Cataclysm Classic - What changes would you want?

[owbu]

LFD and Raid Finder are going to be there in Cataclysm, much like how the dungeon finder is going to be in WotLK by the ICC patch. I don't get why people think these things aren't coming when the devs themselves said they're implementing things patch by patch as it were back then. Such a silly viewpoint - they already backtracked on their statement in the one video about WotLK classic lol.

Do you have a source for that? All I've seen is that they just doubled down on lfg not being there, but are considering to add it back in on wrath at a later patch and that they also consider to take it back out in cata.
They obviously haven't said anything about lfr yet.

(I don't really mind lfd coming to wrath or cata later in the patch cycle. Just keep it out of the first patch where dungeons are more relevant)

[A Blue Smurf]

Know your facts precise my man. The talent tree you've been playing for 10 years is from MoP. Not Cata.

This isn't entirely true. Cata most definitely STARTED the design design philosophy behind the MoP talents.

It took the 51 point trees, condensed them into 31 point trees and introduced specialisations which dictated what abilities you would learn as you leveled up, including the 'required' passive effects that would allow that specialisation to perform optimally within it's designated role (I.E 'Tank' specs got passive crit reduction and threat generation, Ret+Enhance got AP->SP conversions, Healers got +Mana Regen and +Healing etc etc).

These trees also required you to spend a minium of 31 points in your chose specialisation tree before you could spend any in the other trees and thus locked people into a specific cookie-cutter build. This was in line with the emergent 'developer vision' that was used as an excuse to remove/kill off divergent builds that begun to arise in Wrath due to the increased number of talent points allowing for increased options. By the end of wrath the majority of powerful talents where strictly available in the lower parts of the tree and the higher parts were primarily filler points to prevent you from being able to have any real variance in builds.

[nVIDIA]

anything after cata isnt classic

[ArenaDk]

Really no way to come to a complete consensus on this term but basing off its earliest inception it basically means an era of WoW which didn't attempt to streamline everything.

I think a better way to answer this question is what is considered NOT classic

LFD, LFR, stat normalization, class homogenization, masteries, CRZ, sharding, etc. These are generally (meaning not by all) seen as antithetical to the core of the game as release in vanilla.

Lfd? So woltk is out of the classic list.

Stat normalization? Iam not sure what you mean by that.

Class homogenization, in which way ? Because mages got blood lust ? So mages using blood lust is more homogenized then for example vanilla were you basically choose the colour of the bolt spell you pressed by choosing your class , but I am open for examples

Masteries ? Wat?

Sharding is not classic why ?

I don’t get how you can throw buzzwords around but not really explain why you think they are part of your definition.

I will ask the usual question. What plays more similiar classes in cata and woltk or classes in woltk and vanilla ?

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This isn't entirely true. Cata most definitely STARTED the design design philosophy behind the MoP talents.

It took the 51 point trees, condensed them into 31 point trees and introduced specialisations which dictated what abilities you would learn as you leveled up, including the 'required' passive effects that would allow that specialisation to perform optimally within it's designated role (I.E 'Tank' specs got passive crit reduction and threat generation, Ret+Enhance got AP->SP conversions, Healers got +Mana Regen and +Healing etc etc).

These trees also required you to spend a minium of 31 points in your chose specialisation tree before you could spend any in the other trees and thus locked people into a specific cookie-cutter build. This was in line with the emergent 'developer vision' that was used as an excuse to remove/kill off divergent builds that begun to arise in Wrath due to the increased number of talent points allowing for increased options. By the end of wrath the majority of powerful talents where strictly available in the lower parts of the tree and the higher parts were primarily filler points to prevent you from being able to have any real variance in builds.

Soooo they forced people to spec like in tbc/ classic again instead of doing wild stuff like in woltk. Sounds for me like woltk is the outliner , not cata

[Heavens Night]

Lfd? So woltk is out of the classic list.

Stat normalization? Iam not sure what you mean by that.

