Author Topic: World of Warcraft  (Read 35719 times)

vladgd

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Re: World of Warcraft
« Reply #45 on: November 07, 2017, 07:09:32 PM »
I'm not too crazy about harsh consequences with that, especially considering how easy it is to screw up using the classic talent trees. That's actually one of the reasons I don't really care to play Path of Exile: if you screw up your talent tree too bad (and it contains 1325 fucking talents!) your only recourse is to reroll.

While I do agree on the consequences are a bit too harsh, I think the "give everybody everything" removes a sense of class identity, and just makes it boring. I haven't even purchased necro in diablo 3 and I do not intend to because I am done with that game for nearly that reason. All classes feel nearly the same to me, which is what systems like that do.

That being said, I think the original WoW respec system was in a pretty decent place. The main issue that I see with the penalties is that you run into that classic issue where you could have to pay out the ass if you want to change roles for raiding/dungeons. I always appreciated having the ability to dual-spec in Wrath and I remember being genuinely mystified when some select people (vanilla elitists, I imagine) were throwing a ton of shade at Blizzard for adding it!

100% agree there. While I prefer vanilla, I ain't going to pretend it's this perfect un flawed masterpiece. Lich King had the perfect balance of making you work for a respec, yet allowing certain classes that are totally different pve than pvp (tanks for example) the option to actually have fun doing both.

Yep. At this point I'm really curious how they're going to handle a bunch of the little nuances, like keeping cheaters out, dealing with the massive differences between the old and new operating systems (vanilla WoW was written during that innocent time before UAC, after all. Hell, it ran on Windows 98!), and stuff like that. I imagine there's going to be some serious retrofits to get everything working smoothly, but hopefully they do it in more of a StarCraft: Remastered way rather than a Darkening of Tristram way.

I can't imagine them targeting anything less than 1.12.2, honestly. To me, it wouldn't make sense for them to give you anything less than the full experience of Classic, if nothing else because the world just wasn't complete beforehand (I hear Silithus is a great example of that).

Maybe I'm missing the point, but how would it be different than..."cough"



I COULD NOT RESIST I COULDNT...but it runs 1.12 and aside from some minor hitches (character looks a bit weird when using the turn buttons) it feels like I remember. Also see that shit, people, like other players?! Just leveling the content was challenging enough to warrant grouping up with randos, and so just me and this random guy cliqued up and got through the sen'jin stuff, you never see that in retail ever, ever. I'm shocked when I even run into another person while questing, rare enough as is, but on this server there's actually a lot of people out and about. But back to technical stuff, if some vigilantes can get this thing running on multiple private servers, how's a multi quadrillion dollar company going to have issues getting it up and running?

I needed to see if it was rose tinted glasses, or if it actually still holds up. Not sure how long I'll play, because with all private servers your character days are limited till blizzard pulls a C&D, so I don't want to get too attached, but it's pretty damn nice so far. But to stick with mage, or go to shaman, or shadow priest, or maybe warlock because summoning is so nice for dungeons? choices choicessss

Character named after this cartoon. Enjoy!

Spectere

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Re: World of Warcraft
« Reply #46 on: November 07, 2017, 11:25:51 PM »
Maybe I'm missing the point, but how would it be different than..."cough"

FUNNY YOU POST THAT BECAUSE


(Click for four-kaaaaaay!)

I'm seriously amazed at how well crafted 1.12.1 is. It natively supports 4K (that is, it doesn't artificially reduce the resolution list) and can even do windowed fullscreen! And it supports proper UI scaling! In 2006!

When I was referring to limitations and changes, however, I was more referring to UAC interfering with addons, config file writes, stuff like that. Basically the issues that WotLK had with Vista before Blizzard did some fiddling with the engine. Probably won't take them too much tweaking to get it completely compliant.

It would also be nice if they switched to saving screenshots to PNG or JPEG or something. Right now they're uncompressed Targas. Yeaaaaah, that screenshot was 31.6MB before I compressed it. Woo!

But whatever. MAN does it feel good to be back in classic Mulgore. ;D

I COULD NOT RESIST I COULDNT...but it runs 1.12 and aside from some minor hitches (character looks a bit weird when using the turn buttons) it feels like I remember.

Yeah, the animations were kinda janky, even moving into WotLK. Still not bad considering when they were made, though!

Also see that shit, people, like other players?! Just leveling the content was challenging enough to warrant grouping up with randos, and so just me and this random guy cliqued up and got through the sen'jin stuff, you never see that in retail ever, ever. I'm shocked when I even run into another person while questing, rare enough as is, but on this server there's actually a lot of people out and about.

To be fair, I did group with some people when Legion first came out. Then again, I think they only did it because I was a tank (blood DK no less) and could complete entire quests with a single pull and basically heal to full with a single click. :s

But back to technical stuff, if some vigilantes can get this thing running on multiple private servers, how's a multi quadrillion dollar company going to have issues getting it up and running?

