What changes to classic would you be okay with?

[Echo of Soul]

I'm not trying to influence people or anything like that here, I'm just interested in hearing what parts of classic could use a bit of polish and which ones shouldn't be touched.

[Tier539]

If they do anything but fix game breaking bugs, it will fail. It is targeted at people who want the original vanilla feel, not a modified feel. People who want the modified feel, wont stick around for long anyway, and changing stuff will just drive off the people who want the original feel too.

[Projectmars]

Yeah, Bug/Exploit fixing is the only safe thing that can happen to the Classic Servers.

[Adoxe]

Battle.net integration and fixed bugs/exploits. That's it, everything else needs to stay the same as it was else it's no longer vanilla.

[Powell]

If they do anything but fix game breaking bugs, it will fail. It is targeted at people who want the original vanilla feel, not a modified feel. People who want the modified feel, wont stick around for long anyway, and changing stuff will just drive off the people who want the original feel too.

You seriously misjudge peoples nostalgia.
People won't stick around regardless. As much as i adored the experience i had DURING vanilla and TBC, it was NOT vanilla or TBC that created that experience. It was an awesome adventure because everything was new and exciting. Going back might REFRESH that feeling for a short while, but ultimately it will be an enormous amount of resources for little.

For example, casting only Shadowbolt for hours straight while raiding as a Warlock isn't exactly enjoyable, even if its on a classic server.

I want challenging open world content, I want to have to create a band of adventurers to fight the most difficult areas, not just queue up, nobody says a word and leave the moment its done or be able to easily solo elites. Those are the redeemable things about classic vanilla. But the vast majority is not.

[Tier539]

You seriously misjudge peoples nostalgia.
People won't stick around regardless. As much as i adored the experience i had DURING vanilla and TBC, it was NOT vanilla or TBC that created that experience. It was an awesome adventure because everything was new and exciting. Going back might REFRESH that feeling for a short while, but ultimately it will be an enormous amount of resources for little.

For example, casting only Shadowbolt for hours straight while raiding as a Warlock isn't exactly enjoyable, even if its on a classic server.

I want challenging open world content, I want to have to create a band of adventurers to fight the most difficult areas, not just queue up, nobody says a word and leave the moment its done or be able to easily solo elites. Those are the redeemable things about classic vanilla. But the vast majority is not.

I thought the same thing too, but I had a couple months free a bit ago and I played some on the private vanilla servers. The gameplay still holds up. Sure my rotations were dirt easy compared to current wow, but the journey and reward were so much more immersive. Also, the feeling you get from character progression is second to none, and that still holds up perfectly.

[Powell]

I thought the same thing too, but I had a couple months free a bit ago and I played some on the private vanilla servers. The gameplay still holds up. Sure my rotations were dirt easy compared to current wow, but the journey and reward were so much more immersive. Also, the feeling you get from character progression is second to none, and that still holds up perfectly.

Well yea, There are some very redeemable things about Vanilla wow.
Threat, difficulty, progression, rpg values, etc. But there are some very real problems that people easily gloss over because of their nostalgia.
Classes are super imbalanced. Warriors are the only tanks, some classes with quite literally one button "rotations". 40 man raids are an absolute NIGHTMARE for logistics. Other specs/classes won't even see the inside of any raid. Its all fun and games until the frustrations start to pile up, and there are more than people seem to realise about Vanilla wow.

Like i said, i adored my experience in Vanilla and TBC, but age has made me a cynical piece of shit. But hey, if other people want to learn for themselves, thats perfectly fine. I just fear that resources are finite, and i hope they don't start drawing resources from elsewhere to feed into this project.

[gkai]

As fun as bugs were back in the day, they should be fixed, it wouldn't seem "blizzard" to throw out a game with a bunch of bugs just to appeal to an audience that wants a completely untouched game.

Certain mechanics like sap where rogues could damage into it for the entire duration should be fixed, same with fears never breaking from warlocks, along with insane fear pathing.

What's going to be different about vanilla this time around, is everyone knows how to the play the game very very well. There's no more guessing which talent trees are the best, or what gear to prioritise etc.. I think it'll be a lot of fun, but also a bit of a let down as people are going to blaze through it insanely quick. November 23, 2004 was when WoW was released, January 2007 is when BC was released, so roughly 2 years of content if they release patches in the same amount of time as they did previously.

I'm curious to see where they'll go after. Will blizzard continue to re-release old expansions? It seems a little odd for a company to do this, or will they add additional content to the game after naxx. I'm sure they had tons of ideas for the game back in 2005-07 that didn't get announced because of the pressure of coming out with an expansion, so this is their time to kind of play out their ideas.

[Deleted]

I think only battlenet stuff, because is mandatory now on blizzard games. The rest, i want vanilla as it was back in 2004/2007.

Maybe, and just MAYBE, as a...let's say...measure to incentivise people from retail to play vanilla, maybe the things that u get from vanilla (let's say Ashbringer or Atiesh or the Tier 3, mounts, etc...) that are not in the retail game, through a battlenet conexion, can be shared via transmog to your retail characters. But that's all, something that doesnt affect at all the game, is just a "cloud" storage or something ^^

[Thatfire]

These are the QoL changes I would like to see.

Dual Spec or Respecing costing 10g. To PvP you have to raid and doing both you go broke.
Class Balancing/class viability is same thing
Bug Fixes
Different type of PvP system. Getting Grand Marshal shouldn't mean having no life and 2 people playing 1 account

[melodramocracy]

Server stability and bug fixes should be the only things on the table for discussion. Anything else isn't actually classic, but a bastardization.

