For starters i’ve played every official version of classic blizzard has made so far (aside from Hardcore) 2004, 2019, SoM, SoD, and now Anniversary and this is by far the worst. There are a lot of reasons why its so terrible, and I can go into more detail if requested, but im going to keep it fairly simple for now and just highlight a few of the issues that make this “not classic like”.
Lets start with PvP, mostly because its my favorite part of classic content. This is a bit of a nuanced issue however and is really a player issue more than a design flaw, but it certainly impacts enjoyment.
The new honor system on paper is fine. The oldschool r14 grind is horrible and no one should be subjected to 100+ hours a week to be competitive in an enveiornment that forces you to fight your own faction more than the opposing one. That said it convinces casual players and non-pvpers to participate, and for them AV is the option, without the requirement for a ranking mafia dictating the meta, WSG, and in the future likely AB are dead in the water, which is something we saw in SoD, the ability to afk your way into gear, removes any sort of BG pvp experience, even for the sake of enjoyment and takes a in my eyes pivitol part of the classic experience out.
Next issue is server size. Server are way too big, I understand how mega servers make the game “easier” when it comes to leveling or finding groups for content, but they entierly destroy the social aspect that makes classic so good. The servers are too large for the social contract to have any impact, and the fact I don’t instantly recognize people in the open world or BGs, is really lame. Having a bounty network and healthy amount of trash talk between “ususal suspects” makes the game so much better, in 2019 for example not only did I know every single fellow alliance ranker, I knew every horde that even touched a BG on my server. That was fun.
Botting / gold costs and the mafias that control them. Again this is partially a player count issue, the resources in the game even with 7 layers aren’t comparable to the demand, and even if they were supply for mining nodes / black lotus, ect is limited in so far that node respawns are camped and time gated, leading to absurd prices. Another massive issue here is that MOST (not all) gold farms have been nerfed, even raid gold drops have been nerfed to SoD levels, leaving it very expensive to gather the required consumables for raid, this in my anecdotal experience of just talking to friends or fellow raiders has encouraged swiping far beyond the scope of what GDKPs did.
Raid prep is expensive but parsing doesnt matter. Aside from the fact we have done this 10+ times now, parsing is worse than its ever been, with reduced look aqquisition due to timeline coupled with expensive or overfarmed materials, parsing is even more of an RNG crapchute than normal.
I understand that this is TBC waiting room, but if that is the case why isn’t there some QoL, right now its just raidlog simulator, basically 2 active warsongs open and most of those are people wargaming in the PvP discord which at least for NS, is pretty inactive.
Guess i’ll just go greif people in Wpvp because thats about the only fun content in the game rn.
shamiversary is garbo