Classic might need changes in order to give us the "vanilla experience".

[BuckSparkles]

Bug fixes are about the only QoL "changes" I could be fine with.

Leave classes and specs as is.
Leave quests as is.

LEAVE EVERYTHING ELSE AS IS.

Stop wanting to ruin vanilla. You don't realize trying to "balance" everything will turn the game into Legion.

Imbalance is part of vanilla. Imbalance made it fun in many cases and interesting.

You want to play a Ret or Enhance? Understand you might not be the best in a raid. Can still be useful, but not topping meters. Have a blast in PVP though.

Stop demanding to be a special snowflake. Not every class needs to be 100% balanced and perfect.

[Carnedge]

Bug fixes are about the only QoL "changes" I could be fine with.

Leave classes and specs as is.
Leave quests as is.

LEAVE EVERYTHING ELSE AS IS.

Stop wanting to ruin vanilla. You don't realize trying to "balance" everything will turn the game into Legion.

Imbalance is part of vanilla. Imbalance made it fun in many cases and interesting.

You want to play a Ret or Enhance? Understand you might not be the best in a raid. Can still be useful, but not topping meters. Have a blast in PVP though.

Stop demanding to be a special snowflake. Not every class needs to be 100% balanced and perfect.

Not to mention it's impossible. Blizz has been trying for years and all we end up with is some homogenized game with classes that lack identity.

[sixeph]

Balance and viable are two completely different things and crap like this is how we end up with the terrible classes we have on live.

Just stop asking for stuff and focus on questions you may have if you've never played it, or fun stories of what you're going to do when you can.

The hype for this is super real for me, as I'm tired of the spec centric, one raid centric boring crap we have on live.

Take any improvements you may want, and throw them out. we should be happy to know exactly what we are getting, and not having to worry about our classes changing.

Play what you want and how you want to. All of them have strengths and weaknesses, and since we already know them and wouldn't have to worry about changes, you don't have to play a toon you don't want to just to realize that it's not what you want to raid as.

This is an RPG, not a Call of Duty game.

[Akka]

But, this is a game and not a book. The game was about exploration and class fantasy, at least what I've gathered from looking back. If you want to recreate that experience, you can't have useless classes and decade old guides.

The second part doesn't logically follow from the first. It's nonsensical.

Think more of it like fine food at a restaurant. You wouldn't serve 14 years old food would you? You need to recreate the experience, with the same ingredients. The ingredients in this case was stuff like exploration and class fantasy. It wasn't really about the superiority of warriors or Ragnaros hitting for x or y, or having x or y mechanics.

I wouldn't eat 14-years old food because it's perishable and would be rotten, the comparison is absurd.
I would TOTALLY eat a dish made from a 14-years old recipe, though. Even if it's not "the same" as the "first time". The recipe didn't suddenly became "obsolete" just because I already know the taste, and if you change the amount of sugar or salt in it, yes it TOTALLY could change the taste into something I don't like anymore.

You're basing your entire argument on "we can't discover the game a second time", but this whole argument is pointless because it's NOT what we are asking for. I'm asking to be able to play Classic, not expecting some magical "it's the first time again !".

[El_Diabl0]

Rebalancing would be done by making underpowered abilities stronger, which will make content easier, which will turn vanilla into something else entirely. Ruining everything.

And before anybody says rose tinted glasses blablabla. I leveled two holy priests as holy. One in 2005 and one in 2006. I also leveled a Hunter in 2006, and a Warlock and a Rogue shortly after TBC came out. Leveling becomes much easier when you know which quests to do, in what order and when to run dungeons to cover the gaps. Not to mention that much of the raiding content is actually easy if you know what you're doing and have ~30 reasonably geared players. And If they made the content easier by buffing and rebalancing the weaker classes, it might end up becoming the same unenjoyable and extremely boring faceroll that's retail leveling, regular and heroic dungeons, but unlike retail, once the classic content is beaten there will be nothing else to do or to look forward to.

What I wish they would do is make realm capacity faction-specific. Something like 2500 players on each faction. This would help with faction balance while also making sure that one faction can't squeeze the other one out by forcing them to face queues even though there's barely anybody playing on their faction. But I also know that it's something they will NEVER do. Even though it's probably very easy for them to make these changes and the results would be mostly positive, like reducing the need for cross realm features. If they implemented this, faction-specific free-realm-transfers could be used as a faction balancing tool.

