AQ War Effort at launch?

[Lucetia]

Cloth only stacked to 20 back then, a full guild bank with 18 slot bags would be 4440 cloth. Plus 1760 the char itself could hold = a drop in the bucket ;-)

This is true. First question is, did Guild banks exist then? I want to say they got implemented prior to TBC prelaunch, but my memory is foggy. Cloth I also can't remember if it's the most effective to store/stack. It's been so long since I look at the war effort stuff.

Though my main point is we know what the end reward is for the AQ War effort. We know what is required for it. Everyone will be shooting for Scarab Lord / Black Battle Tank and do everything to help push them. So let's say the 3million suggested is roughly right. Then with the 4440 cloth. That's only 670 people stocking all this stuff up. With 10 characters per realm (assuming no link server selection screen wise). That's only 68 accounts needing to store stuff which is barely anything.

Granted that's for the first part, but people storing and stocking this stuff will be timing it so they can mass unload and start on next part's immediately. There will be even more hoarding if you are allowed unlock stuff on Classic realms onto your account that work on Live.

[Flame6]

I dont think guild banks existed back then.

[Lucetia]

It will still be expedited to some extent if players stockpile as they level; most players doing cloth turnins are going to focus on Runecloth since they can farm it while working on farming for their endgame stuff like recipes and potions/flasks/food and Argent Dawn rep for Naxx attunement/recipes. It won't be, say, a thing where everyone just zergs the quartermasters on day one and the gates open on day 2 or whatever, but it will take significantly less times since (unless changes are made to drop rates and spawn rates) you can probably go online and find out exactly where the most efficient places to farm the war effort turnins are in a matter of minutes.

Yup, which is one of the reasons the true classic feel will never be there and people think it'll feel exactly like it did. We know so much more today than we did then. We know on Day 1 of server launch what is going to be useful later on and what won't. We won't be blind noobies running around not knowing how valuable our cloth will be one day or this item, etc. Mind you I'm fine with whatever, but people need to understand no matter what Blizzard doesn't we won't be able to recreate the moments people are wondering if it will be like (like AQ gates).

With that said I loved the AQ event and would love for them to recreate it as best as they could. I also know that instead of it taking months to do and logging each day to see if more turn ins were up or how it was it'll be done in I would say maybe 1/4 to 1/2 the time.

[clevin]

I would bet that they aren't going to try to recreate the patches but take 1.12 as the patch to base off of.

What they could do then that would make some sense is to release things at various times post launch... so Naxx would be released, what, 17 months or so after launch? basically, imitate the release of things over time without actually patching everything as they did in the real Vanilla. Sort of what they do now with raids where the data for Antorus etc is around but it's not active.

[Lucetia]

I dont think guild banks existed back then.

After what I figured in my previous post and your statement I decided to look it up. Looks like guild banks came in 2.3 (ZA patch).

We did have "guild banks" in Vanilla which was usually a GM or officer's alt who stored everything and hope they were honest about all it's content and gold.

[JustRob]

This is true. First question is, did Guild banks exist then? I want to say they got implemented prior to TBC prelaunch, but my memory is foggy. Cloth I also can't remember if it's the most effective to store/stack. It's been so long since I look at the war effort stuff.

Though my main point is we know what the end reward is for the AQ War effort. We know what is required for it. Everyone will be shooting for Scarab Lord / Black Battle Tank and do everything to help push them. So let's say the 3million suggested is roughly right. Then with the 4440 cloth. That's only 670 people stocking all this stuff up. With 10 characters per realm (assuming no link server selection screen wise). That's only 68 accounts needing to store stuff which is barely anything.

Granted that's for the first part, but people storing and stocking this stuff will be timing it so they can mass unload and start on next part's immediately. There will be even more hoarding if you are allowed unlock stuff on Classic realms onto your account that work on Live.

It doesn’t matter, the war effort is still a fucking awesome event, even if we know what to do.

Besides, we’re all on even ground now. Who’s got the best game and will become Scarab Lord and get the mount? Gonna be an exciting race.

[Bloodclaut]

There were no guild banks.

Cloth turn-ins were the only way to grind rep for other factions mounts.

They shouldn't do the AQ event at launch, not at all. They should wait a significant amount of time.

Blizzard could throw us a big curveball and change the materials required for the AQ event to prevent the stockpile issue (which I agree will happen to a certain extent. People will be racing to win the legendary mount). They could do elementals and essences or other crafting materials that differ from the original AQ event. This could really keep people on their toes and would be insane and fun all at the same time.

[Lucetia]

Blizzard could throw us a big curveball and change the materials required for the AQ event to prevent the stockpile issue (which I agree will happen to a certain extent. People will be racing to win the legendary mount). They could do elementals and essences or other crafting materials that differ from the original AQ event. This could really keep people on their toes and would be insane and fun all at the same time.

