"Classic is for everyone!" - agree or not?

[Vaelorian]

I saw this comment in another thread. It just irked me to no end. Classic precisely is not for everyone.
Obviously everyone is welcome to try it out, but only a fraction of the 100+ million accounts will try it and stick with it.

I am speaking from a place where the socalled "purists" will get their vanilla experience as it was. As currently Blizzard said they will provide.

Yet this and the official forums are swarmed with QOL freaks (yeah I will call em that) that will destroy the classic experience. And just to make sure that this thread does not get swamped with questions: "but the bugs man... you want the bugs in it?"

Let me answer that by saying that I don't care one way or the other. A bug free Classic WoW would imo be better. I do not want anyone to gain an advantage over another player because that person knows how to exploit a bug. But if it is kept... sooner then later everyone will know how to handle the bug anyway. So who cares?

But I digress from the topic at hand. Classic should not be for everyone, period. It was not back then and if they "fix" it to be accessible to everyone, the ones crying for Vanilla for over 10 years will keep on crying for it. Private servers will still pop up to provide the vanilla experience.

So please... go play retail. Just set the experience bar to 60 max and imagine you are doing Classic in that way. Because that is ultimately what people actually want who want QOL changes.

Edit: I wanted a poll but for some reason I cannot find the options to make one.

[Nitros14]

Classic is obviously not for everyone.

[VyersReaver]

But Classic is not Vanilla. It literally spells it out for you. Vanilla was not for everyone (mainly because it is shit game to play in 2017, but that's besides the point), on the contrary, Classic should be the better game than Vanilla, and that implies being more available.

[Siraeyou]

I do not believe Classic is for everyone.

There are going to be many people, who have never played a day of the game pre WotLK, who will log in to give it a shot and realize that it is not for them. A number of those same people are also going to grab their pitchforks and storm the forums foaming at the mouth begging for changes to be made to the product they "are entitled to as consumers." Hopefully those people slowly fade into nonexistence and the Classic population can steady out without Blizzard caving in to tears.

Honestly to me the bugs that existed in the Vanilla days help add to a small degree of the nostalgia. If I'm not able to do things such as clip into certain walls and find myself under Irongforge, Stormwind or Orgrimmar I would be pretty sad. Of course the product that was WoW in those days was far from perfect, (I mean everything about everything in the history of everything is a piece a shit if you ask enough people on the internet) but the imperfections are part of the memories and the experience.

[schwarzkopf]

<X> is not for everyone for all values of <X>.

Well - apart from maybe breathing and water.

[Armourboy]

Nope it won't be, the trick for them is to get it in a state to maximize the group it is for. That is what all of this arguing is about.

We already know they probably won't take something like live and plop it down in Vanilla, that does them no good and only cannibalizes the current population. So whatever it is won't be based on designs from the current game odds are.

[yetgdhfgh]

Just add Classic to the wow tab and let everyone play it if they have a wow sub.

It will help stretch the wow sub when blizz stops making xpacs and it will make everyone happy!

Plus it cant be that expensive to run a couple of servers if a bunch of nobodies can do it for more or less free!

[Vaelorian]

Why do stupid things like that irk you?

It irks me because we "the purists" asked for vanilla for 10 fucking years. And now that we get it... in comes the QOL freaks pissing on that with their demands.
It is like this right (and this feels exactly the same to me):
I have written an entire essay at work promoting a certain way of working that is far more efficient. I have been working on that method for like 6 months now.
In comes Mrs Bimbo with her awesome tits and body. She then presents the project to the supervisor of my supervisor. Now she was part of my team for 1 month because someone else got sick. She did not ask me if it was alright to tell "the boss of my boss". No she just grabbed the project and acted as if she was the one initiating it. Now the boss of my boss wants her to do job X Y Z... the exact job I wanted. When I tell my supervisor he just shrugs...

Yes I know the analogy isn't quite correct as being the same. But the feeling remains the same.

[Demoncrash]

Classic isn't going appeal to most(if not all) who didn't play the original game. Besides, all the people who say they "want vanilla" but also want stuff like dual specs, LFD, etc. stop kidding yourselves.

You don't want vanilla.

YOU THINK YOU DO, BUT YOU DON'T.

[MoanaLisa]

Classic is for everyone to try. Some will like it. Others won't. Why don't you let people make up their own minds about it?

Even those who are calling for changes now will probably give it a spin. Some people may find it fresh. And conversely, some of the most hard-core of the hard-core "vanilla as it was" people are likely to discover that it was nostalgia after all.

That's all fine and nothing to get upset about. It's certainly big of you to instruct everyone else about what they should and shouldn't play.

[Armourboy]

I am sure your "purists" also consist of people who are now asking for QoL changes (or class balances) although they asked for 10 years that there be Classic servers. It usually isn't that black and white (and btw..I agree with the ppl who want Classic as it was ..with all bugs....whatever patch it will be. The question if the "community" can even agree on one patch was something I raised in every Legacy thread, never got answered...and look how divided the Classic freaks are now on every bloody issue)

It's why at this point I'm not sure their best bet wouldn't be to just start from the begging and let it run its original course, assuming that is possible.

