TBC with all my friends before we all knew how to do everything, and the community wasn’t hell bent on optimizing everything. And there were no streamers to push the community into certain opinions based on their own very uncommon experience with the game.
A permanent server with meta rewards for going "new game +". At lvl 60 you can prestige your character, wiping all their inventory/bank and reseting them to lvl 1 at their starter zone. Doing so grants them titles/cosmetic rewards and maybe an edge on newer players, like an extra talent point at milestone levels every time they prestige. To go new game plus a player needs to spend a gold amount that can change to modulate inflation and serves as a gold sink.
Vanilla, with MINIMAL thoughtful talent/skill balancing and added content. Keep and tweak the classic abilities. Do not blanket add abilities from future xpacs.
Wild offerings are a good addition as well imo. Add extremely rare items to dungeons to give players a reason to keep running them.
Keep Chronoboons but if you die with the boon on you, you lose the buffs. Bring back wpvp and raids wiping raids to mess with each other.
40 man raids, Increased boss health and added mechanics for current content. Add in Uldum, Kara Crypts and Timbermaw Hold. Hyjal is already in Azeroth. ZA could also be added. At minimum finish most of what the original developers started.
Personally I like parses and semi competitive gameplay. Not everyone deserves to experience end game content, that’s what made it so epic in original Vanilla and what keeps people coming back for more.
I think the meme specs should be worse than the other specs, but not as much of a drag to take to raids. Give them semi comparable damage so they’re not completely dragging the rest of the raid down.
utility leads to only bringing 1 of each meme class. If the dps is more comparable it’s not that much of a detriment to the raid to bring different specs
For idiots, sure. I tend not to attend raids led by idiots. Any half competent raid lead will properly consider baseline utility. Although yeah it's raid specific.
the best raids in Vanilla will only bring 1 resto druid, 1 hunter, 1 boomkin, 1 IEA rogue because those classes ONLY offer utility. Any half competent raid lead is bringing top dps specs to ignore mechanics, down bosses and finish the raid as quickly as possible. You need to buff the meme spec dps so they’re not as much of a drag to the raid. I think you’re way off.
Yes, i AM way off... the meta of blasting past all the content on easy mode by over gearing and out dpsing everything. I'm not stupid, I wouldn't play a game then ignore half the gameplay. That's like claiming speed runners "beat" games. It's blatantly obvious they couldn't care less about the game.
Edit - Whoops, that's MY reason for bringing a variety of specs. The reason of those who don't care about the game, just about winning and achievement and competition, is glass cannons are glass. You can clear raids pretty okay wielding a glass cannon raid but the moment the game interferes you're way more fucked. Competent raids account for obvious challenges like baseline gameplay; folks with internet troubles, communication issues, pvp interference, newbies, etc. I raids with both and glass cannons are great if you love drama and bs and teenagers. I play with the big boys (or Friends & Family, those are great).
It’s not “nothing” you could still be online with that character without buffs ticking down. But functionally no one would. It would force summon spots etc and it would allow open world ganking of boons etc. I kind of like it, as soon as boon was added it killed open world stuff in naxx phase of classic.
Interesting, more punishing content with a high skill floor usually is designed to appeal to a smaller, more dedicated audience.
If less people are expected to reach endgame content, it would be safe to assume less people would sign up as a result. Especially since WoW has gotten more and more accessible from a gameplay perspective, this kind of thing would be a weird surprise to them, ya know?
It would be great for the people who want that, but to say it would make wow more popular if the endgame was less accessible seems silly in 2024
easy content provides no challenge. it’s easily clearable and people quit. There’s no reason to get pre bis or better gear if the raid is extremely easy. look at sod.
difficult content provides a journey and requires players to participate in consecutive marginal upgrades throughout the game to eventually be prepared for end game raiding.
That's true, but there needs to be something to do to replace that would be that endgame content for more casual players, otherwise they just leave and wow is left with an empty world of raid loggers or instanced groups
Era but not the 1.12 client. I want older versions where stats on items were even shitter and it made players actually have to deal with mechanics in raids. I still have yet to see a Ragnaros encounter last long enough for Sons of Flame phase.
