You guys better thank Classic for this

PVP Arenas
1

xDlate: Do you plan to take some ideas from Classic development and apply them to live servers?

Ion Hazzikostas: One example that I can think of–let’s take a look at how our code evolved. We removed the ability called “Eye of the Beast” from hunters and, as a result of several code changes, it was actually impossible to us to reinstate it in modern WoW-- it would be a tremendous amount of work. Well, to make Classic happen, we had to do most of that work. There are still some bugs to fix, but we actually think in the modern game, thanks to the work we’ve done to make “Eyes of the Beast” work again, there’s no reason we can’t give hunters that ability back in Battle for Azeroth, and that’s like a small example of something.

Classic might bring back old ability that the BFA devs too lazy to implement.

11 Likes
2

This is why I’m hoping Classic is a huge success not even kidding.

17 Likes
3

Impossible, but not really impossible, good to know they are hard at work.

4

I sincerely wish they see the allure of the old talent system and reinstate it. One of the biggest things I miss about old WoW.

11 Likes
5

Honestly… WHY NOT BOTH?!

Seriously, no one ever thinks of just combining the two. Old talents for the progression, NOT TIED to some dumb item but actually baseline, and the new talent system on top for customizability and actual real choices. Could double as a balancing method for PvP talents aswell. Also to tweak PvE. Holy moly HIRE ME ION

6

So they really pruned half the game because they legit just lost stuff? :joy:

We got empty spellbooks because they were too lazy to develop, ahh my chest rn :rofl:

6 Likes
7

The only reason vanillas spellbook was more filled was because each spell had 4 or 5 ranks in it.

seriously

3 Likes
8

More fascinating than actual classic servers is what happens if classic drops and November hits and it’s an enormous success, still rising in popularity steadily instead of being strong but showing a notable drop off after week 3-4 which I’m guessing most people are predicting.

Then imagine if the option for an eventual transition to be able to import your lvl 60s to a burning crusade server run by Blizz gained immense traction. Vanilla wouldn’t die but you’d suddenly have an old expansion “added” as Ion talked about. Where do you put your resources? Would genuinely get fascinating and difficult at the same time. Maintain classic, reboot BC…do you also build an entire new game? Obviously more players will come back but I wonder how much it would end up dividing Blizzard resources and end up dividing the playerbases.

9

Same here. Actually baffles me how clueless devs are but I’m hopeful classic will help them realize how many mistakes they have made.

10

just return pvp vendors and everything would be fine

11

I’ve been thinking about this as well.

Who knows if they will recreate TBC and some other expansions. I think it all sounds great BUT it will divide the community so much; which classic will already be doing.

A rather odd concept to keep re-releasing expansions of the game. Especially if they allow TBC etc to be separate.

I don’t think that sounds beneficial to the community at all; of course my opinion.

Keep and fix live and keep classic the same after implementation. I don’t think there is a need to have the entire wow community divided into live, classic and possibly expansion specific communities.

I wish classic wasn’t a thing and developers listened to the community and had a better version of live. They wouldn’t have to go back to the way classic was…but maybe meet in the middle… Having said that I’ll definitely play some classic along with live. I still have vivid memories of my first time running 15 man UBRS.

1 Like
12

So?

Top of that you had every spell you class could use. Remember gouge and ambush?

Did taking that away from sub and sin really fufil class fantasy?

1 Like
13

if sin/sub had those now it would be way too OP and u know it man

14

You miss the point.

Imagine the game being so watered down that you think its good that balance is done around butchered classes and an overall lower quality product.

1 Like
15

That’s not why at all lol

I’m still more excited for WoTLK than anything (assuming classic does well, which I’m confident in) but I think there’s so many good things about classic that people don’t really understand.

2 Likes
16

Genuinely not true. But that just goes to show what you know about vanilla.

I had this discussion with someone in GD, it made for a pretty interesting comparison.

Assassination Rogue BFA has 25 abilities, not including talents. Vanilla Rogue has 25 abilities, not including talents. If we included ranks like you suggested, I don’t need to tell you what 25 x “5” is. (I think some spell ranks went up to 9? And you needed a special grimoire to unlock the final rank.

What’s interesting is all of the abilities that Vanilla rogue has, are active abilities such as finishers, slice and dice, Expose armour or utility abilies like Disarm Trap, or utility + builders like gouge. There’s padding from abilities like Throw, and Shoot, included with vanilla rogue. But throw and shoot are two very important buttons for PvP, so they’re worth mentioning. (Not as much in vanilla, throw gameplay is more of a TBC thing. although you could crit pretty hard with your bow at 60.)

Virtually All of the abilities BFA has that vanilla doesn’t, are cooldowns. So it’s also an interesting look at the core design philosophy. Where we’re moving away from rotations and priorities, and towards cooldown usage, stacking, and just window based gameplay in general.

The biggest problem when comparing these two class designs, is that they’re 60 levels, and over 10 years apart.

There’s literally no excuse for BFA to be anywhere near vanillas ability count.

3 Likes
17

Why people are so divided? I enjoyed all expansions of Wow (obviously wotlk was my fav) and it was an unforgettable journey. I’d still want to keep playing the current/new expansion as well as play classic.

Only reason I can think of is that one camp thinks that development resources will be taken away from their side of the game? But is that how it actually works?

1 Like
18

That’s not the thought at all. I like the big community and the creation of multiple expansions with classic and live simply splits that community into a bunch of smaller communities and you will no longer have any interactions with those players.

People talk about seeing a decline now. Wait until there’s live, classic, tbc, wotlk etc…

I’m not negative towards the classic idea, I’d just prefer to fix the game and keep everyone together.

19

There will be people who play both, along with people who will play one or the other. I don’t think it will be as splitting as everyone thinks it will be.

But yes if they had every beloved expansion recreated and ran in parallel it would probably start to break the community apart.

Surveying or reading forum posts by players doesn’t always capture all the mechanisms of what makes something fun or rewarding. Sometimes you have to watch it in action to understand the underlying causes of fun.

20

This might be semantics, but we actually have moved from rotations, to priorities. It’s something you’ll see in sharper relief comparing bfa to ff as well; damage outputs with no rng elements at all feel very different from dynamic ones, even on dynamic specs that gain comparatively trivial damage from heads-up play between cooldown windows.

I don’t have anything good to say about the reduction of utilities or offensive/defensive group support abilities as the game has aged, but the way they started to change dealing damage as we left… Wrath,I want to say? Wasn’t playing, just remembering stories of mousewheel heroic strike and other locked rotations. But I think priority based DPS is more fun than strict rotation DPS. That said, there’s definitely an argument that PvP injects enough chaos to the game that it has no need for damage rng at all. If wrath demonstrates that to be true, I’m really hopeful classic makes it that far.