Prime reminders of Classic developers' incompetence

[Ielenia]

• Battleground designs (AV Horde favored map design, WSG terrain exploits and safe spots)
• Botting that's so rampant and blatant people don't bother reporting anymore
• Gathering node quantities in relation to server populations
• Server populations in general (dozens of completely dead and single-faction servers)
• Staging of phases and events (Naxxramas timing, scourge invasions not ending, world event timings)

Item #2 seems to be not just on the developers, but also on the players, if they stopped reporting. Because even if Blizzard gets their act in order, nothing would be done because people wouldn't be reporting.
And item #4 is completely on the players. Server population and imbalances are completely player-made. Blizzard did not allocate players to be on specific servers. That was the players' own choosing. And short of forcefully moving player characters to servers they don't want to be in, regardless of their desire, there's nothing Blizzard can do to fix that issue.

[anon5123]

B) private server players/theorcrafters who spent 15 years solving and min/maxing the soul out of the thing

"noooo you can't optimize your gameplay! that's BAD! that's SUCKING THE FUN OUT OF THE GAME! you have to flail around like an idiot with bad specs and bad gear, and boomkins and prot paladin main tanks! you have to not put in any effort whatsoever and have a wipefest in molten core! that's the FUN way to play the game!"

I'll never understand this mindset.

[Relapses]

Yes Alex, I'll take "Reasons the Developers Don't Bother Communicating With This Dogshit Community" for $1,000.

[Chilela]

"noooo you can't optimize your gameplay! that's BAD! that's SUCKING THE FUN OUT OF THE GAME! you have to flail around like an idiot with bad specs and bad gear, and boomkins and prot paladin main tanks! you have to not put in any effort whatsoever and have a wipefest in molten core! that's the FUN way to play the game!"

I'll never understand this mindset.

Not gonna lie, that unironically sounds more fun than "Gotta level by running the same handful of dungeons over and over for hours on end, raidlog to retain world buffs, and play extremely specific builds with nearly zero wiggle room". I had a blast playing an Imp Slam build on a Warrior, even if I never did get to test it out in a raid environment.

[shadowroguetbc]

"noooo you can't optimize your gameplay! that's BAD! that's SUCKING THE FUN OUT OF THE GAME! you have to flail around like an idiot with bad specs and bad gear, and boomkins and prot paladin main tanks! you have to not put in any effort whatsoever and have a wipefest in molten core! that's the FUN way to play the game!"

I'll never understand this mindset.

Wipes in molten core? Not going to lie, this system sounds way better tbh. Way easier to weed out the bad and good players. Hot take if you’re wiping in molten core just because you aren’t playing the top end dps spec/class, then you are really bad at the game.

[unbound]

With all the fuss and discussion about a better expansion, I'd like to point out several objectives that the developers have fully failed to address:

• Battleground designs (AV Horde favored map design, WSG terrain exploits and safe spots)
• Botting that's so rampant and blatant people don't bother reporting anymore
• Gathering node quantities in relation to server populations
• Server populations in general (dozens of completely dead and single-faction servers)
• Staging of phases and events (Naxxramas timing, scourge invasions not ending, world event timings)

These things used to be addressed with a dialogue between the player base and developers. This tradition that made WoW successful in the first place is gone now. Irrational changes to the drums are another fine example of chaotic development of a product the developers have lost their interest in.

Don't get your hopes up for TBC. The Classic "developers" have proven to be completely ignorant to community feedback and utterly clueless to what's going on in game.

/eyeroll

You think Retail is bug free and well designed / maintained? Shimmer (with momentum) is still bugged for multiple dungeons (including some time walking) after all these months. Pet pathing was a disaster in WoD dungeons that got people kicked out of groups through no fault of their own. M+ random affixes line up periodically such that few will run serious keys those weeks. Botting is still a notable issue after all these years. Druid convoke is still stupidly OP after all these months. And that list goes on and on and on and on...

Classic developers fixed a great many things back in those days. The code to fight botting from back then doesn't hold up well with current botting tech. I guarantee any code developed today also won't hold up well in 15 years if it's a target worth going after.

You don't have the foggiest clue what incompetence is. And don't confuse incompetence with Blizz management laziness. WoW Classic has been given minimal staff so that Blizz executives can maximize prices on all the stock that is handed to them each year.

[Stormdash]

"noooo you can't optimize your gameplay! that's BAD! that's SUCKING THE FUN OUT OF THE GAME! you have to flail around like an idiot with bad specs and bad gear, and boomkins and prot paladin main tanks! you have to not put in any effort whatsoever and have a wipefest in molten core! that's the FUN way to play the game!"

I'll never understand this mindset.