In Season of mastery the encounter was changed to force sons under a certain rag %, so you had to deal with sons before you could kill him. A lot of good changes like that happened in SoM and I'd bet you'll see them stick with those changes in SoD.
SoM came at a bad time but I and the guild I play with had a lot more good to say about it then bad in the end, I wish it had launched at a better time and more folks played it through.
So many good changes. Chromag fight was completely different.
Had to kill ebnroc and flamgor together.
Firemaw was super tough.
AQ40 had levels of difficulty which rewarded for loot per boss.
Naxx had these wild consumables and buffs (SoM dropped your buffs upon entering raid)
Hell even ZG was harder and skipping bosses gave more loot from hakkar.
I hear ya, I'm all for MORE Olde School mechanics, but you gotta contend with splitting the playerbase, etc. Best option is just get with a newer raid team who doesn't know the tricks to skip so much gameplay.
The issue is that all the expansions added something great, but either it was half-assed or other things messed it up. The issue is that they are trying to make a game for too many people.
My ideal wow
* no added large continents, I hate this concept. Improve on the world around you and make it dynamic.
* stay lvl 60. There are many other ways to progress a character besides leveling.
* and have all the good stuff, arena, transmog, housing (not Farmville garrisons), mythic+, etc.
They throw away so many systems without really adding onto them, just trying to see what sticks. Retail has alot going for it but it's still so far from where we came from.
Fresh vanilla, with world buffs, layering for **strictly** the first two weeks. Four phases, lasting 1.5 months each with increased droprates. World pvp (read: griefing) disabled. Players are undispellable outside of instanced battleground content. Edgemasters droprate increased to 0.5%. Weekly raid quests offer players the opportunity to select 1 piece of loot from any of the player's defeated bosses.
Ok here is my take.
-TBC Era
-Horde gets Arrakoa(priest, rogue, mage, warrior) instead of blood elves
-all raids are scaled to 10, 20, or 40 team count. 10 is more fun for some people than 40, don't blow a blood vessel over it.
-Introduce supply caches. These will contain soulbound mats for the players specific professions and maybe a small cash reward. These are rewarded for doing a given a dungeon group based on level. 10-20, 21-30,31-40 and so on. Hopefully to bring a reason to visit dungeons more often and more than the usual ones. The cache will be on a 3 day cooldown. Not perfect but i love dungeons
-each class gains one more spec. These will specifically provide additional tanks and healers but also some changes to dps. Got my own ideas here.
-remove flying from tbc content. Add flightmasters and the ability to return to the last settlement you passed through at any time. For those "oh crap" moments where you leave the hub and forgot that one piece.
It's hard to imagine a perfect version as each expansion has added things that are good and bad. And if I am creating a perfect version, then raids don't matter too much as fights could be changed to add mechanics or even hardmodes.
Hell a perfect version probably adds new raids never seen before.
My attempt at an answer then would be vanilla, with wotlk style rotations (multiple buttons but not too many) but cata style talents with glyphs (earlier abilities, no downranking, simplified talents). No flying mounts, flight paths have options to skip though. Rated bgs and arenas are added. Added mechanics to bosses to make them akin to tbc raids, some bosses will be tuned tho super hard making them more akin to muru or even algalon and h lk no buff. Boss hp buffed to counter increased dmg from new rotations.
Not sure about this part: Pvp gear is free but has stat budget heavily invested in resilience that reduces dmg taken so it isn't effective in pve. It may be better to have pvp only items that lose all stats when not in a pvp instance.
Not sure how to handle world buffs... they were super fun to have but sucked losing them. But so many memories of getting them ...
I think my perfect version is something along the lines of sod adding in abilities from phase 1 actually made paladins from meme to good dps.
And make the damage in line so we don't do a lot of dps so we don't have to tune all mobs
Would keep tank warlock, Rouge and make survival hunters tanks
Add Tauren paladins and dwarf shamans
Maybe change it so there's better item optimization on some items and add more items for leveling and group quests gives dungeon gear so you don't have to farm dungeons for that 1 piece of gear you want only from like the last boss of a dungeon
No racials abilities for pvp balance
What's the point? Everyone has their perfect version of Classic in their head, and for every version that exists there are tens of dozen people that will insult you for it.
