Blue confirmed they're considering balancing specs

[Deficineiron]

Honestly anyone involved with current game is likely to see a lot of things in classic they just know need fixing. as far as class/spec's, there are a few that with just a few tweaks could have more utility, but who thinks they will stop there?

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I think you're pretty naive if you think they're only targeting people on private servers.

A tougher, more focused, more community-oriented and more straightforward MMO has a lot wider appeal than just people on Nostralius. There's space in that demographic for additions and changes like being able to play whatever spec you want. That does not break or undermine the experience of grinding, cooperating, playing and leveling carefully, and investing great time into a single character, and even then, a single spec. You can have multiple viable specs per class and still replicate Vanilla's gameplay, atmosphere and difficulty. They're not exclusive of one another.

I really think you and others are misguided if you truly believe you're going to get a carbon copy of 1.12. 2017's Activision-Blizzard is not a company that alienates customers willfully because "that's how the game was nearly 15 years ago."

This obsession of only accepting an exact 1:1 copy of 2006's 1.12 is mind-boggling to me.

in the context of a forum discussion, I think some posters resign themselves to saying 'no changes' because they well understand that once they get their change the special stamp of approval, everyone else does too. since the entire topic is framed in opinion, there isn't good discussion model for saying well my opinion on the special changes is good and yours is bad because I don't like THOSE changes. so people handle it as if they themselves were personally negotiating the changes, and realizing that any negotiation will be a pork-barrel of changes and an absolute frankenstein of a classic project, they say 'no changes, period.' as the only sane alternative.

The irony is that folks on forums are not the main target market of this game anyhow - it is folks who quit years ago but still play some video games and might try 'classic' given how it will surely promise to not be retail. To this end I expect them (mainly the a/b accessibility ogre) to struggle with a strong temptation to follow the 3.0.2 tuning model. blizzard itself did at one point understand that immediate gratification is a terrible mmo model but it may be that institutional knowledge has been buried in a decade of a/b.

[Hctaz]

Do you honestly trust blizzard to stop at class tuning?

Wow didn't become the wow of today by them making wise and thoughtout choices but rather a seesaw of extremes from different vocal groups of players.

Yes, I do. This is a game for the community basically. Look at Old School Runescape. They started adding things in via community polls (they required an active membership to OSRS to vote), and they ended up creating an alternate reality type of game. They've even added stuff that didn't come out until Runescape 3, but managed to make it work for the old game. Even created an older, shittier model just to match the times. It's amazing. I would love to see Classic take that route after a couple of years. Would be really interesting.

Here's the thing: We KNOW what types of things ruined the game. Cross server functionality and server transfers started to kill off server communities until LFD/LFR put the final nail in the coffin. Server communities dead. Flying killed off the feeling of the world, and it's something that retail has been actively fighting against now. Class balance isn't what killed the uniqueness that classes had. It was class homogenization that ruined things.

"Bring the player, not the class" was the nail in the coffin. We know NOT to ask for that, but having a ret paladin do just a little bit more damage (still a significant amount less than pure DPS specs/classes) in order to be considered viable as a hybrid dps/healer or dps/utility/buffer would be okay. They'd still be very unique to all other classes and would bring things that ONLY THEY can bring. Keep battle rez for druids only. That sort of stuff. No reason to give it to Warlock, Hunters, and Death Knights as well. Don't even add new classes in, since that would be a nightmare to figure out how they should work in a Classic sense.

I don't think people are asking to change rets to PURE DPS and have them also be the best at it/never have mana issues/etc., but they are wanting to at least be able to play the spec in a raid without being thought of as completely useless. Like... it might not be perfectly optimal, but there should still be a benefit. "Ah yes, well the ret can do 70% of the damage that a warlock can, and we can have him judge wisdom and keep players topped off. He can come to the raid." Does that really sound like it'd ruin Classic?

