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[Uggsten]

I've been browsing a lot of forums lately, and they're all littered with opinions on what Blizzard should and should not implement with Classic WoW. The subjects varies from:
-Version of Vanilla
-Quality of life
-class balance

It's an interesting thought experiment, but most of the topics quickly derail into flame-wars between the "purists" and everyone else.

Would be interesting to see your thoughts on this topic and also get an active discussion going on these forums. I'll kick it off with my own thoughts on the various subjects.

Versions of Vanilla:
Vanilla lasted for ~2 years and had 12 major patches. Big changes were debuff limit increase from 8 to 16 in 1,7, content release and class balancing. For instance pretty much all warriors at the start of vanilla went mostly arms, since fury/prot was shit.

-Obviously content should be released at an appropiate time, and not all at launch.
I think they should follow the original release pattern, but they could possibly add BG's a bit earlier than original vanilla (say 2-3 months after release).
-My biggest concern is server population. Big part of what made vanilla so great is that you knew and recognised a lot of people on your server, when walking in the capital city, joining dungeon runs or meeting a rival in a BG or in the world. Because of this I think the server cap should be somewhere between 3,5-5k (in vanilla it was 2,5k per server).   Nostalrius-esque population damages server community (and makes it harder to farm essential stuff, so inflates economy).

-It is probably easiest to launch with the 1.12 talents, but then they should tweak the raids. MC with 1.12 talents was easier than MC with 1.1 talents. I am a bit on the fence about debuff limits. Low limit ( means you need to think about what classes to bring, while increased debuff limit makes more classes/items viable. So long as they tweak difficulty accordingly I can go either way on this issue.

Quality of life:
For me the line basically goes: Anything that makes the game easier or reduce the need for social interactions is a big no-no. Other than that I don't really care.
-So any variation of LFR/LFG/LFD is a game-breaker.
-Increasing bag space or making bank items usable anywhere would also negatively impact the game experience. Managing your bags should in my opinion be important.
-Guild banks: I don't really care either way, but having to rely on one person with access to everything could be tedious.
-Pet/mount tabs: It does not affect gameplay and actually incentives people to do content, so I think it should be implemented. Similarly if they add the pet shop, that means more money for Blizz = more maintenance of the server. I don't think they should add mount-shop though, since mounts are a big part of the game, and this de-incentives doing content.

Class balance:
This is probably the most heated discussion, with the purists proper raging at the suggestion of any changes. However they often fail to realise that most all classes changed a lot during vanilla and with class balance in mind.
-I think "some" class balance could be fine, but the danger here is unintended consequences regarding PvP, dungeon and solo experience. I am not however advocating "DPS equality". If rogues/feral does equal dps, why would you ever bring a rogue with the exception of niche stuff like BWL suppression room?
However if hybrid dps + spec specific buff warrants bringing one, then that's totally fine imo.


TLDR; What changes would you like to see implemented with Classic WoW, and which changes would make you not play Classic?

[Eyedie]

Very interesting points Uggen, and I do believe that we need to reinvigorate these forums a bit more with posts like this.

The WoW forums although have come up with some good ideas, anything past page 2 is a waste of time and usually has someone from the Private server community and retail community throwing abuse at each other.

I think there is many interesting points to take from this but i'll go with a similar format to what you have already provided to keep it simple and encourage an ongoing debate.

1) Verison of Vanilla:
It's definitely an interesting point to make, most people see 1.12.1 as the "pure" patch, the perfect patch. I think there are some minor problems with it but that's besides the point. - personally I would want to see the game launched in the condition of 1.12.1 but then possibly Blizzard might even decide to release a 1.12.2 or 1.12.3, this would include VERY minor changes, maybe making boss encounters more difficult to then make them back to normal for people to progress through them.

2) I also think that World Buffs should be suspended for 1month after release of new content, after 1month World Buffs should be available to all for those that need the support with getting through the content, or for farming purposes. I know this ain't vanilla-like. But I enjoy the idea of not trivialising content because we can keep 40 people live through trash. It just creates a more toxic environment for certain members of the raid if they make a mistake. Looking primarily at the incidient that happened to Fenja when we decided for him to Main Tank and we ended up wiping. I don't think it as 100% his fault. But it hit his confidence hard because everyone lost their world buffs.
Personally I would rather they just removed World Buffs - specially as Horde side fucking suck at getting them compared to Alliance due to travel time. (having to set Hearthstones at Badlands etc). But that's a debate that I want to hear other people's opinions on.

