So I’ve seen the interview of Ion Hazzikostas and he asked what are our though about the future of WoW Classic after Wotlk.
So I’m really curious to know why they think the community dislike so much the RGF, I know a lot of player don’t like the tool but to say it’s what killed the game I think there is a big gap! I’m mean you can juste not use it if you don’t like it and objectivily back then it saved a lot of dying servers even if it wasn’t perfect. But that’s not the point of this post so I’ll close this topic here.
So why did I start not enjoying the game after Wotlk ?
First there were too much change in the class gameplay. I felt my characthers back then didn’t feel the same anymore, the talents refont wasn’t fun, the LFR wasn’t really fun good either (but as the RGF you could just skip it). I didn’t like the univers of the expension and the refont of the world was the worst thing ever done to WoW. So would I play a Cata Classic ? I don’t think so. Would I play it if we kept the core Wotlk gameplay of my class without the refont of the old world and no flying mount in the oldworld? Probably but I don’t see this happening ^^.
So what’s left? A Wotlk 2.0, keep the core part of the game and just add new content, I mean we’re now flooded with story about parrallel univers, we even wen’t into the past during the WoD expansion, why not an Wotlk expension taking place in a parallel universs? I would play that for sure if I can keep my Prot Pally and my Mage as they were in Wotlk!
Cataclysm was the first expansion where class changes started feeling like not a fix to shortcomings of your class, but just changes for the sake of a change. “To keep things fresh”. Which progressively ended up destroying the classes and specs’ original identity. I tried to pick up the game in BFA after having left in WotLK and I just couldn’t recognize the classes I once loved and played.
Technically yes, but the effect it has on guilds is much worse - consider that most guilds come together for doing raids, not dungeons.
I could get behind this. The gameplay in WotLK was mostly fine, aside perhaps for a few numeric changes to some specs that under or overperformed. If there’s a lesson Retail devs (and some of the Classic devs as well) seem to have long forgotten, is “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
I didn’t enjoy cataclysm onwards because it watered down the gameplay too much. Much more generic feel to the game with less class diversity.
I’d like to see Classic “finished”. Properly reworked talents, fleshed out specs to every class had playstyles that where not 1 button or striaght up unplayed. Maybe expand some talents and spells to include TBC/WOTLK additions that are core to the class identiy.
Beyond that, I’m happy to stay at level 60/70/whatever, forever, and just have all future raid content released and tuned for our level.
Remove the levelling aspect of each expansion, and just give us new areas and raids every couple of months, which are just copy-paste from other expansions but scaled in difficulty to meet Classic+ or whatever
I’m not at all for the idea that they alter the existing classic games to make them ‘better’.
Why? First and foremost because I don’t trust the current Blizz team to make something great out of it. Second because the point of these classic expansions is to relive them as they were. Yeah blizz is changing stuff which sucks, but these are tweaks compared to what the OP and others are suggesting.
You can’t please everyone and making significant changes like new raids/dungs/storylines will never ever please everyone.
The answer to the question ‘what after wrath?’ is tricky imo. I know a lot of people that wanna replay MoP but not Cata, and if cata fails they won’t do MoP.
It would make more sense to push the reset button and start all over with wow classic fresh servers - TBC - Wrath again. Maybe this time with a shorter lifespan, tho keep TBC the same since it’s already too short!
The appeal of these classic expansions is doing them while current and progressing through all the tiers. Classic era and Wrath era will die down after a while and people that love these will move on to private servers.
I thought about it a little bit lately and I think for me personally it comes to several points:
1.) Raids became too hard at top difficulty (and reward) level. I could no longer perform in 25men HC raids to the good enough standard to not drag my guild down. And it would be completely humiliating to me to just do the easier difficulty for consolation prize baby epics.
2.) Daily hubs became something you absolutely needed to keep up with every day. While before it was just supplemental source of gold and rep that gave some cosmetic or sidegrade rewards, now it felt like a job you had to go and do every day for 2 hours not to fall behind.
