Cataclysm Classic goes against the original intended reason for Classic

[Argorwal]

I think Cata, and even MoP and WoD classic could work because they have the ability to release them on an appropriate timeline.

All 3 of those expansions only had 3 raid tiers, and they could do them all in a 1 year timeline that will feel well paced.

Kind of the opposite of how they were released.

[deenman]

This is subjective, but for me; old Tanaris was much better and I would argue that old Stranglethorn Vale was objectively better as well as darkshore and the Barrens. Booty Bay 10 years after Cata is still not rebuilt, Westfall lost most of its low level charm along with Loch Modan and Thousand Needles...was sort of atmospheric to ride across it on the way to Tanaris.

oh i agree with the dumb continuity,westfall if you complete the zone,it stays burning even after all these years,its extremly silly,i mean...im not saying they need a complete revamp to fix it....but cmon...add some quest eventualy that puts that fire out (if there is a way and i just missed it maybe my bad i guess but i dont think there was)

also yeah i understand people prefering some zones,but i am actualy very curious on how in the world you could prefer old tanaris to the current one if you dont mind

oh and how did westfall lose its low level charm?because of the scaling thing?thats the best thing they ever did for leveling lol

[Yakut]

How are you all hoping Blizzard treats Cata "in a classic way"?

Does it matter? The camel's nose was in the tent with vanilla classic being released. The rest of the camel was TBC and WOTLK. Once TBC was allowed, the rest are sure to follow. Being nostalgic for some of the older content is cute, but it is also directly responsible for what follows. Personally, I was not interested in Classic at all. Nor TBC Classic. But WotlK, sure. Cata, no. MoP, probably. WoD, no. Legion, abso-freaking-lutely.

That said, just because I didn't want the first two did not mean I begrudged those that did. There's always a market for that for someone out there, just as WotLK was for me and a lot of other people. And I probably won't play the others. You're welcome to skip the ones not of interest to you. But, you should own up to the fact that when you play it means you are supporting the initative and are directly and/or indirectly responsible for what comes after.

[Mysterymask]

You know Wrath servers are doing well when more people are concerned with a hypothetical cataclysm server than with Wrath

[Low Hanging Fruit]

lol if you think I'm a retail Andy, then clearly I wrote this wrong. I was a huge advocate for Classic and remain a huge advocate. I just remember when Cata launched how much people wanted Vanilla realms increased, a lot due to the changes to the old world, not being able to visit them, etc. If Blizzard can (and I suppose they absolutely can and should be able to) they should go ahead and just release available versions of WoW at every expansion, but not the very last patch that breaks half the content, either. Personally, I loved how my Shadow Priest played in earlier Legion, when they started changing how Surrender to Madness worked, it got less fun.

And suppose Blizzard just keeps going along... do we get WoD classic? Will they completely rework it and give Alliance the Temple of Karabor and Horde whatever their tower was named as city hubs, so it isn't another snooze fest in the garrisons? WoD has a LOT of opportunity, but in its current state, it would be a silly classic release.

The problem with your soap box here is I didn't call you that. I said don't be that. We all saw how people were all up in arms against Classic. "It will never work" , "its to easy" , "no one will play it" and it all turned out to be wrong. People wanted it. Just the people SAYING those things didn't and it is all they could see.

I wouldn't be a huge fan of WoD classic. But if others are that is ok. This is how I handle these things. Give it a try. Say a game I don't want to play releases or is being talked about releasing. I simply do not buy it or install it. See? That is super easy. No reason to waste energy fighting it. Other people might like it and its not worth any energy trying to fight against people that just have a subjective opinion on a video game of all things.

If people want Cata, if its more, fewer, or the same that wanted TBC then go for it. If they want WoD go for it. Sure, I might not install it and you know what.. that is ok.. or maybe I will and that would be ok too.. it's really not that big of a deal.

All I am saying is don't end up the "you think you do but you dont" guy to other people. Let them have it. If it fails it fails. If it works out it works out. Blizzard's profit margins aren't exactly my livelihood and I am sure they will find a way to milk whales in plenty of other games to keep themselves afloat.

