World of Warcraft Classic?

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com

Dyrnwyn

Legendary Pubber
Joined
Nov 24, 2018
Messages
855
Reaction score
2,414
Is anyone here planning on playing this when it is released? I have some lapsed WOW player friends who are excited for getting back into it, but I'm not sure about it yet myself. I didn't start playing WOW until around the Pandaria expansion, and did a lot of soloing with some guild stuff later on, but by then most of the people I knew offline who had played had moved on to other games. It seems very limited to me from the POV of someone whose first experience was further down the line, but maybe I would enjoy it.
 
Is anyone here planning on playing this when it is released? I have some lapsed WOW player friends who are excited for getting back into it, but I'm not sure about it yet myself. I didn't start playing WOW until around the Pandaria expansion, and did a lot of soloing with some guild stuff later on, but by then most of the people I knew offline who had played had moved on to other games. It seems very limited to me from the POV of someone whose first experience was further down the line, but maybe I would enjoy it.
I think I last played WoW in 2004. Classic is all I know.
 
First tried my hand at WoW circa Burning Crusade (2006?), with a trial account, but I was a resident back then and really had no time for the game. I only got to subscribe during Cataclysm (2011), now married (wife tagged along) and we played into Pandaria until 2016.

Mrs. The Butcher played the hell out of WC3 and got me hooked into the utterly ridiculous but fun canon of the franchise.

I really think WotLK was the height of the game and I’d be happier if we had a “legacy server” parked there, but damn, I’ll take Classic. To run Molten Core, Onyxia’s Lair and other classic dungeons... I kind of hope they redo the opening of Ahn’Qiraj and other events.
 
I'm going to play Classic, no doubt. Don't really know for how long, but I guess I'll find out. I hope it's something I can really get back into; depends on whether or not the social feeling can be recreated.
I'm going to miss the updated graphics and the transmog tool, though. Oh, well.
 
Back in 2006 (I think) I was regaled with Vanilla WoW stories from one of my best buds, who would give me updates about how he and his guild we’re prepping for some end raid and he was working on his legendary weapon. It sounded really cool, but I was heavily invested in City of Heroes at the time to give any more time to an mmo.

But the hype (and my buddy’s stories) finally got to me and at the end of ‘06 I broke down and bought the game. I was just starting out, and it was fantastic. Of course, a few months later I was up around the end level (I think I was about 55-ish) and The Burning Crusade hit. My buddy and our guild rushed to the Outlands to hit the new content while I was finishing up stuff on Azeroth. But one of the things I missed out on was the endgame vanilla content. Everyone said it was a slog fest and not to worry about it, so I joined my guild mates in the Outlands.

Anyway, and sorry for the long-windedness of this reply, but I am coming back. There’s some stuff I missed in vanilla WoW that I’d like to experience. There’s another issue, though. I’ve been back and it’s just...not the WoW I know and love. I know it has to evolve and creat new content. But damn. I miss the community of players trying to work together to accomplish things.

I miss a lot of the things that they got rid of to rush people out to the new content...stuff they sacrificed to make the low level content breeze by. Skill trees, hunters not getting pets until level 10, weapon skills, the relevancy of professions, the earn and saving and scraping of my money to get my riding skill and my mount...all of which are things that I miss. Some of you guys probably think I’m nuts. To me, these things are what made the game a unique and fun experience to me. It felt like a lot of my choices mattered.

Less than a week. I’m excited and ready to play!
 
I miss a lot of the things that they got rid of to rush people out to the new content...stuff they sacrificed to make the low level content breeze by. Skill trees, hunters not getting pets until level 10, weapon skills, the relevancy of professions, the earn and saving and scraping of my money to get my riding skill and my mount...all of which are things that I miss. Some of you guys probably think I’m nuts. To me, these things are what made the game a unique and fun experience to me. It felt like a lot of my choices mattered.

It was so much fun to level weapon skills. I remember running Ragefire Chasm as an Orc Warrior and getting a sword, and realizing I had no sword skill, and having to journey to Undercity to see the Horde sword trainer, buying the skill and then going out into Tirisfal Glades to grind it up.

