Having played through mop-r, I noticed that the game feels a lot more fun because of the spell variety. I get that pruning is done in order to prevent bloating up people’s bars, but I can’t help but feel like there’s barely any class fantasy outside of “i can damage/heal things.”
At least in vanilla to cataclysm (if im not mistaken), you had to interact with class trainers which imo was an important part of the game’s immersion. some of your spells actually required you to do quests, too. i really wish this wasn’t removed and was instead re-imagined or re-explored somehow, because it made developing your character exciting. its really kind of boring getting all your abilities because you leveled up.
Apart from that, it also feels like there’s little to no variety in what you can do with your class, which is bizarre to me because we have access to 3 specs (whereas before it was a lot more of a commitment and you had to pay gold to learn dual speccing.)
maybe there’s something im overlooking. does anyone else feel this way? what do you think?
I understand and get what you mean to say, but how much different is it that you get it automatically when you level up, compared to when you leveled up, go back to a capitial and learn from a trainer, pay gold for it and sometimes unable to do so because back then gold was harder to come by, and then fly back to where you were questing.
I came from the time they were there, and I do not mean the classic servers, and yes it felt like you were developing your character, but back then leveling was way slower too so it meant more.
Now that leveling is like sneezing and you ding max within some hours, you would get that people go in max level dungeons and raids and not having learned a single class spell because, well, they never bothered to go look for them.
So no I understand why it has changed to what it has changed in now.
What I do miss is any kind of roleplay animations sorts of things.
(before when the need of having flint and tinder in your back was mandatory) so you get the animation to gather rocks, chip the flint against the tinder and get the fire started. (or I could just blow at it, or accidently sneeze - ‘oh hey its on’)
Interact with NPC’s with emotes, or with other players.
I’m wondering if that’s due to wider limitations on gameplay? Just thinking out loud, but the game is firstly combat-oriented. That could lead to a game design based around blasting things.
That’s a reasonable opinion, and one I believe is shared by many. The problem is that WoW right now is not the same game as it was many years ago. It’s not really a game of exploration and role-play anymore, but a game of mastery and story.
I think both versions have their pros and cons, and I really support the idea of a “classic plus” expansion that doesn’t include many of the quality of life features such as group finder, flying mounts, fast leveling etc. The details of such an expansion would be susceptible to debate, but I find it unrealistic to ask for the same exploration elements in modern WoW.
Valid opinion, and while I personally feel that learning spells from trainer is outdated for WoW Retail ( which Barcus rightly pointed out has a lot to do with how fast levelling has become)
The thing I genuinely miss are class quests, like the quests with paladin resurrection spell or priest getting their first green quality item by healing guards, they gave so much class identity. Besides, if properly designed, these class quests could be an engaging way for new players to learn their class signature spells.
The fact that Alextrasza talks to my Death Knight the same friendly way she talks to my priest makes me feel like a gray mass. I’d gladly trade 10 generic questlines over one questline specifically tailored for my class.
Also it would be so much more fun if each hero spec had a short questline to it. Currently there is none but I hope they would add it at some point.