What happened to #NoChanges?

[Neklord]

The people that want #NoChanges are fucking zealots.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

for the mass majority of the playerbase retail is even more mindless then vanilla was.
unless you do mythic +, heroic or mythic raiding, vanilla was harder for any content you do.

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naxx would disagree. but that was the outlier.

Nah mop rares were harder than any rare in vanilla and tbc leveling was better as a hunter or warlock. You can avoid a lot of stuff and using your brain matters more.

[storluffarn]

Copied from the changes mega thread, since it seems a bit dead and here seems to be where the discussion is at the moment:

Possibly unpopular opinion at this forum but, I'm personally fine with most changes *within the context of being vanilla*. Adding new content and mechanics is a bad idea IMO, but I for one would be happy with having more visible specs. I used to play Warlock back then, and then you either played SM/ruin or DS/ruin, which is essentially the same, you spam shadow bolts all day long, all game long.

I'd be happy if it was viable to change between demons, fire, dots and shadow bolts, which are the four principle modes of a warlock in vanilla instead of being locked into only one of those. By all means, release it with 1.12, but release balancing patches as we go along. After all patches *was* a part of the classic experience, changing things up every once in a while in terms of strategy.

[Boss Lady]

literally a pile of shit addressing something i didnt even mean.. especially that point b

its not players who ruined experience for others its blizzard who started catering to these players for no reason

also just because for you being social means being bullied, because you cant stand negativity - its your problem, not mine or anyone elses

also i bet you never really played the game to begin with if you think that the game had to change so drastically to stay afloat

all the changes actually alienated the current(at the time) playerbase and most of them obviously quit(either completely or they just try each expansion for a month and then quit, cuz the game is being ruined more and more). Also i mentioned that the game being anti-social isnt even the main reason people quit, but whatever..

also if you believe that the majority of current playerbase are oldschool, then you're delusional

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yeah, imagine in 2018 believing into what blizzard are saying

Feel free to back any of that drivel with facts or data... I'll wait.

[Jazzhands]

I'm still hardcore no changes. We haven't left, it's just pointless to argue with people, some people don't seem understand what Classic is meant to be, which is sort of like a museum. It's suppose to be as accurate as possible, anyone lobbying for changes or things that weren't in Vanilla either doesn't understand that or doesn't care, so I simply avoid them most of the time. I won't be able to change their mind and they won't accept that Blizzard is trying to make a product that's not for them, so it's just a waste of my time.

Classic isn't meant to be some weird WoW remake. It's meant to be as close to Vanilla as possible. Tons of people have done "WoW+" private servers, and they all bomb compared to normal Blizzlike ones. Your vision of Classic WoW and how "good" it could be with XYZ changes is bad, accept that and move on, and let Classic be Classic for people who actually want Classic.

[Boss Lady]

Your thesis of A is incorrect. The expansion of it only has loose correlation in the way you explained it, IE. not well.

Starting off with a logical fallacy.

Blizzard did indeed fundamentally change aspects of the game which took away and chipped at the need to communicate or be social all together. It doesn't matter if players naturally are or want to be social.

Let me just stop you right there. A player's desire to be social is ABSOLUTELY relevant. Whether or not the necessity to do so exists. It is a forced interaction and eventually the anti-social people (which is the majority of the community) will reject it, and resent being forced to do something they don't want to do.

It's no [coincidence] that one can go play on a Vanilla private server (for example) and quickly realize that the game systems did facilitate and encourage social behavior - at the very least for the purpose of getting anything worthwhile done. Fast forward today, completely different systems, completely different player interaction (largely faceless and non-existent).

This should go here. This idea of social interaction being "faceless and non-existent" has ALWAYS been true. People didn't care about you in vanilla, they needed bodies. They checked your FR gear, and/or your bis slot gear. If you didn't appear to be a retard or were blacklisted for ninja looting you made the raid. Shut up, follow instructions, and you'll get loot. That isn't "social" interaction at least not "healthy" social interaction.