And getting your first pet as a Hunter was fun too. When I played a Troll Hunter and went back to the Echo Isles to get a tiger.

Also question for totems as a Shaman, for a steed as a Warlock, and IIRC for animal forms as a Druid.

The one reason I’m not more stoked is that I‘m also stoked for Borderlands 3. God knows how the wife and I are going to decide which we’ll be playing.
 
WoW produced one of my most memorable video game moments. I was a spellcaster with a spell that allowed me to temporarily take control of a monster. We had just walked into a dungeon and I controlled some monster to run off the edge of a cliff.
Thinking the encounter was over we planned how we would attack and I believe someone grabbed food or took a bathroom break.

As we're all standing there we look down the ramp in the dungeon to see pretty much the entire dungeon worth of monsters Rushing up to us. Turns out the original control monster had called to the bottom of the dungeon bit didn't die. The AI told him to turn aggressive and run back to fight us. Along his path back anytime he wandered past a monster it too would turn aggressive and follow him to attack whoever caused the mess.
We were all killed gloriously in a massive horde of monsters. Large amounts of time we consumed by the group trying to regain the loot from our corpses. From then on any failure was referred as "Bunching things up".
 
Every MMO follows the same pattern: eventually the world, landscape, whatever you want to call it, game is ruined for the sake of the endgame raiding. It becomes ridiculously easy and fast to solo, and if you duo or group to quest, it becomes truly, facerollingly dull. In addition, the games get so big and spread out, with everyone focused on endgame grinding for faction, gear and daily quests, the rest of the game is an empty amusement park.

Thus, some kind of Classic server eventually pops up.

I’d consider going back to WoW, it was crazy fun before everything became grinding for raid prep.
 
WoW produced one of my most memorable video game moments. I was a spellcaster with a spell that allowed me to temporarily take control of a monster. We had just walked into a dungeon and I controlled some monster to run off the edge of a cliff.
Thinking the encounter was over we planned how we would attack and I believe someone grabbed food or took a bathroom break.

As we're all standing there we look down the ramp in the dungeon to see pretty much the entire dungeon worth of monsters Rushing up to us. Turns out the original control monster had called to the bottom of the dungeon bit didn't die. The AI told him to turn aggressive and run back to fight us. Along his path back anytime he wandered past a monster it too would turn aggressive and follow him to attack whoever caused the mess.
We were all killed gloriously in a massive horde of monsters. Large amounts of time we consumed by the group trying to regain the loot from our corpses. From then on any failure was referred as "Bunching things up".
Heh, that reminds me of EverQuest. You could get epic trains in Mistmoore and Blackburrow. The zone-wide running brawls that left dead everywhere in Lower Guk when people’s pulls got all mixed up. God it was so much fun.
 
Every MMO follows the same pattern: eventually the world, landscape, whatever you want to call it, game is ruined for the sake of the endgame raiding. It becomes ridiculously easy and fast to solo, and if you duo or group to quest, it becomes truly, facerollingly dull. In addition, the games get so big and spread out, with everyone focused on endgame grinding for faction, gear and daily quests, the rest of the game is an empty amusement park.

Thus, some kind of Classic server eventually pops up.

I’d consider going back to WoW, it was crazy fun before everything became grinding for raid prep.

Very true. Since WoW has “ruined” the world - over and over - for the ever-refreshing font of new endgame raiding, I hope we don’t see this as much on the Classic server. I know they’ll progress the server, but how far really is the question. Since we have the always progressing normal servers, my hope is they don’t progress the Classic servers that much (or very slowly, at least). I’ll selfishly admit that I hope it stays at 1.12. :grin:

WoW was pretty great in Vanilla, at least in my opinion, for the little bit I played in it. TBC was good, too. I thought the game was decent (though declining, at least for me) through WotLK. It wasn’t until Cataclysm that I realized the game wasn’t as fun for me as it had been at the start. Maybe I was the frog in the slowly boiling pot, or maybe nostalgia kicked in, I don’t know.

The only thing I do know is that I’m excited to play Classic. Weapons skills (and race-specific priest spells!) FTW!
 
First I’ve heard of it! Do tell!


