Blizzard announced "Classic" World of Warcraft

[Manjuice Nutella]

^that's a lot of useless fanfic thought put into something like this. It would've been spent better sniffing coke, and it will never came back.

Anyway anyone playing on some TBC or WOTLK server? I'd join in december.

 

[Wilian]

Too bad theres not a single even okay TBC server.

 

[Dzupakazul]

Anyway anyone playing on some TBC or WOTLK server? I'd join in december.

I play Alliance on a WOTLK server called Dalaran-WoW which is generally considered to be one of the better (less buggy) WotLK servers along with the Warmane repertoire. It's overall a decent experience and no quests crapped themselves on me, it's well made. The only problem I have is that I rolled a bear druid as my first char because I like tanking, and, well, I still like tanking, but bear is most of the time pretty straightforward (WotLK fights are generally "solved" and are pretty static for the main tank, also the Druid utility isn't that impressive - I *love* getting off clutch Rebirths to save an ally or those fights where I get to dance between Cat and Bear as OT, but problem is, breaking bear form to cast Rebirth, even in Barkskin, will often straight up kill ya) so I'm a little bit bored at times (I envy Paladins, who, despite "easy mode" reputation seem to be way more proactive in fights due to the numerous Hands they have to use, and Warriors, because even though they're not great for ICC tanking, they have a more entertaining kit) and also too lazy to level up my offspec.

The server is Blizz-like, you can vote for the server on some of those top 100 toplists to slowly get access to some heirlooms (fun for powerleveling multiple alts).

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

Anyway anyone playing on some TBC or WOTLK server? I'd join in december.

I play Alliance on a WOTLK server called Dalaran-WoW which is generally considered to be one of the better (less buggy) WotLK servers along with the Warmane repertoire. It's overall a decent experience and no quests crapped themselves on me, it's well made. The only problem I have is that I rolled a bear druid as my first char because I like tanking, and, well, I still like tanking, but bear is most of the time pretty straightforward (WotLK fights are generally "solved" and are pretty static for the main tank, also the Druid utility isn't that impressive - I *love* getting off clutch Rebirths to save an ally or those fights where I get to dance between Cat and Bear as OT, but problem is, breaking bear form to cast Rebirth, even in Barkskin, will often straight up kill ya) so I'm a little bit bored at times (I envy Paladins, who, despite "easy mode" reputation seem to be way more proactive in fights due to the numerous Hands they have to use, and Warriors, because even though they're not great for ICC tanking, they have a more entertaining kit) and also too lazy to level up my offspec.

The server is Blizz-like, you can vote for the server on some of those top 100 toplists to slowly get access to some heirlooms (fun for powerleveling multiple alts).

Thanks, I checked it out before and chose Icecrown on Warmane because of a faster XP (I played it enough times to enjoy x1 XP).

Is it true that the raids are progressive, i.e. you have to begin with Naxx to unlock Ulduar etc? How's PVP/Wintergrasp and general economy and "community"?

 

[Dzupakazul]

Is it true that the raids are progressive, i.e. you have to begin with Naxx to unlock Ulduar etc? How's PVP/Wintergrasp and general economy and "community"?

Yeah, they're like that on Dalaran. Goes like Naxx->Uld->ToC10/25->ICC, with the usual EoEs and VoAs inbetween. Guilds host "carry" raids for their new blood all the time so that they can get more people to smash through the usual loot treadmill of ToC and VoA, but you can generally find people willing to just host a pug Naxx or whatever.

PvP seems fine, although I mostly played some casual battlegrounds (which I didn't generally have a problem with finding and joining to) and ran some WG on a PvE character with 0 resil, so I wouldn't say I'm an expert, but all the inner workings (arena and whatnot) seem to be business as usual, complete with the drama about That One Guy Who Plays Human Sub Rogue And Gets Accused Of Cheating Because Reasons. Generally with WG I sometimes noticed moments where, for instance, Ally would show up for WG defense with only like 10 people and Horde brought like 40, stomping everything. And vice versa. I'm not sure how it's like on other servers. EDIT: I asked around and more oriented people generally say that Dalaran pop is too low for proper PvP. 2v2 isn't terrible, and that's the best they can admit.

General economy was fine for a while, but then there was an invasion of spambots that sent everyone a fuckton of free gold and it elevated the prices of stuff by quite a bit, and I remember being really annoyed when a stack of Rugged Leather could cost a couple hundred gold. I think it chilled down a bit and it's not unseemly to think that you could level up a whole profession with just being shrewd with gold, I know people who make 10k in like a day once they sort out their crafting profession, and there's always someone who wants to get some money from Enchanting/LW/JC commissions.

