9.0 General Discussion

[Nyel]

Classic surged but it isn't going to last. Its an old version of a time that has gone by it won't last forever.

Classic is incredibly populated at the moment, even queues made a return. We're +7 months after Classic launch and ZG, AQ and Nax are yet to be released and people are still hooked just for MC, BWL, PvP and the "old version" of a game.

I know that people like to belittle or trash Classic but it's already proven to be a tremendous success. Based on recent numbers it might contribute a high six figure sub number to WoW which is, at this point, a lot.

Classic (or the concept of "old" servers) is here to stay, their TBC survey just proved this.

[Synical123]

So... starting a game with tons of stuff to go through and discover, is bad?

Are you attempting to be disingenuous or are you really this clueless? The game is so complicated and janky to new players or returning players it's actually a joke. There are so many leftover systems and weird things that you have to google and thottbot in order to figure out it's just a joke. I could go into this for hours but I'm fairly certain if you play the game right now you know what I'm talking about you just have blinders on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhsH...g&pbjreload=10

This is a good video that barely touches on what I'm talking about.

No, you're obviously looking at it from the point of view of a jaded player. There's every reason to start the game, same as any other iteration. Looking at it as a jaded player rather than how one felt when new, is just asinine.

I'm 100% not jaded at all. This is coming from personal experience as well as the experience of people I've played with who tried wow either for the first time or returning. There is just too much nonsense that it's overwhelming and not fun to try to figure out. It's like taking a college course to even figure the game out, when it could just be simplified in a way similar to the earlier expansions.

And I'm not advocating they make a TBC 2 or WotLK 2, I'm just saying the systems built into those versions were so easy to follow and so simple that when a new player came in it was SUPER simple to digest themselves simply by (SHOCKING COMMENT COMING UP) PLAYING THE GAME. And not doing research for....wait a minute I need a legendary cloak? Ok so google how i get that...ok now to get that I need to do this? and that? oh but I also have to make sure my rep for these factions are XY and Z? But I just want to pvp... Oh I can't just pvp? I have to farm mythics? Then mythic pluses? Whats the difference? Ok I'm farming these now and now I need to run around these world quests and do these? But which ones do I need to do again?

It's a mess and you know it.

I've seen plenty of new players during the 100% buff so far alone. With SL, they'll have a more adapted starting experience to boot.

Sure you have bud. Let me guess you went around and asked all these low level players if they are new to the game and wrote all their names down too. These toons couldn't possibly be, you know, alts.

Jaded people wanting a fresh start should not dictate how the game is handled. And they're not. Thank God for that. Regardless of how one feels about the systems, there's more effort going into the game than ever before in terms of development and variety in content for the many kinds of players.

I'm not attempting to dictate a thing, I know what I'm suggesting is never going to happen. I'm just saying it's never going to happen because people like you just throw blizzard money for store mounts and junk like that so they have no reason to. The sub numbers for classic proves how many new players could potentially be playing wow right now if they just made the game better, but they won't, and they will keep releasing garbage and just patching over the mistakes they did with the previous expansions with almost identical systems but even more busted and call them 'new'.

Then the art team is going to kick ass like they always do and just keep selling nonsense and milk tons of money off their crippled population.

[kaid]

Classic is incredibly populated at the moment, even queues made a return. We're +7 months after Classic launch and ZG, AQ and Nax are yet to be released and people are still hooked just for MC, BWL, PvP and the "old version" of a game.

I know that people like to belittle or trash Classic but it's already proven to be a tremendous success. Based on recent numbers it might contribute a high six figure sub number to WoW which is, at this point, a lot.

Classic (or the concept of "old" servers) is here to stay, their TBC survey just proved this.

I think it will be interested if people want to just keep it vanilla for a while or have progression servers. Honestly if they do a full progression server that gets back up to pandaria I would have to level something up to do pandaria for real. I missed it when it was released and would really like to experience pandaria the way it was intended.

[Georg Von Vitzthum]

Still que times on select servers but yes it did go down. I'm not suggesting classic is superior in anyway or trying to assert some sort of opinion here, I'm simply saying there is a HUGE audience out there WANTING to play WoW and these numbers proved it, but they don't continue to play because of how the game is structured as of this moment.

If we just remove all the nonsense and make wow new again it would bring back a ton of people and make the game fun again.

thats just a delusional thinking, how this team can do a "wow 2 brand new and better"? it will be like overwatch 2, same shit with some differences, or worse, even more heavy, and potato pcs could not play anymore, is completely unnecessary.

