How did it come to this?

[Talvindius]

I think they only thing may address is class viability such as pally/bear tanks.

Even if that's the only thing that's such a big deal. It would bring a lot more depth to the game that Vanilla was lacking.

[Hitei]

No, you cannot.

Once you start making changes everyone will demand more and more until it's just like retail WoW. Just embrace Classic and enjoy it for what it is.

What is it?

Because it sure as hell wasn't everyone playing warriors, most people you meet in pvp using engineering, groups locking down devilsaur spawns, and heavy theorycrafted character creation choices back in 2005.

[Thimagryn]

If you want to play an enhancement shaman in Vanilla raids, you're going to spec into improved totems and shell out some gold for the Nightfall axe to boost your spellcasters in the raid.
But, as a support character, you are invaluable. The amount of utility you bring through totems, and sheer damage increase through Windfury totem and Strength of Earth, aswell as Grace of Air totems for example, are insanely good.

Druid and Paladin having gameplay to support that same kind of kit is all I'd ask for in terms of changes to Vanilla. That doesn't exist though, and instead Druids and Paladins are stuck decursing and buffing. Shadow Priests and Enh Shamans at least get to fight and attack while providing their buffs. Druids and Paladins don't. I'm not offering any solutions to this, but people who think it's perfect the way it is don't have a clue how shitty it is playing an invaluable innervatebot or a buffadin.

Ideally, I'd want them to have Feral and Ret actually viable as hybrid melee Support. TBC hit a sweet spot, but I know many will be up in arms if anything TBC trickles back into Vanilla in any form. I think if hybrids are intended to play as hybrids, then we shouldn't need them as shitty healers that can't perform any other role viably.

[Talvindius]

I find it hard to see Blizzard not wanting to change stuff. So to me some discussion is warranted because it's not really clear what we can expect.

This is the main reason discussion needs to happen, changes WILL be made and discussions will influence what is changed and to what degree. Refusal to discuss these changes is only going to make the purists more butthurt when they could have at least made sure the core elements of Vanilla are kept the same.

[potis]

What is it?

Because it sure as hell wasn't everyone playing warriors, most people you meet in pvp using engineering, groups locking down devilsaur spawns, and heavy theorycrafted character creation choices back in 2005.

Gouge-->Death Ray-->Watch rogue kill himself cause it failed?

This was fun, yes.

[Barnabas]

I have played private realms on and off since 2012. I loved Nostalrius, but even though I loved it and wouldn't have changed anything about it at the time I never believed Blizzard would release their own classic realm like this. Classic WoW has way too many niggle's compared to the modern version, I find it hard to see Blizzard not wanting to change stuff. So to me some discussion is warranted because it's not really clear what we can expect.

Blizzard could also remove people from that project if they can't figure out that changing anything about vanilla could turn it into chocolate instead. Nothing wrong with chocolate but people want vanilla. All the posts by blizzard employees did was just stir the pot so they can say they were right about the you want it but you dont comment.

[Gungnir]

Druid and Paladin having gameplay to support that same kind of kit is all I'd ask for in terms of changes to Vanilla. That doesn't exist though, and instead Druids and Paladins are stuck decursing and buffing. Shadow Priests and Enh Shamans at least get to fight and attack while providing their buffs. Druids and Paladins don't. I'm not offering any solutions to this, but people who think it's perfect the way it is don't have a clue how shitty it is playing an invaluable innervatebot or a buffadin.

As a shaman, I ENVIED you paladins for being such mana-efficient healers once you got to AQ and got some crit, and how incredibly strong your buffs were, especially Blessing of Sanctuary.
I also envied how absolutely crazy druid healers became with gear, they scaled like trucks.

And I didn't fight nor really attack since shamans were also much more valuable as restoration, especially since chain heal was very strong when you got your hands on some T1 gear. I think people forget that paladins weren't just buffbots, and druids weren't just there for innervate even though those were some INCREDIBLY strong tools.
Hell, there's a reason why alliance succeeded at Naxx a lot more than horde did, and that was mainly due to paladins.