[MoanaLisa]

1. Bug fixes.

2. Modern graphics and animations. Best version of original character classes only though. Not the revamps.

that's it.

Battle.net integration won't be an option. That should be assumed.

[Sildor]

Graphics improvements should be optionally available for those who want them. Bugs/exploits should be fixed. The macro/addon API will probably not be the same as vanilla, and they should integrate the battle.net chat. Other than that nothing, keep it real.

[RedTempest]

You seriously misjudge peoples nostalgia.

And you mistake many peoples motivation for wanting to play on legacy realms for plain old nostalgia.

Are there some people hyped for this solely because they remember the "good old times"? Sure, and quite a few of those will be underwhelmed when they get confronted with the rough edges of the content that they can nowadays only remember fondly. Others will like it nonetheless.

However, that's not the point I'm trying to make.

The demand for official legacy realms was there as early as when TBC hit the live servers.
Since Blizzard didn't offer any official way to scratch the special legacy itch other folks took over and offered their own (mostly dubious) services.

For many years loads of people have been playing on vanilla servers while others just un-subbed from retail WoW ages ago because they have zero interest in the current game or any of the private server drama. The motivation was all the same: They didn't have an official offer that suited their taste.
I myself spent more than 6 years on private vanilla realms (with 4.5 years alone in the time between 2012 and 2017) and know enough people that will drop the private server bullshit in a heartbeat once there is a legit way to play with a subscription on an official Blizzard realm.

Whenever this is brought up some folks usually like to respond with stuff like "Yeah, but they only play there because it's free" and for a minority that might even be true.
Private servers that existed just for the sake of offering for free what Blizzard did not were around as early as vanilla,

BUT:

• Why would people that just want to play WoW for free stick to the old versions of the game? There are servers out there for newer versions of WoW and even the retail game can be played without spending a single dime for the monthly subscription without too much of a hassle.
• Even though it's anecdotal evidence; I know a ton of people personally that WILL resub to WoW because of this classic server announcement and over all the years of playing on private server I've only met a handful of people playing there because it was free. People always say that "the whiners" should put the money where their mouth is - I guarantee - more than enough will.

People won't stick around regardless. As much as i adored the experience i had DURING vanilla and TBC, it was NOT vanilla or TBC that created that experience. It was an awesome adventure because everything was new and exciting. Going back might REFRESH that feeling for a short while, but ultimately it will be an enormous amount of resources for little.

While some of that is true - the conclusion isn't. The way the older versions of WoW (I'd argue up until mid-WoTK) worked heavily incentivized socialization. If you weren't/aren't able to socialize on some level, you're going to get bored rather quick after the sense of wonder fades. The way the game worked back in the day had you work with other people (not just for dungeons, but for normal questing) and through that "work" you were able build relationships. I'm still close friends with several people that I met in WoW during 2005-2010 and people that I've met during my private server periods are still around too (quite a few IRL meetups happened too).

When I casually log into retail nowadays and run some dungeons because I'm bored it's rare to even get a reply after writing "Hi".
People don't care about the other players because chances are that they are never going to meet them again due to cross-realm offering such a large amount of faceless players for your current objective - use once and forget about 'em.
In the older versions you knew who was on your server more or less. You knew who was good company for dungeons and who wasn't - that is gone from the retail game and I don't see any way they could bring that back.

For example, casting only Shadowbolt for hours straight while raiding as a Warlock isn't exactly enjoyable, even if its on a classic server.

The gameplay can feel quite boring especially if the content is on farm already, but with the right people in your guild it will still be entertaining. Meeting twice a week for a few hours with 39 other people on whichever voice program you're using shouldn't be boring - if it is you're in the wrong guild.

I want challenging open world content, I want to have to create a band of adventurers to fight the most difficult areas, not just queue up, nobody says a word and leave the moment its done or be able to easily solo elites. Those are the redeemable things about classic vanilla.

This we can agree on

[Deleted]

But by bugs, what do u mean? Cause many of those bugs where because 2004 PC's, bad internet conexions and crappy server blades that blizzard use back in the day. They went meltdown in 1 month cause they have like 300.000 people playing in 1 month and they expected that in 1 year, so the servers meltdown.

I think that with today server infrastructure, our new pc's that can fly a fucking plane, and the 100/200/300 MB's conections that we have, those "bugs" are not gonna be in the game, be sure of that.

[Kainslife]

I'd add transmog to your list.

[skannerz22]

if there is any changes beyond 2007 advancements then it's not vanilla

- - - Updated - - -

1. Bug fixes.

2. Modern graphics and animations. Best version of original character classes only though. Not the revamps.

that's it.

Battle.net integration won't be an option. That should be assumed.

nope that's not vanilla
you can't have bug fixes and modern graphics

[ReleaseDay]

Basically only stacking, it was always a stupid fucking idea having ammo, soulshards, feathers etc take up all your bag space. That's really it, I don't want modern graphics.

[Perkunas]

I'd add transmog to your list.

No, we're good without that. Identifying what people had done based on the items they were wearing was an essential part of the vanilla experience.

[Kainslife]

No, we're good without that. Identifying what people had done based on the items they were wearing was an essential part of the vanilla experience.

It wasn’t essential. And why should you get to dictate what someone else wears on THEIR character? Plus if they choose to xmog it you can see what they’ve done lol. You need a better excuse not to add it.