Classic numbers are not that big, thats what i said, people left after the release, is stable.

they can completely revamp the game, to a point of look like an entirely different one, without doing "wow 2" and fucking with everyone characters.

Also I hate to break it to you, but your collection is going to disappear someday, the excuse to not delete it now and hold the game back is sort of silly.

when wow ends sure is going to, now, there is no need for that.

[Nyel]

I think it will be interested if people want to just keep it vanilla for a while or have progression servers. Honestly if they do a full progression server that gets back up to pandaria I would have to level something up to do pandaria for real. I missed it when it was released and would really like to experience pandaria the way it was intended.

Well, Pandaria is a long way to go but I am pretty sure they'll do it at least for TBC and WotLK which keeps us covered until 2025 or so.

[Synical123]

thats just a delusional thinking, how this team can do a "wow 2 brand new and better"? it will be like overwatch 2, same shit with some differences, or worse, even more heavy, and potato pcs could not play anymore, is completely uncessary.

If that's what you believe then sure bud. If they actually put in time and effort and bring back systems and framworks of the game they want to bring back like travel and leveling and exploration (you know...things that make mmos good?) I don't see how this could be a bad thing.

Classic numbers are not that big, that what i said, people left after the release, is stable.

Um hey bud, once again let me give you the facts just so you know. There are still q times on servers, and at the start of classic it had triple (that's 3 times btw) of just NEW players playing classic wow. I'm not suggesting it's still that big necessarily, but you have no evidence to suggest that the numbers still aren't 'that big'.

And once again, let me repeat myself just so you REALLY get it this time. I told you the classic numbers to show you how many people were interested in wow in general. And how these numbers should be a goal in order to bring back INTO retail and the only way to do this is to completely redo wow and make it better.

they can completely revamp the game, to a point of look like a entirely different one, without doing "wow 2" and fucking with everyone characters.

No, they can't. If you want mounts to feel important again, you have to delete the existing ones so there isn't 2000 options. No one is going to care about your mount if it's just a drop in the bucket to what they have seen.

If they want gear to feel important again they have to scrap all that exists now.

If they want gold to feel important again, they have to delete all the gold and start from scratch and make better tax systems.

They have already tried to make changes in a minor way to push wow into a certain direction and people freak because the game is such a jumbled mess, the changes don't fit with the rest of the games culture. For example, they can't make leveling tougher or more meaningful because there are 120 levels and people just want as many alts as possible when they get bored. It's just a simple concept here.

when wow ends sure is going to, now, there is no need for that.

Sure, there's not a need for it just like there isn't a need to ever release another expansion ever again. Holding onto the excuse of 'DON'T DELETE MAH STUFF' is just holding back the game from becoming a behemoth again. Classic sub numbers PROVED this by showing us a MASSIVE number of people still want to play wow but don't.

[Queen of Hamsters]

*snip of delusional rantings*.

Yeah, well, the sub numbers for Classic are not available, basing anything off of them as a random without insight is asinine. The amount of servers for Classic vs Retail alone speaks an entirely different reality. (More servers for Retail, they fit more players, work it out).

And I don't buy store mounts, try again. New players can easily be spotted by checking things like armories or simply their achievements. I play the game because I've loved it for the past 11 years, and I continue to do so. No entitled know-it-alls having a hardon for a different version of the game and a pathological need to make everyone else agree will change that.

I'm not clueless, I was new to this game when there were plenty of systems and stuff convoluting it. I saw it as a world to discover, not "a slog to google". Thanks for this wholly useless debate, but Classic is for you. Retail = for those of us enjoying the game as is and as it evolves. Thanks.

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thats just a delusional thinking, how this team can do a "wow 2 brand new and better"? it will be like overwatch 2, same shit with some differences, or worse, even more heavy, and potato pcs could not play anymore, is completely uncessary.

Classic numbers are not that big, that what i said, people left after the release, is stable.

they can completely revamp the game, to a point of look like a entirely different one, without doing "wow 2" and fucking with everyone characters.



when wow ends sure is going to, now, there is no need for that.

Don't bother, should've spotted the Classic fanflagging earlier on. If they continue, report since they've got an entire forum to cirkle-jerk about that game, no need to bring it into this thread.