Speaking about myself. I'm extremely social, both in real life and in multiplayer games I play. In present day, I not only don't have to communicate to accomplish anything casual (anything below mythics/rbg) that I might seek to do - across the board no exceptions, but there is no incentive from purely a social aspect to do so. I'm not some one off. This is the general experience for every player now. Unless I particularly and oddly really enjoy the XYZ of whatever it is that I'm doing with another player who randomly joined into my group from a menu, high odds that I'm never going to see or play with that person again. Why bother? For the sake of being social to prove your ideas on social interaction correct? Spare me.

You've actually just proven my point completely. A healthy interaction is developing relationships with people who share similar interests. In the absence of necessity, or imperative, you choose NOT to be social. You aren't the social butterfly you claim to be. You aren't. Period. I'm not sure I understand the defensiveness, or this weird need to "prove me wrong". Why is it so bad for you to think you are "anti-social" accept it, own it, move on. Your need to fight against that fact is a character defect. I have people I work with that I am not friends with. I don't dislike them, but they aren't my friends. I don't NEED more friends. I have people I play WoW with, I don't invite them over for the Super Bowl. We play WoW together, let's leave it at that, I don't have a desire to meet up with them at Blizzcon, or even as little as a guild photo op. I don't care. At the end of the day it's a game, and I don't need a GAME to facilitate a FAKE social interaction. I didn't need it 2004, I don't need it in 2018.

[Boss Lady]

Your thesis of A is incorrect. The expansion of it only has loose correlation in the way you explained it, IE. not well.

Starting off with a logical fallacy. I couldn't eyeroll any harder right now.

Blizzard did indeed fundamentally change aspects of the game which took away and chipped at the need to communicate or be social all together. It doesn't matter if players naturally are or want to be social.

Let me just stop you right there. A player's desire to be social is ABSOLUTELY relevant. Whether or not the necessity to do so exists. It is a forced interaction and eventually the anti-social people (which is the majority of the community) will reject it, and resent being forced to do something they don't want to do.

It's no [coincidence] that one can go play on a Vanilla private server (for example) and quickly realize that the game systems did facilitate and encourage social behavior - at the very least for the purpose of getting anything worthwhile done. Fast forward today, completely different systems, completely different player interaction (largely faceless and non-existent).

This should go here. This idea of social interaction being "faceless and non-existent" has ALWAYS been true. People didn't care about you in vanilla, they needed bodies. They checked your FR gear, and/or your bis slot gear. If you didn't appear to be a retard or were blacklisted for ninja looting you made the raid. Shut up, follow instructions, and you'll get loot. That isn't "social" interaction at least not "healthy" social interaction.

Speaking about myself. I'm extremely social, both in real life and in multiplayer games I play. In present day, I not only don't have to communicate to accomplish anything casual (anything below mythics/rbg) that I might seek to do - across the board no exceptions, but there is no incentive from purely a social aspect to do so. I'm not some one off. This is the general experience for every player now. Unless I particularly and oddly really enjoy the XYZ of whatever it is that I'm doing with another player who randomly joined into my group from a menu, high odds that I'm never going to see or play with that person again. Why bother? For the sake of being social to prove your ideas on social interaction correct? Spare me.

You've actually just proven my point completely. A healthy interaction is developing relationships with people who share similar interests. In the absence of necessity, or imperative, you choose NOT to be social. You aren't the social butterfly you claim to be. You aren't. Period. I'm not sure I understand the defensiveness, or this weird need to "prove me wrong". Why is it so bad for you to think you are "anti-social" accept it, own it, move on. Your need to fight against that fact is a character defect. I have people I work with that I am not friends with. I don't dislike them, but they aren't my friends. I don't NEED more friends. I have people I play WoW with, I don't invite them over for the Super Bowl. We play WoW together, let's leave it at that, I don't have a desire to meet up with them at Blizzcon, or even as little as a guild photo op. I don't care. At the end of the day it's a game, and I don't need a GAME to facilitate a FAKE social interaction. I didn't need it 2004, I don't need it in 2018.