[Deleted]

The social and world content on retail is a fraction of what it was in Vanilla,

what a freaking lie. WoW retail has more content then classic ever had, because it is 7 xpacks later....

the focus now is to get as many people onto raiding as possible, through LFR and group finder

and another lie. no one is trying to force anyone into raids.
and claiming that after legion introduce m+ blizzard forces anyone into raids is hillarious

[Hctaz]

For years, dedicated individuals have campaigned to have Classic considered by Blizzard

Whether through petitions, creating or playing private servers, they have shown that there is a substantial, dedicated playerbase that want vanilla WoW, as it was

Now that it would appear that they have succeeded, after the announcement of Classic at Blizzcon, the entire conversation has shifted away from whether or not Classic should be a thing into what changes should Blizzard make?

These are not posts from dedicated vanilla supporters, they are ideas from tourists who would play the game for 5 minutes before deciding that they would rather play BfA

If you want class balance, easier levelling, cheaper mounts and respecs, then there is already a game for you. If you want a game with better graphics, a more modern client and a million other changes, then there is already a game for you.

The reason Classic was great is because the focus of the content was on whatever you wanted to do. You could RP, PVP, just quest, do casual dungeons, be a hardcore raider, just be a social member or any mixture of those things. Blizzard made the game they wanted to, and people enjoyed it. Any attempt to change classic with modern wow design philosophy is doomed to fail

The biggest problem is that a group of tourist players, who this is not being made for, seek to make classic into something it isn't, when they already have Legion

Stop ruining things for people who have put more effort into this than you have, and who this project is designed for

Except, the problem is that purist players are just assuming this is what the Legion players want. It's not.

Everybody just assumes this CAN'T be what the Classic playerbase was, but it ends up being that a lot of the people supporting the idea of Vanilla servers were these sorts of people all along anyway. I've been an advocate for a long time for Classic servers and have played on Nost, Elysium, and other servers. I STILL want some changes. My biggest issue is just spec balance really, but I don't want to get into that topic.

My complaint about the people advocating to keep the game as identical as possible is this: Literally nobody who is asking for real changes are asking for changes that would make the game similar to retail. Look at that survey that was posted. 90%+ voted no to LFD, LFR, Flying and the like. People overwhelmingly voted for a 1x rate of EXP gain, and voted against having a pay2win form of doubling your experience earned. People are voting "No" to just having all of the raids open at the launch of the server. People voted "yes" to keeping dishonorable kills... but they also voted "Yes" to periodic class balance updates.

I don't understand why you guys think that these people voting to keep Vanilla VERY Vanilla are somehow not the same people who want a game that has a future. You can want to keep the adversity, the grinds, the attunement questlines, lack of catch-up mechanics, ground travel, difficulty of travel and all of that while STILL wanting to see more raids and zones after Naxx. You can vote for keeping Vanilla feeling very Vanilla while still wanting to see the useless specs find SOME place in a raid. Not the top of the DPS charts, but a hybrid DPS/support that is actually a consideration, yeah?

What you guys are forgetting is that there are a lot of people who want a game that is exactly the same as Vanilla, but with future updates that NEVER take away this feeling. People want to experience a WoW that was untainted by things getting nerfed because they were "too hard," but they also want to experience what could have been as well. Whenever I play retail, I think of how much better it could have been. I think of Mid-Wrath and onwards and how much we've lost since then. What I would give to see Wrath/Cata/MoP/WoD/Legion if they had kept ALL of the ideals from Vanilla and told us to just DEAL with it.

If they do ANY of this, they need to make a "Vanilla Bible" which would be a set of unbreakable rules for any and all new content.
And also important is that they not do this early. I DO think we should have Vanilla as Vanilla for a long time to come. It should be at least a year before people start thinking of future updates IMO. And by that time, the loud-mouthed players crying out for an easier game will have left. You can talk to the playerbase who is left. Require a minimum level or a minimum time spent in game playing to be a part of these discussions.

[Darsithis]

The social and world content on retail is a fraction of what it was in Vanilla

What?

