''WoW Classic won't be moving away from the community and inconveniences''

[Deleted]

I'm pretty confident there will always be atleast 2-3 highly populated classic servers that will last AT LEAST 3 years. And before they die blizz will ask if we want TBC servers etc.. I dont think forming 40mans will be an issue in a year or so at all.

Well, I'm only happy if that will happen, but I just have my doubts.

[Wiedzemir]

It will likely be in game.

And you base it on what? Provide a link to the confirmation that it's even being considered. Dude, you want a pristine server, we got it. You don't like classic, it's fine. However, why do you keep pushing your baseless nonsense everywhere though?

[Soon-TM]

Apparently dictating how others play is a vital for you. What makes you feel entitled to do so?

I am not dictating anything. I am just stating the obvious: in any traditional RPG worth its salt, the more defense you have, the less damage you deal, and viceversa. The moment when everyone can do everything is when classes have to be homogeneized, usually in the form of severely reduced (even none at all) utility, cf. Retail Paladins. The huge prune from WoD->Legion didn't come out of nowhere, you know. But sure, that's my diktat and not what happened in the game.

[Armourboy]

The rest of that same blurb talks about being supreme buffers and utility bots which they also were.

The 'core identity' as I understand it would be determined by Blizzard, who then based on their previous works. I'm not saying Blizzard nailed it (I think they did a better than average job though), but I am saying they had very obvious 'themes' to their intended roles. Paladins, Shamans and Druids were never meant to be damage dealing power houses on their own, even in their respective specializations. Their strength came from either force multiplying effects, versatility or both. I'm of the very strong opinion, this kind of approach is no longer present in modern WoW.

I'd argue Paladins were fairly representative of Uther (I think the biggest inspiration for Paladins?). Other than the cloth fiasco, you fielded Uther similar how Paladins were played in Vanilla. Not as mighty Holy Warrior of death, but a buffer, protector, healer, etc. who could melee just not as well as some of his Hero cohorts.

This is also strictly in raids, in other places this assumption of 'stay back in your dress and heal' didn't necessarily hold true. At the time I don't think Blizzard did most of their balancing based on raids, but rather they tried to balance all aspects (which PvP was included in) simultaneously, a ridiculously difficult task.

It's amazing how many people still don't get this concept. I get why we didn't get it then, but looking back on it now it should be fairly obvious that hybrids were built the way they were because that was the Devs concept at the time. Hybrids would bring support and be sort of good but not great at everything. As time went on and raiding took hold Blizzard more or less started gearing hybrids in that manner, but there is a reason the early sets had stuff all over the place, they were trying to cover multiple things with the same sets of gear.

I look at it like this, just about every class got a major overhaul at some point, and at no time did Blizzard ever try to make Paladins or Druid tank specs raid viable. They didn't really try and make the DPS specs raid viable either. So you gotta ask yourself, if they were doing an overhaul and didn't adjust those things originally, what was the reasoning?

The reasoning was that Blizzard put much more stock into utility than players did. Heck even in discussions in later expansions I can remember back and forth about utility, and Blizzard basically telling everyone that to make them viable they had to reduce utility. If you look at Vanilla and look at what we have today you should be able to see that pretty easily, and oddly enough Blizzard is trying to figure out a way to go back to specific utility for classes with BfA. Why? Because it adds variety to the classes.

People look back at Vanilla and see an unbalanced mess, but in reality it wasn't, it just didn't work the way some players wanted it too. We thought if we geared for a certain task, specced for it, and worked on it than we should be just about as good as pure specs. However, the game wasn't designed that way, we were trying to beat a square peg into a round hole. Ret, Feral, Balance, Elemental, Enhance, and anything else I'm forgetting, were built to be ok at whatever they did, but great at supporting the rest of the group, and no matter what spec they were they were still good at support. Pally and Feral were never designed to be MT's, they were designed to be support tanks, and looking back, Blizzard wasn't that far off of that goal.

And whats funny is going into Classic I will roll a Paladin once again because that support function no longer exists in the current WoW.

[kamuimac]

And whats funny is going into Classic I will roll a Paladin once again because that support function no longer exists in the current WoW.

what do you mean ? of its exist in form of holy spec

if you mean support=heal then sure you will be able to do that

but unless they tune specs, healing is all you gonna do in endgame.

enjoy

[Count Zero]

This doesn't change anything from before he said it, really. It's still not going to be a copy/paste. They already said they are fixing exploits and dc bugs, and that they'll have to have discussions with the community ... what discussion is there to have if it's a copy/paste ?. It's not going to be anything that existed before.

[Deleted]

People look back at Vanilla and see an unbalanced mess, but in reality it wasn't, it just didn't work the way some players wanted it too.

Exactly. While the old game was by no means perfectly balanced, the main difference to today is that it had a completely different way of balancing.