Keep in mind that Blizzard needs to package it up in a way that idiots can install and manage. Also there's the technical issues that UAC imposes. Really, after seeing how well the renderer works (that's usually a sticking point with old games) I think the client should be good to go with a bit of cleanup.

The server side might be a bit rougher. From an administration side, 2004-2006 was a radically different time. I have a feeling they're going to need to do some pretty significant overhauls to get it into a state that is secure and functional on a modern server configuration. Naturally, there's also a bunch of logistical hurdles and bureaucracy. There's also a very good chance that the server software was written for 32-bit server environment, so they're likely going to port that to 64-bit and test the shit out of it.

One thing that I think is going to probably take some development effort is getting the code base for both the client side and server side in a state that they can apply patches and such. Even if the game isn't going to change they're still going to have to get themselves into a position where they can plug up security holes, stop spammers (which could potentially be a gigantic issue with official classic servers!), and evolve their anti-cheat technology accordingly.

From a purely backend perspective, there's a lot that they're going to have to do to make it pass muster. Above all else, they have to ensure that the old codebase (which is more than likely a security minefield at this point) won't allow people to break in and tamper with other systems in the same network.

I needed to see if it was rose tinted glasses, or if it actually still holds up. Not sure how long I'll play, because with all private servers your character days are limited till blizzard pulls a C&D, so I don't want to get too attached, but it's pretty damn nice so far. But to stick with mage, or go to shaman, or shadow priest, or maybe warlock because summoning is so nice for dungeons? choices choicessss

I'm just rolling solo on a home-compiled MaNGOS server. I was pretty happy with the solo experience. Weirdly enough, it does support player bots. Not sure how well those work!

Character named after this cartoon. Enjoy!

I named mine after my first toon. Seemed appropriate. :)
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vladgd

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Re: World of Warcraft
« Reply #47 on: November 08, 2017, 10:53:06 PM »
So basically it's a lot of under the hood stuff to get that mammer jammer working on their current systems that Joe orc won't even really appreciate.

But I'm on elysium via lightshope (dot) org, I think its the most popular vanilla server going? Or at least the one I've heard the most about. Going through character crisis at the moment, which isn't much of a crisis as much of a convincing myself not to play shaman.

I think current legion shaman is crap, but vanilla shaman had buttloads of utility which made playing support a blast, had a damn totem for every situation. The conflict is my endgame goal isn't raiding (aint got time for that), I just want to beat up kids in battlegrounds/world pvp. In vanilla, I had two 60's, my main shaman, my alt warrior, so it immediately kinda crosses both of those off my "first character to 60" list because I want something at least new to me. Druid I never liked, and they are like the worst class in vanilla so it makes it even easier not to play. Hunter/Rogue, nope nope. Paladin IS THE PERFECT CLASS A DURABLE AMAZING HEALER IN PVP...alliance, nope. Leaves mage, lock, priest...


It's a private server so the class choice is temporary anyway, sticking with mage since I can play frost pve AND pvp, they're good at both, I like them(my first 110 in legion if that says anything), Trolls are cool, portals in vanilla are more convienient than any other expansion due to how much more limited transportation is, free food/water, a desired dps class (something rogues could only dream of), seems like a solid pick to me.

Come official release I'm totes doing an orc resto shaman, no doubt about it.

If any of y'all have an itch to give the game a shot, elysium horde is where I'll be. Can't say I'll be dumping too much time into leveling though, kind of want to take it low and slow. Not in a rush to level something I'm going to lose, rather enjoy the ride till official stuff is available.

Ohh and I do notice you playing a hunter there sir. I will say, in my opinion, 1-10 experience before you get your pet is the most fun 1-10 leveling a character in vanilla. I have done 1-10 with hunters in every starting area for both factions, no joke...something about kiting the fuck out of everything or die that makes for engaging gameplay.

Side note, not sure if mentioning the server by name is kosher around here, or even if it is a taboo thing to talk about anymore? So I can edit the name out if need be.

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Re: World of Warcraft
« Reply #48 on: November 09, 2017, 01:55:59 AM »
Yeah, that's what I think is going to take the most development effort. Server emulators like MaNGOS have the advantage of having been developed from a clean start without having to learn the painful growing pains that Blizzard had to go through. I'm sure vanilla was no picnic, especially as early as you were playing, but Wrath wasn't fun simply because that's when they hit their peak subscriber count. There was a period of time where dungeons and raids were pretty much unplayable simply because the servers were so unbelievably full that they couldn't spawn anymore instances.

I also distinctly recall them having to restart the world servers for some emergency maintenance, then when they came back up there were NO NPCS IN THE WORLD. Literally none. It was like that for maybe 10 minutes (we were all just bullshitting in trade chat) before they corrected that. Good times.

