Suggestion: how to do the phases

WoW Classic Cataclysm Classic Discussion
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So, first of all, Hyjal and Black Temple need to be separated. They were released within 6 months interval back then. And while players back then were much slower to progress - there was still difference. Hyjal was the top tier raid for months, until Black Temple sort of replaced it, because everyone was already Hyjal geared.

And it would prefer it to be that way this time too, instead of dropping Hyjal at the same time as Black Temple, so it’s an off-raid from the very beginning.

So, here is how I’d suggest doing the PvE phases:

Phase 1 - Karazhan, Gruul’s lair, Magtheridon’s Lair, lasting 2 months. It is the time of levelling, reputation farm, and heroic dungeons, so a big part of the time you wouldn’t be raiding at all, depending on your pace. All 2.0 quests up to and including Hyjal ones should be available upon launch, even if the raids are inaccessible, so the flow of raid questing is not interrupted by having to intentionally walk back to the questgiver to pick up the next quest once it becomes available.
Phase 2 - Serpentshrine Cavern and The Eye in Tempest Keep, lasting 1 month. It’s not a lot of time, but people will be hungry for Hyjal.
Phase 2.5 - Hyjal, lasting 3 months - now let’s give people some time to catch up with the hardcores who finished all raids in the first week.
Phase 3 - Black Temple, lasting 7 months - same as back then, yet 7 months is still a lot of time. People will still be farming Hyjal and Black Temple, some will even be still pursuing their Hyjal attunement for sure. Give them time.
Phase 4 - Zul’Aman, lasting 2 months - one month shorter than back then, because I recall it being a minor raid, like AQ20 or Zul’Gurub, there wasn’t much talk about it, people will still be waiting for Sunwell and it will still be pretty much phase 3 - mostly Hyjal and Black Temple farm. So keep it short. Also, Sunwell has to be unlocked, so it will be relevant in part of next phase too.
Phase 5 - Sunwell and Isle of Quel’Danas. The final version, coming with the lifted attunement requirements and Quel’Danas, but with only the first wing of Sunwell Plateau.
Phase 5.1 - first gate opens after 2 weeks
Phase 5.2 - second gate opens after another 3 weeks
Phase 5.3 - third gate opens after another 3 weeks.
So, 2 months after phase 5 launch, Sunwell is completely open.

Now, don’t rush WotLK - keep it up for some time. Private server people are often like “WotLK as late as possible, TBC was the best”.

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Hyjal was technically in the game from the start, but it was barred (most probably intentionally) from entry. And no boss in hyjal was killed before black temple released, cause the BT patch made Kael’thas killable for people to get hyjal attunement complete.

Having tier 4 and tier 5 last a lousy 3 months? While t6 lasting 10 months,and no rush on wotlk to make t6.5 last super long.

Seems like you got yourself a recipe for losing most of your customers.
There is a fine line, in whats releasing content too fast and too slow, and not a single one of your stages is even close.

Way too short period before you make 70% of tbc content irrelevant, waaay to long hyjal+BT.

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Illidan died before hyjal was cleared back in the days. People where not “in hyjal gear when BT was released”

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TBC didn’t have clear tier numbers like current retail does. There were multiple tier 6 raids and also the “one raid per content patch” stereotype didn’t work in TBC, because it was practically a “progress as fast as you can” expansion. Of course, the Kael’thas bug prevented people from entering Hyjal, but it wasn’t intended. And, he could still be killed by an exploit.

And I would like to have TBC “as it was intended to be back then”. Not “as it was then NOCHANGES” or “as it would be if it was a brand new expansion”. So, the tier 3 and 4 here are really just points in personal progress, not server progress.

As for not rushing WotLK, I mean to stay on TBC for long, beacuse it was a very good expansion. Also, WotLK would require much more work because implementing it would pretty much require proper per-patch progression with all the systems such as emblems, Dungeon Finder, character creation UI, etc.

Except that it won’t make the content irrelevant, because it is still required for progression and attunements. And the community is much less hardcore and meta than it was back then, and even back then there were tier 4 and 5 raids going on after BT released.

Entering and clearing are two different things. And progression-wise, there are those shaman fist weapons from trash mobs, and the Jewelcrafting reputation vendor (reputation can be gained from trash mobs too).

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Yes it was, the tier numbers are perfectly clear, what is considered a tier, is based off where the respective tier sets drop., Tier 4 gear drops from kara, gruul’s and magtheridon, t5 drops in SSC and TK, t6 drops from Hyjal and Black temple, plus 3 extra pieces that was added to sunwell which is considered and refered to as t6.5.

This is how tiers have always been refered to, since vanilla and until they removed set items.
In retail they just kept calling raids for tiers even after set items was removed.

