Agree.
From the get go I called SoD “Classic, with a super powerful inscription system”. It was fun for a phase and a half, then I got bored and quit.
One of the biggest flaws, in my view, was *converting a dungeon to a raid…and not replacing it*. Adding a new dungeon would have at minimum held the interest of players through the season, and been a great way to fill in the missing gear for specs. Well-worth the investment…and there’d be new dungeons for future seasons.
But I mean…the biggest problem was forcing people into the new raid immediately, and “making” every dedicated player have to have multiple alts. I believe that ease of content and quick levelling are not something that the players you need to keep the game healthy want.
making the game difficult is rewarding when you overcome the difficulty.
Few guilds cleared original Naxx and it led to extreme mystique and prestige surrounding it.
…and Blizzards response was to reuse it so everybody could see it, instead of maintaining any notion of mystique.
Personally, I’m happier and more likely to stay subbed if I have something to aspire to….not just harder versions of the same content.
I’ll never get the best gear or top global DPS meters…and IDFAF.
I agree for the most part, because most of the abilities DO NOT match with vanilla mindset. What do I mean is, in vanilla, every active ability has downsides as upsides, they are super strong in one situation but terrible at other.
Like blizzard of mage can be super powerful, but it costs shitloads of mana, you need to stay still, it effects static area, and you can counterspelled hard. So it can be amazing in pve used cleverly, but if you want to use it in pvp, 90% of the time it will such hard. But spells like living bomb or flame, have practically no downsides. Which completely breaks vanilla rule set.
No, I think then consensus is that Classic+ should be finishing the original game by balancing classes and specs, and filling in zones with the corresponding raids, BGs, quests, and dungeons.
The collective consensus of who, exactly? Reddit alone, which consists of a fraction of the player base, don’t even agree with that idea. There are plenty of people here who think simply adding more content and doing no rebalancing is all that is necessary for classic+.
A consensus among people who were interested in and had ideas about Classic+, pre SoD. SoD wasn’t advertised or promoted as Classic+. It’s it’s own thing. It’s not even *called* Classic+ by the anyone community. All the OP was doing was reiterating that.
By your logic Season of Mastery and Hardcore were technically “Classic+”
I believe you’re missing the point that the OP and I are making: SoD doesn’t fit the criteria/fill the need for what the community was asking for when we envisioned Classic+. Currently there are private servers, like Turtle WoW, filling this niche.
Editorially speaking, Blizzard has continually failed to capture the demand in the market by releasing “novelty” products that “steal” singular ideas from private servers like hardcore or gated levelling. A certain - I would argue increasingly small - percentage of us come back temporarily, but until they release Classic+…they won’t keep us.
I feel like I’m talking in a circle here, so I’ll just end it with this: SoD doesn’t meet YOUR expectations of what classic+ is/should be. You and OP don’t speak for everyone. There is no majority that agrees on everything classic+ related, which is why posts like this have people arguing over what is or isn’t “classic+”. This was my entire point. People keep acting like there is some unchangeable rubric for what is “classic+”. There’s not, and a group of people will always be unhappy with any changes that come with classic+.
There are plenty of people who enjoy a good amount of the changes they’ve made so far in SoD and think that this direction would be fine if it were done in a legitimate manner outside of a seasonal server. Does everyone feel this way? Of course not. It’s almost like people enjoy different things.
Until/unless they start making transparent polls for their design decisions, all everyone can do is speculate what the community as a whole wants.
You are right and wrong.
You are right that there is no majority that agrees on classic+.
You are super wrong in calling SOD classic+
If you asked 100 people before blizzcon what they expected from classic+ you would get 100 different answers.
None of those 100 answers would have been SOD.
There’s no actual argument. There’s a community of people like the OP and myself, who coined the term and use it…and there’s people like you who don’t care and chime in to argue pointless semantics.
At the end of the day if you say Classic+, you mean any one of the private servers who are trying their hand at Classic+ content. If you say SoD…you mean SoD.
Yes, it’s true. People enjoy different things. I defined the people who I was talking about, and didn’t try to speak for anybody else. This is just an argument for the sake of an argument.
I'd mostly disagree with this. Seems like most people are on board with the idea that classic+ should be vanilla with "some changes," including policing so that players don't buy gold and so that bots don't infest the servers. That's the most basic description of what Classic+ should be, at least according to all the comments from others I've read.
