I think the cutoff point is either Cataclysm or Mists of Pandaria
my cutoff point is when they patched block value out of the game and I just got so mad
Isnât Classic just Vanilla WoW, before any of the expansions? With Onyxia as the Final Boss?
if this is a big hit are they going to redo and make everyone rebuy all the expansions in wow classic form without the gameplay changes, just adding in the areas and quests and whatnot
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right now, Classic is vanilla and Onyxia and MC and theyâre adding in stuff later on like itâs a progression server, so weâll be getting battlegrounds and BWL and ZG and Naxx later on
Yes to question one, not really to question 2 - Onyxia was never really the final anything. Classic does/will have all the raids that were in the game before the first expansion, Burning Crusade, was released. Raids suck, donât do them
I donât think anyone has any idea. In theory this would be pretty rad, but in practice part of the reason for the constant shifting mechanical changes (inevitably simplifications) as time went on was a response to power creep and number inflation, I dunno how you keep âthe same styleâ while still addressing that problem. Like itâd be a design challenge on par with making a whole new game.
the only just reward for a life wasted in wow is the chance to do it all exactly the same over again
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Sisyphus repeatedly grinding to level cap, over and over, for eternity.
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they should have used extremely detailed player logs to recreate the exact timeline of each userâs specific wow history to allow them to truly bathe in the digital regretscape
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itâs not the same
Iâm doing it much faster this time
Iâm getting a better ratio of time wasted to calendar time
I know we havenât, like, allocated resources efficiently enough as a society for being judgmental about this to be defensible, but thinking about all those mmo hours still gives me hives
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While you were (raid) partying I studied the (Mount &) Blade
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the guy most responsible for the last 6 years or so of wowâs design spent the vanilla years as the guild leader of a top guild. he was just a player. he still leads that guild in modern wow. must be a bit awkward playing in it. I saw him in game early this expansion. I followed him around trying to figure out what stupid thing to tell him to take out of the game before he muted me. I was paralyzed by indecision. I eventually told him to take out the awful, insulting daily quest we were doing. jesus christ, what a disaster
the thing about modern wow is every individual design decision involved in the end product is defensible in a bubble. many of them are good ideas. some of them work very well in practice, even. but there is no overarching design philosophy whatsoever behind the game, beyond trying to get people to stick it out until the next expansion. and all of these ideas are grafted onto a 15 year old skeleton, which has accumulated and sloughed off and morphed entire eras of design and tech. there are many things in the game that are bandaids to ameliorate problems that doesnât exist anymore, or to supplement systems that have since been removed. there are portals that take you back in time so that you can take another portal to get to a continent that has been phased into a different event status from where you currently are. moving in space moves you in time, so that you are always within something that doesnât exist anymore. the leveling in modern wow looks like this: start embroiled within the story of 2011 wow, then go back in time to either 2007 or 2009 wow, then go to 2013 wow where you figure out that the characters who tell you to do stuff in 2011 wow were shitheads, then you go to 2015 wow, where you go back in time to redo warcraft 1. it keeps going. you might get a quest from one horde warchief to go see how that warchief dies. because the stats in wow have been altered and removed and then squished many times, every item you get from level 1 to level 100 is essentially the same. as you level, you do not gain any abilities or otherwise advance your character in any meaningful way from about level 40 to level 120. when the current expansion came out, the leveling process actually ârewardedâ you by removing things from the previous expansion, which are never replaced.
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the hell am I going to do with that time? read books? learn a language?
yeah, right!
wait what?
Can you expand on this?
structurally, BfA is identically to the previous expansion, legion, only worse in every way. legion class design was based around a few headline systems. the first was artifact weapons, which were class specialization specific weapons that you got at the beginning of the expansion and developed over the course of legion. these weapons gave you a new ability and unlocked a talent tree full of passive and active skills that you filled over time. the second system was the legendary system. every class specialization had certain legendary items that you could eventually get (randomly!) from doing basically anything in the game. you could equip two of them at a time, and each of them gave you some new ability or strong character boost of some kind. later in the expansion there was another augment system called the netherlight crucible that allowed you to unlock various other boosts on your weapon based on blah blah.
the day BfA launched, every artifact weapon was disabled. the starting skill was gone, and all the upgrades were removed. the netherlight traits were disabled. the legendary items were disabled once you leveled to 116. no new skills were added to the game for any class. these systems were replaced with one system called the azerite power system, where 3 armor slots each gave you certain bonus traits analogous to the minor artifact weapon traits. most of them were and are inconsequential, they are duplicated over every item in those armor slots in the game, and every time you get a new item you have to grind your azerite armor power level up to a higher level to reactivate the same abilities you just had on the piece of armor you replaced. none of these azerite traits are active abilities. none of the specs in the game were redesigned to take these ability removals into consideration, or to change up gameplay at all. in BfA you are left with a worse version of your legion character.
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Jesus
I thought it would be hilarious but itâs just depressing
While Iâm not about to disagree with geist because technically nothing presented is wrong, itâs an incomplete picture.
I joined the game immediately prior to the release of Cataclysm in 2010; at this point, the âtight server communitiesâ that were apparently such an appealing part of the vanilla experience were already on their way out due to the overall lower difficulty level and the Dungeon Finder tool removing the need to recruit party-members from the players local to your server.
My friends bought me the game and 12 months of game-time, but by the time I was able to get my character up to max level, theyâd all gotten bored and stopped playing. I felt obligated to stick with the guild in case they ever came back, and while theyâve shown up again every so often, Iâve grown accustomed to treating WoW like a game in which I will only ever meet strangers.
Itâs a bit like Journey, if your Journey companion could spout horrible 4chan memes at you. Iâm pretty sure trade chat in 2015 and 2016 was an overt vector for political propaganda; that was the first place I heard terms like ânimble navigatorâ and other pro-Trump rhetoric. A couple of minutes on a high-population classic server was all I needed to see that whole process starting up again. Even if I were to join somebody elseâs guild in classic, thereâs still the fact that classic is heavy with tedious busywork. I donât want to have to fill an entire bag with soul stones; I donât want to track ammo and feed my pet. Iâd rather have the challenges I face be specific to the content Iâm playing; can I manage this bossâs mechanics? Do I have the correct battle pets for this world quest? What do I need to do differently to win this fight in the Brawlerâs Guild?
Yeah, Iâm glad classic exists, and Iâve been happy to play it a bitâfirst getting to level 13 on Atiesh, and then my friends convinced me to join them on some lower-population server, where I got up to level 10. But itâs not really holding my interest. Meanwhile, over on retailâŚ
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only 100 days? youâre slacking off.
(seriously, there was someone on the WoW forums who proudly posted in the general forum that he had reached 100 days played before the gameâs first anniversary.
he also posted a lot about being a balance-specced druid and Iâm pretty sure he ruined the idea for all druids at least until that first talent revamp)
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Oh, I havenât found that to be the case at all. Iâve found pretty much everyone to either be silent or relatively nice. People waiting around for things (in MMOs, you wait around for things) will be goofy and crack jokes and invent friendly rivalries. People will ask for, and offer, temporary groups so everyone can share credit for completing quests. Iâve found the average player has a much more lackadaisacal, zen approach to the game, rather than demanding perfect efficiency. I think itâs because everyone is literally 15 years older?
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I guess the important nostalgia thing for me as a vanilla/BC WoW player is whether or not Barrens chat in Classic is the way it used to be. This is a vital part of the Horde leveling experience.