This. I don’t recall (or care to look right now) at how classes were tuned from tier to tier, but I’m sure a lot of it was to shore up weaker specs as well as tune down stronger specs as they were finally trying a firmer hand at balancing the classes. I also don’t remember it being anything too crazy where a class went from middling/bottom tier to suddenly top of the charts, but again, I haven’t looked.
PvE content should release in phases like Classic, where it matches the patching schedule but slightly accelerated because foreknowledge and whatnot. That includes attunement as it was originally done all the way through to the easy access versions later. This goes for Badges of Heroism loot as well, which they’ve shown they can do just like in Classic with vendors getting phase-based items.
Copy yes… but not faction change. I really don’t want to see the Horde v. Alliance numbers skew harder than they already are thanks to Blood Elves. Alliance Shaman and Horde Paladins should have to level like they did back in the bad-old days of TBC.
I’ll add that as much as phasing was disliked, it will be desperately needed in TBC Classic. Everyone trying to do the same damned quests in the same damned starting zone was a nightmare on TBC launch for a good 2-3 weeks, and became a prime ganking location forevermore even as late as Mists and WoD. I can remember playing in the wee hours trying to level through Zangarmarsh and being in that stupid fungal cave trying to spam tag the named mob at the bottom of the cave. Everyone is essentially funneled until you get high enough to quest in the beginnings of Nagrand or Blade’s Edge, and again when you’re high enough to do Netherstorm or Shadowmoon Valley.
It is the entire reason WotLK gave split starts that eventually funneled into the massive Dragonblight. It didn’t cure the issues, but it certainly alleviated them by a great deal.
- Phasing will absolutely need to be implemented for a time.
I’ll also add:
- Nodes and mob respawns need better tuning in a TBC Classic world. Populations are much larger and with flying, farming out in the world is going to be very difficult with all the competition. Coupled with that are the advent of daily quests, where trying to snag that one last thing to bomb is going to be a nightmare and with no real end to the people doing it because it takes a set amount of weeks to get Exalted. I’m not sure what the solution will be with regards to the Netherwing races… so many people doing it and I’m pretty sure folks each get their own “opponent” to race against. It may actually be necessary to shard/phase folks to even make some of these workable in mass numbers.
Honestly, Classic has been just fine, but has suffered from issues of scale and logistics. With TBC, quests, daily quests, and other outdoor content will be absolutely necessary to progress both for leveling and for reputations that actually matter more than they do in Vanilla. The Sunwell dailies will be notably egregious on PvP servers, guards or not, and on all servers will be ridiculously hard to complete even if you’re running around as a 5man trying to tag everything you can.
Can’t wait to do that bombing flight quest outside of Sunwell for the 18th time because literally nothing is alive or untagged from the 400+ other goobers doing it simultaneously.