Official WoW: Classic Forum Drama. Community Managers on CLASS BALANCE debate

[doot]

I wonder if the people will heed the warning or will Non-subs get booted out of the forum?

[moremana]

Sounds like you want a rehash of WotLK, not a vanilla experience. There are plenty of private servers for you to go try. Leave Classic to us players who know what they are doing.

Numbtard, I didnt say I wanted it, I said "It should be involved" as most complaints back then were for it.

Take your snide comments to Reddit.

[Bas Prime]

One one hand I would like to see them just release the classic servers the way classic was back in the day. But what would be the point? Having a small portion of people play on it, only having one to two raid groups on each server (if we even get to see more than one server per region) and basically a (in my opinion) shitty game? Who wants to work on that?
Classic servers will be flooded with new players at the start, but I think when nostalgia dies, the servers will have players leave left and right. So we have the opportunity to make the choice for something better. Blizz is not going to create a game and put resources into it just to get the "well, this sucks" review from players. And dont get me wrong, of course there will be players who will love the way classic was. But the majority will stop playing at around level 20, another portion at level 50. And what then? play the same raids with the same shitty mechanics for ever?Looking at lfr, how are core hound packs suppose to work? Do you remember when they did this MC timewalk event? People where crying all over the place. To a part rightly so.
So the best way I can come up with is this: Make an absolutlely flawless classic server. The way it has been to a certain point in time of classic. Dont know which point that is (could be the last day of classic, or the day AQ or Naxx was opened, dont know)
and then have one server that lets you play classic but with all the jazz we have today. Ne animation, new class design and balance.
Honestly, I was lucky to pick a rogue back in the day, but I had no idea, I wanted to start a warrior and when I read that their role was basically leading the party (tanking) I changed my mind, because I had no clue and did not want that kind of responsibility. Do we want only Warriors to tank? Priests to Heal? and Mages and Rogues be the damage dealer? Hybrids where basically healers, reskilling was a mess and, well you all remember or read the threads about what the people dreaded about classic.
I see myself only play it when I am totally bored out of the actual content. If I have to look at old graphics, old animations and only have a small amount of specs really being useful, why would I play this? I wont.
Raidleads will be looking into the best classes and specs, and that means that most specs will just not be viable. You are a boomkin in classic? good luck finding a raid.

TL;DR
One "pure" classic server
One classic server with new options (newest rulebook, new animations, current class balance and design of the live game)

[Thatfire]

I don't see at all how making changes to specs change anything in vanilla wow. If it does a thing it makes more people want to play it. Lets look at what not changing it does. You are stuck with 25% of known specs to raid or pvp with. Unless you were planning on having the upper hand and playing 1 of the known specs that are accepted in raids or destroy people in PvP then this really sucks. Not being able to play 75% of the specs out there just kills it for a lot of players. Now lets look at what tweeking a couple numbers of some specs to make them more competitive would do. Mostly it enlarges the playerbase a lot. That is 75% of the specs that will also be playable, the jump in players over this one fact I cant even describe. I have come to start thinking that most of the purist already planned on playing the special raid or pvp specs and don't want the competition. Lets look at it another way. Even if these "purists" do leave they make up only a fraction of the 25% of playable raid/pvp specs. That is a minority if there ever has been one. You are left with a much larger playerbase even with them leaving, if they really do cause I call BS on all of them. There argument is like a toddler trying to argue with mommy why they shouldn't have to eat their peas. Their arguments are junk. "Its not vanilla, go play BC or WotLK, go play live wow". Sounds like a bunch of liberals at an ANTIFA rally lol. Sorry but you cant shut everyone else up by your pointless arguments that you keep shouting.

[Whiskra]

Except that there is really no reason to bring a druid at all, because their healing is not as good as priest and paladin healing. The only thing they really bring is a b-rez that is predicated on (in the vast majority of situations) someone in your raid screwing up and dying.