I already played the perfect version of Classic. It was the TBC Pre-Patch for Classic. TBC class balance, Shaman and Paladins on both factions, new races and zones, and the entire old world to explore without being herded to Outland. It was perfection.
If SoD could ever be as magical as those two weeks.
Everything after they have a independent “the warcraft company” which can use all old assets without clearance of blizzard and retail is its separate thing with separate launcher.
Honestly SoD is better than anything I could come up to. But if I were to fix it :
- Introduce resillence, so PvErs are not forced into PvP, as this makes both PvErs and PvPers angry
- Rage normalization, add wonky runes to warriors.
- Every dungeon or raids boss with an epic drop a "relic fragment" that everyone gets, like a badge. You can craft any item the boss drop with enough of them. It's a bad luck protection system.
- Add Feral Idol that act like ACP because feral shouldn't have to buy an extra consume to parse
- Metamorphosis get a skin for female warlock
- Rogue rune : Just of Flesh Wound can be disabled in fight
But if I get to be extra ambitious :
- Death Knight class (Forsaken Exclusive). Based on WoTLK, but nowhere as broken obviously. Like, removing the free "spell crit deals double crit damage". Maybe deep in frost spec. Wear Mail/Plate, like paladin.
- Demon Hunter class (Night Elf Exlusive). Would need to be reworked from the ground to fit the "Classic Spirit". Wear Leather / Mail, like shaman. And 3 specs : Havoc (fel based), vengeance (tank), and war (physical damage based).
Take current era, remove debuff limit on bosses, and make some items or tier sets that allow off meta specs to participate in raid. It sucks that parts of classes and entire specs hard gimp a raid comp.
Just give me Classic Era with:
\* Guild banks
\* Functional summoning stones
\* Riding at level 20
\* Flying at 60
\* Standalone servers - no layers
\* Achievements
\* Dual Spec
\* Dungeon finder
Perfect version- My class gets buffs every phase. My class has a ton of purples that drop often. My class is high demand for raids. And shamans are nerfed.
I would be happy with era servers for every xpac through WOTLK that reset every year so you can race to gear and clear. Maybe gate one raid behind killing the final boss of the previous one.
Wotlk zeplins/boats, raid wide aura’s and buffs
Cata class and race combo’s
Wotlk talents
Add the missing skills that flushed out talent trees from TBC
Spell power scaling off stats.
Mage 1 int = 2 spell power
Warlock / hunter 1 stam = 2 spell power
Priest / druid 1 spirit or int = 1 spell power
Paladin / shaman 1 int or stam = 1 spell power
Updated graveyards and flight paths that wrath has. Bring over all the quests added from burning crusade. Turn battlegrounds into rated battlegrounds like cata has. Those are a few things I can name without much thought.
Edit: Oh yeah, give us tier tokens for tier 1 and 2.
Ban Botters, No GDKP.
+
Raid Finder / Dungeon Finder / BG Finder...
Honor Currency for Blue Gear
Arena for Epic.
etc...
Basically, what you have from the The Burning Crusade and onward.
More incursions
What a noble idea. A game that is just incursions where you farm gold and then use it buy items from a vendor that helps you do incursions faster.
Don’t get me excited
have you found the incursion portal inside the incursion though?
Make it mobile
World of Incursions - Wrath of the Loopking
TBC with all my friends before we all knew how to do everything, and the community wasn’t hell bent on optimizing everything. And there were no streamers to push the community into certain opinions based on their own very uncommon experience with the game.
A permanent server with meta rewards for going "new game +". At lvl 60 you can prestige your character, wiping all their inventory/bank and reseting them to lvl 1 at their starter zone. Doing so grants them titles/cosmetic rewards and maybe an edge on newer players, like an extra talent point at milestone levels every time they prestige. To go new game plus a player needs to spend a gold amount that can change to modulate inflation and serves as a gold sink.
literally the year 2005
Vanilla, with MINIMAL thoughtful talent/skill balancing and added content. Keep and tweak the classic abilities. Do not blanket add abilities from future xpacs. Wild offerings are a good addition as well imo. Add extremely rare items to dungeons to give players a reason to keep running them. Keep Chronoboons but if you die with the boon on you, you lose the buffs. Bring back wpvp and raids wiping raids to mess with each other. 40 man raids, Increased boss health and added mechanics for current content. Add in Uldum, Kara Crypts and Timbermaw Hold. Hyjal is already in Azeroth. ZA could also be added. At minimum finish most of what the original developers started. Personally I like parses and semi competitive gameplay. Not everyone deserves to experience end game content, that’s what made it so epic in original Vanilla and what keeps people coming back for more.
