If you knew for a fact that Classic servers weren't going to be the same...

[Northy]

It's clear what'll happen. A server for purists, and servers who want to see, for example, shitty specs like Ele or Boomy viable.

[arkanon]

While the use of the word "Forced" is a huge exagregation, you gotta be stupid to not understand that the massive popularity that Private servers got the last 3-4 years is the reason for this change of heart in the blizzard team, and blizzard wants to recapture these potential subs.

That and the fact that the shutdown of nostalrius created a massive uproar, by not only random internet trolls, but by popular streamers and even Mark Kern(yea i know), that created a lot of bad PR for blizzard.

It's not like blizzard after denying classic servers for a decade, and then the riot after the shutdown of nostalrius, all sat in a meeting where one of the employees finally got a ephifany, and "Hey guys, i got a brilliant idea, lets create classic servers"

Bad PR? yeah, i dont think so. The only people who had any real anger towards blizzard were those blatantly exploiting and pirating their product for their own gain.

Its the use of terms like "Massive uproar"and "Riot" that i object to, simply because for the vast majority of the greater gaming community, fans of blizzard products, and even gamers in general, these events didnt even create a ripple, most would be completely unaware of the situation at all.

Most of all though, i object to the core logic you use that Blizzard is attempting to "recapture these potential subs". Without any information on how the pricing methods will be set out for Classic, the entire argument is based on a guess. An educated guess maybe, but still a guess.

[Projectmars]

I would love to see:

- slowed down experience (No changes to leveling speed are needed. If you think it's too fast then surely there's some illegal place that has reduced exp gain)
- more profession recipes/plans/patterns/schematics (No New Additions or else it wouldn't be Classic)
- tougher mobs and dungeons (Too hard to properly balance and we don't need it to fit some arbitrary assumption of what Classic is like to stroke three or four people's fragile egos)
- no PvP gear (They were added in eventually and should be in at some point as a result.)
- caster spell ranks more dependable on gear (No New Additions or else it wouldn't be Classic)
- more factions with reputation rewards (No New Additions or else it wouldn't be Classic)
- randomness in quests (Dunno what this means, but it sounds like something Retail would have)
- debuff limit lifted (It's balanced around the current debuff limit. No.)
- gear sets for all specs (No New Additions or else it wouldn't be Classic)

I would hate to see:

- any feature in current retail

May want to consider sticking to retail.

[Roxyfoxy]

Bad PR? yeah, i dont think so. The only people who had any real anger towards blizzard were those blatantly exploiting and pirating their product for their own gain.

Its the use of terms like "Massive uproar"and "Riot" that i object to, simply because for the vast majority of the greater gaming community, fans of blizzard products, and even gamers in general, these events didnt even create a ripple, most would be completely unaware of the situation at all.

Most of all though, i object to the core logic you use that Blizzard is attempting to "recapture these potential subs". Without any information on how the pricing methods will be set out for Classic, the entire argument is based on a guess. An educated guess maybe, but still a guess.

Well then you didnt really pay attention. Blizzard forums were full of upset people, mmo champion forums where so full of anger towards the shutdown, that they lifted their "no private server talk" policy temprorarily, (as long as no other private servers than nostalrius were talked about), and made this megathread that reached almost 2000 pages. and a few of the big gaming magazines wrote several articles about the shutdown of nostalrius. even trade chat in the server i have my retail character on, people were talking about nostalrius daily, for several weeks after the shutdown.

That is as close to a riot as you can get in a digital world, and is most certaintly what you can call a massive uproar. It might not be on the same level as the Mass Effect 3, but it does give blizzard bad PR when there is so much negative talk about their company.

And real anger? The developers of nostalrius didnt take a penny from the players, they even forced players to donate directly to the server host, so that they didnt have to handle any money. The anger came from frustrated players, who want to play the old versions of wow that there is currently no "legal" way to play.

Recapturing subscribers, is what every company wants to do, creating a game thats mainly wanted by old subscribers, very recently after the nostalrius uproar, is a clear sign that they want to attract these lost subscribers, but that does not mean current subscribers arent welcome. But their intent is pretty clear. but you seems to be the guy who does not accept anything but a statement from blizzard before you believe something. and thats never going to happen, cause blizzard don't need to do that. So educated guesses is the only thing we'll ever get.

Pricing methods doesnt matter at all really, if its a standalone subscription, or shared with the retail subscription, if it's B2P. it doesnt matter, as long as they don't overprice it with something like 50$ plus a subscription fee.
My "educated guess" is that they require you to own the battle chest, and keep a active subscription to WoW. cause then you would attract old customers, and current customers during content draughts, while still not being too expensive for players who does not own the game.

[Battlebeard]

Irrelevant and pointless, which most would agree with.

Would never play if there was even 1 change. Changes completely kill the purpose of these servers.

[deniter]

May want to consider sticking to retail.

As i understood it this thread was about toying with the idea they were changing something in Classic rather than keeping it the same as vanilla was back in 2004-2006.

And i really would love to play with slowed down experience. I've always played on x1 rates and will refuse to go even near anything higher than that, but i'd prefer to play, let's say, x.25 or even x.1 with the game balanced respectively.

EDIT: Oh, and i wouldn't touch retail with a 10-foot pole.

