World Of Warcraft Classic Raises A Lot Of Questions

I can't wait! I hate easy mode WoW of today and put this is my unsubscribe message 3 times when I tried to come back to the game. Last time being when they shut down Nost private server. I was like "well okay, I understand that you want to make money", and I bought the new expansion and paid for a month sub to give it an honest go. I played for about 20 hours over a couple weeks and then unsubbed. The game was okay but was simply too easy and has no customization anymore. I want to have choices, that is why I am playing an RPG. I have more choices playing League of Legends than the current WoW.

Wow fan: these expansions suck, the game was better before

Blizzard: we are making the version without expansions available

Wow fan: and there won't be any of the changes?

Blizzard: no

Wow fan: oh, yay. :(

*wow fan realizing he will never play that initial version seriously but still pretending that it's what he wants*

I give it one hour before players get bored of it and quit as nostalgia wears off.

Can't wait, I can see millions joining and it becoming quite a success. :) Perhaps even more successful than the modern day dumbed down version they have now. Talent trees are back, thank god. Actual character customization. Why on earth would you take that out of a RPG? lol

Imagine it's free to play, and at any point you can play to 60 all without paying, quest with friends. DO the early instances. And when you're ready you subscribe and your character can transfer to a paid server with all the expansions. Also, stop making me buy all the expansions I missed every time I come back to the game. I don't understand how they need all the money from the subs plus the expansion money. Like... I'm poor here.

Moooooooooooo.

This is a mocking from Blizzard to other rpgmmo games that are trying to take the market, but hey, we still have got that right since then!

Vanilla WoW is a mixed bag for me. I miss the community feel, the immersiveness (going to dungeon and bg entrances instead of Group Finder), and proper use of aggro, cc and focus fire in dungeons and raids. I do not miss low monster/quest drop spawns, poor gear and attribute optimization, near useless class specs (vanilla enhancement shaman), and being pigeonholed into one spec for raiding (vanilla resto shaman)

I can't believe people actually convinced Blizzard to do this. I just can't. Don't people care about progression anymore? For me, be locked in "bare-bones" vanilla would be a living hell. Nothing would change, and no way to progress to another level and area.

But hey, if people will pay to play on vanilla servers, I am all for that, you will be funding Blizzard so they can work on the "REAL" World of Warcraft that doesn't stay the same forever in one state.

The community have been saying for years that they wanted a vanilla WoW to play. They went to unofficial sources to experience it and put up with being razzed by the arrogant twats at Blizzard that told them "you don't want that"... Do you think maybe you can put away the speculative "do they really want it" nonsense? I know you have nothing else to say on the matter other than shit-talking fans since there's nothing else to report. So how about doing something more constructive than being a dickish journalist? Or is that all you can do with your power?

Personally, I'm wondering what sort of client is going to be used. A game's client can have as much an effect on players' perception of and reaction to a game as the gameplay and content themselves can. In this case using the first generation client will lead to a more "authentic" experience, but at the same time it's going to have various issues such as performance on/with modern hardware and APIs. On the other hand using a modern client would avoid many of the age-related issues but could leave to a cognitive disconnect of sorts for old-time players.

On the gripping hand, a modern client with an "old school" UI would probably be the best choice, but even there there will need to be changes made so that the "old school" UI can properly interface with a modern engine.

Another point to ponder is whether or not they should use the original or modern art assets. If they use a modern client engine then it would almost beg that they use the modern assets as well, at least where applicable, in order to make best use of the client's capabilities. At the same time this will negate some of the "authenticity" of the project even if all the core game mechanics make a comeback verbatim.

Hell, Blizzard's put out store-bought mounts and pets since the game launched. How will those be integrated into the "classic" environment? From what I've heard it could be a real pain in the ass to acquire "epic" mounts in Vanilla World of Warcraft which means that store-bought mounts will provide a significant advantage for early players.

Personally speaking, as much as I wouldn't mind playing through a "real, authentic Vanilla" experience, I feel that I would be much more inclined to stay if some of the more egregiously outdated aspects were updated. This doesn't mean that I feel that the dungeon/raid finder mechanics should be incorporated, as I don't, or that Hunters should be able to hot-swap pets as easily as they can in the current game. At the same time, however, having the expanded pet storage for Hunters that modern games have would be a useful addition, and increasing the durations of buffs, while *not* expanding on their scope/power, so that some of the old "buff bot" nightmare can be dissipated would be of great benefit to raiders.

@lookhowselfawareiam:
"Novelty and wonder were a big part of the experience, and those are gone."

This is honestly the biggest issue, and why I'm surprised that Blizzard is even wasting their time on vanilla servers in the first place. People don't want vanilla back. They want to be awestruck newbies again. It's not the game's fault that 13 years later you're not a wide eyed newbie any more, and a classic server can't give that back to you. All it can do is let you run old school Strat a few times for the nostalgia.

Nostalgia is a really powerful thing. It lets us remember the good while conveniently forgetting the bad. I remember the Good-Old-Days™ too, but I also remember literally broken specs and talents, faction specific classes, bags full of ammo and soul shards, 5 minute blessings, and a million other things I'm happy to have left in the past. Does anyone want to go back to that?

I got a ring in there last night....

I've played on vanilla and WOTLK servers recently. Here's what to expect:

1. It's not the same. Novelty and wonder were a big part of the experience, and those are gone.

2. You're not the same. Hopefully you've found more effective ways of meeting your psychological needs in the last 12 years, so you won't find it as fulfilling.

3. The scope is smaller. Part of WOW was the promise of future change and character growth. Legacy servers leave you frozen in time, running the same endgame raids over and over. It leaves you with a feeling of "ok, now what?"

4. It's still pretty cool. Don't expect classic WOW to be a life-support system, like it might have been for you all those years ago. It's not, and that's a good thing. But the nostalgia is real, the game mechanics still stand on their own, and it's still fun to try out different characters and builds. PvP is still great. It's worth trying out.

After playing 3 years of Everquest 2001-2004, I was in the 1st group of World of Warcraft players in the fall of 2004. I was a continuous top 10 player on my server for my class. We leveled up the hard way. We did quests and ground it out. We did 40 person raids. Over the years, the game changed until the last couple of years, it was boring. We used to use many areas in the game instead of being stuck in one zone. I stopped my account recently. I'd like to go back to the old World of Warcraft of 10 years ago with 10 person dungeons (40 was a lot of work).