
World of Warcraft Classic Relase - HNLurker2
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/wowclassic
======
namelosw
I wonder how long Blizzard can still stay in the game. It seems they 're only
repeating themselves now. EA is boring but they keep doing their job, as for
Blizzard they seem to be fully stopped creating things.

Recently they are only remaking old games StarCraft, WarCraft, World of
Warcraft. Basically, the remake doesn't touch the functionality. They seem
only want to juice money from their current market.

For more 'real' new games from Blizzard like Overwatch is Okayish, and Heroes
of Storms (I can't even be sure about the name) are bad.

Anyway, I think I would play Classic for a while, but I guess it wouldn't be
long. Although It was and still is the best game I ever played, without
constant releases, it just won't persist - World of Warcraft doesn't mean to
be modeled as a game with infinite replay value without new releases. And
there won't be new releases because would be branching the game.

~~~
abledon
its Activision wearing blizzard's dead skin. Most blizzard "minds" have left
for other pastures.

~~~
gizmo385
Oh come on, Activision has owned Blizzard for over a decade, during which
Blizzard has released many of the most popular games and expansions for WoW.

~~~
Retric
Blizzard had a fair amount of inertia. They had been working on Diablo III
(2012) for years but it shows how quickly Activation destroyed what made
Blizzard great. The problem was not really core gameplay mechanics at release,
it was the final balancing being completely out of whack that destroyed the
game. This meant early review where generally positive, but gamers quickly
stopped playing as late game was simply broken.

Similarly, Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King are pure Blizzard.
Cataclysm (2010) was controversial. On the other hand Mists of Pandaria (2012)
was generally disliked, Warlords of Draenor (2014) was an inane mess.

~~~
fruffy
I'd disagree that Wrath of the Lich King was pure Blizzard, in fact I'd claim
the final patches of Burning Crusade marked the beginning of the end for many
players. IIrc, monetization efforts such as faction transfers[0,1] and pets
were introduced during that expansion and "casual-friendly" tools such as the
dungeon finder[2] and heirlooms[4] were developed to attract more players. All
of these changes were already extremely controversial.

[0]
[https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Character_Transfer](https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Character_Transfer)

[1]
[https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Faction_Change_service](https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Faction_Change_service)

[2]
[https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Dungeon_Finder](https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Dungeon_Finder)

[4]
[https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Heirloom](https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Heirloom)

~~~
Retric
The merger was 7/8/08, years after character transfer from mid 2006.

[4] “The precursors to modern-day heirlooms were introduced in Vanilla/Classic
World of Warcraft. Heirlooms up to the Wrath of the Lich King expansion were
items that were sold by a specific battleground vendor. There were Warsong
Gulch, Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley heirlooms.”

[2] This depends on how you mark an expansion. IMO, after the initial bug
fixes are put that’s the expansion. Everything after that like 3.3.0 is it’s
own separate patch.

~~~
fruffy
My bad, I mistook the character transfer with the faction change service.
Still, I remember there being a push for it which seems to be confirmed by the
wiki: "initially, there was a 6 month cooldown between character transfers. In
late February 2008, the cooldown was reduced to 1 month. In July 2009, the
cooldown was reduced to 3 days."

Regarding heirlooms, they were introduced in WotLK:

"Heirlooms that increase experience and scale based on character level were
introduced in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion."

The line is blurry, but I believe that a trend was definitely noticeable even
in late Burning Crusade. In particular, efforts to attract a broader player
base. It is unfortunately surprisingly hard to track and timestamp all the
controversial changes introduced to the game.

------
kyrra
For those interested, they at least have a medium size write-up how they
created this technically:

[https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/22646759/restoring-
hi...](https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/22646759/restoring-history-
creating-wow-classic-panel-recap)

Here is a live blog of the Blizzcon talk:
[https://www.wowhead.com/news=288407/blizzcon-2018-restoring-...](https://www.wowhead.com/news=288407/blizzcon-2018-restoring-
history-creating-wow-classic-panel)

My take is one of the original programmers for WoW still at work's at Blizzard
and helped great deal with this effort. They were also able to go back in
their source Control and pull the code from back then and they've been
different current code to previous code in various places to see how behaviour
has changed. And then Ford porting old behavior onto a existing client.

------
davidcollantes
No, thank you. Same game, same grind, same close-to-real-life (or more!)
struggle. It is a drug I have clean of for a few years now. Hard pass.

~~~
MrMember
Not even nostalgia could get me to play it. Just think about what running five
man instances was like in vanilla. Find a group in chat. Run to the instance
(which can take like half an hour if you're far away). Wait another half hour
for everyone else to get there. Enter the instance, wipe on the first pack,
and the group disbands. That's an hour+ of "playing" a game where you
accomplished exactly nothing.

~~~
ferrisford
I disagree, or at least my experience on private servers hasn't been this.
Putting a group together in chat and getting everyone to the instance takes
time and work yes, but that generally means you don't bail at the first wipe.

It might not work that way with new players coming in to classic, but making
it trivially easy to group and port to an instance has its own problems.