Let's see:

In classic you can't talk to cross-faction friends while they're playing. You can on retail
In classic you couldn't talk to friends playing other Blizzard games. You can on retail
In classic you can't group with people from other servers. You can on retail
In classic you couldn't raid with friends from other servers. You can on retail
In classic (before the stones even summoned), putting groups together was a multi-hour ordeal of people joining and dropping. On retail you can pick up a pug group in minutes for quests, for scenarios, for dungeons, for raids, for pvp, for arena...
There is no level-scaling in classic, but in retail there is, which makes it much, much easier to quest together despite level differences

Classic had two continents: Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. Retail has EK, KM, Northrend, Pandaria, Outland, Draenor, and Argus, if you don't count Broken Isles and others of their kind.

There is no way objectively anyone can say that classic WoW had more social and world content than retail does now. Yes, retail is more streamlined than before, but it definitely has more. Note I say objectively - you can prefer classic if you want, that's fine, that's your opinion, but there is no way you can say that classic had more.

[Deladeu]

I love how the purists try to falsely argue that classes shouldn't be balanced and that the game was so much harder.

1. Almost every patch was a class overhaul patch because they were so broken. 1.0 Warlock was almost unrecognizable by 1.12, as were most classes. Vanilla was constantly evolving.

2. A single mythic raid encounter has more mechanics in it than an entire vanilla raid had. Raid difficulty came in not knowing what was going on and the minimal use of addons / resources (Because all we had was thottbot, alakazam and the official forums). The difficulty came from having poorly balanced classes and itemized gear. Vanilla difficulty is an illusion created by poor design choices and our own cluelessness about how things worked.

I loved classic. I played classic to death... but the improvements made in the game have been mostly for the better.

There needs to be wide-ranging class balance and changes, and with that, balancing to encounters to compensate for the changes.

If they do decide to go with 40 man raids, the loot a boss drops needs to be at least doubled. 2-3 items shared between 40 didn't work in 2005 and it certainly doesn't now. It is no fun doing a raid for half a year and NEVER seeing the item you need drop.

QoL improvements like group loot and the collections tab should be there. Other things like achievements and even pet battles would add to the experience without detracting from what made classic great.

I wouldn't complain if they had account wide attunements either. Once you've done the MC / Onyxia attunement once, you don't want to go through it again.

Things such as random dungeon / pvp queues, LFR and server / faction changes should absolutely not be in the game. Anything that harms the community / interaction aspect of the game should be discouraged. This is the core of what made classic... classic. The lack of queue systems forced more interaction between players and made parts of the world far more lively and active.

[Gungnir]

You can vote for keeping Vanilla feeling very Vanilla while still wanting to see the useless specs find SOME place in a raid. Not the top of the DPS charts, but a hybrid DPS/support that is actually a consideration, yeah?

This is a mentality that is somewhat flawed, because it's a mentality shaped by current WoW iterations.
Back in Vanilla, you weren't the sole hero character spec, you weren't the one downing bosses by yourself. You were a footsoldier, you were your CLASS. Every CLASS in Vanilla has spots in raids.
Shamans for example had great raid healing with CH and incredibly strong buffs and utility with totems.
Paladins were absolutely the best class in the game with how strong and mana-efficient they became once AQ rolled around with some crit gear, and the blessings. Especially Blessing of Salvation, which is the sole reason why alliance pulled ahead in Naxxramas progression.
Druids scaled like trucks when it came to healing and easily became some of the strongest throughput healers later on.

Vanilla was an RPG, and you were your class. You weren't just enhance, you were a shaman.
I absolutely LOVED the fact that I could make such an impact with my totems and healing, even though I spent most of my time as enhance otherwise.

[Pull My Finger]

All I know is that I'm laughing about the "Vanilla WoW" people more than ever. It's priceless.

[Santoryu]

For years, dedicated individuals have campaigned to have Classic considered by Blizzard

Whether through petitions, creating or playing private servers, they have shown that there is a substantial, dedicated playerbase that want vanilla WoW, as it was

Now that it would appear that they have succeeded, after the announcement of Classic at Blizzcon, the entire conversation has shifted away from whether or not Classic should be a thing into what changes should Blizzard make?

