Balance the classes. Keep the content the same. Just stop.

[jackofwind]

I am only going to say they called it "Classic" with a good reason.
Ornyx community manager already said that it's not really "copy-paste patch and be done with it" so I'll let you contemplate on that.
Can't see connection with music band and software system. At least not in the way you are trying to make it.

Ornyx was commenting on them not being able to just deploy patch 1.12 into the current WoW architecture because too much has changed.

They called it Classic because that's been interchangeable with Vanilla forever, and Vanilla is much more colloquial sounding for an official release. They'd never name an official product "Wow: Vanilla".

[Askyl]

Except giving paladins a taunt would still make them a subpar tank. Bosses have taunt immune, and paladins would have to spend too many points itemizing. At end game, they'd need: spirit, mp5, hit, expertise, spell hit, spell power. Warriors need: hit, expertise. Taking a paladin without capping spell hit is a liability for resisted taunts. And they need sustained threat. Their mana pools are bad. So, while you've made paladins more useful, they're still going to be benched for warriors.

Exactly the point, Paladins will be able to finally tank regular dungeons to start with. Add whats needed later. If they change too much, it'll taste pretty bad I think. They might change the balance and class meta too much, even if they don't change a lot.

Raiding might take months until people do BWL, depending on if it's added on release or not. Took months for guilds to start raiding when the game was launched. So there is plenty of time to balance the classes.

Take it slow, give the classes and specs the one true thing they really need to go for super shit to atleast good enough.

"we want vanilla"

but we want class balance , transmog , account mounts , looking for group , name change , server change , dual spec , raid buffs , no buff mats , wow tokens , and new raids


oh wait you got all that.. play the lattest version of the game.. poeple wanted classic for a reason just stop wanting stuff now why not enjoy the old feeling , if you dont like it dont play it?

Did you even play Vanilla WoW? Almost everything in this thread is stuff people wanted BACK in vanilla. We want vanilla, and we want it to develop into something more. Something it could have been. It was the greatest MMO at the time, but it was still short on being one of the greatest games ever released. These changes could make it so, even it's this old.

[Mindark]

Raiding and dungeons were the focus. Many of the specializations were designed specifically around doing their jobs in open world, dungeon, and raids. Ignorance or no, why do you think item sets were designed and made for certain specs that classes had? It wasn't because that is an 'after thought' and 'not a focus'. Raiding was and always has been a focus since the dawn of time in WoW - dungeons as well. Raiding had more than single digit representations, you're thinking of Naxxramas - which rightfully so had almost no reach.

ZG, MC, and BWL? Many casuals made it to those. Poor itemization and the absence of some key abilities (due to TBC being right around the corner) were a key factor in some specs being incomplete but half-way there.

Of course I'm speaking of end game raiding. Most specs were designed for open world and dungeons. Raiding pigeon-holed the classes into a specific role. Specs were not designed around raiding. Raiding was designed with each class (more or less) performing a specific duty. It was a focus for blizzard, yes, but not in the context of specs. There was significantly more flexibility in the open world, pvp, and dungeons.

[Mindark]

Exactly the point, Paladins will be able to finally tank regular dungeons to start with. Add whats needed later. If they change too much, it'll taste pretty bad I think. They might change the balance and class meta too much, even if they don't change a lot.

I was able to tank any non-raid content just fine without those changes. Even to the extent of 3 manning level 60 dungeons (DM) and farming mats in raids (ZG).

[Kilee25]

How is that related to the fact that community's response to balancing the classes in classic is no? You may keep struggling, but you still will be outnumbered and we won't let you destroy the spirit of classic WoW.

You want balanced classes - you have retail for that. Don't attempt to ruin our vanilla with your wants. It is that simple.

It's worth noting that retail has pretty much never been balanced well either. There's always some specs that are wildly stronger than others, and it seems like every time a new tier rolls out, some classes scale ridiculously out of control and have to be tuned down again. Or the set bonuses for the new tier were grossly misjudged and have to be patched repeatedly. It seems to me that either Blizzard sucks at testing and balancing their own game, or it's being done on purpose just to create a constantly-shifting meta, because some analyst somewhere figured out that the game sells more copies when it's not balanced well.

