Blizzard announced "Classic" World of Warcraft

[Kiste]

And?

Read the rest of the posting?

 

[Xor]

Best thing you can hope for is servers for The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King.

Eh I'll do Burning Crusade again but there is no chance in hell I'm sitting through the complete failure that was Trial of the Crusader ever again. Blizzard should be ashamed that raid even exists. It's the laziest fucking thing they had ever done and looking back, a sign of the new direction they were going in. Icecrown has its moments, especially the heroic Lich King fight, but for the time investment? The entire first tier of the expansion is a joke except for sarth+3d.

 

[Maculo]

With the news that Herod server is severely overpopulated, Stranglethorn Vale is going to be nuts. It is going to be like the Dark Portal opening again with several layers of skeletons on the ground.

 

[Absinthe]

Fucking hell, I laughed at that way more than I should have. Those were the days, even if that level of shithousery was way too much for me.

He missed a bunch of other stunts. For instance if you want to kill lowbies all you need to do is buff the mobs they tag with Curse of Recklessness. The subsequent boost to mob DPS will do them in nicely. And you can also fear mobs so they come back with an aggro train. As for using pets to store debuffs, aside from being essential to promoting AIDS epidemic (aka "the corrupted blood incident") alongside Hunters with their pets, it's typically used to store debuffs that do AoE damage and then summon the mobs in the AH, preferably to kill everyone, but some people settle for just killing lowbies. Adding Warlocks usually helps. This is usually referred to as "bombing the Auction House," a stunt Warlocks were particularly notorious for. The under-ranked healthstone stunt is pretty worthless though. In my experience when your idiot warrior tank dies and you ask him if he used his healthstone, the answer is "I forgot," even if it's the third time he got himself killed in this dungeon run, so it's not like the healthstone rank makes any difference, in which case soulstoning yourself for an easy hearth is sound advice.

The player interaction.

WoW was pretty famous for instancing though, which deliberately limited the amount of player interaction.

Yeah, sure, if you want to spend hours farming https://classic.wowhead.com/item=9449/manual-crowd-pummeler before every raid so you can build enough Threat when tanking a boss, and use every single consumable under the sun, then your Druid tank might be able to do what a Warrior can do with much less effort and more safely.

That was one of those stunts that people didn't like mentioning too much during vanilla because they were sure Blizzard would nerf the pummeler if it became a common tactic. A Druid tank with MCPs actually does a shitload more threat than a Warrior, which can make them preferred MTs if your healers are good enough to offset the inferior mitigation and you want to use the higher threat cap to do more DPS. Either way you should pool rage pre-fight, even if that means summoning infernals/doomguards to keep punching the druid/warrior until he has 100 rage.

MCPs are also used for feral Druid DPS and I think you can use them for enhance Shaman DPS too.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Fucking hell, I laughed at that way more than I should have. Those were the days, even if that level of shithousery was way too much for me.

He missed a bunch of other stunts. For instance if you want to kill lowbies all you need to do is buff the mobs they tag with Curse of Recklessness. The subsequent boost to mob DPS will do them in nicely. And you can also fear mobs so they come back with an aggro train. As for using pets to store debuffs, aside from being essential to promoting AIDS epidemic (aka "the corrupted blood incident") alongside Hunters with their pets, it's typically used to store debuffs that do AoE damage and then summon the mobs in the AH, preferably to kill everyone, but some people settle for just killing lowbies. Adding Warlocks usually helps. This is usually referred to as "bombing the Auction House," a stunt Warlocks were particularly notorious for. The under-ranked healthstone stunt is pretty worthless though. In my experience when your idiot warrior tank dies and you ask him if he used his healthstone, the answer is "I forgot," even if it's the third time he got himself killed in this dungeon run, so it's not like the healthstone rank makes any difference, in which case soulstoning yourself for an easy hearth is sound advice.