[Kuntantee]

It is for everyone to try. Not all will like Vanilla experience with minimal change.

[callipygoustp]

Reading the wide variety of posts on this very forum, I am very comfortable in saying that Classic is in fact not for everyone.

[Heathy]

honestly I had fun during classic, I hadn't played a game like wow at that time, today though, no, its like going back and trying everquest, its fun for a while, then you hit the wall.

all things considered i think a large portion of ppl will just have the same issues as the first time, not-enough-todo-at-endgame I must have spent twice as much time idle talking about random crap as the time i spent actually progressing. that is going to be the main turn off for a lot of ppl, classic was great if you could raid every day for 6hrs, not so great if you only raided 2 or 3 times a week, because then you have 4-5 days every week with fuck all to do. good times. but again I don't need to argue this point it will become apparent on its own.

I don't find that idle game fun any more, a chat room shouldn't cost $10 a month. you can't get away with that these days. ppl want value for money, not glorified chat room games. from my perspective the game has only become more of an actual game and less of an msn messenger clone over the years.

[Vineri]

Vanilla is definitely not for everyone.

Many will try to turn Vanilla into some retail xpac ... but it will fail, by Blizzard own words. "Vanilla is Vanilla", "We are not moving away from Vanilla", then other comments about creating Vanilla to preserve history. QoL feature oriented people need to check out BFA.

It's good stuff, all the same. Some people are funny actually, like a clown.

[Lochton]

I think the comment was meant as it is for everyone to try, not that it is made for everyone. Back then, you had huge floods of new players and huge floods of leaving players. I mean, I played then but I most likely won't stick around, I'll go on a museum tour with my wife.

[Deleted]

Classic is for everyone who likes good games and not mobile clickers.

[Blackcoffin]

I wholeheartedly agree. I just want to add these pointers of my own. The things that made the vanilla paradigm standout was this - starting from the top going down:

Horde vs Alliance.
At that time you could not have both horde and alliance on the same server. You had to choose. Already here, you identified yourself with your faction, effectively starting a competitive mindset (or racist if you will).

Time spent:
Since everything was timeconsuming, from running dungeons, raids, farming materials/getting gold, leveling up a character/professions, getting gear, finding people. Everything took time, which I think is a good thing. This also meant you were less likely to level an alt. This for me, brought the player and the character closer together - this character would usually be your identity. This is further amplified by the fact, that server transfer, name changes were non-existant, in addition to that, lfr/lfg tools were also absent - so you had to actually make an effort finding the right people, making good connections and friends. You had to make an effort not being an asshole, since people would actually remember your character and name.

Flying
Also, the absence of flying made the world much more a roleplaying game. Im not even talking about npc's or guards. I'm talking about the sudden strife of meeting your nemesis faction. Getting corpsecamped, call for aid and let the battle begin.

Now, where does this fit in, in all of this you ask?
When it comes to QoL changes I'm very adamant about them.

When it comes to timeconsumption:
You could change everything you want, but the essence of vanilla is the perfect balance between timeconsumption and player identity. If timeconsumption was less, people would level more characters, making an abundance of superfluous characters.

When it comes to class balance:
Again, its a slippery slope and shifts away from the real issue - Classes will never be balanced, even in legion today, it will never be 100% balanced for all classes. But that's okay, because in vanilla you didnt bring a druid for its exceptional healing capabilities, you brought one for decursing and innervates and combat resses. In vanilla, it's bring the class not the player. You were important by stacking buffs and/or bringing niche class abilities.
For example.

Marksman hunter

• Trueshot aura

Survival hunter

• Wyvern sting and Crowd control

Paladin

• Buff machine and healer, some with Blessing of Sanctuary, some with holy shock. Whichever was needed.

Shaman

• Buff machine and healer

All classes brought something in one way or the other. And not all classes were equally good all the time. Example mages would 100% specialize in frost throught MC/BWL, and then specialize in fire through other content.

Sorry for the huge wall of text. My two cents

[Vineri]

Well obviously it's not for everyone, but to think that it's just for the private server community would be delusional. There are millions of potential returning players that have never touched a private server for one reason or another. When you think about it the private server community already have access to vanilla since they have no moral obligations, if anything Classic should be for the people who fought for it the legal way and haven't gotten to experience vanilla in 10 years.

Cool story bro. Except Nostalrius was what forced Blizzard's hand. People who found the legal way was what landed the infamous quote, "You think you do, but you don't". Which is where you would still be 10 years from now if it was not for these people with no moral obligations.

Think twice before silly moral rants. If you think Vanilla was obtained immorally, feel free to not play it.

[klaps_05]

Agree, as there is a reason why its called Classic and not Vanilla. They will cherry pick the best of all the patches that happened pre-BC and combine it into 1, thus creating the full Classic experience. This solves the problem of "but which patch is really vanilla?" - all of them are, hence why you pick the best, remove bugs and set it as 1 single version.