Classic update. It will be on 1.12 and it will be on battle.net :)

[The Stormbringer]

-SNIP-

I can tell you're very passionate about this, but I'm not going through all of that, sorry. Ideally the toggle would restore old animations and skeletons along with old models, at least that's how I see things.

[Hitei]

I can tell you're very passionate about this, but I'm not going through all of that, sorry. Ideally the toggle would restore old animations and skeletons along with old models, at least that's how I see things.

You are not going to get through to him, the issue isn't even that he wouldn't be able to play with the graphics he wants. He is obsessed (to a legitimately worrying degree) with the need for everyone else to see his character exactly as he is seeing it on his end, which is ridiculous to begin with, since there are a wide variety of graphics settings, monitors, and physical sight capabilities that wildly change how any given person sees your character. Even before addons, which can further alter the depiction of other people's characters.

[PaterMDx]

So you where one of those guys that set a record right? Seing as the record for 60 was around what? 5 to 6 days played, meaning you got to 60 on a week with no sleep! Gzz i guess

I leveled like 50hours later than that dude.
and that dude made the record on newer servers after learning stuff.
and yes, i read his guides and still have them on my old pc
yes.
next time dont post random shit you casual^^

and dont worry, if youre not alkohol and tobacco adicted you can only sleep 4h a day for a short period of time (1-2 weeks)
The first release week of Dark Souls remastered i had 100h played.
I´m like that, if a new game is out I love i play the shit out of em, sometimes without sleep.

I played Morrowind jthe first time 36h without sleep xD

[Projectmars]

So you where one of those guys that set a record right? Seing as the record for 60 was around what? 5 to 6 days played, meaning you got to 60 on a week with no sleep! Gzz i guess

I think even back then there were alleged guides on fast ways to get to 60 in a week or two (that people were trying to sell for money... so they may not have actually been legit tbh.)

[Alkizon]

You are not going to get through to him, the issue isn't even that he wouldn't be able to play with the graphics he wants. He is obsessed (to a legitimately worrying degree) with the need for everyone else to see his character exactly as he is seeing it on his end, which is ridiculous to begin with, since there are a wide variety of graphics settings, monitors, and physical sight capabilities that wildly change how any given person sees your character. Even before addons, which can further alter the depiction of other people's characters.

We already passed this, you could not win by this argument

Moreover, I would even more like to have them introduce new models through customization, for then this would be a guarantee that no one will hack client for this and break the rules. But this my wish would conflict with "same experience" promise and therefore I don't even insist on it.

Villains are not those who want to follow rules, villains are those who want neglect them.

[voidillusion]

I think even back then there were alleged guides on fast ways to get to 60 in a week or two (that people were trying to sell for money... so they may not have actually been legit tbh.)

As far as i know the absolute record is just under 5 days /played time.

Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTSy...FqqjPtcxhF7kB_

And ofc this depends immensely of the class. Don't even think getting close to these numbers on a warrior lol

[Animalhouse]

https://www.furiouspaul.com/wow/

Since a few of you are going on about speed leveling. The above link is kinda cool.

Personally, I am going to take my time and enjoy the journey again.

[Echocho]

I might have mixed up the technologies there. Yet to both problems the better solution might have been to manage server populations more carefully and keep the social aspects working. The one thing that sticks out every time people become nostalgic is how the world felt "alive" and how they were "being a part of it". My worry is that a lot of the things one might label as "convenience" or "technological improvement" actually have the potential to take the heart out of vanilla again.

Absolutely. But I don't think it's such a big deal if they enable sharding for a bit to ensure a stable launch and after that they can turn it off permanently.

[Deleted]

I'm not so sure about that.

You'll probably have a huge crowd that starts to play on release and desperately wants to get ahead. The mob respawn timers and the fact that you had to tag everything meant that questing and leveling was hardest in the most crowded areas. That's effectively a catch-up mechanic for all those who take it slower, because it makes the most active players spend relatively more time.

If the first week were an authentic vanilla launch you'd get permakilled questmobs and completely overrun starting areas, the full package. That can be a good thing because there's not much else in the game that slows down a player's progress and discourages no-lifing. Retail has soft (AP knowledge) and hard (time-gating) drag factors, vanilla only has mob respawn timers.

I don't see how you can balance convenience and immersion. The world felt alive because you sometimes spent hours fighting with people for questmobs, which was frustrating but also memorable. You'd be forced to group up and make connections and you'd recognize the name tags of those who you met in your first few days for the rest of your ingame life.

This actually sums up my main frustration with the world in its current state.

Running into random other players doesn't make the world feel alive, running into known faces does.

[potis]

I think even back then there were alleged guides on fast ways to get to 60 in a week or two (that people were trying to sell for money... so they may not have actually been legit tbh.)

It wasnt fast ways, it was literally experience and patches.