"Community" is, eh... well, if you go on Global, be prepared for quite a lot of /pol/talk out of nowhere, the usual "anal [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]" jokes and the usual juvenile drivel. It's not generally hard to find a decent guild, and there've been a lot of environments in my experience that would either go on casual, friendly raids or would strive to go superhard at progression (Horde seems to be more "PvE-competitive" of the two sides because IIRC they got realm first heroic Lich King kill). For every unplasant shitter type like that guy who spoke no English and went with a fantastic 0/71/0 Retribution spec (ALL PvE AND PvP talents) into Ulduar and then proceeded to not understand absolutely any Mimiron mechanic and blamed the Holy Paladin for not HoSing him in time while he was running through all the mines, I could generally find a fine bloke.

Raids mostly work fine and the only thing I can think of is that I never properly went through was the "Safety Dance" fight in Naxx (Heigan the Unclean, I believe?) because everyone just stacks on the rock and avoids the acid. Mimiron is bugged in such a way that if you taunt him in 2nd phase, he goes apeshit and instakills everything. ICC went live without the +30% HP buff and Saurfang would eat your limbs without a good Hunter and perfect Blood Beast kiting, but then they tuned ICC down and more people got their Kingmakers. About the only thing that I can think of that most WotLK servers struggle with (both Warmane and Dala) is that pet scaling is bugged and I'm not sure if that was ever fixed, so be aware of that if you wanna roll pure Demo Warlock (Demo/Destro hybrid murders though) or a BM Hunter (though you can still gank people by shadowmelding while the pet instakills wandering clothies).

That's my general experience as someone who mostly raided casually, spent most of his 80 time chatting with guildies in Dalaran unless it's time for a raid, still has to get his Kingmaker and gets quickly bored of one spec.

 

[Makabb]

A good post

At this point far dawn the rabbit hole, I can't for the life of me understand how anyone (apart from the ones that never tried vanilla) play this as it pertains currently. More to the point, WoW has put out 5 huge stinkers since the last good installment, there now exist more bad expansions than good ones and i've no reason to believe that this trend will reverse (maybe if Classic will be a miracle). Even if it does, the bad ones are a permanent stain on WoW legacy. Now whenever someone says 'I like WoW' it's with an asterisk 'I like WoW*' *'except for....'. Now you can debate the merits of expansions all you want. You can do that all day long, but you can't exactly deny that these expansions have created huge rifts within the WoW fan-base. You might label this a coincidence, you might label this as the fan-base being a bunch of ingrates. I do not. For one simple reason, those expansions

Are unnecessary

What was WoW about? I don't mean what it came to be about, i mean when it began, what was it about? and that's easy

You

The game was very simple, very straightforward, it was the classic(pun intended) example of 'the journey'. You wanted to see what's beyond while leveling up, go and have a little adventure while meeting other people. That's it, the story later added in expansions is totaly unnecessary as it was YOU- 'Us' the players who created the story, it were the moments of world PvP that created the magic and memories. That is what Vanilla was about. That's marginally what Burning Crusade was about and Wotlk, you had no 'epic' storylines or quests where you would fight alongside NPC characters vs other NPC and not real people in Vanilla because they were unnecessary and not because Blizzard couldn't do them at the time. Today WoW has grown so far from original vision it feels like there is no direction or purpose to any of it anymore

 

[KazikluBey]

Is it true that the raids are progressive, i.e. you have to begin with Naxx to unlock Ulduar etc? How's PVP/Wintergrasp and general economy and "community"?

On Warmane's Icecrown, nobody plays Naxx or Ulduar since there's no point, gearwise. People jump straight to the Frozen Halls instances that came with ICC and their correspondingly higher ilvls, and the higher tier emblems for more higher-ilvl-than-Naxx/Ulduar gear. There's ToC, frost side VoA and there's ICC being run. And the occasional novelty run of Naxx or Ulduar I suppose.

 

[Darkman]

They slowed down the leveling in newest wow patch and people are having meltdowns

Imagine these people playing vanilla

 

[Jarmaro]

Imagine these people playing vanilla

These people are not vanilla target, why should you be concerned?

 

[Rahdulan]

Those figures. Jesus Christ, experience rate has been a joke since Cataclysm.

 

[Aildrik]

It is comical to read comments like that. I came over to WoW from EQ where if you had a bad day, you might even lose a level.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

I came from a MUD where most people played at level 20-40 their entire lives, because with 1 death you lost 1 week worth of XP. And after level 40, you needed groups, you couldn't go on soloing anything.

I think this design is the best way to keep people playing at all level ranges.

 

[dibens]

Slowing down the leveling rate in modern WoW seems pointless, because pre-endgame content is pointless. There is no sense of progression whatsoever if you sit in the same heirloom set the whole time as mobs scale to your level and nothing you find in the world is useful to anyone. In vanilla even mid-level toons contributed to the endgame economy by selling BoEs, consumables and materials. Some ilvl 40 items were even BiS forever for certain builds. Not to mention the very lively twinking scene.

