Dev Watercooler: World of Warcraft Classic

[Koward]

Actually I realized I missed this in my earlier reply: the new tables don't allow you to share effects between spells (look more closely and you see why), however, as blizzard already noted it does allow you to have any number of effects per spell.

Indeed, I read too fast and missed their SpellID columns. At first glance I though Spell Effects was a raw list of effects and that they had some other relation to link them with spell.
Mmm, that means two spells using identical Damage effects with the same parameters (and I just checked the actual tables, there are quite a lot) would have duplicate entries with just the SpellID that differs. I wonder if there's an advantage to that, I don't see it. Still better than vanilla anyway.

You know can revert to the old busted looking models in the current game right?

The animations were removed around something like 6.1 (it was the patch that fixed a bit Night Elf models, but I do not remember which one exactly) so that even old models use the new skeletons. And nowadays, even the old models are not accessible for some races (at least elves and taurens I think).

[Baluki]

Sorry folks, WoW Classic still can't bring back the life you had 15 years ago.

[Dahij]

Sorry I just needed to come back to laugh at you. that's so insane if you truly believe that LFR is anywhere near close to being undergeared for a legacy raid, lmao.

Considering you could kill most bosses in MC/BWL with only half the raid actually playing somewhat decently, if you'd have a full raid of somewhat decent people you would easily be able to clear both MC and BWL without having great gear.

[Niwes]

As someone who actually raided during vanilla, yes, about 30 people per 40-man raid were bumbling idiots. But it didn't matter, because raids weren't difficult enough to demand bleeding-edge coordination and optimization to beat. It was about having fun, and ideas like "hardcore" or "casual" weren't exactly in everyone's minds at the time. Naxxramas was the first raid were things got noticeably more demanding, and that's contributed to its reputation - but it still wasn't anywhere near as difficult as modern raids, even "just" on heroic difficulty.

And looking back, even the great players in vanilla were far less skilled than they are now. Part of that has to do with the fact that they simply didn't have to be. There wasn't mythic raiding, where you messing up some small thing leads to an instant wipe. There weren't super-tight enrage timers or damage phases and so on, that demanded you min/max your character to the very last point if you want a WF kill. I played with the guys from Fury back on Stormrage, when they were the first to get kills in BWL. Those weren't hardcore gamers. There were people with their girlfriends, husbands and wives, just normal people who happened to have a bit more time on their hands than the average player, and who happened to know some people who had ambitions. You know how you got into top guilds back then? They needed a priest. They needed someone who can actually show up 4 nights a week. They needed someone who didn't mind farming Felwood for silly tubers. There were no logs, or rankings, or whatever.

I'm not saying it's impossible to have fun in classic these days. Far from it. But expect a lot of things to not turn out like you remembered, simply because the people who play it now aren't the same people who played 10 years ago, even if they actually played back then. And make no mistake: there will be ambitious raiders playing it as well, and absolutely WRECKING the classic raids. Not that that should necessarily diminish the fun for others. But it's just a reality that raids back then are lightyears behind modern raids.

good argumented here. but i have just another oppinion (or maybe another experience) about that.

i play without interruption since release. i played in classic lets say semi prof. there were not too much raids even existing. most ppl didnt raid in classic. our guild had some realm first stuff. outside of that we were that place 2-5 realm guild, on maybe 15-20 raids on that server.

in my memory our raid hadnt and couldnt had 30 idiots. we had around 10 really good ppl, 25 „do just straight their job“ ppl, and 5 idiots or so.

in my memory bosses needed commitment. they werent hard. but they had a hard need of having all your farmed stuff, max resi, best gear, etc. and that encounters were very black white. they werent hectic. they werent „move out of this shit!“ since there was nearly no movement encounter. but they were more „do this stuff NOW or you wipe“. more about micromanagement and be always „prepared“.

but maybe thats just my memory and maybe its wrong. a lot happened in the last 13 years.