Priests got something unique at levels 10 and 20, though human and dwarf shared their racial spells. I think they were removed in WotLK but don't hold me to that.
 
I did hate hate hate walking everywhere in WoW. God that was balls.
 

Priests got something unique at levels 10 and 20, though human and dwarf shared their racial spells. I think they were removed in WotLK but don't hold me to that.

What jay said! :grin:

Check this out for more detail:
Priest racial spells

Damn, son, makes me want to go for the Undead Shadow Priest I’ve always wanted to play. Probably not a great option for PvE, though (which is why my original PC ended up being an Undead Warlock).

What are y’all playing with?

And do we have spell lists and talent calculator up somewhere?
 
Damn, son, makes me want to go for the Undead Shadow Priest I’ve always wanted to play. Probably not a great option for PvE, though (which is why my original PC ended up being an Undead Warlock).

I remember them being really good for PvE but they take some time to get going. Basically once you unlock Mind Flay in the talent tree you're amazing.

Here's a talent calculator: https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/priest
And here's a guide to the Shadow Priest: https://classic.wowhead.com/guides/shadow-priest-dps-classic-wow
 
I'm in a progression Raiding Guild now. Been active since WoW Alpha.

Not doing Classic. I've done classic and everything else in Wow - TO DEATH. Zero interest. I only Raid in WoW now because it's the only challenging thing to do and my history with my guild.

But I plan on leaving all of it behind when Pantheon drops. That's the "old school" I want. WoW was never "old school" to me. Even when it was brand new.
 
I was excited about WoW Classic's arrival... then City of Heroes came back and I stopped paying attention, because I always loved City of Heroes best.
That said, I will play WoW classic. I started WoW before the expansions and had a lot of fun with it... and mostly hated the changes as they came. All the city hubs would empty out when the next area opened up... so it only felt like alive in the endgame spaces.
I did have the most fun during the Liche King era, but that's because I was in a solid guild at that time.

Walking around is grueling, but when my Warlock finally got his demon mount in depths of Dire Maul it was fucking epic! Those quests could never be matched by just buying the thing outright.
 
I tried WoW back in the day (I think around the second expansion...) it was alright. So I take their releasing the old game huh? Neat.

What really got me and my group hooked for one summer was the WoW tabletop RPG now that was an awesome game setting. It really sold us on how fun gaming the dnd 3rd system was and the campaign setting was sooo good. A world fill only with awesome heroes, no puny npcs to get in the way only quest givers and vendors. It was so beautifully Meta about in how it contextualize previous settings of the game. seriously that book sold us on the promise that Pathfinder held. Too bad its long out print and not on drivethru. Just writing about those amazing memories makes me want to start up a game.
 
What really got me and my group hooked for one summer was the WoW tabletop RPG now that was an awesome game setting.
I've always thought that sounded fun... despite being D20. Probably best played with lapsed fans of the MMO, so there'd be that shared mindspace of visuals and lore.
 
I've always thought that sounded fun... despite being D20. Probably best played with lapsed fans of the MMO, so there'd be that shared mindspace of visuals and lore.

C’mon, why crack on the ol’ d20?!? Hasn’t it suffered enough? :grin:

I had lots of fun with the d20 system. Of course I wasn’t all that concerned with this class being more powerful than that class and thankfully, my players weren’t either. I’m not saying there weren’t problems, just that they never became a big deal at our table. Some people played numbers, some people built characters based on a concept, and they all had a pretty good time.

The d20 Warcraft stuff was actually pretty good. I don’t know where the market sits for it now, but at one point some of them were rather expensive. I think it’d be interesting to run a “classic” campaign to coincide with Classic WoW (and the fact that the game line stops somewhere around TBC, if I recall correctly).
 
I've always thought that sounded fun... despite being D20. Probably best played with lapsed fans of the MMO, so there'd be that shared mindspace of visuals and lore.
It's a pretty fun game, and my wife's gateway into TTRPGs. It suffers the same drawbacks as any other D20 game, and its most innovative feature, the Tinker's ability to craft machines to the wishes of the player, was overly limited because these machines were pretty much Tinker-only, and wealth was too tied to experience progression. Nevertheless, it was this class specifically that inspired me to include a Device skill in Talespinner; a skill that allows the players to build any machine that can reasonably exist within the setting's technological level. If you play any 3(.5)-ish system with technology, I suggest giving World of Warcraft's Tinker class a good look-over; I sincerely believe it's much superior to the standard Artificer classes in delivering an inventor-themed character.

