I want to share with you one of the most and biggest difference in my opinion between old good expansion and the direction the game took over the years.
The gcd and slow-paced interaction with spells.
In tbc / wotlk every single global you press feels so important (expecially in pvp) and so rewarding.
Every single spell you press it’s super important in every pve/pvp/world scenario
Idk if i’m correct saying that in classic the gcd i slower or what, but if it’s that the case it would be so good to bring back retail to that state.
I logged retail few days ago, after spending couple of months on a private pvp server to prepare for wotlk.
Man, in retail i can press around 10 global into 1, by the time i pressed 2-3 spells in classic, in retail i’ve already used 5 cds, and pressed 10 different buttons.
Not to mention that dmg numbers are so pathetic atm, almost feel you didn’t press anything.
It’s a paradox. 1 Global and 1 number on screen in classic is much more rewarding then 10 spell into 1 global and 12 different numbers on screen… am i wrong?
Tell me what you think, i’m really curious about your thoughts this uber mega fast paced retail gameplay back to classic pace.
Depends on the class as well, it’s not quite the same accross the board. It has to do with APM too and different players will prefer different playstyle.
Some classes objectively need tweaks though. E.g. unholy DK has to pop so many big cds to start bursting that the design feels clunky.
But honestly, it’s been so long since I played any old WoW that I don’t exactly remember how it felt or can’t compare the two directly.
For me everytime I go and play one of the new classic launches I come back to Retail and I’m like OMG this is so good, I appreciate all the quality of life improvements and things like the gameplay.
Others go from Retail to classic and feel OMG this is so much better for their own reasons and prefer to play that instead.
Generally speaking I still prefer retail, and it makes sense for retail to be faster paced, but I also love the slower, more readable Classic action.
I agree with Punyelf, to each their own.
I’m going to have both.
I think they should try to pursue a similar feel without actually slowing down GCD, by tweaking how combat with enemies feels, maybe by making trash more complicated.
I wanna have to actually Think about my combat encounters.
I get satisfaction from both, depending on class and spec.
In Classic, your spells heal and dmg for a lot as your resources are limited. Which makes a lot of sense - you want to choose what to spend on, and not spend resources mindlessly. (Say, when leveling, you don’t want to DoT up an almost dead foe, and just wand to death for instance.) Much of your dmg comes from white meler swings, autoshots or a filler spell.
In Retail, you can spam abilities nonstop, but let’s face it, a simple frostbolt spam would put most off. Which is why you get complex rotations and almost everyone has a baseline cooldown. The spells also have a good interaction with each other mostly, and you rotate between weaker and stronger spells mostly.
That said, while I prefer a slower gameplay or easier spec, some retail bursts are satisfying. Say, I can pump a ton of damage as shadow on ST when I use Void Eruption, Mindbender, UH nova and PI.
Would be nice to have the same world content in both playstyles.
I suppose many classic players would love to jump with their old class and play some new expansion. The other way around is there, sort of.
I was also fine with my 1-49 frost mage, felt a bit overpowered, but getting to BC I noticed the same.
I personally never identified with pressing mundane buttons to keep doing mundane things. It works in Skyrim where all I do is aim and shoot or swing and block, and both take time actually, but in WoW I reserve my focus for the other things (procs, fancy swings with abilities, CC, short buffs). Then again, what am I saying, classic frost mage.
It can be balanced, although high APM people will be (already are) jealous of low APM classes performing the same result (“level 10 in my dungeon with one button”).
One not-so-small problem would be that some (most) old classes don’t have any kind of CC. So players can not be expected to interrupt. (But have durability, or higher raw damage instead.)
I like both systems. There really is no reason to compare these as they are different games and I hope retail will not move towards the way it was in classic but to evolve something better, which it has done so far.
It is true, retail is more and more like an arcade game but so what? People seems to somewhat like it and Blizz is working to make it better. I am more concerned that classic is seeing some of these changes too even they were not there originally. They should just release the classic game as it was back then OR they could just do a “Remastered” version and say so. Make better graphics and perhaps AH and barber shop / character customization from retail
Interesting point. Depends on Blizzard’s longterm plan for Classic, which is something I sometimes wonder about. It’s pretty ok until it reaches WoD, which was probably the first really unpopular expansion. When I played on a private WoTLK server I personally never wanted it to move to Cata and further, I just wanted some of the QoL introduced later. With more and more Classic releases, you’re diluting the no. of people playing the previous ones too.
At the present time, it makes no business sense to let Classic players take their characters to retail, they would also look out of place in retail or flatout wouldn’t work for new content and playing with retail players. I think it’s not as simple as you’re making it sound and would require additional resources.
*if you meant it differently, please elaborate on your vision
There wont be any popular classic servers beyond WoTLK. If there is no decent version of WoTLK + most players will stay on eternal wrath, just like certain pserver.
I am pretty confident that Classic and pre Cata are basically synonyms.
TBC APM / rewarding buttons to press + retail talents polish and spec depth will be the best option of synergy in between what we had and we have now.
But I dont expect it to come soon enough. But it is inevitable at some point because its simply the best of both worlds for players who will still be playing Warcraft in few years.
Eh there nothing in crapstic that is better then retail its simply a failed experiment of a bunch of guys who abandoned the Superior Everquest 1 and stole a bunch of ideas and somehow made a inferior mmo who’s only advantage was that you could run it on a toaster compared to everquest 2
What I’d really like is after Wrath classic if they really go to town on the Classic+ idea, carry on releasing the expansions, but changing them to keep the core sense of what made classic, classic.
OR even better, creating totally new, unique expansions that follow a different story, as a branching timeline kinda thing, a “What if?”.
What if Garrosh didn’t do Theramore, and took Saurfang’s lesson’s from Northrend to heart?
What if Thrall didn’t leave the horde?
similar questions for Alliance characters too (is it obvious I’m more familiar with the horde’s history?)
If I remember correctly Chromie, or one of the Bronze Dragons’ even told us that our timeline was the only one where Garrosh didn’t go on to become a great hero of the Horde.
lot’s of room for potential, and hell, if they DID do this, it’d probably become my preferred version of Wow.
And as a slight jab at them out of spite… What if the game didn’t forget about Death Knights and Bolvar until Legion?
Oh hell no mate…
I hate that, aswell as the responses above …autoattacking just to fill resource starving is an bad, sluggish and outdated concept. Imho.
Same as ooming as caster dps in arena -that can go to hell aswell.
It feels different because on retail its burst cd stacking gameplay…on classic wotlk your basic abilities do a lot of damage even without cds. And that should come back i agree.
They did mess around with GCD in BfA. They didn’t even make it slower, just put more spells on the GCD and it was so universally hated that they had to change it back. Retail WoW wouldn’t get anything out of slower gameplay.
