What would a mix between "Classic" and Retail look like to you?

Community General Discussion
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I renamed the title and will rewrite this post to make the question more clear.

Old Post

I always wonder what would need to change to bring Retail together with Classic. After playing both for a few months now I’d have the following points (my opinions):

  • No unnecessary time consuming grinds (Cloak, Forging, Essences) but more gameplay related content (Good dungeon design, good PvP)

  • More alt-friendly content (again no Cloak or Essences on alts)

  • Don’t lock game mechanics behind annoying grinds (improving riding skills should again be connected to the game economy) - I personally hate grinding quests or reputation for gameplay mechanics. I’d rather grind my jobs and farm mats etc for money.

  • More class identity (bring back trainers and talent trees but maybe keep dual-specs to keep characters flexible enough)

  • No transmogs (it always feels awesome to see someone with sick equip knowing that he actually wears that eq)

  • Make equipment special again. Currently 90% of the equip feels replaceable while in classic you really are proud about that Rend sword as your BiS

  • Chill with the mount design - some mounts are just over the top and a lot of people are way to much invested in mount or transmog farming instead of playing the game and progressing

  • No wow tokens

  • No cross realm

What I’d like to keep:

  • Dungeon Finder (Bring on the hate, I don’t like spamming the LFG channel every 3 seconds)
  • Group Sync (This is one of the best things introduced in recent wow. A friend of us is at level 30 in classic while we’re at the end game and he’s completely demotivated by slow paced leveling alone while we’re having fun in UBRS etc.)

What do you think should happen to move Retail back into the “Classic” expansion feeling?

I’m currently playing both Retail and Classic because of two groups of friends being split between Classic and Retail. Since I play both frequently and sometimes get to a point where I don’t like specific design decisions (for example the level grind on Classic or the daily grind on Retail) I got to the point where I wondered what a mix of both would look like.

Just to clarify - with Classic I don’t exactly mean WoW Classic but all “classic expansions” from Vanilla to WOTLK. I don’t want to change any of both games and I don’t ask Blizzard to do something for me. This should just be little fun thread about a theoretical World of Warcraft that probably will never exist.

For me it would be these decisions and features from retail:

  • [RETAIL] A good leveling and questing experience
  • [RETAIL] Good gear design (visual design, even though it got better from TBC upwards)
  • [RETAIL] Warmode instead of PvP/PvE servers
  • [RETAIL] Group Finder (way better than spamming LFG chats)
  • [RETAIL] Flying
  • [RETAIL] Class Balance
  • [RETAIL] Dungeon/Raid design (Ny’alotha looks rad)

and these decisions/features from classic:

  • [CLASSIC] No transmogs (I always liked to see what people are actually wearing instead of their preferred fashion)
  • [CLASSIC] Class trainers over specs
  • [CLASSIC] Special equipment (feels like a lot of gear is generic and gets defined by Azerite Treats in R)
  • [CLASSIC] Learn new riding upgrades by gold and not levels/quests
  • [CLASSIC] Talent Tree

and general change which I could not exactly pinpoint:

  • Daily quests related to dungeons or pvp instead of minigames or generic kill quests

Anyone else who plays both or did play both and misses something from the counterpart? What would you keep and what would you keep away if there would be another WoW version?

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I feel like a lot of people changed the definition of Classic and Retail a lot. Classic = good, Retail = bad. Why not just take the best of both, instead of making Retail more like Classic? And no, Classic is not a good game by any means, it’s a decent game, but it suffers from a lot of problems on it’s own.

Edit: commenter below me summed it up much better than I did.

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We don’t want retail to “feel more like classic”

If you want classic go play classic…

Yeah bring pvp vendors back, yeah make it more alt friendly, yeah ease off the time gating and rep grinds a bit.

Classic is classic, retail is retail.

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I’m not asking for Retail to change into Classic. I’m just wondering what people see as differences between both. As I said I played both but when I heard that Shadowlands lowers to Lcap to 60 and wants to bring back more class identity I instantly thought about what actually defines “Retail” and “Classic” and what would be the “perfect mix” between both.

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i dont think that there is an objective “perfect mix”. everyone likes different stuff about the games so its absolutely subjective what the “perfect mix” would be.

plus perfection doesnt exist. you cant satisfy everyone.

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When someone thinks classic did not have grind… your whole levelling process is a grind without reward.

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Why are you people think i want retail to turn classic? If i wanted to play classic i would play classic. I don’t like classic and i don’t want retail to turn into an outdated mmo.
I do agree that retail needs to get rid of those not alt friendly mandatory grinds.
Do not bring back those outdated talent trees , i agree that current talents are boring but there should be a modern and more enjoyable way to replace that.
Transmog is fine.
You do have a bis list on retail too and i’m pretty proud about the raden weapon as my bis.
What is wrong with farming mounts? I do like mounts and i like farming them. It’s an mmo , i can play whatever the way i want.
Wow tokens are good for game economy and actually helps blizzard. I rather have blizzard takes my money or exchange my gold to blizzard to buy something else then doing with a shady 3rd party site ( classic is overloaded with gold sellers).
Wow doesn’t have the volume it used to have to support non cross realm thingy. It’s just a dream.

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Well a perfect mix doesn’t exist, and will never exist, given how vastly different both games are. But there are things to be learned from the past. I’d urge Blizzard to take notes from wotlk-cata instead of Classic to be honest.

