Classic servers and access to retired mounts (and mogs)

[Kazuchika]

Surely you aren't arrogant enough to say it shouldn't happen just because that's what YOU want? Because I absolutely wouldn't take you seriously.

I've read enough of your posts to bring me to the conclusion that I couldn't care less if you take me seriously or not. You're just an entitled child.

[HammondQ]

I find absolutely no value in removing content. It's never consistent, and lately it serves more to push people into doing a particular piece of content while it is current more than anything else. I never feel happy when I use one of my many retired mounts and people whisper to me saying "Aww, wish I could still get that Too bad I didn't play back then". It actually makes me feel shitty about using some of my favorite mounts, the Pandaren Phoenixes. I think you need to be a particularly horrible person to enjoy the sadness of people who can't get the thing you're showing off, and that negates any respect I may have for your achievement.

It's even worse for things that were removed randomly, such as ZG and the racial mounts, or things where Blizzard clearly realized removing rewards for that kind of content was a mistake, but kept them removed anyway because they felt guilty they forced players to push themselves to get them, such as the Glory proto-drakes.



I main a Troll... do you think Classic has anything cooler to offer than freaking Zandalar? Sure, I'd level a character to 60 for the right reward, but let's be serious here, BFA is 100 times more promising.

The whole substructure of the game is built around displaying achievements especially exclusive ones. People shouldn’t feel bad for riding exclusive mounts, nor does it make them bad people to be proud of their accomplishments by riding them.
If you follow your line of logic to the end then people should be shamed for wearing server 1st titles. Your whole stance is pretty silly.

[Coconut]

By allowing folks (like yourself) who actually aren't interested in the experience itself, brings an unwanted demographic to the server for no other purpose than to exploit it.

I'm sure the Black Qiraji Battle Tank will have enough people racing for it as it is, that ACTUALLY want to play on Classic servers, with the classic experience. By allowing crossover from standard and live, it would/will taint the experience for those who just want to play.

As I replied to other people above, I am not interested in playing Classic. If Bizzard wants to incentivize people to do it, which I doubt myself that they do, mounts and transmog would be a good way to do it.

However, I believe the same argument used to justify Classic servers, "I want access to retired content, so jump through hoops to make it available for me", can be used for retired vanity items. If we are honest to each other, the mere existence of Classic servers makes it a lot harder to justify why I and others can't have access to old mounts that were mostly randomly removed from the game.

As you should have noticed, I did not bring up the Black Qiraji Battle Tank because that is an exceedingly special case*. Even though the vast majority of players owning it in Standard got it by realm transfers after Vanilla was over, which means they should probably STFU about their rights to feel special.

Things like the original epic mounts and the Zulian tiger and raptor were never removed to preserved the integrity of a challenge though, they simply vanished due to the changing nature of the game, so I am just as entitled to ask for their return as people are to ask for Classic servers.

*Though, since you mentioned it, a nicely armored version of this beauty would be a very cool reward for whatever event is going to take place in Silithus in the upcoming patch...

Those mounts are gone. So is my black proto drake that you will never have. Do you also want my exclusive s6 and s9 gladiator mounts? What about my Immortal title?

I never said anything about gladiator mounts, so don't tie your panties in a knot, tick. Not that I respect WoW PvP in the slightest, but the nature of those mounts was crystal clear from the start and remained fairly consistent, so I can live with it as long as they don't flush entirely unique models down that dirty drain pipe.

I've read enough of your posts to bring me to the conclusion that I couldn't care less if you take me seriously or not. You're just an entitled child.

A very mature argument indeed. You showed me.

The whole substructure of the game is built around displaying achievements especially exclusive ones. People shouldn’t feel bad for riding exclusive mounts, nor does it make them bad people to be proud of their accomplishments by riding them.
If you follow your line of logic to the end then people should be shamed for wearing server 1st titles. Your whole stance is pretty silly.

I consider the social aspect of the game a lot more important (achievements weren't even available to display in Classic, so it's a bit of a stretch to even bring that up in the larger context of this discussion). I get a lot more satisfaction helping a friend earn a reward than telling a stranger they can't get my stuff.

The current system puts me in a position where I have to tell my friends they can't have my stuff, so I feel guilty showing it off in front of them, because I know they pine for it.

[A dot Ham]

As you should have noticed, I did not bring up the Black Qiraji Battle Tank because that is an exceedingly special case*. Even though the vast majority of players owning it in Standard got it by realm transfers after Vanilla was over, which means they should probably STFU about their rights to feel special.

Things like the original epic mounts and the Zulian tiger and raptor were never removed to preserved the integrity of a challenge though, they simply vanished due to the changing nature of the game, so I am just as entitled to ask for their return as people are to ask for Classic servers.

