Wrath Classic - New Fresh Start Realms, Community Council Interview with Developers

[Lumy]

Wrath Classic - New Fresh Start Realms Available for NA and EU with the Pre-expansion Patch

On Tuesday, August 30, there will be two new Fresh Start realms available for character creation and play immediately after patch maintenance is complete. They will be:

Skyfury (PvP) (NA)
Maladath (Normal) (NA)

We’re really looking forward to seeing you there next week!

---

On Wednesday, 31 August, there will be two new Fresh Start realms available for character creation and play immediately after patch maintenance is complete. Those realms will be:

Thekal (PvP) (EU)
Giantstalker (Normal) (EU)

We’re really looking forward to seeing you there next week!

Wrath Classic - Community Council Interview with Developers

Thanks for posting these notes and commentary, Vay, Cleavis and Mispeled. Was really great talking with you and the rest of the classic community council folks yesterday.

I wanted to chime in and talk about the “ilvl squish” in ToC/ICC a bit more, and provide even more context for anyone who is reading this who may have some questions about this idea (and I do want to stress, it’s currently just an idea)

There’s actually several goals, here, with two being the primary:

Give Ulduar time to breathe

Going to start with a little history recap here; In original Wrath of the Lich King, Ulduar occupied an interesting design space as even the normal modes for many of the bosses were a pretty large cut above Naxxramas 10/25 in terms of difficulty. For many people just joining World of Warcraft during at the start of Wrath of the Lich King, Naxx was potentially their first raid and as Naxx was so accessible, it had huge participation. Ulduar however, had much lower participation and many groups that were successfully clearing Naxx and the other Tier 7 raids suddenly found themselves struggling.

Overall a few different things were tried including some nerfs to Ulduar as well as trying to get a new raid out to players to bridge the gap between Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel. This raid was released around 3 1/2 months after Ulduar, and was released with gear equivalent to another full tier up from Tier 8 gear, with the addition of heroic mode which provided an even larger ilvl jump over normal mode than rewards for defeating hard mode encounters in Ulduar were. By early World of Warcraft raid tier standards, Ulduar had a relatively short run before being effectively replaced and outclassed by significantly better rewards from a much more accessible raid in Trial of the Crusader.

As years have passed, we think its safe to say that Ulduar is now regarded as one of the best and most unique raid experiences in WoW, and those that enjoyed it undoubtedly felt like it was cut quite short. We want to make sure that Ulduar is front and center during its time in Wrath Classic, and still has healthy amount of time to breathe before Trial of the Crusader is released, and by extension, Season 7 for Arena is introduced. This bridges to the next major goal for this change…

Don’t Cut Arena Season 7 Short

Early on in discussions to plan Wrath of the Lich King Classic, we knew we wanted Ulduar to have a good long run, and the first Idea we considered was simply making the Trial of the Crusader tier (Tier 9) much shorter, potentially up to half as long as Ulduar (Tier 8). However, the major problem with that plan is that we’d then need to either start Arena Season 7 right in the middle of Tier 8 and create a situation where PvP gear would be in many cases BiS to PvE raiders for multiple months, or start Season 7 late and have it be a very short, truncated season.

Arena seasons need a certain amount of time to breathe as well and this idea of a truncated season did not sit well with us at all. By going ahead and releasing Trial of the Crusader at a time that makes sense to line up with Arena Season 7, that feels much better for PvP-focused players.

In addition to the goals above, we also had 3 other main secondary goals:

Encourage Older Raids to remain Relevant and worth doing for Alts and PUGs.

One thing we really like in Classic and Burning Crusade is that older tiers of raiding continue to see participation even when that content is no longer current. This means that there’s a large variety of things to do for your alts or on off-nights, and due to the overall flatter nature of gear and ilvl progression in those earlier versions of wow, this makes these older raids more appealing to continue to run. By lowering the ilvl of ToC slightly, this makes running Ulduar hard modes appealing and a worthwhile investment for longer than it otherwise might be. As mentioned above, Normal ToC gear is so much better than even Ulduar hard mode gear, that most guilds would very likely drop Ulduar completely, and it would be less appealing to alts much faster.

