Assuming WOTLK Classic happens, I have some questions

[Aurabolt]

Ok so Wrath of the Lich King stands as the only expansion in which I did literally...EVERYTHING there was to do from start to finish. Every raid tier, WG every day 4-6 times a day, Batte of Undercity on several alts, etc. Good times ^_^

...All that said.

I have questions about certain features introduced in Wrath:

• The biggest one right now for me is Achievements. I know up to now, the point has been to keep the "Classic" games separate from Modern WoW (currently Shadowlands). Should players have separate achievements in Wrath Classic or have their achievements from the live game migrated to Wrath? I'm also being mindful accountwide achievements weren't introduced until Cata which is a whole other issue in and of itself. I think separate achievements is most likely but if Blizzard could figure out a way to have an integrated Achievements system, that would be very interesting.
• Northrend Flying...how you got it on alts changed a few times during the course of the expansion and I'll give Blizzard credit for trying. You could buy Tome of Northrend Flying with your main and send it to a level 68-70 Alt to learn Northrend Flying. I don't remember if it was in Cata or the last content update in which you just automatically learned it at level 70. How should that be handled this time around?
• Heirlooms...I know this is a sensitive subject for many. Initially introduced in Wrath, they could be given to alts to boost leveling speed. More types of heirlooms were added in subsequent expansions including items to increase the level cap for them. In Wrath, they were locked behind Argent Tournament Dailies (or PvP) but when Gold Heirloom Vendors were added to UC and IF in Cata, they became more common. My question is should Gold Heirloom vendors be added in Wrath or keep it as-is?
• TBC Classic's Prepatch gives a pretty good indicator for what to expect in regards to DKs: They'll be made available two weeks before Northrend goes live. Players were limited to one DK per sever and you had to have a level 55+ char on the server you wanted a DK on when Wrath was current. Both limitations were removed a few expansions later. Should these restrictions be included or not?
• Speaking of DKs. We know Blood (originally DPS) and Frost (Originally Tank) were swapped as DPS or Tank Specs with Wrath's first content update. I assume they'll start as Blood Tank and Frost DPS but what if Blizzard gave players the option of playing them as Blood DPS or Frost Tank? Maybe add an NPC to Acherus who could flip those two specs to DPS or Tank for Gold. Could be fun =O
• Wintergrap...whew. Blizzard learned fast launching the game without a cap was a dumb idea and it made the outdoor BG a lagfest until they added a hard cap and then kept shrinking it. What should the cap be? I think 120 per faction would be a good start (240 total) but it can be lowered to 40 per faction (80 total) if needed. Once it started, everyone else gets teleported to Dalaran or something until a side wins. For those who don't know or remember, the faction that won WG earned the right for their faction to do the 10 or 25-man raid in WG Fortress. Until the next WG match anyways. If WG changed hands while you were raiding, you didn't have to worry about being booted though.
• Stand of the Ancients was introduced in Wrath but was retired a few years back. Should it return?
• Almost Forgot: Can we all agree Battle for Undercity MUST be included?

Those are my burning questions. Feel free to add your own or comment ^_^

[ArMeD_SuRvIvOr]

[*]Speaking of DKs. We know Blood (originally DPS) and Frost (Originally Tank) were swapped as DPS or Tank Specs with Wrath's first content update. I assume they'll start as Blood Tank and Frost DPS but what if Blizzard gave players the option of playing them as Blood DPS or Frost Tank? Maybe add an NPC to Acherus who could flip those two specs to DPS or Tank for Gold. Could be fun =O

What? All DK specs could be tank or dps. I've no idea what you're saying here. Doesn't matter if blood was worse in early patches than frost or viceversa, both had the tools to tank and dps.

[Ielenia]

[*]Speaking of DKs. We know Blood (originally DPS) and Frost (Originally Tank) were swapped as DPS or Tank Specs with Wrath's first content update. I assume they'll start as Blood Tank and Frost DPS but what if Blizzard gave players the option of playing them as Blood DPS or Frost Tank? Maybe add an NPC to Acherus who could flip those two specs to DPS or Tank for Gold. Could be fun =O

You're confusing "presences" with "spec". The blood presence was a DPS presence, and the frost presence was a tank presence (and unholy presence was the utility presence), but as far as the specs go, all three specs could be tanks or DPS, depending on the choice of talents you would pick.

