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Blizzard announced "Classic" World of Warcraft

Ninjerk

Arcane
Joined
Jul 10, 2013
Messages
14,323
I was being a little glib. I think the only reason a melee class would have a set of intellect gear would be a shaman that needed to level 2-handed weapon skill after respec.

Int is the worst stat for warriors, but interestingly spirit is not worthless for them. It increases the amount of health the warrior will regen when moving between mobs, reducing required eating and overall downtime enough that it actually makes sense for it to appear on plate levelling gear.

(Something that was certainly not common knowledge back in the day.)
And trolls in-combat regeneration...
:troll:
 

Jeru

Novice
Joined
Jun 25, 2019
Messages
62
It's because people felt they deserved to have access to all the content they were paying for, either by means of the subscription or by buying the expansions. At least that's the argument i believe. Not that they didn't try to give content for casual people as well, new races, new starting areas etc, but i guess the majority felt "cheated" that they made content that was very hard to access but which everybody had to fund whether they got to experience it or not.
That's the elitist way to phrase the issue. More like, people just simply unsubbed given the raid-centric nature of progression. If you're a company then people unsubbing is a bad thing.
That would be fine and dandy if giving content progression to everyone just because they pay and deserve to get all because they pay actually would kept players playing and increased playerbases. Yet while most MMORPGs did it via LFG tools, 'easy mode' dungeons&raids, grind alternatives for getting end-game gear, etc it didn't stop MMORPG genre from declining in popularity and MMORPG focused studios closing, being sold by parent company and downsizing and/or changing focus from MMORPGs to other genres.
How many big MMORPG studios/companies even survived last decade while still making MMORPGs?
 

Absinthe

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2012
Messages
4,062
That's because most MMORPGs have low replayability once you cease dangling loot over players' heads. The problem isn't that you made loot accessible, but that your game isn't sufficiently entertaining for people to want to play once they're no longer getting loot (and that players lack incentive to roll and level up alts).
 
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Metro

Arcane
Beg Auditor
Joined
Aug 27, 2009
Messages
27,792
That would be fine and dandy if giving content progression to everyone just because they pay and deserve to get all because they pay actually would kept players playing and increased playerbases. Yet while most MMORPGs did it via LFG tools, 'easy mode' dungeons&raids, grind alternatives for getting end-game gear, etc it didn't stop MMORPG genre from declining in popularity and MMORPG focused studios closing, being sold by parent company and downsizing and/or changing focus from MMORPGs to other genres.
How many big MMORPG studios/companies even survived last decade while still making MMORPGs?
Are you trying to argue that keeping WoW closer to the raid-or-nothing formula would mean it would have a higher sub base today?
 
Self-Ejected

Alphard

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Jul 18, 2019
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I have tried classic wow pserver to see what all this fuss was about. Idk how i managed to reach level 40 before realizing i was wasting my life. Endless grind and walking , old tab tqarget combat with very basic rotation, useless specs (like prot paladin) , griefing, repetitive and easy enemies encounters etc. The only thing that is cool is the vast open world without loadings and the fact you have to interact with people to form groups. The rest is a relic mmo from an age ago
 
Unwanted

a Goat

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Dumbfuck Edgy Vatnik
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I have tried classic wow pserver to see what all this fuss was about. Idk how i managed to reach level 40 before realizing i was wasting my life. Endless grind and walking , old tab tqarget combat with very basic rotation, useless specs (like prot paladin) , griefing, repetitive and easy enemies encounters etc. The only thing that is cool is the vast open world without loadings and the fact you have to interact with people to form groups. The rest is a relic mmo from an age ago
I'm now playing on certain private TBC server, and it's really a gigantic fucking rift between it and classic. It just won't be something people will play, the sheer amount of simply dumb ideas in it will outweigh actually good content it has(BRD is imo. one of the best instances blizzard has ever made). Classic did surprisingly few things well for all the applause it gets(most important pro of it is that classic was seemingly still made with an idea that this is kind of like normal RPG game, but with thousand of other players, so leveling up till level cap isn't where the game actually starts). Now in comparison to newer expansions it obviously has a lot of the stuff that WoW lost overtime(unique if stupid armour designs, or a sense of permanence, since no crossrealm shenanigans means that the players you're interacting with at random are someone you may meet later), but you know what - TBC has basically all of these excluding getting assraped in armour design compartment in SWP content patches. WotLK retains a lot of these until they've started introducing some cancer to it. And they made a lot of things that were plain and simply dumb(useless specs, insufficient itemisation), better, while maintaining good/decent quality of content. While it's obvious that SWP is the herald of the decline of WoW, WotLK still has Ulduar and ICC and the state of its PvP is still where I'd consider it to be fun and varied.
Also hate me for stating it, but as far as mechanics go, WoW was improved even as recently as in WoD or Legion(with most so-called downgrades being actually side-grades, see the current iteration of class specs/talents), it's just the content and the game turning slowly into MOBA(due to crossrealm RDF etc.) that sucks.