Blizz will 100% ban anyone doing any sort of griefing in this manner, including things like kiting big mobs to major cities etc if they haven't already flat out patched them out of the game

 

[Kiste]

That was one of those stunts that people didn't like mentioning too much during vanilla because they were sure Blizzard would nerf the pummeler if it became a common tactic. A Druid tank with MCPs actually does a shitload more threat than a Warrior, which can make them preferred MTs if your healers are good enough to offset the inferior mitigation and you want to use the higher threat cap to do more DPS. Either way you should pool rage pre-fight, even if that means summoning infernals/doomguards to keep punching the druid/warrior until he has 100 rage.

I wonder how much of this is Private Server bullshit, though. With a 15% parry rate in Classic (vs. about 5% on Private servers) and the parry-haste effect, tank damage can potentially become EXTREMELY spiky. Doing just a rough back-of-the-envelope calculation, the scenario of three boss attacks in very close succession (normal attack followed by two parries and parry-hasted attacks) over a hypothetical 10 minute tank-and-spank fight will statistically maybe happen once (if even) with a 5% parry chance. With a 15% parry chance, it can easily happen 6-10 times.

Add in the the MCP-hasted Druid attack frequency, the Druid's higher susceptibility to Crushing Blows and the lack of defensive cooldowns, and I am not sure that healers actually CAN negate the incoming damage in every case. Ninjerk mentioned that the raid bosses were overtuned on Private Server and in some regards, they were - mainly in terms of armor value. But man, that 15% parry chance is a big one, so I am not sure anymore that Private Server bosses were actually harder. 5% boss parry chance makes incoming boss damage much more predictable by producing significantly fewer extreme damage events. It also negates a lot of the potential tank Threat generation advantage a tank might have due to lower armor values.

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

If Pala is so low maintenence to level, should you expect to see them as preferred multibox class?

 

[Gregz]

If Pala is so low maintenence to level, should you expect to see them as preferred multibox class?

If I see multi-boxers I'm rage quitting. Nothing kills my immersion faster. It's why I don't play on the private EQ servers.

 

[Absinthe]

Blizz will 100% ban anyone doing any sort of griefing in this manner, including things like kiting big mobs to major cities etc if they haven't already flat out patched them out of the game

Back in vanilla people did all of these things and got away with them on a regular basis. But odds are today's GMs will be a lot more trigger happy than the GMs back then, who mostly did not give a fuck. Nowadays I wouldn't be surprised if you got banned just for corpse-camping someone for 3 kills in world PvP. IIRC Blizzard GMs are ridiculously heavy-handed these days. This is the company that suicided their subscription rates a few years ago by trying to make everyone go by their real names in an attempt to reduce what they perceived as misbehavior, so sanity is in short supply there.

I wonder how much of this is Private Server bullshit, though. With a 15% parry rate in Classic (vs. about 5% on Private servers) and the parry-haste effect, tank damage can potentially become EXTREMELY spiky. Doing just a rough back-of-the-envelope calculation, the scenario of three boss attacks in very close succession (normal attack followed by two parries and parry-hasted attacks) over a hypothetical 10 minute tank-and-spank fight will statistically maybe happen once (if even) with a 5% parry chance. With a 15% parry chance, it can easily happen 6-10 times.

First, the benefit from parrying is bigger with slower weapons, and most warriors swing 1Hs, and if you pool rage fast 1Hs are preferred to spam more heroic strikes, so I doubt parrying is going to make a major difference between Warriors and Druids. The second problem is that dodge/parry/miss also represent a loss of rage income. It's actually dangerous to dodge/parry/miss too many attacks in a row, as it can leave a Warrior rage-starved, causing them to suddenly lose threat output, and lose boss aggro by extension if the raid fails to adjust to the sudden drop in threat output. This actually wipes raids, so parrying and dodging attacks can actually be undesirable.

Add in the the MCP-hasted Druid attack frequency, the Druid's higher susceptibility to Crushing Blows and the lack of defensive cooldowns, and I am not sure that healers actually CAN negate the incoming damage in every case. Ninjerk mentioned that the raid bosses were overtuned on Private Server and in some regards, they were - mainly in terms of armor value. But man, that 15% parry chance is a big one, so I am not sure anymore that Private Server bosses were actually harder. 5% boss parry chance makes incoming boss damage much more predictable by producing significantly fewer extreme damage events. It also negates a lot of the potential tank Threat generation advantage a tank might have due to lower armor values.