That was one of the original gimmicks of the death knight class: "tank in any spec."

[Rockstaar]

Blood dps is all I want. Stack armor penetration and just annihilate whatevers in your path with blood strikes. Those were some of my favourite times in WoW.

[SinR]

I tanked things as Unholy. Did pretty good too.

Other Points, in order:

Separate achievements from Live, However it was in WOTLK I think you had to be 77 to unlock flying and I can't seem to remember anything about a tome you could send alts, Heirlooms only the ones that were available in WOTLK, same WOTLK Era restrictions for DKs, However WG was on the final content patch, and yes to SOTA. and fuck yes to Battle for Undercity

[Tojara]

Not to nitpick, but frost was never really a premier DPS spec or tank spec throughout all of WoTLK. People get massively confused because of how the presences worked in WoTLK. Unholy made you move, attack faster while lowering you GCD. Blood presence made you do more damage and heal for a portion of damage done, while frost presence increased you threat generation, armor and health.

Every single spec was designed to do all three roles, and unholy was by and large the winner throughout the entirety of WoTLK. It was the best tank of the three (sans a few fights) until ICC, and was one of the best DPS specs in both AoE and ST for portions of WoTLK (until ICC). Blood scaled really well, and because of changes became a really good tank and DPS in ICC. Almost all of WoTLK tanking design was based on reducing big hits, and unholy just performed that function incredibly well. Frost was just a middling spec, caught somewhere between, but was never really "the" tank spec.

The TLDR about DKs is that presences didn't define their intended role. DK was designed to have all three specs do everything, and you could absolutely get by tanking as all three, or doing DPS as all three. There are clear winners, but they were all mostly viable.

I don't see how achievements being introduced again really matters, and I think the hard limitation of having a single DK on your account makes sense in the context of a re-release of WoTLK. Getting multiple free '55's by making them all DKs is one of the primary reasons they didn't do it to begin with. Not to be completely negative, but business wise it's pretty counter productive allowing you to get as many 55 DKs as you want on a server, all the while offering a boost to 68 when WoTLK is released. It's ultimately a big time save buying a boost, but that's obviously going to cut into potential boosts and Blizzard has ever reason to stick with the original design philosophy.

I think all the other stuff you listed should just be as is. Not to slam down on needing changes (because WoTLK certainly needs them), but as shitty of a BG as it was, why contemplate removing stand of the ancients? Why change how flying is approached (it was pretty minor anyway), and the heirloom system was basically fine anyway. Realistically speaking, considering boosts will be a thing, I doubt they would want to make it easier to level characters in WoTLK anyways.

My biggest concern is the actual difficulty of the dungeons and raids (the launch ones). While this is my opinion, WoTLK was one of the few times I contemplated taking a break because of Blizzards design philosophy with WoTLK. To me, WoTLK was an empty boring shell of an expansion when it first released, and that was solely because they made every single dungeon easy, giving us one truly difficult encounter for an entire 6 month period. "Difficulty" was replaced with achievements where you had to do bosses in really stupid ways to make it harder, all the while offering zero additional incentive for doing so (aside from 3D Sartharion).

Again the above is just my opinion but I would seriously hope that they actually tune the dungeons upwards on the difficulty side this time around, in addition to Naxxaramas as a whole. Zero memes aside, but it felt incredibly wrong with all that raiding knowledge that you learn over 4 years of playing, to be reintroduced to a raid and the version you did years ago was way harder. I fully realize as well that there's no way they can truly make it hard by today's standards, but holy shit they could do something with it.

You also might hate it, but WoTLK dungeons while tuned poorly are the first time I would consider them being 'fun' dungeons. Pretty much everything that came before them were slogs with mobs that just hit hard with basically zero mechanics. WoTLK dungeons actually had mechanics, they were just tuned incredibly poorly to where most of them didn't matter. While I wouldn't call for changing them to something along the lines of M+, WoTLK dungeons have potential to be changed to "something" far more interesting because the tuning is certainly there to accommodate that. Probably not though. I get that some people liked the old system of dungeons being invalidated fairly quickly, and mostly serving as a max level pre-raid gearing activity, where newer dungeons added later catch people up to speed.