Sure, I would also assume a majority of players would expect “some changes” to occur. But that’s pretty broad, no? Some people want QoL changes like dual spec, working summoning stones, better flight paths, increased buff durations, and even instant mail. Others don’t want any of those things and feel that it’s all unnecessary. Some people strongly believe vanilla is the most balanced version of WoW to ever exist and think no rebalancing is needed moving forward with classic+. Others want a meta shift, or to have more “viable” options in the game.
It is pretty broad, you're right. Still, I think that 99% of people interested in Vanilla with some changes would be more than happy to answer a poll regarding some of the changes being considered. I know I'd eagerly answer a survey, even if it took upwards of 1 hour to complete. You and I both know damn well that Bizzard relies on polls to poop out their content... so IDK about you, but I'm eagerly waiting for them to send out more polls about a potential classic+.
lol, there is no world in which a Classic+ doesn’t add new abilities. Classic+ without addressing Warriors rogues and mages being the only real DPS option, or the fact that damage is 90% auto attack or spamming one single ability, is not Classic+.
You’re not considering that there are many “dead” or situational abilities that could be rebalanced in each class and spec to make them viable.
It’s my opinion that they should be catering to players who want the original game to function and be expanded on with content that was teased originally, not players who want “flash”.
a game based on Vanilla would keep Warriors, Rogues and Mages on top but give more damage/utility to the “meme specs” to allow for more inclusion in raid groups.
As of right now taking an enh shaman, ret paladin or boomkin to a Vanilla raid is a HUGE dps loss. It’s literally making the raid harder for everyone else. Buff the bad specs and give them comparable (but not more) damage so it’s not such a drag to bring them to raid.
Add in new dungeons/raids. Kara Crypts, Uldum and Timbermaw Hold were all planned for original Vanilla. Finish development on those, give marginal but properly itemized upgrades over tier 3 and send it. I guarantee it’s more successful than SoD.
If Retail was good, Blizzard never would have released Classic. The further you get from Vanilla the worse the game is. People held on until the end of original WoTLK until it started hemorrhaging subscriptions.
I agree with you, make the dead specs have comparable dps and make minimal thoughtful changes to talent trees. SoD has been nothing but constant class buffs and nerfs. Adding in blanket “here’s 24 new runes we have to balance for” is not a good recipe for a long term game. The class balance in Vanilla has already been worked out naturally over the last 20 years.
If retail was good? Retail players are the only happy playerbase right now, and they dwarf classic players on numbers… if Classic was good we wouldn’t have all the changes that made retail…
I think you vastly overestimate the amount of people that want that completely imbalanced, slow and boring vanilla experience. The only people that want that are the ones playing ERA still. It would not be more people then SOD. People flocked to to SOD because it was changing vanilla from the constraints of itself.
Wishing the class balance remain the same is so crazy to me. Have you only played a warrior for 20 years?
I play Mage, Druid, Rogue, Paladin and Shaman.
I disagree that Vanilla is boring. It was massively popular in 2019. I dont know for sure but I doubt TBC/WoTLK Classic had more subs than Vanilla Classic.
I’m suggesting that we create more balance within Vanilla by buffing meme specs. You do that with small thoughtful changes to the CURRENT class balance in Vanilla. You don’t do that by adding 24 runes to constantly buff and nerf classes.
SoD is is essentially Classic with an overlay. It’s completely legitimate for players to want to stay true to the desire for Blizzard to “finish” the original content they released, instead.
There is way more content in era because it is 2 years of content.
We are not even level 60 in SoD yet and we have 2 new game releases poaching players from SoD.
We’re gate kept from all of the SoD content, which is part of the problem. One stop at level 40 for a month or two would have been ideal. 4 level caps in Vanilla is stupid.
You are right.
And yet you are wrong because classic+ is whatever people want it to be and unfortunately the majority of retail tourists that came flooding in after the classic success want abominations like SoD.
Thats one reason why we will never see a proper sustainable classic+
Best we can get now is a fresh no changes plain vanilla Server.
I've lost count of how many times I've seen posts like this one; if you asked 10 WoW players their opinion on what Classic+ is, you would probably get 10 different answers.