PvP vendors, with honor / conquest. Nowadays, with the amount of ilvl differences in tiers, you could buy upgrade tokens as well, to progress the gear.

Timegated content only limited to stuff like Argent Tournament, which has pretty much 0 influence on your power progression, but still rewards you with cool stuff, and a lot of good story.

No infinite grind systems, no introducing new ways to progress your toon’s power (excluding gear and rebalancing). It’s already a nightmare to balance this game with the amount of extra stuff thrown into the mix in BfA.

Cata’s mix of CD oriented and consistent burst gameplay. Let’s be honest, this is something a lot of people liked, and this system gave us the most well designed and balanced PvP and PvE in WoW.

Old school talents. Maybe? I guess that is what the Covenants are going to do in SL, but I’m afraid it’s going to be another timegated and long grind, not to mention that you already know it’ll be rebalanced millions of times, and the general player will pick the strongest one. Ain’t gonna be fun if that’s the case.

No monks and DHs. Thumbs up! :smiley:

Recipes for professions in raids. I don’t think a lot has to be said here, a lot of people miss it, and it did give professions more value.

Again, Retail should not try to be Classic at all. That would just give us another mess of an expansion. Retail should do better.

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^^ This

And what is it with all the lets make Retail like Classic, Classic is best, Classic has more players, lets have Classic stuff in Retail, threads going on atm.

I can’t imagine anything worse than any element of Classic being put in modern WoW.

Anything they do old style is always a disaster. Like lets have no bag space doing stuff in Mechagon and Nazjatar. Or lets have dailies instead of WQs and now the items are only interactable by one player, resulting in lots of bad behaviour from the playerbase grabbing things from others, stealthing waiting for others to engage the mobs, shadowstepping to things to grab them etc etc.

I love that there is Classic for those that want to play it. But lets keep the two separate tyvm.

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As I’ve said elsewhere, for example I feel 8.2 and 8.3 both have taken already a lot from Classic mentality and are way too alike to Classic. And this also resulted me to quit this game soon as current raid ends for my guild (read: I am going to quit, and I run on minimum program until then). I skip Shadowlands due to the similarities to classic in 8.2 and 8.3. :confused:

I have changed. In 2004-2005 I had great fun in Vanilla, in 2019 I felt I don’t want to play classic even when someone would pay me for doing it. This was just extra reminder for me that i should let nostalgia stay in past, where I think of it fondly instead get reminded of how bad things actually were.

same reason i do not play some of my favourite single player games anymore. One of the worst replays I’ve ever had was Skyrim. I do not know … but … that game did not age well for me.

Classic is same like Skyrim for me - was nice back on days, is less nice now.

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classic = old outdated game for people who are mentaly stuck in 2004

retail = modern wow for modern gamers.

keep it separate.

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I never said that. I said I enjoyed both but the changes introduced in Shadowlands remind me a bit of “bringing back a bit of classic”.

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That is a description of the last two days worth of Classic posters bringing these topics up.

I don’t find anything in Shadowlands is like Classic. The level squish has been in discussion for a very long time and has nothing to do with Classic.

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Bringing back class identity and cross-spec skills is what I’m talking about. Right now there is just one way to play a mage if you spec into frost mage while in classic expansions you could do whatever you wanted (if it was effective is another discussion).

I’m not saying classic is better. I like both but both have their downfalls. Classic leveling is a pain in the butt, Retail endgame felt more like a mobile game grind to me (logging in everyday to kill 5 damn rare mobs in uldum or looking for these chests or shooting birds out of the sky still haunts me). So I see positives and negatives in both games and that’s why I wonder what would the best of the best would look like for other people.

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Oh God, these threads always have nebulous concepts like “Class identity”, while a holy paladin literally reads his spells from a book these days and has iconic spells whereas in Classic they were buff bots.

:thinking:

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But isn’t that what paladins are? Helpful knights of the light dealing more damage to undeads? :slight_smile: Just because the animation now shows a book doesn’t mean that I feel more like a paladin now. Classic did a bad job with balancing classes but TBC and WOTLK improved a lot on that.

I’d clarify that I cound everything WOTLK and sooner as “classic” since it still featured the old world and skilling system.

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You got classic to feel more like classic…

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Class identity still exists, although it is true that a class can feel more like a vessel for a spec, instead of the spec focusing on something within the class. As for cross-spec skills, that is what we are getting in SL.

Classic’s version of class identity is simply horrible. Again, retail needs to do better, and not copying stuff from Classic.

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Posting this thread was a mistake… I’m not asking for changes or my wishes to be implemented. It’s just what I would see as a combination between Retail and Classic… It was supposed to be a “funthread” so people could post what they like in both instead of telling me that I can play classic every 3rd post.

Classic’s version of class identity is simply horrible. Again, retail needs to do better, and not copying stuff from Classic.

Thats true - as said balancing was hell in vanilla/classic. I’d just like more variety in what my character can do and what he can’t do. I have the same feeling with Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 when it comes to the skill trees.

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Like I said, completely nebulous and meaningless concepts thats different in everyones head.

“Paladin was helpful cos it did lots of damage to kill the monster”
“Paladin was helpful because it tanked”
“Paladin was helpful because it healed us”

I don’t feel more like a paladin and admire their class fantasy because he helped me by buffing me either? So what is “class fantasy” then? Or more to the point, why do you feel Classic has it, but retail doesn’t?