[rogoth]

Ok so Wrath of the Lich King stands as the only expansion in which I did literally...EVERYTHING there was to do from start to finish. Every raid tier, WG every day 4-6 times a day, Batte of Undercity on several alts, etc. Good times ^_^

...All that said.

I have questions about certain features introduced in Wrath:

• The biggest one right now for me is Achievements. I know up to now, the point has been to keep the "Classic" games separate from Modern WoW (currently Shadowlands). Should players have separate achievements in Wrath Classic or have their achievements from the live game migrated to Wrath? I'm also being mindful accountwide achievements weren't introduced until Cata which is a whole other issue in and of itself. I think separate achievements is most likely but if Blizzard could figure out a way to have an integrated Achievements system, that would be very interesting.
• Northrend Flying...how you got it on alts changed a few times during the course of the expansion and I'll give Blizzard credit for trying. You could buy Tome of Northrend Flying with your main and send it to a level 68-70 Alt to learn Northrend Flying. I don't remember if it was in Cata or the last content update in which you just automatically learned it at level 70. How should that be handled this time around?
• Heirlooms...I know this is a sensitive subject for many. Initially introduced in Wrath, they could be given to alts to boost leveling speed. More types of heirlooms were added in subsequent expansions including items to increase the level cap for them. In Wrath, they were locked behind Argent Tournament Dailies (or PvP) but when Gold Heirloom Vendors were added to UC and IF in Cata, they became more common. My question is should Gold Heirloom vendors be added in Wrath or keep it as-is?
• TBC Classic's Prepatch gives a pretty good indicator for what to expect in regards to DKs: They'll be made available two weeks before Northrend goes live. Players were limited to one DK per sever and you had to have a level 55+ char on the server you wanted a DK on when Wrath was current. Both limitations were removed a few expansions later. Should these restrictions be included or not?
• Speaking of DKs. We know Blood (originally DPS) and Frost (Originally Tank) were swapped as DPS or Tank Specs with Wrath's first content update. I assume they'll start as Blood Tank and Frost DPS but what if Blizzard gave players the option of playing them as Blood DPS or Frost Tank? Maybe add an NPC to Acherus who could flip those two specs to DPS or Tank for Gold. Could be fun =O
• Wintergrap...whew. Blizzard learned fast launching the game without a cap was a dumb idea and it made the outdoor BG a lagfest until they added a hard cap and then kept shrinking it. What should the cap be? I think 120 per faction would be a good start (240 total) but it can be lowered to 40 per faction (80 total) if needed. Once it started, everyone else gets teleported to Dalaran or something until a side wins. For those who don't know or remember, the faction that won WG earned the right for their faction to do the 10 or 25-man raid in WG Fortress. Until the next WG match anyways. If WG changed hands while you were raiding, you didn't have to worry about being booted though.
• Stand of the Ancients was introduced in Wrath but was retired a few years back. Should it return?
• Almost Forgot: Can we all agree Battle for Undercity MUST be included?

Those are my burning questions. Feel free to add your own or comment ^_^

1) ALL achievements should be new and 'reset' you haven't earned them on the classic realm so just because you did something years ago doesn't automatically give it to you there, period.

2) i don't know what version of WOTLK you were playing but to fly in northrend you needed not only the flight skill for it (250% speed) but you needed to also buy the tome of cold weather flying, furthermore the tome that was an heirloom class item was added in TOGC, and you needed to be max lvl to buy it for alts to use at lvl 68, so i don't understand your question here, it's obviously gonna be part of a later 'phase' of the expansion life cycle.

3) heirlooms were added to vendors in dalaran and were purchasable with emblems of heroism, i have no clue why you think they were tournament grounds exclusive, all they did was add them there in 3.2 to allow people who couldn't raid etc a way to get the items instead using the daily quest currency, so again i don't understand why they wouldn't be available as was the case back when it was current content.

4) again i don't really understand your question, the restriction was in place for several good reasons and was only relaxed when the lvl cap and lvling in general had been squished to the point that starting a character at 55 was not even noteworthy anymore, so of course i expect the 1 per server and other restrictions to still be in place and not touched.

5) you clearly didn't play back then if that's your analysis of DK's specs, all 3 could tank, all 3 could dps, all had their niche and changed over the course of the expansion to fit the buff/nerf cycle as well as stat inflation causing certain skills to scale past what was previously considered best, so no, there's no need for any npc in acherus because why would there be?

