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What makes Classic WoW an authentic Vanilla experience

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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 (8) 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! ::)

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