[Boss Lady]

Your thesis of A is incorrect. The expansion of it only has loose correlation in the way you explained it, IE. not well.

Starting off with a logical fallacy.

Blizzard did indeed fundamentally change aspects of the game which took away and chipped at the need to communicate or be social all together. It doesn't matter if players naturally are or want to be social.

Let me just stop you right there. A player's desire to be social is ABSOLUTELY relevant. Whether or not the necessity to do so exists. It is a forced interaction and eventually the anti-social people (which is the majority of the community) will reject it, and resent being forced to do something they don't want to do.

It's no [coincidence] that one can go play on a Vanilla private server (for example) and quickly realize that the game systems did facilitate and encourage social behavior - at the very least for the purpose of getting anything worthwhile done. Fast forward today, completely different systems, completely different player interaction (largely faceless and non-existent).

This should go here. This idea of social interaction being "faceless and non-existent" has ALWAYS been true. People didn't care about you in vanilla, they needed bodies. They checked your FR gear, and/or your bis slot gear. If you didn't appear to be a retard or were blacklisted for ninja looting you made the raid. Shut up, follow instructions, and you'll get loot. That isn't "social" interaction at least not "healthy" social interaction.

Speaking about myself. I'm extremely social, both in real life and in multiplayer games I play. In present day, I not only don't have to communicate to accomplish anything casual (anything below mythics/rbg) that I might seek to do - across the board no exceptions, but there is no incentive from purely a social aspect to do so. I'm not some one off. This is the general experience for every player now. Unless I particularly and oddly really enjoy the XYZ of whatever it is that I'm doing with another player who randomly joined into my group from a menu, high odds that I'm never going to see or play with that person again. Why bother? For the sake of being social to prove your ideas on social interaction correct? Spare me.

You've actually just proven my point completely. A healthy interaction is developing relationships with people who share similar interests. In the absence of necessity, or imperative, you choose NOT to be social. You aren't the social butterfly you claim to be. You aren't. Period. I'm not sure I understand the defensiveness, or this weird need to "prove me wrong". Why is it so bad for you to think you are "anti-social" accept it, own it, move on. Your need to fight against that fact is a character defect. I have people I work with that I am not friends with. I don't dislike them, but they aren't my friends. I don't NEED more friends. I have people I play WoW with, I don't invite them over for the Super Bowl. We play WoW together, let's leave it at that, I don't have a desire to meet up with them at Blizzcon, or even as little as a guild photo op. I don't care. At the end of the day it's a game, and I don't need a GAME to facilitate a FAKE social interaction. I didn't need it 2004, I don't need it in 2018.

[Boss Lady]

Your thesis of A is incorrect. The expansion of it only has loose correlation in the way you explained it, IE. not well.

Starting off with a logical fallacy.

Blizzard did indeed fundamentally change aspects of the game which took away and chipped at the need to communicate or be social all together. It doesn't matter if players naturally are or want to be social.

Let me just stop you right there. A player's desire to be social is ABSOLUTELY relevant. Whether or not the necessity to do so exists. It is a forced interaction and eventually the anti-social people (which is the majority of the community) will reject it, and resent being forced to do something they don't want to do.

It's no [coincidence] that one can go play on a Vanilla private server (for example) and quickly realize that the game systems did facilitate and encourage social behavior - at the very least for the purpose of getting anything worthwhile done. Fast forward today, completely different systems, completely different player interaction (largely faceless and non-existent).

This should go here. This idea of social interaction being "faceless and non-existent" has ALWAYS been true. People didn't care about you in vanilla, they needed bodies. They checked your FR gear, and/or your bis slot gear. If you didn't appear to be a retard or were blacklisted for ninja looting you made the raid. Shut up, follow instructions, and you'll get loot. That isn't "social" interaction at least not "healthy" social interaction.

