Upcoming PTR for Chains of Domination

The Future of World Buffs in Classic Era
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Hey everybody!

We know that there’s a lot of excitement for Burning Crusade Classic, but we haven’t forgotten about the Classic Era servers. One of the defining features of raiding in Classic has certainly been the prevalence of world buff stacking, and while there are some interesting social effects – coordinating turn-ins, leveling alts, world PvP at buff locations, there’s also an obvious negative element – once you’re buffed, you’re incentivized to log off and stop playing to preserve your buffs. If you want to log off to go make dinner or put your kids to bed, that’s completely fine and the timing works in your favor. But if you still want to repair your gear, shop for consumables, or run a dungeon with your friends, then it’s not great to be losing precious minutes on your buffs, or worse, risk dying and losing them entirely. We’ve been wanting to do something about that side-effect, without completely abandoning our philosophy for WoW Classic, so we’re going to try something new in Patch 1.13.7: The Chronoboon Displacer.

What is it?

The Chronoboon Displacer is an item you buy which takes a snapshot of your world buffs, such as Rallying Cry of Dragonslayer, Songflower, etc. and saves them for use at a later time. Of course we don’t want to change things too radically, so it comes with some significant restrictions: While you are under the effects of the Chronoboon Displacer, you can’t benefit from any of the world buffs that it’s holding for you. That keeps you from getting a second set of buffs, and then still feeling like you need to log off. Also, when you release the buffs from the Chronoboon Displacer, it puts the item on a 1 hour cooldown so that you can’t toggle your buffs on for bosses and off for the rest of the raid.

How does it work?

First, you collect all your world buffs the way you normally would – getting your summon to Dire Maul, a portal back to Stormwind or Orgrimmar for your Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer, a quick trip to Yojamba Isle to turn in the Heart of Hakkar, or whatever subset of world buffs your raid expects or that you feel comfortable with. Then you activate your Chronoboon Displacer, which creates a Supercharged Cronoboon Displacer in your inventory and an aura which holds the captured state of your world buffs. You can mouse over that aura at any time to see which buffs are stored, and how much time is stored on them. You can then go about your business, secure in the knowledge that your world buffs are saved and ready for use when you need them most. When you’re ready to restore them, simply activate the Supercharged Chronoboon Displacer and it will break apart, releasing the stored auras back onto your character.

Where do I get one?

Well, given the complex temporal mechanics involved, you obviously need to make a deal with a Bronze Dragon, and you can find a friendly one named Chromie located in Andorhal in the Western Plaguelands. Of course she’ll likely want your help repairing the time stream first, but once you’ve helped her out with that, she’ll be happy to sell you as many Chronoboon Displacers as your heart desires.

Why now?

We launched Classic with an intent to keep the game data the same as it was originally, and we wanted to make sure we delivered on that promise, but now that we’ve been through all the content phases we planned before launch, we took a step back to consider what it really means to have the world buff system stay this way in Classic Era. A persistent world where everybody is traveling around for magical items and spells to maximize their power is fine, but one where they then stop playing to avoid wasting them seems wrong. Having an additional stop that lets you “bottle your buffs” seems like a thematically appropriate change to alleviate that problem.

We know this is a change, and any change to Classic is something we want to be careful with, but in this case, the fact that playing optimally literally requires you to stop playing was just too much for us to sit idly by. If you have any concerns about ways this might be abused, please post them here so we can address them. We hope you’ll all find this change as exciting as we do!
This article was originally published in forum thread: The Future of World Buffs in Classic Era started by Lumy View original post
Comments 109 Comments
  1. Akka's Avatar
    They could have fixed ALL this shit with simply disabling World Buffs in a raid.
    Instead they keep this toxic meta going that push people to mindlessly waste time collecting buffs that trivialize the content, distort all performance, and insert some weird shenanigans to keep them up.
    That's Blizzard stupidity displayed.

    /facepalm
  1. TickTickTick's Avatar
    "We miss Vanilla! We want to go back there!"

    Also:

    "Welp this sucks, and this and this and this too. Please change."

    I swear Classic WoW is some kind of a failed social experiment.
  1. hypnotix33's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Tietoso View Post
    They do something for the community, they complain.
    They dont do anything, they complain.

