WoW Classic Development Team AMA

[Akka]

But that's just such a ridiculous path to go down. Who gets to decide what broke the game? You?

That's not ridiculous at all, that's my informed opinion.
NOW that being said, I fully understand the "if we take everyone's opinion on what is best, it'll be a clusterfuck". That's the reason why I support the #nochange idea even though I see plenty of things that would warrant improvement.
So yeah, if Blizzard remakes TBC and WotLK and apply a strict "no change" rule, I'll understand and comply.

I still consider that these things are the root reasons why WoW went so far down the hill, so many people wanted to return to Classic.

[Sithalos]

BC and wotlk could have classic design?

This part excited me the most. Wrath without LFG? ...Cata without the dungeon nerfs or LFR?

We could truly live in the best timeline.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Who would've guessed it.
Classic won't be enough, we're already seeing "Remake TBC and WOTLK to be like Classic!!!!11"...
Meanwhile, how about they design each legacy iteration to be actual legacy, aka be as it were, rather than appeasing individual ideas of what turned the game sour...?

Don't know who was expecting new content to be developed for past expansions?

Well I've seen plenty make that assumption/demand over the past years. Not gonna go back to each and give you a name though, but pretty sure this thread alone has them too.

[mmonym]

We’ve done most of the hard work by bringing back 1.12 so progressing to Burning Crusade would be a lot easier for us. Our plan is to identify everything we need to do should we ever decide to go this route.

Awesome, BC coming up - my favorite expansion.

WotLK - everything after Ulduar - killed WoW for me. I really don't care what they do after BC, though I'd try to get into a guild that wanted to do Ulduar.

[SirCowdog]

I'm actually kind of glad I'm going to be absolutely slammed at work, and not able to spend significant time on Classic at launch. I'll come in the week after when things have calmed down a bit.

[Al Gorefiend]

I’d only support progressing to BC if the players are allowed to change the updates that came with it.

Like add the stuff we want: outland, level cap of 70, new talents and abilities.

Leave out the stuff we don’t: removal of 40 mans, blood elves.

[Al Gorefiend]

Except clearly a large portion of the playerbase loves Blood Elves. The only ones who seem to dislike them are the kind of Garrosh loving weirdos.

An alternate development of BC where we got ogres and high elves sounds better though.

[Merie]

So the honor system was reworked into live update instead of the weekly rank update? Unfortunate, was looking forward to that Wednesday excitement, now you will just know in advance if you are ranking up.

I remember getting into an AV as Lt Cmd at about 3-4am in the morning, anxious if this week would be my last. When I got out and saw the words "Commander" by my name, I was on cloud nine!

[cerberus1838]

The response to WoW Classic has blown the team away!

You think you do, but you don't!

[ElDoorO]

"The reason to WoW classic has blown the team away" - the team that said almost no one would be interested and wrote players off for years. Now it's so overwhelming they are having to open up way more servers than expected.

It's almost like the players have been doing it for a while because they liked it. Huh. How about that? How many people here and on the forums swore the dev team knew better?

[alturic]

I’d only support progressing to BC if the players are allowed to change the updates that came with it.

Like add the stuff we want: outland, level cap of 70, new talents and abilities.

Leave out the stuff we don’t: removal of 40 mans, blood elves.

So. BC, but not BC?

[Vargur]

So layering is phasing? So it's not vanilla then?

[korijenkins]

Funny how the team was "blown away by the response"

Maybe because a large amount of people preferred the game originally? Gotta figure, the game came out 15 years ago, a lot of people who played it back then are older, in some cases maybe even dead. Even so, there are still millions that played at the time and still follow the game even if they don't play it in it's current terrible state.

Hopefully this is a wake-up moment for Blizzard, and they realize that removing complexity from the game under the guise of "quality of life" makes the game dull.

[Gref]

man I am so fucking hyped. can't wait for saturday. Gotta find an excuse for sundays drinking party.