I mean, obviously they'd have to do some balance changes like adding more health to bosses or something if they end up fucking up, but 1.12.1 already had class changes that made older raids significantly easier. You didn't have Shadow Priest, DPS Warlocks (they were there for their stones and summons, not the damage they dealt), or Fury warrior DPS in Molten Core, but they were slowly made viable throughout time. Having SPs buff warlocks who now did crazy damage and still brought stones and summons to the raids made earlier raids a lot easier. They'd probably have to rebalance PvE anyway because of this.

[Alienshroom]

Blizzard is a Commiefornia tech company. They will cater to people who will spit on them a month later and they laugh at the people they built their company on the backs of. This project is going to be a disaster. Blizzard is incapable of ignoring social media and forum posts made by people who sit online all day everyday. Once the complainers get the QoL changes they want and they release this bastards version of WoW they will move on to the next set of complaints. Probably wont even log 10 days played into the server, especially if they cant bring over the 300 mounts and 60 titles they earned by soloing the previous expansions content.

[Kuja]

The guy who accounced it at Blizzcon already said it will be much better just after announcing it, so don't get surprised if that means there's balancing involved.

[Mosotti]

Community Managers are like the people in supermarkets that stack the things on the shelves. They are really at the bottom of the decision chain, in fact they aren't even part of that chain. So yeah, nothing is "confirmed", unless you have someone like Ion Hazzibully or Gaycrawler making a huge post about it.

[Mister Cheese]

Well who the fuck is gonna wanna play it if half the classes are broken unplayable messes?

[RapBreon]

in the context of a forum discussion, I think some posters resign themselves to saying 'no changes' because they well understand that once they get their change the special stamp of approval, everyone else does too. since the entire topic is framed in opinion, there isn't good discussion model for saying well my opinion on the special changes is good and yours is bad because I don't like THOSE changes. so people handle it as if they themselves were personally negotiating the changes, and realizing that any negotiation will be a pork-barrel of changes and an absolute frankenstein of a classic project, they say 'no changes, period.' as the only sane alternative.

This line of thinking is the sole reason I'm against changes, even though I know some changes would be for the best.

[Thimagryn]

Well who the fuck is gonna wanna play it if half the classes are broken unplayable messes?

Obviously, those who played the classes that weren't broken and pretend that was the way Vanilla was for everyone else.

[RapBreon]

Obviously, those who played the classes that weren't broken and pretend that was the way Vanilla was for everyone else.

Come'on'bruh, you even made a thread and got some answers that directly state they still want to play those classes. I mean it's not conclusive, but come'on'bruh.

[hulkgor]

I'm not suggesting we make huge changes or even small changes at all for that matter, but that it is a worthwhile conversation to have.

They haven't considered anything, he even stated the dev team is still being put together.

Reading is fucking hard.

[phealin]

I wouldn't say that really means anything it was just the blue posters personal opinion and that he said it's something that the community as a whole should discuss and see if it's something that the majority of the community would want.

[Lightbull]

Was a minor cock-up by Ornyx, since the community likes to take anything they read and take it as fact.

[Schattenlied]

Not confirmed, they are saying they want the community to have the discussion, and they will decide based on that discussion... If only they took that stance with the live game, instead of taking their "we're the devs so we're right and you're wrong" stance they usually do.


Anyways... I personally don't have a problem with it, as long as it's only numbers tuning, no adding or removing abilities/talents, just tune numbers. I feel this way because of the experience I had on Nostalrius playing a Paladin. Ret Paladins, actually, were a viable DPS, because some of their abilities scaled with attack power that weren't supposed to (like Consecrate), and scaled higher off spellpower (crusade judgment) than they were supposed to. No one complained about it that I ever saw, it worked, and Ret wasn't completely useless outside of PvP.

[Ghier]

Not confirmed, they are saying they want the community to have the discussion, and they will decide based on that discussion... If only they took that stance with the live game, instead of taking their "we're the devs so we're right and you're wrong" stance they usually do.