[HuxNeva]

My hope is that a success in classic could lead to serious philosophical changes in the retail version.

It already has. If you look at the design changes, Legion has actually already been influenced by the classic movement.

[Scythist]

Regardless of what everyone thinks... discussions like this are pointless atm as we're talking about balancing.

Let's wait out for a beta first in regards to those things. I personally wouldn't mind if we get a normal 1.1-1.12 patch cycle and eventually we get a patch where they rebalance stuff.

Honestly this is the route I hope for, it would be the simplest to implement.

[Chaelexi]

Honestly this is the route I hope for, it would be the simplest to implement.

It is the most complex to implement and 1.1 was a horrible mess. There are so many flaws with this logic and implementation.....1.1-1.6 item dupping was as easy as zoning into an instance with a trade completing....C'Thun unkillable for months until a patch came....Also the money for them to redevelop every patch would be huge and no longer worth it as it would drive many away, take development dollars for every patch and not address major issues. You will likely get a server that has content at a trickle release, with some balancing changes to make some specs viable made to a 1.12esque design, and some minor QOL things that happened through vanilla(maybe early BC) ex: connecting flight paths. Blizzard will want this to have initial cost and not much after the initial cost other that fixing game breaking bugs/boss tweaking. This is the EXACT OPPOSITE.

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Rebalancing would be done by making underpowered abilities stronger, which will make content easier, which will turn vanilla into something else entirely. Ruining everything.

And before anybody says rose tinted glasses blablabla. I leveled two holy priests as holy. One in 2005 and one in 2006. I also leveled a Hunter in 2006, and a Warlock and a Rogue shortly after TBC came out. Leveling becomes much easier when you know which quests to do, in what order and when to run dungeons to cover the gaps. Not to mention that much of the raiding content is actually easy if you know what you're doing and have ~30 reasonably geared players. And If they made the content easier by buffing and rebalancing the weaker classes, it might end up becoming the same unenjoyable and extremely boring faceroll that's retail leveling, regular and heroic dungeons, but unlike retail, once the classic content is beaten there will be nothing else to do or to look forward to.

What I wish they would do is make realm capacity faction-specific. Something like 2500 players on each faction. This would help with faction balance while also making sure that one faction can't squeeze the other one out by forcing them to face queues even though there's barely anybody playing on their faction. But I also know that it's something they will NEVER do. Even though it's probably very easy for them to make these changes and the results would be mostly positive, like reducing the need for cross realm features. If they implemented this, faction-specific free-realm-transfers could be used as a faction balancing tool.

Not exactly, you balance to a mid point not bring everyone up to a high point. Example would be rogues, dps warriors and fire mages may have their scaling tweaked down a bit, where as boomkin would have their Mana usage balanced, hunters scaling tweaked a bit as they scaled terribly after BWL. Things along those lines.

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100%

If Vanilla was truely good then no changes are needed.
If Vanilla was only good due to rose tinted glasses, then give it enough rope to hang itself.

If you make any changes at all you are helping no one. If anything, wait till true vanilla fails before you start asking for changes.

Where does true Vanilla come from....I know it is not Blizzard....they have said a classic server and a "Vanilla Like Experience" but never true Vanilla. It is the brain child of people who can not read, listen or properly think things through and jsut dream about something that is not happening.

[Mirishka]

OP wants the 'vanilla experience', and yet advocates for changes which were not part of vanilla WoW. *goes crosseyed*

Oh Blizzard... what have you unleashed?

[El_Diabl0]

Not exactly, you balance to a mid point not bring everyone up to a high point. Example would be rogues, dps warriors and fire mages may have their scaling tweaked down a bit, where as boomkin would have their Mana usage balanced, hunters scaling tweaked a bit as they scaled terribly after BWL. Things along those lines.

You give Blizzard too much credit. Make a new character on retail and level from 1 to 100 doing only quests. Depending on the class you choose it's pretty hard to stay awake. There's nothing you can't kill with your eyes closed. They always try to make changes in the least controversial way, so they would probably try to reach balance by buffing abilities, not by nerfing them.

[Mendzia]

The changes I talk about are not QoL changes, but rather rebalancing of both classes/bosses and perhaps new contents.

Yeah... This post has got promising start...

My concerns, personally, is that copying the original game exactly won't give us the real vanilla experience.