Blizzard's idea of "balancing" these days is that a hybrid in a DPS spec should do the same damage and have the same utility as a pure dps class. That, of course, is the exact opposite of "balance" since then hybrids strictly dominate pures when it comes to class choice (due to having the added ability to spec for multiple roles). Previously the approach to balancing was to give hybrids low personal dps but unique utilities that synergized with pure dps classes. Enh shaman is the classic example of this in TBC—every melee raid group had one even though their personal dps was low.

Basically the two approaches to balancing are: 1) make everyone able to do everything equally, 2) make everyone able to do something unique that synergizes with others. The former model just leads to dull (yet still unbalanced) game, while the latter leads to a diverse and actually balanced game. E.g., in TBC you brought a rogue and an enh shaman regardless of their personal dps since together they synergized to higher total dps than two rogues or two enh shamans—today you just bring five rogues, if the rogue personal dps happens to be highest in the current patch (because Blizzard still after all the homogenization can't balance everyone to do the same dps).

[RapBreon]

-snip-

It's an entirely different approach, one extremely reminiscent and inspired by seminal video game RPGs (Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter, etc.). Something Blizzard has clearly moved away from (and regret in some aspects).

Regardless, if you bring real tangible utility (which the hybrids did, like fuckin heaps, pretty sure Windfury totem did INSANE work), the spec/class has to be docked for it (hybrid tax) or they just role swap with the pures in terms of who gets sat. Personally, I do not want to move back to the 'bring the player not the class model' and I have no idea why we'd tread back down that path when we've got a living successful embodiment of that model raking in cash as we speak.

Vanilla is a pretty well known quantity at this point, so you got to ask yourself, what's more important being a DPS/Tank/Healer OR being X class? The argument to balance for parity reminds me of the old argument eon's ago and we all knew how that ended up. The inevitable march towards homogenization, the thing that actually put me off WoW more than all other changes.

Ideally, I still wouldn't be against some balancing changes if it truly was needed, but not parity for parity's sake. Preferably much later after release or in dire circumstances. Because these classes and specs are viable in all areas but possibly Naxx, they're just not optimal, which is the real argument people tend to be putting forth.

Quick side-note: I think TBC balancing was probably the best at managing 'uniqueness' and balance. So here's a quick hypothetical, what if Stormstrike buffed nature damage for more than just the Shaman, with maybe more charges. I think this would be a positive change for Enh Shaman's optimiability (I'm making up words) while retaining 'core identity'. However, it seriously runs the risk of 'run-off' effects, so I'd be wary of it, but I am curious about people's thoughts (the idea itself, not if you want it implemented).

Happy to hear different opinions on the subject.

[Vakna]

It means pure vanilla

So basically half the specs in the game unplayable in anything outside questing. I'm sure that'll go down well.

[HordeFanboy]

So basically half the specs in the game unplayable in anything outside questing. I'm sure that'll go down well.

Yes, unbalanced vanilla means unbalanced vanilla. If you want balance go and play Legion.

[Twilight Cultist]

This doesn't change anything from before he said it, really. It's still not going to be a copy/paste. They already said they are fixing exploits and dc bugs, and that they'll have to have discussions with the community ... what discussion is there to have if it's a copy/paste ?. It's not going to be anything that existed before.

He said they want to know how people feel about release content. Should content be released all at once? All raids and dungeons available at the start? Should UBRS be a 15 man like it was at the start of vanilla, or a 10 man when it was later changed in vanilla. Vanilla WoW wasn't static; it changed over time. So there is no way to copy/paste something, since it was ever changing. They want to discuss how things should be implemented. What people were worried about was that they may have been planning to add things to Vanilla that was never there in the first place, like mass loot, add more spirit healers to reduce corpse run time, dual spec, LFD, etc.

[Vakna]

Yes, unbalanced vanilla means unbalanced vanilla. If you want balance go and play Legion.

And you honestly think that's good game design? Think that a vanilla where you can't play what you want and the vast majority of people would have to reroll away from the classes or specs they've come to love over the last decade just to play is going to gain more interest than retail WoW? It's an abomination of game design that was only good at the time because we hadn't experienced better. I'll give you a pro tip if this is really what you have envisioned for a perfect WoW: Never get a job in game design.

[Deleted]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrC9AJRajGA

While he wasn't using the crowd pummeler and did good DPS it's a DPS who applies 2 dots just for himself(faerie fire helps all melee/hunter). For example you didn't have any fire mages on those bosses (because of fire resistance) and the stacked ignite pushed off the boss was a huge deal. Ferals were viable-ish in 1.12 but you couldn't stack them as well as say mages. It's also a reason why warlocks weren't really used at all in AQ40 and naxx (there were other reasons too).