They won't reset the game. The day it ends, it'll either go into maintenance mode, or be shutdown. Bringing out "WoW 2" would only happen if 2 parameters were fulfilled:

1) WoW stopped being wildly profitable
2) They saw potential long-term gain from a sequel.

But, the day that not enough people have an interest in WoW to keep it running, is the day that a WoW2 would be redundant to begin with.

[huth]

No I don't, I understand there is a lot of people who care, the issue is that this number could be higher if you just redid your whole game.

Yes, you do. What you keep forgetting is that none of your examples actually remove the collection, they only add another one. The original collection still exists.

[matrix123mko]

Man, I want to be a Venthyr Blood Knight, but I also want wings. Maybe I should go with bastion? I can always find another red set, but I can't get Perma wings anywhere else.

There may be Venthyr ones later. Keep in mind that every covenant will have a couple of cloaks.

[Eurhetemec]

So... starting a game with tons of stuff to go through and discover, is bad?

It can be, actually. I don't know how many MMOs you've played, but it absolutely can be extremely off-putting. I've been a "new player" a very large number of times over the last two decades, in tons of MMOs, and I'm not generally a "jaded" person about MMOs, and indeed I'm mostly enjoying 8.3.

But for a new to hit max level and be slammed with a massive avalanche of bizarre, poorly-explained stuff that they're supposed to do, some of which is largely unnecessary, some of which will hugely upgrade their character (with no clear signposting as to which is which), and a lot of which just isn't described at all, just vaguely alluded to by other players, is problematic.

SL will fix this in the sense that it will reset the level cap, and a new player coming on board at the beginning of an expansion in WoW is pretty much always happy, because due to the way WoW works, they're not really much worse-off than anyone else. By the time 9.3 rolls around, though, it's quite likely new players will be in a similar situation to now, where there's just a ton of confusing, poorly-explained content, again with little/no guidance as to even a sensible path through it (let alone an optimal or efficient one), which makes it extremely difficult to get started.

I have no doubt that the buff has attracted a ton of new players, or players lapsed so long they might as well be new. They'll enjoy leveling, for sure, it'll make sense. When they hit 120 is the issue. Having too much content isn't really a problem, but it is a problem if it's all thrown at the player in a confusing and hard-to-follow way as it is in WoW (and has been in many other MMOs). I know a lot of people who have played WoW to level cap, enjoyed it the whole time, then quit shortly after level cap, because they just had no idea what was going on and what they could find to do, wasn't fun (even with people trying to help guide them, and god help those who don't even have that).

I don't know what the solution is. I suspect something more than orange exclamation/question mark (which is already being misapplied by some quest designers Blizzard - it absolutely should NOT be on the Heroic Warfront quest for example, that's just bad behaviour), like I dunno, a big gold glowing exclamation/question mark, which pulses on your map or something (obviously allow this to be disabled back in some options menu new players won't easily find), which guides people through the sensible path at max level. Orange question marks help but they've been debased as noted (and aren't used in some places where they should be).

But it's not as simple as "MORE CONTENT == BETTER" as you appear to be asserting. Presentation of that content, particularly to new players, is extremely important. Also Blizzard honestly need to think about better catch-up mechanisms for stuff that isn't gear. They're very good at pure gear catch-up mechanisms, almost excessively so, but everything else? Not so much.

At least WoW isn't screwing this up anywhere near as badly as FFXIV, though. FFXIV not only takes vastly longer to level up in, but you have to do dozens of hours (literally) of mostly fetch-quests to understand the story, and they're mandatory unless you buy a skip, which just leaves you having no idea what is going on. And all the tutorial/guidance stuff is absolutely godawful and seems like something from 2010 or earlier.

[Synical123]

Yeah, well, the sub numbers for Classic are not available, basing anything off of them as a random without insight is asinine.

LOL no...it's....not.

How many times do I have to repeat myself.

My point was to tell you how many people are still interested in WoW in general (not just classic) but don't play because of how junk the game is. I used the example of release day classic to show you just how many people are still paying attention. Christ classic was BARELY advertised and they still pulled these numbers. Imagine if they completely made a brand new wow from scratch. The numbers would be INSANE.

The amount of servers for Classic vs Retail alone speaks an entirely different reality. (More servers for Retail, they fit more players, work it out).

Ok this is just dumb as fucking hell my dude. How long has retail gone on? How many servers did they have to release over the years to keep up with OLD sub number demands? How many servers have they had to merge together just because of all the people leaving? Then with xrealm groups they didn't have to worry about server death anymore because you can q with anyone at anytime from anywhere.