I don't doubt classic will be success early on, but I doubt it will retain players. If it does, I wonder if Blizzard will realise what makes people play classic instead of BofA, rather than just carry on with resurrecting old expansions.
 

anvi

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I have tried classic wow pserver to see what all this fuss was about. Idk how i managed to reach level 40 before realizing i was wasting my life. Endless grind and walking , old tab tqarget combat with very basic rotation, useless specs (like prot paladin) , griefing, repetitive and easy enemies encounters etc. The only thing that is cool is the vast open world without loadings and the fact you have to interact with people to form groups. The rest is a relic mmo from an age ago
A lot of people felt like that when WoW first released. But it depends what your first MMO was.
 
Self-Ejected

Alphard

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I have tried classic wow pserver to see what all this fuss was about. Idk how i managed to reach level 40 before realizing i was wasting my life. Endless grind and walking , old tab tqarget combat with very basic rotation, useless specs (like prot paladin) , griefing, repetitive and easy enemies encounters etc. The only thing that is cool is the vast open world without loadings and the fact you have to interact with people to form groups. The rest is a relic mmo from an age ago
A lot of people felt like that when WoW first released. But it depends what your first MMO was.
Well my first mmo was metin2 and was shit, but i only realized that after. Actually most of mmos i played are shit, except Guild wars 1. But hearing how much wow and wow classic are hyped , i expected much more. Mmorpg are a stagnating genre, there are no real innovations since years, and those develepers that dares to innovate are some indie projects that fails because lack of optimizations and their game being too niche. I think wow was a revolution for mmorpg genre, but it got such a big success that all money greedy softhouses tried to replicate that success and started making clones of wow and clones of clones, leading where we are now.
 

anvi

Prophet
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It is true, WoW killed the genre. The problem is that MMOs could be so many different things and nobody had a chance to try them. Millions of people played UO and EQ before WoW existed, and when WoW came along it just seemed like a dumb, childish, Nintendo version of the same game. They made some improvements but overall it was a total degeneration. Since then everything wants to copy WoW's formula.
 
Unwanted

a Goat

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Dumbfuck Edgy Vatnik
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Let's not pretend EQ2 wouldn't be "the nintendo of MMO" if it wasn't for it being released in the same window as WoW.
 

deama

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Messages
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UK
If anyone has an itch to play a semi-classic WOW server with being able to make a custom class, then the ascension private server is there.

It's pretty decent, has a resonable population, lots of people talking in world chat all the time, and has a side server that has no soulbound equipment (except for special items) and almost full loot pvp (this is the one I played on). Only problem is that some builds are too OP so PVP is a bit iffy, but I like that, adds a lot of variety.
 

Bester

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WoW servers with full loot drop in pvp? Daymn... If Classic wasn't coming out right now, I would've jumped right in.
 

deama

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UK
WoW servers with full loot drop in pvp? Daymn... If Classic wasn't coming out right now, I would've jumped right in.
Semi, you don't drop all of it, but a percentage of your total, so the more you have on your person, the more you'll drop.
 

Dzupakazul

Arbiter
Joined
Jun 16, 2015
Messages
707
If anyone has an itch to play a semi-classic WOW server with being able to make a custom class, then the ascension private server is there.

I played on that server for a while and I dropped it for reasons that some here might identify with:
1) The "classless" server ends up being a server with four classes (hyperoptimized backstabber, Boomkin Mage with a ton of instants, Titan's Grip Guy and multi-DoT Shadowform; in PvP, every single build stacks up a ton of gap-closers as well, so you get one-shot all day, every day, shit looks like Dragon Ball Z) + one tank build + one healer build.
2) I realized that I enjoyed having the restriction and class fantasy of classes and went back to another, classic private server with 3.3.5a (as Ascension isn't "true" vanilla, it's just modded 3.3.5a, so Wrath).

My tank went through Molten Core and stars aligned for me in such a way that Thunderclap was supposed to be my primary tanking skill, as I received unique enchants pertaining to the skill.
Unbeknownst to me that Thunderclap is utterly bugged to give no threat (in spite of the tooltip), I sank gold into enchanting the special Thunderclap enchants and talented for the spec and then my primary threat generation skill was... Innervate. Innervate ramped up your Threat Per Second to RIDICULOUS proportions to the point where my co-tank and I set up a simple system where I would Innervate someone in the raid, he would Taunt-swap to snap to #1 in aggro tables, Innervate someone else, I would taunt-swap and I'd be set up for the entire raid. This worked for most tank'n'spank bosses in the vanilla raids (we were locked at level 60, but with Wrath), but turned out to be a less lucrative proposition for raids such as Onyxia. I wasn't amused as the special enchants for items can be worth hundreds if not thousands of gold (farmed at vanilla rates...), respecs were expensive, dual-specs were insanely expensive (no way I could just switch into a DPS spec to farm), and my primary skill was effectively worthless.