Speaking about myself. I'm extremely social, both in real life and in multiplayer games I play. In present day, I not only don't have to communicate to accomplish anything casual (anything below mythics/rbg) that I might seek to do - across the board no exceptions, but there is no incentive from purely a social aspect to do so. I'm not some one off. This is the general experience for every player now. Unless I particularly and oddly really enjoy the XYZ of whatever it is that I'm doing with another player who randomly joined into my group from a menu, high odds that I'm never going to see or play with that person again. Why bother? For the sake of being social to prove your ideas on social interaction correct? Spare me.

You've actually just proven my point completely. A healthy interaction is developing relationships with people who share similar interests. In the absence of necessity, or imperative, you choose NOT to be social. You aren't the social butterfly you claim to be. You aren't. Period. I'm not sure I understand the defensiveness, or this weird need to "prove me wrong". Why is it so bad for you to think you are "anti-social" accept it, own it, move on. Your need to fight against that fact is a character defect. I have people I work with that I am not friends with. I don't dislike them, but they aren't my friends. I don't NEED more friends. I have people I play WoW with, I don't invite them over for the Super Bowl. We play WoW together, let's leave it at that, I don't have a desire to meet up with them at Blizzcon, or even as little as a guild photo op. I don't care. At the end of the day it's a game, and I don't need a GAME to facilitate a FAKE social interaction. I didn't need it 2004, I don't need it in 2018.

[Boss Lady]

Your thesis of A is incorrect. The expansion of it only has loose correlation in the way you explained it, IE. not well.

Starting off with a logical fallacy.

Blizzard did indeed fundamentally change aspects of the game which took away and chipped at the need to communicate or be social all together. It doesn't matter if players naturally are or want to be social.

Let me just stop you right there. A player's desire to be social is ABSOLUTELY relevant. Whether or not the necessity to do so exists. It is a forced interaction and eventually the anti-social people (which is the majority of the community) will reject it, and resent being forced to do something they don't want to do.

It's no [coincidence] that one can go play on a Vanilla private server (for example) and quickly realize that the game systems did facilitate and encourage social behavior - at the very least for the purpose of getting anything worthwhile done. Fast forward today, completely different systems, completely different player interaction (largely faceless and non-existent).

This should go here. This idea of social interaction being "faceless and non-existent" has ALWAYS been true. People didn't care about you in vanilla, they needed bodies. They checked your FR gear, and/or your bis slot gear. If you didn't appear to be a retard or were blacklisted for ninja looting you made the raid. Shut up, follow instructions, and you'll get loot. That isn't "social" interaction at least not "healthy" social interaction.

Speaking about myself. I'm extremely social, both in real life and in multiplayer games I play. In present day, I not only don't have to communicate to accomplish anything casual (anything below mythics/rbg) that I might seek to do - across the board no exceptions, but there is no incentive from purely a social aspect to do so. I'm not some one off. This is the general experience for every player now. Unless I particularly and oddly really enjoy the XYZ of whatever it is that I'm doing with another player who randomly joined into my group from a menu, high odds that I'm never going to see or play with that person again. Why bother? For the sake of being social to prove your ideas on social interaction correct? Spare me.

You've actually just proven my point completely. A healthy interaction is developing relationships with people who share similar interests. In the absence of necessity, or imperative, you choose NOT to be social. You aren't the social butterfly you claim to be. You aren't. Period.

I'm not sure I understand the defensiveness, or this weird need to "prove me wrong". Why is it so bad for you to think you are "anti-social" accept it, own it, move on. Your need to fight against that fact is a character defect.

I have people I work with that I am not friends with. I don't dislike them, but they aren't my friends. I don't NEED more friends. I have people I play WoW with, I don't invite them over for the Super Bowl. We play WoW together, let's leave it at that, I don't have a desire to meet up with them at Blizzcon, or even as little as a guild photo op. I don't care. At the end of the day it's a game, and I don't need a GAME to facilitate a FAKE social interaction. I didn't need it 2004, I don't need it in 2018.

