How did it come to this?

[Feel The Power]

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.

NOTHING stops anyone from doing that now...the things you listed are literally the core things anyone and everyone does. Perhaps the worst argument about why Vanilla was so good that I ever saw.

[arboachg]

Remember the prenerf C'thun video DnT released? I sure do. Remember all the other broken things in the game? Obviously the whole 100 vocal purists don't.

Go ahead and fix obvious bugs like that and what not, but leave it at that.

- - - Updated - - -

Absolutely. Spend an hour on the Ironforge bridge shouting 'LF tank UBRS', warlock quit earlier so get on the bird to Thorium Point, ride heroically to BRM, someone in the group can't find the dungeon entrance, tank has to leave, go back to IF to find a replacement, finally get group together, no-one's completed the Seal of Ascension quest, log off. Good times!

Yep, it is! If you don't want to deal with that, you've long since moved on from vanilla (or never actually played it in the first place)!

[Pantalaimon]

Can you not also do that on the live game though?

This was my first thought too lol

[Heladys]

You can still have a classic wow experience with changes in the game, i know this concept is very hard for people to grasp.

No, you cannot. Not outside of things like fixing crashes and lag, because while those were part of the vanilla experience they weren't really the "game" experience.

But stuff like enhance flightpoints? No. Class balance? No. Things worked they way they did, and playing well enough to overcome disadvantages or prove the capability of an under-respected spec so long as you geared it just right was part of the scene. Dual-spec? Fuck no. Commitment to your spec and the skill that came with it was a big god damned deal. Sure people could respec but it quickly got prohibitively expensive, which brings us to gold balances and the economy: Short of investing heavy time into farming specific tricks before blizz could nerf them, the only way you made money was by profiting off others in the auction house, which carried murderous deposits and holdbacks compared to now.

All. Those. Things. They make the experience. You needed to work weeks to get that one piece of gear, and then you needed to work very hard to drum up enough cash to get it enchanted properly. Maybe after a few months without guild support you had yourself reasonably-enough geared to try to join a pug for a raid, if your guild wasn't progressed enough to go together.

And then you started encountering the real joys of repair costs following learning wipefests.

So no, you do not get the vanilla experience with *any* of the quality-of-life or balance "improvements" people are requesting. You may well be asking for a better resultant game, Blizzard would agree that's why they made all these changes.

But that's NOT what people bitched and moaned and spammed for years to get.

[BananaHandsB]

Except you literally can't because then it becomes a different game

It will never be the same game. The community has changed. The addon community has evolved (and this will show in the mods available for classic). The game will never be the same it ever was no matter how much they try.

[thealmightymoo]

a lot of people who wanted it will go on, play it for 15 mins then think:

"man, this is shit..."

just sayin...

[Drobu]

Any community input should be 6-12 months after launch and you have to have a level 60 to vote.

[Sticky]

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.

Can someone please answer me why all of these are impossible in WoW's current form?

[Daffan]

All of them were vanilla. Which is why Blizz can provide an accurate vanilla experience by rolling them out in a similar fashion. It worked fine then.. will work fine now.

It worked 'fine' then because nobody knew stuff like we do now on private servers.

Inb4 undertuned garbage dies in 2 weeks. Love Vanilla, but know it gonna be funny difficulty. It'l be "waiting for Naxx" again, just like last 5 yrs of private.

[Pantalaimon]

It will never be the same game. The community has changed. The addon community has evolved (and this will show in the mods available for classic). The game will never be the same it ever was no matter how much they try.

Exactly. I mean even look at questing. People already created guides for the most efficient questing paths when leveling up in vanilla content long before we reached the sad cataclysm quest revamp, and sites like good old Thotbot and other fan services pointed out where quest items are. So even the strength of leveling in vanilla isn't surprising or unknown anymore, like it was the first time around.

[Deficineiron]

That's like buying an Old Timer Car, but then go out of your way installing electric windows, parking sensors, slik sport tires, remote lock.
Yes it is still a car, and yes you can still drive it, but it's not really an Old Time rnow is it.

well no one is saying you are getting an actual authentic old car - you are paying for the experience of owning one, not for ownership or even just use of the original car itself (which would be a rather more clear promise), No matter what is changed, if it 'feels classic' then they are delivering the classic game experience, as promised. Those terms didn't start appearing out of the blue by accident.

the car is a particularly apt analogy because the car you describe is a sort of Frankenstein - skeleton of old car, guts of newer stuff cobbled together from who knows where. That is one possible scenario of what we get with wow - classic facade with modern everything else.

