You really thought you do, but you really don't.

[Saucerian]

On a forum with the loudest players? People with extreme views flock to places like these. The vast majority, that don't use forums, want QoL and viable classes.

The target audience are former WoW players, many of whom have played on private servers. I'd say it's a sound argument the majority of that audience do use forums and they weren't drawn to popular private servers because they offered "Classic plus QoL".

Blizzard themselves apparently opened a forum for Classic discussion which doesn't require a current subscription. They expect the target audience to use forums.

They're not targeting "people who've never played WoW and would start now" with this. There aren't many of those people left, and I've no doubt Blizzard considers Legion/BfA the product for them.

[Deleted]

On a forum with the loudest players? People with extreme views flock to places like these. The vast majority, that don't use forums, want QoL and viable classes.

Correct and people should also consider that the private server community is a tiny fraction of those who played and enjoyed vanilla over the years.

[Enthusiastic Steward]

For me it only depends on what version of Classic we're going with. 1.0? Probably won't play much if at all. 1.12? I'll be on there and quite happy to have my nostalgia outlet. And no, I won't want any outside QoL changes, I'd want 1.12 as-is (or was). As far as graphical changes I don't care much either way.

[Morssoe]

On a forum with the loudest players? People with extreme views flock to places like these. The vast majority, that don't use forums, want QoL and viable classes.

Pff, ofc majority wants QoL and viable classes cause they are plebs, but the project is not created for them. You actually think players who fought for this project and signed the petition actually thought they would get vanilla wow with QoL and other changes?

[Baracuda]

Pff, ofc majority wants QoL and viable classes cause they are plebs, but the project is not created for them. You actually think players who fought for this project and signed the petition actually thought they would get vanilla wow with QoL and other changes?

Life isn't fair, just because they "made it happen" don't mean they alone get to decide how its done.

[Morssoe]

Life isn't fair, just because they "made it happen" don't mean they alone get to decide how its done.

True, Fuckboys at blizzard can actually fuck this project up really good. Oh well, we always can go back to pservers. Also, at that time they probably should rename the server prestine plebs #youthinkyoudobutyoudont, That would indeed be something we wouldn't want to play so brack would be right. GG.

[Akka]

Blizzard themselves apparently opened a forum for Classic discussion which doesn't require a current subscription. They expect the target audience to use forums.

Holy shit, you're right 0_o
Blizzard gets some trust points from me here, for seemingly actually taking this seriously. I didn't expect them to open the discussion to actual veterans without sub, but they did.

[Demithio]

I guess I'll say this again. The majority of us 'old timers' didn't necessarily want to get blasted clear back to 2004. However, what we do want is a classic-like experience with *some* QoL improvements. No, not the ridiculous junk like we see today in WoW, rather the kind you might find in say, TBC. This whole argument is being fueled by the anti-classic kiddies who are butt hurt over loosing the "no classic servers argument", and compounded by the occasional self proclaimed 'purist'. Everyone needs to get a grip. Its about moderation, not one stupid extreme to the other.

[Akka]

I guess I'll say this again. The majority of us 'old timers' didn't necessarily want to get blasted clear back to 2004. However, what we do want is a classic-like experience with *some* QoL improvements. No, not the ridiculous junk like we see today in WoW, rather the kind you might find in say, TBC. This whole argument is being fueled by the anti-classic kiddies who are butt hurt over loosing the "no classic servers argument", and compounded by the occasional self proclaimed 'purist'. Everyone needs to get a grip. Its about moderation, not one stupid extreme to the other.

In theory, you're right.
In practice, it's not doable.

Some people consider self-evident that "faster leveling" would be necessary, many others consider that leveling is the core point of Vanilla and any change is going to ruin the game.
Some people consider that small immersion details like weapon skill learning, needing consumable for buffs and non-stackable soul shards are a pointless annoyance, other consider them part of a whole where you feel the constraint of your characters.

How do you know which change is acceptable and which not ? When do you know you start denaturing Vanilla ? There is lots of changes I would support, lots of change I would be absolutely, totally against. Another one could in complete good faith have entirely different limits. Who gets to decide ?

Each and every QoL change will be liked by some, hated by others. Half the suggestions will be trolling, the other half will be divisive. We can all recognize that "no change" is a baseline that respect Vanilla. Nothing else but fixing bug and maybe allowing for server consolidation will make a consensus.

[Deleted]

You think you do, but you don't.

Having played Vanilla since release and having played Nostalrius for many months some years back I think I can safely say I know what I want. It's not just nostalgia, the game still appeals even though some mechanics might not be popular anymore these days. Vanilla holds its own just fine. It doesn't need tweaks.