6) because the expansion patch will be released on the 3.3.5 patch systems i don't expect to see why they wouldn't release 40v40 wintergrasp (as it is now i believe), not only would it be a better experience but it's less stress on their already frail infrastructure.

7) SOTA was a release pvp map for the expansion, why the hell would it not be included just because it's been retired from the current game?, again i don't understand this question at all.

8) it was an overhyped event that lasted way too short a time because of ppl whining and whinging on and on about the plague, so i don't really care for it at all if i'm being honest, if they do a like for like copy/paste of the event then whatever, if they don't bother with it again, doesn't bother me at all.

- - - Updated - - -

Not to nitpick, but frost was never really a premier DPS spec or tank spec throughout all of WoTLK. People get massively confused because of how the presences worked in WoTLK. Unholy made you move, attack faster while lowering you GCD. Blood presence made you do more damage and heal for a portion of damage done, while frost presence increased you threat generation, armor and health.

Every single spec was designed to do all three roles, and unholy was by and large the winner throughout the entirety of WoTLK. It was the best tank of the three (sans a few fights) until ICC, and was one of the best DPS specs in both AoE and ST for portions of WoTLK (until ICC). Blood scaled really well, and because of changes became a really good tank and DPS in ICC. Almost all of WoTLK tanking design was based on reducing big hits, and unholy just performed that function incredibly well. Frost was just a middling spec, caught somewhere between, but was never really "the" tank spec.

The TLDR about DKs is that presences didn't define their intended role. DK was designed to have all three specs do everything, and you could absolutely get by tanking as all three, or doing DPS as all three. There are clear winners, but they were all mostly viable.

I don't see how achievements being introduced again really matters, and I think the hard limitation of having a single DK on your account makes sense in the context of a re-release of WoTLK. Getting multiple free '55's by making them all DKs is one of the primary reasons they didn't do it to begin with. Not to be completely negative, but business wise it's pretty counter productive allowing you to get as many 55 DKs as you want on a server, all the while offering a boost to 68 when WoTLK is released. It's ultimately a big time save buying a boost, but that's obviously going to cut into potential boosts and Blizzard has ever reason to stick with the original design philosophy.

I think all the other stuff you listed should just be as is. Not to slam down on needing changes (because WoTLK certainly needs them), but as shitty of a BG as it was, why contemplate removing stand of the ancients? Why change how flying is approached (it was pretty minor anyway), and the heirloom system was basically fine anyway. Realistically speaking, considering boosts will be a thing, I doubt they would want to make it easier to level characters in WoTLK anyways.

My biggest concern is the actual difficulty of the dungeons and raids (the launch ones). While this is my opinion, WoTLK was one of the few times I contemplated taking a break because of Blizzards design philosophy with WoTLK. To me, WoTLK was an empty boring shell of an expansion when it first released, and that was solely because they made every single dungeon easy, giving us one truly difficult encounter for an entire 6 month period. "Difficulty" was replaced with achievements where you had to do bosses in really stupid ways to make it harder, all the while offering zero additional incentive for doing so (aside from 3D Sartharion).

Again the above is just my opinion but I would seriously hope that they actually tune the dungeons upwards on the difficulty side this time around, in addition to Naxxaramas as a whole. Zero memes aside, but it felt incredibly wrong with all that raiding knowledge that you learn over 4 years of playing, to be reintroduced to a raid and the version you did years ago was way harder. I fully realize as well that there's no way they can truly make it hard by today's standards, but holy shit they could do something with it.

You also might hate it, but WoTLK dungeons while tuned poorly are the first time I would consider them being 'fun' dungeons. Pretty much everything that came before them were slogs with mobs that just hit hard with basically zero mechanics. WoTLK dungeons actually had mechanics, they were just tuned incredibly poorly to where most of them didn't matter. While I wouldn't call for changing them to something along the lines of M+, WoTLK dungeons have potential to be changed to "something" far more interesting because the tuning is certainly there to accommodate that. Probably not though. I get that some people liked the old system of dungeons being invalidated fairly quickly, and mostly serving as a max level pre-raid gearing activity, where newer dungeons added later catch people up to speed.

erm, what expansion were you playing because frost was the ONLY tank spec in the early game, and in 3.2 it was the single highest dps spec of any melee class in the game thanks in part to dual wield frost giving the highest uptime on 'death's verdict' trinket which was nuts at the time.

