Blizzard announced "Classic" World of Warcraft

[Makabb]

I think that new expansions throw life into this rotten and twisted game, so I wonder how the new Vanilla will turn out after a 2 years of existing.

Blizzard said the 1.12 is the 'foundation'. It means either they will be rolling expansions again, or creating 'new' content based on vanilla mechanics and not going the 'expansion' route.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

I think that new expansions throw life into this rotten and twisted game, so I wonder how the new Vanilla will turn out after a 2 years of existing.

Blizzard said the 1.12 is the 'foundation'. It means either they will be rolling expansions again, or creating 'new' content based on vanilla mechanics and not going the 'expansion' route.

Considering they have 4 people on vanilla staff, it's unlikely they'll make any new content.

 

[J1M]

They would not need a large team to create remixed content. They have a dozen years of art and sound assets to pull from.

Most importantly, the current dungeon creation process is hyper bloated with too many people giving input on everything and a weird focus on "storytelling" instead of a cool adventure/exploration/challenge.

 

[Roygbiv]

This is so weird. I played original Vanilla, TBC, Wrath, Cata, MoP, Wod and Legion and my impression is that WoW is overall a spawn of Satan, a monster that killed Warcraft and devoured it corpse.
Vanilla was cool, because it enabled to experience Warcraft world from the whole new perspective. I think Silthid/Silithus/Ahn Qiraj was the beginning of the crap, it felt strange and I believe it's the first major thing that was disconnected from original Warcraft lore.

When I heard about Nostarlius server, I jumped in to see how it will be cool to come back to Vanilla, and it was fun to experience old world and it's dungeons, raids and quests.
Well, it was a fun for a while, then it became stale and boring, because of no new content.

I think that new expansions throw life into this rotten and twisted game, so I wonder how the new Vanilla will turn out after a 2 years of existing.

What are the actual chances of a WC4? I have a hard time getting into true 3d strategy games.

 

[Xor]

I think that new expansions throw life into this rotten and twisted game, so I wonder how the new Vanilla will turn out after a 2 years of existing.

That's the problem. If they don't do something like progressive content updates into the expansions, people will get bored with it pretty quickly. And they're sure as shit not going to develop new content for vanilla. At this point the only thing I trust blizzard to do is find a way to fuck up a good idea so my hopes aren't high.

I'll still probably play classic for a few months just for the nostalgia.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

The good thing about vanilla is that this is before the time they decided to make Subtlety Rogues into some gay shadow ninja.

Cutthroats and brigands > ninjas.

 

[Cyberarmy]

At least you're not an overgrown chicken ...

 

[Makabb]

I think that new expansions throw life into this rotten and twisted game, so I wonder how the new Vanilla will turn out after a 2 years of existing.

And they're sure as shit not going to develop new content for vanilla.

If we would be living in a perfect world

 

[Parabalus]

The good thing about vanilla is that this is before the time they decided to make Subtlety Rogues into some gay shadow ninja.

Cutthroats and brigands > ninjas.

Premeditation with that sweet 1 sec cast time (or was it 0.5 or 2?) for 2 CP .

 

[J1M]

One of the consequences of using the modern client that people don't understand is that they have already removed the ability to use the original's character animations. If you opt to use the original models, you get the new pixar-inspired bouncy animations with the old textures.

The client decision is going to lead to a lot of small differences that will likely add up to killing the nostalgia factor.

Jim, nobody said anything about a new client. They said new backend, not frontend. They're only updating the file formats, character databases, etc.

One of the features they want is integration with recent bnet features and better support for modern video cards. The client is absolutely changing. Call me pessimistic that they would re-implement those things given their approach with the back-end.

1) I was right. I like being right.
2) Someone at Blizzard realized how poorly this will be received and decided to hire someone to fix things, at least superficially. (Previous communication was that the team was fully-staffed.)

Check out this new job posting:
https://careers.blizzard.com/en-us/openings/oYEO7fwh

Responsibilities

• Restore old models and animations
• Re-implement old shader behavior
• Transform database data
• Build classic UI elements

They are going to try and use the same client for classic and modern servers. This was obvious to those of us who understand the software side of game development, but now you don't have to believe me. It's right there in the job description.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

2) Someone at Blizzard realized how poorly this will be received

It was a trivially obvious idea that if they opted to use the new engine, old data and assets would have to be ported. You make it sound like it's a bullet barely dodged because one guy at blizzard had an accidental epiphany.