But yeah, even overlooking the fun they're going to have beefing up the security of the old servers, they're also going to have to make sure that it can handle loads without falling over. That didn't really start happening until Cataclysm, and it got to the point where Warlords was able to withstand a massive, sustained DDoS attack for a surprising amount of time (dem ping times, though).

Elysium apparently spawned from the remains of Nostralius, so that probably has a lot to do with its level of kickassery. I might end up signing up at some point. While I do enjoy the solo leveling experience, it's reaaaaally hard to make bank without a population to trade with.

Yep, I decided to basically roll my first character again (I think I even have the same appearance as before) and yeah, it's definitely a nice throwback! Bristleback Ravine is still just as much of a bitch as ever. It feels weird having to actually play cautiously in the newbie area, but hey, that's classic WoW.

I was thinking of sticking with a hunter when official classic hits, though now I'm considering a mage for all of the reasons you mentioned (not to mention being a fantastic way to build up ye olde gold reserves, even with the cost of reagents). Hmm...

And yeah, mentioning the server by name should be fine. The illegal content rule applies more to direct facilitation of piracy, like linking to a torrent, attaching infringing material to posts, etc.
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vladgd

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Re: World of Warcraft
« Reply #49 on: November 09, 2017, 07:24:39 PM »
Yeah, that's what I think is going to take the most development effort. Server emulators like MaNGOS have the advantage of having been developed from a clean start without having to learn the painful growing pains that Blizzard had to go through. I'm sure vanilla was no picnic, especially as early as you were playing, but Wrath wasn't fun simply because that's when they hit their peak subscriber count. There was a period of time where dungeons and raids were pretty much unplayable simply because the servers were so unbelievably full that they couldn't spawn anymore instances.

I also distinctly recall them having to restart the world servers for some emergency maintenance, then when they came back up there were NO NPCS IN THE WORLD. Literally none. It was like that for maybe 10 minutes (we were all just bullshitting in trade chat) before they corrected that. Good times.

Im not (yet) a technically savvy person, but, I see private server from a random third party success! Official server from a multi billion dollar company?...NO PROBLEM THEY GOT THE MONEY TO THROW AT ANY PROBLEM THAT EXISTS!

Am I wrong? Or are you just taking the perspective of the grunts who actually have to impliment such changes. Which is fine, just beyond my current level of understanding. I know I do take for granted how smooth everything is in the current game, back in vanilla servers went down a lot, crashes, long queue times, server transfers and all that shenanigans. And I started 3 or so weeks after launch, it was rough for at least a year after that.

Elysium apparently spawned from the remains of Nostralius, so that probably has a lot to do with its level of kickassery. I might end up signing up at some point. While I do enjoy the solo leveling experience, it's reaaaaally hard to make bank without a population to trade with.

I mean you don't need people to get the mechanical feel of how the game used to be, but I think the lack of creature comforts and convienience is what drives the community in that game. You need to be proactive and socialize with people to get stuff done in that game, just not the case in the current game. I needed to do a RAID of all things in the process of getting flying in legion...queue tank, 5 minutes later, raid, kill like 4 things, done. Like, what? Didn't talk to a single human being. I'm not even level 10 on my mage yet and I talked to more people than I did leveling from 100-110 in legion, 8 times.


I was thinking of sticking with a hunter when official classic hits, though now I'm considering a mage for all of the reasons you mentioned (not to mention being a fantastic way to build up ye olde gold reserves, even with the cost of reagents). Hmm...

This is my mentality. Come official release, my main, is a resto shaman, it is my favorite class in that version of the game, however, soloing and grinding money as a resto shaman SUCKED. I did it once, and that was enough. The game isn't balanced, nobody should pretend it is balanced. Mage seems like a great compromise class, although I'm not sure they are the "best" at farming gold at 60. Warlock gets a free mount, which that gold could go to an alt or something, so it's nothing to sneeze at, and rogues I think can farm brd with pickpocketing and whatnot. Going to need to do more homework before I finalize it, mage seems to be a great choice so far though.

And yeah, mentioning the server by name should be fine. The illegal content rule applies more to direct facilitation of piracy, like linking to a torrent, attaching infringing material to posts, etc.

Muy bueno.

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Re: World of Warcraft
« Reply #50 on: November 10, 2017, 09:11:38 AM »
Im not (yet) a technically savvy person, but, I see private server from a random third party success! Official server from a multi billion dollar company?...NO PROBLEM THEY GOT THE MONEY TO THROW AT ANY PROBLEM THAT EXISTS!

Am I wrong? Or are you just taking the perspective of the grunts who actually have to impliment such changes.

I'm trying to look at it from all angles. While I don't have the number of roadblocks at my company that Blizzard would, I certainly do run into a few of them.