- - - Updated - - -

i get it, you're mad because i'll end up right. look, i'm not here to argue with you about your 10th grade memories. i came along right after the beginning of BC. i got to hear the stories of running until level 40, only getting one or two epics at max level (which i do find that kind of cool, when every slot is purple or orange in the current build it does take away the cool factor of having something "epic"), and all the other shit that came with classic.

i wonder why blizzard has decided to change EVERYTHING about the game from classic over the years. it's almost like they knew what they were doing...

as far as my mmoc account time...what's your point? you sound silly.

ENJOY CLASSIC GRANDPA

aha. ok. maybe its time for your pills...

[kihaji]

The success of WoW when it first came out was due to a number of things, that no matter how hard you code, will never be captured.

1 - It was a world people knew. With Warcraft RTS games being huge, people knew the basic lore and characters of the game, that made it approachable.
2 - It was casual. Compared to the other big name established MMO's at the time (Everquest and Dark Ages of Camelot), WoW was infinitely more casual. Instancing, no corpse loss, ghost corpse runs instead of naked, and extremely simple classes and mechanics (read no Enchanters or Bard type chars, you want pain, try 4 twisting for hours). Those are just a few of the things that made it again, very approachable.
3 - It looked better than everything else visually. EQ and DAOC were, and are fugly, period. WoW had the typical polish you expect from a Blizzard game.
4 - It was story and quest driven. Most the MMO's before WoW were very "open world grindfests". You would sit in one spot and just kill over and over and over, and there really wasn't an alternative.
5 - You controlled the level of your interaction. With instancing, you didn't have to compete with other groups or guilds for a kill, and if someone was trolling you, you removed them from your group or went to another instance and they couldn't follow. Not so in EQ or DAOC.
6 - People were on Tigole (Jeff Kaplan) and Furor (Alex Afrasiabi) nuts. Two of the most vocal and visible EQ guild leaders who bashed everything wrong with EQ, and to be fair there was a lot wrong. They were hired on by Blizzard (Thanks to Rob Pardo, Tigoles guilds old GM). But, by the time WoW was announced, Tigole, Furor, and the firing of Brad McQuaid had everyone pretty sour on Sony and EQ.
7 - Which leads me to my last big thing, It wasn't Everquest. By the time WoW came out, people wanted to play anything that wasn't run by Sony. Everquest 2 came out a few months before WoW and had a much more traditional RPG set of mechanics, but it was run by Sony, had EQ style, but updated graphics.

[Darkynhalvos]

I said it would be modernised.

Good luck running it on your Windows XP PoS you purist filth.

No way in hell will Classic have system requirements anywhere near the same as BfA.
You're delusional if you believe that.

[Eleccybubb]

No way in hell will Classic have system requirements anywhere near the same as BfA.
You're delusional if you believe that.

Where did I say near BFA?

It most certainly won't run on older machines if they intend to develop it for modern standards.

[Darkynhalvos]

The CVar was never removed. You can still switch models.

What is the CVar exactly?

Curious because maybe that will work whereas the toggle does nothing.

[Molvonos]

I think one thing people tend to forget, is that the grind will be there.

People're saying that Ragnaros will be killed in 3 days (obviously exaggerating) isn't going to happen, even with 1.12.

You'll have to grind reputations and resist gear just to survive MC. You'll be farming Onyxia for months just to get scales enough to survive Blackflame from various Nef's Lair.

You can start grinding NR for AQ, but you'll be grinding AQ20 for upgraded skills, too, just to keep up.

People aren't going to magically be able to skip all of the grinding to clear MC in a month.

This isnt good or bad, but there are Classic zealots who don't get it. Like so many things.

[Gorsameth]

I think one thing people tend to forget, is that the grind will be there.

People're saying that Ragnaros will be killed in 3 days (obviously exaggerating) isn't going to happen, even with 1.12.

You'll have to grind reputations and resist gear just to survive MC. You'll be farming Onyxia for months just to get scales enough to survive Blackflame from various Nef's Lair.

You can start grinding NR for AQ, but you'll be grinding AQ20 for upgraded skills, too, just to keep up.