These are not posts from dedicated vanilla supporters, they are ideas from tourists who would play the game for 5 minutes before deciding that they would rather play BfA

If you want class balance, easier levelling, cheaper mounts and respecs, then there is already a game for you. If you want a game with better graphics, a more modern client and a million other changes, then there is already a game for you.

The reason Classic was great is because the focus of the content was on whatever you wanted to do. You could RP, PVP, just quest, do casual dungeons, be a hardcore raider, just be a social member or any mixture of those things. Blizzard made the game they wanted to, and people enjoyed it. Any attempt to change classic with modern wow design philosophy is doomed to fail

The biggest problem is that a group of tourist players, who this is not being made for, seek to make classic into something it isn't, when they already have Legion

Stop ruining things for people who have put more effort into this than you have, and who this project is designed for

We call these people entitled scrubs. Why blizz caters to such people is beyond me.

[Hctaz]

This is a mentality that is somewhat flawed, because it's a mentality shaped by current WoW iterations.
Back in Vanilla, you weren't the sole hero character spec, you weren't the one downing bosses by yourself. You were a footsoldier, you were your CLASS. Every CLASS in Vanilla has spots in raids.
Shamans for example had great raid healing with CH and incredibly strong buffs and utility with totems.
Paladins were absolutely the best class in the game with how strong and mana-efficient they became once AQ rolled around with some crit gear, and the blessings. Especially Blessing of Salvation, which is the sole reason why alliance pulled ahead in Naxxramas progression.
Druids scaled like trucks when it came to healing and easily became some of the strongest throughput healers later on.

Vanilla was an RPG, and you were your class. You weren't just enhance, you were a shaman.
I absolutely LOVED the fact that I could make such an impact with my totems and healing, even though I spent most of my time as enhance otherwise.

But is there something wrong with being enhance and doing some damage while also being useful? Why can't you, say, sacrifice some of your healing for some damage and still be viable? You're a support/damage/heals instead of just a support/heals. That's what shamans were in lore and in previous games. They had a lot of utility and buffs for others. Bloodlust was a spell that targeted on ally and made them attack and move faster in WC3. Thrall had chain lightning and heals. I don't see why being forced into Resto as a shaman is a good thing for the game.

You're right that you are your class, but your class should also be based on your spec somewhat. What is a shaman? They use totems to buff their friends, they use heals to keep them alive, but they also have powerful spells like chain lightning. Removing that aspect of the shaman doesn't make them any more of a shaman. The fun of Vanilla to a lot of people was determining what TYPE of shaman they were. You could specialize into stronger totems, or strong melee attacks. You could specialize into stronger healing and more utility. None of the specs changed the way the classes played drastically, but they did alter what you somewhat. Why not make some of alterations potentially usable in a raid?

This is a legitimate discussion. See, the way that I look at it is not that I want enhance to be the DPS shaman or elemental to be the DPS shaman. They're just shamans who can do more damage than a resto. That doesn't mean you have them DPS full time. They'd fill (and be good at filling) an inbetween role. Same as rets. Rets shouldn't just be doing damage like a Rogue. You gotta have them throwing out heals, casting blessings. That kind of stuff. That technically works in Vanilla, but it isn't an actual option. I just think they should give them the option.

[Eapoe]

For years, dedicated individuals have campaigned to have Classic considered by Blizzard

Whether through petitions, creating or playing private servers, they have shown that there is a substantial, dedicated playerbase that want vanilla WoW, as it was

Now that it would appear that they have succeeded, after the announcement of Classic at Blizzcon, the entire conversation has shifted away from whether or not Classic should be a thing into what changes should Blizzard make?

These are not posts from dedicated vanilla supporters, they are ideas from tourists who would play the game for 5 minutes before deciding that they would rather play BfA

If you want class balance, easier levelling, cheaper mounts and respecs, then there is already a game for you. If you want a game with better graphics, a more modern client and a million other changes, then there is already a game for you.