3) - I do agree that all content should be released with the mind of the normal vanilla timeline, if all content is available at start, count me out.
- BGs don't bother me, release them at the start or 2months later i'm not bothered. But I think that leveling for people in their 50s will be painful within those 2months, specially when the rankers want the honor.
- Which leads to me my other point. I want to see progressive PvP gear, I'd personally not be bothered if they changed the stats on them to make them non-blizzlike. But R14 PvP weapons and certain gear pieces are too powerful in their naxx condition, but at the sametime the pre-nerf state is absolutely shite. I'd love to see a potential improvement to PvP gear as content gets released for example..... The R14 sword will have 3 more dps then the highest dps 1h in current content, so in MC = Peredition Blade / Viskag ... BWL = CTB or Crul ... AQ is etc ... So that R14 is a reward for people, but it ain't doing 1k dps in only Molten Core gear stupid numbers.

4)Debuff limit should be 8 until Zul'Gurub comes out that is when it becomes 16 I believe? Makes BWL and Molten Core a challenge until the change!
Server population... this should just be standard server size, and I don't see why it should be ANY different? they have the potential and capacity to make it so.

Quality of Life:
5)Agreed,
Agreed
Agreed
Guild Banks is a good change in my opinion, but I think only the Guild Master should be able to use it - even including donations etc. Good luck Squibbi keeping up with 50g donations if you randomly put in items etc for that DKP.
Pets i'm happy with that, mounts are a definite no, so agreed.
What other forms of money inclusion would you like to see though? Maybe to avoid a sub payment? - This could be server movement? Name change? Personally I hate the idea of all these as they ruin the fundamentals of server reputation, but i'd like to see other opinions!

Class Balance:
6)Oh yes this is fun to read ... LETS GIVE A PALADIN TAUNT - MAKE SHAMANS TANKS AGAIN - I WANT TO GO DISC PRIEST - ARCANE MAGE .... it's all fucking shite. That's me putting it nicely.
I think dps numbers in terms of rankings are fine, Rogues top - warriors also top with threat issues - warlocks high in AQ - mages good etc ... But i've got nothing against maybe possible VERY MINOR changes to spells.

7)Maybe make Starfire cost 10 less mana or give them 100% pushback resistance? Does that make them viable? Probably not, but I think you have to think about what makes the game feel plain. Is it wrong to have a few minor changes or testings throughout content? TBC they have the information to include every patch, vanilla they don't. We can't and personally don't want to go back to 1.7 spells etc. Hence my idea of a 1.12.3 etc. I just don't want to start seeing 8 shadow priests in my raid cause their dps went flying up and they have zero threat issues. Keep the fundamental issues with every role. But nothing wrong with the slightest bit of tweaking. Thoughts?

Most people also forget that many classes are good at certain things in certain specs (like beast mastery for leveling or Maraudon farming) Many people don't notice this.

I've gone through a lot, so I've numbered certain points that might be worth debating. My biggest stance on vanilla WoW is that, DO NOT trivialise the leveling. I don't want it to take 2 days played to get a level 60 warrior. DO NOT include spells that don't exist, like paladin taunt or Shaman Thunderstorm etc. DO NOT break the raid structure to become 5 of every class and most of all DO NOT break that which makes classes unique (similar to spells I guess).

[Uggsten]

@Eyedie, I totally agree about the world buffs, since having to log on 1-1.5 hours before raid just to get DM buffs can be a hassle. It might even be a good idea to have them not be removed on death (assuming they are not available for current content).

One issue with releasing BGs from the start is that it kills of the world pvp that we all remember, but also the gear from those reputations can to make the pre-bis gearing easier. On that note I also hope they remove the black lotus spawn from AV, and instead have the world spawns on a more dynamic re-spawn timer.

I'm not sure I 100% understood your stance on server population though. Do you want massive servers with population equal to what their current systems can handle?

I do think it should be subscription based (similar to retail) and you should not be able to faction/server change. I'm indifferent to race change within the same faction. Instead of possibility for server change they should just merge servers if/when they become too small.

