The economy of ''Classic'' : people are in for a rough shock

[Deficineiron]

For the record, flasks persisting through death was actually a thing in vanilla. Not the entirety of Vanilla, but it was introduced somewhere in the middle, which comes back to the old argument of "which vanilla".

vanilla as if it were 3.0.2 is my guess. folks are acting like they don't expect blizzard to nerf the consumable demand, increase in-game gold (maybe even allow tokens for classic servers), speeed up leveling, nerf outdoor and instance mobs, etc. One has to hope to even be able to recognize vanilla classes when the 'class balance' team gets done.

I will eat my hat if blizzard's 'Feels like the classic experience' servers aren't heavily nerfed in all directions. 1.12 wow violates multiple post-merger blizzard core values. watch pardo's 2014 MIT presentation and decide if classic wow would ever get releaesd by this company as-was.

what they say now is discountable as it is perception-management as much as anything.

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Not exactly.
I mean, yes the flask were changed during Vanilla to last through death.
But you could still stack an ungodly amount of consumables.
It's in the 2.1 patch that Blizzard made up the rule of "one battle elixir and one defensive elixir, OR a flask".

seems a no-brainer they are going to nerf the potential to use various buffs and consumables in raids. I expect they try to get raid PREP time down as low as possible. I would not be suprised to see resistance gear removed as a mandatory item.

[Imperial3]

vanilla as if it were 3.0.2 is my guess. folks are acting like they don't expect blizzard to nerf the consumable demand, increase in-game gold (maybe even allow tokens for classic servers), speeed up leveling, nerf outdoor and instance mobs, etc. One has to hope to even be able to recognize vanilla classes when the 'class balance' team gets done.

I will eat my hat if blizzard's 'Feels like the classic experience' servers aren't heavily nerfed in all directions. 1.12 wow violates multiple post-merger blizzard core values. watch pardo's 2014 MIT presentation and decide if classic wow would ever get releaesd by this company as-was.

what they say now is discountable as it is perception-management as much as anything.

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seems a no-brainer they are going to nerf the potential to use various buffs and consumables in raids. I expect they try to get raid PREP time down as low as possible. I would not be suprised to see resistance gear removed as a mandatory item.

We're entering a brave new homogenized, one size fits-all, designed to the lowest common denominator world!

I can't say I don't expect something similar, but I hope we're both wrong.

[Deleted]

No one needed Fire Resist gear except tanks. Some people wore a very small amount for Firemaw, but even that was rare after the first couple kills. The only crafting requirement for MC/BWL is an Onyxia Scale Cloak, and even that you can cheese it with some classes and not wear it. I raided MC through Naxx on a Mage and the only bosses off the top of my head that I wore resist gear for were Huhuran in AQ40 and Sapphiron in Naxx40.

I think you also vastly overestimate how many consumables people used. Gold was a MUCH larger barrier in vanilla than it is now. Even on progression pulls, people didn't use every consumable because it simply wasn't feasible to do so. You used 1-2 elixirs at most, and probably Mana Pots on cooldown. The real consumable spam was saved for the roadblock DPS check bosses like Patchwerk and Loatheb.

Private servers are vastly different from the 2004-2006 Blizzard servers.

[Deleted]

Can't wait for the old Stratholme (10 man!) and old ST (which was bigger) and original ZG.

grinding your first 1-60 on a realm will be tough. much easier for alts.

[Deficineiron]

We're entering a brave new homogenized, one size fits-all, designed to the lowest common denominator world!

I can't say I don't expect something similar, but I hope we're both wrong.

the problem as you doubtless know is that the LCD folks have money too, and there are a lot more of them in aggregate.

[Imperial3]

the problem as you doubtless know is that the LCD folks have money too, and there are a lot more of them in aggregate.

Of course; which is why no matter how large my initial excitement was, it was quickly followed by lingering dread. I can't fault them for following the dough. While I think it would be great if they could pull the private server folks into the fold, and onto the bankroll, im just not sure how willing they are to pay. Surely, a good number of them would, but given their smaller playerbase to begin with, does that playerbase then get halved once a subscription model is the gateway to what was once free.