As long as the Druid cannot be one-shot, skilled and geared healers can overcome the damage spikes. And bear tanks usually have more health (+500 health and +20% stamina) and armor than Warriors, so there are compensating factors. Crushing blows are basically tons of rage at the expense of healers coming under more strain. In a 40-man raid you usually have at least 10 healers anyhow. That +2K health flask is pretty much a must though.

So there are a number of fights where Druid tanks can work better than Warriors. And then there are fights where Druids are liable to get instakilled and shouldn't be used.

If Pala is so low maintenence to level, should you expect to see them as preferred multibox class?

Assuming multi-boxing is about being a 1-man party, probably not, because the Paladins are dead weight to your leveling experience and make awful grinders too. It is workable to do a Warlock+Paladin combo for AoE farming where the Warlock uses Hellfire, the Paladin uses Consecration, Concentration Aura, Blessing of Sacrifice, and spams heals, but most people don't want to roll Warlocks on Alliance because this means you PvP against Undead as a class whose primary forms of CC are Fear and Seduction. Then again multi-boxing sounds more like a PvE server thing.

 

[Kiste]

First, the benefit from parrying is bigger with slower weapons, and most warriors swing 1Hs, and if you pool rage fast 1Hs are preferred to spam more heroic strikes, so I doubt parrying is going to make a major difference between Warriors and Druids. The second problem is that dodge/parry/miss also represent a loss of rage income.

I think you completely misunderstood me. I am talking about the boss parrying the player.

 

[Ninjerk]

Still don't know what I want to play.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Still don't know what I want to play.

Whatever you decide on, your parents and I will support you.

 

[Absinthe]

I think you completely misunderstood me. I am talking about the boss parrying the player.

That can fucking suck, yes. Not much else to say to that. If you want to go out of your way to avoid parries you can delay your attacks so you don't risk a parry while your health is dangerously fragile.

 

[boot]

I'm gonna play on Stalagg probably.

 

[Fedora Master]

Seems about right for Classic players.

 

[sebas]

Icecrown has its moments, especially the heroic Lich King fight, but for the time investment? The entire first tier of the expansion is a joke except for sarth+3d.

Trials was absolutely awful but Ulduar is up there with Kara in my books as one of the most immersive and fun raids.

Then again, I remember we wiped for literally 4 weeks straight on hardcore Yoggy server 1st and the one fucking night I took a break and went out, they killed it with some random replacing me. Anyway, I loved Ulduar and I would play it all day long.

 

[J1M]

Why did people hate Trials of the Crusader so much? The raid didn't have a lot of trash and the encounters were pretty well done. Is it simply the limited environment artwork? Or the number of encounters?

 

[Maculo]

Personally, my issue with TOC was not the boss encounters per se, it just felt ridiculous. Prior to that point, you had Naxx redux, yogg-saron, and Malygos building towards a major showdown at Icecrown glacier, the Vrykul, and/or Zuldrak. Instead, we have this strange side-show tournament. To date, I cannot think of a single raid that felt more out of place than TOC.

While WotLK was not the worst expansion, it did fail my expectations the most. Icecrown ripped off Mordor, there was a random vibrant forrest with badger people, retcon of Muradin’s death, Arthas became a Saturday-morning cartoon villain with a different voice actor, and the Nerubian zone was cut.

 

[Dzupakazul]

From the perspective of someone who only played on pservers, I can imagine the main issue with ToC is really that it came hot off the heels of Ulduar which had seamless hardmodes, a "secret" boss, and it oozed atmosphere and interesting encounter design*, and then ToC comes in and invalidates a lot of that achievement with new catchup mechanics piled on top of a somewhat boring raid. Jaraxxus is a huge meme, but he's also a banal tank and spank encounter, and the whole thing pretty much just takes place in a single room. It even feels like a shitty stop-gap because the whole raid tier is clearable in one hour with pugs. And then, I imagine, your only other recourse is doing dailies or farming the ToC5 normal trinket. I probably have a very skewed perspective on this, of course, but I imagine paying your subscription just to return to this barebones place was probably not very inspiring.