And finally, to better get my class balance idea across;
I do not want hybrids to outdps rogues/mages/warlocks, and I do not want them adding game-breaking new abilities. However I wouldn't mind hybrids getting a slight dmg increase or tuning the spec specific buffs.

Using hunters as an example:
They do not top dps (nor should they imo)
However their DPS together with the buff (Trueshot aura) makes it worthwhile over yet another rogue.
They are also needed for other niche areas like kiting mobs/tranq shot, running into C'thun room first etc.

Boomkins could be worth it with the spell crit aura, but sadly even then their dps is not really cutting it.
Feral druids on the other hand (assuming it's Wort playing) are worth it, and that crit buff to the melee party is awesome.

[Eyedie]

Sorry no I mean they can support a massive amount of servers, rather than one big server. They should be 2.5k ish maybe 3k. I don't see why people want any  bigger.
I agree with the BG idea, I like it. I think 1month is a good deadline for that then. Not many rank at all within a month - you want pre-raid BiS preferably to one shot level 50s.

[Wortgewandt]

For all i care they can make a million million changes, i just want to finally raid with the guild again!

[Squibbi]

1) Patch 1.1 progressive to 1.12. Fuck the haters, time to level prot.
2) Same with actual content, especially items, ESP PVP gear. Should be correct relative to when it was itemised.
3) Strip all buffs upon Raid zone.
4) Guild bank would be godlike, everything else can fuck right off.
5) Go crazy with bought tabards, horsies, pets etc as long as its not new 'MEGA GLITTERPONY WITH WINGS' style crap.
6) 16 debuffs from the start is actually pretty elegant so im fine with that.
7) No fixing of DM/LBRS/ARENA etc farms.
2500 server hard cap.
9) Redo all Bosses with no innate Resistances to have standard Resistances.
10) Namechanges are actually a dealbreaker for me and started the current collapse into toxic wow community imo.

[Drdoomblunt]

Versions of Vanilla:
I very much like the way the classic vanilla survey outlined it.

Day 1 maraudon is fine since it was patched in 1.2, before most people had even really hit 60/raided.

Post release Dire Maul, Kazzak and Azuregos since this affects the end-game pre-raid BiS and 1.3 was launched 5 months after release version, which bare in mind was 1.1 not 1.0.

Gurubashi event on release is also fine, this is a world-pvp flavour event with no dramatic shake-up to those chasing r14/r15.

WSG, AB and AV on release would be fine, but I would also kind of like to see this delayed, just to see how natural wpvp develops, whether it will focus on the usual hillsbrad, STV and plaguelands zones or not. AB should always be bundled with WSG release I think, because if you delay AV like Nost, farming just WSG for a few months is hell on earth.

Raid releases should follow the tier progression, though I'm unsure where you want to put ZG into the schedule (AQ20 obviously has to launch with AQ40 despite it's weird tier placement also.) Dungeon tiers should also be patched in appropriately, though I don't have the knowledge of them well enough to say when.

Darkmoon faire on release makes no difference to me, but the buffs should perhaps be disabled to combat some of the cheese buffing guilds did (us included at one point in time I remember ) And on that note I agree that I don't want to see world buffs, perhaps until the next tier patch, i.e. no Ony buffs for MC until BWL is released, and disabled in BWL until AQ is released. It works as a "buff" for the most current content and a "nerf" for previous tiers to make alt raiding and new guilds a bit smoother, though someone is bound to shout "casual" about this.

Dragons of Nightmare should be post release, though I don't know how well stated the gear compared to Kazzak and Azuregos. If it is comparable, they should be bundled and all world bosses dropped at once. If they're better, release them with the appropriate 40 man raid.

War Effort is a tough one, I don't know enough about it to comment on scaling it, but obviously it should be a prerequisite for AQ no matter what.

X-Realm BGs are fine in my opinion, dependant on if they use vanilla-like realm caps or not, and battlegroups for server clustering. I don't want to see arenas added though. Vanilla classes are not appropriately balanced for rated 2v2, 3v3 or 5v5.

I'd like to see dungeon player caps and talents set at 1.12 levels, with some gear like Strat at it's 1.12 equivalent, but I'm not so sure how to deal with the likes of PvP gear and such, that's probably for someone a lot more knowledgable than me to say.

Quality of life:
Integration of battle.net friends lists, this literally just cuts down adding every single one of your friends alts. No real impact on gameplay.