Class homogenization, in which way ? Because mages got blood lust ? So mages using blood lust is more homogenized then for example vanilla were you basically choose the colour of the bolt spell you pressed by choosing your class , but I am open for examples

Masteries ? Wat?

Sharding is not classic why ?

I don’t get how you can throw buzzwords around but not really explain why you think they are part of your definition.

I will ask the usual question. What plays more similiar classes in cata and woltk or classes in woltk and vanilla ?

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Soooo they forced people to spec like in tbc/ classic again instead of doing wild stuff like in woltk. Sounds for me like woltk is the outliner , not cata

Cataclysm changed the whole world, and the game, completely. That just isn't up for debate its fact. Some people liked it. A lot of people did not.

I would have less of a problem with Cata "classic" if they didn't ruin the world and kept the old talent trees.

[shise]

At this rate you don't have wow classic you have a completely second game

Why don't you ask EverQuest how that went?

We can´t compare everquest to WoW tho. Not saying EQ was bad or anythign like that, but WoW, specially it´s first 3 areas is an animal of its own.

We know that a LOT of people would come back in to play a more classic wow style, with modern technology.

[shaunika123]

Do not equalize content between 10 and 25 man raiding this destroyed the raiding community and shattered hundreds of guilds.

Better yet just skip to MoP.

by that logic TBC did the same thing with going from 40 to 25 men.
being able to only need 9 players to raid was the best thing that's ever happened to wow and I will die on that hill no matter what. It was the most fun I've ever had raiding because I could just play with my friends, not an extra 15 strangers that generally were less qualified than us.

blizzard didnt revert it because it was a "bad idea" for raiding communities. they reverted it because they couldnt be arsed to try to balance them, which is not an issue in classic.

MOP also had 10 man HC raids btw...

10man raids would be the only reason I would consider playing Cata at all

[PrairieChicken]

1. Give alakir a voice

2. Do not kill 10 man raiding, when it died my interest inn raiding too. Maybe allow running both 10 and 25 to incentivize 25 man but anything that punishes you for raiding 10 man should not happen

[ArenaDk]

Cataclysm changed the whole world, and the game, completely. That just isn't up for debate its fact. Some people liked it. A lot of people did not.

I would have less of a problem with Cata "classic" if they didn't ruin the world and kept the old talent trees.

It changed the old world. Okay , whats different to woltk / tbc were you also spend 99% of your time in a new world?

changed the game , how ? dungeons , raids eversthing is as usual.

yes it is to debate cause you literally only throw around buzz words and never explain them.

Is it because some classes now have 2-3 more buttons to press in their rotation, that makes it not classic ? Because than the jump from vanilla to woltk rotations may also be to overhelming for your measurements.

Or is there a button/ dps ratio that determines classic ?

Or is it because cata is based on pre wc2 lore , and to old for classic ?

[Tuor]

You were on a crappy server in a bad guild. More people took part in ICC than any other raid in WoW history. Literally pugs doing runs on Illidan server on Heroic. Get out of here with this garbage.

I was speaking of cata not wrath, ICC was not cata.

[Nachtigal]

Removing LFR achieves nothing except adding a barrier to accessing group content, so I wouldn't advocate for that. The "muh social aspect of spamming chat for groups" crowd can stay in vanilla. The only changes I'd make are to rebalance the dungeons.

Actually no removing LFR would be the leading change that leads to Cata being successful. I would also say that LFD SHOULD be added, but keep it server specific.

As much as it sucks, having raids be “hard” to access or “inaccessible” makes the raids feel slightly more epic for those who can run them. You’ll find casual adventurers in 5 man dungeons. The TRUE heroes of the world will be found in raids, slaying big baddies.

Sarcasm aside, raids really haven’t ever been inaccessible. That’s just been an excuse lazy people use. It doesn’t matter what their schedule is, there’s a guild out there that runs at the times they’re free. They just have to look.

If an individuals schedule is truly that tight, they really shouldn’t be playing an MMO. To have such a schedule would mean that they’ve got a lot going on in their life and there are probably better places they should be spending their time.