[storluffarn]

It's meant to be as close to Vanilla as possible.

Meant by whom? By You? By Blizzard? This community? Because I haven't seen any official statement that it's supposed to be an absolute pristine copy. Quite the contrary, a pristine copy it won't be, read e.g. their post on anti-cheating / boting. There won't be any "Chinese farmers" running around with some crudely written -- even comical -- script farming silithus. Is that a bad thing? It'll cost me a few laughs to be sure, but also it'll make the game more fair and it will impact the in game economy, and overall I believe it's a good thing.

I believe the crucial question to ask is: Why do you want to play vanilla wow? To me the answer is that I want to experience the same community, the same spirit, and the same environment as I experienced 15 years ago when the undead warlock Storluffarn was travelling the land. Which of course leads to the question: What made that those things? I believe this is a notoriously hard question to answer. I would even venture that this is one reason why Blizzard hasn't started a legacy server already, because the answer probably is different for different people, and it's a near impossible task to please everyone, making it a high risk project.

I for one though, do not think that the exact metrics and data tables used in 1.12 was what made vanilla wow what it was. I believe that it has a lot more to do with concept, which is also hard to capture, but here's some examples of changes I think made wow unvanilla: parallel specs, teleportations to dungeons, flying mounts, rewards for doing mostly nothing, not having 40-man raids, etc. In particular, I *don't* think e.g. changing the values in talent trees to make more specs viable will change the overall in game environment. Quite the contrary, I believe that it's the typical kind of thing you *could* change while still preserving the vanilla core. And if you can make the game more enjoyable while maintaining that it is still vanilla wow, then that seems to be a good thing to me. If we all can get the vanilla experience, just with even more enjoyment, how can that then be a bad thing?

Even disregarding the abstract discussion above, I believe balancing patches had a natural place in what made vanilla wow what it was. The theory crafting, the testing out new PvP specs, ironing out how to peak DPS in instances. It added crucial variance in my opinion, it challenged the players to try new things, and also added to the individual uniqueness of your character.

[MHMabrito]

No one will play and the game will fail

This might happen regardless, once people find out how quickly the players now-a-days can power through content.

[Jazzhands]

Meant by whom? By You? By Blizzard? This community? Because I haven't seen any official statement that it's supposed to be an absolute pristine copy. Quite the contrary, a pristine copy it won't be, read e.g. their post on anti-cheating / boting. There won't be any "Chinese farmers" running around with some crudely written -- even comical -- script farming silithus. Is that a bad thing? It'll cost me a few laughs to be sure, but also it'll make the game more fair and it will impact the in game economy, and overall I believe it's a good thing.

I believe the crucial question to ask is: Why do you want to play vanilla wow? To me the answer is that I want to experience the same community, the same spirit, and the same environment as I experienced 15 years ago when the undead warlock Storluffarn was travelling the land. Which of course leads to the question: What made that those things? I believe this is a notoriously hard question to answer. I would even venture that this is one reason why Blizzard hasn't started a legacy server already, because the answer probably is different for different people, and it's a near impossible task to please everyone, making it a high risk project.

I for one though, do not think that the exact metrics and data tables used in 1.12 was what made vanilla wow what it was. I believe that it has a lot more to do with concept, which is also hard to capture, but here's some examples of changes I think made wow unvanilla: parallel specs, teleportations to dungeons, flying mounts, rewards for doing mostly nothing, not having 40-man raids, etc. In particular, I *don't* think e.g. changing the values in talent trees to make more specs viable will change the overall in game environment. Quite the contrary, I believe that it's the typical kind of thing you *could* change while still preserving the vanilla core. And if you can make the game more enjoyable while maintaining that it is still vanilla wow, then that seems to be a good thing to me. If we all can get the vanilla experience, just with even more enjoyment, how can that then be a bad thing?