Open raid finder/dungeon finder, similar to the system on retail. By this I don't mean the LFR/LFD system, but the group listing feature where you can recruit for mythic dungeons, and normal and up raids. Really all this does is create a clean UI feature instead of having to use /world, some might argue it encourages players to do their recruiting outside of city /2, but people did it anyway on /LFG or /world, so I don't see the difference personally.

Pet/mounts tab is also fine. However I think it should only be a shortcut/extrapolation of your bag content. You should be penalised for carrying around all 5 of each factions mounts by losing 20 bag slots, and carrying round 100 pets should take 100 bag slots.

Class balance:

As above, keep it 1.12, perhaps tweak any exploits or bugs with classes that were well known in 1.12 (not mangOS specific or other such private server bugs). No one, even the most "hardcore" of player wants to roll a class only for a patch to make it nigh un-viable for several weeks. However, I don't want to see them change class balance from 1.12. The niches some classes fill such as shadow priest or feral druid are part of the charm and wonder of 40 man raiding, because the comp can be as important as your abilities as raiders. If blizzard choose to go down the 1.13 route of content, I would accept a degree of class balancing so long as you aren't looking to give every class everything like retail. Don't make retri a viable dps spec, or bear tanking possible for MT, etc. but are just further developing the class roles established in 1.12. As above, no giving shamans a dedicated tanking route in their trees, or putting warrior level taunts in pally/bear spellbooks.

Moving on from those, I'd actually like them to add custom vanilla patches/expansions, on the proviso that everything is voted for by the playerbase a-la 07runescape. I think only accounts with at least 1 level 60 should be able to vote on these changes and everything should be thorough internally tested, with no previews or fatboss exclusive or datamining so people can prepare strats way in advance. That's a real vanilla experience, going in blind with minimal guides available at first and learning how to deal with bosses or learning how to wait 2 weeks for actually competent people to clear it and tell you what to do. Things they planned for but cut, like emerald dream, caverns of time, Kara maybe, hyjal dragon isles, the STV islands, stuff like that to start with, then perhaps branching into the more outlandish ideas (no pun intended, also don't make vanilla hellfire peninsula please). I think that'd be cool to see blizzard design new content with a vanilla ethos, but that's just me. Also I don't want any post-60 leveling. If they want to patch in a new 30-40 zone or something I'd probably accept it, but otherwise, only post-naxx raids and new/harder 60 dungeons.

I think blizzard should also seriously consider how they deal with realms. I think they should maximums and minimums on servers, with regular mergers. I'm not really the best person to ask, but I'd say anywhere in the ball-park of 3-5 maximums and 0.75-1.5k minimums. If they expect people to pay for this products via sub or box fee, I think we should reasonably expect regular server mergers to ensure every server has a healthy playerbase, otherwise you fall into some of the actual retail pitfalls where dead servers get deader and big servers get bigger, dead servers don't open AQ until 2.4 sometimes, big servers mean no one can ever kill world bosses without copious alt camping.

[Uggsten]

I would much rather they release TBC server instead of creating new content post naxx tbh. Although it would be fun, it's also not something that's ever gonna happen, since this would ultimately force current retail people to play it in order to experience everything.

I they are gonna do cross-realm BGs I'd want it to be 2-3 realms max that gets merged together, since any more then that and you don't get that old community feel of intense hatred for that 1 player on the opposite faction on your server.

I am not really a huge fan of the retail LFG for mythic dungeons tho. It turns some of the social aspect into a drop down menu and you can just list for the dungeon you want to do and get whispered. From a pure QoL or efficiency PoV it's way better, but that's not what makes vanilla vanilla.

We all agree on the server cap tho, which is nice. and we're also capable of civil discussion, so we're atleast more mature than the wow forums. yay us!

[Jasuba]

Lovely thread, Ugg.

I personally want the game to start in it's first patch and progress how it was back in retail. I want to have mages spec into Arcane so their Arcane Explosion won't have a 2 second cast time. (-0.4 sec cast time per talent point if I recall correctly)

I want it blizz-like, which is why I got sad that pretty much every private server had the patch 1.12 talents.

