New high end content in classic after Naxx

[Thornquist]

And they would address it like this.

No.

Guaranteed.

Pardon me if I dont take your "guarantees" that highly.

Almost no one wants legacy servers, that's why Blizzard hasn't done them and that's why Blizzard is not going to announce them at Blizzcon.

[Kaleredar]

How so? How long do you think Vanilla players want to play Vanilla? 2 years is enough.

I was under the impression that, because Vanilla was the greatest thing ever, people would be content to play it now and into perpetuity with no possibility of changes.


Besides, isn't BC when they "ruined the game" by introducing flying mounts?


None of this holds any rose-tinted water, I'm afraid.

[munkeyinorbit]

Pardon me if I dont take your "guarantees" that highly.

I will pardon you for your mistake. Blizzard probably won't even address it tbh.

[Pickynerd]

You mean there's TBC.

TBC is Classic now?

[Jyggalag]

Insane request OP. Shouldn't warrant discussion.

[Deleted]

The big question I have is will they add new content after 40 man Naxx like a 40 man Karazhan with better loot to keep the progression going or its all going to end with Naxx for eternity.

What was cool about classic is that you had very few guilds finishing all the content before new content was being pushed out. I think after a while when guilds have Naxx on farm they may release a new 40 man raid to keep people progressing.

Why would they add new content to Vanilla?

[Deleted]

Ye good idea, playing with a game, which has "literally" NO ENDING! NO FUTURE! Who would waste "years" on playing a game like with that?

By "NO ENDING!" I mean no new contents, update, ect. froze at naxx 40 for example.

Maybe u clean naxx 40 after 6 months, after what? Nothing.

Only tool in Vanilla was Random bg. Ye good idea, spam Random Bg till servers go off?

Well that will gonna worth my wasted years I guess.

Thats my thoughts about "classic".

In the other hand, there will be no achievements system. It came in TBC.
What will gonna track your progress? How you will prove what you done? If blizz implement achievements system in classic , then thats no no longer classic, other option is surely to make a classic armory which can do that, but always linking armory kinda sucks if you ask me.

[Ferocity]

Ye good idea, playing with a game, which has "literally" NO ENDING! NO FUTURE! Who would waste "years" on playing a like with that?

By "NO ENDING!" I mean no new contents, update, ect. froze at naxx 40 for example.

Maybe u clean naxx 40 after 6 months, after what? Nothing.

Indeed. It takes maybe a couple years to get to lv.60 and farm full t3 gear, max all reps and stuff.
And if you want to make alt, it is only 2 years per class, all of which play quite differently from each other.
It is only like 18 years to be done with the game? Indeed, it isn't acceptable. It is HORRIBLE for the 13 years old game!
/sarcasm

[Deleted]

Indeed. It takes maybe a couple years to get to lv.60 and farm full t3 gear, max all reps and stuff.
And if you want to make alt, it is only 2 years per class, all of which play quite differently from each other.
It is only like 18 years to be done with the game? Indeed, it isn't acceptable. It is HORRIBLE for the 13 years old game!
/sarcasm

Dont get my point seems.

[Aggrophobic]

The big question I have is will they add new content after 40 man Naxx like a 40 man Karazhan with better loot to keep the progression going or its all going to end with Naxx for eternity.

What was cool about classic is that you had very few guilds finishing all the content before new content was being pushed out. I think after a while when guilds have Naxx on farm they may release a new 40 man raid to keep people progressing.

Yeah, it's called retail.
You can play it now.

[Souflikar]

NO! No! No! No! Jesus let classic be just that, CLASSIC! Still waiting on someone to ask for playable naga in classic.

[Vladar]

Some people dont understand the difference between game systems and content. TBC and all other expansion are DIFFERENT GAME SYSTEMS than classic. New content to classic is not TBC. What I am saying is new CONTENT with the same GAME SYSTEMS. The problem with current day retail wow is not the content its shitty casual dumb downed to the extreme game systems. The slippery slope started slowly in TBC and it went downhill from there.