I've tried it a few months ago and it did.

As far as I know, the original vanilla was about exploring a brave new world.

Seems like you did not play it at all.

*Rebalancing the classes:

Any changes in classes for 'better' are QoL.

*New raid mechanics and balancing:

Vanilla was not about raiding. It is not needed.

*Small visual updates:

It is not needed but i do not care about models much.

*New quests/raids/bgs:

You've got it in current WoW. It is not needed here.

[khalltusk]

Bug fixes are about the only QoL "changes" I could be fine with.

Leave classes and specs as is.
Leave quests as is.

LEAVE EVERYTHING ELSE AS IS.

Stop wanting to ruin vanilla. You don't realize trying to "balance" everything will turn the game into Legion.

Imbalance is part of vanilla. Imbalance made it fun in many cases and interesting.

You want to play a Ret or Enhance? Understand you might not be the best in a raid. Can still be useful, but not topping meters. Have a blast in PVP though.

Stop demanding to be a special snowflake. Not every class needs to be 100% balanced and perfect.

While I am on board for leaving class balance (for now) where it was in Vanilla. I do feel this point needs addressing.

So many people say the same shit "not every class was balanced and people were ok with it". That is flat out wrong. You should have taken note at the time of the immense amount of QQ on the forums and in game about class in balance in Vanilla.

Shamans endlessly kiting in the earliest patches, no diminishing returns? Not to mention when you tried raiding content as a Shaman you were made to heal and be a buff bot. Same for paladins druids and priests. Very few guilds let those classes do DPS. Druid tanks were not viable in raids due to crushing blows.

It was not fun to have to change to a spec you didnt play or intend to play purely because your chosen spec is utter garbage. Todays class balance is much closer.

Blizzard should release it with the latest patch they had with the game along with bug fixes and exploit fixes (Nax patch etc). Then they can get feed back and do internal testing and later on see if a balance patch might make things better.

[BuckSparkles]

Very few guilds let those classes do DPS.

It was not fun to have to change to a spec you didnt play or intend to play purely because your chosen spec is utter garbage. Todays class balance is much closer. =.

On Priv servers most guilds are fine with a few non-traditional DPS.

Also it's vanilla. You need to go in with the expectation you may need to off-heal or tank. Don't want to tank or heal? Don't play a class that you might have to do that.

It's just the way things are. Learning your place in the world. I mean, I love paladins and shamans, but I understand in PVE I might be required to carry some healing gear.

Vanilla is more adapting to the world rather than forcing the world to adapt to you.

[khalltusk]

On Priv servers most guilds are fine with a few non-traditional DPS.

Also it's vanilla. You need to go in with the expectation you may need to off-heal or tank. Don't want to tank or heal? Don't play a class that you might have to do that.

It's just the way things are. Learning your place in the world. I mean, I love paladins and shamans, but I understand in PVE I might be required to carry some healing gear.

Vanilla is more adapting to the world rather than forcing the world to adapt to you.

Players going into it now might have more of an idea. Not back then so don't pull this bullshit please?

Players will still ask for class balance after a while for sure. They were even doing it on private servers as well. People are not a hive mind. Some will be OK others won't be.

I will go into Vanilla with my eyes open and with the knowledge of what it was actually like. This time I won't be playing shaman most likely due to not enjoying the state we were in PVE wise.

[Chaelexi]

You give Blizzard too much credit. Make a new character on retail and level from 1 to 100 doing only quests. Depending on the class you choose it's pretty hard to stay awake. There's nothing you can't kill with your eyes closed. They always try to make changes in the least controversial way, so they would probably try to reach balance by buffing abilities, not by nerfing them.

With this being a "new" product they could just tweak the internal numbers prelaunch and it is therefore neither a nerf or a buff as they have never promised a Vanilla server but a Classic Server(remastered) with a "Vanilla like experience". Also leveling from 1-100 is not longer important to the majority of players in current wow they have seen that content multiple times. They just want it to still exist as a suedo-training grounds for new players and if leveling was still at the slowed down pace of launch of each Expansion it would take 20+ days played to hit 110 and would lose customers that way. So your example is a poor one to use to prove your point.

