Just curious. Or I guess you could say the longest last patch if 1.12 didn’t really last that long which is a possibility.
Pretty much all of the dungeons and earlier raids had been nerfed by the time 1.12 came about, either directly or indirectly, and I’d rather get something closer to the launch experience of those dungeons and raids.
Plus there are some things like threat not mattering nearly as much as it did in the early days.
It’s not entirely 1.12 or any one single patch’s fault though. It was a slow shift that happened over 2 years of patching.
13 Likes
simple solution… do not play.
I have two main issues with 1.12. That would be cross-realm bgs and 1.12 version of AV (which will just be another zerg). Other than that I have no huge issues. The way they’re staggering content release is good. I do understand peoples’ concerns with the threat issue. I’m fine either way with that.
But that said all those things in 1.12 are still authentic Vanilla, so while not ideal they wouldn’t keep me from playing.
16 Likes
The original World of Warcraft changed quite a bit through its dozen patches. By the time 1.12 rolled around, I had seen all the dungeons, done all the (alliance) quests, and so on. My main was a warlock and I was pretty happy with the class…and then 2.0 came out just before the Burning Crusade proper.
I immediately specced into Felguard (giving up some “necessary” first-tier Afflication and Destruction talents) and felt that my primary class was now complete. Many friends said similar things about their 2.0 patch talents, even at level 60. There were still problems, of course, but it seems that just as the vanilla endgame was about to get obsoleted in several regards by the first expansion’s content, the talents finally reached a sweet spot. So you could say what I didn’t like about 1.12 was something that was yet to come.
As Sabetha points out, in 1.12 the dungeons and raids had already been tuned down by then, but I managed to miss the early high-level difficulties so I never knew what those were like—I was actually out of the country for 5 weeks right as everybody on my server was hitting the high 50s and as those dungeons were getting retuned. The nostalgic purist in me would really like to see a fully progressive Classic, from 1.1 to 1.12 on the same relative schedule, but the pragmatist in me realizes how much that’s asking for.
4 Likes
Personally, I’m not picky. I started playing the day 1.11 dropped apparently (though I wouldn’t have known), and was a slower leveler, so I have no reference for the way things were early beyond a daughter who raided, a friend who PvP’d, and the many stories people tell.
However, speaking of the friend who PvP’d, he took me along as pocket healer to AV in TBC, and spent some time showing me where things used to be, talking about how things used to work. At the time, the PvE elements still existed in a small degree - but groups would often mark you AFK if you weren’t along for the zerg.
One of the big aspects of 1.12 I see some complaints about were changes to threat and something else that made warriors high-powered in multiple roles and activities.
We can read about it taking months for people to reach 60 and clear MC, BWL, Ony, and then look at private servers where people talk about clearing all the raids within the first weeks, and realize how much changed from 1.1 to 1.12 that trivialized earlier content. Gear that was unavailable or changed, talents that were tweaked multiple times, a complete revamp of the trees, so much takes away the sense of challenge in 1.12 that earlier players worked through before that.
2 Likes
The main reason is Alterac Valley has been gutted a good bit by that point. The original, epic AV took place in previous patches. 1.12 AV has a chance of being the PvE race we all know and despise from current expansions.
4 Likes
It’s the culmination of all the nerfs and buffs that lead to 1.12. It turned everything into face roll easy mode essentially - something that was not a part of the Vanilla experience. I’m not saying make MC 1.1 difficulty, but a happy medium would be nice.
That being said, none of us really know what the game would have played out like during Vanilla 1.12 . It just wasn’t around long enough, and TBC was around the corner. The only experience we have is private servers. And that’s a big question mark. But, for all we know they got it right and 1.12 really is just really, really dumb.
For me? 1.12 is probably a deal breaker. But self admittedly, my experience differed from many others. Which is why I want something in the middle. 1.6 level MC would be ok. From what I remember, in T2 it would still take us over 2 hours.
8 Likes
1.12 version of AV decreased it’s complexity and epicness in my opinion.
Warrior threat increases to shield slam and more. In my opinion it unbalances earlier raids. It makes them play as they were not intended by making threat less of a mechanic to deal with. I believe taunt mechanics were changed slightly as well. Some say that without the change shield slam is useless, and I wholeheartedly disagree, those people are thinking of the 1.5/.6 (forget which) change to shield slam.
Dungeon/raid nerfs.
Paladin talent changes to the Ret/Prot tree… holy changes were good.