There is a reason that, despite there being 9 classes in Vanilla, druids generally fall below 6% of any private server's population. That is HALF the amount you'd expect to see (11%) if classes were reasonable good in their own way.

That is the problem with Vanilla balancing. It is "the classes are unique and are each good in their own way" except that they aren't. There is an entire classes that is just worse at everything it can do, and 2/3 of basically all specs sans warrior are non-viable. There is a reason warriors, rogues and mages make up the vast, vast majority of every private server.

It is just bad design. Not uniqueness, not rock-paper-scissors.



This is called "broken".

Maybe a majority of people simply don't want to play as Night Elf or Tauren? Whatever shortcomings Druid healing might have on paper compared to other healing classes, those hardly matter. Druids do bring a lot of utility to raids, especially on Alliance side where they are the only class capable of decursing besides Mages. You'd be surprised how useful combat resses actually are by AQ40/Naxx, when the number of players alive will actually matter for those tougher bosses. More often than not, you'll be wishing so hard that you had just one extra combat ress, so you might have a chance to avoid the imminent wipe.

Druids are also by far the most versatile class in PvP.

[Palinn]

Except that there is really no reason to bring a druid at all, because their healing is not as good as priest and paladin healing. The only thing they really bring is a b-rez that is predicated on (in the vast majority of situations) someone in your raid screwing up and dying.

This is the reason class balance is such a dangerous topic. People look at numbers and say "a is better than b" and then completely disregard utility because it doesn't show on some fancy damage meter... Battle Rez IS a strong reason to bring a druid.

Besides, this myth that priests were tiers above druids is just false, anyway. Druids were fine. Priests were fine. Each excelled in different areas.

[Orbusg]

Whew, just came from the wow forums cause I can't stand them anymore.
They don't even try to hold a discussion even when community managers come in and try to have a talk, they immediately get shouted down and get mad at anyone holding a differing opinion on anything, which is everyone because nobody can even agree what version of vanilla is the "real" vanilla.
I can't blame the CM for closing those topics.

[Sturmbringe]

The answer to the OP is quite simple:

The community, that is to say US (and not the retail community), wanted to play original World Of Warcraft and not retail. For years, Blizzard disdained us, scorned us and banned us at the official forums at every opportunity. For instance, while I had an active subscription (that was in the early months of Catafail) I was advocating for classic servers, and quite predictably I got perma-banned with no chance of appeal.

We were the heretics of the World of Warcraft community, persecuted much like the Jews were in previous centuries. Nobody wanted to do anything with us and Blizzard didn't even want to acknowledge we existed.

The Classic Blizzard servers are an answer to the demand created by US (and not the retail community) in Nostalrius and other private server projects. And what WE always wanted was an original World of Warcraft server with ALL THE BUGS IRONED OUT.

That is the only thing we wanted, bugs fixed. So, all Blizzard has to do to please us is give us an original WoW server with bugs fixed.

NOTE: We never wanted any changes to the game. Those advocating for retail-style changes are retail players who just want to ruin it for us. If we liked LFD, LFR, CRZ and the present mechanics, we'd play retail, which we do not. Therefore, if you want to please US (and not the retail community) in order to incentivize US (and not the retail community) to pay a sub again (the retail crowd already pay a sub) and return US back to the fold, you give us original servers with no "QoL" additions and you keep your modern retail WoW design philosophy and design paradigm out of these servers.

Quite simple actually.

[Hitei]

Maybe a majority of people simply don't want to play as Night Elf or Tauren? Whatever shortcomings Druid healing might have on paper compared to other healing classes, those hardly matter. Druids do bring a lot of utility to raids, especially on Alliance side where they are the only class capable of decursing besides Mages. You'd be surprised how useful combat resses actually are by AQ40/Naxx, when the number of players alive will actually matter for those tougher bosses. More often than not, you'll be wishing so hard that you had just one extra combat ress, so you might have a chance to avoid the imminent wipe.

Druids are also by far the most versatile class in PvP.