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@OP

Bro, it doesn't matter which classes sucked or were overpowered. Raids and dungeons were so much easier than they are now. Literally over half the raid was carried. You can only bring so many of the overpowered classes due to how buffs/debuffed stacked. No one will care if you bring a gimp class. Only thing they care about is if you show up when you are supposed to and help out.
That being said we know more about the game than we did back then. We know more about certain items and class mechanics than we did back then. Certain classes that were really gimp back are actually pretty good now if you equip the right gear and use certain playstyles/talent setups (if that's your goal).

This is true till the end of AQ40 where everyone had to be able to preform. But for the first 2.5 raids they could be cleared with 25 players no issues. We were selling gear in Vanilla and made lots of gold doing it, carried 5-10 players a week in BWL. Now with people theory crafting, warcraftlogs, wow progress and actual proven strats it will be even easier...... Also players are a lot better than they were in Vanilla.

You are correct about vanilla being new and magical back then, but there are still so many things that will bring back that feeling
- Having to make your way to dungeons and raids via foot/mount
- World mobs being harder and an actual threat
- Talent trees so you can actually have a gimp build if you choose (Hand holding is one of the things that is killing current WoW)
- Having to actually be apart of the community (even if it sometimes toxic.... grow some skin) in order to achieve anything meaningful.

- Running to dungeons....... I was a warlock I would summon most of the raid/dungeon group most of the time....... It was a useless timesink(happy they fixed that shit)
- World mobs being difficult - Played warlock, could solo everything but world bosses, between blueberry tank and fear kiting it was a joke.
- Talent trees - LOL many classes could pick trash talents and still preform, especially healers. Hell most of the talent trees were terribly designed money sinks
- Community was more a product of the age of gamers playing it in 2005. Many were young adults and older teenagers in that fall in the Gen-X/Pre-Millennials group that were having many of their first online community gaming experiences. Even in Vanilla there were addons like a group finder that assisted organizing groups.

-And very few people have actually explored Vanilla. Tons of stuff has changed since Cata and the stuff that has most people just fly over with their mounts. I think you will be surprised about how much you have actually forgotten about vanilla. Also you forget about the people that started playing after Cata and never played vanilla... I envy them come WoW Classic release.

tl;dr
No changes
No changes
No changes

It will be fine that way.

LOL, get your head removed from your sphincter, there will be changes as this will be Classic: Remastered, Blizzard was very careful about stating that they are planning to release a "Vanilla like experience" multiple times and never said they are relaunching Vanilla servers but did say Classic Servers. Look into those words and tell me what they mean honestly.........

There is a long list of bugs, exploits and cheats that were available in Vanilla that will have to be fixed..... I have listed them in other threads but I can list them again and even more that I have remembered and likely used. There are also some quality of life changes and balances that likely should take place:
1) Fixing Paladin Tank AOE taunt/threat issues and give them a real active defensive spell
2) Fixing Boomkin mana consumption/regeneration. Boomkins went oom faster than a warlock and locks had lifetap. If this were to happen they may be borderline viable
3) Fixing Shadow Priest damage
4) Flushing out Arcane to be a spec and not just a buff pyroblast spec

[StraTosSpeAr]

With this being a "new" product they could just tweak the internal numbers prelaunch and it is therefore neither a nerf or a buff as they have never promised a Vanilla server but a Classic Server(remastered) with a "Vanilla like experience". Also leveling from 1-100 is not longer important to the majority of players in current wow they have seen that content multiple times. They just want it to still exist as a suedo-training grounds for new players and if leveling was still at the slowed down pace of launch of each Expansion it would take 20+ days played to hit 110 and would lose customers that way. So your example is a poor one to use to prove your point.

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This is true till the end of AQ40 where everyone had to be able to preform. But for the first 2.5 raids they could be cleared with 25 players no issues. We were selling gear in Vanilla and made lots of gold doing it, carried 5-10 players a week in BWL. Now with people theory crafting, warcraftlogs, wow progress and actual proven strats it will be even easier...... Also players are a lot better than they were in Vanilla.

- Running to dungeons....... I was a warlock I would summon most of the raid/dungeon group most of the time....... It was a useless timesink(happy they fixed that shit)
- World mobs being difficult - Played warlock, could solo everything but world bosses, between blueberry tank and fear kiting it was a joke.
- Talent trees - LOL many classes could pick trash talents and still preform, especially healers. Hell most of the talent trees were terribly designed money sinks
- Community was more a product of the age of gamers playing it in 2005. Many were young adults and older teenagers in that fall in the Gen-X/Pre-Millennials group that were having many of their first online community gaming experiences. Even in Vanilla there were addons like a group finder that assisted organizing groups.


