Just saying this because some people seem to miss the point of not wanting any changes.
It’s not that Classic is perfect and everything in it gives the best experience that it possibly can. There are changes that could be made that most people would agree make Classic better and even more Classicy-er.
The problem is who do you let decide what changes should and shouldn’t be made? The things that give Classic its feel are extremely subtle, and whoever goes in and starts tinkering has to thoroughly understand Classic’s philosophy. I’m not convinced that there’s any game developers at Blizzard that really get it. At least, not any that would be in the position to be in charge of making changes. Do you really want modern game developers making these decisions?
Not making any changes is a sure thing, we know what we’re getting. You start allowing things to be changed and anything can happen. Some of the people calling for changes now, expecting the changes to fit what’s in their mind, are in for a surprise when they inevitably don’t like some changes that happen.
I’ve already seen people here suggesting changes that they think fit Classic and won’t harm anything that I and others disagree with. Showing just how unclear the “right” changes are.
I think the idea of making changes and innovations to Classic is interesting, and I’d like to see what would come of it, but I wouldn’t want to sacrifice what we have now for it.
All that said, the only change I’d like is dungeon tuning to pre-1.12 numbers. And that’s not even really a “change” IMO. If Classic isn’t going anywhere, let people progress through the un-nerfed Dungeons/Raids the right way. I think saying stuff is easy cause we’re so much better now is massively embellished. If that’s true, then there’s no reason to make things even easier by using nerf numbers.
tl;dr: Changes aren’t inherently bad, there’s just no way to discern who you can trust to make them.
Change sometimes can be healthy for a game. However, people are neglecting to ask the question who do they want to make these changes? A majority of changes asked for are “We want this, but change XYZ lead to change ZYX. I don’t want ZYX, I just want XYZ”. They’re asking the same group of people who made changes to retail (and look at retail now) to come and make ‘better’ changes to classic.
1.13 exists forever untouched and unaltered. Carving in stone Vanilla WoW and the “#NoChanges” movement forevermore. The extent of Blizzards interaction with this branch is limited to maintenance.
A second branch is opened for changes beyond or even parallel to 1.13.
People who want changes can copy their character out to the other branch, people who don’t can stay.
This is my feeling on it 100%, thank you OP for articulating it well.
I’m not a #nochanges person, but i have zero trust in a group of devs who had be nigh on dragged kicking and screaming to the table to make classic, led by an ex dev now CEO who’s smug condescending attitude could clearly be seen when he said "you think you do, but you don’t "…
I have even less faith in player “suggestions” either, considering how they contributed to the abomination that is Refail. In general terms, players make the most idiotic develpoment descisions because they are biased and thus tainted.
So yeah, given the history of WoW’s development progression, the results of blizzard “listening” to players and the unending stream of conflicting ideas people regurgitate on these very forums…i guess i am a #nochanges person after all.
Long live WoW classic, the most untainted WoW now in existence…for now at least. Given enough time, im sure we’ll see blizzard destroy it again, but hopefully thats approx 2 years off at least.
i think the point of classic is show how was the game, so until last raid the things should stay faithful to vanilla.
For example people were asking, “why druid wasn’t popular?” “why balance druid is bad?”, if you make changes before the last itemization the classes will work different and the idea of classic wow will be “false”.
on the other hand a mmorpg can’t be static, when that happens all gimmicks get to the stable point of no surprise.
vanilla mages will love stay in classic forever.
warlocks and healer druids will love to be in BC for the rest of their live.
ret paladin will 0rg4sm with perpetual wotlk.
i feel pity for anyone picking ret, feral or balance and then stay in eternal no changes classic, but the changes shouldn’t come before the last iteration of original vanilla.
That’s fine in theory, but how convoluted are we willing to get? Does Bliz really want retail, Classic, Classic+, and BC servers if they do them(which is what I wanted from the beginning tbh)? 4 versions of the game just to try to satisfy everyone.
Well, really it would only be adding one version, classic+, that would require game development. Classic and TBC just require some programmers to refurbish old games before they are re-released and little else after.
Maybe if Classic+ was limited to a difficulty boost, like +10% damage and +30% health across all mobs, and some basic stuff like old AV and meeting stones working kind of stuff, then I could see Blizz doing some basic upgrade to Classic as an option. Can’t imagine they will go osrs route some want.
Also, no idea why people keep arguing about nochanges. That ship sailled, Classic came out mostly on the nochanges side and it will remain that way. The only argument is if Blizz should do a Classic+ or not.
I have 15 years of experience as well, actually more if you count previous MMO’s. Also, I never said I wanted anything in this comment. But if you want control maybe Blizzard will sell you WoW. You can feel like you have some say all you want, but your experience should tell you that you really don’t.
All I said was that the comments here are risk-averse which they are. In fact I share the mistrust to some degree, but in the end the same company that is said to be mistrusted to handle the game, is the same company that made all of those decisions the culminated in what everyone “loves”.
“Nochanges” has already failed. At this point we just have to accept our fantasy realm and hope they don’t put in things like dual spec, new races, dungeon finder teleports, class rebalances, and so on.