custom type of servers and less pure and this is who Blizzard is competing with in term of classic content.
Because it’s entirely possible to have multiple separate thoughts in your head at the same time:
- The classic game is better than retail
- The classic game should be authentic as possible
- Despite 1 and 2, there where some rather obvious flaws in these old versions that can and imo should be ironed out. It’s absolutely asinine that the human racial Emfh got reintroduced, for example. Like actually one of the most impressively stupid things I’ve seen blizzard as a company do… And that is saying something because it’s literally the same issue that basically nuked rated pvp participation back in regular progression wow.
Beyond that some things simply didn’t age well with the modern audience playing them, like world buffs (hence the creation of boons), or the vanilla pvp system’s current impact on anniversary realms basically making av the only bg anyone does, with almost no actual pvp in it. Dk bots in full season 4 gear being rampant in wotlk classic/infesting every bg. Rated pvp deflation via lower participation vs the reward structure is another.
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they no longer have sod to work on but still need to prove they can do something so they decided to ruin mop
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Because prog Classic isn’t an exercise in historical preservation or subject accuracy. It is, in 2025, its own game that people play because it is a more approachable, tame version of WoW without the feeling of being 20 years behind the people who got on the train early.
Prog Classic also still exists because retail offers no way, at all, to experience old class design or old instances of your choosing with other players. Timewalking is a seasonal game mode in retail, unlike FFXIV where item level sync exists for all trials.
Neither the casual leveling his first toon or me leveling my 15th are helped in any way by being on the losing end of historical(ly bad) class balancing, trying to convince people that the spec you personally enjoy is worth bringing over a better one. Design decisions made for a wildly different audience at the time the expansion was current content should not get in the way of you having fun today, because having fun is the primary motivator here- and the way you interact and have fun with the game has radically changed. Can’t fit square pegs into round holes.
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This exactly, a lot of the changes they made were done because they just make sense
The dont call it classic, call it reforged. Then people will expect changes.
I’d agree if it wasn’t already six years that ‘Classic’ has been used as a term. It’d only create confusion now. I agree ‘Classic’ isn’t the best term for the whole umbrella of ‘non-retail’ games, but what’s done is done.
I also, respectfully, think expectations in this regard have been crystal clear for years. Mists is no more ‘changed’ than Wrath was (feral/ret balancing, H+, Ulduar ilvl adjustments, 25-man loot tables in 10-man, etc.) - whether that’s good is subject to debate, but nobody is being misled.
And that term means a faithful / authentic recreation according to Blizzard. If its no longer going to be a faithful / authentic recreation then change the name.
The reason is to make it more fun.
Instead of repeating the same exact thing they are allowing garbage specs to actually be playable, which is a good thing.
Classic/Anniversary not doing proper balancing ruined it. Just more raids full of warriors yay so fun…
Thank god they are doing balancing now.
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Then why didnt they do that with vanilla classic? Stopping to eat and drink after 2 mobs is not fun. Running out of mana after 3 casts isnt fun. So if the reason to do things was for the sake of fun, well it isnt consistent at all.
Those aren’t balancing changes.
Research the difference.
‘Faithful’ is a line in the sand everyone’s going to draw differently. The modern client, layering, and other similar changes which greatly affect what you can do within the game and how you experience the world have been part of ‘Classic’ since day one.
If you draw the line at systems changes and can’t abide content or balance changes, that’s perfectly fine- I can understand that. But it is silly to suggest that it is Mists that somehow crosses this line; it’s been gone for a long time, and I don’t think a name change will make that any more glaringly obvious than it already is.
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I dont understand how somebody can get so bent out of shape over this.
It’s going to be fun.
They haven’t done anything that will ruin the fun.
Isnt the classic team different from the original team that worked on the original release?
Maybe these changes are some that the original team wanted because of hindsight i mean they mentioned that with the no LFR announcement and no changes ended with vanilla classic as soon as that ended the changes crowd took over.
There has been some changes since BC classic and only gotten bigger. I actually like it.
At least for Mists, original developers that still work at Blizzard are being consulted in regards to behavior and bugs in the original that are now being uncovered. In some cases, with their blessing, this has resulted in bugfixes that never shipped in original Mists.
For example, it was now uncovered that the alchemy trinkets had a bug that munged procs; the original 5.1 “bugfix” that buffed the proc rate was wrong, and it was reimplemented from scratch to behave as it was always meant to. Strangely enough, in rare instances, Classic is more authentic to the original intent than even the original itself was.
The answer is the most obvious, simple and depressing one: This model is the most profitable. The market for true ‘hobbyist’-grade #NoChanges World of Warcraft is much smaller than the market that would be alienated by it. “You think you do, but you don’t” was very prescient, even if it was a comment made in bad faith.
I am very certain that Blizzard uses data collection to drive and justify macro-level decisionmaking for the game, with everything from compiled results of the “Why did you cancel your sub” survey to just noticing how many people who play Classic also play Retail.
This is stage III enpoopification. Please substitute human waste for an appropriate forum-censored word if you are unfamiliar with this concept. Unfortunately, this is the World of Warcraft we play in.
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