Lol, sure. People just don't want to play one of the most popular races and popular classes in Vanilla.

No. It is because this isn't Vanilla, people understand what is good and what is bad, and druids are not worth bringing when you can bring more mages, preists and paladins and not have the person die in the first place. Which is why it's insane that people are so afraid of class balancing. Raids are already not going to be the way they were in Vanilla. People are much better individually, people will build raids much more effectively, people will have much higher server pools to draw from.

This is the reason class balance is such a dangerous topic. People look at numbers and say "a is better than b" and then completely disregard utility because it doesn't show on some fancy damage meter... Battle Rez IS a strong reason to bring a druid.

Besides, this myth that priests were tiers above druids is just false, anyway. Druids were fine. Priests were fine. Each excelled in different areas.

You don't need to be tiers above to just be a stronger healer. Battle Rez is being useful is inverse to your raid being good. If no one dies, that slot is completely wasted and you'd have been better off bringing a priest or paladin.

The numbers don't lie, just look at them. Class imbalance is broken, that's why it was progressively worked upon during Vanilla and then improved greatly with BC.

The Classic Blizzard servers are an answer to the demand created by US (and not the retail community) in Nostalrius and other private server projects. And what WE always wanted was an original World of Warcraft server with ALL THE BUGS IRONED OUT.

That is the only thing we wanted, bugs fixed. So, all Blizzard has to do to please us is give us an original WoW server with bugs fixed.

NOTE: We never wanted any changes to the game. Those advocating for retail-style changes are retail players who just want to ruin it for us. If we liked LFD, LFR, CRZ and the present mechanics, we'd play retail, which we do not. Therefore, if you want to please US (and not the retail community) in order to incentivize US (and not the retail community) to pay a sub again (the retail crowd already pay a sub) and return US back to the fold, you give us original servers with no "QoL" additions and you keep your modern retail WoW design philosophy and design paradigm out of these servers.

Quite simple actually.

Classic without bugs IS changes. You can't say "we never wanted any changes... by the way please change all this stuff that was broken and also fix all this other stuff that was fixed during the course of Vanilla". Bugs were a core part of the vanilla experience. Patches downing servers for days at a time was part of Vanilla. You're already asking for a better Vanilla. Class balance, achievements, etc, are not QoL.

[blackblade]

The honest answer to this is that sometimes forums are bad and people are wrong to think that CM's are developers. Their JOB is to expedite conversation.

I don't see that much drama here other than Blizzard encouraging people to express what they think and people freaking out about perhaps having to think, much less--OMG, where's my fainting couch!!!1!--see that there might be some merit in both sides. For my part, I hope they change little.


The whole question is about "different" versus "off". There's a good argument to make that balance in vanilla was terrible and that the entire affair, while fun at the time, was out-of-balance to the point that it won't be that much fun to do it again. There's also a good argument to make that it should be left the way it was. I think there are some reasonable positions between those two things but as I have consistently said I lean toward leaving it alone.

Purity may do more harm than good for the long-term. That's also a reasonable discussion worth having.

IMHO, If they launch it 'as it was' and then start making iterations that aren't based on people's rose-tinted memories and more based on real, actual data, the conversation about what it should be would be a lot easier; and the 'purists' who're completely against any form of compromise wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

I do, concurrently, believe it'd be possible to rebalance vanilla in such a way that more support-y specs are more competitive damage dealers... without intrinsically making them feel "not vanilla" espeically if it's purely a numbers tweak. Tanks/Healers are a trickier problem. Paladins lacked a taunt, Druids lacked cooldowns and an out-of-combat-res, Shamans were pretty decent once they got some tier but had mana issues before hand.

Onnn the other hand, with a modern-day think tank behind rotation optimization, we may find that the prevalent issues are not as bad as we remember. Who knows? Opening up a 'true' vanilla server and seeing what people think is the best way to find out.