You could clear MC with 40 druids in full dungeon gear. It would be a lot harder but it's not like hybrid classes were absolutely trash like some people make it sound. However with people being as biased as they are nowadays and so much information available it might end up with people only inviting 8 mages, 8 warriors, 8 rogues, 8 priests and 1 of each other class but I doubt it. You don't need to min-max that hard for vanilla content. The only exception is if you aim for realm first Naxx40 clears, in which case you're forced to play one of the "good" classes or better be the best one of your class on the realm/faction because they'll only take one.

[Deleted]

And you honestly think that's good game design? Think that a vanilla where you can't play what you want and the vast majority of people would have to reroll away from the classes or specs they've come to love over the last decade just to play is going to gain more interest than retail WoW? It's an abomination of game design that was only good at the time because we hadn't experienced better. I'll give you a pro tip if this is really what you have envisioned for a perfect WoW: Never get a job in game design.

If you like the vanilla game design you can play WoW Classic, if you think vanilla design was bad you can play retail WoW. Pretending like vanilla was somehow objectively "bad" design is just silly. It had millions of players and even today hundreds of thousands will play it on hacked together private servers—that doesn't happen if the design is bad.

I can play what I want in WoW Classic, but specs were specialized for different things—not homogenized like today. Both are valid designs, but personally I find the vanilla design "good" and the modern design "bad", for me.

[Vakna]

If you like the vanilla game design you can play WoW Classic, if you think vanilla design was bad you can play retail WoW. Pretending like vanilla was somehow objectively "bad" design is just silly. It had millions of players and even today hundreds of thousands will play it on hacked together private servers—that doesn't happen if the design is bad.

I can play what I want in WoW Classic, but specs were specialized for different things—not homogenized like today. Both are valid designs, but personally I find the vanilla design "good" and the modern design "bad", for me.

So you're saying that having specs in the game that are literally useless isn't objectively bad game design? Just to clear this up.

[Deleted]

So you're saying that having specs in the game that are literally useless isn't objectively bad game design? Just to clear this up.

There were no specs that were "literally useless". What you mean is that not every spec was a raiding spec (generally there was one raiding spec per class). No, that is in no way bad design, let alone "objectively" bad design.

[Rupenbritz]

So you're saying that having specs in the game that are literally useless isn't objectively bad game design? Just to clear this up.

I dont like this argument. Assuming the correct spec is the one for raiding isn't a smart argument at all.
Generally all classes had 1 PvE/Raiding specc, 1 PvP specc and one experimental/unusual (albet "useless") specc.
Just because feral druid wasnt made for tanking raids, doesn't mean its a useless spec.

[Vakna]

There were no specs that were "literally useless". What you mean is that not every spec was a raiding spec (generally there was one raiding spec per class). No, that is in no way bad design, let alone "objectively" bad design.

I mean you're wrong, but to each their own I guess. I personally played vanilla for it's entirety and if you had the balls to play one of the many useless specs people wouldn't touch you with a 10 ft pole and trying to get a group for anything outside levelling dungeons was a nightmare. Some of them were even so bad people would laugh you out of chat if you had the audacity to apply for a group as one.

And even if there was only 1 raiding spec for each class that is still objectively bad game design, being forced into a playstyle you don't enjoy just to even get into raiding content is awful. There's a reason it's never and WILL never happen again.

[browneyekaboom]

That's fine as well. I would totally be down for that. You spec into DPS as a druid then your damage will never be as good as a rogue, but you will be able to toss out small heals now and again. If you spec resto, then you have all the utility and healing but very little damage (it really isn't worth it to do damage at all anyway as resto). That's exactly the trade off I wanted in rebalancing. Make it so that you can choose pure damage classes (rogue) or you can choose 80% damage with 20% utility (feral/ret/enhance). Neither one is necessarily right to fill your raid with. You're going to need some pure damage and you might want to have people who are a little more flexible than others.

I just don't want it to be like "Lol enhance/ret/feral... go spec healer you idiot."

It was never like that to begin with so you should be good.

[Deleted]

I mean you're wrong, but to each their own I guess. I personally played vanilla for it's entirety and if you had the balls to play one of the many useless specs people wouldn't touch you with a 10 ft pole and trying to get a group for anything outside levelling dungeons was a nightmare. Some of them were even so bad people would laugh you out of chat if you had the audacity to apply for a group as one.

But I am not wrong. No spec was useless. Just because you cannot get into a dungeon with some spec doesn't mean it's useless, some people can still enjoy doing something else with, like RP. The whole point is that the design was specialized and not homogenized like it is today. It's not objectively better or worse, it's just different.

And even if there was only 1 raiding spec for each class that is still objectively bad game design, being forced into a playstyle you don't enjoy just to even get into raiding content is awful. There's a reason it's never and WILL never happen again.

But that is simply not objectively bad game design. You simply don't like that design, I do. Your subjective opinions are not objective facts.