Raids themselves have also been bugged to hell, most notable encounters being Lucifron, Executus and Ragnaros himself. Our guild was plenty optimized to deal with the beefed up encounters, but no one could predict erroneous, raid-ending behavior; Ragnaros once launched half the raid into a rock and they got stuck there, or the fire elementals on the ground would require you to fully reset the instance or they'd stay spawned and then barrel down on you.

It was also schizophrenic in the sense that, for example, it had a triple-or-so XP rate at the time, but you still had to deal with vanilla problems like mounts only available at level 40, even though we're playing on Wrath. None of that really mattered as it simply meant a near-mandatory skill tax on everyone having Travel Form. I wasn't sure what the point of this was as no one was fooled that we're having anything close to a vanilla experience.

On top of that, every Tank build is expected to sink a ton of points into a Voidwalker pet; there is no use for it as it's basically a dummy that carries your Soul Link (-10% damage reduction) and gives you a personal damage reduction buff. On the other hand, more cost-effective skills and talents like Aspect of the Monkey got nerfed into the ground. Between the tax imposed by certain skills and the amount of bugged skills, I didn't feel like I'm free to experiment after all.

It's a fun enough idea to screw around in, and I do admit that I didn't bother with the "high-risk" realm, but with the massive prices on Books of Ascension and the penny-pinching policy on most basic things like respecs, I figured out Ascension really isn't my cup of tea. This guy's experiences line up with mine.

All of the above was roughly 2 years ago, and I can't say whether any of the grievances have been improved upon, but I won't come back and I would advise not getting too invested in it. Just my 2 cents; the intent is nice and the concept interesting, but I can certainly say I would never do this again. I do hope you're having fun, deama!
 

deama

Prophet
Joined
May 13, 2013
Messages
4,352
Location
UK
If anyone has an itch to play a semi-classic WOW server with being able to make a custom class, then the ascension private server is there.

I played on that server for a while and I dropped it for reasons that some here might identify with:
1) The "classless" server ends up being a server with four classes (hyperoptimized backstabber, Boomkin Mage with a ton of instants, Titan's Grip Guy and multi-DoT Shadowform; in PvP, every single build stacks up a ton of gap-closers as well, so you get one-shot all day, every day, shit looks like Dragon Ball Z) + one tank build + one healer build.
2) I realized that I enjoyed having the restriction and class fantasy of classes and went back to another, classic private server with 3.3.5a (as Ascension isn't "true" vanilla, it's just modded 3.3.5a, so Wrath).

My tank went through Molten Core and stars aligned for me in such a way that Thunderclap was supposed to be my primary tanking skill, as I received unique enchants pertaining to the skill.
Unbeknownst to me that Thunderclap is utterly bugged to give no threat (in spite of the tooltip), I sank gold into enchanting the special Thunderclap enchants and talented for the spec and then my primary threat generation skill was... Innervate. Innervate ramped up your Threat Per Second to RIDICULOUS proportions to the point where my co-tank and I set up a simple system where I would Innervate someone in the raid, he would Taunt-swap to snap to #1 in aggro tables, Innervate someone else, I would taunt-swap and I'd be set up for the entire raid. This worked for most tank'n'spank bosses in the vanilla raids (we were locked at level 60, but with Wrath), but turned out to be a less lucrative proposition for raids such as Onyxia. I wasn't amused as the special enchants for items can be worth hundreds if not thousands of gold (farmed at vanilla rates...), respecs were expensive, dual-specs were insanely expensive (no way I could just switch into a DPS spec to farm), and my primary skill was effectively worthless.

Raids themselves have also been bugged to hell, most notable encounters being Lucifron, Executus and Ragnaros himself. Our guild was plenty optimized to deal with the beefed up encounters, but no one could predict erroneous, raid-ending behavior; Ragnaros once launched half the raid into a rock and they got stuck there, or the fire elementals on the ground would require you to fully reset the instance or they'd stay spawned and then barrel down on you.

It was also schizophrenic in the sense that, for example, it had a triple-or-so XP rate at the time, but you still had to deal with vanilla problems like mounts only available at level 40, even though we're playing on Wrath. None of that really mattered as it simply meant a near-mandatory skill tax on everyone having Travel Form. I wasn't sure what the point of this was as no one was fooled that we're having anything close to a vanilla experience.

On top of that, every Tank build is expected to sink a ton of points into a Voidwalker pet; there is no use for it as it's basically a dummy that carries your Soul Link (-10% damage reduction) and gives you a personal damage reduction buff. On the other hand, more cost-effective skills and talents like Aspect of the Monkey got nerfed into the ground. Between the tax imposed by certain skills and the amount of bugged skills, I didn't feel like I'm free to experiment after all.