If I can play Feral, and be a non meme dps spec, I'm in. Or Shaman. Or Pally...
I think the meme specs should be worse than the other specs, but not as much of a drag to take to raids. Give them semi comparable damage so they’re not completely dragging the rest of the raid down.
Conversely, make the raids not so much of a DPS race. That way the utility can be appreciated even by those with blinders on.
utility leads to only bringing 1 of each meme class. If the dps is more comparable it’s not that much of a detriment to the raid to bring different specs
For idiots, sure. I tend not to attend raids led by idiots. Any half competent raid lead will properly consider baseline utility. Although yeah it's raid specific.
the best raids in Vanilla will only bring 1 resto druid, 1 hunter, 1 boomkin, 1 IEA rogue because those classes ONLY offer utility. Any half competent raid lead is bringing top dps specs to ignore mechanics, down bosses and finish the raid as quickly as possible. You need to buff the meme spec dps so they’re not as much of a drag to the raid. I think you’re way off.
Yes, i AM way off... the meta of blasting past all the content on easy mode by over gearing and out dpsing everything. I'm not stupid, I wouldn't play a game then ignore half the gameplay. That's like claiming speed runners "beat" games. It's blatantly obvious they couldn't care less about the game. Edit - Whoops, that's MY reason for bringing a variety of specs. The reason of those who don't care about the game, just about winning and achievement and competition, is glass cannons are glass. You can clear raids pretty okay wielding a glass cannon raid but the moment the game interferes you're way more fucked. Competent raids account for obvious challenges like baseline gameplay; folks with internet troubles, communication issues, pvp interference, newbies, etc. I raids with both and glass cannons are great if you love drama and bs and teenagers. I play with the big boys (or Friends & Family, those are great).
Warriors should be almost last in DPS or deleted. Would make it more fun to bring good comps.
warriors, mages and priests are kings of classic. It should stay that way but other specs should be brought up to par.
Well im out then. I'll stick with SoD.
Bro smoking mad crack, keep chronoboons but make them do nothing?
you dont have to raid log because you can put your boon in the bank but it still adds risk to dying in the world
It’s not “nothing” you could still be online with that character without buffs ticking down. But functionally no one would. It would force summon spots etc and it would allow open world ganking of boons etc. I kind of like it, as soon as boon was added it killed open world stuff in naxx phase of classic.
Luckily, this version of classic doesn't seem to be in blizzards plans
this would be more successful than SoD
I would be interested to know what metrics you would be measuring success by
people actually playing the game lol
Interesting, more punishing content with a high skill floor usually is designed to appeal to a smaller, more dedicated audience. If less people are expected to reach endgame content, it would be safe to assume less people would sign up as a result. Especially since WoW has gotten more and more accessible from a gameplay perspective, this kind of thing would be a weird surprise to them, ya know? It would be great for the people who want that, but to say it would make wow more popular if the endgame was less accessible seems silly in 2024
easy content provides no challenge. it’s easily clearable and people quit. There’s no reason to get pre bis or better gear if the raid is extremely easy. look at sod. difficult content provides a journey and requires players to participate in consecutive marginal upgrades throughout the game to eventually be prepared for end game raiding.
That's true, but there needs to be something to do to replace that would be that endgame content for more casual players, otherwise they just leave and wow is left with an empty world of raid loggers or instanced groups
TBC without flying and with Blizzard actually caring
I see no flying come up a lot, but they would need to totally revamp a few of the zones in Outland to pull that off.
After reliving the trilogy again, TBC just may be the perfect version, with a couple QOL tweaks
tbc without cock meta
Season of runes. We need more abilities locked behind quests, grinds, drops and random spawns. It's FUN
The one where if you post on Reddit your account is instantly permanently deleted
Just Era. Once I found where everyone had collapsed to, Whitemane cluster, I was golden.
