You are concerned about what happens after Naxx, but do you know how much content you have to play through to truly be "done" with Classic?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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I have been seeing a lot of forum posts recent about paranoia around the time investment it takes to play Classic WoW and the inevitability of a future content drought post Naxx. So I thought I would shine some light on two things.

1.) The amount of content that Classic WoW -actually- has to offer in its entirety (Phase 1-6).

2.) The permanence that your effort has in Classic WoW.

So to start on the first point,

A lot of you may be done with Molten Core/Onyxia, while I would argue a majority of the community might be finishing leveling their mains to 60, I am going to focus on the more “hardcore” players here. With one raid available (+Ony) its easy to think that Classic is not sustainable in the long term. Molten Core is meant to be an introductory raid and Blackwing Lair will probably not be much different. (Other than Chromaggus +)

If your guild is raiding consistently every week, you are not “done” with Molten Core and Ony when BWL launches. Raids do not cycle out like in retail, the content still has its relevance. If your guild needs bindings for Thunderfury, you need to run MC for each player who wants Thunderfury. Due to the generally scarcity/rarity behind loot drops, rerunning MC is extremely beneficial to your raid (unless you are fed gear cough). So in Phase 3, you are looking at MC, Ony and BWL weekly.

Not enough for you? Alright.

Phase 4, Zul Gurub launches. While it may act as a catch up mechanic, there is a lot of incentive for geared/progressed players to run ZG. The loot in ZG, however, is not a replacement for MC/Ony loot. If you want to gear your alt, you still need to head back into MC/Ony/BWL. Getting 20 guildies and raiding ZG weekly will be the norm, even if you are looking to pug it, it makes a lot of sense to run this weekly.

So in P4, you’re now looking at MC, Ony, BWL and ZG weekly. On top of this, you need to keep up with farming gold for future content and PvP if that is something you like to do as BG Weekends will be a thing + AB. (Not going to get into the honor gains in AV, thats a different discussion.)

Onto Phase 5,

AQ20 and AQ40, 2 more raids to be completed (don’t forget AQ Gates Server-Wide Event!). You will probably be able to PUG AQ20, however, I would argue this is where Classic Raiding will be tough to PUG. C’Thun will take a bit for most guilds and the amount of time it takes to raid will fizzle out some of the less dedicated guilds on your server. Unlike previously in Vanilla, however, the player base of WoW today will continue to play Classic and look for a new guild to raid with, creating more competition on your server and thus, making specific loot even more valuable considering its rarity.

So now we have MC, Ony, ZG, BWL, AQ20 and AQ40. Looking for things to do outside of raid? Farm gold, PvP on weekends, World PvP, professions or catch up on reputations. Raiders need to keep up with farming gold toward end of AQ/Naxx, Naxx is an expensive raid. For players without a guild, you will probably be able to now be able to PUG MC, Ony, ZG, BWL and AQ20 every week. Thats a fair amount of content for a more casual player, especially if you are playing multiple toons.

So now onto Naxx.

Naxxramas will not be easy for most guilds. Deeper into Phase 6, you MIGHT be able to PUG some bosses. KT? Doubtful. Four Horsemen? Good luck. Tier 3 will be a pretty awesome reward for guilds that complete Naxx, it is definitely something that you will feel proud of having. (I mention this because I personally have not felt proud of accomplishing much in WoW since Retail took an odd turn, I look forward to accomplishing those goals in Classic.) On top of that, you may actually get to see players complete Atiesh which was barely ever seen back in the day. Completing your Tier 3 set will also take the average raider a LONG time, and it is quite expensive to do so. Make sure you farm up the gold before Phase 6 drops. :slight_smile:

In Phase 6 you will also have the opportunity to go back, gear up alts and actually play the game. (lol) You’re now looking at all of this as weekly content, and the beauty of Classic is that you will be experiencing this with the rest of your server. Players in Vanilla can create their own content, its an actual World…of Warcraft. That is why Vanilla is loved as much as it is.

In between all of this, you may get sidetracked by whatever happens on your realm. One thing that is neat about streamer communities now adays is the random spontaneity of events. While you may not be on a streamer server, guild rivalries will happen and so will realm drama. Its actually a lot of fun to experience.

To touch on the second point, “the permanence that your effort has”, this is something that has not been in WoW before. Everything that you accomplish in Classic will always be here. Those memories you make and the gear you obtain will not vanish, it will be here. Classic will be played for years to come and the core community will always stay, the things you accomplish in game now will always be here and will not vanish with the next upcoming expansion.