Allow us to increase difficulty slightly in later tiers without changing bosses or the mechanics themselves.

We have a ton of reverence and respect for the encounters in Wrath of the Lich King Classic and wanted to make as few adjustments here as possible. Slightly lowering overall player power going into a raid like ICC allows our modern, more savvy Classic players to have a bit more of a challenge in that raid without needing to make risky changes to the encounters themselves. And with the progressive raid buff system that comes in later in ICC, we still feel like this raid will be accessible to raid groups of varying skill levels after some time passes.

Curb a bit of the wild scaling that occurs with such massive iLvl jumps between tiers

Kris Zierhut was one of the designers responsible for planning itemization during original Wrath of the Lich King, and he’s back on our team now working on the Classic version. He often times says that a stated goal of gearing and scaling in original Wrath was to avoid the situation we got into at the end of The Burning Crusade where certain classes and roles scaled so well that they had to make major systemic adjustments to Sunwell Plateau to compensate for this. The most notable example of this is “Sunwell Radiance” which effectively reduced the avoidance of all tanks by a flat, massive amount. While effective, this debuff never felt great because it meant that the progression of your character meant little when you got to Sunwell, as there was a global debuff that negated the benefits you got from your hard-won gear across the board.

As alluded to above, Trial of the Crusader’s injection into the overall design of raid progression in Wrath of the Lich King conflicted with those original goals and intent, and ultimately led to the same type of scaling problems that were faced late in The Burning Crusade. We feel that an adjustment here could help with this concern when we get to ICC, and add up to a more interesting experience overall.

We totally understand that at face value “nerfing” gear is a scary prospect, but we are committed to taking extreme care to not make too many waves, and ensure that in relative terms, classes and roles that excelled later in the expansion will continue to feel powerful as they progress.

Thank you for reading if you got this far, and apologies for the length of this, but floating a change like this really needs a thorough explanation and reasoning for context. We wanted to start this with a focused group of community council members, and we’d love to get feedback on this in the coming weeks. We still have time to make further adjustments to this idea.

Thanks!

Wrath Classic - PvP Feedback

3 things I want to talk about here.

1. Regarding the end of seasons rewards not being adjusted to reflect player bans and team disqualifications, see my thread here. Should we expect this issue to repeat at the end of this season and in future WotLK seasons?

2. Arena gear rating requirements. How is this going to be handled? TBCC arena participation was low and the percentage of PvP players that had access to the gated gear was abysmal, mainly due to two things: The low participation rate and the starting rating being 0. Not starting at 1500 meant that there was less rating being injected into the ladder resulting in a lower average rating for everyone overall.
The rating requirements needs to either reflect the state of arena and the game so that a proportional amount of players equivalent to the PvE counterpart have access to the gear or it needs to be done away with completely and be replaced with a different system of incentive to reach higher rating.

3. Wintergrasp.
From what I understood, it’s going to be made into an epic battleground similar to retail?
The issue with this is that Wintergrasp as an epic battleground is a total failure as it doesn’t fit the mold of a battleground. Having a different objective for each side, that is defending or attacking, makes it not work as a battleground. Because one side will always have an advantage and result in the other side not even trying. It requires the dynamic incentive of wanting access to the Vault of Archevon to work. Because with an incentive, it makes players more likely to participate on the side that has a disadvantage rather than just give up and leave like they do on retail when you get randomly put on offense.
How can the challenges of having a balanced, enjoyable, Wintergrasp be tackled? Because from the solution provided, I am not optimistic at all.

Hello. I’ve been keeping an eye on Classic PvP, and I can answer your questions.