People aren't going to magically be able to skip all of the grinding to clear MC in a month.

This isnt good or bad, but there are Classic zealots who don't get it. Like so many things.

2 sets of fire res gear for the tanks on Rag, which means some rep farming but no problem as a combined guild effort.
2 (or was it 3?) onyxia cloaks for the tanks on Ebenroc and Nef. No one else should eat a breath during the entire raid. Including Nef where the raid can hide near the throne to avoid it.

Rag dead within 3 days of enough people being 60? Yes, I would consider that very much possible with modern knowledge and time investment.

[Molvonos]

2 sets of fire res gear for the tanks on Rag, which means some rep farming but no problem as a combined guild effort.
2 (or was it 3?) onyxia cloaks for the tanks on Ebenroc and Nef. No one else should eat a breath during the entire raid. Including Nef where the raid can hide near the throne to avoid it.

Rag dead within 3 days of enough people being 60? Yes, I would consider that very much possible with modern knowledge and time investment.

Except you need Hydraxian Waterlord rep just to get the 'waters' to put out the runes to summon Majordomo, which summons Rags. Which only happens in MC and only happens in earnest when bosses are killed.

*Edit*: Summons Domo, not Rags.

[Manhands]

The success of WoW when it first came out was due to a number of things, that no matter how hard you code, will never be captured.

1 - It was a world people knew. With Warcraft RTS games being huge, people knew the basic lore and characters of the game, that made it approachable.
2 - It was casual. Compared to the other big name established MMO's at the time (Everquest and Dark Ages of Camelot), WoW was infinitely more casual. Instancing, no corpse loss, ghost corpse runs instead of naked, and extremely simple classes and mechanics (read no Enchanters or Bard type chars, you want pain, try 4 twisting for hours). Those are just a few of the things that made it again, very approachable.
3 - It looked better than everything else visually. EQ and DAOC were, and are fugly, period. WoW had the typical polish you expect from a Blizzard game.
4 - It was story and quest driven. Most the MMO's before WoW were very "open world grindfests". You would sit in one spot and just kill over and over and over, and there really wasn't an alternative.
5 - You controlled the level of your interaction. With instancing, you didn't have to compete with other groups or guilds for a kill, and if someone was trolling you, you removed them from your group or went to another instance and they couldn't follow. Not so in EQ or DAOC.
6 - People were on Tigole (Jeff Kaplan) and Furor (Alex Afrasiabi) nuts. Two of the most vocal and visible EQ guild leaders who bashed everything wrong with EQ, and to be fair there was a lot wrong. They were hired on by Blizzard (Thanks to Rob Pardo, Tigoles guilds old GM). But, by the time WoW was announced, Tigole, Furor, and the firing of Brad McQuaid had everyone pretty sour on Sony and EQ.
7 - Which leads me to my last big thing, It wasn't Everquest. By the time WoW came out, people wanted to play anything that wasn't run by Sony. Everquest 2 came out a few months before WoW and had a much more traditional RPG set of mechanics, but it was run by Sony, had EQ style, but updated graphics.

I think the spirit of this is exactly correct. If you take a snapshot in time when Vanilla was released and compare to today, Vanilla WoW succeeded for reasons that are currently impossible. But there are new reasons why it has value. Some of these have even flipped, like point 2, where we WANT a more challenging world and it is compared to retail.

Nope, the graphics won't stand out and hatred for Sony isn't a motivation, but point 7 is still a HUGE reason it can succeed. And nostalgia. Which is fucking powerful (while it lasts).

[Darkynhalvos]

Where did I say near BFA?

It most certainly won't run on older machines if they intend to develop it for modern standards.

My bad if I sounded like an ass, coffee hasn't kicked in yet.

I still say Classic will run on far lower-end machines than the current game does. Doubt they'd make Classic require the same specs as today's clients.

[Kanegasi]

What is the CVar exactly?

Curious because maybe that will work whereas the toggle does nothing.

