WoD Classic CANNOT be released as it was back in 2014.

[Akka]

Nope. It wasn't about overtuned dungeons only. Problem was about overall weak characters, that was attempt to mimic Vanilla's game mechanics.

Yeah, Molten Front and all MOP claustrophobic isles weren't attempt to mimic TBC's Quel'Danas Isle. And Pathfinder wasn't attempt to mimic TBC's "grind 5k gold" thing, yeah.

Also in Cataclysm the sky in Stormwind has the same colour than in Vanilla, that's obviously iron-clad evidence they were aiming at aping Vanilla design philosophy !

*sigh*

[WowIsDead64]

Also in Cataclysm the sky in Stormwind has the same colour than in Vanilla, that's obviously iron-clad evidence they were aiming at aping Vanilla design philosophy !

*sigh*

I understand, that it's not super obvious. But weak classes, no mana after 2 casts, talent trees were cut to make them feel more Vanilla-ish, Hyjal, Twilight's Hammer, Ragnaros. Obviously not attempt to mimic Vanilla, yeah.

[Aucald]

This thread isn't about Cata in either Classic or Retail, it is about WoD - let's get the discussion back on track and drop the derailing tangent arguments.

[WowIsDead64]

This thread isn't about Cata in either Classic or Retail, it is about WoD - let's get the discussion back on track and drop the derailing tangent arguments.

See? You've killed all discussions. Problem is - any WOD's problems boil down to "I don't like it personally => it should be changed". I.e. 100% subjective argument. And we just can't discuss it without reviewing other xpacks. Cuz otherwise it would be unfair due to implying, that WOD was the worst xpack ever made. But it applies to any xpack. WOD was perfect for certain category of players: 1) Casual players, for whom 1hr of content/day was enough 2) Players, who wanted replayable content and weren't against leveling alts. There were xpacks, that were bad for this category of players. Like BFA, SL, DF. Almost all recent xpacks, that are mostly about overtuned, non-replayable, non-soloable and FOMO content. Question is - should xpacks be changed, if some players don't like them personally? If all xpacks exist in unchanged form to cater to certain categories players, who like them, then exactly the same should be applied to WOD. No? Don't like it - don't play it. There is category of players, that has misconception, that Wow should be designed personally for them. They treat WOD as "absolutely bad" xpack. There are no absolutely bad xpacks. There are xpacks, that cater to different categories of players. If no-flying disaster wouldn't happen and WOD would have 1-2 more patches - it would be the best xpack ever made for casual playerbase. May be something on a par with WotLK, that had stable 12.5M subs for reason. Because it had more accessible and casual-friendly content vs 2 previous xpacks.

[Aucald]

See? You've killed all discussions.

Any thread can continue endlessly when it's just a rambling argument about anything and everything. But if a thread can't stay on topic, and no one wants to discuss the actual subject at hand, then it should naturally decay and get archived as a matter of course. And no, I don't think every single expansion under the sun needs to be discussed for people to determine whether or not WoD needs changes or should be 100% replicated as per its original incarnation in Retail.

[WowIsDead64]

And no, I don't think every single expansion under the sun needs to be discussed for people to determine whether or not WoD needs changes or should be 100% replicated as per its original incarnation in Retail.

This implies, that there should be some sort of standard to be met in order for xpack to be called "good". Right? Like xpack should have 10 dungeons and 4 raids to be good. Something like that. But who sets this standard?

[Aucald]

This implies, that there should be some sort of standard to be met in order for xpack to be called "good". Right? Like xpack should have 10 dungeons and 4 raids to be good. Something like that. But who sets this standard?

Not sure how you arrived at that implication, considering what I said was a distinct binary about whether people feel WoD needed to be changed or needed to remain identical to its previous incarnation. I don't have an opinion either way, to be honest, although based on precedent, I'd argue most Classic offerings lean more toward loyalty to the original release, with only a few tweaks or bugfixes applied - meaning Classic WoD probably won't release with broken Garrisons or significant lag through Frostfire Ridge or Shadowmoon Valley.

To my knowledge they've never added dungeons or raids to Classic offerings outside of SoD, which is sort of its own distinct flavor of WoW similar to Plunderstorm or Remix.

[WowIsDead64]

Not sure how you arrived at that implication

Well, usually when one says that something is good or bad, he has to compare it with something. If you say, that we don't need to compare it with anything, then there should be some sort of standard. This thread could be about subjective opinions, yeah, and we wouldn't need any standards in this case, but it should have different name then.

[Aucald]

Well, usually when one says that something is good or bad, he has to compare it with something. If you say, that we don't need to compare it with anything, then there should be some sort of standard. This thread could be about subjective opinions, yeah, and we wouldn't need any standards in this case, but it should have different name then.

Which would make sense if I said anything about anything being either good or bad. But since I didn't, it doesn't really apply. Also, making comparisons doesn't mean the entire conversation needs to shift to discuss the thing being compared - I'm pretty sure these are basic conversation tenets you're aware of. Staying on topic means that the comparisons are relevant to the topic at hand, but when you transition to entirely debating the merits or flaws of the thing being compared, you've officially gone off-topic.

