Does classic have incremental changes now?

[PenguinChan]

The question is what the focus of the design is, not whether the elements exist at all.

Maybe I'm too meta but I fail to see how Classic or Retail fail in the MMORPG manual-grouping aspect - I see them one in the same.

[NineSpine]

Maybe I'm too meta but I fail to see how Classic or Retail fail in the MMORPG manual-grouping aspect - I see them one in the same.

I didn’t raise the issue of manual grouping.

[Illuminance]

I'm asking what the design focuses on, not what percentages of players do.

That isn't what was in the quoted text. To be clear, the quote was:

When you think of WoW, and the things that define it in 2025, do you really think about mindlessly doing world quests and ignoring that every other player exists? Or do you think about challenging group instanced content? Everyone knows it's the latter.

You specifically asked what players think defines the game, not whatever someone thinks Blizzard's focus is. You also made the claim that when asked what defines WoW "everyone [thinks about challenging group instanced content]" which is incorrect even given that "everyone" is hyperbolic in this case. The other game activities were listed in support of that response.

If the question is "what is the design focus?," the answer is still not "challenging group instanced content" insofar as you seem to think that other facets of WoW are less important to or demand fewer resources from Blizzard. That's such a narrow view of Blizzard's readily apparent effort that it seems to be your fixation rather than theirs.

"The persistent shared online world" is just nowhere near the top of the list in terms of designer priorities, while it was the prime #1 concern in the design of vanilla.

My argument is not that retail contains zero elements of a persistent shared online world. My argument is it's a tertiary concern.

I don't believe Blizzard treats the persistent world as a lower priority. For example, the work they put into Undermine (zone, vehicle, quests, rewards, etc.) surely rivals or surpasses the raid itself. The most obvious near-future example is the development of massively multiplayer housing that shows they are not laser-focused on challenging group content and demonstrates an interest in enhancing WoW's MMO gameplay.

Based on what you wrote, I think you've exaggerated some of the design choices while overlooking others, perhaps biased by what you personally enjoy about the game (seeing as your suggested alternative was "mindlessly doing world quests").

[Mysterymask]

What we have here is a classic case of genre gatekeeping.

Wow isn't an MMO cause it doesn't have X
Heroes of the Storm isn't a Moba because they dumbed it down
MegaMan X7 isn't a MegaMan game cause it sucks
Smash isn't a fighting game because of X
This isn't an RPG because it doesn't have X Y Z

I mean crap this gets so tiring and the only reason y'all trying to gatekeep the label is to feel better about your life choices instead of just enjoying what you like and let people enjoy what they like

[NineSpine]

What we have here is a classic case of genre gatekeeping.

Wow isn't an MMO cause it doesn't have X
Heroes of the Storm isn't a Moba because they dumbed it down
MegaMan X7 isn't a MegaMan game cause it sucks
Smash isn't a fighting game because of X
This isn't an RPG because it doesn't have X Y Z

I mean crap this gets so tiring and the only reason y'all trying to gatekeep the label is to feel better about your life choices instead of just enjoying what you like and let people enjoy what they like

Who said wow isn’t an MMO?

I’m sure it does get tiring when you are inventing things to argue with.

- - - Updated - - -

That isn't what was in the quoted text. To be clear, the quote was:



You specifically asked what players think defines the game, not whatever someone thinks Blizzard's focus is. You also made the claim that when asked what defines WoW "everyone [thinks about challenging group instanced content]" which is incorrect even given that "everyone" is hyperbolic in this case. The other game activities were listed in support of that response.

If the question is "what is the design focus?," the answer is still not "challenging group instanced content" insofar as you seem to think that other facets of WoW are less important to or demand fewer resources from Blizzard. That's such a narrow view of Blizzard's readily apparent effort that it seems to be your fixation rather than theirs.



I don't believe Blizzard treats the persistent world as a lower priority. For example, the work they put into Undermine (zone, vehicle, quests, rewards, etc.) surely rivals or surpasses the raid itself. The most obvious near-future example is the development of massively multiplayer housing that shows they are not laser-focused on challenging group content and demonstrates an interest in enhancing WoW's MMO gameplay.

Based on what you wrote, I think you've exaggerated some of the design choices while overlooking others, perhaps biased by what you personally enjoy about the game (seeing as your suggested alternative was "mindlessly doing world quests").

I dont have any response to a straw man based on quote mining. The conversation was about what defines the design, as was made clear by all the parts of my post you left out.

Nothing you referenced about Undermine has anything to do with it being shared and persistent.

I appreciate that housing goes in that direction, but when you have to reference a feature that isn’t in the game yet because there aren’t any better examples from the last decade to point to, it makes my point for me.

[Azerothian Explorer]

Hi,
I'm someone who's been curious about playing classic in the past, but didn't really click much with the release back in 2019. The main appeal of classic to me is being able to revisit past iterations of different specs that I remember fondly. MoP and WoD classic are on the horizon, and those expansions had the best overall class design of almost any time period in WoW (imo) - specs like launch Mistweaver and BRF blood DK were some of the most fun I've ever had playing.

That said, I'm worried that a lot of these specific iterations will be lost to time - from what I recall, classic would typically start on the very last patch of the corresponding expansion, which makes it an entirely different experience relative to the real deal. Still, would we be able to expect more incremental changes now that we're getting closer to the modern era of WoW? (ie having patch 5.1 with patch 5.1 specs + some changes) As I've not really kept up with news on classic at all, I'm wondering if they've done this at all for wotlk and cataclysm?

Obviously, I don't blame Blizzard for not being able to implement this if it's not in the pipeline; after all, a patch definitely involves thousands of commits, and reverse engineering those is way more work than is reasonable.

Blizzard is still using the cadence of basing the entire "classic" expansion on the final patch of the expansion. It seems that's the way to get the least problematic build of the expansion working, in terms of balance and bug fixes. I don't think they'll move away from that.