MMO’s are huge time sinks. Watering the game down to make it accessible is why retail is the way it is. If for some reason, these people with insane schedules who can’t occupy a classic raid spot NEED to play Warcraft because it helps them unwind, then they have retail for that.

[Mysterymask]

you know not enough people are saying this..or saying this at all and I'm not gonna to play a cata server ever but..

KEEP GUILD LEVELS OUT OF CLASSIC

Yes Cata had them...yes people miss being able to just summon your friends anywhere or having that insta res thing for everyone no matter what or hell even having the stupid gold talent back

but Guild Levels I still point as one of the biggest killers of guilds and the community as a whole and did IREPREABLE damage to a lot of newer players

Guild levels did the following...

-Killed smaller guilds cause they couldn't keep up with levels
-Caused a lot of those smaller guilds to mass invite just so they can compete fucking once again destroying smaller guilds
-Caused smaller guilds to struggle with recruiting cause "well this guilds level 25 why would I join you"
-Created a bunch of predatory sweat shop guilds to exploit the gold gained from inviting any and all new players that spawn into the intro zone
-Ya'll bitch about flying destroying travel how about every character is a fucking super warlock that can summon an entire raid into one spot with a push of a button
-Did I mention the predatory sweatshop guilds exploiting the gold talent? Cause holy fuck that needs to be mentioned twice...in case y'all forgot they had to make addons to block spammed guild invites when you made a fucking alt it was such a problem.

Really they only need to bring back guild achievements and THATS IT...guild levels were toxic as fuck keeps the main thing guild achievements did removes all the bad parts and we should be good.

but that's my 2 cents

[MrLachyG]

Remember when #nochanges was the trend when Classic was about to be released? Pepperidge Farm remembers

[Romanthony]

I dont want it, I want them to stay with the Trio they have, Cata is when Classic stopped being Classic, because of the world revamp, Also when does it end? Do they go mop. Wod legion bod and then shadowlands, then Dragonflight while we are 2 or 3 exapnsions a head? Seems a waste of resources. Plus pretty much everything Cata introduced is in the game now.

[ArenaDk]

I dont want it, I want them to stay with the Trio they have, Cata is when Classic stopped being Classic, because of the world revamp, Also when does it end? Do they go mop. Wod legion bod and then shadowlands, then Dragonflight while we are 2 or 3 exapnsions a head? Seems a waste of resources. Plus pretty much everything Cata introduced is in the game now.

Why did it stop being classic with cata ?

also the classes how they played , glyphs , reforging etc arent in the game anymore, not even talking about how proffesions worked, guild level system or the pvp zones.

and dont start with the old world bs. tbc and woltk ignored the old world 99% of times , and so does cata with the reworked one.

And yes revisiting wod would be fun as the raids were insanly good and so was rbg at the time

[DarkAmbient]

It encourages non participation and lazy behaviour. I literally cant count the amount of times ive been into LFR and like 50% of the people are literally AFK expecting others to kill the bosses for their free trash gear. Why cant they just pug a normal?

Why do content that you don't want to do? Leave LFR for people who want to do LFR, it literally has no effect on people who do other difficulties.

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Actually no removing LFR would be the leading change that leads to Cata being successful. I would also say that LFD SHOULD be added, but keep it server specific.

As much as it sucks, having raids be “hard” to access or “inaccessible” makes the raids feel slightly more epic for those who can run them. You’ll find casual adventurers in 5 man dungeons. The TRUE heroes of the world will be found in raids, slaying big baddies.

Sarcasm aside, raids really haven’t ever been inaccessible. That’s just been an excuse lazy people use. It doesn’t matter what their schedule is, there’s a guild out there that runs at the times they’re free. They just have to look.

If an individuals schedule is truly that tight, they really shouldn’t be playing an MMO. To have such a schedule would mean that they’ve got a lot going on in their life and there are probably better places they should be spending their time.

MMO’s are huge time sinks. Watering the game down to make it accessible is why retail is the way it is. If for some reason, these people with insane schedules who can’t occupy a classic raid spot NEED to play Warcraft because it helps them unwind, then they have retail for that.