There was a huge difference between leveling in February-march 2005 when WoW launched in EU, and leveling in August 2005 when they opened the 3rd batch of servers.

I dont remember how long my first character took, all i know is my second character when we rerolled May-June 2005 from Alliance to Horde, in 5 days with 4 hours of sleep (Yes i played that much, summer and being 18+ helps) was around level 45, with keeping my Blacksmithing and Mining on par cause i was gonna abuse it the moment i hit 60, which i did.

Because i got burnt out by playing so much those 5 days i didnt touch WoW for ~2 weeks, went on 5 day vacation, came back and played Dota for 1 week before they introduced BGs which is where i started playing again , that and my friends were starting to catch up finally.

[Chaelexi]

It wasnt fast ways, it was literally experience and patches.

There was a huge difference between leveling in February-march 2005 when WoW launched in EU, and leveling in August 2005 when they opened the 3rd batch of servers.

I dont remember how long my first character took, all i know is my second character when we rerolled May-June 2005 from Alliance to Horde, in 5 days with 4 hours of sleep (Yes i played that much, summer and being 18+ helps) was around level 45, with keeping my Blacksmithing and Mining on par cause i was gonna abuse it the moment i hit 60, which i did.

Because i got burnt out by playing so much those 5 days i didnt touch WoW for ~2 weeks, went on 5 day vacation, came back and played Dota for 1 week before they introduced BGs which is where i started playing again , that and my friends were starting to catch up finally.

There were extremely fast ways. Tap leveling in and outside of BRD or Winterspring Blue Dragon caves is a prime example. You could go from 30-60 in an evening of play.

[ossyc]

There were extremely fast ways. Tap leveling in and outside of BRD or Winterspring Blue Dragon caves is a prime example. You could go from 30-60 in an evening of play.

30-60 in one night? Absolute nonsense, I leveled many characters to 60 back in the day and that is just BS

[Chaelexi]

30-60 in one night? Absolute nonsense, I leveled many characters to 60 back in the day and that is just BS

You could average a level every 10 minutes through this. You would get a group of geared level 60's and then the low level character would run around getting the tap on high level elites while not in the group with 60's and the 60's would kill it them allowing the low level to get full XP credit for the kills(which at that point was over 2500 XP a kill) or you could do the zone into BRD as a group the 60's would run around gathering the mobs up the low level char would get the tag, the 60's would leave the group and kill the mobs before the timer to kick them of dungeon came up and the low level char got all the XP. We would charge 1000 gold for a 30-60 carry and most people would just buy the gold from gold sellers and pay us. If it took more than one night we would lower the cost to 800 gold.

[potis]

30-60 in one night? Absolute nonsense, I leveled many characters to 60 back in the day and that is just BS

It isnt, it was used until some point in early TBC , it got patched after that because everyone started abusing it, so it got Blizzard's attention.

Did Blue Dragons thingie solo for a friend for his alt at one point not the Winterspring ones, the Azshara ones, took to long with one person despite the gear and i got bored after awhile, told him to go grind the Satyrs nearby at North Azshara.

Also did the outside BRD thingie, you simply pulled all the shitty dwarves, cleaved them down -->tons of XP for the low level tagger.

I remember it cause there was a weird account trading going on between friends at TBC launch (We were a good 15-20 people playing together from a lan environment/net cafe) and eventually someone got fucked over and had to re-level a character, helped him a bit, then next day we tried again, was fixed , he got devastated.

It was simple, tag mob -->Level 60 1 shots it-->full XP.

Despite the person above explaining, they didnt fix "XP received by damage done" as i said, until TBC.

[Akka]

Fair point. I heard the launch was pretty botched, didn't actually play myself back then. Also, Wildstar had the massive problem that WoW already existed.

Wildstar also had the even more massive problems that it didn't benefit from the Warcraft franchise.

I liked a lot of the design philosophy of Wildstar, but I just was bored of it nevertheless. That's not because "WoW Vanilla design is bad", but rather because :
- I find magic and medieval settings more immersive than SF ones.
- The classes in Wildstar were just not as iconics as in WoW, and just lacked personality, which made the whole thing feels tacked on.
- The story wasn't compelling.
But yeah, the dynamic aspect of gameplay was pretty fun, and there is lots of things that were absolutely great (the housing was just incredible).

- - - Updated - - -

Running into random other players doesn't make the world feel alive, running into known faces does.

And that's the strength of Vanilla : as you spend a lot more time leveling, as leveling and grouping are more significant, as you need to group to get a lot of things done, and as there is no cross-realm, you'll encounter the same people much more often and they will stop being random and start becoming known faces more and more.

[Deficineiron]

Very recently a Pserver had more than 8k in the same realm, a complete shit show for leveling imo but most aparently enjoyed it.

2.5k was the original cap on blizz servers and those days are long gone.

one very big benefit of high pop servers like that is you can probably find a dungeon group pretty easily while leveling even on a mature server (where a lot of the char. online are 60 already).