Edit: The class itself can be found here (since the book is out of print) : https://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Publication:World_of_Warcraft:_The_Role_Playing_Game/Tinker_Class
However, this isn't worth much without the crafting feats and, more importantly, the crafting mechanics for technological items.
 
I played the Classic Beta during last BlizzCon... for about 20 minutes before thinking, "Oh, right, *that's* why they changed that, because it's annoying as hell." Has zero appeal to me.

Otoh, every other WoW player I know is super stoked, so different strokes and all.
 
I played the Classic Beta during last BlizzCon... for about 20 minutes before thinking, "Oh, right, *that's* why they changed that, because it's annoying as hell." Has zero appeal to me.
I completely understand, as someone who is stoked for Vanilla. Thing is: Many of the inconvenient things created community. Having to ask for or look up information, having to find groups for difficult quests, having to actually walk to the dungeon, not respawning at the start of the dungeon upon death... Those things were inconvenient, but they required patience, understanding and lenience towards one another. The fact that you know many names from having played with them, having had experiences with them, and that they, in turn, know you, may send you messages asking for a dungeon because you were good company, a good gamer, or both... That's what the WoW community seems to be looking for in Classic.
 
Having to actually walk to the dungeon, not respawning at the start of the dungeon upon death...
I loved the whole pre-amble of having to get a group together and get to the dungeon... sometimes travelling in a group to avoid the scary stuff around it. Hated it when they let you just zap there... and worse when it was cross server.
Those things were inconvenient, but they required patience, understanding and lenience towards one another. The fact that you know many names from having played with them, having had experiences with them, and that they, in turn, know you, may send you messages asking for a dungeon because you were good company, a good gamer, or both...
Also, before they made dungeon PUGs cross server, the bad apples got named and shamed. It wasn't unusual to see someone trying to get in on a dungeon run but refused because people on it had seen them pitch a fit earlier that week.
WoW always seemed to attract more assholes than City of Heroes, but I always thought that was partially because of how loot worked. Having a reputation on the server at least kept that partially in check.
 
I played the Classic Beta during last BlizzCon... for about 20 minutes before thinking, "Oh, right, *that's* why they changed that, because it's annoying as hell." Has zero appeal to me.

Otoh, every other WoW player I know is super stoked, so different strokes and all.

You said it, sir - different strokes. I was the guy who would come back after a break and was like, “they changed [insert game aspect here]? That’s annoying as hell!” But yeah, I know some people are over some of the more...tedious...aspects of vanilla. I didn't get to play long enough back then to get tired of them. :wink:
 
I recently returned to LOTRO and SWTOR this year.
Last time we did LOTRO we played up to Angmar, so I'm discovering the world beyond that
Sometimes going back to old MMOs are fun, even if it's a decade later!
(I'm even considering returning to AoC to see if it got better or not)
Would really dig checking out City of Heroes/Villains again sometime

Best of luck to those returning to WoW!
 
Last edited:
WoW always seemed to attract more assholes than City of Heroes, but I always thought that was partially because of how loot worked. Having a reputation on the server at least kept that partially in check.
Completely agreed with what you said in the bit I didn't quote.
As for what I did: I think it's also because wow has a broader appeal than City of Heroes. City of Heroes is a game made for specific fans of a specific franchise that is... Well; very specific. I, for example, didn't exactly dislike it, but it never clicked with me because of the comic book tropes. And there are a great many tropes there that just make it very difficult for me to emotionally invest in.
WoW, however, is thematically generic fantasy with some generic cosmic horror tossed in.