[M1r4g3]

Id rather it exists than not? The alternative is what? I would personally still play cata over a shadowlands-quality xpack.

[RoKPaNda]

The original reason most ever asked for "classic/Vanilla" realms, was because we lost the old zones and, at least in the case of early Wrath and prior, less LFD/LFR implementation/ no LFR.

Unless they do something substantial, I really personally don't see the reason for Cata Classic, though I guess ultimately it can be a way for people to live/relive Cataclysm, if they so please, but let's be real, Cata was the start of the overall downfall.

I can't help but say I'd love a second chance to play MoP during the expansion, as there was a lot of fun during it, but I missed most of it.

How are you all hoping Blizzard treats Cata "in a classic way"?

I'm more hyped for Cata Classic than I am for Wrath Classic tbh. My advice to anyone who doesn't like it is to not play it.

[Yakut]

I'm more hyped for Cata Classic than I am for Wrath Classic tbh. My advice to anyone who doesn't like it is to not play it.

Pretty much this. No game on this Earth is compulsory. The best way to express interest in a product is to buy it. The best way to express disinterest in a game is to not play it. Voting with your wallet matters. When enough people stop buying a product, believe me the makers will review why and take appropriate action.

The drawback to voting with your wallet is not that your voice does not count. It just takes time to see results.

[The Stormbringer]

I always felt like they should have servers for each expansion, so people can just play what they want, as well as cycling servers that will go through the expansions one at a time, like say, every year it's a new expansion or something.

[MoanaLisa]

The reason for Classic is that people wanna play older versions of WoW which dont exist anymore.

This pretty much sums it up. Even if the game were thought to be excellent by all, there would still be a desire based on nostalgia more than anything to relive those opening weeks of pretty much any expansion.

[tomten]

Don't be a retail Andy to people that want Cata. They hated Classic and wanted to prevent it. You might not like Cata, but let it roll for those that want to do it. If it fails it fails. If it works out it works out. Really not that big of a deal.

I have ignored all classic so far, they're beyond pointless to me. But I really liked cata, it along mop are my two favorite expansion of all time and would definetly check it out, most likely a very short lived hype turned into once a week raid log but I would definitely check it out, which I cant say about classic so far.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I have ignored all classic so far, they're beyond pointless to me. But I really liked cata, it along mop are my two favorite expansion of all time and would definetly check it out, most likely a very short lived hype turned into once a week raid log but I would definitely check it out, which I cant say about classic so far.

I am really happy you have an opinion on the matter. I hope they release for you if you want them.

[Zyrinx]

When does it end..... Maybe once they get to Shadowlands Classic, they'll redo Vanilla Classic Classic?

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I always felt like they should have servers for each expansion, so people can just play what they want, as well as cycling servers that will go through the expansions one at a time, like say, every year it's a new expansion or something.

This actually makes too much sense, but there probably aren't enough players for 5 concurrent versions. Seems like maybe just have less servers for each, idk.

[Battlebeard]

Cataclysm is my all time favorite expansion, can't wait to play it again

[NineSpine]

There's a pretty big caveat you're forgetting to mention here. Blizzard's "wall of no" was the status quo for a reason. The technology didn't exist. The biggest change that happened which opened the floodgates for Classic's development was that somebody at Blizzard found a way to develop a version of Classic compatible with Blizzard's modern server architecture. Ion mentioned how they came about this in a lead-up interview with PC Gamer:

Because we finally figured out a way to do it. As you know, questions have been asked at BlizzCon and elsewhere for a long time, and the answer of ‘no’ or ‘we can’t do this’ was never a philosophical one on our part, nor a matter of stubbornness. It was simply that every time we had looked back at what it would entail to bring the original World of Warcraft into the modern era, the obstacles seemed insurmountable.