So work for those legendaries, that tier set or that speed run time. These are all things that will be here on these servers and maintain their relevance. While some may drop off and stop playing it is ultimately your choice on when you want to log in and play for a bit. Vanilla will continue to be enjoyed, and the players will enjoy the game/community how they want to because that is what Classic WoW is all about.

(And if we get BC servers, at least you will be able to come back to Vanilla for a bit and play this content when you want to and progress in Outlands.)

That is all. :slight_smile: Good luck in game!

EDIT: ZG reset is twice a week. :slight_smile:

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Yall need to slow the fork down, I’m barely level 27.

Edit, I gave up on this hunter.

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Play at your own pace. :slight_smile: You have time.

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/agree.
Can’t wait for more of the locusts to leave when they’ve gotten their fill. I see the game settling into a tighter knit community.

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For some specs there is some amazing loot in there.It’s also twice a week reset.

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Great point, and my b.

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I wouldn’t call it a “bad”, more an oversight.
And to also echo the OP’s sentiment.
Outside of raiding there’s a metric truckload of content to be done.
-Working on rep’s to get some good recipes that are coming out shortly.
-Grinding towards attunements.
-Finding those elusive recipes for crafting.
-The tier 0.5 set is due out in the future if that’s your thing.
-Working towards pre-raid bis can take awhile (I’m still missing 1 piece)

People go on about how “hardcore” classic is but it’s not hard for a casual person to complete a set of competitive gear without even setting foot in a raid or melting their brain ranking to HWL/GM.

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I’m done with it already. I had enough of nerfs to goldmaking that an ordinary player like me without sweet connections to early exploits got stuck with. I was so tired of having everything I fought resist me, even things 10 or more levels lower than me would block my attacks.

I thought it would be cool to get the timbermaw trinket, oh look. Waste of time, turns out it’s not being released until phase 5. Tired of getting loot on only 1 of 5 to 1 of 10 beasts I skinned. Stingy Blizz devs needed to make sure that the 1 silver I got every 5 corpses wasn’t accompanied by an occasional green boe I could vend out.

LOL. Not quite. Hardly anybody to do dungeons with even 3 months ago when I stopped playing. I was so exhausted and making no progress toward anything.

At least bears are fun to play in retail.

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Considerably less time than is required to read your post.

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Accept my server isnt my server… its a bunch of xfered players that ive never met, that will probably xfer off once AQ hits

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While i agree that Classic definitionally has a lot to offer though it’s 6 phases… can i be honest here? it’s just mostly raiding you listed out. I used to be a raider back in MoP and WoD, but i stopped after the guild disbanded. I’m more or a dungeon person in that sense, really, cause being in a group of 9 to 39 other people is a crowd sometimes, and it can be a drag.

on the other end of spectrum, we got PvP and… ehh. If i ever did get back to PvP in full swing (and in Classic, dear lord :nauseated_face: ), World PvP is going to be my thing.

Then we got professions, which people list this as content. Honestly, i wish people go expand upon on and tell me what makes it so, rather then just being vague about it, or just say “it’s meaningful” as if that alone tells you everything you want to know. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

When i first read that phrase, i thought you mean game content… as in, i can literally create any game content i want, like recreating transmogs or battle pets, or bonus objectives in quests. I didn’t figured you meant this below when i connect the two together… :point_down:

Okay, this one is also werid. Are you saying, that 100% everything in retail, isn’t permanent or are you talking about things like AP or Legendaries here and there? like you can’t earn it and have it stick with you?

Also, I’m entirely unsure if Blizzard is just going to keep Classic static atfer they done the 6 phases or move on to TBC replacing it, (Which i hope they do not) let alone the community, which, lets face it, not the same community from 15 years ago.

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I’m not worried about what comes after Naxx. In vanilla my guild never got to kill CThune and didn’t get into Naxx because TBC was coming out and everyone knew it would make gear obsolete. So progression stopped for us. It’s one of the main things I want to do without the rush of an expansion that will make it irrelevant.

Once phase 4 is out there will be not lack of content for all except the really hardcore players. Like the OP said just because BWL comes out doesn’t mean guilds will stop doing MC/Ony. We’ll also have Arathi Basin + bonus honor weekends and ZG.

Right now a lot of people in my guild have been raid logging. We clear MC in a 1 1/2 hours then do Ony. We’re done raiding in one night after 2 hours for the week (many guilds are much faster) minus whatever time people spend during the week in preparation. BWL will add a 2nd raid night for most guilds. ZG will likely add a 3rd optional raid. Then you have AB my personal favorite BG to play as well. People will need to farm and gather materials for consumables still. There will be a lot to do.

For casuals they can play at their own pace. People will still be doing MC, Ony, ZG after AQ is out and there will also be AQ20. There will also be pvp and catch up gear in 5 mans by that time.