Anyways... I personally don't have a problem with it, as long as it's only numbers tuning, no adding or removing abilities/talents, just tune numbers. I feel this way because of the experience I had on Nostalrius playing a Paladin. Ret Paladins, actually, were a viable DPS, because some of their abilities scaled with attack power that weren't supposed to (like Consecrate), and scaled higher off spellpower (crusade judgment) than they were supposed to. No one complained about it that I ever saw, it worked, and Ret wasn't completely useless outside of PvP.

I can live with tuning only. If they decide not to do it; im fine with that too. Once they have everything set up, their jobs should be pretty easy. Either making no changes or just tweaking some numbers.

[Orbusg]

I have a feeling whatever community feedback they listen to, it's not gonna the official wow classic forums.
It's an echo chamber of absolute purists, and there's a survey with tens of thousands of votes that disagrees with every one of them.
It's such an echo chamber in fact that because they can't stand it having opinions other than their own one of them made their own "unbiased" survey which is being passed around only on those forums which the very unbiased community there took the time to answer his survey by completely agreeing with him and his survey that totally was not set up to be another circle jerk of their unbending opinion.

It's unbelievable.

[ComputerNerd]

ofc they will balance it

people have to be retarded to think they would leave just half of classes and one forth/fifth of specs being viable.

Depends how faithful the community really wants the game to be.
Or more accurately how much they were lying to us about how great vanilla really was in their eyes.

Accuracy or something that isn't vanilla.
It isn't both at once.

How is this a confirmation of anything? It's a fucking community manager stating their opinion.

It isn't.
It is just the usual twisting of a statement to mean what someone wants it to mean, instead of what it actually does.

We got demands for vanilla, now we get demands for "enhanced vanilla", so basically raspberry ripple.
Make up your mind people.

[Mormolyce]

Guys, read the thread:

>I have to ask since you're a Blizzard employee. Does your opinion speak at all for the design team working on this?

>It's more of a personal opinion. As you've read numerous times, the team for Classic is just now coming together, so I wouldn't say there's much of an opinion internally one way or the other.

Speculation.

[analmoose]

While they're at it, they should homogenize all classes. make pally available to horde, shaman to alliance, make holding threat super easy and give all classes super OP AoE abilities

[Spramp]

Vanilla experience to me is slower leveling, less QoL "improvements" to rush everything along, harder and more group oriented content (you're not likely killing that elite world mob on your own) and very large focus on the community, and I'm fairly certain that is what vanilla experience means to a hell of a lot more too.
Half the classes and 3/4 of specs being bad to unusable and dated 2004 graphics is a symptom of the time, not the reason people played and fondly remember it.

Exactly this. I wasn't quick enough to put in my opinion on the blue post but, while I don't want any of the convenience changes since vanilla, like grp finders, flying, transmog, taking away ammo, quests where you have to walk forever, etc etc., I dont see what the point of releasing the classic server with the horrendous class balance like it was just for the sake for "purity" this is classic wow not vanilla wow... with the amount of knowledge people have about vanilla now and with damage meters being a thing now - its not going to be like then when people chose their character blind and just went with it because they invested so much. How will it be fun to have 50% of the population on rogues and the other 50% on the 3 or so other viable specs. Who do you expect is going to come on a druid and just sit on their hands and give you innervate while you get to have the fun/glory. Why even have the other specs in the game they were so dramatically unviable? I don't even think they would consider huge changes, just some minor ones so that for example moonkins could actually be a thing. I don't believe in the slippery slope argument... where does it stop? somewhere reasonable.

Maybe we can split this into two types of servers? a pure vanilla server -released with everything exactly the same, old graphics, original balance, bugs intact, etc etc and another wow classic - which is a modern take on vanilla, one free of the conveniences added since but with some tweaks to class balance, graphics, bug fixes...

[NihilSustinet]

Do "project 60" like all the retards do if you want today's features while being stuck at level 60.

i think you misunderstood my post.