1. Season 4 is our last Season with Arena teams, and it’s important for us that players are rewarded for their skill and their effort accordingly. Now that we’re approaching the end of Season 4, we’ll keep in mind the feedback from all of the Seasons during Burning Crusade Classic. We aim to be fair, but at the same time, we want to make sure that players are following the rules.

2. Now that we’re not going to have Arena teams, players will be able to keep working on their rating, no matter how many different partners they play with. We believe that this will change both the participation numbers and how many players get to the higher ratings. That said, during the first Season of Wrath of the Lich King Classic there will be many different options for you to get PvP gear, including Hateful and Deadly Gladiator. We are currently analyzing the ratings requirements around these. We might modify some of the Hateful gear requirements, while at the same time keeping Deadly gear as the ultimate PvP gear.

3. One player needs to win a Wintergrasp match in order to unlock the Wintergrasp victory rewards for that player’s realm and faction. We’re encouraging players to join the battle when it’s active to unlock the rewards for their realm and faction. With multiple Wintergrasps running at the same time, it will enable players from the same realm to have more than one chance per period to earn the awards. That said, we will continue to monitor the system and make adjustments as needed.

Thank you for the reminder of these issues.

[SinR]

TWO! TWO SERVERS! Ah Ah Ah!!!

- - - Updated - - -

FOUR! FOUR SERVERS! Ah Ah Ah!!!

[Uvania]

Good that they understood the need of fresh normal, i dont want to be stuck on a 99% horde/alliance dominated PvP server.

[Monteverdi]

Blizz: "Y'all remember WotLK? The almost universally beloved WoW expansion?"

Players, hesitantly: "...Yeah?"

Blizz: "I FIXED IT"

Let Wrath be Wrath. Itemization changes are a terrible idea. If you want Ulduar to 'have time to breathe' then give it time to breathe and release ToC later. Don't nerf an entire tier, which is light on content as-is, to artificially inflate the previous tier's peak lifespan.

[Ave07]

GDKPs are going to run Ulduar 24/7 as I'd imagine the legendary shards for selling throughout the expansion.

[Ragu4]

Well, we at least know its going to be Alliance on the PvE and Horde on the PvP probably.

Either way I am very glad they are making a PvE server. Making a Draenei priest on Maladath!

[Caprias]

Well, we at least know its going to be Alliance on the PvE and Horde on the PvP probably.

Either way I am very glad they are making a PvE server. Making a Draenei priest on Maladath!

Troll and orc racials dominate PvE while human is the best for PvP.

So I wouldn't be so sure about that.

[Ragu4]

Troll and orc racials dominate PvE while human is the best for PvP.

So I wouldn't be so sure about that.

you have a point. my brain is still stuck in 2007.

[Asheeva]

Blizz: "Y'all remember WotLK? The almost universally beloved WoW expansion?"

Players, hesitantly: "...Yeah?"

Blizz: "I FIXED IT"

Let Wrath be Wrath. Itemization changes are a terrible idea. If you want Ulduar to 'have time to breathe' then give it time to breathe and release ToC later. Don't nerf an entire tier, which is light on content as-is, to artificially inflate the previous tier's peak lifespan.

Disagree, these changes are good. ToC is a trash raid and Ulduar is the best one by far. This change will make the progression better, I would rather raid Ulduar for half a year than ToC for a month.

[RobertMugabe]

Blizz: "Y'all remember WotLK? The almost universally beloved WoW expansion?"

Players, hesitantly: "...Yeah?"

Blizz: "I FIXED IT"

Let Wrath be Wrath. Itemization changes are a terrible idea. If you want Ulduar to 'have time to breathe' then give it time to breathe and release ToC later. Don't nerf an entire tier, which is light on content as-is, to artificially inflate the previous tier's peak lifespan.

I remember THIS very forum to have been almost entirely filled by Wotlk-Haters back then. I'd go ahead and say that there are more people on here that love Shadowlands compared to the amount of people that liked Wotlk back then.