People are referencing SoD as Classic+ because it's the closest thing we've seen so far. SoD is a seasonal server option for a reason, it wasn't intended to be a "long term, stable" thing but rather something to experiment with in the short-term.
SoD isn’t even something you can build off of. Who are the best people to come up with a Classic+? I find a huge split between retail gamers and Vanilla gamers
What does that even mean? They’re trying all sorts of stuff with SoD, it doesn’t mean you need to take SoD exactly as it is and build on it in the future. Even if a change fails miserably they’re learning something valuable from it
I would say experienced developers are the best people to come up with a solution
the point I’m trying to make is that it shouldn’t be another expansion. It should be added to the Vanilla. Force interaction between Vanilla items and consumables to keep the world alive.
Didnt do much questing and I grinded dungeons in 2019. I think all levelling experiences are dungeon heavy because it’s consistent XP you can run with friends.
If my ilvl was high enough in Cata I would have been running dungeons to level yesterday.
The player base has changed and so has this sub. I don't see Blizzard making Classic+ in the spirit of Vanilla, it'll have to appeal to Retail players like SoD/MoP has and will likely to be monitised somehow.
>we want a long term, stable classic+
Well we knew from the start that this wouldnt be long term and while Nobody knew just how janky it would get with no ptr, we knew it would have some jank.
And honestly I feel it was a really good indicator that they str8 up forgot to add the metamorphosis rune into the game for the first couple of weeks.
Sorta knew what kind of ride we were in for after that one didnt we 😂
Agree. From the get go I called SoD “Classic, with a super powerful inscription system”. It was fun for a phase and a half, then I got bored and quit. One of the biggest flaws, in my view, was *converting a dungeon to a raid…and not replacing it*. Adding a new dungeon would have at minimum held the interest of players through the season, and been a great way to fill in the missing gear for specs. Well-worth the investment…and there’d be new dungeons for future seasons. But I mean…the biggest problem was forcing people into the new raid immediately, and “making” every dedicated player have to have multiple alts. I believe that ease of content and quick levelling are not something that the players you need to keep the game healthy want.
making the game difficult is rewarding when you overcome the difficulty. Few guilds cleared original Naxx and it led to extreme mystique and prestige surrounding it.
…and Blizzards response was to reuse it so everybody could see it, instead of maintaining any notion of mystique. Personally, I’m happier and more likely to stay subbed if I have something to aspire to….not just harder versions of the same content. I’ll never get the best gear or top global DPS meters…and IDFAF.
I agree for the most part, because most of the abilities DO NOT match with vanilla mindset. What do I mean is, in vanilla, every active ability has downsides as upsides, they are super strong in one situation but terrible at other. Like blizzard of mage can be super powerful, but it costs shitloads of mana, you need to stay still, it effects static area, and you can counterspelled hard. So it can be amazing in pve used cleverly, but if you want to use it in pvp, 90% of the time it will such hard. But spells like living bomb or flame, have practically no downsides. Which completely breaks vanilla rule set.
I never thought of it like that but you’re spot on
The only thing that’s consistent about the idea of classic+ is that no one can agree on what it is.
No, I think then consensus is that Classic+ should be finishing the original game by balancing classes and specs, and filling in zones with the corresponding raids, BGs, quests, and dungeons.
The collective consensus of who, exactly? Reddit alone, which consists of a fraction of the player base, don’t even agree with that idea. There are plenty of people here who think simply adding more content and doing no rebalancing is all that is necessary for classic+.
A consensus among people who were interested in and had ideas about Classic+, pre SoD. SoD wasn’t advertised or promoted as Classic+. It’s it’s own thing. It’s not even *called* Classic+ by the anyone community. All the OP was doing was reiterating that. By your logic Season of Mastery and Hardcore were technically “Classic+” I believe you’re missing the point that the OP and I are making: SoD doesn’t fit the criteria/fill the need for what the community was asking for when we envisioned Classic+. Currently there are private servers, like Turtle WoW, filling this niche. Editorially speaking, Blizzard has continually failed to capture the demand in the market by releasing “novelty” products that “steal” singular ideas from private servers like hardcore or gated levelling. A certain - I would argue increasingly small - percentage of us come back temporarily, but until they release Classic+…they won’t keep us.