LOL, get your head removed from your sphincter, there will be changes as this will be Classic: Remastered, Blizzard was very careful about stating that they are planning to release a "Vanilla like experience" multiple times and never said they are relaunching Vanilla servers but did say Classic Servers. Look into those words and tell me what they mean honestly.........

There is a long list of bugs, exploits and cheats that were available in Vanilla that will have to be fixed..... I have listed them in other threads but I can list them again and even more that I have remembered and likely used. There are also some quality of life changes and balances that likely should take place:
1) Fixing Paladin Tank AOE taunt/threat issues and give them a real active defensive spell
2) Fixing Boomkin mana consumption/regeneration. Boomkins went oom faster than a warlock and locks had lifetap. If this were to happen they may be borderline viable
3) Fixing Shadow Priest damage
4) Flushing out Arcane to be a spec and not just a buff pyroblast spec

Actually, Blizzard explicitly stated that they are trying to recreate the Vanilla experience and are going to make as few changes as possible.

It blows my mind that people don't understand what it means to make a Classic server and just not fuck with it.

Vanilla is Vanilla. Stay the fuck away if you don't want Vanilla. End of fucking story. Stop trying to make random changes that will change Vanilla from what it truly is.

[Altariaz]

Actually, Blizzard explicitly stated that they are trying to recreate the Vanilla experience and are going to make as few changes as possible.

It blows my mind that people don't understand what it means to make a Classic server and just not fuck with it.

Vanilla is Vanilla. Stay the fuck away if you don't want Vanilla. End of fucking story. Stop trying to make random changes that will change Vanilla from what it truly is.

I am looking forward to playing Vanilla a lot. As someone who played the Vanilla game from the start, it was an amazing experience and one that evolved as Blizzard developed the game. As which point precisely Blizzard will say "that was the Vanilla game" and create that, is a tricky one.

[Soon-TM]

There is a long list of bugs, exploits and cheats that were available in Vanilla that will have to be fixed..... I have listed them in other threads but I can list them again and even more that I have remembered and likely used. There are also some quality of life changes and balances that likely should take place:
1) Fixing Paladin Tank AOE taunt/threat issues and give them a real active defensive spell
2) Fixing Boomkin mana consumption/regeneration. Boomkins went oom faster than a warlock and locks had lifetap. If this were to happen they may be borderline viable
3) Fixing Shadow Priest damage
4) Flushing out Arcane to be a spec and not just a buff pyroblast spec

It won't be vanilla then, but a sort of hybrid monstruosity that I won't even touch with a 10 ft pole. Did Blizzard correct Dragoon pathing in the remastered SC1? Or the ability to zergling rush? Did Dark Templars get toned down? Did firebats get a range buff? Nope, 100% SC1 or bust. I hope they do the same with Vanilla remastered.

[Chaelexi]

Actually, Blizzard explicitly stated that they are trying to recreate the Vanilla experience and are going to make as few changes as possible.

It blows my mind that people don't understand what it means to make a Classic server and just not fuck with it.

Vanilla is Vanilla. Stay the fuck away if you don't want Vanilla. End of fucking story. Stop trying to make random changes that will change Vanilla from what it truly is.

They never ever ever said Vanilla server......the said multiple times a vanilla like experience........ You even said it they will make changes, a few but they will make them........ A Classic server is not a vanilla server, so make up your mind...... Look ever starcraft remastered has some graphics and balance changes.......to use everyone's example pre announcement why it will happen....guess what changes will happen......The balance patch came before launch with 1.18a that fixed some of Dragoon pathing and valk missile firing.

[StraTosSpeAr]

They never ever ever said Vanilla server......the said multiple times a vanilla like experience........ You even said it they will make changes, a few but they will make them........ A Classic server is not a vanilla server, so make up your mind...... Look ever starcraft remastered has some graphics and balance changes.......to use everyone's example pre announcement why it will happen....guess what changes will happen......The balance patch came before launch with 1.18a that fixed some of Dragoon pathing and valk missile firing.

They didn't make any balance changes with SC:Remastered.

And I didn't say "Vanilla server". I quoted what they said. Blizzard has stated that they're going to make as few changes as possible. Stop asking for ridiculous balance changes. We want Vanilla. Plain and simple.