3.) Archeology. Damned Archeology. Who thought it’s a good idea to put a super rare drop 2nd BiS mage staff behind an incredibly boring, tedious profession that required complex addons to even do efficiently. The endless hours I spent flying around Azeroth hoping my next site that opens up will be dwarven. By Elune I still shudder typing it. I literally put off logging just so I don’t have to grind archeology. Curse you, Staff of Sorcere-Thane Theurissan, you almost single-handedly ruined Cata for me.
4.) Revamped ZG and ZA as only content in 4.1 completely killed it for me. Log in, do random finder ZA, do random finder ZG, hope groups arent too bad. Do your dailies. Grind Archeology. Question why you do this to yourself. Then Firelands comes and you see another massive daily hub with JOUSTING IN THE AIR ON AWKWARD MOUNT WITH ABILITIES. Cancel sub and never even raid Firelands. God I hated WoW so much at that point. Making me suffer daily for 6 months out of sheer inertia.
My thoughts about Cataclysm:
Overall I still enjoyed Cata back then and would probably enjoy it again.
Still I agree the addon introduced several aspects which reduced my enjoyment of the game a lot. I don’t think these are insurmountable, so I’m hoping for a Cata with changes.
The Good:
I really enjoyed the new zones, Twilight Highlands was one of my favorites overall. This was very well done. Hyjal was amazing lore-wise.
Firelands was one of the best raids ever, just after Ulduar and Karazhan for me.
5 player dungeons, including pre-nerf heroics. I like challenging 5 man content, although I understand they were too hard for the majority (not necessarily too hard to complete, but too hard to enjoy, which is a difference). I think there is a sweet spot somewhere, though, probably around TBC post-nerf heroic difficulty.
The Bad:
These are aspects I didn’t like, at least in part, but were not the main reason why I feel Cataclysm was so much worse than TBC or WotLK.
Old World revamp. I think the new storylines in the zones were actually well done. The problem was that levelling was too fast - quests and mobs became grey when you were 50-70% into the storyline. You then had to decide if you’d move on and leave the story unfinished, or if you stayed but fell back in progression as you won’t get XP anymore.
Talent system revamp. I understand you can’t just grow the talent tree more and more, but it left no room to experiment, make small changes, etc.
Dragon Soul. I don’t think it was as bad as some made it out, I believe the disappointment was due to expectations being too high. All of the previous end-of-expansion raids were amazing (ICC) or at least infamous (Classic Naxx, Sunwell). Dragon Soul was just an OK raid. It being current content for as long as it was certainly didn’t help, either.
The Ugly:
There were the main reasons I felt Cata was a huge step down from WotLK
LFR. The introduction of LFR took a lot of the joy and excitement of killing a raid boss for the first time away from me. When you killed a boss the first time with your actual raid on normal or heroic it didn’t feel as good anymore - you had killed the boss already, after all. That actual (LFR) first kill wasn’t a challenge and even more important it wasn’t something you did with your friends, but with a bunch of strangers you’ll probably never see again. As the players in the LFR wouldn’t see each other again there were next to no incentives (except common decency which, for some, is in pretty rare supply) not to be toxic. This is the same reason I dislike LFG, just on a much larger scale.
In addition, you could basically avoid LFG by just playing with your guildmates and friends. Not so much for LFR. It also felt mandatory to play LFR, as it would still have items you’d use for progression.
I understand and agree with the basic idea - everyone should be able to experience the raid content. Like all other major changes made to WoW which I disagree with I understand the good intentions, it’s just the side effects of that change that made the game less enjoyable for me. I don’t think LFR would be necessary to achieve that goal. PUGs are MUCH stronger nowadays then they were back then, so even if you don’t have the time to commit to raiding with a guild, you can still join PUGs and experience the raid this way. Since folks will want to run with that PUG again in the future there is even a better chance of it being less toxic than LFR.
Still, if you feel that LFR needs to be in Cata, at least put it on the same lockout as non-LFR raids, so folks don’t feel obligated to do both.
Class/ability design: Classes started to feel very similar with everyone getting everything to some degree. That has advantages, of course, but it removes much of the individuality and class fantasy, especially if combined with the removal of flavor mechanics, e.g. ammo and pet feeding for hunters. This started earlier, of course, but I felt WotLK kept it in a reasonable frame, while Cata went over the line.