The directors of the project have to satisfy the people in finance (I doubt this is going to be free--hopefully they do a tiered pricing scheme, like no additional cost if you already have an active subscription to retail and, say, $5/month if you're not). If they aren't planning to charge for it, they'd have to make that determination as to whether the goodwill they get from it will exceed the value of the staff needed to run it. They'd need to factor everything in and see if they'd be able to break even. I suspect that's one of the main reasons they want to talk to the people who run vanilla servers: it's a great use study.

When it comes to the programming team, in the interests of both purity and time savings they're probably not going to rewrite the code (rewriting would likely put it overbudget verrrrry quickly) but they're still going to have to do a bunch of work on it to raise the security and reliability of the software while preserving the gameplay. I doubt anyone's going to complain if they prevent cheats and exploits from working, and I don't think anyone has fond memories of the mandatory maintenance windows. :)

After the code changes/modernization is done, they're going to have to run it through their compliance teams to ensure that the server software itself can't be exploited, as that can lead to some pretty sticky issues (like people getting access to the server that the code is running on). While that's happening, their QA team would be trying their damnedest to break the game. Since they're likely going to be modernizing the client as well (if nothing else to make sure it's using newer graphical APIs so that they don't have to worry if Microsoft winds up dropping DirectX 9 support or something like that), that's going to have to go through thorough testing to make sure that nothing breaks as a result of those changes.

The random third-parties that build this software independently, on the other hand, may not have a bunch of money to throw at the problem, but they don't have any overhead, either. They don't have stringent testing policies in place or a financial department breathing down their necks. In their case, it boils down to whether or not they know enough about the game and its client/server protocol to make it happen.

I needed to do a RAID of all things in the process of getting flying in legion...queue tank, 5 minutes later, raid, kill like 4 things, done. Like, what? Didn't talk to a single human being. I'm not even level 10 on my mage yet and I talked to more people than I did leveling from 100-110 in legion, 8 times.

LFR is one of the things that kill modern WoW for me. I appreciate the fact that it exists to a degree. I mean, the aforementioned finance department wants to make sure that people who don't have time to do proper raids will be able to experience the storyline and keep giving them money.

Buuuuuut, the problem that I have with LFR is that it is more mindless than normal dungeons, and the rewards are simply too damn good. Why bother doing normal raids when LFR gear rewards are a baby step down from that? What's worse is that the ease of getting decent gear in LFR had a rippling effect through normal raiding as well. My friends and I tried like hell to make normal raiding work in Legion, but it just straight up wasn't happening. The people who queue for normal raids are, by and large, complete idiots. People will happily join raiding guilds with no intention to bother showing up for raids. It's ridiculous.

Oh yeah, these modern day snowflakes also get super pissy if you call them out on their bullshit. If they think that me telling them (forcefully, for the fifth time) not to drag displacing effects to me (the main tank) while holding threat on a stationary enemy is "mean," I don't even know what to say. So yeah, a dumbass demon hunter causing our top warrior DPS to get killed (and wasting a battle rez in the process) is apparently acceptable behavior by current generation players. Brilliant.

Before LFR, I don't recall ever having problems like that. By and large, people knew what was expected of them. They knew that they weren't getting a carry. Standards were higher. Even during Dragon Soul people had the courtesy to not bring LFR bullshit into normal raids. That all started coming crashing down in Mists when Blizzard made LFR more "accessible" without decreasing the awarded gear level appropriately. You actually had to pay attention in DS LFR. In Mists and beyond? Not so much.

Come official release, my main, is a resto shaman, it is my favorite class in that version of the game, however, soloing and grinding money as a resto shaman SUCKED. I did it once, and that was enough.

Heh, yeah, I did that with my priest. I leveled him as holy from 1-80 (1-30ish during BC, the rest during WotLK). I can say that warriors loved grouping with me, though.

From what I remember, the only healers that weren't a complete bear to solo with were discipline priests, and that still was far from ideal.

The game isn't balanced, nobody should pretend it is balanced.

Exactly.

I think a large part of why the game is so different nowadays is that sometime around Cataclysm, Blizzard went from focusing on group balance to emphasizing individual class balance. For an MMO, that sort of thinking is a mistake. Raids nowadays have become more about dividing up a set of increasingly bizarre mechanics than actually knowing how to actually play your damn class. Of course, it's really telling of the modern WoW community when people can't even handle instructions like "go over there when you have X debuff, then walk back when it expires" without fucking it up.

Mage seems like a great compromise class, although I'm not sure they are the "best" at farming gold at 60. Warlock gets a free mount, which that gold could go to an alt or something, so it's nothing to sneeze at, and rogues I think can farm brd with pickpocketing and whatnot. Going to need to do more homework before I finalize it, mage seems to be a great choice so far though.