[WowIsDead64]

Which would make sense if I said anything about anything being either good or bad. But since I didn't, it doesn't really apply. Also, making comparisons doesn't mean the entire conversation needs to shift to discuss the thing being compared - I'm pretty sure these are basic conversation tenets you're aware of. Staying on topic means that the comparisons are relevant to the topic at hand, but when you transition to entirely debating the merits or flaws of the thing being compared, you've officially gone off-topic.

You didn't, because you weren't in discussion. But you said it about other players. Dunno how about you, but I've got used to "subjective opinion without explanation = non-constructuve". Saying something like "It's bad - let's remove it" is just wrong. Same for WOD. Saying "WOD is just bad" - is wrong. Did WOD lack content? Yeah. Did WOD lack content specifically for players, who played one character only and preferred "infinite" grinds? Sure. Did Blizzard have that "one character only" obsession back then? Have Blizzard admitted existence of alts just recently - more specifically in current xpack? Yes. But was WOD so bad? No. It was good for it's niche. May be it just shouldn't have lasted for 2 years (cuz may be it was failed attempt to switch to yearly releases) and shouldn't have had that "removal of flying" bluff to force players to complete 100% of that small content it had.

P.S. Please note, that it's usually not me, who starts to derail threads. It's other people, who trick me into drifting offtopic via something like "this clown saying nonsense again" and "you have to prove it" instead of just treating what I say as my personal opinion. I just answer them. And you should clearly understand, that it's provoker, who should be treated as troll and banned, not people, he tricked into forum rules violation. And even more. Whole thread can be bait right from the beginning. What do you expect, if you don't close such threads immediately?

[owbu]

Yeah, that's not gonna happen.
Classic exists because it's cheap to make compared to it's popularity.

Vanilla is really really popular, so it gets a bit of extra dev love.

But that's not true for the rest of them and definitely not for WoD. Fixing that is waaaaay out of budget for a classic expansion.

They are just going to give you the relatively decent leveling experience and a fast raid release schedule, fix some bugs and then remind everyone that legion is right around the corner. Just like they did with Cata and MoP.

[Aucald]

You didn't, because you weren't in discussion. But you said it about other players.

I don't recall saying anything about other players, either.

Saying something like "It's bad - let's remove it" is just wrong. Same for WOD. Saying "WOD is just bad" - is wrong. Did WOD lack content? Yeah. Did WOD lack content specifically for players, who played one character only and preferred "infinite" grinds? Sure. Did Blizzard have that "one character only" obsession back then? Have Blizzard admitted existence of alts just recently - more specifically in current xpack? Yes. But was WOD so bad? No. It was good for it's niche. May be it just shouldn't have lasted for 2 years (cuz may be it was failed attempt to switch to yearly releases) and shouldn't have had that "removal of flying" bluff to force players to complete 100% of that small content it had.

"Bad" in and of itself is neither objectively nor narrowly defined, either. There are some aspects of "bad" qualities I would most certainly be receptive to removing from the experience, such as the aforementioned horrendous lag or technical problems that plagued Garrisons and the starting zones of WoD in its earlier days when it was originally released. I wouldn't remove something that defines the overall character of the expansion, nor would I want to alter its general tenor, theme, or gameplay experience. As for the subjective opinion as to whether WoD was good or bad, that's entirely subjective, and in my view, somewhat immaterial to the question posed by the OP. I don't think the Classic experience is meant to iterate on the game in the manner the OP seems to espouse, but rather to replicate as closely as possible the original experiences of the expansions when they were active in Retail.

Would it be good or bad to deviate from that? Who knows, really, and I'm sure people have many different opinions on that matter. Will it ultimately happen? Probably not. That's part and parcel of why I didn't jump into the original discussion, since I see the OP's proposition as essentially dead in the water.

[Just Passing through]

I think the state in what patches are released in retail atm (buggy Nightfall, buggy Children week etc) shows that Blizzard totally can do whatever they want.

In reality, I don't think any Classic x-pac was ever released the way it was originally. So OP should be safe.

The only thing that interests me is if WoD Classic will have anyone playing it - according to this forum (and I guess the sub drop) it was the worst ever

[Hellfury]

I think the state in what patches are released in retail atm (buggy Nightfall, buggy Children week etc) shows that Blizzard totally can do whatever they want.

In reality, I don't think any Classic x-pac was ever released the way it was originally. So OP should be safe.

The only thing that interests me is if WoD Classic will have anyone playing it - according to this forum (and I guess the sub drop) it was the worst ever

I think so Ashenvale and the Raids where fun, and now for the hc wow fan you can just raidlog and play other flavours of wow

[Just Passing through]

I think so Ashenvale and the Raids where fun, and now for the hc wow fan you can just raidlog and play other flavours of wow

Just giving my impression of the last 17 years on this forum (I joined on another account in 2008) - as a 10 year member, I guess you noticed your fair share of critque of WoW and especially WoD.