[Buffbringer]

I remember THIS very forum to have been almost entirely filled by Wotlk-Haters back then. I'd go ahead and say that there are more people on here that love Shadowlands compared to the amount of people that liked Wotlk back then.

Só true... People even called players that joined WOW on wotlk "wrath babies".

[RobertMugabe]

Só true... People even called players that joined WOW on wotlk "wrath babies".

Yeah everyone who liked Wotlk was considered a "wrath baby" (regardless of whether they actually were) and then there was everyone else, who hated it (the "OG players").

I think the term wrath baby even originated from here or it's at least where it became a known term.

It's also interesting to just think about what the Wotlk-haters were complaining about back in the day and how it compares to today. One thing I sometimes think about is how one of the biggest issues with them was the emblem system, which gave all the noobs "welfare epics" and even tier sets, which they then have removed later on. Meanwhile, several expansions later, having an emblem style system and being able to acquire tier sets outside of raids are one of the most requested and loved features ever, which Blizz did add in 9.2

[Ragu4]

I'm basically a PvE wrath baby! I only did PvP in TBC.

[Sensa1]

Blizz: "Y'all remember WotLK? The almost universally beloved WoW expansion?"

Players, hesitantly: "...Yeah?"

Blizz: "I FIXED IT"

Let Wrath be Wrath. Itemization changes are a terrible idea. If you want Ulduar to 'have time to breathe' then give it time to breathe and release ToC later. Don't nerf an entire tier, which is light on content as-is, to artificially inflate the previous tier's peak lifespan.

Correcting very bad design decisions from a decade or so ago, that virtually no one remembered fondly, is hardly destroying a "universally beloved...expansion". Nearly everyone thought ToC was a crappy filler raid that you felt forced to do 4 times a week (10/20 normal / heroic) and nearly everyone lamented the fact that Ulduar was given such short shrift ( mostly the result of the absolutely ridiculous ilvl gap between it and ToC).

The solution in this case actually means that Wrath servers will probably stay more vibrant longer as Ulduar will be relevant longer (great for alts gearing up later) and nerfing ToC gear will mean that ICC will present a slightly greater challenge extending gameplay there as well slightly.

That being said, not all of their attempts to solve bad design decisions are equally good...the "instancing" of Wintergrasp is probably as bad a fix as the original problem (it being a lag fest).

[Monteverdi]

nerfing ToC gear will mean that ICC will present a slightly greater challenge extending gameplay there as well slightly.

Here's the thing: we don't know what impact it will have. Lowering all gear from ToC/Ony/ICC by 13 ilevels will impact *everything* that item level impacts, and given that not all stats scale linearly this isn't just a blanket 'X% nerf', it's a fundamental change that will impact:

* PVP class balance
* PVE class balance
* PVP gear priorities
* PVE gear priorities
* PVE encounter difficultly

Making a change like this fundamentally changes all of the above. How much of this comes out to look 'the same' as it was before? That depends on a lot of the dev time that's put into rebalancing everything, but it seems like a hell of a lot of work when the answer could just be to leave it the hell alone. ToC was unpopular with a vocal part of the community, sure, but is it worth changing *everything* for the last half of the expansion just to try and 'fix' something from an expansion that, while having its flaws, was almost universally beloved?

Save these kinds of changes for SoM.

[Nyel]

I'm super glad they are doing the changes to Ulduar and TotC. Ulduar is the best raid they've ever done and it was done dirty by the terrible 3.3 which is to date one of the worst content patches in WoW's history. At best they should have changed tiers back during WotLK, but this works, too.

[Akka]

Anything that lowers the ridiculous ilvl inflation that started in WotLK is good.

But keeping the retarded buff to ICC is idiotic, and giving away raid-tier gear with badges goes directly against the point they support with TBC seeing people still doing the "lower" raids.

As usual, Blizzard says one thing but half they do goes against it.