    Why does blizz even bother dealing with these classic players? Just let that overhyped museum rot.
    are you surprised? Classic players are as 'bottom of the barrel' as it gets.
  1. tikcol's Avatar
    Isn't April's fools day tomorrow?
  1. Cracked's Avatar
    Actually a pretty good way of balancing changes to keeping old mechanics. I like it.
  1. ashrasmun's Avatar
    I had to create account just to comment on this. The amount of hate in the very beginning is fascinating - some of you guys are never going to be satisfied, no matter what

    In my opinion this is the best change they are going to introduce to the game and it's nothing but positive! I love it! Running around the world and collecting buffs is a fun, SOCIAL experience for me. I can see tons of people that I know, converging in one place. Spontaneous talks ensue, ganking happens, there's drama, there's excitement. The only problems were the buff jail, dispeling and simply losing buffs if you die right after pop. I bet that this change is only going to spark more interesting content If someone doesn't want buffs, just join guild that deliberately raids without buffs - problem solved and noone else but you is affected by your will to play differently.

    I've been an advocate of such change since the dispelling started happening. I'm really really happy about that change as it solves all the flaws about the system that makes this game a true MMO experience. If you want to get teleported to instance, drink one pot and experience hardcore content, there's already a game for it, and it's Shadowlands.
  1. Nak88's Avatar
    Who cares, barely no one will remain in Classic Era when TBC hits.
  1. Askyl's Avatar
    This is a fantastic change but it's almost 2 years late

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by TickTickTick View Post
    "We miss Vanilla! We want to go back there!"

    Also:

    "Welp this sucks, and this and this and this too. Please change."

    I swear Classic WoW is some kind of a failed social experiment.
    I know you're trolling. But isn't it VERY obvious that even if you like 99.9% of everything in a game, you can still highlight the things you dislike? Classic WoW is not a failed social experiment.

    It's the most successful remaster of a game, ever.
  1. Drejjmit's Avatar
    What about fixing WCB for alliance? Maybe have it go out in Stormwind when we turn in Nef/Ony. Will people even pop world buffs on classic eras lower user base? How about giving out WCB/Ony every hour like on Chinese servers?
  1. Zka's Avatar
    These guys are totally insane. This will make worldbuffing mandatory in even more guilds because it's no longer fucking up your character.
    First the BC drums, now this. Fire this team, they are incompetent.
  1. Viikkis's Avatar
    I was kinda hoping for them to remove or at least nerf the world buffs. "Hey since these buffs were never intented to be mandatory for raiding we're limiting them to world content only so you can still use them for farming etc. but don't feel compelled to have them for raids"
  1. Uselessrouge's Avatar
    perfect.. keeping world buffs who those who want but not making us raid log

    win win good change
  1. jk1895's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Askyl View Post
    even if you like 99.9% of everything in a game, you can still highlight the things you dislike?
    But this is not true for WoW! Every aspect in Classic WoW is worse than in Retail WoW. I can't say what is better in Classic than in Retail. Classic WoW is a joke.
    At that time we didn't know anything better, so we had to accept everything Vanilla offered.
  1. Viikkis's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by jk1895 View Post
    But this is not true for WoW! Every aspect in Classic WoW is worse than in Retail WoW. I can't say what is better in Classic than in Retail. Classic WoW is a joke.
    At that time we didn't know anything better, so we had to accept everything Vanilla offered.
    You forgot to say "in my opinion".
  1. procne's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Zka View Post
    These guys are totally insane. This will make worldbuffing mandatory in even more guilds because it's no longer fucking up your character.
    First the BC drums, now this. Fire this team, they are incompetent.
    Honestly, it feels like a guild issue, rather than dev issue at this point. Just find another guild, surely not all guilds are such tryhards?
  1. apelsinjuice's Avatar
    this is 100% just about "engagement" "played time" and all their new statistics they use in their earningscall, they still want people to spend hours and hours farming for the world buffs but at the same time they dont want to them to logout for a few days waiting for next raid
  1. MrKnubbles's Avatar
    Welp, some people are about to be real mad.
  1. Aritra the Gnome's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Akka View Post
    They could have fixed ALL this shit with simply disabling World Buffs in a raid.
    Instead they keep this toxic meta going that push people to mindlessly waste time collecting buffs that trivialize the content, distort all performance, and insert some weird shenanigans to keep them up.
    That's Blizzard stupidity displayed.

    /facepalm
    This pretty much says it all and is just one of the reasons I'm not touching Classic (or TBC classic) with a ten foot pole.
  1. Kwaizar's Avatar
    not really Classic then with all these changes... so when do we get classic-classic just like how it exactly was in 2004
  1. rayvio's Avatar
    normally I'm not interested in classic news (been there, done that, was fun but moved on) but this one caught my eye and after some thought it actually sounds like a pretty good idea. the concept could have practical use in future content as well

Site Navigation