That said..yeah...I always found something in every x-pac to keep me going and kinda even was ok with Garrisons and the various upgrades (like being able to get special mounts from the stables etc).

I just played every x-pac to death, so not really interested in any Classic version of the game. Though I did create a warlock to relive the time back in 2005...and quit at lv 5

[WowIsDead64]

"Bad" in and of itself is neither objectively nor narrowly defined, either. There are some aspects of "bad" qualities I would most certainly be receptive to removing from the experience, such as the aforementioned horrendous lag or technical problems that plagued Garrisons and the starting zones of WoD in its earlier days when it was originally released. I wouldn't remove something that defines the overall character of the expansion, nor would I want to alter its general tenor, theme, or gameplay experience. As for the subjective opinion as to whether WoD was good or bad, that's entirely subjective, and in my view, somewhat immaterial to the question posed by the OP. I don't think the Classic experience is meant to iterate on the game in the manner the OP seems to espouse, but rather to replicate as closely as possible the original experiences of the expansions when they were active in Retail.

Would it be good or bad to deviate from that? Who knows, really, and I'm sure people have many different opinions on that matter. Will it ultimately happen? Probably not. That's part and parcel of why I didn't jump into the original discussion, since I see the OP's proposition as essentially dead in the water.

Dunno. I wouldn't treat lags and technical issues as reason to call xpack bad. Because all xpacks have had them in some shape or form. For example my personal experience - MOP was first xpack in Wow's history, that suffered from overcrowding problem. I hadn't notice it prior to that. And overall I was solving this problem via starting to play a little bit later, not in main stream of players, and picking less overcrowded server. Of course it worked only till CRZ was implemented. Thx to Blizzard for implementing unavoidable overcrowding and lags. You should remember, that I posted thread about lags in Ardenweald mid SL. Yeah. May be some servers have better hardware than others, so this problem doesn't affect all players, but I'm affected by it almost always.

[arandomuser]

i think main classic will be a permanent progression server and the innversary might lock in at wotlk or somethin since they have the anniversary realm they can keep going

[casecase89]

You cannot release the expansion exactly as it was, thematic WoD was impressive and unique, but the product was simply not in good state.

You MUST fix loneliness in Garrison.
You MUST fix poor gameplay in Garrison.
You MUST fix end-game for non-raiders.

That's the bareminimum for WoD classic.

And highly, highly recommend: ... add the cut content, or add fresh new content fitting for WoD/IronHorde/FelHorde.

They probably aren't going to touch anything if I am to be honest. Blizzard has had many opportunities to add things, correct things, rebalance things, etc, and they haven't. I know WoD is a total turd of an expansion, but there may be some kind of saving grace? You will probably have protocols still, so they will give the casuals something to spam and honestly there is a whole portion of the community that does just that. If they made the raid tiers shorter, like how they are now in classic, it might not be that that bad, but its still going to be WoD. It only had raiding and stuff to do in your garrison. It would be cool to see them add the cut stuff from the expac, but i think that is too tall of a glass for blizzard to fill.

[Grinning Serpent]

i think main classic will be a permanent progression server and the innversary might lock in at wotlk or somethin since they have the anniversary realm they can keep going

My bet is that we'll soon have three separate WoW "lines" - retail, classic, and anniversary. If TBC-A proves successful (and it will be), they'll surely test the waters with a WotLK-A (which will also be in demand), and once they do that, why not see if people might want some Cata-A? After all, that'll be a good three or four years from now - we got a little under 2 years (9/2022 to 4/2024) from Wrath-C, it'll be about 1.5 years for Cata-C (4/2024 to 8/2025), so we can probably expect the classic line to be in the middle of Legion and probably with BfA on the horizon (assuming that WoD will be in the 10-14 month range and will not have added or expanded any cut content) so people might be wanting to go fight Deathwing again.

I think it's whether or not Cata-A gets a positive reception that will be the determining factor. As long as it's profitable to keep doing this, they will keep doing it. And who can blame them? It's kind of crappy to try to get into retail where you feel like you've missed the past ten years of stuff. Having a constant set of new WoW "lines" on progression allows people to hop onboard at times and places where they missed it last time around so they can experience the "real thing."

I also think they'll be splitting off era realms for each expansion popular enough to get a spin-up on the Anniversary line. They missed their chance with TBC-C so I doubt they'll miss that chance with TBC-A. With megaservers being tried and tested, it's probably not that costly to have a single PvP and PvE era megaserver for each global region and call it good.

[Shadowferal]

That said..yeah...I always found something in every x-pac to keep me going and kinda even was ok with Garrisons and the various upgrades (like being able to get special mounts from the stables etc).

What kept me going in WoD was the artistry..the zones were a treat to travel through.
But inevitably it came back to the story. And that's what killed the game for me.