Even disregarding the abstract discussion above, I believe balancing patches had a natural place in what made vanilla wow what it was. The theory crafting, the testing out new PvP specs, ironing out how to peak DPS in instances. It added crucial variance in my opinion, it challenged the players to try new things, and also added to the individual uniqueness of your character.

There are a lot of interviews and such that aren't posted here. Take a look over https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20764016465, but more specifically, https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...-big-questions, and a bit more specific:

-Do you think there'll be a line to walk for the team, then? Somewhere between creating that authentic experience that people have asked for, while also figuring out what doesn't make sense anymore? For example, with the Intellect buff, is it important to you that players do need to drink after casting it?

-J. Allen Brack:Yes. That's part of the level 60 experience. Our goal is to recreate that classic 1-60 gameplay. Some things changed as time went on, with different patches. How does that get manifested? That's one of the outstanding questions. But yeah, the goal is to recreate that exact experience, for better or for worse.

In order to recreate the exact experience, first and foremost all the numbers and stuff need to be the same, if Balance druids are suddenly viable and balanced you have no chance of having the same experience they had back in the day, no matter how good or bad that experience is. Blizzard seems intent on keeping every upside and downside of Classic. After that, they can try to help push the community towards what it was back in the day, but it was the people that made the community back then, not Blizzard, so it's up to us to do what we can to create that part, like we did back then. Mostly all Blizzard can do is do what they did back then, and hand us a client, one that's as close to what we had back then as they can manage, and that's seemingly what they want to try to do. Some things are going to change of course, we know that a 100% pristine copy isn't going to happen, I never expected it to, but 99% is pretty good for me.

And if you read over those articles, in one of them J Allen directly says they don't care how populated the servers will be, so as long as that stays the same they won't be making changes just to make Classic more popular. Just based on private servers, they will be plenty populated, and those strive for 100% no matter what. And no, people don't just play them because they're free, there are TBC/WoTLK servers just as good as Vanilla ones, and people choose Vanilla, and if you have a PC and internet, 15$ isn't an amount of money to be sweating over, especially given how much time people put into WoW compared to, say, a 60$ AAA game. And on top of that, I've lost a lot of characters (and time) to private servers vanishing, Classic won't have that problem, I'll gladly pay 15$ a month just for that.

[cparle87]

You know the old saying "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."

A good portion of those people would likely rather quit then be forced to communicate, imo, since they wouldn't be able to do as much as they would like anymore. And I'm sure quite a few of those players that used to be social in WoW would probably join them if those changes that allowed them to not be as social were to be removed.

Don't forget that in LFR the person who stands up and tries to coordinate the rest of the group will likely get votekicked.

[arkanon]

Don't forget that in LFR the person who stands up and tries to coordinate the rest of the group will likely get votekicked.

I see this a lot. And, to be fair, when running 80% guild 20% pug runs i generally find the outspoken pugs tend to take a walk pretty fast.

Correction : i DID see this a lot, however i have not done LFR other than a few bosses in 2 expacs, but i doubt its changed.

[evogsr]

Starting off with a logical fallacy.
Let me just stop you right there. A player's desire to be social is ABSOLUTELY relevant. Whether or not the necessity to do so exists. It is a forced interaction and eventually the anti-social people (which is the majority of the community) will reject it, and resent being forced to do something they don't want to do.

You're not stopping me right there. Citation needed for your claim on what makes up any portion of the "community", now or then. The fact is, your own statement here works against your initial point that I was replying to. If anyone is led to believe that players will, as you say, reject and resent being forced to do something they don't want to do, then it holds water that various systems and specific design changes of the game have indeed been fundamentally changed by Blizzard. Which just so happens to be supported by a very long list of patch notes. (Thanks history)

The real truth about that is, not all of those changes like X-server BG's, phasing, CRZ, sharding, brain dead content, soloability extended, shared tags, etc. were spawned solely because of lack of interest in the necessary social interaction required, but several reasons. It just so happens, one of the outcomes was that social interaction took a nose dive from these changes. It has been noted, recorded, discussed ad nauseam. Which frankly, btfo's your original point.