I also really find it funny how Garrosh/Varian suggests a fight to the death in place of a regular sparring with Argent Crusade's top knights and Tirion is just like "yeah go ahead murder each other" and then chastises you over wiping out other heroes that would probably help wrap up this whole expansion much quicker. So I guess it's also jarring that the whole thing is a vehicle for RvB. (And a literal vehicle for RvB shows up in the gunship fight in Icecrown.)

*Which I couldn't appreciate because I joined a bad guild with misguided pretenses at being hardcore, which meant hours of wiping only to get like 8 bosses. I really started hating the trash fights at some point...

 

[Maculo]

Also, "mounted" combat was such a huge let down. I would love to know who thought that system was a good idea to base content over.

 

[Dzupakazul]

Also, "mounted" combat was such a huge let down. I would love to know who thought that system was a good idea to base content over.

Wrath is when Blizzard seems to have really wanted to push in vehicular combat and mounting cannons. They probably felt like they can squeeze more mini games into their engine (TBC already allowed you to carry out bombing missions) to allow players bored with their rotation to mix it up by wrestling a dragon or whatever. So, the mounted combat in ToC5 was probably just an extension of Blizzard's fetish for mini games. Of course, a lot of those mini games were a part of repeatable daily content, and that simplistic shit got old real soon. Note that raid fights that rely on these gimmicks the most are also the easiest (Flame Leviathan, Lootship) and that Wintergrasp has the whole buy-a-car setup under the hood.

 

[Lacrymas]

WotLK just showed that they had no idea where to go design-wise and started adding game-y shit that doesn't really work in MMOs. The whole ToC patch being so devoid of content and it not making sense in context is also doubly soured by the fact that they had the most subscribers then than ever (and also came after a rehash of Naxx in the start of the expansion), so money was obviously not the problem. Most subscribers ever, yet you have one recycled raid and a non-patch like ToC? I speculate they started becoming too big for their own good and had internal management problems and lack of vision, and it just went downhill from there.

 

[FreeKaner]

Wotlk also had some of the easiest dungeons and early raids in general so the complaints of people added up, some of the complaints at the time also resulted in stuff like dungeon finders however. The game had some wrongs done in TBC, like flying mounts, arenas and a too self-contained exterior zone but WOTLK is just a shitshow overall. Which is sad, I liked northrend since WC3 and the zones and atmosphere was done well overall but unfortunately the streamlining struck the game that already a fairly casual theme park. Really if not for Ulduar and ICC, it would be unsalvegeable. Even the heroics were easy unless you were doing them in questing items with very few dungeon drops. They made the heroics and early raids interesting as well as challenging in cataclysm but well it was over by then really due to mechanical and vision changes.

 

[Lacrymas]

Arenas are fine and gave structure to the PvP, it was my favorite part of WoW when I still played it and I'm definitely going to return to the game if they make a TBC server. What they did wrong with them, however, is that they refused to separate the balancing between PvP and PvE, or they could've balanced PvP first and then balance PvE around that, but surprise, surprise, a PvE game is gonna PvE. What a circus.

 

[FreeKaner]

Arenas are fine and gave structure to the PvP, it was my favorite part of WoW when I still played it and I'm definitely going to return to the game if they make a TBC server. What they did wrong with them, however, is that they refused to separate the balancing between PvP and PvE, or they could've balanced PvP first and then balance PvE around that, but surprise, surprise, a PvE game is gonna PvE. What a circus.

Arenas shifted balance focus to small skirmishes between 2-3-5 players rather than group PVP with 10 or more people. If you have 10 or more people, each class can have a specific role they can fill within the greater context of battleground or world PVP but if your group is only 2-3-5 people then the rebalance was done in a matter of streamlining in terms of roles rather than classes, which inevitably lead to balance by spec and everything becoming the same.

Especially because the arenas became the main way to obtain resilience gear, where every class needed to excel to get them so they could no longer have distinct roles. All classes and all specs needed to be good at specific attrition and CC based manner of 2-3-5 man combat. Rather than objective based melees of BGs or open world PVP.