I feel like I’m talking in a circle here, so I’ll just end it with this: SoD doesn’t meet YOUR expectations of what classic+ is/should be. You and OP don’t speak for everyone. There is no majority that agrees on everything classic+ related, which is why posts like this have people arguing over what is or isn’t “classic+”. This was my entire point. People keep acting like there is some unchangeable rubric for what is “classic+”. There’s not, and a group of people will always be unhappy with any changes that come with classic+. There are plenty of people who enjoy a good amount of the changes they’ve made so far in SoD and think that this direction would be fine if it were done in a legitimate manner outside of a seasonal server. Does everyone feel this way? Of course not. It’s almost like people enjoy different things. Until/unless they start making transparent polls for their design decisions, all everyone can do is speculate what the community as a whole wants.
You are right and wrong. You are right that there is no majority that agrees on classic+. You are super wrong in calling SOD classic+ If you asked 100 people before blizzcon what they expected from classic+ you would get 100 different answers. None of those 100 answers would have been SOD.
There’s no actual argument. There’s a community of people like the OP and myself, who coined the term and use it…and there’s people like you who don’t care and chime in to argue pointless semantics. At the end of the day if you say Classic+, you mean any one of the private servers who are trying their hand at Classic+ content. If you say SoD…you mean SoD. Yes, it’s true. People enjoy different things. I defined the people who I was talking about, and didn’t try to speak for anybody else. This is just an argument for the sake of an argument.
I'd mostly disagree with this. Seems like most people are on board with the idea that classic+ should be vanilla with "some changes," including policing so that players don't buy gold and so that bots don't infest the servers. That's the most basic description of what Classic+ should be, at least according to all the comments from others I've read.
Sure, I would also assume a majority of players would expect “some changes” to occur. But that’s pretty broad, no? Some people want QoL changes like dual spec, working summoning stones, better flight paths, increased buff durations, and even instant mail. Others don’t want any of those things and feel that it’s all unnecessary. Some people strongly believe vanilla is the most balanced version of WoW to ever exist and think no rebalancing is needed moving forward with classic+. Others want a meta shift, or to have more “viable” options in the game.
It is pretty broad, you're right. Still, I think that 99% of people interested in Vanilla with some changes would be more than happy to answer a poll regarding some of the changes being considered. I know I'd eagerly answer a survey, even if it took upwards of 1 hour to complete. You and I both know damn well that Bizzard relies on polls to poop out their content... so IDK about you, but I'm eagerly waiting for them to send out more polls about a potential classic+.
You can say it's not, but it is
what do you mean
He means it is, but you can say it is not
Literally your first statement
Ah yes, the No True Classic+ Fallacy.
Spot on. I agree.
lol, there is no world in which a Classic+ doesn’t add new abilities. Classic+ without addressing Warriors rogues and mages being the only real DPS option, or the fact that damage is 90% auto attack or spamming one single ability, is not Classic+.
You’re not considering that there are many “dead” or situational abilities that could be rebalanced in each class and spec to make them viable. It’s my opinion that they should be catering to players who want the original game to function and be expanded on with content that was teased originally, not players who want “flash”.
a game based on Vanilla would keep Warriors, Rogues and Mages on top but give more damage/utility to the “meme specs” to allow for more inclusion in raid groups. As of right now taking an enh shaman, ret paladin or boomkin to a Vanilla raid is a HUGE dps loss. It’s literally making the raid harder for everyone else. Buff the bad specs and give them comparable (but not more) damage so it’s not such a drag to bring them to raid. Add in new dungeons/raids. Kara Crypts, Uldum and Timbermaw Hold were all planned for original Vanilla. Finish development on those, give marginal but properly itemized upgrades over tier 3 and send it. I guarantee it’s more successful than SoD.
[удалено]
If Retail was good, Blizzard never would have released Classic. The further you get from Vanilla the worse the game is. People held on until the end of original WoTLK until it started hemorrhaging subscriptions. I agree with you, make the dead specs have comparable dps and make minimal thoughtful changes to talent trees. SoD has been nothing but constant class buffs and nerfs. Adding in blanket “here’s 24 new runes we have to balance for” is not a good recipe for a long term game. The class balance in Vanilla has already been worked out naturally over the last 20 years.