This should go here. This idea of social interaction being "faceless and non-existent" has ALWAYS been true. People didn't care about you in vanilla, they needed bodies. They checked your FR gear, and/or your bis slot gear. If you didn't appear to be a retard or were blacklisted for ninja looting you made the raid. Shut up, follow instructions, and you'll get loot. That isn't "social" interaction at least not "healthy" social interaction.

What are you even talking about? You're conflating and attaching specific emotions to a game. Your memory hole of the Vanilla experience is disingenuous and fictitious. Even if that's how it was for you (no one would believe you), for literally everyone who ever played Vanilla - that faulty description is still a whole heap more interaction between players than what occurs right now. Sad.

You've actually just proven my point completely. A healthy interaction is developing relationships with people who share similar interests. In the absence of necessity, or imperative, you choose NOT to be social. You aren't the social butterfly you claim to be. You aren't. Period.

I'm not sure I understand the defensiveness, or this weird need to "prove me wrong". Why is it so bad for you to think you are "anti-social" accept it, own it, move on. Your need to fight against that fact is a character defect.

Yeah, no. That's your subjective definition of a healthy interaction, and you're trying to apply it to a game world but then a couple statements down disregarding this very thing while discounting the subject matter wholesale. Try to keep up. It is humorous that you think you have any insight to me with certainty. If we're going to play that game and Freudian style psycho analyze each other based on this forum, my take is that you're deep indigo levels autistic as this whole discussion seems to be beyond your grasp. Don't get defensive though, or try to claim that you aren't. Seriously, read between the lines here.

I have people I work with that I am not friends with. I don't dislike them, but they aren't my friends. I don't NEED more friends. I have people I play WoW with, I don't invite them over for the Super Bowl. We play WoW together, let's leave it at that, I don't have a desire to meet up with them at Blizzcon, or even as little as a guild photo op. I don't care. At the end of the day it's a game, and I don't need a GAME to facilitate a FAKE social interaction. I didn't need it 2004, I don't need it in 2018.

Again, what are you even talking about? You're so far off the reservation with this that there's no walking it back. This is how things used to work.

Player A needs help with XYZ. They look for other players willing to help them or who have similar goals. During their play time together, they may notice certain qualities or quirks that make engaging with that player(s) fun and worthy of repeating. A "friendship" is formed. Don't let your autism get you. I don't mean literal friends. In the confines of the game, they are able to rely on each other and extend this same level of social interaction and cohesion to other like minded players. This extended to almost every part of the Vanilla experience. Whether it was regular questing, dungeons, world pvp, bg's, raids. WoW followed that formula until certain fundamental systems changed/added/removed which made it so players have to do a collective sum of zero of that in quite literally every area of the game, other than the most competitive aspects which I mentioned in the last post, universally recognized.

Precisely, it is these changes that give no reason whatsoever for players, no matter how social to engage with each other outside of controlling their character. There's no shared struggle through some learning curve because the content has become brainless and server communities are long gone, you're 99% never going to see that LFR player again, let alone ever see them out playing in the open world. There's a reason why so many play this game now as a solo game and not an MMO and it's not because they're all a bunch of anti-social shut-ins (hint: you can't prove that anyway) but because the game has changed in such a way that there isn't even a reason, let alone a need to establish the most basic communication (hint: proven).

[cparle87]

I see this a lot. And, to be fair, when running 80% guild 20% pug runs i generally find the outspoken pugs tend to take a walk pretty fast.

Correction : i DID see this a lot, however i have not done LFR other than a few bosses in 2 expacs, but i doubt its changed.

Yeah. Happened to me once after a simple "Don't pull Tichondrius before everyone's in the room or they'll be locked out." To be honest Legion was really bad for this. Guys would rush up the tunnel after the first boss in EN through the portal to a boss, and pull it, locking everyone who got stuck on trash out. Or in ToV when going down the undead steps leaving a few people desperately fighting off trash so they could get through the portal and not be locked out of the three-headed dog. Or the sisters fight in ToS with the lockout gate appearing super quick.