Sure, I can see the appeal of some minor tweaks, optional updated models for example, but it is indeed a slippery slope. Vanilla should remain pure and unaltered or this whole fight has been for nothing.

Retail WoW has become increasingly dumbed down. And yet a new trend in gaming is going back to difficult content. Dark Souls and the new Zelda are taking that route for example. So Vanilla WoW fits in there somewhere, it's much more punishing towards making mistakes. People love this old school kind of gameplay. Not someone taking your hand and carrying you through everything.

I think the game will do just fine, it might even be more popular than Battle for Azeroth upon release (if they even release at the same time).

[Demithio]

In theory, you're right.
In practice, it's not doable.

Some people consider self-evident that "faster leveling" would be necessary, many others consider that leveling is the core point of Vanilla and any change is going to ruin the game.
Some people consider that small immersion details like weapon skill learning, needing consumable for buffs and non-stackable soul shards are a pointless annoyance, other consider them part of a whole where you feel the constraint of your characters.

How do you know which change is acceptable and which not ? When do you know you start denaturing Vanilla ? There is lots of changes I would support, lots of change I would be absolutely, totally against. Another one could in complete good faith have entirely different limits. Who gets to decide ?

Each and every QoL change will be liked by some, hated by others. Half the suggestions will be trolling, the other half will be divisive. We can all recognize that "no change" is a baseline that respect Vanilla. Nothing else but fixing bug and maybe allowing for server consolidation will make a consensus.

I think we can come to a reasonable conclusion about what works and what doesn't by looking at the history of WoW. When was WoW at its peak? What level of satisfaction was observed by the player base at that time? What era of WoW showed the best player adaptation to the design? If some find say, weapons leveling an annoyance, and some find it paramount for immersion, then simply modify and curtail the annoyance without totally eliminating it. TBC did an excellent job of curtailing vanilla's issues without going off the deep end. Point is, find a balance that most people can be happy with without going from one extreme to the other like we saw happen to retail. It can be done, its been done before (TBC - wotlk), now its up to Blizzard to do it again.

[Deficineiron]

The target audience are former WoW players, many of whom have played on private servers. I'd say it's a sound argument the majority of that audience do use forums and they weren't drawn to popular private servers because they offered "Classic plus QoL".

Blizzard themselves apparently opened a forum for Classic discussion which doesn't require a current subscription. They expect the target audience to use forums.

They're not targeting "people who've never played WoW and would start now" with this. There aren't many of those people left, and I've no doubt Blizzard considers Legion/BfA the product for them.

I agree about the target market being former wow players.

The key question is to what degree they will accomodate the cumulative accessibility changes in the game from then to retail today. tuning, time per bg/dungeon, xp rate, level rate, etc. are just a small fraction of what they could 'improve.'

- - - Updated - - -

I think we can come to a reasonable conclusion about what works and what doesn't by looking at the history of WoW. When was WoW at its peak? What level of satisfaction was observed by the player base at that time? What era of WoW showed the best player adaptation to the design? If some find say, weapons leveling an annoyance, and some find it paramount for immersion, then simply modify and curtail the annoyance without totally eliminating it. TBC did an excellent job of curtailing vanilla's issues without going off the deep end. Point is, find a balance that most people can be happy with without going from one extreme to the other like we saw happen to retail. It can be done, its been done before (TBC - wotlk), now its up to Blizzard to do it again.

the western sub peak was late bc/very early wotlk. sub growth rate did slow down the last year of bc.

I think if they end up putting out what in effect is a 2.3-tuned classic game, it would be a good compromise. I would prefer anything before that ( didn't like a lot of the 2.3 changes) but suppose they want to tune the overall game more along 4.0 lines?

[Soulwell]

Correct and people should also consider that the private server community is a tiny fraction of those who played and enjoyed vanilla over the years.

And you should also consider that most of the private server community are people that just can't afford WoW and the tiny fraction of the community is all of those casuals that want something new to play and topics to whine about.
Since its attached to wow, you can bet on these new servers having an extra price for being a rerelease and maybe an extra monthly charge. Then we will see how many people really wanted it.

[Demithio]

the western sub peak was late bc/very early wotlk. sub growth rate did slow down the last year of bc.

I think if they end up putting out what in effect is a 2.3-tuned classic game, it would be a good compromise. I would prefer anything before that ( didn't like a lot of the 2.3 changes) but suppose they want to tune the overall game more along 4.0 lines?