[Popthehood]

Yung Frosty said it best +1

[Deficineiron]

No, you cannot. Not outside of things like fixing crashes and lag, because while those were part of the vanilla experience they weren't really the "game" experience.

But stuff like enhance flightpoints? No. Class balance? No. Things worked they way they did, and playing well enough to overcome disadvantages or prove the capability of an under-respected spec so long as you geared it just right was part of the scene. Dual-spec? Fuck no. Commitment to your spec and the skill that came with it was a big god damned deal. Sure people could respec but it quickly got prohibitively expensive, which brings us to gold balances and the economy: Short of investing heavy time into farming specific tricks before blizz could nerf them, the only way you made money was by profiting off others in the auction house, which carried murderous deposits and holdbacks compared to now.

All. Those. Things. They make the experience. You needed to work weeks to get that one piece of gear, and then you needed to work very hard to drum up enough cash to get it enchanted properly. Maybe after a few months without guild support you had yourself reasonably-enough geared to try to join a pug for a raid, if your guild wasn't progressed enough to go together.

And then you started encountering the real joys of repair costs following learning wipefests.

So no, you do not get the vanilla experience with *any* of the quality-of-life or balance "improvements" people are requesting. You may well be asking for a better resultant game, Blizzard would agree that's why they made all these changes.

But that's NOT what people bitched and moaned and spammed for years to get.

problem is not a poster here using blizzard phrases to define 'the classic experience' but blizzard itself - this 'feels classic' word game started with them from multiple blues out of the blue, so obviously the memo went around to emphasize it and keep the classic community quiescent.

Given that blizz is orchestrating use of those types of phrases, I don't think 'why' is really in question. "How much/How bad' is the key issue and it may take a while to sort out just how much they want to change for real.

I suspect they would like to find a way to get the classes/specs the way they were functionally in 2.x or 3.x into the classic version, and honestly that makes a lot of sense from a developer view - they are still familiar to even more players than just classic most likely, and it would address some perceived issues/shortcomings in classic, if they stop there and don't go on improving them, maybe make it bring the player not the class, etc.

When it is all over and released, blizzard will be able to 100% claim to have provided a classic gaming experience without regard to how much they have changed from the actual classic game.

[Echocho]

Any community input should be 6-12 months after launch and you have to have a level 60 to vote.

So they should give people a crappy experience for a year just to cater to a few backwards private serveteers?? No do a proper beta/PTR, gather feedback and launch a Blizzard quality game right from the start.

[Devilyaki]

Only change that should happened and I am pretty sure it will is server stability. The old servers are all phased out and replaced by now so the random disconnects and alike won’t be happening with this version of vanilla.

[Dxbsniper]

So they should give people a crappy experience for a year just to cater to a few backwards private serveteers?? No do a proper beta/PTR, gather feedback and launch a Blizzard quality game right from the start.

i doubt all the private server people are willing to pay a subscription honestly after all this time of paying for free. all this whining and shitposting is just honestly frustrating its like talking to a wall or like talking with someone with wax in their ears. yes we want to preserve the spirit to vanilla. No fixing some bugs and unfinished class specs will not ruin the game for you unless you want only warriors rogues mages, and priests to be playing the game only. no adding a graphics toggle wont lead to LFR. No adding a color blind option wont lead to LFR( some one actually argued this in /r/classicwow) Yes some features can improve the game such as adding meeting stone summons( 3 people still have to run to the instance out of 5) No we dont want LFR No we dont want group finder No we dont want cheap mounts no we dont want transmog. People make it seem that its 100% purists vs LFR people THAT IS NOT THE CASE. alot of people just want Some TINY changes it wont lead to LFR for Thralls sake. anyways im looking forward to the launch. my stance is launch with minor minor fixes(autoloot toggle without pressing shiftfor example minor stuff but im against against any gold price changes for mounts or skill, you should be poor it will control the ingame currency and prevent inflation of AH prices atleast in the beggining, and they should add more gold sinks in the future to prevent people for charging gold for stuff worth a few silve) then at 60 let people who are level 60 vote and let PVPers above a certain rank at 60 vote on stuff like in OSRS thats it