Classic must be tuned higher than it was in 2004

[Nitros14]

As much as I might like the content tuned up, I'm perfectly willing to accept it exactly as it was. Vanilla is vanilla after all.

[Deleted]

With 13 years of advancement, knowledge, tactics and expertise, the Vanilla of 2004 would be far too easy for the playerbase today. Therefore to recreate that experience, world, dungeon and raid enemies must be tuned much higher to account for these factors. Otherwise all the content will be steamrolled very quickly and it'd defeat the purpose of the project.

I don't believe anything should be changed, but it's hilarious to think it WONT BE EASIER compared to 14 years ago.

I sure as hell don't hope you guys go to work thinking "yo I wont get better at this shit within the next couple of years, sorry boss I'll continue to be useless as fuck".

[op3l]

No it doesn't.

Even with the correct gear, requiring 40 people to do the right sequence is still hard. Couple with that it's hard to actually run dungeons(LF1M Mage Scholomance) to get the required items, it'll be fine.

What's the point of bringing back a classic server if they're going to change everything about it?

[Deleted]

You're misguided. People aren't "better" now than hey were.

Oh they most definitely are.

Not even close

[Thetruth1400]

No it won't be.
Main reason is that gear is not as easy obtainable like today. Additionally building dungeon groups take more efforts, dungeons take much longer to complete.
Mobs will run away in dungeons and add more groups in uncoordinated groups. Raidsize is bigger, gearing up more people and coordinate everything will be much harder for most casual players. Additionally many encounters at a later stage were just gearchecks. You won't compensate because you already completed this content more than 12 years ago.
Yes there will be a few people that will steamrush things. But those people will spend much more time to prepare for raids than they would need in retail and will be online 24/7 to achieve that.

Exactly.

Not only that but specs and gear weren't exactly optimized, that's not going to change with knowledge. Sure, you might now "don't stand in X" but that doesn't matter when you're hunched over in the corner crying because your OOM and wand auto attacking like a madman while you wait for your mana to come back.
Likewise, you need to go out and farm resist gear for different areas / fights, so again, a grind not just "Let me pop over to the free gear vendor, toss him a little gold or do his repeatable quests until he gives me gear." like today.

[Deleted]

No matter what you think of the guy today or in the past...he was there, he main tanked and I found the blog on manaflask about the times they raided the place very interesting (as somebody who did not get far in Naxx with his guild). So....if you are in a position to judge - I would be interested if you debunked the points he made, instead of personal attacks.

Kinda would help the topic, too

What he was, was a very very very small part of the population that played vanilla. His individual viewpoints, as interesting as they are, arent really applicaple for the far majority of the population and ad such should not be taken into account when discussing the best future for the vanilla servers.

Besides that his viewpoints of late are mostly salty and elitist with the crowd he is going with these days

[Alithia]

I don't get it when people say gear was difficult to get in Vanilla.

Here is my little story: I had the record for epics on my server as a warlock when MC started. I had 8% with, the Scarlet Monastery head, craftable cloak and eversthing you could get at that time. People knew me for my "crit gear". So we got a new warlock who "Only" had gear from dungeons, no epics of course.

He had double the DPS that I had. When I had 500 spelldamage and my cool 8% crit (don't remember the exact numbers) he had 1000 spell (shadow) damage from stuff like the red hat in Strath, staff from DM, bracers from LBRS, everything that had spellpower on it. THis was a shock for me and a lesson that easy-to-get items were far superioir than even T2.

Same for our best rogue, who stacked attack power and used craftable stuff from the dinosaurs in Un'goro.

Long story short: Gear is easily attainable if you know what you are looking for,.

[Akka]

4 days has seemed to be quite common speed leveling time, granted that is on a server that didn't just open up.

4 days of /played (which is definitely not 4 days where you were playing) is a pretty mad dash for 60. That's speedleveling of the highest order.

[Spicymemer]

Vanilla wasnt played for its difficulty.

When WoW went live, it was a revolutionary.
It was the strongest mmo on the market by far, there was almost no choice for a newcomer.
This was because of the players ability to set their own goals and then socialize with other people to get to those goals.