If they were to tune it to the likes of 4.0, that would be compromising the classic experience too much. I agree with 2.x - 3.x or somewhere in that realm. What happened with 4.0 and onward is that we lost much of what made WoW, WoW. My personal favorite WoW era is somewhere between the start of TBC and early wotlk. From what I can tell, most people that want to relive classic WoW say the same. The game seemed the healthiest, and the player base seemed to be at its most content point.

[Deficineiron]

If they were to tune it to the likes of 4.0, that would be compromising the classic experience too much. I agree with 2.x - 3.x or somewhere in that realm. What happened with 4.0 and onward is that we lost much of what made WoW, WoW. My personal favorite WoW era is somewhere between the start of TBC and early wotlk. From what I can tell, most people that want to relive classic WoW say the same. The game seemed the healthiest, and the player base seemed to be at its most content point.

I think they would please the most former players doing something inthe 2x area (pre or post 2.3), but the larger concern is how they view their target market, and how much nerfing the game would bring in fans of later wow iteration/tuning/etc.

[Shedeo]

Outside of minor bug/exploit fixes, I hope nothing changes.

[God Save The King]

The plurality if not the majority want unaltered (as closely as possible) Classic.

Go away.

Source? Or is that just your opinion that you hope is the majority.

[Deleted]

What happened is the second it became a reality many of these people who weren't part of that push said, "Hey, I'm bored of retail and I like a lot of the Vanilla ideas but I can't survive without AoE loot, dual-spec, transmog, homogenization/Balance, and other misc. shit that wasn't part of Pre-BC. Let's make our perfect version of a game that never existed because this is our only shot."

this and 100% this, i would be fine with whatever they gave me aslong as it stay true to classic, not fixing bugs and exploits and just leave it as is, IS NOT a blizzard experience, oh well it was but it was not something they wanted and i bet my left nut most can agree that classic would be even better then before if these hacking goldcrapbots and exploiters wouldnt be a part of the game all thouse years ago, less bugs and exploits to impact the economy the longer the economy stays good.

falling thru the world forever and needing to reset server or call a GM for help was another bug im not that fond of encountering again for example

[Dhrizzle]

On a forum with the loudest players? People with extreme views flock to places like these. The vast majority, that don't use forums, want QoL and viable classes.

We have no idea what the vast majority, that don't use forums, want because they don't use forums and haven't told us.

[RemasteredClassic]

Hi peeps,

I never was in the vanilla movement for these last 2 years simply because I never played Vanilla, I started mid-TBC, but I gotta say, I was cheering and admiring all the people that were so vocal and passionate about a game that released ~13 years ago and wanted to relive that experience once again. I was reading forums and video comments all over the internet how these people wanted vanilla, because they hate how the modern wow has become "easy" with all the QoL changes and modern graphics and models etc...

When I watched the Blizzcon Opening Ceremony on twitch, and Brack announced that WoW Classic is on it's way, you have no idea about the WIIIDE smile that formed on my face. Even though I will never go on the vanilla server to even try it out (hell, I wouldn't even go back to TBC servers if they made one, even though all of my most precious memories of WoW are there, i just know that it'll never be the same as back then when, I prefer going forward), I was super excited and happy that all the vocal and passionate people finally got their precious Vanilla.
Now that people are actually getting their vanilla servers, I started visiting forums and discussions, excited to see (I'm happy when I see other people happy) how people rejoice in happiness and satisfaction because their voices have been heard. And boy oh boy, what do I get to see. Hundreds upon hundreds of topics and comments and videos of people requesting and demanding changes and tweaks to their so beloved and perfect Vanilla WoW. I thought you loved every single aspect about Vanilla, including the bad graphics, the imbalances, the bugs etc., what happened now so suddenly? The Vanilla community has been totally ripped to different factions, 5% of those are people who actually want to play Vanilla, then there are those who think they want to play vanilla but with some little modifications and tweaks and those who outright ask for some gamebreaking changes. Granted, there are a lot of trolls among the ones who want some game breaking changes, but they are easy to distinguish, so I can safely say that not all of them are trolls. Once you apply ANY change, no matter how minor it seems to be, it's no longer the game you want to play (didn't say vanilla, because it applies to any game). So what happened, vanilla community? Why the sudden change of heart/opinion?

Well, considering all the various change requests I've seen for the last few days, I guess the guy, who's been mocked and hated and made fun of for what he said these past couple of years was right, after all.

You think you do, but you don't.

Well, I for one was never a Vanilla purist even though I played it all the way up to the last 3 bosses in naxx before the release of TBC. Nor was I ever one of these people who asked for it to be back. But now that we are getting it back, I want it changed in order for me to have an incentive to play it. Therefore I, like many others, are asking for changes to it that do not affect gameplay. What's wrong with that?

Please don't put everyone in the same basket.