 

[hivemind]

agree ^

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Not sure what this level scaling thing will do. I leanred about it over on mmorpg.com:
https://www.mmorpg.com/world-of-warcraft/columns/the-revival-of-leveling-in-patch-735-1000012416

I wonder if the same "problems" in SRPGs with level scaling would manifest in MMORPGs? A few of the probelms I've read are not feeling like you're progressing because the monsters aren't getting weaker. Another was travel being harder because if you travel through low level zones a lot they're much tougher with scaling.

It seems it's not just giving you experience or items you'd otherwise be given you if you were appropriate level, it's also boosting hte experience and giving you higher level items?

For exapmle, if a mob at level 30 gives 3200 experience and a 5dmg weapon for a level appropriate player, a traditional level scheme without level penalties might grant a non-appropriate level player, like a level 52, the full 3200 experience and the 5dmg weapon (no trivial loot code). However, with this WoW patch, it seems to be a much stronger level scaling, such that the level 52 in this scenario is granted 4800 experience and a 8dmg weapon. Does anybody get what I'm saying here? The game is scaling the experience and the loot. It's full level scaling.

A example of the former is Shadowbane. In that game, you'd get the same experience and loot at any level for a particular mob. It doesn't make sense to kill a level 10 mob at level 30 because the experience is too low, but you'd not receive a level penalty. It also didn't have a group penalty. In Everquest, the experience was cut in half if you invited someone else (with a small percentage added), meaning sometimes you'd lose experience if you invited someone who afk'd a lot or had bad gear. In Shadowbane, contrastingly, you'd not lose any experience with more group members. Those group members could AFK the whole time and you'd get the same experience you would if you were soloing.

In Everquest, the rolepalying server had the trivial loot code feature. What this did was restricted a player from looting any lore items on a non-level appropriate monster. So if a level 52 player kills a level 22 monster, the level 22 monster won't drop any lore items. The reason this was added to the server was to discourage high level players from playing in lower level zones, thus giving lower level players full access to them.

 

[Delterius]

by mobbing the entire population of Asia and nuking them with one AoE without receiving pretty much any damage.

Ironically, AoE levelling was a thing back in the day. Granted, mostly it was just Frost Mages doing it.

 

[J1M]

The leveling slow-down is directly related to the "allied races" feature. By making people take longer to level those characters, and requiring them to be leveled from 1 to max to unlock some transmog gear, they hope to keep people subscribed until the next expansion.

Similar situation with the level scaling. By making more zones viable for leveling, they hoping that those transmog collectors are willing to level multiple allied race characters by offering some variety.

 

[Cromwell]

The leveling slow-down is directly related to the "allied races" feature. By making people take longer to level those characters, and requiring them to be leveled from 1 to max to unlock some transmog gear, they hope to keep people subscribed until the next expansion.

Similar situation with the level scaling. By making more zones viable for leveling, they hoping that those transmog collectors are willing to level multiple allied race characters by offering some variety.

The allied races will be introduced with the next expansion so I doubt your theory is true.

 

[Metro]

The leveling slow-down is directly related to the "allied races" feature. By making people take longer to level those characters, and requiring them to be leveled from 1 to max to unlock some transmog gear, they hope to keep people subscribed until the next expansion.

Similar situation with the level scaling. By making more zones viable for leveling, they hoping that those transmog collectors are willing to level multiple allied race characters by offering some variety.

The allied races will be introduced with the next expansion so I doubt your theory is true.

So because it's not coming until next expansion they shouldn't bother implementing it until then? Derp? They probably added it now because they realize there is so little content to keep people subbed to the game. Now people can derp around in the new scaled leveling.

He's correct. And this is par for the course with Blizzard. Instead of developing actual content they develop a bunch of sideshow crap that momo subscribers have been asking for: "ERMAGERD CERRRN WEEERRR GERRRRRT SERRRRB-REEERRRCEEEES!?!?!?!" Boom. Just tweak a few existing skins and you've just created another piece of cheese for the rats to chase on a wheel for another several months.

 

[J1M]

The leveling slow-down is directly related to the "allied races" feature. By making people take longer to level those characters, and requiring them to be leveled from 1 to max to unlock some transmog gear, they hope to keep people subscribed until the next expansion.

Similar situation with the level scaling. By making more zones viable for leveling, they hoping that those transmog collectors are willing to level multiple allied race characters by offering some variety.

The allied races will be introduced with the next expansion so I doubt your theory is true.

No. At least 4 of them will be available with pre-order.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Those were the days...

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Well explained why the fucking alliance has an edge on every god damn bg.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Missed good ol'a day long Alterac's.

 

[Aildrik]

Would love to know what happened during AV design; surely Blizzard knew how heavily slanted it was towards Alliance.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Well, Horde had shamans back then so that kinda balances things out. Thunderfury bug, shock spam were glorious against bad geared characters. I stil remember my friend was killing most of mages with one crit from a frost shock and a normal auto attack.