- - - Updated - - -

I tanked things as Unholy. Did pretty good too.

Other Points, in order:

Separate achievements from Live, However it was in WOTLK I think you had to be 77 to unlock flying and I can't seem to remember anything about a tome you could send alts, Heirlooms only the ones that were available in WOTLK, same WOTLK Era restrictions for DKs, However WG was on the final content patch, and yes to SOTA. and fuck yes to Battle for Undercity

you needed to be 77 to learn the artisan riding skill, the tome to allow alts to fly in northrend was added in 3.2 and you needed to be lvl 68 to use it on an alt, but you needed to be lvl 80 to buy it from the flight trainer on krasus landing.

[Drusin]

I can't seem to remember anything about a tome you could send alts

[Dorp]

Since they are re-selling BC classic, I hope they use the money from BC classic, to make some raid changes in WOTLK.
They should scrap the re-use of Naxx and give us a new raid tier, maybe nerubian themed, with Anub'arak as the main boss.
And scrap the ToC raid after ulduar and do a different actual undead themed raid. Those were my biggest gripes with WOTLK back in the day, and if they are going to re-charge for the expansion, they should make some better changes.

[varren]

I think they will go with account wide achievements, rather than the character specific ones we had until like MoP I think it was. Can also see them giving us the modern account wide pet/mount/transmog systems when we get to those. Zero connection between Retail and Classic versions, though.

I don't think getting the same achievement on 10 different chars was part of people's nostalgia, but I could be wrong.

[rogoth]

I think they will go with account wide achievements, rather than the character specific ones we had until like MoP I think it was. Can also see them giving us the modern account wide pet/mount/transmog systems when we get to those. Zero connection between Retail and Classic versions, though.

I don't think getting the same achievement on 10 different chars was part of people's nostalgia, but I could be wrong.

the first iteration of account wide achievements was added in the cata pre patch so technically still during the content life cycle of wrath.

[Marmot]

8) it was an overhyped event that lasted way too short a time because of ppl whining and whinging on and on about the plague, so i don't really care for it at all if i'm being honest, if they do a like for like copy/paste of the event then whatever, if they don't bother with it again, doesn't bother me at all.

Battle for undercity was a quest line after the wrathgate where you raid the undercity to kill Putress and so on. It was removed from the modern game due to some technical reasons iirc.

[Kagthul]

but it felt incredibly wrong with all that raiding knowledge that you learn over 4 years of playing, to be reintroduced to a raid and the version you did years ago was way harder. I fully realize as well that there's no way they can truly make it hard by today's standards, but holy shit they could do something with it.

It was easier on purpose.

The part i highlighted is the important part:

No one had really done Naxx. Less than 1% of the player base ever saw Naxx 40 when it was relevant (before TBC launch). Like .8% or something.

Thats why it was made easier and re-used as the first raid in the LK expansion. They basically didnt want all that work to go to waste, which it largely had.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I am guessing everything will be pretty damn close to what it was at the end of the game with a few minor changes and a few things oddly monitized and insanely over priced.

[Dom]

It won't happen, but I'd support achievements copying over. The entire purpose of classic is to experience a version of the game that is no longer available. Achievements like Battlemaster were made under the assumption it would be something you only ever did once.

Characters copying over to newer classic expansions will be a strange and shortsighted decision in the long run. Eventually classic will graduate to more modern WoW expansions and we'll get account wide mounts, pets, toys etc. and then what? We'll be operating 2 accounts on the same account, if that makes any sense.

I would've much had classic expansions exist in their own bubble, which it seems we're going to get anyway, but not before they've had their day in the sun.

Many years from now, we'll have our retail account, our 2nd retail account (that's on the same account, with nothing shared), and however many more bonus accounts you want on the "eternal" classic servers. This is going to be such a disaster.

[Ohvul]

Since they are re-selling BC classic, I hope they use the money from BC classic, to make some raid changes in WOTLK.
They should scrap the re-use of Naxx and give us a new raid tier, maybe nerubian themed, with Anub'arak as the main boss.
And scrap the ToC raid after ulduar and do a different actual undead themed raid. Those were my biggest gripes with WOTLK back in the day, and if they are going to re-charge for the expansion, they should make some better changes.