The CVar is "hdPlayerModels". You can put the first line directly into World of Warcraft\WTF\Config.wtf or use the other two ingame. 0 shows old, 1 shows new.

SET hdPlayerModels "0"
/console hdPlayerModels 0
/run SetCVar("hdPlayerModels",0)

[Eleccybubb]

My bad if I sounded like an ass, coffee hasn't kicked in yet.

I still say Classic will run on far lower-end machines than the current game does. Doubt they'd make Classic require the same specs as today's clients.

It won't require the same.

But it won't run on a Pentium 4 HT with 1GB of RAM, Windows XP and a Geforce 6600 GT either.

[Gorsameth]

Except you need Hydraxian Waterlord rep just to get the 'waters' to put out the runes to summon Majordomo, which summons Rags. Which only happens in MC and only happens in earnest when bosses are killed.

*Edit*: Summons Domo, not Rags.

Fine, 4 days. 1 day spend farming rep to get honored so you can pick up the water quest.
Remember, you only need 1 person with the required rep and then you summon him back and forth to pick up new waters.

[Darkynhalvos]

It won't require the same.

But it won't run on a Pentium 4 HT with 1GB of RAM, Windows XP and a Geforce 6600 GT either.

My real question will be how well it runs on Linux.

Would give my left nut for a native Linux client so I can dump Windows for good.

[Chromell]

My only problem with vanilla is the viability of some specs. Who wants to be a mana/buff bot?

[Darkynhalvos]

My only problem with vanilla is the viability of some specs. Who wants to be a mana/buff bot?

Not I, will be running a mage myself (race undecided).

Some folks might actually enjoy filling that role though.

[Molvonos]

Fine, 4 days. 1 day spend farming rep to get honored so you can pick up the water quest.
Remember, you only need 1 person with the required rep and then you summon him back and forth to pick up new waters.

Let's do some math real fast. Assuming a single person is grinding this.

Before Honored (which is what you need for the Quintessences), the only way to get rep outside of MC is farming in Silithus or Burning Steppes. Occasionally you'll get rep from bosses in BRD (2 to my knowledge).

At the gear level you'd be grinding at, it'd take roughly 2 to 4 minutes to kill one (depending on class/spec). Let's average 3 minutes.

Each kill nets you 5 reputation.

In 60 minutes, you'll kill about 20 mobs, and at 5 rep a piece, that's 100 reputation per hour. You need roughly 1,800 kills to get from Neutral to the cusp of Friendly into Honored. That's about 10 hours of grinding without any interruptions. Chances are, though, you won't be the only one farming, so it's a safe estimate you could add half as much to the timeframe, so 15 hours. But if you're dedicated enough to get into raiding, you'll also be forced to farm materials, run dungeons (because there's a high chance you won't have the absolute best gear for your entry into Vanilla raiding.

That can add another 10 to 25 hours.

If you're in MC though, killing trash gives rep to help along the way, so that also shifts into the opposite direction, but from my memories of MC, we weren't clearing -every- single pack, and initially, we were getting to Magmadar, killing her and waiting for the Corehounds to despawn so that'd be one less thing to worry about while clearing to other bosses.

Plus, grinding out the materials for Fire Resist gear didn't happen overnight, especially with the pieces needed to keep both the tanks and healers alive (as DPS, it was less optimal for me but still necessary due to mana constraints on healing, but our Tanks and Healers were required to have it).

Saying 3 to 4 days for a dead Ragnaros is a horrible exaggeration.

**Edit: also forgot that Tranquilizing Shot for Hunters was a requirement for dealing with some bosses, and the book only dropped from the first boss in MC, and only one at a time. As an Alliance player without Tremor Totem, it severely hampers progress.

**Edit #2: Beyond the first Hearthstone to somewhere nearby, getting back to Azshara was a lengthy trip unless you had a warlock alt on standby with two alts to summon. You're adding a few hours to every trip to MC for just one player to get quintessences. This is not realistically feasible and why, usually, multiple people were working on it. Again, something that isn't helping the 3 to 4 day Ragnaros kill.