But let me just repeat this....again...I'm not attempting to tell you classic is better than retail or they have millions of more players than retail. Listen to what I'm telling you. I'm telling you that sub numbers tripled. There are a TON of people still wanting to play wow, but don't, because of how trash the systems are.

And I don't buy store mounts, try again. New players can easily be spotted by checking things like armories or simply their achievements. I play the game because I've loved it for the past 11 years, and I continue to do so. No entitled know-it-alls having a hardon for a different version of the game and a pathological need to make everyone else agree will change that.

Oh so you're going around checking armories of people you see walking around leveling now LOL ok dude you got anymore fishing stories for me too?

I'm not attempting to make anyone agree with me, I'm just telling you some facts here with some of my opinions as well. There is a massive massive population that still pays attention to wow but doesn't want to play it in it's current form. This is obvious and factual. New sub numbers proved this. I believe that doing this will bring those players back to stay for quite some time. Disagree with that opinion all you want, but attempting to act like retail wow just needs to keep doing what they are doing and just revamp a zone is going to bring back all these people is just insane. This is what they have been doing for how many years now?

I'm not clueless, I was new to this game when there were plenty of systems and stuff convoluting it. I saw it as a world to discover, not "a slog to google". Thanks for this wholly useless debate, but Classic is for you. Retail = for those of us enjoying the game as is and as it evolves. Thanks.

I'm talking about the game right now, were you brand new to this game at the release of BfA? Pretty sure you just said you've been playing the game for years and years now correct?

So which is it?

[Raetary]

Man, I want to be a Venthyr Blood Knight, but I also want wings. Maybe I should go with bastion? I can always find another red set, but I can't get Perma wings anywhere else.

There'll be several cloaks to choose from.

For all we know one of the venthyr ones is a pair of gargoyle wings.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Man, I want to be a Venthyr Blood Knight, but I also want wings. Maybe I should go with bastion? I can always find another red set, but I can't get Perma wings anywhere else.

If Venthyr don't get some kind of permawings, we shall riot until they do!
But I'd be surprised if they didn't plan for them already.

[Sondrelk]

There'll be several cloaks to choose from.

For all we know one of the venthyr ones is a pair of gargoyle wings.

From what we saw at Bastion there might end up being 2 different back slot cosmetics for each covenant, Kyrian having both the wings and the Halo.

What i am more intrigued by though is the likely possibility that cloaks will be a thing of the past going forward, or at least only given as low level quest rewards and such, proper back slot items are far more interesting, and will likely be the norm for raids going forwards.

[Raetary]

From what we saw at Bastion there might end up being 2 different back slot cosmetics for each covenant, Kyrian having both the wings and the Halo.

They showed 3 different options actually.
Wings, that symbol and the halo, each in 4 different colorations.


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I hope they let us use the rewards cross covenant tho.
I want to look like i just came out of Ori and blind forest as well as having access my sexy silver angelic wings.

Most probably never gonna happen, but i can dream.

[Sondrelk]

They showed 3 different options actually.
Wings, that symbol and the halo, each in 4 different colorations.
[IMG]

Ohh yeah, forgot about that second thing. Even better then i guess.

Pretty sure i will end up choosing the Night Fae covenant for my Hunter main unless the mail set is absolute garbage, so really looking forward to seeing more of the back slots from there at least, the butterfly wings we saw at the presentaion didnt exactly blow me out of the water, but i will keep an open mind.

[huth]

I hope they let us use the rewards cross covenant tho.
I want to look like i just came out of Ori and blind forest as well as having access my sexy silver angelic wings.

Most probably never gonna happen, but i can dream.

AFAIR they said at BlizzCon that you can only use the cosmetics of your active covenant.

[Mokenuf]

Please for the love of Lord Illidan throw us a bone blizzard.

[Raetary]

AFAIR they said at BlizzCon that you can only use the cosmetics of your active covenant.

As expected.

Welp, i guess i gotta sacrifice my wings to become a full time nature spirit.

[Yarathir]

They showed 3 different options actually.
Wings, that symbol and the halo, each in 4 different colorations.


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I hope they let us use the rewards cross covenant tho.
I want to look like i just came out of Ori and blind forest as well as having access my sexy silver angelic wings.

Most probably never gonna happen, but i can dream.

Prolly not at release. Maybe after Shadowlands? Idk.