Impossible, we will be getting Vanilla + more. So it won’t be a truly authentic experience. I’m not even sure if the core engine of the game will actually be the 1.x version of the game, as it ran completely differently to what we have now.
Things like water, fog and lighting were -entirely- different back then. It’s going to feel janky having HD water textures with the low res player model.
As it’s been mentioned here many times already the players who think they want it - usually Wrath players who’ve played on Nostalrius and think they’re cool for it, will be in for a painful, painful shock when they realise the game worked a lot different to the jury-rigged fauxnilla they were getting fed.
I mean I will give it a go purely to see how quickly I can break the game like it used to be - very prone to things flying off the handle if you did quests in a particular way, and as a pleasant distraction from the honestly stifling atmosphere the current community has created.
In many ways it will probably benefit someone like me - who still plays very much in the Vanilla mindset for how boss encounters and how I think systems should be run anyway but I acknowledge I am very much a minority who found the quirky, weird and baffling design philosophies entertaining back in the day.
I do look forwards to PvP without any of the post-Classic catastrophe that was applied to it though COUGH resilience COUGH back when I could ambush a clothie as a rogue and kill them instantly. You know, as the class fantasy of an assassin actually worked back then.
Also one thing a lot of the classic crowd who never played vanilla will have to stomach is class balance, which was horrendous. If you want the authentic vanilla experience, that means accepting things like ret was never as viable as a pure dps class like a mage, rogue or hunter. Same for other hybrids. They just weren’t as balanced for damage and many of them had extremely boring rotations (paladin was essentially judgement and reapply seal and auto attacking, no crusader strike, no aoe). I remember my paladin attempts at pve dps only became competitive when I rolled a Belf in tbc due to seal of blood. And crusader strike was added.
Same for healers. Priests and druids were much stronger. Paladins and shaman were much poorer substitutes due to the power of their heals and relative weskness/rarity of their correct gear, as tier sets back then had stats for all specs makely them less optimal for each spec individually (strength and agility on all pieces for Paladins for example) . This said holy and resto were largely their most viable raiding specs but largely if you stacked cloth gear for the focus on caster stats. Prot palas were not as good as warriors or druids for tanking.
Classic might appease the guardian community though. Bfa has them lamenting their relative weakness to DKs, monks etc. Classic they were one of the most viable tanks, largely due to lack of competition.
Exactly. Whilst all classes were alright in pvp roundabouts, pve less so.
I imagine the same ppl will also complain about respecing etc. It wasn’t free, it cost gold. And you couldnt save specs. You can do it where you like, and it has no correlation with your spells. Meaning making your hot keys fit for all spells was a nightmare (shaman with their totems holy jeebus was that a lot of hot keys)
People comaplin about trimming down classes. I wonder if these people experienced the bloat that was vanilla where classes could have like 40 abilities and each one has multiple ranks which are sometimes worth using lower versions (healers and mana costs) and depending on your spec some of these would be close to pointless, but not pointless enough to not give yourself somewhat quick access to. It was a freaking mess at times. Oh, and you had to go to town to buy them and pay money for them. Fun times having your class abilities locked behind a paywall.
It was fine then because we knew no better. But going to that now against what we have? Nah mate.