That being said I'd love for them to remove some bugs prior to patch releases. WF infinite proc buffs, infinite pala stacking so they can solo kazzak, and all that shit. Heck, even get ruid of the fucking bug where you port to Alterac Mountain if you die inside the furbolg cave in Winterspring. I'll admit I had load of fun popping my cooldowns on people inside that cave when I was farming E'kos, but bugs such as those I could deal without.

PvP Wise I absolutely hate the notion of adding it early. Those 4-5 day crossroad raids with 100v100 was EPIC. Defending that shit for days on end, only to push them back to Ashenvale, and completely obliterated Astranaar was what made classic pvp so fantastic. That being said, I'd love to have AB released along with WSG.

Oh and remove the black lotus from AV. Honestly remove every gathering shit from BG's. As a pvper the worst thing you can see is cunts scratching their balls being semi afk fishing. And as far as the black lotus in AV goes, I feel it's pretty unfair especially considering how mages and palas for the most part have eternal dibs on it.


Personally I don't mind having a blizzard store where people can buy pets or tabards and shit. Ofcourse it's abit infuriating seeing some shithead 13 year old with every purchasable pet and mount,but with those shitters comes better servers in terms of stability etc.

The server cap would be great at 2500-3500 or something. I don't want anything to do with the crossrealm bullshit. That was the moment in Vanilla where I feel it lost its magic.

That is what made vanilla so great. You knew about people from your server, whether it was some asshole in your own faction that was arrogant, retarded or the real MVP, while on the enemy faction side you had people you hated. People encroaching on your farming spots. People camping you. The cunt rogues who didnt dare to 1v1 unless you had pulled a mob or two.

In one regard I want everything as vanilla-like as possible,but on the other side of things we've gotten to know Vanilla inside and out, which makes it very exploitable, whether it's mara farming, AV lotus hunting or trash farming in DM. There are a load of issues I'd love to have fixed, but at the same time I want it as vanilla as possible, which makes it a god damn paradox for me.

The one thing I could agree on, atleast for a trial run is the removal of world buffs on content release. Having all the min-maxing stuff is fun and all,but in reality it makes the raid 5 hours instead of 4, and it creates a really unforgiving environment(which I'd argue vanilla is already). Removing or fixing the world buffs could prevent moments when some people get alot of heat because of a fuck up. We're supposed to play to have fun, and yes losing all the buffs suck a fat dick,but you'll always find people who feel justified in their verbal assaults cause person X fucked up and made all of us lose our buffs.

And regarding what Doom said. I would personally not mind having maraudon on release. It made it so Desolace didn't feel so desolate (no pun intended), and it serves as a nice life-line for people struggling in that level 40-50 area of lvling. Only having ST to farm for items gets dull rather quick.

And as Squibbi said: name change is a dealbreaker. there are so many selfish and cunty assholes in any moba, and giving them the option to pay 10 euro for a namechange is a big nono, which brings me back to the x-realm view I had. Back in vanilla people knew each other for better or worse. What you said and did mattered to an extent. Giving people the option to change their name or faction even is practically a get out of jail free card. I also believe it makes it so you connect to your character. I personally would connect more with a character I named Jasuba instead of something as juvenile and retarded as Dicksledge.

And to all of you who did not play retail vanilla, who feel you know all the classes and shit. Would it not be fun to see vanilla how it's supposed to be? all the janky and bullshit talents each class had. 1.12 talents is basically classes on steroids. Take part in the angsty teenage years where you don't know what the fuck you're doing.

[Noisy/Chode]

1) Patch 1.1 progressive to 1.12. Fuck the haters, time to level prot.
2) Same with actual content, especially items, ESP PVP gear. Should be correct relative to when it was itemised.
3) Strip all buffs upon Raid zone.
4) Guild bank would be godlike, everything else can fuck right off.
5) Go crazy with bought tabards, horsies, pets etc as long as its not new 'MEGA GLITTERPONY WITH WINGS' style crap.
6) 16 debuffs from the start is actually pretty elegant so im fine with that.
7) No fixing of DM/LBRS/ARENA etc farms.
2500 server hard cap.
9) Redo all Bosses with no innate Resistances to have standard Resistances.
10) Namechanges are actually a dealbreaker for me and started the current collapse into toxic wow community imo.

This^ is perfect except for the mounts imho. If I see a nerd on a winterspring sabre, I want to know that this is a creature who excells in maintaining sweaty armpits in cold climates, and should not under any circumstance be challenged in snow.