I say dont touch the classic game systems but add new high level content at some point when Naxx gets cleared on a regular basis.

[Deficineiron]

A single raid clearing things, sure. Two or three, maybe. It being largely irrelevant due to the number of people that clear it? I'm not so sure.

The most challenging raid boss in Classic was never Kel'thuzad, it was coordinating 40 schedules for a raid night.

Bear in mind, people will have to do a lot of non-raid time devotion to get consumables and even resist gear. Then you've got to gear 40 people in drops that are entirely RNG based from each boss (oh yay, more ___ gear we don't need). AND you have to keep 40 people motivated to keep returning and running it to keep progressing.

Raiding is, by design, going to take longer than it often does now because there are more arbitrary roadblocks in the design than simply performing mechanics. Heck, a lot of the fights are kind of light on mechanics and it's entirely if your raid is geared enough.

Also remember it's Classic WoW's economy. Gold doesn't flow like water and you have to spend 100s and 1000s of gold just for epic riding speed + mount. Repair bills added up in Classic too and this would all be starting from a ground level on the server economy.

There's a lot of non-raid aspects in Classic WoW that contribute to the challenge of raiding. I agree a few guilds will stomp it quickly, but a lot of people will take just as long now as they did then.

you are right, but may be missing the key point. someone at blizzard knows what you write to be true as well, but they may look at it as a problem, not a feature.

I would not be surprised to see them take steps to reduce raid prep time requirements, even eliminating some of the world buffs in raid zones to solve the issue.

have they even confirmed they are keeping raid size at 40/20?

[Faroth]

you are right, but may be missing the key point. someone at blizzard knows what you write to be true as well, but they may look at it as a problem, not a feature.

I would not be surprised to see them take steps to reduce raid prep time requirements, even eliminating some of the world buffs in raid zones to solve the issue.

have they even confirmed they are keeping raid size at 40/20?

More examples of if they didn't, it's not Classic. People were playing on the private servers for Classic and that's what spurred this whole conversation, not "change as many features as possible to make Classic more accessible but only limited to Classic areas"

If they change the raids, the buffs, the classes, the costs, etc. then it's not remotely Classic and it's not remotely what spurred their decision to undertake this in the first place. I'm not expecting them to dedicate mountains of time to redesigning and retuning everything for modern approaches when the demand was for a Classic WoW experience.

I won't be surprised if there are a few concsesions that die hards will have to accept, but I wouldn't expect raid sizes, for example, to be one of them.

[Deficineiron]

More examples of if they didn't, it's not Classic. People were playing on the private servers for Classic and that's what spurred this whole conversation, not "change as many features as possible to make Classic more accessible but only limited to Classic areas"

If they change the raids, the buffs, the classes, the costs, etc. then it's not remotely Classic and it's not remotely what spurred their decision to undertake this in the first place. I'm not expecting them to dedicate mountains of time to redesigning and retuning everything for modern approaches when the demand was for a Classic WoW experience.

I won't be surprised if there are a few concsesions that die hards will have to accept, but I wouldn't expect raid sizes, for example, to be one of them.

I wrote 2 replies that I think sum up my thinking on the points raised in your post better than I can re-write them.

so A/B looks at this classic server thing. a few possible market segments -

1) classic server PS crowd. they need to be placated while this goes forward so they remain supportive, so keep repeating 'classic game experience' in every interview. Try to co-opt sponsored sites and bloggers to gradually suggest 'some QoL/other changes would be good' in coming months.

2) former players not on PS - both BC and Wotlk are more well known to this group (many started then) and accordingly are benchmarks on QoL, pacing, tuning (bc and wotlk very different in that, of course). They are the key target market, there are tens of millions of them.