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If you quit 3 months ago… why are you even posting?

ahh… just to whine… sorry, forgot I was on the WoW forums for a minute… my bad.

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Whining just like you are.

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We’ll see how it shakes out long term. I think the vast majority of players have at least one 60 and are doing Ony and MC on at least a pug basis right now.

I suspect we’ll see a drop off in that when you get to BWL which front loads two encounters harder than anything in the game right now.

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This it what those impatient people who are complaining about the current lack of PvE content don’t understand. Each phase will add new content, but people will still run the old content. There will be more and more stuff to do as the year progresses, especially if you have an alt, because the lower tier content and 20-mans will be puggable and available for your alt(s) on nights when you’re not raiding with your main. You’ll be able to raid all week if you want to.

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Yep, that’s what usually happens. For example, I still play PSO, and the community on existing private servers is amazing even though is pretty small by modern gaming comparison.

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“Truly being done” with an MMO doesn’t require you to consume every piece of content. After all, most content in the game steadily directs you to go raid, and raiding encourages you to run dungeons, farm mats, and grind reps to help gather resources. By the time you’ve killed KT, you will have done lots of questing at max level, become exalted with many factions, run all of the dungeons several times at least, spent countless hours grinding in different areas to get various materials, etc etc.

I’d like to note here that some of this grinding and farming ISN’T actually content. Running around killing Satyrs endlessly for felcloth and demonic runes or killing the furblogs for rep isn’t content. It’s a supporting activity that allows you to see actual content. I’ll make an exception for the PvP ranking grind since that’s essentially both the content and the grind in one.

After all of this grinding, you won’t have every piece of gear or reputation, but at that point you’ve experienced most of everything and achieved the loftiest PvE goal that exists. You’ve “completed the game” by any reasonable definition. You’re done if you want to be.

As with many other RPGs, you can continue to progress your character if you like (perhaps in order to push speed-runs or partaking in PvP), but the normal RPG thing to do would be to reroll and try a different path. Or you can put the game down, and maybe come back to replay it some day.

The problem with WoW specifically is that it’s fundamentally a social game. Most of the content in the game is only available if there are other people around to play with. For raiding specifically, you don’t just need the 39 other people in your raid. You need there to be a live community that’s farming materials, grinding reps, running old raids and dungeons, using the auction house, etc. The smaller that community, the harder it is to get those 39 people you need to progress.

Eventually that community will shrink to the point where it’s basically impossible for a new player to partake in all of these activities. Guilds will finish KT off and shrink. Rankers will reach their target and/or burn out and quit. The remaining community won’t necessarily be able to support Naxx raids or new Rank 14s. Even pugging Dire Maul or BRD will eventually become quite difficult. At that point the game will be essentially dead.

The only way to avoid this is to attract large numbers of new players. The original did that with regular content updates. However, that would require Classic+, which won’t be on the current Classic realms, and likely won’t happen until long after TBC and Wrath… if ever.

Blizz said Classic was meant as a museum, and that’s not a bad analogy. Eventually you won’t be able to do all of the content. You’ll just be able to walk through and see it lying dormant, like some exhibit of a long-dead mummy behind a pane of glass.

TL;DR 1 - You’re “done” with classic when you’ve completed your goal… not when you’ve seen every possible piece of content and non-content in the game. For many people, “done” means killing KT.

TL;DR 2 - Classic is “done” when its community shrinks to a size at which it cannot continue to support some activities.

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OP is probably referencing how, in retail, your gear is basically reset every raid tier due to huge item level jumps. Not to mention that each expansion erases 100% of the last expansion, including professions, class design, and “temporary systems” like artifact weapons.

The design philosophy is disparagingly referred to as “play the patch” by many. In Classic, however, you play the whole expansion for the entire expansion (Certain MC drops are still useful when Naxx releases), and even into the next expansion.

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I fully accept that not everyone enjoys classic-style professions or can understand how professions qualify as “content”, but let me try to explain. Professions in vanilla/Classic require a good bit of effort to maximize, both in the sense of gaining levels and in the sense of gaining a return on investment. Hunting down recipes and mats, leveling the skills, finding buyers for your wares: all of those things things to do in the game and therefore “content”. Whether a person finds it meaningful or not is another story entirely.

Working on professions and the process of buying/selling/trading your wares and skills falls more under the category of “player created content” than it does what many WoW players (especially retail players) consider to be traditional content (dungeons, raids, dailies). In the case of professions and the AH, it’s a case of Blizzard giving us the tools and unlimited time and resources to do whatever we want with them.

And it’s optional. You don’t have to love it. If you don’t, don’t participate.

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