It’s so interesting to see people discount private servers like there was nothing they could have possibly contributed to theory crafting over the last decade.
I agree that there was a lot of issues with private servers but I’m not dumb enough to think that nothing of value was gained by the tens of thousands of players religiously grinding through Vanilla over and over again.
Just the thought that “Everything had been figured out by the end of Vanilla” is a joke. Naxx was out for less than a year before TBC and less than 1% of the player base saw Kel’thuzad but ya, they figured out EVERYTHING.
Pretty much anything from private servers should be taken with a grain of salt because of the ever present reality that it could just be an incorrect calculation and isn’t authentic Vanilla.
The other thing is that people act like the playerbase was ignorant to a lot of things in Vanilla when the reality is that the top players knew what they were doing. We had 2 years to figure things out, and even in 1.12 we had half a year. It doesn’t take us that long to theorycraft things out.
A few Paladins in my guild already thought of the spellblade build that we’re now seeing(and we weren’t even top 1% players). We knew about stacking as many consumables as we could find(this is why Blizzard started limiting them in TBC).
Private servers may have worked to further optimize things, but most of the underlying builds were already known.
They just weren’t always known by the average player, since a lot less people looked up guides back then and less people made them. We didn’t even have YouTube when WoW first came out, and it didn’t start really ramping up in popularity until the last 1/4 of Vanilla’s lifespan.
I think that you might of misunderstood the statement. I never said giving information about the specs aren’t a good thing. The statement was more for people who straight up just tell people what to do.
Different strats on how to clear dungeons and raids; sure when you also remember that Private servers are only based on Classic WoW.
As much fun as it is to think of them as the same game; it’s just not true. Small differences, missing mechanics, different points of balance; these things all impact game play and change the potential possible strategies.
Will the private server community have a big edge on actual Classic? YES, they will have a massive advantage regardless of how wrong their servers / classes are.
Why is that true? Regardless of the private servers accuracy, the class mechanics and PVE encounters are close enough to give them a tremendous amount of practice in handling the classes in a way that works. They will adapt quickly to the differences in how the game plays and tune their strats accordingly.
However practice does not = great game play, it just means you’re practiced and proficient.
I am fully willing to wager that very few players from the private servers will ever be regarded as “The best of Classic” in regard to their skill. Those players are also just as unlikely to be from the “Vanilla” era either. I would imagine that the best of the best have yet to play any format of Classic WoW, but only time will tell.
I’d actually bet the majority of the first wave of R14 players will be from private servers. I also would be willing to bet that “world first” clears on retail classic will be completed by private server guilds.
Granted you’ll see some streamers continue to be “top” due to their sheep feeding them the entire time, understanding the time commitment and logistics of being top is something private server players will have over retail only.
The majority of the differences between retail and private servers just won’t have that significant of an impact.
The real only reason this may be the case. I am in no way discrediting it. Is simply because pretty much all the current top guilds have no real interest in raiding in classic ad they’ve all done it before. I am sure you’ll have them come along. However they’d most likely have no interest in that race as it was already done.
You’re likely right on the private server community being “first”.
Where I was pointing toward them falling behind is on game play and total skill cap; that’s where I feel the best players have yet to discover Classic WoW.
As much as I hate to point it out, the younger generation of player’s who’re not all wimps will learn from our skills, and evolve the game play to a place where we will have a tough time competing due to reaction times slowing with age.
I always liked experimenting and playing the way I want to play… if that happens to line up with the meta, that’s fine… if it doesn’t, that’s good too.
This right here is exactly how I plan to play the game. As I’m leveling to 60, I will pick whatever talents I want because I want the experience of customizing my own character and I want to have fun. My janky build didn’t stop me from finding groups back in 2006, and it won’t stop me this time. Then once I feel ready to enter the raiding scene – and I’m determined to do so no matter how hard it is – I’ll switch my talents to whatever the group needs.
My philosophy? The internet can’t tell me that I’m playing the game wrong if I manage to beat up bosses and players with a janky talent set.
