… in 45 years lol, will you still be around??
According to Icy viens, it will take classic 45 years to catch up, will you still be here? 
How can it be 45 years, when WoW only launched 20 years ago and the CLassic expansions are launchged on a faster sceme?
I won’t be there. Nothing after Wrath is interesting … If they launch Era servers, with HC options, for TBC and Wrath, I’ll stay.
3 Likes
Classic wow is at 2012, done 7 years of progress in 5 years. Just to reach where retail is now at that rate would be by 2034, which would leave it behind with another 9 years and so on.
Wrath is a really bad expansion, very uninteresting. Mop, Legion & Cata were by far the best. But it’s very questionable that anything other than classic offers a significantly different experience from retail though.
This is purely a matter of taste.
Wrath was not that bad, but the Classic rehash was worse.
For me post-Catalysmic Azeroth is just meh - gamplay-wise that is. There’s fun moments, genuinely good ideas and great stories, wonderful zones and so on. I just can’t stand playing them with the soul-lacking, homogenized and overpowered characters from Cata onwards.
Also I do not like the devastation of the old zones.
But as to topic,
that would mean WW classic in 15 year from 2019 (2034), but their math is off, it’s not 5 years, it’s 6 … 2019 to 2025.
EDIT:
YES! That’s what I think too, gameplay is for me the same from Cata to BfA (where I quit), only gradually getting ever easier, less interesting and challenging, more end-game oriented and in short less fun.
1 Like
The gameplay in wotlk is closer to cata than classic. The world itself is also more similar to cata with teleport to dungeon, fly mounts etc. It’s only worse at gameplay, the only place it is be better than TBC/Classic. TBC is basically wotlk without teleporting to dungeons and worse spec balance.
There are multiple ways to consider the timeline. Wow came out late 2004 in the US, early 2005 in the EU. Classic wow released Q3 2019, Mop was Q3 2012, but came out a quarter earlier in 2025. If you are really bothered about the specifics just count the days instead.
This! So few people realize this. TBC is in my opinion basically Vanilla+ with better class balance, improved questing experience and flying. Wrath is first “retail” expansion. Yeah it has the (empty and abandoned) old world still there to solo level in, but Northrend is virtually indistinguishable from Cata. In fact what Cata old world revamp is, is turning Azeroth into Northrend, if you understand what I mean.
Yeah going into Classic I was firmly in the “Cata ruined everything” camp, 3 classic expansions and all that, but replaying it with adult eyes I realized it was actually Wrath that ruined it all, Cata was just a logical extension of Wrath.
The idea of putting azeroth in the bin started in classic with the pvp queuing system. It was just expanded upon in TBC and perfected in Wotlk/Cata with flying everywhere, teleport to dungeon/raids. What you get in real life from going down this slippery slope of putting convenience above all else is america’s obesity rate.
The best way to make any content meaningful is to adjust the reward / time investment ratio. This applies a lot to classic too, which was what lead to these degenerate systems being implemented as a bandaid fix to a much deeper issue.
Almost the same for me, but I was sure that MoP was what ruined everything, I remember kinda being fine with the new talent trees in Cata and at least with the leveling, was a shock when Wrath was booring the life out of me.
I care to disagree here. In Wrath we still had no forced specs (aka the old talent trees), we had to learn our spells, buy arrows and so on, professions and other choices still made a difference, questing was still not a well-oiled slide on laid tracks, quest “help” was not forced into your map, there was less “bling” around - meaning that quest log etc could still be disabled …
All that freedom of choice went out the window with Cata.
I agree that Classic Wrath was closer to Retail what with being on the last patch, account-wide things and other changes, but Wrath is still - for me at least - basically the WoW I fell in love with in 2006.
I was, and still am, in the “Cata ruined my game”-camp.
Disclaimer: My comparison is not modern Retail, but BfA (and 10 levels Island Expedition in 2022). I do guess that the points of significance for me has either grown worse or not changed significantly.
2 Likes
Can you list how many wotlk specs are viable without going through the entire talent tree? I am fairly certain it’s pretty much just illusion of choice by wrath, tbc too, classic actually does have some flexibility for mages, most don’t have any real choice, doesn’t help that priests are the only hybrid with a decent tree. The talent trees are also extremely deep in wotlk. Finishing a tree in classic leaves you with 65% of the spent talents to be used elsewhere. In wotlk that is down to 39%. Blizzard added the cata questhelper because of how prevalent the addon questhelper was. Today we have the same thing with questie, or even more extreme with the guides telling you which quests to pick.
Cata was an excellent expasnion in most regards, you shouldn’t view the build up of error and laziness from blizzard with taking care the root of the problems, which pretty much all started back in 2005. Dungeon Finder, Raid Finder, QuestHelper, Battleground queue all have their roots in vanilla.
1 Like
I can honestly say that I find all classes vialble and always play some mish-mash patchwork spec. … I won’t speak for Rogue and DKs, as I do not play either.