It's a fun enough idea to screw around in, and I do admit that I didn't bother with the "high-risk" realm, but with the massive prices on Books of Ascension and the penny-pinching policy on most basic things like respecs, I figured out Ascension really isn't my cup of tea. This guy's experiences line up with mine.

All of the above was roughly 2 years ago, and I can't say whether any of the grievances have been improved upon, but I won't come back and I would advise not getting too invested in it. Just my 2 cents; the intent is nice and the concept interesting, but I can certainly say I would never do this again. I do hope you're having fun, deama!
I don't like raiding, so I didn't do that stuff. In the high risk server money is less of an issue because mobs have a chance to drop random loot, sometimes it can be worh 1-2 gold each. It's confusing, but you can switch between high risk and low risk in the high risk server, if you switch to high risk, you drop a percentage of your items when you die, but in exchange you have higher chance of getting loot from mobs, and the loot is higher quality, sometimes you can get raid/dungeon drops from mobs. At max level it costs 25-29g to respec a talent/skill, but that's relatively easy to get, I could get that amount in 1 hour, even less if I did daily quests. Actually, daily quests give you honour points and you can go to an honour merchant to get a respec scroll (for skill/talent, takes usually 2 dailies).

Ye I've taken a break from the server too, problem is that there's not that much to do, the raids are kinda hard to do because it's hard to get a group for some reason, I think everyone just enjoys going open world or doing pvping then raiding cause the population seems high enough for raiding.

I heard devs are going to release BC when classic launches, or around that time, so I'll revisit then.

I understand that there's cooky cutter builds, but I usually don't bother paying attention to that stuff, I just build whatever sounds cool or I like and don't really care.

It's too bad they haven't tried introducing territory control, that would give a much higher incentive to keep playing after capping.
 
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Jeru

Novice
Joined
Jun 25, 2019
Messages
62
Are you trying to argue that keeping WoW closer to the raid-or-nothing formula would mean it would have a higher sub base today?
No. I don't know I don't think anyone does, but I would guess it would not. Yet approach taken by almost all games in themepark mmorpg industry didn't produce astonishing results either.
Who knows maybe problem didn't actually lie in elitism vs inclusiveness but in something else.
 

anvi

Prophet
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Raids are such a terrible concept. There is a lot about MMOs that needs to evolve, but raids are something that need to be completely rethought. There was a game I used to play which was totally raid obsessed, and they were so fucking boring because it always took at least 3 hours, and it was like herding cats. The weird thing is that the same game had very fun and very tuned 6 man dungeons that had the exact same mechanics as a raid. The only difference is you only needed to find 5 other people and there was no long drawn out preparation times and waiting for people, and scheduling, etc. You just go to the dungeon and go from room to room to fight each encounter. If someone knows the strategy to win an encounter they quickly tell the team, if nobody knows, you figure it out as you go.

But the same game just kept pumping out raid content that was the same principle but far slower and far more hassle. People seemed to prefer it because, I assume, they are sad lonely fucks who prefer to mingle with 23 people instead of 5 other people. There is also the spectacle of seeing a lot of people working together, but that soon fades. And there is also the fact that it seems more of an accomplishment to achieve something with 24+ people than it does with 6, but I think that is nonsense. Raiding as we know it should be completely changed. I found WoW's BGs to be far more fun than any raid.
 
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Bester

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In MUDs, the max amount of people in a group was 5 to 9.
When at 5, you got a healthy dose of communication, like you're sitting at your place with a couple of buddies.
When at 9 (raiding size), it got pretty rowdy, but you catch what everyone says, only one discussion happens at one time.

When at 25 in WoW, two choices:
- everyone must shut up, no opinions are welcome, just stfu and do what raid leader says - i.e., be a silent drone. It's not fun.
- everyone talks, but it hampers gameplay, communication becomes difficult like yelling at a concert. It's not fun.

When at 15, it's debatable, but I didn't like it.

5-9 is the ideal size.
 
Unwanted

a Goat

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Dumbfuck Edgy Vatnik
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Nobody is pretending that, EQ2 was shit.
You didn't get my point. Blizzard did what MMO market was already trying to do, EQ2 isn't that different from it in abstract, both are EQ for plebs in a way, but Blizzard just did it better.
 

Bester

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>zero marketing
>blizzard is dead silent about the game
>all blizzard related news are about the company rotting from the inside
>layering and beta killed all the hype
>no pvp for the first 12 months
>cross realm battlegrounds
it was supposed to be home...
 

Bester

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What's the point of spontaneous town-v-town if there's nothing to lose or gain? It's meaningless. At least in the older games, you used to lose/gain loot. What's the point in WoW when there's no honor system?
 

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