I'm leaning towards either mage or hunter at this point, favoring the latter just due to nostalgia and experience. We'll see! I'm going to fiddle around with the different classes on my server and determine what I want to do based on that.
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Spectere

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Re: World of Warcraft
« Reply #51 on: November 12, 2017, 01:52:27 AM »

(click to enlarge)

Breaking out of End Time is fun.
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vladgd

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Re: World of Warcraft
« Reply #52 on: November 12, 2017, 08:16:34 PM »
I know money is always a factor, but I'm not so sure making tons of money off WoW Classic is what they're going for. They want to cripple private servers, because...the legal team hates them? But I really do think that this project isn't blizzard suddenly giving a shit about a niche group of fans, they just want those people who are playing free WoW on private servers to be paying customers. That's my tin foil hat assumption anyway.

But besides technical challenges, I think the biggest challenge is how to implement the game? I don't think they can pick a solution that can please everybody.

I would personally would like static 1.12.1, nothing gated, and NOTHING ELSE. NO FIXES NO "ohh we're transferring classic to "classic tbc"" JUST STATIC 1.12.1 PERIOD.

I don't want to play vanilla and 12 months later no longer have that option because we've moved on to tbc. I do love tbc, don't take this the wrong way, but if I am on a server to play vanilla, I ONLY WANT THAT, if they want to release a separate server for tbc they can do so, but don't delete my vanilla character in the process.

But I'm not one of those nutters who also want to ban addons and stuff, they claim it ruins the vanilla experience...except addons and thottbot were day 1? Even leveling addons and whatnot were fairly common in that era, so I have no problems with it and use a few myself on elysium.

And don't get me on those people who want to see all sorts of changes to make the game legion "lite". Just no, they have the current game for that experience. I listened to a podcast and these people though "maybe instead of drinking once every 1-3 mobs, it was every 10-15 mobs" like...no. That's disgusting, no. Sure it sounds nice, but, the current game has an experience like that. Although...i may have drank...10 times IN TOTAL on my mage from..91-110...no joke, infinite mana is in the current game for some reason and nobody mentions anything about it

Buuuuuut, the problem that I have with LFR is that it is more mindless than normal dungeons, and the rewards are simply too damn good. Why bother doing normal raids when LFR gear rewards are a baby step down from that? What's worse is that the ease of getting decent gear in LFR had a rippling effect through normal raiding as well. My friends and I tried like hell to make normal raiding work in Legion, but it just straight up wasn't happening. The people who queue for normal raids are, by and large, complete idiots. People will happily join raiding guilds with no intention to bother showing up for raids. It's ridiculous.

Even without LFR you don't even need to raid to get solid gear. My prot warrior, FULL GODDAMN EPICS(and one legendary) 884 gear level (I have done 0 argus content, so if I did i'd be like 15 higher), solo only content. wut?! There's no effort, and with no effort, I don't give a damn about my gear. It's pointless and meaningless, and I don't care. I care more about a dungeon blue in vanilla in my leveling stage than any "epic" item I get in legion or draenor for that matter. It's not fun when it's not earned.

Before LFR, I don't recall ever having problems like that. By and large, people knew what was expected of them. They knew that they weren't getting a carry. Standards were higher. Even during Dragon Soul people had the courtesy to not bring LFR bullshit into normal raids. That all started coming crashing down in Mists when Blizzard made LFR more "accessible" without decreasing the awarded gear level appropriately. You actually had to pay attention in DS LFR. In Mists and beyond? Not so much.

In vanilla and even past expansions you needed to learn your damn class. I have completed heroics, first try, in legion, literally MASHING RANDOM BUTTONS TANKING. I don't even have words for that. The game doesn't force me to play optimally so I just don't, and I even get rewarded for it.

I'm leaning towards either mage or hunter at this point, favoring the latter just due to nostalgia and experience. We'll see! I'm going to fiddle around with the different classes on my server and determine what I want to do based on that.

Hunter is certainly not a bad option, it's not like you're leveling a slow class like paladin shaman or healer or something. I'm focusing down on definitely making mage the main (aoe farming can't be beaten for dat gold). However, I want a resto shaman, so I'll have the shaman created at the same time and camp him at an inn, and grind through that rest xp every 10 days or so to make for a more efficient leveling process while focusing on the mage. Shadow priest sounds really fun in pvp as well...so...3 characters? Who knows, but mage/sham is likely unless I want to change the sham into priest since I experienced end game with shaman in vanilla already.

For the screenie you posted, I'm not sure I know what that is. If it's anything cata/panda, my playtime was at an alltime low durring those expansions (one level under the cap in cata, fuckin skipped panda expansion till I was forced to level through it to get to draenor)

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Re: World of Warcraft
« Reply #53 on: November 13, 2017, 01:00:36 AM »
I know money is always a factor, but I'm not so sure making tons of money off WoW Classic is what they're going for. They want to cripple private servers, because...the legal team hates them? But I really do think that this project isn't blizzard suddenly giving a shit about a niche group of fans, they just want those people who are playing free WoW on private servers to be paying customers. That's my tin foil hat assumption anyway.