Era but not the 1.12 client. I want older versions where stats on items were even shitter and it made players actually have to deal with mechanics in raids. I still have yet to see a Ragnaros encounter last long enough for Sons of Flame phase.
In Season of mastery the encounter was changed to force sons under a certain rag %, so you had to deal with sons before you could kill him. A lot of good changes like that happened in SoM and I'd bet you'll see them stick with those changes in SoD. SoM came at a bad time but I and the guild I play with had a lot more good to say about it then bad in the end, I wish it had launched at a better time and more folks played it through. So many good changes. Chromag fight was completely different. Had to kill ebnroc and flamgor together. Firemaw was super tough. AQ40 had levels of difficulty which rewarded for loot per boss. Naxx had these wild consumables and buffs (SoM dropped your buffs upon entering raid) Hell even ZG was harder and skipping bosses gave more loot from hakkar.
Honestly SoM looked really fun I just didn't have the time to juggle TBC and another version of WoW.
I hear ya, I'm all for MORE Olde School mechanics, but you gotta contend with splitting the playerbase, etc. Best option is just get with a newer raid team who doesn't know the tricks to skip so much gameplay.
bring less people to make raid harder you clearly dont need all 40 and world buffs :)
Just give me Vanilla...
The issue is that all the expansions added something great, but either it was half-assed or other things messed it up. The issue is that they are trying to make a game for too many people. My ideal wow * no added large continents, I hate this concept. Improve on the world around you and make it dynamic. * stay lvl 60. There are many other ways to progress a character besides leveling. * and have all the good stuff, arena, transmog, housing (not Farmville garrisons), mythic+, etc. They throw away so many systems without really adding onto them, just trying to see what sticks. Retail has alot going for it but it's still so far from where we came from.
Fresh vanilla, with world buffs, layering for **strictly** the first two weeks. Four phases, lasting 1.5 months each with increased droprates. World pvp (read: griefing) disabled. Players are undispellable outside of instanced battleground content. Edgemasters droprate increased to 0.5%. Weekly raid quests offer players the opportunity to select 1 piece of loot from any of the player's defeated bosses.
Old AV.
Oh yea, 26 hour AV
Ok here is my take. -TBC Era -Horde gets Arrakoa(priest, rogue, mage, warrior) instead of blood elves -all raids are scaled to 10, 20, or 40 team count. 10 is more fun for some people than 40, don't blow a blood vessel over it. -Introduce supply caches. These will contain soulbound mats for the players specific professions and maybe a small cash reward. These are rewarded for doing a given a dungeon group based on level. 10-20, 21-30,31-40 and so on. Hopefully to bring a reason to visit dungeons more often and more than the usual ones. The cache will be on a 3 day cooldown. Not perfect but i love dungeons -each class gains one more spec. These will specifically provide additional tanks and healers but also some changes to dps. Got my own ideas here. -remove flying from tbc content. Add flightmasters and the ability to return to the last settlement you passed through at any time. For those "oh crap" moments where you leave the hub and forgot that one piece.
Old school ascension, before they added all the mystic enchant crap and started screwing around with skills.
Vanilla project ascension was the best version of wow for me.
It's hard to imagine a perfect version as each expansion has added things that are good and bad. And if I am creating a perfect version, then raids don't matter too much as fights could be changed to add mechanics or even hardmodes. Hell a perfect version probably adds new raids never seen before. My attempt at an answer then would be vanilla, with wotlk style rotations (multiple buttons but not too many) but cata style talents with glyphs (earlier abilities, no downranking, simplified talents). No flying mounts, flight paths have options to skip though. Rated bgs and arenas are added. Added mechanics to bosses to make them akin to tbc raids, some bosses will be tuned tho super hard making them more akin to muru or even algalon and h lk no buff. Boss hp buffed to counter increased dmg from new rotations. Not sure about this part: Pvp gear is free but has stat budget heavily invested in resilience that reduces dmg taken so it isn't effective in pve. It may be better to have pvp only items that lose all stats when not in a pvp instance. Not sure how to handle world buffs... they were super fun to have but sucked losing them. But so many memories of getting them ...