------
durron
There's a nice writeup about how the WoW team went about re-creating a
10-year-old version of their game with modern security and toolchains

[https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/21881587/dev-
watercoo...](https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/21881587/dev-watercooler-
world-of-warcraft-classic)

------
carwyn
I really wish I could find a game that captures the 5-person PvE experience
that was early WoW classic without it turning into a grindfest or a raidfest.
You don't even need the loot or the crafting elements. It was the beauty of
the tanking, healing, crowd-control and strategy. I've not really found
anything that captures this out there (suggestions very welcome!).

Many suggest games like Diablo but it tends to play more as a scaled single
player game than a genuine balanced composition group game (i.e. if you're not
hearing/feeling "Need healer/dps/tank"! it's not what I mean). MOBAs brought
this for PvP but there are many out there that simply like good ol' PvE co-op
with character and strategy.

~~~
jplayer01
I'm sorely disappointed by modern games throwing out class roles. Even WoW got
rid of support roles and only left healers. And then there are games where I
can't play a healer at all, which simply annoys me - I'm just bored out of my
mind if all I can do is shoot at people or be DD. The Division 2 was the
latest massive disappointment. Where the first game let you spec into being a
tank or a healer, which was incredibly awesome for the setting, the only real
meta in TD2 is damage, damage, damage.

~~~
skinnymuch
Is that really the new trend? That’s sad. Support and healers being separate
was cool. And then tank and varied attacking classes (direct and mage-like).
Sorry I don’t remember terminology that well. But this could also just be
nostalgia talking. And I didn’t enjoy rogue type of classes ever.

------
mess110
Y'all need to liven up a bit, try to be a bit more positive.

WoW is a landmark in the gaming world and we now have the chance to replay it.
Maybe try a RP server. I for one am excited to play it, even though I don't
have that much time to dedicate to this.

For the horde!

~~~
toxican
RP servers are a blast. Even if you don't RP, the RP community makes for a
much friendlier and livelier server than non-RP ones do, imo. But do try RP!
It's a lot of fun and very challenging at times.

------
Waterluvian
Everything I absolutely loved about WoW is inaccessible to me 15 years later
now that I have kids and a job.

I'm really curious to learn about the sustained user count of those who never
played classic.

~~~
danesparza
You really just need to either:

a.) Schedule your time better (timebox, baby)

b.) Or get the kids and wife involved

c.) Or stop whining about it.

~~~
bart_spoon
Your comment is completely out of touch.

a) "Scheduling a baby" or children in general isn't a thing. They are full
time commitments. Which is the entire point of the original comment. To say
nothing of the fact that MMOs like WoW are extremely time demanding games. Its
pretty hard to play WoW casually, for small amounts of time, and actually get
enjoyment out of it. Which again, is the point of the original comment.

b) Possible, but unlikely. MMOs are pretty niche, and again, giant time
commitments. Its unlikely his entire family will be into the idea of all
grinding away together online. But sure, its a possibility.

c) At no point was the comment doing anything resembling whining. It was
simply pointing out that much of the fanbase that would potentially be enticed
to come back to the game by WoW Classic has aged into a stage of life where it
will be hard if not impossible to enjoy it the same way they did previously.
Its simply an observation, and a good one at that.

~~~
danesparza
For the record: I'm a husband and father of two college age daughters. My
daughters game casually.

I think you misunderstood the 'timebox baby' comment. I was simply suggesting
timeboxing the gaming time. And clearly communicating that with the wife (at
the very least). I wasn't suggesting timeboxing baby / children / family time.

To my ear, the statement 'Everything I absolutely loved about WoW is
inaccessible to me 15 years later now that I have kids and a job.' sounds like
whining: No indication of any failed effort -- just lamenting.

------
buildzr
Is there a key to getting more into MMOs I'm missing? Once or twice a year
I'll pick one up for a week or two and blow most of my free time on it... then
get bored and move on to the next thing.

~~~
BucketSort
Yes. Clan involvement. If you just play alone, you won't get as hooked.

~~~
bdz
Depends ont the MMO as well. For example I only play FFXIV and that's very
very single player friendly with a huge focus on story. Same with FFXI that
became single player friendly with the Trust system tho that's an old school
MMO (akin to Everquest and such)

~~~
falcolas
Even FFXIV (my current drug of choice) has limits to what you can do as a solo
player. Even the MSQ - the most single-player content in the game - requires
you to group up with others every other level and do dungeons. It’s a mostly
seamless process with all the duty finder enhancements and roulettes that
bring existing players back to the old content, but it’s still there.

The benefit of a clan/guild/free company can’t be understated. They will
provide entertainment, support, and access to a set of content that’s
otherwise very hard to do.

~~~
hatsubai
From ShB onwards, you can now use the Trust system to solo dungeons and MSQ
events. I'd be willing to bet they will port this to older dungeons once New
Game+ comes out, although I am not sure if they'll ever do this with
roulettes.

~~~
falcolas
Trusts do alleviate a portion of it, but there’s entire swaths of content you
can’t do solo (including all of the MSQ-blocking Trials).

I like trusts, but they’re definitely a band-aid for a very specific issue
(DPS queue lengths).

------
falcolas
There will always be an audience for a MMO that walks the fine line between
too punishing, and not punishing enough. It is, however, a niche genre, and
the feeling that many are hoping to recapture with the release of classic will
not exist anymore.

The game is, for the serious raiders, too simple. For the casual crowd, it’s
going to be slow and comparatively unrewarding. The nostalgia hit for people
who have played it before will wear off fairly quickly, leaving only those for
whom classic WoW hits their sweet spot. At least for a year or two. What will
happen once those niche players hit max level and run out of content to do?