Honestly, I think that the people on the mid- to lower-levels of the company do genuinely care about what the players want. The problem in almost every case is convincing the higher ups that things like that are a good idea (and that they make "financial sense" and that sort of thing). I sincerely believe that if it were up to upper management, they'd just stick with sending C&Ds out to server operators as they've done in the past. Hell, it'd be a lot cheaper for one. They have lawyers on retainer for reasons like that. And, honestly, who's going to fight back? A person who's running a private server isn't going to have the money to fight against Activision-Blizzard in a court battle--they're just going to shut it down and post a sad message to their site's front page. It's a grey area anyway, and ActiBlizz is counting on people not being able to afford to set a precedent.

No, in this case they're actively investing in it. They're definitely spending more cash than they would by slinging C&Ds all over the place. I'm sure part of the reason it's happening does involve getting the people who dislike modern WoW back under their umbrella, but I think there's more to it than typical corporate bullshit in this case.

But besides technical challenges, I think the biggest challenge is how to implement the game? I don't think they can pick a solution that can please everybody.

I would personally would like static 1.12.1, nothing gated, and NOTHING ELSE. NO FIXES NO "ohh we're transferring classic to "classic tbc"" JUST STATIC 1.12.1 PERIOD.

I don't want to play vanilla and 12 months later no longer have that option because we've moved on to tbc. I do love tbc, don't take this the wrong way, but if I am on a server to play vanilla, I ONLY WANT THAT, if they want to release a separate server for tbc they can do so, but don't delete my vanilla character in the process.

I'm also in the camp that hopes that Blizzard keeps it a truly vanilla experience. If they push into BC, I doubt anyone's going to be wandering around actually doing things in Azeroth. When I started playing it really seemed as though most of the people stayed in Outland, and that was with a high enough population to adequately support both lands. When WoW Classic drops I doubt we're going to see numbers get anywhere near as high as they were back in its prime, so keeping the population at a sustainable level is going to be challenging enough.

But I'm not one of those nutters who also want to ban addons and stuff, they claim it ruins the vanilla experience...except addons and thottbot were day 1? Even leveling addons and whatnot were fairly common in that era, so I have no problems with it and use a few myself on elysium.

It definitely goes beyond leveling addons. The main problem is that the addon API in Vanilla had so few restrictions that people were able to write addons to play the game for them. Not sure how I feel about that particular point either way.

Obviously if the minimal restrictions cause security issues to crop up, that should most certainly be addressed. Despite everything, though, I don't think addons had any sort of filesystem access, so that'll probably be fine.

And don't get me on those people who want to see all sorts of changes to make the game legion "lite". Just no, they have the current game for that experience. I listened to a podcast and these people though "maybe instead of drinking once every 1-3 mobs, it was every 10-15 mobs" like...no. That's disgusting, no. Sure it sounds nice, but, the current game has an experience like that.

Yet another example of people thinking without speaking. People like that don't seem to realize that when they suggest "minor" changes like that it would require the game to be significantly rebalanced. Blizzard doesn't have a slider that controls how often you need to bloody drink. The only way to control that is to tweak 1) enemy damage, 2) the size of the player's health pool, and/or 3) the player's health regeneration rate. Any change to any of those would drastically change the dynamic of the game.

And yeah, I know I'm preaching to the choir...

Although...i may have drank...10 times IN TOTAL on my mage from..91-110...no joke, infinite mana is in the current game for some reason and nobody mentions anything about it

Yep. I leveled my priest from 90-102 without drinking once. I don't bother carrying food on my DK because hitting death strike once or twice pops me to full health.

Even without LFR you don't even need to raid to get solid gear. My prot warrior, FULL GODDAMN EPICS(and one legendary) 884 gear level (I have done 0 argus content, so if I did i'd be like 15 higher), solo only content. wut?! There's no effort, and with no effort, I don't give a damn about my gear. It's pointless and meaningless, and I don't care. I care more about a dungeon blue in vanilla in my leveling stage than any "epic" item I get in legion or draenor for that matter. It's not fun when it's not earned.

It's funny in hindsight how big of a deal people made during WotLK about welfare epics when you actually had to regularly do dungeons and raids in order to get them. You were just able to get some of your tier pieces from a shopkeeper using tokens/emblems instead of waiting for them to drop (basically an expanded version of BC's raid loot system).

And yeah, "epics" have been pretty much meaningless for a long time now. I'd really like to see dungeons max out at rares again. I'm fine with epics dropping from dungeons if it's truly a rare event, but the rate that you get those sorts of items is just absurd.