[heinz0r]

My personnal gig was farming the thorium veins in Heartglen.

Yeah this, and even farming earth elementals was decent to get around 1-2g per "Elemental Earth" drop, which happened quite frequently, even on those Dalaran Ruins mobs at level 34ish.

The game was slower in terms of aquiring stuff but also more grounded because of it. I feel right around the time of cata they must have made some big changes to their team, because everything after wotlk felt so much worse compared to the older expacs, apart from the graphics of course, those changed for the better, though not all of it (Tarens Mill and undead starting area turned into freaking green neon town for kids).

[Marxman]

Private servers are vastly different from the 2004-2006 Blizzard servers.

I'm not talking about Nost or Elys. I'm talking about 2004-2006 retail.

I don't know about other classes, but Mages did not wear FR for any MC or BWL bosses. None. Mage Armor and Pally Aura/Totem was enough for Rag unless your healers were awful.

[Deficineiron]

Of course; which is why no matter how large my initial excitement was, it was quickly followed by lingering dread. I can't fault them for following the dough. While I think it would be great if they could pull the private server folks into the fold, and onto the bankroll, im just not sure how willing they are to pay. Surely, a good number of them would, but given their smaller playerbase to begin with, does that playerbase then get halved once a subscription model is the gateway to what was once free.

i figure for every ps player, there are multiples more who would play on actual classic official servers but wont mess with ps. this includes china/netease of coures, there are quite a few chinese ps players it seems.

but there are tens and tens of millions of former players in general.

at my most cynical, I would say acti-blizz finds the classic server community to be useful idiots in promoting this thing.

every time I get to the point in the script where activision-blizzard, run by mr. accessible himself, releases classic more or less as was or even as/was in bc, i get a script error/divide by zero. does not compute.

wow has been a victim of its own success. it brought about the merger and brought kotick in, and now is going to turn an alleged feels-classic server into an accessible mess.

in a few places here and reddit I have suggested that what ps folks need to do is ask for 'hardcore/pristine classic' servers that have 1 difficulty and are tuned like or harder than classic, rathher than bicker over how blizz promised etc etc.

[Imperial3]

i figure for every ps player, there are multiples more who would play on actual classic official servers but wont mess with ps. this includes china/netease of coures, there are quite a few chinese ps players it seems.

but there are tens and tens of millions of former players in general.

at my most cynical, I would say acti-blizz finds the classic server community to be useful idiots in promoting this thing.

every time I get to the point in the script where activision-blizzard, run by mr. accessible himself, releases classic more or less as was or even as/was in bc, i get a script error/divide by zero. does not compute.

wow has been a victim of its own success. it brought about the merger and brought kotick in, and now is going to turn an alleged feels-classic server into an accessible mess.

in a few places here and reddit I have suggested that what ps folks need to do is ask for 'hardcore/pristine classic' servers that have 1 difficulty and are tuned like or harder than classic, rathher than bicker over how blizz promised etc etc.

Bolded the cringeworthy section - because it's probably very close to the truth. Hell, I could bold your entire post. Those scary statements "Well, it's all in the 'spirit' of classic." As if that isn't a subjective perspective. Legion might as well be in the 'spirit' of vanilla. It's warcraft, there's adventure, and a lot of people, still slaying monsters.

I'll cross my fingers, but keep my expectations low. It is still entertaining to peruse this forum though, in the meantime.

[reauxmont]

1)No daily quests whatsoever

I'm so looking forward to this!

[Zka]

You can't assure me because I know we did.

I've cleared MC and went up to bosses before Chromaggus in BWL as a guest raider in a top raid guild of the server on my mage. There was no FR gear requirement. Nothing. Maybe some FR pots for Ragnaros. I actively used fire ward and ice barrier (when frost specced) to reduce damage intake. The content was extremely trivial, there was no real need to reduce damage intake with FR gear. Maybe for tanks, but DPS/heals were not using FR.

[Deleted]

We only used raid wide FR for Ragnaros. Not needed for trash, or any of the other bosses.

We used Mindcontrol on a elite in BRF to use his FR buff, he was easy to reach, buffing the whole raid with 3 priests took under 5 minutes, that was very little time back in the day.