You do that and it's not Classic anymore. Then the next question is what else should be changed. See the slippery slope already started?

[MMKing]

Well this is the exact type of problem Blizzard has already said they are aware of and expect to solve after discussion with the community

Imo if the game is to keep a pace similar to vanilla it is important that Dire Maul, Zul'Gurub, AQ event, Naxx and of course the Dungeon set questline (I loved that questline, only reason I might play Vanilla) are NOT available at release. All those significantly change the pacing (and if all of them are available then you can nearly skip MC for gearing).

More importantly, the item changes from 1.10 need to be implemented AFTER AQ40. Following patch 1.10, some of the dungeon rares were so well itemized that they were superior to molten core epics as they still had allot of useless stats. Allot of people criticize vanilla for having so poorly itemized gear, when in reality it doesn't really matter if the content is tuned accordingly.

For reference, the following major patches added the following content.

1.1 - Launch patch
1.2 - Maraudon added
1.3 - Dire Maul added
1.4 - Pvp system added, elemental invasions added.
1.5 - WSG and AV added, Tier 1 set stats and set bonuses ''updated''
1.6 - Blackwing lair added, darkmoon faire added and Battlemasters added to cities. Timbermaw hold added, with the +15 agi 1H and +25 agi 2H enchants.
1.7 - Zul'Gurub added, STV fishing event added and Arathi basin added
1.8 - Dragons of nightmare world bosses added, Cenarion circle faction added in silithus with appropriate quests and rewards. Moonkin form added, replacing hurricane.

1.9 - Ahn'Qiraji event begun, AQ20 and AQ40 added, Tier 2 armor models updated, auction houses linked, multiple BG queues added, paladin 15 minute blessings added, warlock soul shard bags added.

1.10 - Tier 0.5, also known as Dungeon set 2 added to the game. Major revamp to dungeon rewards, significant stat changes on allot of 50+ rare dungeon drops as well as the addition of allot of new items. Quests completed at lvl 60 reward gold instead of experience, flight paths now link.

1.11 - Naxxramas added Innervate druid ability moved from druid 31 point talent to base ability at lvl 40. Key rings have been added to the game. No longer possible to zone in raids, while an encounter is ongoing.

1.12 - Battlegroups added, linking several servers to a single battleground server. Eastern plaguelands and Silithus pvp objectives added. All thread reduction modifiers changed to multiplicative.

Highlighted the most significant changes to keep out of the game day 1. It's unreasonable to expect the developers to quite literally account for thousands of changes that occurred throughout the roughly two year lifespan of classic wow. But i don't think it's unreasonable to keep the more obvious buffs out of the game until the content preceding those buffs have been beaten for a significant amount of time.

With that said. The Ahn'Qiraji event MUST activate following Blackwing lair, Zul'Gurub and the Dragons of nightmare as significant content updates.

Maraudon and Dire Maul must not be available prior to Molten Core.

Patch 1.10 item changes, must not precede AQ40.

[Flarelaine]

Someone mentioned this in another post, but I think this warrants specific discussion. When Classic comes out, should it release ALL content up through NAXX at launch?

Would it be weird to be able to start the AQ war effort right away? That would create a MASSIVE race to level and get geared enough to do all that stuff and ring the gong ... doesn't seem like something Blizz would want.

Do you think it'd be better to release with just MC, BWL and Onyx for a while, and when enough people finish those, THEN start the war effort and AQ?

Dear, I hope they will be gradual. Hard to remember through the haze of nostalgia, but wasn't there some event triggered upon first clearing of Strat or maybe Scholo on each server? And something which needed completing that event in turn?

- - - Updated - - -

Plus a TON of that cloth is also needed for rep grinds, if people want other race's mounts.

My gnome's first mount was one of the sabers at 40 and no cloth was involved. Just a focus on quests that gave Darnassus rep from the early levels.

[Flame6]

After what I figured in my previous post and your statement I decided to look it up. Looks like guild banks came in 2.3 (ZA patch).

We did have "guild banks" in Vanilla which was usually a GM or officer's alt who stored everything and hope they were honest about all it's content and gold.

Thanks for that. I do remember now of having a mule character. That level 1 who sat in Org just as a bigger bank toon.

[epLe]

Were cloth turn-ins even in Vanilla? I thought they were added later..

Yes they were there from release, you just had to turn in linen, wool, silk, mageweave before the repeatable runecloths.
I missed to original epic tiger by a couple of days doing that...

[Vestig3]

Dont know for sure but if i remember correctly the AQ war effort wasnt there right at the start i remember the dwarf in ironforge (coz it was the place to be for alliance) was standing near the pvp war room.