For these reasons, i side with the Vanilla+ people, i played vanilla, it was good, not as good as TBC and while WotLK ushered in 'neo-wow' it wasnt as good as WotLK either.
Blizzard really should bring a 'Vanilla as it was' server to life because the people that fought for it, should get exactly what they asked for.
But they really should try a Vanilla+ where its very much Vanilla but with all the UI/Graphics/Engine improvements, balance classes to be 'viable' but still not mainstream, bosses become more challenging with new mechanics and slightly less emphasis on resists, changing redundant loot, Functional premade group finder, basically Vanilla in a TBC model with MoP/WoD/Legion graphics and UI.

[Akka]

This is why we need all four difficulty modes from live all the way from LFR to Mythic.

/facepalm
Get out.

[Akka]

They conveniently forget that by AQ and Naxx release, MC and ZG were already the source for a lot of welfare epics. Most level 60 players were fully decked out in purples by 2006.

Most level 60 players didn't even raid.

[Deleted]

like when you would decurse a player before they stood on the correct marker in MC and ended up wiping the raid?

did
you
even
play
back
then

or are you talking out of your butt

i sure don't remember any addons like decursive waiting until a player reached the correct marker or reached a certain distance from the raid so they would not explode taking out half the raid with them

but what would i know i was only a dps during vanilla not a healer i assume you were healing in MC 13 years ago?

Decursive was still an over the top powerfull addon there is absolutely no denying it. The fact that 1 boss in MC required ppl to look before pressing the decursive button doesnt change that.

Your post seems to say that because of Garr addons in vanilla wherent very good.

You seem to be talking out of your butt

- - - Updated - - -

They conveniently forget that by AQ and Naxx release, MC and ZG were already the source for a lot of welfare epics. Most level 60 players were fully decked out in purples by 2006.

What the shit did you smoke?

[Spicymemer]

What the shit did you smoke?

By players he probably means raiders and hes not entirely wrong.
Yes there were blues that we're 'perfectly itemised' that were amazing until AQ/Naxx era.

[Deleted]

By players he probably means raiders and hes not entirely wrong.
Yes there were blues that we're 'perfectly itemised' that were amazing until AQ/Naxx era.

There where tonnes of BiS items that where not epic quality until at least halfway through AQ40 but thats besides the point.

A very small part of the community raided enough to get fully decked out in purples.

"yeah well by players he means the top 1% of elite players" then he should have said so. His post is either extremely misleading or incredibly stupid

[Deleted]

No you get to a strength level and stay there, never growing.

I'm sorry but you're so naive and clueless.

Even if we haven't progressively gotten better at the game (lol jk, look at mechanics of mythic encounters today compared to Vanilla), every raid mechanic has been used a thousand times over. Even Thaddius with a quite unique mechanic has been reused by Maiden in TOS, and the mechanic is only half the fight, where as it was 100% of the fight back then.

None of the Vanilla mechanics are unique or special, we've seen them reused time and time again.

Oh, so it's a numbers game? Well if you actually raided Vanilla, how many people in your raid used tier sets? The vast majority most likely, despite it being significantly worse for loads of classes/specs. People just used the tier because it gave a nifty bonus and it looked cool - We didn't have transmog back then, so fitting pieces was a priority for a lot of people. The tier bonuses aren't even remotely close to what we have today - Today they are so strong you might even consider downscaling gear to get them. Even if it wasn't for the looks, people just didn't know better, so surely aiming for 8/8 couldn't be that bad, right? - There wasn't as much widespread information back then about every class and spec. These days you have easy-to-access discord servers where everything is pinned in a FAQ so you instantly know how to play on your shitty alt.

With simcraft, askmrrobot and whatnot, your DPS will be significantly higher.

Denying that we haven't improved in any way when we join the Classic servers compared to 14 years ago is just being naive at best.

[Deleted]

Fair enough...yet he was a major part among the very few guilds that cleared Naxx. So I think his insight is still applicable, especially when it comes to difficulty. I mean...it is an interesting point that OP makes: Does our experience make us steamroll the raids? Especially if suddenly addons are allowed. What if people get the wish of class "balance". Dual specc, bug fixes, remove DoT limit?