[Halyon]

Please just release it without custom tuning - changing numbers and fiddling with classes will throw the game off balance.
God forbid this gets pushed back months because Paladins/Shamans/Druids want to DPS.

They have specs for it. Why the hell should they be entirely unable to.

[Kithelle]

I think people are having a hard time with "as close to that original World of Warcraft experience as possible"

I think class balance should be involved. It was the main complaints players had at the time, it seems like some just don't remember some of the bad things with Vanilla.

So basically you didn't want Vanilla. I see...

[Whiskra]

Lol, sure. People just don't want to play one of the most popular races and popular classes in Vanilla.

No. It is because this isn't Vanilla, people understand what is good and what is bad

And you clearly don't so why should you have a say in it?

[Hitei]

And you clearly don't so why should you have a say in it?

What a well thought out and convincing argument.

Because I actually played Vanilla and I'd rather have a minor balancing pass that means we'll actually see class populations similar to Vanilla than play on what is basically a shitty private server where nearly everyone I pass by is a warrior, rogue or mage.

I would rather see Vanilla but without Vanilla's extreme flaws (Read: an even better Vanilla)--than keeping clearly broken things just for the sake of muh that's how it was!! And clearly most people agree with that sentiment, or there wouldn't be such a consensus on removing game breaking bugs.

[Meow]

There is the absolute freedom of speech if people agree with everything about Vanilla and hate everything about the current WoW.

[redeyesbl]

in all honestly what is the problem with some balance changes? really? i mean i know im playing because of the actual content the dungeons and the pvp and honestly if they balance classes so lets say paladins can tank or druids can go moonking and dps i dont see the problem hell i dont see a problem with class balancing at all make all specs viable (but still let naked rogues stuntlock and kill anyone) as long as the content its the same difficulty and hell that would make pvp way more interesting.
or you are gonna tell me that you liked vanilla because they were like 13 maybe 14 viable specs in the game?

[Sormine]

Please just release it without custom tuning - changing numbers and fiddling with classes will throw the game off balance.
God forbid this gets pushed back months because Paladins/Shamans/Druids want to DPS.

I think the problem here is that you're under the assumption things were "balanced" back in vanilla. This assumption would be wrong. Which invites a reason to look at class changes.

[Jastall]

They have specs for it. Why the hell should they be entirely unable to.

Because muh hybrid tax. Which is such a stupid concept given that while hybrids can do several things, they can't do all of them at the same time, and it's not like it stopped Warriors from being the best tanks either.

[Sormine]

What a well thought out and convincing argument.

Because I actually played Vanilla and I'd rather have a minor balancing pass that means we'll actually see class populations similar to Vanilla than play on what is basically a shitty private server where nearly everyone I pass by is a warrior, rogue or mage.

I would rather see Vanilla but without Vanilla's extreme flaws (Read: an even better Vanilla)--than keeping clearly broken things just for the sake of muh that's how it was!! And clearly most people agree with that sentiment, or there wouldn't be such a consensus on removing game breaking bugs.

This is a very good point. People need to take into consideration what we've seen from the private server scene. Rogue/Warrior/Mage saturation isn't fun for anyone.

- - - Updated - - -

Maybe a majority of people simply don't want to play as Night Elf or Tauren? Whatever shortcomings Druid healing might have on paper compared to other healing classes, those hardly matter. Druids do bring a lot of utility to raids, especially on Alliance side where they are the only class capable of decursing besides Mages. You'd be surprised how useful combat resses actually are by AQ40/Naxx, when the number of players alive will actually matter for those tougher bosses. More often than not, you'll be wishing so hard that you had just one extra combat ress, so you might have a chance to avoid the imminent wipe.

Druids are also by far the most versatile class in PvP.

It's hard to justify bringing them in as DPS. No matter what their utility is you're just better off having one of them as a healer and letting the Rogues/Mages/Warriors DPS.

[Frosteye]

I'm the OP from the first thread, was a surprise when I logged back in and saw it at 36 pages lol.

NO to changes!