Originally there was a vrykul raid planned which is why armageddon and final voyage are models (If i recall correctly). Id love if they could go and remake UP/UK as an entry raid instead of naxx (make naxx a super dungeon like karazhan and mechagon lol)

[Stardrift]

Blood dps is all I want. Stack armor penetration and just annihilate whatevers in your path with blood strikes. Those were some of my favourite times in WoW.

Blood DPS was the pinnacle of DK DPS. God I remember telling my guild "just let me swap from tank to DPS and my DPS will carry us through LK"

Lo and behold, when I swapped to DPS we got him down.

[shise]

WotLK is a borderline so it won´t be easy to do again. It is not really classic like vanilla and BC, but yet it sort of is, because Azeroth was still unchanged.

It won´t be an easy approach...

[Tojara]

It was easier on purpose.

The part i highlighted is the important part:

No one had really done Naxx. Less than 1% of the player base ever saw Naxx 40 when it was relevant (before TBC launch). Like .8% or something.

Thats why it was made easier and re-used as the first raid in the LK expansion. They basically didnt want all that work to go to waste, which it largely had.

Yeah, I understand that. My point was they swung the pendulum too far and there was essentially zero tuning done in Naxxaramas at all. Going into a new raid with questing blues and raid gear from the previous expansion and just smashing everything in the first night just felt wrong. I realize the raid wasn't necessarily new, but considering the knowledge people had gained over the years from elevating dungeon/raid mechanics, they could have done a far better job with the raid as a whole.

Again, I also realize that no matter what they do it's still going to be easy and reliving "classic" era shit is always going to be easy. It doesn't take away from the fact that regardless of whether Blizzard wanted to make raiding a bit more "open" for the community, that they potentially went too far with Naxxaramas. I think you basically see that in their raid philosophy after that tier because they never really brought back that kind of difficulty again until the end of Cataclysm when they introduced LFR.

Naxxaramas 10/25 man in WoTLK was essentially LFR tuning, or maybe somewhere between LFR and current normal mode tuning.

Considering the approach going forward with TBC (using harder versions of the content, that people may have not seen) it stands to reason that they could actually look at things like launch WoTLK content when they do a second pass on it in the future. Hardcore players are never truly going to be super challenged, especially doing content a second time (or some just practicing it for years). However I also don't think it's healthy for the classic community to have virtually zero challenge either. While there might still be a lot of paint chip eaters in this community, most of them have been down this road before, so stimulating a little brain activity wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

[ebah]

Yeah, I understand that. My point was they swung the pendulum too far and there was essentially zero tuning done in Naxxaramas at all. Going into a new raid with questing blues and raid gear from the previous expansion and just smashing everything in the first night just felt wrong. I realize the raid wasn't necessarily new, but considering the knowledge people had gained over the years from elevating dungeon/raid mechanics, they could have done a far better job with the raid as a whole.

Again, I also realize that no matter what they do it's still going to be easy and reliving "classic" era shit is always going to be easy. It doesn't take away from the fact that regardless of whether Blizzard wanted to make raiding a bit more "open" for the community, that they potentially went too far with Naxxaramas. I think you basically see that in their raid philosophy after that tier because they never really brought back that kind of difficulty again until the end of Cataclysm when they introduced LFR.

Naxxaramas 10/25 man in WoTLK was essentially LFR tuning, or maybe somewhere between LFR and current normal mode tuning.

Considering the approach going forward with TBC (using harder versions of the content, that people may have not seen) it stands to reason that they could actually look at things like launch WoTLK content when they do a second pass on it in the future. Hardcore players are never truly going to be super challenged, especially doing content a second time (or some just practicing it for years). However I also don't think it's healthy for the classic community to have virtually zero challenge either. While there might still be a lot of paint chip eaters in this community, most of them have been down this road before, so stimulating a little brain activity wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

This, WOTLK leveling sure gonna be fun for few days to a week if u play casual. But the PVE-side in first tier is lame, you've done the raids within first raid day most likely. Ulduar was supposed to be released at beginnign of WOTLK but got delayed.... Tier 8 is the only thing im waiting about WOTLK, Ulduar & hardmodes was the best thing in Wow (after TBC).