It's not hard to understand. You should read the original essay with the memorable quote on the subject -

Many players cannot help approaching a game as an optimization puzzle. What gives the most reward for the least risk? What strategy provides the highest chance – or even a guaranteed chance – of success? Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.

Put simply, in Actual Vanilla, WoW was a game people were just stumbling through and finding out how to do stuff in. Or finding stuff that even exists. Mankrik's wife was actually a search, not a meme, or a cliche about people new to the game. Classic is something where nothing is novel, nothing is 'adventurous', everything is solved, and there is a 'correct' way to do everything.

[Eosia]

• Battleground designs (AV Horde favored map design, WSG terrain exploits and safe spots)

Actually the AV map is very Alliance-favored. The bridge choke point in DB with no equivalent on the Horde side. The fact you only have to kill the one archer in front of the hut on top of the tower versus the Horde having to kill them all because they can't LOS.

The terrain "exploit" is not that big of a deal.

[shadowroguetbc]

Actually the AV map is very Alliance-favored. The bridge choke point in DB with no equivalent on the Horde side. The fact you only have to kill the one archer in front of the hut on top of the tower versus the Horde having to kill them all because they can't LOS.

The terrain "exploit" is not that big of a deal.

Eh I’m not really one to say if one is easier or harder than the other, but that chokepoint def doesn’t make it easier for alliance. The alliance equivalent is a space that’s probably 3 character widths long and very very easily aoed. Plus horde have a really easy jump spot to get around this and just kill the archers off before anyone is even there (mostly rogues).

[Master Factician]

if there were no changes we wouldn't have had gargantuan overcrowded servers with like 10 times the population of a full vanilla server with the same amount of herbs and mining nodes.

When we had servers that size, there were layers. More layers, more nodes. If you're trying to say that there's servers with 10 times the population of a full vanilla server now, you're delusional.

[Ludvig]

When we had servers that size, there were layers. More layers, more nodes. If you're trying to say that there's servers with 10 times the population of a full vanilla server now, you're delusional.

perhaps not anymore but a full server on classic still has many times the population of a full vanilla server with the same exact amount of nodes.

[Kralljin]

Plus horde have a really easy jump spot to get around this and just kill the archers off before anyone is even there (mostly rogues).

Backdoor got fixed almost a year ago, the only way to enter Dun Baldar is the bridge as Horde.

[Nalam the Venom]

What exactly were FOTM classes? tBC was a peak idea of "bring the class, not the player" where many specs brought some unique buff/debuff.

Hunter, Warlock, Shaman are probably the ones optimal groups will stack

[durenas]

With all the fuss and discussion about a better expansion, I'd like to point out several objectives that the developers have fully failed to address:

• Battleground designs (AV Horde favored map design, WSG terrain exploits and safe spots)
• Botting that's so rampant and blatant people don't bother reporting anymore
• Gathering node quantities in relation to server populations
• Server populations in general (dozens of completely dead and single-faction servers)
• Staging of phases and events (Naxxramas timing, scourge invasions not ending, world event timings)

These things used to be addressed with a dialogue between the player base and developers. This tradition that made WoW successful in the first place is gone now. Irrational changes to the drums are another fine example of chaotic development of a product the developers have lost their interest in.

Don't get your hopes up for TBC. The Classic "developers" have proven to be completely ignorant to community feedback and utterly clueless to what's going on in game.

battleground designs: this is the way it was. Like it or not, blizzard never said they were going to fix it.
botting: they really should have done more about this, but it's like trying to empty the ocean with a spoon.
gathering node quantities: you mean, like, scaling spawn rates with population? they did do some of that, but making it truly dynamic would be not part of the vanilla experience, imho
server populations: not really blizzard's problem. If a server is dead, hey, move to a server that isn't.
staging of phases: they made some mistakes with the invasion event, but I don't think anyone was complaining that it wasn't ending on time. In fact, I for one appreciated that I had more time to farm sharpening stones.

[shadowroguetbc]

Backdoor got fixed almost a year ago, the only way to enter Dun Baldar is the bridge as Horde.

Oh that’s nice! Either way even with that fix I hardly see one side having the clear advantage over the other. Just because they both have massive bottlenecks in certain spots.

[anon5123]

It's not hard to understand. You should read the original essay with the memorable quote on the subject

But you still haven't explained why "optimization" = "not fun". That essay seems to imply that any and all optimizations are "boring and mind numbing" and therefor if you try to optimize yourself, you are inherently doing something not fun....because he says so.