After WotLK classic I’d like to see Vanilla Classic Plus with:
Rebalanced classes: make all specs equally playable.
New raids & dungeons: plenty of ideas online. That big door at the end of Dark Iron highway in BRD, or Timbermaw Hold in Azshara? There’s bound to be some adventure in there!
Finished zones & new zones: Azshara begs for more quests and we still need some island to be the base of operations for Bloodsail Buccaneers
More incentive to visit old dungeons/raids. Remember the dungeon set two questline, where You would visit dungeons and summon additional bosses? More of that!
More incentive to explore remote corners of the map, like black lotus spawns, treasure chests or rare mobs.
Ability to get rep with Scarlet Crusade, akin to Bloodsail Buccaneers rep for roleplay purposes.
More loot like “Ancient Petrified Leaf” that doesn’t give You the item right away, but instead sends You on an epic personal adventure that tests Your ability to play your character.
Features I’d like to see but may be controversial:
Dual spec: afer a hard and lengthy epic quest.
Daily limit on plant/mining deposit use to counter bots, preferably with limit set for each individual type of plant/ore.
Transmogrification: I just like the idea, and find it as a good way to incentives visiting old content for more item models.
Disable all quest assisting add-ons. Make people read quest text and explore. Remember quests like “The Dragon’s eye” or “The Ancient Leaf”? They gave You almost no information on where to turn in the quest. You had to explore the world Yourself!
Not everyone is a mage/rogue and not everyone wants to spend 23 hours a day in Dire Maul nor everyone wants to spend 23 hours a day boosting others for gold.
Bots arent the issue for decade now if not more.
Main issue atm is boosters who end up selling gold to wow.gold sites.
Blizzard should’ve re-work loot completely.
Personal loot,without being able to trade it.
People would get used to it eventually and got over it.Current system obviously does not work because game literally became pay to win.Anyone who has $ can get fully geared within 2 weeks.
I have seen people without single gem or enchant,rocking skull trinkets,with 4/8 t6 set.
Plenty of ways to earn gold in vanilla, I was farming elementals for elemental earth and water with my hunter, for example. But i think they could just add daily quests, I’d like that. Also, bots usually run 24/7 so You could set the node limit high enough not to hinder players but still enough to tackle botting problem. And it will actually help players gather, as less nodes will be picked by bots, leaving more for players. This is jus an idea, all I need is for Blizz to limit bots farming.
Due to inflation,gold earned from quests on max level has become irrelevant.
Why is there inflation?Because of boosters.
No matter what you do,bots will always be there.
I have farmed leather in zuldazar throughout most BFA,and there was one bot who spent 24 hours there,killing 5 gorillas only.That’s not even 1000 gold per hour. (who i reported multiple times in course of 11 months but nothing happened)
Thought about it, but: on wowhewd, You still need to read something to know what to do. So I think that at least with more mundane quests people won’t bother browsing and just read the quest text. Alas, I did put it in the controversial section
Deathwing happens and still F’s up the world (enabling a revamp) but the story goes down a different route. Create some alternate timeline from the Bronze dragonflight or summat…
Keep the fundamentals of classic.
Don’t babyfi like retail.
No cash shops or wow tokens.
I would like a Season of Whatever-it-will-be-called like this. But longer than one year’s duration, please.
a few note to your controversial features.
3. Transmogrification: Only if all items are transmoggable. I have never understood the limitations on this. Why only mail to mail and leather to leather, and why only greens and blues? There’s many grey or white item with looks I like better than many blues. And that you could not 'mog the things you liked, was one of my biggest disappointments upon visiting the transmogrifier.
4. Yes!!! Only the new quest have to be understandable. Have yioou ever tried doing the Herbing Q in boralys without anything but reading: I literally says “Go out and use this” And I tried I think for half an hour going places, before I relized thet I was supposed to be in a specific place (looking at the Quest-helper-map ). Not to talk of Phin the Pearlhuter’s Quest: Mrglll, mrglllll, ba-ba!!
here is my view after Wotlk classic. to me the future is very very grim and negligent for classic franchise sadly. however we do not know after wotlk as they stated its the last.
). Not to talk of Phin the Pearlhuter’s Quest: Mrglll, mrglllll, ba-ba!!