I suppose you are, coupling that request with that particular feature though would detract from its purpose.

As far as the Black Qiraji battle tank I'm in favor of removing from people who transferred to get it, or from the DKs that got it, via an exploit.

[RayenDark]

If they won't allow mounts/mog to be added to your "Main" ie Retail account-no point for me to play classic. The main game (for me at least) is Retail. Not gonna waste time on classic servers if my main does't get anything out of it.

[Coconut]

I suppose you are, coupling that request with that particular feature though would detract from its purpose.

Thank you for the honest answer. I would prefer the game modes to stay separate as well, so I'd go with a way to add them back to Standard (ZG timewalking, rep vendors, etc). I don't think Blizzard would purposely push people on Classic servers, but then again the raids are 40 man and take a while to gear for. If the vocal Legacy community isn't as serious as it claimed to be about paying and playing on official Classic realm, they may have to push people in there just to have a normal raiding cycle.

[Teri]

Keep it seperate please, many people will roll need for transmog and be a dick taking other people's loot, in 1 hour dungeons....

[Ozyorkbourne]

I find absolutely no value in removing content. It's never consistent, and lately it serves more to push people into doing a particular piece of content while it is current more than anything else. I never feel happy when I use one of my many retired mounts and people whisper to me saying "Aww, wish I could still get that Too bad I didn't play back then". It actually makes me feel shitty about using some of my favorite mounts, the Pandaren Phoenixes. I think you need to be a particularly horrible person to enjoy the sadness of people who can't get the thing you're showing off, and that negates any respect I may have for your achievement.

It's even worse for things that were removed randomly, such as ZG and the racial mounts, or things where Blizzard clearly realized removing rewards for that kind of content was a mistake, but kept them removed anyway because they felt guilty they forced players to push themselves to get them, such as the Glory proto-drakes.



I main a Troll... do you think Classic has anything cooler to offer than freaking Zandalar? Sure, I'd level a character to 60 for the right reward, but let's be serious here, BFA is 100 times more promising.

For what it's worth, I don't have much that's been removed in regards to vanilla transmog or special mounts outside of challenge mode stuff. To remove something that is a reward for completing an objective in a time frame (phoenix mounts from MoP) is entirely logical. You're mistaking pride and pleasure in ones limited accomplishment with the misery of people who don't.

I don't think anyone who says "Aww, wish I could still get that Too bad I didn't play back then" is lying awake at night because of it. You haven't ruined their day. Put it in to perspective. You have something that is essentially limited edition in a video game that outside of your personal joy, doesn't mean much, so let someone who's accomploshed something enjoy it without demeaning it because you think they're being a cunt for using it. There's absolutely no harm in it, as they're a sign of prestige. I know that when I use a title or something that can't be used, i'm not looking for whispers. I use it because I like it, because i'm playing my character and I like having that thing.

[Coconut]

For what it's worth, I don't have much that's been removed in regards to vanilla transmog or special mounts outside of challenge mode stuff. To remove something that is a reward for completing an objective in a time frame (phoenix mounts from MoP) is entirely logical. You're mistaking pride and pleasure in ones limited accomplishment with the misery of people who don't.

I don't think anyone who says "Aww, wish I could still get that Too bad I didn't play back then" is lying awake at night because of it. You haven't ruined their day. Put it in to perspective. You have something that is essentially limited edition in a video game that outside of your personal joy, doesn't mean much, so let someone who's accomploshed something enjoy it without demeaning it because you think they're being a cunt for using it. There's absolutely no harm in it, as they're a sign of prestige. I know that when I use a title or something that can't be used, i'm not looking for whispers. I use it because I like it, because i'm playing my character and I like having that thing.

I'll give you a counter-example of prestige that I believe actually works. Now, I'm more of a casual/collector, but many of my friends are high end raiders, so I have a certain degree of access to that sort of stuff. Back in MoP, before the mergers, my server was almost dead Horde-side, I believe the best guilds didn't even manage to finish ToT on Normal, but I really liked that raid, so very soon after ToT opened to cross-server groups, over the course of a month or so, I got taken on Glory runs (all the achievements + a full Heroic clear) and got the Armored Skyscreamer, the ultimate Troll mount at the time. I even learned to do the Ji'kun achievement, which few ppl knew how to do at the time, and did it for some other friends later (though they still couldn't clear Heroic until later on).

For all of the 14 months of SoO, I was the only Horde on my server with that mount. I believe some alliance players from a Heroic guild also had it, but they were rarely using it, so basically for more than a year pretty much the only person on my realm (and later the connected RPPvP realms, which were also low pop and shitty at PvE) with that mount was me. Even in early WoD, that mount was very rare. I absolutely love that mount, and I still use it to this day on my main. I like using it more than the Pandaren Phoenixes, even though they are unobtainable, even though I participated a hell of a lot more in earning them.