I also think that toxicity in WoW increased despite the changes to loot. Instead of loot, it became time. Which is understandable from a DPS perspective, but tanks who like to do their job well tend to take a little more time setting things up than tanks who don't care. Add to that content that became less relevant in terms of skill demand (in part, admittedly, due to the fact that dying lost its meaning and enemies didn't have much health), and people started to viciously demand blind charges (which half of the time actually made things take longer). Couple that with easy AoE, mythic timers bleeding into normal/heroic mentality, and kite-tanking (which makes things harder on the melee group, and only works if you can slow the enemies), and there are a lot of things that people can become disdainful of others over. Even when loot drops became completely personal, this was true.

I recently played SWTOR as well. The game's great, but pretty lonely since group content while levelling is... Irrelevant. You can simply do it without, and do it much faster. In addition, removal of the holy trinity (and making levelling group content easier to ridiculous degrees) has sparked a similar mindset as found in WoW (though to be fair, in my experience SWTOR is less toxic because all the players play it primarily because they're Star Wars fans; they start out on common ground, and have a shared identity). It doesn't seem to have cross-faction grouping, but you rarely remember your group mates.
Sure, you can get into guilds, but guildmember identity really relies on time investment rather than personality, because that's what the game asks.

It's funny; these games put a lot of effort in designing mechanics that promote social behaviour, but so often, making 'social' easier seems to have the adverse effect. I think humans naturally work best together, grow into communities, when there is a sense of stakes. And that's an interesting segway into toxic politics which I am just going to let hang. :tongue:
 
I feel like classic WoW captured lightning in the bottle and invoking that spirit involves a lot more than recreating the old servers. If I take off the rose-colored glasses I remember a lot of Classic WoW being an obscene time sink.

I have fond memories of playing Vanilla and BC. Hell, I even got a gf through WoW. I played for the PvP. Just about everyone I knew played back then and I would roll with a crew into battlegrounds, Arenas, and world PvP every day right after work. I started to lose interest around WotLK but I don't recall why; it probably had something to do with the game catering to end game raiders at the expense of everyone else. I also had a lot of fun playing the markets and getting rich; it was disappointing that gold was rendered more and more worthless with each expansion.

I gave it a try with the wife last year. Levelling was dull and unchallenging. More like a chore. The sheer amount of content was staggering which you'd think is a good problem to have but none of it was exciting. By the time we got to the Asian-themed area the wife had zero interest so we quit. Transmog tool is cool tho.
 
I was a very, very casual WoW player. “Serial leveler” if you will. I did dungeon PUGs often and was walked through a couple of raids, but it’s exploring the world that does it for me.

Sure, it’s going to be more work with Classic. But who’s in a rush? If we get bored, we unsubscribe.

(Not to mention that Borderlands 3 is coming out and I’m really looking forward to it.)
 
I was a very, very casual WoW player. “Serial leveler” if you will. I did dungeon PUGs often and was walked through a couple of raids, but it’s exploring the world that does it for me.

Sure, it’s going to be more work with Classic. But who’s in a rush? If we get bored, we unsubscribe.

(Not to mention that Borderlands 3 is coming out and I’m really looking forward to it.)
Oh is vanilla a subscription? Yeah I'm not going to pay to waste that much time walking everywhere. It bored me then and I had no wife and kids then. Now my minutes count. I will not be spending them pressing a forward key
 
Oh is vanilla a subscription? Yeah I'm not going to pay to waste that much time walking everywhere. It bored me then and I had no wife and kids then. Now my minutes count. I will not be spending them pressing a forward key
As I understood it, it's included in the 'normal' wow subscription.
 
I feel like classic WoW captured lightning in the bottle and invoking that spirit involves a lot more than recreating the old servers. If I take off the rose-colored glasses I remember a lot of Classic WoW being an obscene time sink.
It IS a huge time sink, unless you approach it in the most casual of ways... don't fall for the faux-urgency in every mission you're handed. I'm looking forward to a return to the old crafting system... which was more expensive and took longer... but was more involving, for me. It kind of ties in with what Talespinner said about 'stakes'.
Also, some of those epic world spanning quests that got done away with because some people thought they took to long... or something.
There was a point in WoW, where it did start to feel like a lot of people were playing on their lunch break and were in huge hurry to get things done... they'd already seen/done all of it a hundred times already... no fun to play with those guys, I liked going through dungeons in a slow and thorough manner, taking in the atmosphere.
 
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top