But to be honest, ragnaros is mechanic wise stupidly easy now for players. People know now how to gear and how to play. This increase the DPS over a whole raid by 30% or more I would guess. People forget back in the days you did throw 40 foot soldiers at a boss, if you throw 40 elite soldiers now at them, it will be a piece of cake.

But Vanilla had a lot downsides but upsides too, you where more flexibel with what you can do, if you put the work into it.

Few Examples:
Use FR buffs from enime elites through Mindcontrol.
Have 3 Different staves as a healer for manareg (willpower for out of combat (triggered once 5 sec non casting), one with MP5 in combat and one with spellpower for throughput), until you got benediction that was.
Spelldownranking as a healer: Back in the day, healing spells had ranks, lower ranks had lower manacosts but lower heal to, SP applied to all ranks. So on chromaggus where we had issues keeping our tank up (reactive healing was to slow sometimes), we switched to a hot style healing. Everyone downranked to a spell he could nearly infinetly spam manawise and just spam these on the tank. Tank never died after this. (Raid dmg back in the day was barely an issue)
First boss in BWL: The kiting strat, it just looked ridiculous.

[Akka]

But entirely depends on what part of vanilla you start in, as some will say it shoudl be in there, others will say it won't. Which is half the issue atm with the pro original Vanilla crowd, they just cannot make up their minds.

No, it's not an issue. There might be opinions about talents and how soon a raid should be release and its tuning, but nobody gives a fuck about which patch the keyring was included as long as it was during Vanilla.
In fact, as usual, 90 % of the "problems" are people from outside the Vanilla crowd who are stirring the shit.

[Spazlord]

I love all these doom and gloom threads, as if nobody knows what it was like lol. I can't wait to play a game where we aren't drowning in gold and there's a reason to go into the world and do things to get stuff aka play the damn game.

[Painstorm]

Pointless thread.
The people that really want Vanilla are those that played it back then.
They very well know what it was like, and what you describe as a "rough shock" is what they want.

[Thelxi]

It will be interesting to see how people will min/max in vanilla. I think that will be a big difference between now and then. By todays standards of deeming a spec "unviable" if it does 5% less damage than the other, I am curious what those same people will do with vanilla specs.

[Kralljin]

But entirely depends on what part of vanilla you start in, as some will say it shoudl be in there, others will say it won't. Which is half the issue atm with the pro original Vanilla crowd, they just cannot make up their minds.

Not exactly point of the debate however.

Anything that was implemented during Vanilla's lifecycle remains fair game as far as QoL changes go, the premise of "Classic WoW" is still fulfilled there.

[Celarent]

And people are in for a nasty surprise if ''Classic'' is emulated with ''Classic'' economy, with highlights such as....

1)No daily quests whatsoever
2)Compared to BC and up , a sufficient (barely) number of quests to reach 60, but not to get a few thousands easy gold (remember walking to the Scarlet Monastery because you had no cash for mounts ?)

Having played WoW as Level ASAP > Dailies > Gear > Raid > Dailies > Gear > Raid > Dailies > Gear > Raid for three expansions before pulling the ejection handle on the fourth, I'm not interested in maxing out as fast as necessary to keep up. I don't want handy teleports and ergonomically designed zones. I miss walking and actually spending ("wasting") time in a virtual world, bumping into players doing the same. Seeing as how Vanilla servers aren't flops, it's not unheard of.

[Eurhetemec]

The main shock for most players is going to be that modern gamers playing a Vanilla server are going to create an ENTIRELY different economy to both current WoW and actual Vanilla WoW.

People are going to be much, much more aggressive in terms of trying to take control of the economy too, and likely much more professional about it. I mean, in Vanilla, my brother, a total casual who logged on maybe two hours a day three days a week, basically controlled the economy of an entire server. He "ran" the auction house. He became incredibly, hilariously wealthy by Vanilla standards. He didn't actually play, having got to 40-something, he just logged on and messed with the AH. It was astonishing.

But that you could do that in Vanilla tells you a lot about the then-economy. You will not be able to do that in "Classic" WoW. The economy is going to be totally different. Better, worse? No way to say, because it all depends on perspective and who dominates it, and what their goals are.