- - - Updated - - -

You wont find disagreement here, as i said i dont enjoy packed servers at launch. I do have to admit however that servers like the big ones i knew in pservers, despite being a horrible experience in the first levels for the exact same reasons you said, they ended up being vibrant and busy in the mid to late game, there's always ppl looking for stuff to do in a server with 7 to 8k ppl, what that, regardless of whatever ppl think, is a requirement for the sucess of classic, big servers, with lots of folks.

right, otherwise you end up with the scenario that many servers had in bc, where player population is mostly at max and you cannot find groups for almost anything while leveling - outdoor elite areas, instances, etc.

for whatever reason getting well over 5k online seems to provide critical mass to complete a lot of group things while leveling. unfortunately, in the ps scene it does not provide critical mass to get leveling bracket bg's to pop reliably. It seems a given that 'queue anywhere' would change this, however.

- - - Updated - - -

I think that Blizzard expanded the size of the servers toward the end of Vanilla or early TBC.

Regardless, I think a 5k max is fine, but beyond that it becomes overcrowded. Pservers fare better with higher pop because they are nearly always international and as such have languages and nationalities to take into account (even if truly international guilds exist and tend to be the norm, there is a substantial amount of players who stick to their own), and because players simply tend to aggregate around the same server to avoid the risk of "dead server", which isn't as critical in an official one.

I think about half? the pop on major pservers is chinese and that presents a rather large and essentially insurmountable language barrier - you can interact in wpvp, you can run instances where there isn't a lot of communication needed, but that is about it.

- - - Updated - - -

I get what you are saying, and yeah, it would take really dedicated raiders only about a week to get their pre-raid BiS after they hit 60. A lot of the BiS items, or at least the next best thing, in classic were weird greens. Hell, I even used some green +frost power shoulders in MC because my BiS dropped from some rare spawn in BRD that no one wanted to kill. But that's different from Dudas is saying. He wants all the content for classic(Ony-Naxx) released all at once so that he can clear it all in a month. I'm just saying that even if they did that, and I don't think they will, it would still take a guild 6 months to a year to get everyone geared up enough for Naxx.

I remain optimistic they are considering how to modify how raids gear up, either increased drop rates, some type of badge system (boj's essentially) giving a guaranteed slow upgrade alternate path or both.

[Tesshin20]

It's good they don't go with the patch that has realm only bgs. Like on low pop server people don't want 30 min queues. Like you need 80 people for AV. After a couple of months if you somehow started on a dead server you're completely fucked.

Let's not kid ourself here. Most will SWARM the server that will have the popular streamers on them. The other servers that don't have a huge playerbase would be completely fucked with no crossrealm bg.

The whole reason why many people want classic is to get to the pre crossrealm era where each server was its own isolated community.

[Deleted]

And that's the strength of Vanilla : as you spend a lot more time leveling, as leveling and grouping are more significant, as you need to group to get a lot of things done, and as there is no cross-realm, you'll encounter the same people much more often and they will stop being random and start becoming known faces more and more.

The whole reason why many people want classic is to get to the pre crossrealm era where each server was its own isolated community.

Had to highlight that.

I sincerely hope they are placing the utmost importance on the community aspects. Personally, I'd argue in favor of introducing realms with capped population and faction ratios and a name check for uniqueness across all vanilla servers (to facilitate later merges). There are all sorts of issues with that in practice, but if you don't create an environment in which a recognizable community can emerge the whole thing is pointless.

Vanilla nostalgia isn't about the gameplay. The famous quote "you think you do, but you don't" misses the mark entirely, because it assumes that gameplay and player experience are the same. Nobody misses the gameplay, it's the social aspects of the game that died somewhere along the way.

[Echocho]

Wildstar also had the even more massive problems that it didn't benefit from the Warcraft franchise.

I liked a lot of the design philosophy of Wildstar, but I just was bored of it nevertheless. That's not because "WoW Vanilla design is bad", but rather because :
- I find magic and medieval settings more immersive than SF ones.
- The classes in Wildstar were just not as iconics as in WoW, and just lacked personality, which made the whole thing feels tacked on.
- The story wasn't compelling.
But yeah, the dynamic aspect of gameplay was pretty fun, and there is lots of things that were absolutely great (the housing was just incredible).

I always felt like Wildstar was made completely by mathematicians. They nailed the mechanical side of the game with its systems and what not but got nothing of the soul. You need artists and storytellers that can bring the magic to life.

[Dergiab]

Vanilla nostalgia isn't about the gameplay. The famous quote "you think you do, but you don't" misses the mark entirely, because it assumes that gameplay and player experience are the same. Nobody misses the gameplay, it's the social aspects of the game that died somewhere along the way.

Actually, I legit miss the gameplay. Slow paced combat, dangerous world and dungeons and professions actually benefitting the leveling process.