You just keep repeating "optimizing the fun out of the game".....well, what if I find it fun to optimize the game? That's what I find enjoyable. But NOOOO that's WRONG AND BAD AND SUCKING THE SOUL OUT OF THE GAME according to whiners like you. In the context of WoW, I don't understand why people WANT to play sub-optimally. Why do you want to play a Ret paladin so badly? You just sit there and autoattack 90% of the time. Why do you want to play an Ele shaman so badly? You spam lightning bolt and go oom halfway through the fight. Why do you want a Paladin to main tank so badly? You can't taunt and have to fuck around with threat just to do something that would be a simple job for a Warrior or Druid. It's just mindboggling that someone would CHOOSE to be sub-optimal, and then claim that it is the proper and "fun" way to play the game, and anyone who does not do that is wrong and bad and "unfun".

And I'm not even a sweaty nolifer or anything, I'm not one of those people who stacks a raid with 20 warrior DPS and clears MC in 20 minutes. All throughout Classic I just ran in semi-hardcore groups. Y'know, with multiple Druids in the raid, 4 hunters, 5 warlocks, and only 10 melee DPS. "Minmaxing" is not black and white, it's a spectrum.

It's funny, really, that the anti-minmaxers constantly whine that minmaxers "dictate how you play the game"......and then turn around and proclaim that if you minmax, you are wrong and bad and should not play the game that way.

Put simply, in Actual Vanilla, WoW was a game people were just stumbling through and finding out how to do stuff in. Or finding stuff that even exists. Mankrik's wife was actually a search, not a meme, or a cliche about people new to the game. Classic is something where nothing is novel, nothing is 'adventurous', everything is solved, and there is a 'correct' way to do everything.

If you're playing a 15 year old game expecting it to be new and unexplored and "adventurous", you're setting yourself up for failure. Nothing will ever bring back "the good old days" save for mind-wiping anyone who ever played the game.

I enjoy Classic BECAUSE it's something I'm familiar with, I don't give a shit about it being "novel" or "solved", it's a fun game that I enjoy anyway despite everything being minmaxed to death. If you want to play a Ret paladin and afk 90% of the raid, then nothing is stopping you from finding a casual dad guild that allows that sort of thing.

- - - Updated - - -

making it truly dynamic would be not part of the vanilla experience, imho

Servers with 10,000+ players on them are not "the vanilla experience" either. What's your point?

They increased the player cap on each realm to 3-4x more than what it was in 2005, but kept the herb and mining spawn rates the exact same. And thus, we ended up with stacks of plaguebloom going for 80+ gold.

[durenas]

Servers with 10,000+ players on them are not "the vanilla experience" either. What's your point?

They increased the player cap on each realm to 3-4x more than what it was in 2005, but kept the herb and mining spawn rates the exact same. And thus, we ended up with stacks of plaguebloom going for 80+ gold.

Hey, I agree they probably could have(and likely did!) increase the spawn *rate*. But dynamic spawns like you saw in later expansions based on pick rate? No, probably not.

[Bigbazz]

I fully expect TBC to be full of FotM classes and min-maxers. It wont be fun at all.

I think this is something you're putting on yourself. FOTM rerollers and min-maxing was already a thing in 2007 and has been in every expansion to date, but there are still thousands of guilds out there clearing raids every week, having fun with their friends. Like if you want to play whatever spec and just have fun making friends or playing friends you can do that and be 100% successful.

Unless you convince yourself that every guild and player is represented by the top 1% of hardcores that is. Most players aren't hardcore, most players want to come home from work and raid for 2-3 hours 1-2 nights a week and enjoy some gaming time. You can find thousands of guilds just like that right now well into Mythic progression in Castle Nathria in Shadowlands, a raid that is by far harder than anything in TBC.

[Azsune]

I never understood the min/max hate. In Vanilla we Min/Maxed to the best of our ability. We didn't have full knowledge of how shit worked and years of experience playing the game. I know I farmed dungeons for specific pieces of loot because they were a minor upgrade in vanilla. Even in TBC I worked out the optimal path for daily quests to spend the least amount of time doing them. Luckily now there are guides so we don't have to put the effort in and save even more time.

Saying that min/maxers ruin the game is a lie we did it back then we just have all the knowledge before hand this time.

[Something Wicked]

With all the fuss and discussion about a better expansion, I'd like to point out several objectives that the developers have fully failed to address:

• Battleground designs (AV Horde favored map design, WSG terrain exploits and safe spots)

Alterac Valley is so Alliance-tipped as to be ridiculous. The bridge, alone, is the single most advantageous position on the entire map. Nevermind the tower-supported bottleneck at Icewing Bunker, or the tower archers who can hit you at the flag at Stormpike.

"B-b-but the Horde win so often! And the map ch-ch-changed so much from vanilla to retail, where Alliance typically stormrolls every battle!" Lemme guess, that's going to be your argument, sans the second part?

• Server populations in general (dozens of completely dead and single-faction servers)

How is this their fault again? You really want them dictating who plays where and with whom? Because that's literally the ONLY way to avoid that.