3) current retail players - not a source of new subs, but if they can be hooked into classic, they will be less likely to unsub during the biannual drought. They are quite accostumed to a very different game tuning/convenience/pacing/hand-holding experience in all game aspects except the latest raid on the hardest difficulty. Blizzard should really try (if they haven't) to get some feedback on how players that have started since say 4.0 or 5.0 respond to classic wow's tuning, even getting to level 10. some would log out, others might enjoy the challenge, but they need some sense of how that sorts out proportionally.

I rate 1 and 3 as of equal monetary importance to blizzard, and 2 is the most important.

path of least resistance - make a game with conveniences recognizable to bc/wotlk players. a big choice between bc and wotlk tuning - bc heroics were HARD, wotlk were aoe/faceroll. want to bet which side of that divide activision-blizzard comes down on?

I do not believe activision-blizzard is institutionally capable of release a game that does not have an 'easy' setting, and classic wow as-was was not 'easy' in any way by modern wow standards.

Activision-Blizzard is a publicly traded corporation, not a personal relationship for each and every one of us.

They understand expectation/image management is key in this. They have framed themselves as being 'pure classic' proponents. Some blues probably are, but that is somewhat irrelevant as the company will do what it needs to do to market the game to the broadest audience possible. A/B is not going to leave money on the table for sentimental reasons.

Some people (the gullible and the naive, in my opinion) are reassured by this declaration about this being a pure classic server. I think it is a case of being the only thing they could possibly say in that situation - what was he going to say ? "we are going to build on our new engine a classic-themed version, but tuned for greater accessibility, and with some QoL and other changes we feel will increase appeal." can you imagine how that would have gone over? it is much more likely to be true, though.

[Independent voter]

I'm really hoping for a "progression" server. I can't see doing Blackwing Lair for years or even Naxx.

[pateuvasiliu]

I was under the impression that, because Vanilla was the greatest thing ever, people would be content to play it now and into perpetuity with no possibility of changes.


Besides, isn't BC when they "ruined the game" by introducing flying mounts?


None of this holds any rose-tinted water, I'm afraid.

Turns out not every Vanilla player is the same and we actually are individuals, rather than Zerg lead by the Overmind.

2 years of Vanilla is enough for me, then give me TBC.

Then 2 years later WOTLK.

Bam.

Plus they can just keep a Vanilla/TBC/WOTLK server up as long as it makes $$.

- - - Updated - - -

TBC is Classic now?

I'd say everything up to WOTLK is classic.

[Vladar]

Turns out not every Vanilla player is the same and we actually are individuals, rather than Zerg lead by the Overmind.

2 years of Vanilla is enough for me, then give me TBC.

Then 2 years later WOTLK.

Bam.

Plus they can just keep a Vanilla/TBC/WOTLK server up as long as it makes $$.

- - - Updated - - -



I'd say everything up to WOTLK is classic.

WOTLK is definitively not classic, nothing less classic than 5 man heroics that you can AoE zerg dropping tokens that can buy raid quality epics. WOTLK is when they really started to kill the game and its when WOW peaked in subs.

[pateuvasiliu]

WOTLK is definitively not classic, nothing less classic than 5 man heroics that you can AoE zerg dropping tokens that can buy raid quality epics. WOTLK is when they really started to kill the game and its when WOW peaked in subs.

WOTLK was still an acceptable mix of casual and hardcore, it's not like everyone got to kill Arthas. That + having Arthas as the end game boss and a focus on storytelling through levelling and raids was why it had so many subs.

A classic is an outstanding example of a particular style

WoW Classic wasn't a thing till Blizzcon.

Pre TBC is called Vanilla. Blizzard are just using " WoW Classic " because they're not going to 100% copy Vanilla.

[anon5123]

Lol, the amount of 'yay vanilla servers now here's the new stuff/improvements/QoL changes we want' topics is mindblowing.

Oh Blizzard, what fresh hell have you unleashed.

"reeeee stop having different opinions than me reeeeeeeeeee"