In vanilla and even past expansions you needed to learn your damn class. I have completed heroics, first try, in legion, literally MASHING RANDOM BUTTONS TANKING. I don't even have words for that. The game doesn't force me to play optimally so I just don't, and I even get rewarded for it.

The only time you really have to learn your class now is when you're raiding, and even then the only time you need to learn to play optimally is if you're tanking or healing. The only way people notice DPS fucking up is if they do something monumentally stupid (like drag a nasty debuff to the tanks) or if literally everyone is sitting around with their thumbs up their asses.

Hunter is certainly not a bad option, it's not like you're leveling a slow class like paladin shaman or healer or something.

If I did decide to level a healer for some reason, I'd probably ride on rested exp (like what you're doing with your resto shaman) and I'd probably wind up leveling in a DPS spec and spec swapping when I'm at cap. I've done my fair share of holy nova and smite DPS already. :P

Shadow priest sounds really fun in pvp as well...so...3 characters?

I had a lot of fun healing in PvP as a priest, at least during Wrath. YMMV for Vanilla. I generally ran disc for PvP and holy for dungeons/raids.

For the screenie you posted, I'm not sure I know what that is. If it's anything cata/panda, my playtime was at an alltime low durring those expansions (one level under the cap in cata, fuckin skipped panda expansion till I was forced to level through it to get to draenor)

It's from End Time, one of the heroic-only endgame dungeons in Cataclysm. The dungeon content proper takes place in the dragonshrines in Dragonblight (in the apocalyptic future where everything is super dead). However, there's a way that you can escape the confines and explore the instanced version of the ruined Dragonblight by jumping up the wall a certain way in the bronze dragonshrine (which, luckily, is one of the areas that's guaranteed to be accessible). That's the only way to actually get to the foot of Wyrmrest Temple.

There's also a nearly-complete representation of Crystalsong Forest in there as well, presumably so that Dalaran would show up.
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vladgd

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Re: World of Warcraft
« Reply #54 on: April 29, 2018, 06:35:36 PM »
Bump?

Uhh...help?

I had cravings for vanilla, and I impulse spent $15 on a month of retail...except I realize I HAVE NOTHING TO DO ON RETAIL!

I have 4 classes left to level, and I kinda want to wait till BFA for the new allied races for some of those, so...ahhhhhhh

Slutmog hunting for the demon hunter? Game the auction house for $$$? Try and get any goddamn protodrake? Gear is all but meaningless in retail to me, it feels like diablo 3 now where it's all erased with the next update, and I'm not raiding in retail at all.

Maybe I'll try gearing up my shaman as resto and attempt some battlegrounds?

I'm out of ideas, I should just accept I wasted money and try more elysium. I've yet to decide on my vanilla main, it's mage, shaman, paladin, shadow priest. TOO HARD TO DECIDE

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Re: World of Warcraft
« Reply #55 on: April 29, 2018, 09:48:50 PM »
I'm kind of in the same boat. I didn't renew my subscription, but I've been kind of getting the urge to play something like WoW but I really don't think retail is going to scratch the itch.

Mog hunting would be fun if you're in that sort of mood. I don't see the point in gaming the AH. Gold has become almost meaningless aside from getting the overpriced mounts. PvP's almost always relevant.

I'd just cut your losses and jump on Elysium. Vanilla is far more interesting from a gameplay and lore perspective, IMO. *shrug*
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vladgd

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Re: World of Warcraft
« Reply #56 on: May 01, 2018, 09:40:16 PM »
Having 8 classes at max level, the other 4 I could care less about, so I don't even have motivation to level.

I was excited about the new trolls being able to be paladins...then that idea was shot down. Orc priests though...but I already have a dwarf.

Idk, I will play battle for azeroth, and probably enjoy it, but this game doesn't feel like it has the legs it once had. I just can't think of anything to do. I should try pvp or something, but there's like pvp tallents and stuff now? I don't even want to dive into that malarkey. I aint even shitting on legion, its a totally different game now, and I had a lot of fun playing through the content, but It's all dried up and I remember now why I let my sub expire.

Still going back and fourth on vanilla classes, and probably will until classic hits. I recall late vanilla I wasn't really raiding much and just did battlegrounds on my warrior mostly, and then respecced elemental on the shaman and it was amazing. Elemental is shit in vanilla...for pve...but in pvp FAT CRITZZ FUK ENHANCE RNG

I want to shaman again, but mage is just too damn broke to not have as a first character. Probably the best gold farmers in the game? So main may be troll mage with enchant/tailor, bank alt/real alt will be orc sham herb/alch, leveling when rested caps out. That way I can have a bank alt, but make use of rest exp to gradually get the pvp character I really want to play. Shit maybe use the mage to fund a twink, I never tried that back in the day and I totally understand the appeal now a days.