[Deleted]

Wouldn't play. I want to play it for the nostalgia, not because the game was actually better than it is. This doesn't hold true for BC/WotLK though because if those servers were made I'd actually raid in them so QoL changes wouldn't be a problem for me.

[Rotted]

Just bug fixes and a few tweeks to a few classes to make them viable and not laughable.

The main issue I'm seeing upcoming is; We all have the benefit of hindsight, we all know what classes you need to play to raid and we all know what classes / specs you need to avoid. My beef with this, is that we're going to see the majority of players on these classes (cause duh why would we pick something we know no one is going to want or invite), which is going to feel stagnant. What's worse, is loot distribution will be 10 times worse (Unless they buff how many pieces drop which I think we can all agree we don't want).

So tweek the classes a little bit,

[Roxyfoxy]

Just bug fixes and a few tweeks to a few classes to make them viable and not laughable.

The main issue I'm seeing upcoming is; We all have the benefit of hindsight, we all know what classes you need to play to raid and we all know what classes / specs you need to avoid. My beef with this, is that we're going to see the majority of players on these classes (cause duh why would we pick something we know no one is going to want or invite), which is going to feel stagnant. What's worse, is loot distribution will be 10 times worse (Unless they buff how many pieces drop which I think we can all agree we don't want).

So tweek the classes a little bit,

There are no classes which are avoided for raids. Some speccs are avoided yes, but there is no class that does not have a raidspot even in a 100% optimalized raid setup.

[Kudos]

If concessions are made, I'll make an informed decision. I'll at least try it, which is what I always said if they were going to release a classic server. Don't get me wrong, I loved me Vanilla back in the day, but a large part of what made the game great was the community. The 'purists' who make the most noise on the forums don't seem like the type of people I'd want to play with in such a community.

[Roxyfoxy]

If concessions are made, I'll make an informed decision. I'll at least try it, which is what I always said if they were going to release a classic server. Don't get me wrong, I loved me Vanilla back in the day, but a large part of what made the game great was the community. The 'purists' who make the most noise on the forums don't seem like the type of people I'd want to play with in such a community.

As with anything, it's only a loud minority you see. be it purists or those who want changes. And it's not like the "changes" people, are making less noise than the "no changes" people.

When you get ingame, things are different, cause you can choose what people you associate with. Meet someone who is obnoxious, set them on ignore and never play with them again

And the game that is vanilla, forces people to think twice about their behavior, if you make too many QoL changes, that part dissapear, and THEN you will see toxicity level rise.

[Deleted]

Deal-breakers:
- Token: Ruins the economy.
- Balancing the classes: Ruins the balance and feel of the game.
- LFG/LFR, cross realm anything: Ruins the social aspects of the game.

Would hate to see:
- Any in-game (not macro/API/interface) related "quality of life" changes: Ruins the immersion.
- Modern quests: Ruins the fe

I'd like to see:
- Manual in-server grouping tool for building dungeon groups (maybe accessible only through meeting stones).
- Modernized macros, APIs and interface changed. These have evolved a lot and made the gameplay more fluent.
- Some mechanism to keep server populations balanced between the factions. E.g., close the ability to roll a new toon on a faction that is over populated relative to the opposing faction.

[Deleted]

It's quite simple for me - If they take anything from retail that wasn't a thing back in Classic = I'm out.

[Dergiab]

Irrelevant and pointless, which most would agree with.

Would never play if there was even 1 change. Changes completely kill the purpose of these servers.

Good, do you got a decent old computer to play Classic on then? Because unchanged classic won't make use of more than one core of the processor.

Of course you can still play on modern computers, but it might actually run less optimal than retail.

[Kheldin]

From the pov of a player who started with the WoW Beta and raided through retail including Naxx40 (never cleared though) and beyond in further expensions as well as giving a private server a shot (Kronos 2) cleared everything again before the release of AQ40,

I would love to see:
- UI settings like they are now available
- More viable specs
- Rework of item stats (especially tier sets)
- bug fixes
- reworking of buff timers (atleast 30min)
- modernized macros

Would hate to see
- no improvements at all
- LFR
- cross realms

[Kudos]

- reworking of buff timers (atleast 30min)

Anyone who doesn't want this never played a Paladin in Vanilla. 5 minute blessings? No thanks.

[deniter]

Anyone who doesn't want this never played a Paladin in Vanilla. 5 minute blessings? No thanks.

Greater blessings were patched in in 1.9.

Can't see why they wouldn't be in Classic as well.

[Demithio]

I wouldn't play if they injected the same type of garbage current WoW has in it. If they added some TBC level enhancements that wouldn't be a show stopper for me. But nothing more than that. All this crap people are talking about with current retail WoW features possibly making it into classic makes me nauseous.

[Ettan]

Then I would stay on private servers.

QoL changes like aoe loot , class balance changes, Stats or Item changes.
I could not live with any of those.

The only changes I would accept are.
Glitch and bug fixes.
Adjusting Respawn rates, according to population.
Adjusting Drop % rates, (if needed to nerf gold farming spots or eliviate quest bottlenecks).
And integration into bnet.

[Xecks]

the one thing i would change if i HAD to change something would be making meeting stones able to summon people.