We had the original 1.12 client and server and data. But they were designed to run on hardware that hasn’t existed for a long time, in an overall tech stack and part of a broader Blizzard infrastructure that hasn’t existed for a long time. It was full of bugs and exploits and tons of things that really were addressed over the course of literally tens of thousands of hours of programming efforts between 2006 and today. So the idea of trying to retrace those steps seemed virtually impossible.

But I think it was really just a few years ago – two and a half or three years ago – in part due to a more intense community focus, we took a much harder look at the question and said, ‘ok, we think this is impossible, but what if we had to do it – what approaches might we take?’ We started to go down some R&D paths. One of the ideas we came up with was an experiment that was spearheaded by a programmer on the WoW team, Omar Gonzalez, one of the members of the Classic team. What if we took our modern client, our modern server architecture and instead taught them to speak the original 1.12 data? Rather than working forwards, what if we took what we have now, trying to kind of interpret what was there back then.

He spent a few weeks hacking together a rough prototype, and there were tons of bugs – things didn’t fully render, and there were all sorts of UI elements missing, and things weren’t accurate. But at its core, it was 1.12 WoW. It was the old world. It was the old skill system and talent system, and it was there running in the modern client. And the fact that he was able to get so far in that amount of time gave us confidence that this is something that we actually could do. There wasn’t going to be hundreds of thousands of hours. It was to be something that we can actually deliver in a number of years and get to our players at a level of quality that we deemed worthy of Blizzard and worthy of what they expect of us. That’s the story of WoW Classic.

Ultimately, I think we came to that conclusion really late into summer 2017, and announced it at BlizzCon a couple of months after that. Uncharacteristically early in a lot of ways for a Blizzard announcement. In part because we were just really excited that we had found a path to make this happen and wanted to share it with the world. We knew there’s gonna be a ton of enthusiasm behind it. We knew those those questions were going to continue. People have been asking them forever. We wanted to be able to say, ‘yes, we’re doing it’.

Legacy has always been about capturing the authenticity of a version of WoW that's no longer available to play. It has never been about forking off a new version of the game at some indeterminate point in its past. The leap in logic to go from "they said Classic couldn't exist and look at us now," to "gee, maybe Blizzard wants to have two live services under the same subscription" is substantial and, importantly, there really isn't any precedence to lend credence to this idea.

Classic was a "museum" and then they changed their mind and made changes, and then they made a seasonal server with even more radical changes. There was no precedent for any of this. There was no precedent for Classic in the first place. Are we going to add "There has to be precedent" to your list of fantasy rules that Blizzard is magically bound to?

It doesn't matter if they are under the same subscription, because as I am now repeating for the fifty-first time:

There. Is. Little. Crossover. Between. Retail. And. Classic.

The people there for classic don't want to play retail, and the people there for retail don't want to play classic. If Blizzard comes to the conclusion that the classic audience can be retained with new content, they will add new content. This is a business. It is about profits, not about arbitrary fantasy rules people who don't even work for Blizzard invent.

I think you are under the illusion that developing classic+ content would require some large investment. They would just use assets from expansions. It needs no art budget, no music budget, and probably not even a level design budget, as they would just reappropriate content from TBC forward. Adding, for example, Kara to classic as a new endgame raid would be a trivial resource investment. The only reason they aren't doing it is because they have thus far calculated that moving through expansions is the way to retain people. The minute that new expansions in Classic don't retain people, Classic+ is going to be considered.There is a reason that they have explicitly said nothing is off the table, and it isn't because they are just hiding their secret document filled with arbitrary rules.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

The original reason most ever asked for "classic/Vanilla" realms, was because we lost the old zones and, at least in the case of early Wrath and prior, less LFD/LFR implementation/ no LFR.

You see, this is the problem with this topic about classic version of WoW at all: people speaking for other people, claiming they know the who, what, when, where, and why... as if a singular reason is actually the right reason at all.

Is that the reason? Is that the only reason why people wanted WoW Classic? They wanted old era zones and no LFG?

Do you think about things you type before you type them, or... ?