My theory is that there's some game theory floating around that says a truly balanced game is boring and ultimately leads to player dropoff, and I suspect Blizzard has subscribed completely to it.

Balanced game = boring game.

So basically what I'm saying is that I do think the classes can be fixed and/or tuned, and quite easily so. The trick is to do it intelligently, and in a way that makes players both happy and interested in playing for a long time. I imagine that's the tough part.

[Mindark]

I would use my words differently if that's what I meant and I have not.

Those weren't your words...you were quoting Ornyx.

I think that no one sane thinks that they would actually apply 1.12 on current WoW architecture. Reverting everything to a point in time where it can work is much more like it and that's what I meant on.

Why are you claiming Ornyx's words as your own? Twice now.

[Thimagryn]

Because we want to play the original game, because we liked it. I played Vanilla, I've played and raided on numerous private servers, and I, along with lots of others, love the game for exactly what it was. That's what we like to play, what we asked for, and what Blizzard finally said they would re-release.

Some private servers start on a later patch like 1.12, which itself is a convenience over doing a rolling progression from 1.0. No one seems to bat an eye that 'it's not Classic' even though you're getting all the conveniences that never existed in 2004-5. And that is what many purists are still asking for.

I mean, that's not really a hard concept to grasp. People weren't clamouring for Classic + Changes, that wasn't even a conversation until Blizzard announced that they were going to re-release Vanilla.

Yet there were people who clamoured for TBC servers. Again, I refer to Mark Kern's own polls after the petition. TBC request was polled very highly. He even suggested there be a separate TBC server alongside. I don't care either way nor am I asking for TBC servers, but I recognize that there was demand for it and it exists right in the Petition signing community that wanted Legacy WoW.

Classic+ could be an optional server providing (TBC influenced) balance patching, essentially 1.13. No, it's not Vanilla, but that's okay.

[Ielenia]

Because raiding was never a focus and it didn't matter much in that big picture.

If raiding wasn't the focus... what was it? PvP?

[jackofwind]

Yet there were people who clamoured for TBC servers. Again, I refer to Mark Kern's own polls after the petition. TBC request was polled very highly. He even suggested there be a separate TBC server alongside. I don't care either way nor am I asking for TBC servers, but I recognize that there was demand for it and it exists right in the Petition signing community that wanted Legacy WoW.

Classic+ could be an optional server providing TBC balance patching without the expansion content. No, it's not Vanilla, but that's okay.

Yeah, there still are people who want TBC servers. They should get them.

[Askyl]

I don't get it. Do people want like. WoW 1.0 with insane bugs and glitches with useless gameplay? Why would you ever want that?

[PenguinChan]

Of course I'm speaking of end game raiding. Most specs were designed for open world and dungeons. Raiding pigeon-holed the classes into a specific role. Specs were not designed around raiding. Raiding was designed with each class (more or less) performing a specific duty. It was a focus for blizzard, yes, but not in the context of specs. There was significantly more flexibility in the open world, pvp, and dungeons.

Outside of your core group you could afford to run sub-optimal DPS specs. You could run sub-optimal healers, even. Warriors were pretty much the only exception because being nearly one-shot from crush hits isn't something you can seriously play around besides massive over-healing (And that's pretty sub-optimal at the highest level of play).

Paladin tanks are semi-viable with hard dedication in ZG, MC, and the greatest extent BWL. They can't tank every boss, since some will obliterate their faces but it's possible for them to actually tank. Why? Because they were designed to tank - they just don't have the proper itemization to really do it. This is the same for Druids - the clear intent was for them to tank but were barred just as heavily as Paladins because tier sets and proper itemization for their specializations just didn't exist.

Specializations may not be designed around raids solely, or dungeons, or pvp, or open world -- but they had their roles and clearly were meant to do those roles. Blizzard just didn't develop tier gear for the other specializations and epics / rares that would help them along the way. Why? Time, most likely. They figured it out in TBC with the recolors (or lack there-of) of the side-specs thankfully.

It was just unfortunate that the design wasn't implemented until TBC came around. It was clear though, that they wanted other specs to be viable in classic - they just didn't want to put the time into it when fixes were there in TBC.