The amount of raids in a content patch has nothing to do with why something is called a “Tier”

Of course it was intended, or they would have fixed it sooner. But noone but the developers can say for sure what the real intention was, Kael’thas remained unkilled until after the fix that came with the BT patch, which also came with the change to the attunement quest that actually made it possible for a guild to get their members attuned to hyjal.

i think you should rephrase this part, cause it doesnt make sense.

How is that any different than what they are doing with TBC? How can you possibly know that wotlk is more work than TBC? for all we know, WOTLK will be much LESS work for them, since they have newer data and code on that expansion.

This tells me that you either did never play tbc, or did not participate in raiding much.
The number 1 biggest complain from raiders in TBC, was that the only reason they had for doing these earlier raids, was because of the attunement. meaning the raid itself was completely irrelevant, but they had to do them to get new members attuned.
Being required does not mean that they are relevant, it turns the raid from something fun to do, into something that is a chore you have to do.

And the community is much MORE hardcore and meta now than they were back then.
Yes people will do t4 and t5 with their alts, but if you look at classic and compare it to vanilla, in classic, pretty much every guild are in naxx, very very few guilds have not made the step up and started naxx, back in vanilla pretty much no guilds even attempted naxx, let alone killed more than a couple bosses.
The raiding community in vanilla vs classic is very different and cannot be compared. A much higher % of the raiding playerbase are doing the current content raids, and are not as split up over different raid progressions as they were back in vanilla.

So unless the prenerfed bosses turns out to be very difficult, you will see pretty much every guild clearing the current content pretty quick, and guilds being up to date progress wise when a new raid release.
Meaning that the lower tiers will be mostly done by alts. You wont see many guilds progressing tier 5 after tier 6 have released.

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As far as I remember, there was one guild that killed him using an exploit - unless it was some other boss I’m thinking of.

WotLK had faaaaaar more diversity of the core mechanics and gameplay between particular patches.

Try comparing patch 3.0, being pretty much a part of the old WoW era, with patch 3.3.5a, having all that Dungeon finder, daily heroic farm systems, random battleground rewards, random heroic rewards, etc. It just won’t work on patch 3.0.

And do you really think that the pro-meta attitude of MMORPG gamers will once again develop as rapidly in 2021 as it did in 2007? What would the cause be? The increasing popularity of Google Classic? The creation of Wowhead classic? More households upgrading from Dial-up Classic to ADSL Classic? Or maybe people upgrading to Windows Vista Classic?

You’re talking nonsense. The retail community was obviously more meta-oriented in 2008 than Classic community is in 2021. However, meta tactics were not as widely available because they were often guild secrets, so that each guild had its own meta, which was not always the best possible. That’s why the average raiding performance was worse than today.

Have you ever played before Cataclysm?

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That i cant say for sure, no kill on him was counted in the world first race at least, and that race have been quite acceptable of using exploits to kill, just look at Lady Vash 1st kill. EDIT: That was a bug and not a clear exploit.

There is no difference, the things you mention there are simply solved by either phasing them out(tournament site) or leaving the structures and just disabling the NPC’s / quests.
They already did similar to this in Classic, with silithus and Lights hope Chapel. deactivating systems that will come in a future patch is probably one of the easier tasks. And looking at how they have handeled classic, and tbc, it will release as 3.3.5 patch, so there will be no 3.0 patch. every future system is in the game client, just disabled for use.

No i do not think the meta attitude will develop as rapidly, the pro meta attitude is at a all time high. in TBC it was increasing, but its nowhere close to what it is right now.

The 2008 community was much less meta oriented, you are comparing the top 10% in 2008, with the average gamer in 2021. Top 10% was of course meta oriented. The average gamer was not, in 2021, the average gamer is much more meta oriented. Doesnt change the fact, that the top 10% in classic, is much more meta oriented than what the top 10% in vanilla and tbc were.

Guild secrets? any guild secret was open to the world as soon as a video was released if we’re talking top raiding guilds, which is the only ones with a reason to hold secrets.
The average raiding performance being lower in 2008 has nothing to do with secrets, it have to do with retail being a living game under constant development, and you would never know if blizzard would buff or nerf classes, so the top raiders had no chance to adapt to a meta that was changing all the time, so they had to go with what they had at hand, back in classic and TBC, the player behind the keyboard was often more important than the class he played.

Rerolling every patch and split raiding to keep a whole bunch of alts in top tier gear at all times to always have meta comps is something that didnt start until Wotlk or Cata, where getting alts up to speed became much easier.

If you are talking about boss strategies being held secret, yes they were, but that have nothing to do with being meta oriented. and as i said above, it were all released to the public as soon as a couple guilds defeated the boss.

I think you are confusing what Meta is.

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He is constantly making weird topics including AH shared between TBC and Classic Era realms :wink:

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yeah, he should try smoking ½ next time

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I hope they don’t something so lame as to just leave the building as in 3.3 without quests and NPCs. The tournament has a real progression in which we saw changes in the zones due to the storyline progression through patches, so the only appropriate will be to use the phase system to first does not have any tournament building in the first phase, add the version of the tournament in construction state during Ulduar phase and finally in the proper tournament phase have the building we can see now in retail.