You're making some incorrect assumptions here, and your post has the familiar whiff of elitism about it. I've never known a guild that can raid at whatever time I happen to feel like raiding on any given day or night, and it's just not true that such guilds are readily available everywhere. And the notion that retail is 'watered down' is laughable, as the game arguably has the most difficult content that it's ever had. The people who complain most about LFR are the people who would never want or need to do that content. They just want to take something from the game that has no effect on them at all, because for some reason its mere existence makes them feel less special.

[VinceVega]

Getting the new models.

I get why people wanted the old ones in Classic and TBC. But with WOtlk and going forward i would like to see the game with the current graphics... would be so much better.

Never agreed with the classic has to look like shit in the first place. I played it. And you get used to it. Still looks like shit. Have you ever really looked at human faces?

Rework Cata into a modern game at least looks wise and i will gobble it up like nothing. At least until firelands. Hated the last raid. Horrible PoS that was....

[Kralljin]

Class homogenization, in which way ? Because mages got blood lust ?

- More Classes received baseline interrupts (Pala, Feral Druid)
- More Classes received a stun (Arms Warrior)
- Revamped Dispels (Every Healer can now dispel magic, as opposed to every Priest and Pala)
- Pallies gained a raid heal (well, two, Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn)
- A ton of Raid cooldowns were added (Power Word Barrier, Spirit Link Totem, Tree of life)
- Every Healer now uses Spirit (previously only Priest and Druid had some use for Spirit)
- Paladin received Holy Power (System that's very similiar to Combo points, alongside spells that are awfully similiar to Slice and Dice / Savage Roar)

There's probably some things i'm forgetting about, but i think it's fair to say that Cata had more than just Time Warp as "homogenization".

Not sure if Cata was the expansion that homogenized classes far more than other expansions (both TBC and Wotlk also had their fair share) but i don't think it's unfair to say that Cata can be considered a tipping point when it comes to homogenization.

So mages using blood lust is more homogenized then for example vanilla were you basically choose the colour of the bolt spell you pressed by choosing your class , but I am open for examples

I think it's always important to keep in mind that Vanilla Class design wasn't centered around raiding but rather leveling the character.
If you leveled as Mage or Warlock and exclusively pressed Frostbolt or Shadowbolt, you most certainly did something wrong.

Bringing up rotations is simply faulty because the concept just didn't exist back then.

Never agreed with the classic has to look like shit in the first place. I played it. And you get used to it. Still looks like shit. Have you ever really looked at human faces?

No idea why people are that adamant about new player models, it's not like they are super visible when they're covered in armor.

Disregarding that it looks awful when you have super high res models covered in pixaleted armor, keeping the quality of art consistent is pretty important in my view.
That's why a lot of people struggle to use any transmog before WoD on Retail nowadays, because the difference in quality stands out quite a lot.

Point is, the faces don't really stand out when you normally play the game, with updated models, they almost certainly will stand out.

[Dadwen]

We can´t compare everquest to WoW tho. Not saying EQ was bad or anythign like that, but WoW, specially it´s first 3 areas is an animal of its own.

We know that a LOT of people would come back in to play a more classic wow style, with modern technology.

WOW was a direct result of EQ, and was built to grab the people that wanted a less time consuming, less grindy, way more casual friendly alternative. *I played EQ almost from the start and same with WOW (was a month short due to still playing EQ at the time). it was blizzard target audience.

[Heavens Night]

Why did it stop being classic with cata ?

also the classes how they played , glyphs , reforging etc arent in the game anymore, not even talking about how proffesions worked, guild level system or the pvp zones.

and dont start with the old world bs. tbc and woltk ignored the old world 99% of times , and so does cata with the reworked one.

And yes revisiting wod would be fun as the raids were insanly good and so was rbg at the time

You have been told many, many times why it stopped being classic with Cata. You are deliberately obtuse and facetious for the sake of it. The guy you responded to here, explained to you again, and again you asked why as if he hadn't.

If you love WoD, go play it, just log into retail and go to Draenor.