Dev Watercooler: World of Warcraft Classic

[JohnnyMccrum]

Progression is dead no matter what. People already know everything about all the raids in vanilla and even if someone has been living under a rock, the raids are easy enough that people will clear them faster than LFR is being cleared.

Well, even things like getting raid-ready blues from places like Stratholme is hard work, and you can't jump from Molten Core to Nefarian, it just doesn't work that way. but the ability to farm greens from Dire Maul (even if they don't release the dungeon, from outside the dungeon) will kill most of that progression.

[AnonEntity]

Short of a time machine going back to 2004 there's never going to be a true Vanilla experience. Sorry lad.

Exactly. This whole project is a waste of resources.

[Sierra85]

will we get resistencies back? like fire resist / shadow resist?

[digichi]

With 1.12 baseline, I wonder if a staggered raid launch could still be on the books (just to smooth out the experience, is all.)

[EternalBany]

Those raids/dungeons are a joke from today's perspective. Naxx mechanics, for example, are laughably easy for people accustomed to modern-day mythic or even heroic raiding. And Naxx was on a whole different level than the earlier ones, which were RIDICULOUSLY simple by today's standards.

The biggest barrier to Naxx is gear, as raids weren't exactly well-scaled in that respect. But given how easy most raids were, you can probably just skip ahead fairly easily and not even bother with things like MC. Use ZA/AQ20/AQ40 to get some a handful of good pieces, and then you'll be set for Naxx. Well itemized dungeon blues or certain quest rewards will easily be able to substitute for raid gear (like the 2% crit trinket from Blackrock Spire) if you compensate with skill.

Remember, 99% of raiders at the time were utter morons. People had never heard of theorycrafting, or even damage meters. Their talent trees were all over the place. They used abilities more or less at random. Addons were mostly QoL and not for performance. Not being afk and simply moving out of the fire while pressing 112112112 was enough to clear a raid for most people. LITERALLY.

I remember some people at the time looked into how much skill matters, and there's some amazing results out there. People soloing dungeons at max level, or two-manning dungeons people went in with 10-man raid (like UBRS or Scholo). There was even a Molten Core raid with people in all green items, iirc. Stuff was hard only because people were new to things and utterly clueless. With modern, teched-out approaches to the game, the content will be OBLITERATED in no time. I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the truly hardcore guilds take out Nax within days of release.

but even that wasnt true in vanilla
the difficulty was never the mechanics, but the threat, the farming consumables and having people show up or have their resitance/cloak
just cause you know everything doesnt mean you can stampede it, the HPs were still very low

[Slashnox]

Honestly Idk what the hell is being said under Dinning In and How Engineering Has Changed

But I 1.12 baseline and lots of work nothing really completed is what I'm getting at

[Biomega]

but even that wasnt true in vanilla
the difficulty was never the mechanics, but the threat, the farming consumables and having people show up or have their resitance/cloak
just cause you know everything doesnt mean you can stampede it, the HPs were still very low

There were tons of reasons vanilla FELT more difficult, but from a modern perspective, it really wasn't. People just didn't know better. 10+ years of raiding experience compared to 1 year? Even the best players in the world back then weren't all that great by today's standards. It was mostly about showing up, and about farming what you needed to sustain your raiding. Playskill was secondary, because the average player skill was low - and that was fine, because the mechanics weren't as demanding as they are now.

Don't forget there was only ONE difficulty, and even casual raiding guilds cleared raids.

[EternalBany]

There were tons of reasons vanilla FELT more difficult, but from a modern perspective, it really wasn't. People just didn't know better. 10+ years of raiding experience compared to 1 year? Even the best players in the world back then weren't all that great by today's standards. It was mostly about showing up, and about farming what you needed to sustain your raiding. Playskill was secondary, because the average player skill was low - and that was fine, because the mechanics weren't as demanding as they are now.

Don't forget there was only ONE difficulty, and even casual raiding guilds cleared raids.

Understood, what i am saying is having websites, knowledge of fights, experience of raiding wont make it a walk in the park, sure once you have gear and resitance you have momentum but the get go is hard cause of the things you just specify, people are acting as if its gonna be LFR walk in the park
the ability/talents "revamp" from 1.12 may help make it easier i guess but it was never about the mechanics

[Biomega]

Understood, what i am saying is having websites, knowledge of fights, experience of raiding wont make it a walk in the park, sure once you have gear and resitance you have momentum but the get go is hard cause of the things you just specify, people are acting as if its gonna be LFR walk in the park
the ability/talents "revamp" from 1.12 may help make it easier i guess but it was never about the mechanics

I do expect it to be a walk in the park. Things like resistance gear etc. were actually more like crutches to compensate for bad plays. Once you got better a fight, you dropped more and more resistance gear, until you basically didn't use any at all. I remember that from both MC, Nax, and BT (Mother) vividly, where I had to reroll to a new class at the request of the guild and went in without resistance gear thinking it didn't matter if I died - only to find that I didn't.