Unless they do something substantial, I really personally don't see the reason for Cata Classic, though I guess ultimately it can be a way for people to live/relive Cataclysm

Way to get back on track: to live/relive Cataclysm. To play the game and it's life cycle the way it was back then. Just like we have already with WoW Classic, BC Classic and now WotLK Classic. That is the point.

How does doing the next step with Cataclysm Classic somehow betray the "original intended reason"? Because you are not making sense.

if they so please, but let's be real, Cata was the start of the overall downfall.

Irrelevant to the point you are trying to make, which you even contradict below.

Also, side-note, you say "overall downfall" was during Cataclysm while WotLK was the first expansion to ruin all of these things that players supposedly loved about vanilla era of WoW... including LFG. Personal bias towards an expansion is okay, and parroting popular opinions about certain expansions is fine if you agree with them... but be consistent with what you're trying to address.

I can't help but say I'd love a second chance to play MoP during the expansion, as there was a lot of fun during it, but I missed most of it.

So you have no problem with doing MoP Classic but Cataclysm Classic is where you draw the line, huh?

How are you all hoping Blizzard treats Cata "in a classic way"?

With the same philosophies they have treated WoW Classic and BC Classic with, and with the same philosophies I fully expect them to continue with in Cataclysm Classic. If players want it, Blizzard should do it.

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I have ignored all classic so far, they're beyond pointless to me. But I really liked cata, it along mop are my two favorite expansion of all time and would definetly check it out, most likely a very short lived hype turned into once a week raid log but I would definitely check it out, which I cant say about classic so far.

Not sure if this user is trolling or not, but if this is a genuine feeling then this is a perfect example. Players who really liked it and would actually give it a go if we get Cataclysm Classic.

[The Stormbringer]

I still say they should do WoD Classic so I can farm gold at the Garrison again and never pay for a subscription ever again.

[Relapses]

Classic was a "museum" and then they changed their mind and made changes, and then they made a seasonal server with even more radical changes. There was no precedent for any of this. There was no precedent for Classic in the first place. Are we going to add "There has to be precedent" to your list of fantasy rules that Blizzard is magically bound to?

It doesn't matter if they are under the same subscription, because as I am now repeating for the fifty-first time:

There. Is. Little. Crossover. Between. Retail. And. Classic.

The people there for classic don't want to play retail, and the people there for retail don't want to play classic. If Blizzard comes to the conclusion that the classic audience can be retained with new content, they will add new content. This is a business. It is about profits, not about arbitrary fantasy rules people who don't even work for Blizzard invent.

I think you are under the illusion that developing classic+ content would require some large investment. They would just use assets from expansions. It needs no art budget, no music budget, and probably not even a level design budget, as they would just reappropriate content from TBC forward. Adding, for example, Kara to classic as a new endgame raid would be a trivial resource investment. The only reason they aren't doing it is because they have thus far calculated that moving through expansions is the way to retain people. The minute that new expansions in Classic don't retain people, Classic+ is going to be considered.There is a reason that they have explicitly said nothing is off the table, and it isn't because they are just hiding their secret document filled with arbitrary rules.

...yeah, uh, I'm not engaging with an argument that new Classic content would as simple as an asset flip. This argument is so far out of the realm of reality that it isn't worth addressing.

[Tiev]

The reason I play classic is the absence of M+, LFR, Transmogs, and all the extra BS retail has that made WoW be less of a World and less Warcraft.

I thought old world Cata zones were fine. Dragon Soul wasn't great and the Spine was just very underwhelming for a last boss.

But the end of Wrath into Cata was the first foray into the World of Instancecraft, with Deathwing being largely unknown to people who went into WoW from War3 and not War2.

[Spikedhammer]

The part I don't understand is that... Cataclysm still exists retail-side whereas Vanilla does not. Cataclysm overwrote Vanilla. That was its selling point and what predominantly counted/still counts as "Main Contintents" content to this day.

Cataclysm Classic makes no sense because Cataclysm literally broke Classic both in terms of the old data being pitched out and Azeroth itself being torn a new one in various places.

While I don't doubt they're going to try it "because money", the desire for Classic was for content that was no longer present, let alone curated, outside of private servers.