Maybe, but not in those regards that are highest-ranking omn my list. Which are fun, freedom of choice and a challenging levelling.
With an add-on I have the option to not download it, not so with the built in one. That’s why I really like addons!
These two I really like. I like tanking, I like helping friends and Guildies, I have limited time. When going to the Dungeon and back takes more time than doing the dungeon I decline politely and with a bad conscience. RDF helped me immensely. But it did not come with Cata.
I hate this one, as per above. I want to look at the map and see map and me, nothing more.
Totally indifferent, as I do not PvP - and if, only spontaneous WPvP - I like me a good fre for all somewhere in the world.
I am a PvE player, I love the levelling process, I have a goal of leveling one of each Race / Class combos to max without dying (not UD, DK & Rogue).
But as I am not going to lose my characters to Cata once again, I do not play Anniversary. I hope for Era servers for TBC and Wrath. Hopefully as unchanged as possible and with a HC solution - be it realms or the Soul of Iron buff.
Then no spec is viable without putting 51 points into it in wrath.
Freedom of choice is probably greater in cata than any expansion before it. At least when it comes to spec viability. Leveling is never challenging in wow, unless u do something like hardcore. That would be by far the hardest in classic.
You do realize you can remove features with addons, not just add them? You could just run an addon to hide/disable the quest helper features which 99% use, however I do agree there is a negative with them, which you seem unable to see.
Dungeon finder, raid finder, questhelper, battleground queues, easier leveling all derive from the idea that some content is a waste of time, traveling/the world itself is a hinderance and combined with very bad reward relative to time investment in their original states. If you want to advocate against questhelper, which I agree it’s terrible that it is de facto essential considering how many use them, you really ought to see the other problems that were solved with the same mentality and which all took away something essential to classic when they were added.
Your conveience in RDF & RF watering down the difficulty/time investment required to play dungeons & raids is just the same as quest helpers making all quests a map reading exercise.
1 Like
You can play wow to a reasonable success without assigning any talents at all. That doesn’t make such play “viable” in any colloquial sense. Hybrid spec is just deliberately gimping yourself for Roleplaying reasons. (Or some specialist farming and PvP shenanigans) Which is perfectly fine, but very niche. You can play Warrior with a gray weapon and autoattacks only, but why would you?
I can’t think of any popular spec that doesn’t use bottom talent of a tree except DK Blood tanking, but that just shows how useless dancing weapon is in 3.4, nothing else.
Hmm, then I have been playing WoW wrongly for all of my time in Wrath, both times around, and in Cata 2012. I found great freedom in the old trees and the Cata system chafing and binding me.
This is what I do - and have done ever since Cata ruined the gameplay for me in 2012.
… and this is what we did doing the IronMan challenge after Cata made every leveling too easy.
I have tried a heap of addons - to no avail - to try to hide FP markers and the small up&down triagles in the mini-map ever since the arrived (with 1.14 I think) - It is hard, none of them really does the job without breaking something else. The only functioning “roll back to how Classic UI worked” I have ever found is one to remove the big, red open all mail button. Note, I do not play Retail or MoP. Only Hardcore Era.
I do not understand what you mean here - if you mean a negative effect to the game with inbuilt Questie or as an addon, I see it all the time, players just picking up Q, speeding after the arrow, not thinking, not interacting … not playing!
If you think a negative effect to hiding helps or to the addons proper please enlighten me.
I agree as to Quest helper, mouse overs, more information in your map, maybe even flying - when not at max level. but I do not agree that:
I do not see RDF and Questie on a line at all.
Questie quasi plays the game for you. Just follow the arrow and slay what it tells you to.
RDF - or rather the TP to dungeons and back (I could readily do without the group making aspect and even better without the bribes) I see like this:
- Dungeons are instances. They are a place outside time and space already. You go through that shimmering portal and is somewhere else
- I could do the same - or almost the same - with a summon and a HS, things already in-game - Only the HS does not always bring me back to where I was before entering that shimmering portal.
- It won’t, or only marginally increase my levelling speed, and hugely increase my availability to my Guild and other groups within the game.
- It would not hurt the fantasy feeling for me if that shimmering portal was created in front of me, instead of being tucked away in some random corner of the world - as long as I have travelled there by foot at least once. You could even make a Quest line, and hand out “Dungeon Portal Stone” for any dungeon. I’d be happy to spend bag space for at least some of those.
I think travelling is nice, I love it, I go question on foot, I go from place to place on foot, but some dungeons are placed awkwardly compared to where I’d be questing. The lack of TP does not hurt in-game me, it hurts my conscience (or whatever it’s called - English is not my native language) and makes me feel bad over always saying no. It hurts mostly my Guild and others.
i’m here until wrath…then it’s back to the new vanilla every time…so no i’ll never be around for retail classic XD
3 Likes
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.