[storluffarn]

In order to recreate the exact experience [...]

Thank you for replying to my post! The compiled list of interviews with Allen made for an interesting read!

I have some more thoughts though -- but feel free to pull out at any time if you find this discussion tiring because you've had it a hundred times before, I just came here, and I'm trying to sort out my impressions and thoughts.

Is that a realistic prospect though? Surely the experience back then partially depended on the context, the two biggest differences being: wow was the first game of its kind, and in particular we hadn't already played the game intensively. On the contrary, now MMOs like wow is a well-integrated genre in the gaming community and we have all played wow in some form, both which will surely impact the gaming experience making it more or less impossible to recreate the *same* experience.

What we can aim for however, is providing a similar gaming experience by ensuring wow stays conceptually true to its origins. Let's not forget that wow was ganging quite a lot back then. Take your balance-druids for example. In 1.12 you didn't see any moonkins around, because they got hit hard by the nerf hammer, however in 1.9 they were perfectly good. Was 1.12 fundamentally more vanilla wow at the core than 1.12? I don't think so. 1.12 was live for 3.5 months out of vanilla's lifetime of 2 years. Rather I believe that the wow experience came from the mechanics that made wow what it was, which did not change every other patch, as opposed to the class balance. Really, to me it seems pretty arbitrary to chose 1.12 as the hallmark for class balance in vanilla wow -- 1.12 was unlike 1.11 and would have been unlike to 1.13 in terms of balance, just that 1.13 by chance never came since TBC was released instead.

As far as population goes, I very much agree with you. The servers will be very full I think. I know I'll be there, haha. I'd also gladly pay for it. I put a lot of time into nostalrius until it shut down, and I'm psyched to get going again! I do hope for some class balancing every once in a while though, for me I think I'll become bored running the same specs after half a year... It should help with the longevity of the game.

[Coldfrostzero]

From very early on, there has been an extremely vocal group of players, on this forum and others, screaming that #NoChanges or they will leave. Various claims have been made, saying that if ANY changes are made:

- No one will play and the game will fail
- It wont be 'classic', but rather a new game
- New players wont be interested and will just play retail
- Vanilla players will reject it and stay on private servers

Plus many more obviously.

From day 1, outside of throwing the odd #NoChanges in a sarcastic and ironic way, i have said that Blizzard will make numerous changes to how vanilla was, but will drip feed them to the community, and present them in a way that the community will accept and even embrace them. "No way man, we will see it coming and reject the changes! #NoChanges!"

The changes are happening, some might be considered smaller (changes to animations, lighting, and graphics in general), some much larger (sharding confirmed for Classic). Now that it is obvious that Blizzard are making many changes from Vanilla into Classic, is the community pretty much just accepting it? Where do you sit with the change;

- Ignore them (no, those changes are not CONFIRMED, just a rumor)
- Justify them (Yeah but they HAD to make those changes and its only for launch!)
- Accept them (It wont ruin the game for me, so i dont mind)
- Embrace them (I think the changes are mostly for the good of the game)

But thats just my opinion, i would LOVE to hear your thoughts on the matter in the comments down below.
LETS JUST JUMP INTO IT.

As someone who is okay with QOL changes (especially technical limitations) and balancing I have no say in that part. However, they literally said that any sharding would only be at the starting zones to ease stress on the servers and not beyond that. Wanting servers to crash because they can't handle the stress so you can't even play for days on end is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Its a relaunch of a game from 2004, not a fucking emulation of your experience at that time.

[SoundOfGuns]

I mean, they are even giving you the square-eyelids from what i can tell, and im going to sit there eating popcorn when people start whining how bad classic looks. You get as close to classic as you can... just not all the bugs we actually had to deal with back then like constantly dying servers, which im kind of sad about.