[Askyl]

If raiding wasn't the focus... what was it? PvP?

Actually, a VERY few % of the actual WoW playerbase raided. Most just lvld up, did dungeons and PvPd.

[Ielenia]

My theory is that there's some game theory floating around that says a truly balanced game is boring and ultimately leads to player dropoff, and I suspect Blizzard has subscribed completely to it.

Balanced game = boring game.

That's only if you consider "balance" to mean "all classes the same". Then yes, it's a boring game. But that's not the case, here. "Balance" is more like "paper-rock-scissor", like one class can dominate the other, but be dominated by another, which in turn is dominated by another, and so on and so forth. (player skill notwithstanding)

[PenguinChan]

Actually, a VERY few % of the actual WoW playerbase raided. Most just lvld up, did dungeons and PvPd.

Very few actually did end-game raiding. A sizable chunk has always done the easier raiding.

[Thimagryn]

I don't get it. Do people want like. WoW 1.0 with insane bugs and glitches with useless gameplay? Why would you ever want that?

No one is clear on what they want. From what I gather it's a mixed bag of opinions, and that's even coming from other threads.

The popular trends seem to be 1.7 at start (Zul'Gurub patch) which is still tough difficulty but stable enough to play; then rolling forward with content. The other one would be 1.12 ala Nost and some other private servers, which is more balanced but not typically 'the Vanilla experience' that was brutally challenging and unforgiving.

As for 1.0, there's also a group wanting that but it's harder to discern since few people asking for no change would go to the lengths of clarifying to start from the very beginning. I don't see many people arguing strongly for 1.0, but that's just my observations.

- - - Updated - - -

If raiding wasn't the focus... what was it? PvP?

WoW was a sandbox. Everyone did their own thing.

Raiding was not the norm, even though all of WoW's focus was put into it. Not everyone raided. Those who did are in the vast minority.

Balance was nothing like it exists in retail and that's because Talents and Specs were undefined. Your character class was the Role. You're a Druid. You're a Shaman. You're a Rogue. There was no real 'right way' to play, and the best thing you had was using a cookie cutter build you found on some enthusiast website.

The end game was whatever you wanted it to be, and you stayed subbed because there was lots to explore or do because everything was soft-gated. It took you months to level up, and to get any progress gear means months of dungeon grinding for some upgrades or trying to level up crafting (nothing like leveling professions today) to make a few items that allowed you to play better. Stats were also all over the place heavily influenced by Diablo 2's stat distribution where a green item could have 2X more of one stat while blues have more stats with less individual value, and purples have the most stats and highest armor. Sometimes you took a Green over a Purple just because you needed to min-max your Spirit for a long fight, or Resist gear for a particular encounter. If anything, you raided to get gear because it looked cool.

The end game wasn't all about gear or raiding. It was more about exploring the game and finding out what 'end game' means to you as an individual player.

[Mindark]

If raiding wasn't the focus... what was it? PvP?

There was no ultimate endgame. It was a lot more open ended than it is now.

edit: in the community

[Swanea]

I can see both sides of the issue. But considering how long ago vanilla was....I don't know if I can recall which patch I was most attached. Having classes being a little more decent for raiding would be nice, but at the same time takes away from the game because balancing those classes would most likely include gear/talent point changes/new abilities added.
To me it was less about some classes/specs being worthless and more about needing the community and grind and time to accomplish things.

[Alienshroom]

Classes are fine. Vanilla is a different game. The specs that are not "viable" are actually just fine. They just have goofy as hell itemization and generally they have many hard to obtain items they need to acquire. Its one of the most unique things about vanilla that was missing even in BC. Classes need left as is.

[Ielenia]

Actually, a VERY few % of the actual WoW playerbase raided. Most just lvld up, did dungeons and PvPd.

Only if you consider end-game, hardcore raiding. Many casually raided.

[Askyl]

Only if you consider end-game, hardcore raiding. Many casually raided.

Can't be bothered to find any source atm, but I was stalking the forums 24/7 and read every blue post you could find. A vast majority didn't raid. I think they said that actually no more than around 15% of the WoW population even were attuned for MC.