~~~
lugg
Had similar thoughts.

I think a lot of people have rose tinted glasses on and simply don't remember
how simple the game used to be and how far it's evolved since.

I am curious what they've done with the mechanics though. Some were broken by
expacs, some were fixed, wonder what they rolled back and what they left.

~~~
vbezhenar
They rolled back everything except obvious exploits like wall jumping or
macroses automating your rotation in one button. It's not pixel-perfect
remake, but it's very close to it.

~~~
pythonaut_16
Seems a little disappointing if they disabled wall jumps.

Were there any wall jumps that were actually exploitable (i.e. let you do bad
things)? Most of the ones I remember just let you get to weird spots in the
environment.

~~~
plopz
Theres still plenty of wall jumps, you can find videos of people testing all
the classic WSG jumps on youtube. The classic wall-walking doesn't work, but
that was changed during vanilla so its to be expected.

------
Bluecobra
World of Warcraft 2: The Search for More Money

~~~
tylerjd
To be fair, it comes with your World of Warcraft retail subscription, and you
don't have to purchase the original game again nor the latest retail expansion
(Battle for Azeroth) to play it.

~~~
jplayer01
> To be fair, it comes with your World of Warcraft retail subscription, and
> you don't have to purchase the original game again nor the latest retail
> expansion (Battle for Azeroth) to play it.

Seems to me like Classic is aimed at players who aren't currently subscribed,
who aren't served by the current modern WoW. You know, different demographics
and stuff. I know I'm not subscribed, but I'm considering resubbing just for
Classic, and I've seen plenty of people in the same position.

------
swebs
>Releases August 27, 2019

------
lukey_q
I haven't played WOW since the first version, which I guess is "classic" now.
I'm wondering what the draw would be for something like this, as I assume the
current version of the game is this plus all the extras and bonuses from the
expansions over the years? Is it just nostalgia for the "classic" version or
is there some other reason someone would want to play this instead of the
updated version?

~~~
bovermyer
Nostalgia is part of it.

The other part of it is a genuine desire for a more difficult, time-consuming,
socially-driven game.

~~~
ubermonkey
Yeah, this.

I was a pretty dedicated player, off and on, from open beta in late-summer
2004 through the Cataclysm expansion in 2012, with a little dabbling later for
Mists of Pandaria in 2014.

The game changed a LOT. I was never much of an endgame raid player; I really,
really enjoyed the progression through the world with friends, so I did that
several times.

As WOW shifted to be more endgame raid focused, world progression got a lot
faster, a lot lonelier, and a lot less interesting. OTOH, those first years of
playing WoW remain, to me, probably the best video gaming experiences I've
ever had (and I'm pushing 50, so I've seen the whole ride).

I'll probably re-up to play some Classic. I doubt I'll stick with it -- I have
other things I enjoy doing now that would preclude me from playing more than
an hour or two a week -- but it'll be fun to visit that world again.

(Oh, and I should note for non-WoW people that the actual in-game world
literally changed -- geography shifted, towns were destroyed, etc -- with the
release of Cataclysm in 2010. Among the shattered places left behind were the
early-level zones for my first characters. I'd love to see those as they were
again.)

~~~
lukey_q
Ok, got it, thanks for the explanation :) I also really enjoyed the
exploration and social aspect of the early part of the game back then, I quit
when that was over and seemed as if the rest of it would just be re-doing the
same raids over and over trying to get slightly better gear.

~~~
ubermonkey
EXACTLY. That grind held no charm for me.

------
jefozabuss
I think the magic is mostly that everyone can start fresh again without the
added clutter from the many expansions and without a lot of things handed on a
silver platter for the user, also since the leveling process is slower the
user might feel more accomplished when they hit the end game.

I wonder if adding a diablo like ladder type system where everyone starts
fresh periodically (see Path of Exile leagues) make game a lot more addictive.

------
cozuya
To repeat what many have said I'm not sure why this is so popular or highly
anticipated. I played WoW vanilla heavily 15 years ago, was bleeding edge, had
the legendary hammer from ragnaros, and then.. you know.. grew up. Got burnt
out and quit shortly after the 1st expansion, got a career, got married, etc.

Why would I go back to that mess? What's the appeal of 5+ hour raids every
night in 2019? For content thoroughly covered 15 years ago. "Nostalgia" is no
where near enough for me and I would expect that I am the primary demo for
this product. Maybe if they gave me my hammer back..

------
meerita
The only game that made me play all day long and only do casual toilet stops.

------
holtalanm
eh. i'm excited for it. a few of my friends are, as well.

then again, we must be gluttons for punishment, because we played on
nostalrius for a while, too.