The obvious exception is the cloak for Nefarian, since the damage there is at ludicrous levels by design. It's more of an attunement.

[Gorsameth]

I do expect it to be a walk in the park. Things like resistance gear etc. were actually more like crutches to compensate for bad plays. Once you got better a fight, you dropped more and more resistance gear, until you basically didn't use any at all. I remember that from both MC, Nax, and BT (Mother) vividly, where I had to reroll to a new class at the request of the guild and went in without resistance gear thinking it didn't matter if I died - only to find that I didn't.

The obvious exception is the cloak for Nefarian, since the damage there is at ludicrous levels by design. It's more of an attunement.

Only the main tank needed cloak for Nef. The only breath anyone else has to worry about is when he lands and there are safe spots to avoid that (at his throne).

(Tanks also need the cloak for one of the earlier drakes).

[Caaethil]

I'm still not entirely sure if there's much point to this announcement other than to tell us it's starting at 1.12 (which most people guessed). The tech stuff isn't really of interest to most people but I suppose the purpose is to show that Classic is going to be harder to make than just a private server, because it needs to essentially be reworked into a modern WoW client with old content. It's not enough to just slap it together like a private server.

They're not far enough in development to talk about raid releases, changes, etc. Classic community got what it asked for and it's fairly unsubstantial at this point. If people are happy though, sure.

[Tupolew519]

that's a good news.

[Gorsameth]

I'm still not entirely sure if there's much point to this announcement other than to tell us it's starting at 1.12 (which most people guessed). The tech stuff isn't really of interest to most people but I suppose the purpose is to show that Classic is going to be harder to make than just a private server, because it needs to essentially be reworked into a modern WoW client with old content. It's not enough to just slap it together like a private server.

They're not far enough in development to talk about raid releases, changes, etc. Classic community got what it asked for and it's fairly unsubstantial at this point. If people are happy though, sure.

Yeah, its just them saying "it will take a while because we need to redo most of the database".

[micwini]

So many all-seeing people in this thread. Can one of you tell me if i'll ever win the lottery if I keep buying tickets?

[Eats Compost]

None of this is too surprising. Modern client + old assets (which, in this case, is predominantly data) was always how I thought they were gonna go about it, and this is just confirmation of that.

Using 1.12 as a base is definitely news, though. The question of whether or not they'll make any significant amount of frankenpatch changes still appears open (relevant for stuff like AV design, difficulty of early raids with 1.12 balance + gear, etc) but at least we know they're not going to replicate sequential patch changes for content & gear.

[Acelius]

Pretty sure you can't do that for a while now. Ever since 7.3, so almost a year.

You can, but the new animations are permanent. But I don't see why, the old models were horribly outdated and ugly.

[Deleted]

There were tons of reasons vanilla FELT more difficult, but from a modern perspective, it really wasn't. People just didn't know better. 10+ years of raiding experience compared to 1 year? Even the best players in the world back then weren't all that great by today's standards. It was mostly about showing up, and about farming what you needed to sustain your raiding. Playskill was secondary, because the average player skill was low - and that was fine, because the mechanics weren't as demanding as they are now.

Don't forget there was only ONE difficulty, and even casual raiding guilds cleared raids.

You know nothing and im sure you are what they now call scrub. Millenials think they are better... rofl

[justandulas]

All these opinions about vanilla and 90% posting never played it. Unless you experienced it you don’t have a valid opinion over someone who did

Current wow will still exist but vanilla wow was one of those top 10 games of all time. Current wow doesn’t resemble classic at all and some people prefer the classic wow experience

[Niwes]

You are talking about that option that already exists on live servers ..?

its really hard how you and the other posters above have not the slightest glue about what you talking. horrible.

1)
you cant go back to the old run animations on live. was never the case, since they were introduced, cause skel and rig are different.

2)
you cant switch back to old models style for all elves in game cause of DH.

3)
you cant switch back to old tauren model styles cause of high mountain taurens.

4)
same goes for every allied race that will added (i.e. orcs or dwarves in BfA).

you can test that for yourself. make a tauren, click the checkbox. wohoo nothing happens. surprising...

so, nearly no old model can be used any longer these days.

or in short: you just talk shit and dont know what you are talking about.

above user who wants all old models and run animations in classic is right. and i have the same oppinion here. for me one of the major points of classic is to not run bouncing up and down like an idiot and not have that manga idiotic models. todays style (especially running) is completely crap and hillarious in comparission with classic. so, thats a reason for some of us to play classic, and no, we „just can do this alrdy on life“... nooot.

[Phlegethon]

This read baffles me. Why would they straight up lie to us? They told us repeatedly that one of the core reasons they couldn't make a classic version was because the data was long ago written over. Now they admit they have archived versions of it that they booted up with other bits thrown in. Ugh. Now I feel like a moron for defending them when they said they didnt have the code and that they would never do classic.

Hahaha, a software company straight up deleting their shit. That'd be a bad company.