I have a doubt about NPC dialogues that was changed years ago in retail but I am not sure if what we have in WOTLK was before that change or not, because I can’t remember when happened.
I am talking about those pieces of dialogue text that some NPCs say before choosing an option like buy/sell, train, or take a flight path. Those kinds of NPCs currently in Retail have no dialogue, showing directly their utility when you talk with them.
I never like that change because we lost many lore dialogues. I remember there was an NPC, maybe a flight master, with a female voice and a male body due to a mistake with some magic and only that dialogue explains that difference, but was lost once Blizzard changed it. I am one of those rare players who read every text, every dialogue, and every quest.
But I am not capable to remember if that dialogue reduction happened in Cataclysm or before. I always had the impression it happened around WOTLK but playing in Classic WOTLK I don’t see many differences from what we had yesterday in TBC Classic.
So, anyone could tell me in what patch that was changed?
Ok, I found it. That type of dialogue is called gossip, which is why I didn’t find anything searching “dialogue removed”.
Apparently, Blizzard remove those gossip on TBC patch 2.3.0
“When you speak with an NPC with a single function (Banker, Flight Master, Etc) and who has no other gossip options or quests you will go straight to their functional pane rather than to the gossip pane. Most importantly this means that clicking on a flight master will bring up the flight path map directly rather than the gossip pane with the option to bring up the flight path map.”
I do not know why but Classic TBC nor Classic WOTLK work like that. These gossips are still present in WOTLK.
But I also found Blizzard never actually removed the gossip data, not even in Retail, and there is an addon that allows to reenable it, apparently, it is removed using a hidden configuration that is easy to change for an addon.
The addon is NPC RP Gossip Text Re-enabler
The addon seems to have versions for Retail, TBC, and WOTLK. I installed it but I see no changes, the gossip I could read are the ones I could read before, including flight masters and bankers, and those are supposed to be removed in 2.3
So Im confuse because I do not know if Classic by default keep those gossip or maybe I have them restored thanks to another addon I am not aware do that. Anyway, I am happy to know I won’t miss any lore dialogue.