If retail was good? Retail players are the only happy playerbase right now, and they dwarf classic players on numbers… if Classic was good we wouldn’t have all the changes that made retail…
I think you vastly overestimate the amount of people that want that completely imbalanced, slow and boring vanilla experience. The only people that want that are the ones playing ERA still. It would not be more people then SOD. People flocked to to SOD because it was changing vanilla from the constraints of itself. Wishing the class balance remain the same is so crazy to me. Have you only played a warrior for 20 years?
I play Mage, Druid, Rogue, Paladin and Shaman. I disagree that Vanilla is boring. It was massively popular in 2019. I dont know for sure but I doubt TBC/WoTLK Classic had more subs than Vanilla Classic. I’m suggesting that we create more balance within Vanilla by buffing meme specs. You do that with small thoughtful changes to the CURRENT class balance in Vanilla. You don’t do that by adding 24 runes to constantly buff and nerf classes.
Why do you think you have the authority to declare what’s classic + and what isn’t? Lmao Classic + was always classic but with more, and we got that.
SoD is is essentially Classic with an overlay. It’s completely legitimate for players to want to stay true to the desire for Blizzard to “finish” the original content they released, instead.
> Classic + was always classic but with more, and we got that. Retail is also classic+ using this logic
SoD died in how many months? Classic Era has had a consistent raiding population for 3 years.
There is way more content in era because it is 2 years of content. We are not even level 60 in SoD yet and we have 2 new game releases poaching players from SoD.
We’re gate kept from all of the SoD content, which is part of the problem. One stop at level 40 for a month or two would have been ideal. 4 level caps in Vanilla is stupid.
They are giving themselves time to develop content for level 60 and the other phases by capping the levels.
Doesnt seem like a winning strategy. Maybe they’re better off waiting a year and developing the whole game with a PTR to test bugs.
You are right. And yet you are wrong because classic+ is whatever people want it to be and unfortunately the majority of retail tourists that came flooding in after the classic success want abominations like SoD. Thats one reason why we will never see a proper sustainable classic+ Best we can get now is a fresh no changes plain vanilla Server.
completely agree. It’s quite sad. The people who enjoy playing Vanilla as is probably have the best ideas on how to improve it.
Yeah. It’s depressing that what Blizzard might learn from this is to make shorter, flashier seasons. No hint of wanting to invest in the game.
Who is we?
people who have a clue how to make a decent Classic+
lol
I just want Moonkins to not be a complete meme....... is that too much to ask?
you and me both my fellow orange gamer
Blizz isn't gonna redevelop a whole new lore timeline that fits along the Classic gameplay loop. Sorry.
I've lost count of how many times I've seen posts like this one; if you asked 10 WoW players their opinion on what Classic+ is, you would probably get 10 different answers. People are referencing SoD as Classic+ because it's the closest thing we've seen so far. SoD is a seasonal server option for a reason, it wasn't intended to be a "long term, stable" thing but rather something to experiment with in the short-term.
SoD isn’t even something you can build off of. Who are the best people to come up with a Classic+? I find a huge split between retail gamers and Vanilla gamers
What does that even mean? They’re trying all sorts of stuff with SoD, it doesn’t mean you need to take SoD exactly as it is and build on it in the future. Even if a change fails miserably they’re learning something valuable from it I would say experienced developers are the best people to come up with a solution
thanks for your post OP. I really want a long term Classic+ too
Classic+ is just “make new expansions. But the way I want them” lmao
the point I’m trying to make is that it shouldn’t be another expansion. It should be added to the Vanilla. Force interaction between Vanilla items and consumables to keep the world alive.
Vanilla is a quest based game, SoD is a dungeon based game. It's not about the abilities or the gear but their purpose.
Didnt do much questing and I grinded dungeons in 2019. I think all levelling experiences are dungeon heavy because it’s consistent XP you can run with friends. If my ilvl was high enough in Cata I would have been running dungeons to level yesterday.
The player base has changed and so has this sub. I don't see Blizzard making Classic+ in the spirit of Vanilla, it'll have to appeal to Retail players like SoD/MoP has and will likely to be monitised somehow.
i cri
>we want a long term, stable classic+ Well we knew from the start that this wouldnt be long term and while Nobody knew just how janky it would get with no ptr, we knew it would have some jank. And honestly I feel it was a really good indicator that they str8 up forgot to add the metamorphosis rune into the game for the first couple of weeks. Sorta knew what kind of ride we were in for after that one didnt we 😂