[Not A Cat]

I feel like if they were to make a BC legacy server they would have to change some things in order to make it work better.

By the end of BC, Sunwell PAtch, they removed attunement requirements for dungeons and raids and added the first iteration of "catch-up gear." IMO the only change they would need to make is to keep attunements and not add the catch up gear.This way new players to the server would be able to experience all of the content instead of just jumping straight into T6.

They would also probably have to phase out the raids like with classic, they launched BC with T4 and T5 (and Hyjal but it was unreachable) and as a result there were some insane tuning issues. I'm sure anyone who has played remembers the broken nightmares that were Vashj and Kael.

I actually think BC servers would be nice. Facilitating a more modern patch cycle through phases would make the whole expansion feel less like the massive clusterfuck it was back in '07. Like it matters, that's probably something they aren't even close to considering right, either way I'm stoked for classic!

[Tente]

C'mon guys and girls, vanilla is not released yet people already start making TBC and Wotlk request ?

[reacher]

C'mon guys and girls, vanilla is not released yet people already start making TBC and Wotlk request ?

The dev team seems to be planning on re-releasing BC eventually. It's stated in their AMA summary

"Most of the hard work is done bringing back 1.12 so progressing to BC would be a lot easier."

[Gadzooks]

True, but I'd prefer if they continued development based on Classic platform rather than making museum.

Game development can be analysed to find where it all went wrong and change it this time. I think flying was first thing that went wrong with development, catch up gear (before Sunwell patch it was fine - just few offset hard to get items) was second, achievements that required group participation (things like professions and trivial stuff that does not require other players is fine, things that are used to measure progress and require group effort are not) was third, mid-WoTLK nerfbat that trivialised all content was fourth, LFD was fifth mistake, raiding modes were sixth and final pre-Cataclysm mistakes that can be changed. This is my subjective opinion.

They seem to be considering TBC being added, which is fine, but I'd keep your expectations low. I've seen nothing from them that they're considering making a "fixed" version of the game alongside retail. This has been a "museum" project, from the beginning, you're talking expanding the dev team for classic, taking budget and manhours from retail - that's a high bar to reach. This has always been "experience the game as it was", not developing two different games.

I don't want to start name calling, but this smacks of just being greedy. You're getting classic. Be happy with that, for now.

- - - Updated - - -

If Classic is #NoChanges, then so should TBC and WOTLK servers be. Bastardising both those expansions to appease the Muhnilla crowd? No thanks.

Classic for the Classic fans, TBC and WOTLK for the fans of each. Makes perfect sense.
It's more or less a confirmation that no, there won't be new, original content developed for Classic though. As it should be.

The whole thing is slowly shifting from "OMG can't wait to play classic" to "WE WANT OUR REBOOT". That was never discussed, promised, or even hinted at. But we all know they'll be posting about it.

[Wardrake]

The dev team seems to be planning on re-releasing BC eventually. It's stated in their AMA summary

"Most of the hard work is done bringing back 1.12 so progressing to BC would be a lot easier."

Man if they do that it will seriously suck and anger alot of people.
I hope people do realize that once they progress Classic to TBC there wont be any Vanilla/Classic anymore.. unless they open up SEPARATE servers just for BC... and even if they do, alot of people will move away from classic to TBC and thus the classic server will have even less people playing.

And in the end, where will this end? we will be back re-playing all the other stupid expansions until we catch up to retail? Come on folks.

[Queen of Hamsters]

The whole thing is slowly shifting from "OMG can't wait to play classic" to "WE WANT OUR REBOOT". That was never discussed, promised, or even hinted at. But we all know they'll be posting about it.

Yeah, it's pretty weird how the "pinnacle of this game's design" in their minds still doesn't seem to be enough. A museum is exactly what Classic should be. And if they add TBC and WOTLK servers, those too should be Museums. Experience them as they were, not bastardized to appease a crowd that was never going to stay pleased anyway.