Do I mind that this mount is now easy to get? Hell NO. Because that year and a half, maybe more, when I barely saw anyone else with this mount, when ownership statistics for it on Guildox was around 0.5%, was plenty of prestige for me. And nobody's going to take that experience, that feeling, away from me.

People tend to ignore that earning a prestigious reward early means they get to show it off for many months, even years, before other people start having access to it. They act like all that time is worth nothing. They want it to stay rare forever, or it's worth nothing to them. But in reality, those months are worth a lot, especially if you like the mount and you don't only use it for bragging rights.

And they work very well with the natural progression of the game, because there will always be a set of "latest cool mounts nobody else has". I believe players should keep riding the wave if they want to keep feeling prestigious. They should keep showing off the latest Glory mount, or the latest Mythic mount, since Glory is easier nowadays. If Blizzard were to make these mounts exclusive, they would actually discourage people from taking part in challenging content, because they can always pull out a musty old relic from 3 expansions ago and still trigger the envy of the crowd.

The current system is much better. Now I went back to looking like a scrub on my beloved Skyscremer. I'm simply using it because I like it, and because of the good memories. But that content has gone full circle: from the cutting edge players, to well-connected raiders, to achievement hunters, to casuals who only care about looks. It served its initial purpose, but in the end reached enough players to be worth the development time - exactly how it should be.

Blizzard realized very quickly that retiring Glory and Heroic mounts was a mistake. People would have complained, and rightly so, that the money earned from their millions of subs goes into creating the coolest content for the 0.1% to rub in their faces in front of the AH. This way they have no reason to complain. They have to wait like 3 years before they can access that content, but they can't complain.

The Black and Plagued proto-drakes are an anomaly that should have been fixed, but Blizzard didn't want to do it in WotLK because they told they would be removed and many strained themselves to get them... had they done it immediately, there would have been a backlash. And after a while it became so late that adding them back would have been basically like immediately handing them for free. So they didn't do it. But if an opportunity arises, such as Legacy WotLK servers, or Naxxramas timewalking, they should definitely make a comeback.

The removed rewards from the latest expansions feel more like a hook to force people to play through it. That's why some of them were added in a content lull rather than shipping with the raid. It's a marketing tool, not a reward for skill, and it's getting old. There's only so many sets of exclusive weapons and armors you're going to care about... only so many mounts, even for a mount collector. I'll get the curve raven because I can easily get a carry, but I already resigned myself to losing most of the Prestige unicorns and toys if they get removed, because that grind is way too much for me. I get a lot more joy from playing content I'm not being pushed into by an artificial deadline.

[khazmodan]

If they won't allow mounts/mog to be added to your "Main" ie Retail account-no point for me to play classic. The main game (for me at least) is Retail. Not gonna waste time on classic servers if my main does't get anything out of it.

the millions that have been wanting some legacy server option do NOT give a crap about the mounts being carried over, they just want to have the same feeling of adventure and community that there was back before the current developers got a god complex and started ignoring what players really wanted. A good example of this is the scenarios coming back in the next expansion.....what players were saying "oh i hope they bring back scenarios because they were such fun"?. it was a stupid idea that made the players even more apathetic than they have been since the addition of LFR/LFG and procedural generation is not going to fix that.

[Marrilaife]

If they won't allow mounts/mog to be added to your "Main" ie Retail account-no point for me to play classic. The main game (for me at least) is Retail. Not gonna waste time on classic servers if my main does't get anything out of it.

That's the whole point, people wanted vanilla servers because vanilla was supposedly "better experience" and they should play it for that, not for some extra incentives to expand their retail collection with some "old school prestige" stuff even if it's green dagger from deadmines. If the only purpose of "vanilla server" is to produce another bunch of scarab lords, then I wish they never really bothered with it. As soon as "forbidden fruit" becomes accessible, people grab what they needed for their collections, it will become a deserted place. Which means, all the effort that went into recreating vanilla was for naught. Now I really hope there's enough of true vanilla fans and not only people who want "incentives" to play there.

[TheWorkingTitle]

There should be absolutely no connection between the different era of servers. Whatever you earn in Classic is tied completely and singularly to Classic. Nothing carries over to BfA.