1 Like
The biggest issue with 1.12 is actually simple, it’s 11 patches into vanilla and the final major one before TBC prepatch. That’s eleven times the game balance and apparent design changed while still following the original philosophy.
Some of those changes were earth shattering in their complexity and scope. They fundamentally shifted both player perception and overall balance. Specs that had been a staple, a tried and true value had become worthless in the eyes of the player base, while specs best described as meme specs were suddenly king of the world.
It’s one of the things I’ve always found absurd about the #nochanges crowd, the only consistent thing in all of vanilla was that it changes constantly. That was actually the origin of the FOTM rerollers meme, because each time one of the class patches came out tons of players would reroll to that class to see if it was better or worse than whatever they had been playing.
Vanilla was an experience, and it cannot be contained within a single patch.
Beyond all that though was the philosophy, the original devs never appeared to want things to be broken or OP. Sometimes it happened and it would get fixed as soon as they were able to. The entire game was a work in progress and to not use the experience gained over the past 14 years to complete the project does it a disservice.
This is not to suggest that it needs sweeping changes, but cutting out fixes and better designed versions of some talents/abilities simply because they don’t fall within an arbitrary timeline cutoff is absurd. It could use a good solid coating of old school blizzard polish if they plan to have it be a one and done.
They will already need to retune a large number of encounters if they wish to even remotely provide the challenge those encounters had during retail.
My closest comparison would be Launch-MoP and then MoP after the timeless isle. Sure they are both MoP, but the gearing and play style implications are staggering.
1.12 lasted from Aug 22, 2006 until Dec 05, 2006; so just over 3 months out of the 25 month lifespan, not what many would really consider solid representation.
5 Likes
1.12 was great. Every class had their patch upgrade by then. I wouldn’t want to start at any other point in wow.
wow classic at launch will be better than wow vanilla was at launch.
Well the thing is, Blizzard has to ship something, and settling on the last iteration of the ever-changing vanilla seems a quite reasonable thing over opening a rat’s nest of potential changes, which will only delay release.
Once Classic is out, it’s quite possible they could entertain further 1.x patches, with retunings of talents, mobs, and itemization, or just keep retreading the path of the original expansions. While I’m personally a part of the #nochanges crowd for vanilla (largely for pragmatic matters of release date), I’m open to changes for TBC:Classic, even if it’s just giving Classic players the time to “finish” that we didn’t get in vanilla.
I wanted to add an additional thought. I want TBC Classic servers, as well. When I think of my favorite point in TBC, it absolutely 100% is NOT 2.4.0 with Isle of Quel’danis. I want the original attunements for raids. I want the original difficulty level for Heroic dungeons, and the key (and rep level) requirements.
So even though I never got to experience 1.1 through 1.10, I realize just how different (and gimped) all the prior content of vanilla will feel from the lens of 1.12 out of the gate.
(In fact, anyone who has played through more recent expansions has seen this multiplied. Each patch might as well be its own expansion for how absurdly the catchups make everything prior pointless to do.)
6 Likes
Thanks to catch up mechanics, any classic servers done for WotLK or later would be severely hurt by their existence unfortunately.
Even in 3.3.0 for WotLK Naxx, Ulduar, and ToC were all basically irrelevant. Which is really unfortunate for Ulduar because that’s an awesome raid.
You’d almost have to do servers on a cycle unless you wanted it to be ICC for all eternity, or make something that isn’t authentic WotLK.
4 Likes
Biggest issue for me is the buffed items making a lot of content easier.
1 Like
I think the major issues with 1.12 can be boiled down to
- nerfed dungeons and raids
- the least liked version of av.
- threat not really being a factor.
14 Likes
Because it’s not as good as the 1.4 to 1.10 era; bar none the best era of Classic WoW without any equal.
Some may disagree, but most of these people who do are pushing for TBC changes to be added to Classic so that they can have something that never existed.
Most of these people don’t actually have a good understanding as to what makes for a stellar gaming experience, and it’s unfortunate that they will never understand.
3 Likes
Cross realm Battlegrounds which they already said wont be in because realm identity is important.
You could in theory keep all raid tiers relevant for if not forever at least a lot longer by putting item level restrictions on doing the mount/title achievements.
heroic were a joke even in heroic blues so the power creep from badge gear doesn’t really matter there.
As much as I would love some blend of vanilla and TBC, that made more talent specs desirable in end-game content, that didn’t obsolete end-game content, etc., I realize full well what a horribly huge and difficult thing that would be to even try, and so I don’t expect it.
1 Like