Honestly we could only find out if vanilla was released exactly like Vanilla was (patch number aside) - and disallow also all addons that didn't exist back then

The difficulty of vanilla PvE is(as many people have said) going to be gathering 40 semi geared ppl to start clearing the trash raids. The only actual difficult raid is Naxx 40 which is most likely years away at this point. No amount of new addons is going to make or break if a raid can clear the raids. You either have the ppl and you steamroll it or you dont and you give up quickly.


I remember my first MC experience with what turned out to be server 2nd guild in vanilla. The first time we went to MC we had a few people with experience from ragnaros and we literally steamrolled the entire raid. Everyone was so suprised because we expected it to be much harder, but in reality it wasnt a big step up from UBRS.

[Deleted]

There wasn't as much widespread information back then about every class and spec. These days you have easy-to-access discord servers where everything is pinned in a FAQ so you instantly know how to play on your shitty alt.

Yea, dark times. No wowdb, mmo-champion, forums didn't existed, people didn't exchanged opinions... well they did but we had to use oldschool mail with postman and all that shit, because there was no internet and it took days to receive reply for question about talents.

From where comes this delusional assumption that people were total noobs back then? Yea, some of them were but it's not any different than it is now. No information? Information was always out there. There were always people who min/maxed, dig through every forum, every combat log etc.

[Hottage]

So here's my question then. If they choose to go the Private Server route and stagger content, but release 1.12 as far as mechanics, balancing, gearing etc. What do they do? Original MC progression wasn't done with 1.12 talents and changes, those changes undeniably make older encounters easier (as they weren't tuned for them).

Would a more classic experience involve a Rag tuned to factor those things in? Or just a Rag who gets walked over? I personally think that would be underwhelming and more dramatically...an injustice to his memory.

That wouldn't be the classic experience.

If anything I expect either:

• emulated progressive patches starting at 1.0.
• everything unlocked at the start (essentially like everyone rerolled on a new server at patch 1.12.2

[Tharkkun]

As much as I dislike Kungen, I must admit that he has a great point here and is not wrong.

He's so delusional. 99% of doing those harder raids was either resists, or gear. Raids had a hard skillcap on gear. You needed +spell hit/hit gear from previous raids and naxxramas or guilds wouldn't even accept you into their raid team.

The next challenge was finding 39 other raiders with internet connections that could stay online during fights. Then finding competent players which were few and far between. The skill level of most raiders was terrible.

Then you had tradeskills an consumables which were ridiculous. Most players had something like 18 different buffs between elixirs, multiple food buffs and a flask for each fight. Finding people who enjoyed farming this for 50+ wipes a night is rare.

The final thing that negates his argument is that his guild disbanded because they couldn't cut it in newer expansions with harder content. If it was so easy why did they throw in the towel after being smoked on the world 1st races or being forced to exploit?

I was an amazing tank back then at my young age but I'm not as sharp as I used to be. I was in a guild with friends and some were really bad players but we managed to kill 3 bosses in Naxx 40. I could've ditched them but I chose not to.

[RapBreon]

That wouldn't be the classic experience.

If anything I expect either:

• emulated progressive patches starting at 1.0.
• everything unlocked at the start (essentially like everyone rerolled on a new server at patch 1.12.2

I highly doubt that last one. That's a quick way to cull the life-span of the project. If they go that route they're denying a large portion of the playerbase a 'classic experience' either way. There is no actual option present that will give a pure replication of 2 contiguous years of experience (as this was multiple over a period of time). Thus, we ask, what is the best way of capturing that experience?

1.0 is the best option, but the most work. 1.12 release with staggered content is the leading theory (I.e. Private server), which needs consideration in terms of earlier content (lots of 'soft catch up mechanics').

EDIT: I think an easier way of saying it is; a person who does MC in 1.0 does not have the same experience as in 1.12. So whose experience wins? They're mutually exclusive in this scenario.