 

[J1M]

2) Someone at Blizzard realized how poorly this will be received

It was a trivially obvious idea that if they opted to use the new engine, old data and assets would have to be ported. You make it sound like it's a bullet barely dodged because one guy at blizzard had an accidental epiphany.

If it was so obvious, why did you think they were going to use the old client?

My point is not that one guy had an accidental epiphany, but rather that internally the initial position was that WoW classic using the new models and animations was a desirable 'improvement'.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

If it was so obvious, why did you think they were going to use the old client?

Ok, let me repeat. What was obvious is that IF they opted to use the new engine, old data and assets would have to be ported.

internally the initial position was that WoW classic using the new models and animations was a desirable 'improvement'.

[citation needed]

I think the exact opposite - everyone, including Blizzard always understood that vanilla is not just data, but also assets that evoke nostalgia.

 

[J1M]

If it was so obvious, why did you think they were going to use the old client?

Ok, let me repeat. What was obvious is that IF they opted to use the new engine, old data and assets would have to be ported.

internally the initial position was that WoW classic using the new models and animations was a desirable 'improvement'.

[citation needed]

I think the exact opposite - everyone, including Blizzard always understood that vanilla is not just data, but also assets that evoke nostalgia.

Friendly reminder: the company line until less than a year ago regarding vanilla was "you think you do, but you don't."

 

[Aildrik]

If it was so obvious, why did you think they were going to use the old client?
My point is not that one guy had an accidental epiphany, but rather that internally the initial position was that WoW classic using the new models and animations was a desirable 'improvement'.

Thankfully, they came to their senses. Classic is just that; classic. If they do some bastardization of new elements and Vanilla the entire effort will blow up in their faces.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Actually no, grouping in whatever circumstances isn't faster or, like Parabalus said, entire guilds would just do that instead. Since you are 5 people in the same group, nobody would be behind, so that point is moot. Grinding mobs in dungeons with a group is NOT efficient, you get laughably little xp that way.

People still worry about XP gain in 2018?

The actual grind starts at 60. Getting from 1 to 60 is a piece of cake regardless of what you do. In fact, leveling was too fast even in Vanilla.

 

[Parabalus]

Actually no, grouping in whatever circumstances isn't faster or, like Parabalus said, entire guilds would just do that instead. Since you are 5 people in the same group, nobody would be behind, so that point is moot. Grinding mobs in dungeons with a group is NOT efficient, you get laughably little xp that way.

People still worry about XP gain in 2018?

The actual grind starts at 60. Getting from 1 to 60 is a piece of cake regardless of what you do. In fact, leveling was too fast even in Vanilla.

It took like 10-15 days /played to get to 60 normally, that's a few months for regular players. Can't remember anyone complaining about leveling too fast honestly.

 

[Lacrymas]

If you play your cards right, there is no need to grind a single thing at level 60. Well, it depends on what you want, doing the AQ chain is a wrist-slitting grind I don't recommend to anyone, but things like enchants, consumables, the mounts don't require any grind whatsoever. The leveling speed while soloing is fine, it doesn't take tooooo long, like EQ, nor is it trivially fast, and you have time to get attached to your character and find people to play with. The problem with grouping and xp is that you will literally run out of quests if you group all the time and you'll have to grind to 60.

 

[Parabalus]

If you play your cards right, there is no need to grind a single thing at level 60. Well, it depends on what you want, doing the AQ chain is a wrist-slitting grind I don't recommend to anyone, but things like enchants, consumables, the mounts don't require any grind whatsoever. The leveling speed while soloing is fine, it doesn't take tooooo long, like EQ, nor is it trivially fast, and you have time to get attached to your character and find people to play with. The problem with grouping and xp is that you will literally run out of quests if you group all the time and you'll have to grind to 60.

Some stuff was really expansive though, like mounts being 1k, crusader 1k, every respec 50g. Can't remember how much pots were, then you also had to farm some consumables yourself like the felwood flowers, the blasted lands animal parts, some ?juju firewater?.

Then you also had reputations, to get that Earthstrike trinket you had to live with the Silithus cultists for a while etc.

Not sure how you avoided all those grinds, did you play the AH for money?