[Camthur]

Would make zero sense to share. Much of the transmog and mounts we have are acquired through either stomping through trivial content with leveled characters or from just buying off AH with pools of gold modern WoW throws at us. It wouldn't be much of an accomplishment to show that stuff off in Classic WoW. If there was any sharing at all, I'd it would be one way where they added the stuff you earned in Classic to your account to use in normal WoW. (I don't really see that happening either though)

[volescue]

The way I picture it, live and classic will be shared. In classic you cannot use the mounts you have in live, but unlocking a item that was made unobtainable in the past does grant it as a transmo option in live (with transmo being absent in classic). The same would go for mounts, pets...

I may add that I believe this way because people will need motivation to play classic and Blizzard knows this. One may argue we got spoiled with achievements but it is what it is.
Getting to level 60, for example, could unlock an achievement for the live counterpart. Same goes for clearing AQ or MC. People seldom raid as it is, I cannot imagine seeing 40 people banding together when even putting 10 in the same raid can prove hard.

If your main reason to play classic is because you want to get xmogs, you probably won't be staying long, and I think Blizzard is aware of that. Plus, they specifically said one of the reasons they aren't allowing the new race sets to be shared with your other characters is so you don't feel a need to roll a new character just to unlock that xmog for your other characters. I really don't see them suddenly doing a 180 on that for classic, which takes significantly longer to get to cap then current retail.

[Lord Pebbleton]

If your main reason to play classic is because you want to get xmogs, you probably won't be staying long, and I think Blizzard is aware of that. Plus, they specifically said one of the reasons they aren't allowing the new race sets to be shared with your other characters is so you don't feel a need to roll a new character just to unlock that xmog for your other characters. I really don't see them suddenly doing a 180 on that for classic, which takes significantly longer to get to cap then current retail.

Fair point on them not wanting to "force" completionists to roll on a classic server. But if so I'm left wondering what is going to keep the average player engaged in classic if the rewards aren't adequate. If forums are anything to go by, the average player complains for virtually anything, and vanilla was full of obstacles and void of comfort.

[Daedius]

I got a sneaking suspicion that Classic will be F2P, and aside from Social UI Battle.net interfaces it'll be completely separate from regular WoW.

Plus, there's the lingering fact that mounts back then weren't "LEARNT"... you used the mount item itself.

[TriHard]

Why do people think classic and live are going to be connected in any way aside from possibly your live subscription granting you access to the classic server?

Pretty comical how you claim people who want some exclusivity are "edgy" though. 10/10 that'll surely get people to take you seriously.

Because they said it would be a SERVER OPTION, meaning it's not a standalone game, it's a server option you choose in the server list.
Just like Everquest had for their servers.

[Marrilaife]

But if so I'm left wondering what is going to keep the average player engaged in classic if the rewards aren't adequate.

It's not supposed to be for "average player", it's supposed to be for all these die hard vanilla fans who claimed Nostalrius' population was keeping steady while retail population kept dropping. The appeal of vanilla is to play vanilla. If "average player" sees no appeal in it, then it's not for them. I know I won't play vanilla, all I remember was long slog borefest, but what do I know, right? Some people say vanilla was amazing and they petitioned for these vanilla servers. Now they're finally getting them.

Plus, they specifically said one of the reasons they aren't allowing the new race sets to be shared with your other characters is so you don't feel a need to roll a new character just to unlock that xmog for your other characters.

Which is quite silly since several things in the game already incentivized making throwaway characters, for example achievements to get all professions maxed, all class campaigns done or collecting all the pets / toys tied to class mount questline. Someone might have had no interest in playing a monk or a demon hunter, but they had to if they wanted mini red tiger pet or illidan pepe toy. The latter one being a prime example of something you can use on a different character (your main) but needs to be obtained on a specific class as it's BOP (some toys require let's say rogue to pick pocket them but are boe so can be bought from AH).

Thing is, vanilla had no transmog, no achievements, no mount tab and so forth, how does it even make sense that obtaining something in vanilla "unlocks" stuff in achievements / collections while they don't even exist over there? It doesn't sound like vanilla at all.

[Coconut]

Thing is, vanilla had no transmog, no achievements, no mount tab and so forth, how does it even make sense that obtaining something in vanilla "unlocks" stuff in achievements / collections while they don't even exist over there? It doesn't sound like vanilla at all.

These mounts and transmogs shouldn't come from a Vanilla crossover. Rather, with the release of Classic servers they should be added back to Standard as well. Since they are adding Zul Gurub and Naxx 40 to that format, they can add them as timewalking events as well, with stuff like the ZG mounts and T3 set pieces dropping there (or being available for currency that drops in these TW raids).

The original epic mounts can simply be added to racial vendors for an adjusted price, like 10k or more. Kodos received a graphic update, horses are getting one in BFA, and the rest will probably follow, so they will be worth it.

[arcaneshot]

If we were meant to get them back Blizzard would give them back on live. As is, we're not getting them back.