But those things about outdoor zones changing due to story progression was not new from WOTLK, it was actually started in TBC 2.4 patch, some NPCs were changed between pre-2.4 Shatrath and 2.4 Shatrath to add NPCs from Shattered Sun Offensive, and M’uru was in Silvermoon before 2.4, I also expect Blizzard to recreate pre-2.4 Shatrath and Silvermoon, in the case of TBC there is no building changes, only NPCs.

Anyway both things, TBC 2.4 changes and WOTLK Tournamente could be recreate with retail phasing system, so even if TBC had no phasing and WOTLK phasing was not capable to do that, the current Classic code is based on retail one so the modern phasing system is available to be used for those purposes.

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The tournament site should be easily solved by phasing, those phases are probably in their codes already.

But i wouldnt keep my hopes too high on the TBC things, moving NPC’s around might be quite a bit of work to do, not in the actual moving, but keeping track of where what npc was when. so unless they have some special funcition pre 2.4, im pretty sure they will just go the easy route and do the disable/enable. but we can always hope

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The tournamente shouldn’t be already in their code as phases because it was never implemented with phases, they just have one Northrend map file in 3.0, that map file was changed in 3.1 to have the in progress tournament and another version of the map file in 3.2 and beyond with the final version of the tournamente. But recreate that in phases system should be easy, they have all map versions from the old clients, they only need to make 3 phases and have every phase to use a different map version, after all that is how currently phases do to make changes in the enviroment that goes beyond enable and disable npc’s, objects and quests.

About TBC 2.4 changes if I remember correctly there is no need to move NPC’s, there was some NPCs on the Shatrath inner ring where Shattered Sun Offensive NPCs are now that were removed to add those new NPCs, and Silvermoon M’uru in the code is a different NPC thant the raid boss, so in both case it is just enable and disable NPCs.

But I would love if they made an exception with Griftah, this was a troll, both in the sense of the race and the internet one, who was move during TBC patches with different funny dialogues, that is completely documented and easy to replicate.

Another change I would like is the Stormwind Harbor construction. In patch 2.4.3 there were added some NPCs and construction platform in the Stormwind part that currently takes to the port to show they are demolishing those walls to make something. We currently now that they were building the harbor that was added in 3.0. They could only enable those NPCs in the last phase like it was in the original TBC, but because we currently know that is a WOTLK foreshadowing it does not make sense to add them until Blizzard announce Classic WOTLK.

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Or they be “lazy” and do Silithus-like option - the final version but without late phase quests and NPCs.

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I hope not, the construction of the tournament was part of the progression of the story, during patch 3.1 it was a plot point that the tournament site was not completed yet and there were a few quests where the players were helping in the construction. Silithus was more a retcon of the story that a progression of the story and the final version is the only one that exits in lore. Still, I would have loved to play the original version of Silithus.

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But that means either Wintergrasp not available in the beginning, or being only available via that queue, which is just stupid. The best and funniest Wintergrasp was with massive multi-raid groups and massive Tenacity.

in Classic the NPCs were there, but either the quests weren’t, or the items for them were unobtainable.

But that’s a different story since Blizzard lacked some data from pre-1.12 database. With TBC, they can as well add the NPCs without even restarting the realms.

They said that they didn’t have pre-1.12 data, but they do have post-2.0 data, so they might just do it automatically.

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Well, having NPCs not being there until a given time it already happens in Classic too, but in Classic the only NPCs who are like that are those related to holidays events, for example Greatfather Winter is only there when Winterveil holiday event is active, so they can just internally use holidays to do that, so they can have a Pre-2.4 “holiday event” and a 2.4 “holiday event” and associate NPCs that appear o disappear after a given phase to the appropriate event.

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That would come with potential side effects of raid quests resetting. Better not.

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Explain to me why you get to that conclusion because it does not make any sense. There is no relation between raid quests resetting and holiday events.

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Holiday quests do reset in TBC

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That is partially incorrect. There are holiday quest that reset every time the event start and there are holiday quest that never reset and can be completed one time only. Association of a quest to a holiday and yearly flag are two indendent piece of the game data.

Even if you were right and every holiday quest reset it would be irrelevant, holiday events to simulate patch progression only start and end one time, except the last patch wich would never end, so even if the quest reset is impossible for anyone to complete those quest before the event starts.

PD: I am sure Blizzard is already using event system for phase progression in Classic. Does quest raid has been reset anytime during Classic? No, so there is no reason to believe it would be different in TBC.

PD2: In fact in Classic there has been problems of holiday quest NOT resetting becuase in the original 1.12 data those didn’t have the yearly reset flag because during Vanilla lifetime some holiday events only happens once.