The reason Classic was great is because the focus of the content was on whatever you wanted to do. You could RP, PVP, just quest, do casual dungeons, be a hardcore raider, just be a social member or any mixture of those things. Blizzard made the game they wanted to, and people enjoyed it. Any attempt to change classic with modern wow design philosophy is doomed to fail

The biggest problem is that a group of tourist players, who this is not being made for, seek to make classic into something it isn't, when they already have Legion

Stop ruining things for people who have put more effort into this than you have, and who this project is designed for

Isn't the project designed for everyone? The reasons you gave for Classic being great still exists. Sorry, but you need to come up with some better examples than things that are still in the game.

[Deleted]

If that was the case they wouldn't bother asking everyone for their opinions, they would only ask you "Old Vanilla Players."

The good news is they didn't so Classic will have a chance at being a much more playable game than the min/max skull beating grindfest that was Vanilla.

I'm going to enjoy adding my opinion to every thread knowing that if Blizzard looks they'll see the opinion of close minded purists like you and forward thinking, open minded players like me and seeing what the middle ground is. Even if we aren't catered to any change to Vanilla QoL wise is a win for me and a loss for you.

Open minded? You claim to be open minded? Jesus christ. The ego behing that statement!

Open minded would be this:
One group has the game they like. Let them have it. Why not? I'm not gonna play so why I should even bother? You like it? Fine. Good for you.
The other group would like to have a game for them. Game they like. Same as first group likes their game. Everyone is happy.

But noooooo! There comes "open minded" horde of people like you. So open minded about runing game for other people. I'm literaly 100% sure, that every single person that calls for changes won't like Vanilla anyway and will stop playing after few weeks, few months at best. Same with true Vanilla fans. Those will stop because Vanilla isn't Vanilla anymore because people like you.

In the end no one will happy, except people who say entire thing will flop. It will. But it won't be our fault. It will be yours.

[Swalload]

Can't take it for something that it's not.

Denial.

10chars

[Hitei]

This is a mentality that is somewhat flawed, because it's a mentality shaped by current WoW iterations.
Back in Vanilla, you weren't the sole hero character spec, you weren't the one downing bosses by yourself. You were a footsoldier, you were your CLASS. Every CLASS in Vanilla has spots in raids.

"spots" plural, is questionable. Some classes had 15 spots in the raid and others had 1 or 2. Let's not pretend that the death-dependent utility of a battle rez meant druids were as valuable as a holy priest, or that warlocks were somehow different but equal to a warrior or mage.

Wow class balance in Vanilla is a lot like historical segregation.

"Haha, we're all equal and every class has a role to fill except that we're going to take 15 warriors because they are the only worthwhile tank and also do great DPS while able to actually play their spec and use their abilities--and we're going to take 1 ret please spend the entire raid pressing a bound button to buff people rather than actually doing what your spec was designed to do. P.S. No balance druids or dogs are allowed in the restaurant."

[Hctaz]

Druid and Paladin having gameplay to support that same kind of kit is all I'd ask for in terms of changes to Vanilla. That doesn't exist though, and instead Druids and Paladins are stuck decursing and buffing. Shadow Priests and Enh Shamans at least get to fight and attack while providing their buffs. Druids and Paladins don't. I'm not offering any solutions to this, but people who think it's perfect the way it is don't have a clue how shitty it is playing an invaluable innervatebot or a buffadin.

Ideally, I'd want them to have Feral and Ret actually viable as hybrid melee Support. TBC hit a sweet spot, but I know many will be up in arms if anything TBC trickles back into Vanilla in any form. I think if hybrids are intended to play as hybrids, then we shouldn't need them as shitty healers that can't perform any other role viably.

Yes! This is my thought process as well. They should flesh out these options for other specs so that they can effectively do this type of thing and be considered an asset to a raid to have if they choose. There should not be only one type of support class that is viable.

I mean, I know you are a druid player so you will have a vastly different knowledge than me. I'm a pure DPS through and through. On Classic I will be playing either Rogue, Warlock, or Fury warrior depending on how it releases, but I'm still fighting for you guys out there. I've read and heard stories of your misery in Vanilla. I was fortunate because I picked Warlock as my first ever character and then Warrior as a second. I didn't have to deal with this whole "I'm gonna be cool like Uther/Thrall/Druids of the Claw" and then just get fucked into a healing slot later. I just wanted to kill shit and I got to kill shit.