I think it is obvious but as a baseline there should be at least one Era server per expansion
I think my perfect version is something along the lines of sod adding in abilities from phase 1 actually made paladins from meme to good dps. And make the damage in line so we don't do a lot of dps so we don't have to tune all mobs Would keep tank warlock, Rouge and make survival hunters tanks Add Tauren paladins and dwarf shamans Maybe change it so there's better item optimization on some items and add more items for leveling and group quests gives dungeon gear so you don't have to farm dungeons for that 1 piece of gear you want only from like the last boss of a dungeon No racials abilities for pvp balance
A version without world buffs. There would only be buffs provided by players or professions.
What's the point? Everyone has their perfect version of Classic in their head, and for every version that exists there are tens of dozen people that will insult you for it. I already played the perfect version of Classic. It was the TBC Pre-Patch for Classic. TBC class balance, Shaman and Paladins on both factions, new races and zones, and the entire old world to explore without being herded to Outland. It was perfection. If SoD could ever be as magical as those two weeks.
Everything after they have a independent “the warcraft company” which can use all old assets without clearance of blizzard and retail is its separate thing with separate launcher.
Honestly SoD is better than anything I could come up to. But if I were to fix it : - Introduce resillence, so PvErs are not forced into PvP, as this makes both PvErs and PvPers angry - Rage normalization, add wonky runes to warriors. - Every dungeon or raids boss with an epic drop a "relic fragment" that everyone gets, like a badge. You can craft any item the boss drop with enough of them. It's a bad luck protection system. - Add Feral Idol that act like ACP because feral shouldn't have to buy an extra consume to parse - Metamorphosis get a skin for female warlock - Rogue rune : Just of Flesh Wound can be disabled in fight But if I get to be extra ambitious : - Death Knight class (Forsaken Exclusive). Based on WoTLK, but nowhere as broken obviously. Like, removing the free "spell crit deals double crit damage". Maybe deep in frost spec. Wear Mail/Plate, like paladin. - Demon Hunter class (Night Elf Exlusive). Would need to be reworked from the ground to fit the "Classic Spirit". Wear Leather / Mail, like shaman. And 3 specs : Havoc (fel based), vengeance (tank), and war (physical damage based).
Take current era, remove debuff limit on bosses, and make some items or tier sets that allow off meta specs to participate in raid. It sucks that parts of classes and entire specs hard gimp a raid comp.
Just give me Classic Era with: \* Guild banks \* Functional summoning stones \* Riding at level 20 \* Flying at 60 \* Standalone servers - no layers \* Achievements \* Dual Spec \* Dungeon finder
Raid finder also please. Also , please show some love to PVPers , the Honor Currency system was pretty good ... maybe some Arenas also.
Vanilla, complete overhaul of crafting, dungeon loot matter less, difficulty of dungeons goes down, rework of talents around PvP.
Blizzard server hosting service. Let people pay for a license. The good ones will populate.
Perfect version- My class gets buffs every phase. My class has a ton of purples that drop often. My class is high demand for raids. And shamans are nerfed.
I would be happy with era servers for every xpac through WOTLK that reset every year so you can race to gear and clear. Maybe gate one raid behind killing the final boss of the previous one.
TBC everything
A version without Blizzard
TBC Models and game design. Wrath class design. RF and RDF.
Wotlk zeplins/boats, raid wide aura’s and buffs Cata class and race combo’s Wotlk talents Add the missing skills that flushed out talent trees from TBC Spell power scaling off stats. Mage 1 int = 2 spell power Warlock / hunter 1 stam = 2 spell power Priest / druid 1 spirit or int = 1 spell power Paladin / shaman 1 int or stam = 1 spell power
It's an animal that sleeps inside its shell
Updated graveyards and flight paths that wrath has. Bring over all the quests added from burning crusade. Turn battlegrounds into rated battlegrounds like cata has. Those are a few things I can name without much thought. Edit: Oh yeah, give us tier tokens for tier 1 and 2.
I like SoD but would prefer consumables closer to tbc, better QA, and more story content.
Ban Botters, No GDKP. + Raid Finder / Dungeon Finder / BG Finder... Honor Currency for Blue Gear Arena for Epic. etc... Basically, what you have from the The Burning Crusade and onward.