 

[Lacrymas]

If you don't grind, you don't have to respec unless you are a mage. I almost never ran out of Felwood flower juice because you could spam click someone else's cleansed flower the moment they cleansed it and get the buff. It also took like 5 minutes to grind the necessary souls if you didn't have any juice, and you weren't an enchanter, so that's not really a problem. I never grinded the animal parts, we were the best guild on Kronos and almost nobody did that, it's a waste of time. You can buy firewater and juju from the AH, and I was a healer, so that wasn't relevant to me. The only reputation I had to max was Cenarion Hold to get the healing mace from AQ20, but I mostly AFK'd that by being in a raid group and someone else grinding for me.

Yeah, I did play the AH. I ended up with 10k gold while having enough materials and consumables to last the entire vanilla and beyond. You can have even more gold if you catch the flask market early enough, but I started playing a bit late for that. There was a guy in our first guild who used guildies to carry mats for a ridiculous amount of flasks to Scholo for him, but that was before I started playing. The AH did stagnate a lot at the end, though, around the second week after the opening of AQ, and I was barely making any money. Money is surprisingly worthless in vanilla and the economy terrible and limited.

 

[Parabalus]

If you don't grind, you don't have to respec unless you are a mage. I almost never ran out of Felwood flower juice because you could spam click someone else's cleansed flower the moment they cleansed it and get the buff. It also took like 5 minutes to grind the necessary souls if you didn't have any juice, and you weren't an enchanter, so that's not really a problem. I never grinded the animal parts, we were the best guild on Kronos and almost nobody did that, it's a waste of time. You can buy firewater and juju from the AH, and I was a healer, so that wasn't relevant to me. The only reputation I had to max was Cenarion Hold to get the healing mace from AQ20, but I mostly AFK'd that by being in a raid group and someone else grinding for me.

Yeah, I did play the AH. I ended up with 10k gold while having enough materials and consumables to last the entire vanilla and beyond. You can have even more gold if you catch the flask market early enough, but I started playing a bit late for that. There was a guy in our first guild who used guildies to carry mats for a ridiculous amount of flasks to Scholo for him, but that was before I started playing. The AH did stagnate a lot at the end, though, around the second week after the opening of AQ, and I was barely making any money. Money is surprisingly worthless in vanilla and the economy terrible and limited.

Well I played rogue, I had to respec before every raid from my PvP spec, so that added up. I guess healers could run the same in both cases so that's a lot of money saved.

Is Kronos a private server or a realm name? Can't recall anyone named Kronos in the lore, guessing it's the former. I wouldn't be surprised if everything was more efficient on them, stuff being figured out.

 

[Lacrymas]

Private server. I only PvP'd to get the healing off-hand from AV and did it in my normal spec, PvP is shockingly pointless in vanilla, unless you are a Warrior and can get to HW/GM for the PvE DPS boost from the great gear, so I didn't do that either.

 

[Parabalus]

Private server. I only PvP'd to get the healing off-hand from AV and did it in my normal spec, PvP is shockingly pointless in vanilla, unless you are a Warrior and can get to HW/GM for the PvE DPS boost from the great gear, so I didn't do that either.

Ah, that might be the difference . Skill level and knowledge on private servers is likely much higher than on release (majority of people then didn't use key bindings...), translates to better economy.

It was much more fun than PvE for me, didn't really need another reason.

The HW titles were pretty hardcore though, you needed to run 12+ hours of BGs in a team daily to get the honor. I think all but one HW on my server were on unemployment benefits, and I was on a random PvE one.

 

[Lacrymas]

Well, I wouldn't say it translates to a better economy, quite the contrary. People stopped using the AH when AQ came out and the server was mostly a ghost town before raiding times. The economy was best around the time BWL came out and was going strong a month or so after ZG came out, but it started declining after that and there weren't any mats on the AH at all. The Blizz original servers didn't really have this problem, as new people were constantly coming and wanted stuff from the AH, private servers fail to attract a significant amount of new players after a certain point, while the old people have already grinded their consumables and shit. The record for most gold in the original vanilla was 100,000+ gold, while I only managed to get to 10k. The guy with the most gold on Kronos (the flask guy) had like 40k gold while also having the legendary mace.

This is what people should expect on the official Classic servers, though. Metaknowledge allows you to better exploit your fellow man on the AH of course, but it won't help you when nobody is buying anything and nobody is farming.

 

[gruntar]

I hope private servers tryhards will pick some servers and roll on them together, that way normal people could avoid them.