Also if I get people to play with, and they want to do alliance for whatever goddamn reason, I'm totally doing broke ass paladin. BEST PVP HEALER IN THE GAME, no doubt, and support in vanilla is really fun. Really loved it with the shaman before I respecced ele for the tail end of vanilla.



Maybe when I get around to it I'll level the elysium mage. Still level 9, don't even have my first tallent point yet.

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Re: World of Warcraft
« Reply #57 on: May 02, 2018, 08:57:07 AM »
Oh man, that screenshot! I miss when my action bars were filled to the brim with abilities rather than tinker toys.

I obviously can't speak for you, but a big part of the reason that I have a hard time staying invested in WoW is because it seems as though the story designers are more interested in telling a linear, cinematic story than populating a world. Before--even as late as Mists--you could go through the leveling experience without even so much as stepping into a zone, but nowadays you're directed through the content step by step. About the only "freedom" you have now is being able to bug out early and move on.

This sounds like an odd thing to bitch about, but I also consistently feel as though I'm moving the world along rather than the world moving along around me. For an MMO, the former makes little sense. Then again, considering the writers of Legion saw fit to make every single player a leader of the same small group of organizations, I can't say that I'm surprised. The game went from you being a citizen of Azeroth with a widely variable amount of heroism (I mean, it's not like you have to raid in the earlier patches) to becoming a massive ego trip for your character.

I just wish that if Blizzard wanted to tell a linear story, they'd branch off and make a separate game out of it. Fans have been vying for Warcraft 4 for how long now? This obsession with making the player a demigod completely falls apart when you add another similarly fawned over player to your party and dare to think about it for more than a couple of seconds.

And yeah, I'm going to keep bringing up this point (I know I have in the past!). If you have two shaman on your party, you have two leaders of the Earthen Ring. Some people complained that I wasn't suspending my disbelief enough, but the crux of my point is that you never bloody had to before. The player doesn't have to be the leader of every minor faction in the game for it to be compelling. That's escalation for the sake of escalation, and Blizzard's implementation of this sort of thing is just as lousy as Bethesda's (arguably it's worse--in the Elder Scrolls games you don't have to do any of that. In WoW it's a forced part of the story).

What I'm trying to say is: /2 wtb classic plz kthx.
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vladgd

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Re: World of Warcraft
« Reply #58 on: May 02, 2018, 08:15:56 PM »
Well whenever classic hits, let's make sure to be same server same faction. I assume you're horde?

I'm seriously going to try and connect with people to get people into this fucker. I had so much damn fun playing with other people back in the day. I even remember having people come over to my house with their desktops, and we played lowbie alliance characters on random servers and went and did deadmines and shit, it was amazing. Depending on who I know will be playing (and if they will stick with it to 60 is the key factor) I may change class away from mage. So far mage is the default, however priest and shaman are very close behind. If i had people to support me, I would have no issues healing.

You do make a great point. The game now is about turning the character into a literal god, not even a demi god. You are the master of everything and slaughter all in your path and there's only ONE of you (ignore the other 10 million who "cough" are also the ONE "cough"). There was something kinda nice about being a wee bop nobody lost in a big big world that vanilla had (I'd argue tbc as well, but less so in tbc). Plus the lack of the creature comforts we're used to, forces you to...lets hold off, what is an MMORPG. MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER? like, a lot of other people on your server to play with, as in it's not a single player game? Ohh, the old WoW forced you into playing with others because the game was hard(in comparison to the current game). Even early on first 10 levels it was very advantageous to clique with others to get certain hubs done. Remember the troll islands off the coast of durotar? Some tough enemies in there, soloable, but groups sure did help. Now a days people don't even talk. People who haven't played vanilla and current wouldn't understand, but the current game compared to the first release is as different as comparing madden NFL to NBA jam. Both sports games...both totally different.



As for the screenie (digging through what I have archived) remember kargath? ITS GONE NOW, but it was a town hordies gathered at to raid mc and bwl. Lotta good times I had there.

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Re: World of Warcraft
« Reply #59 on: May 03, 2018, 04:27:43 AM »
Sounds good to me! And yeah, I main Horde (tauren and trollin' all day long, yo).

Going through the vanilla content during BC was the most fun I'd had, I think. I did enjoy raiding during Wrath, but I don't really have anything to compare it to. I never actually hit the level cap until...3.1, I think? I played at a relaxed pace for quite a while, haha.

I'm not sure what I'll be rolling when classic comes out. I have a few ideas in mind but I'm not sure exactly what I want to commit to. Hunter is an easy choice for soloing, but if I do end up getting involved in any endgame type stuff I'd probably want to go with something different. Probably magic RDPS of some description. I've done more than enough MDPS in Wrath and Cata, after all. Rolling a tank is kind of tempting, too, as long as people who decide to play on classic figure out or remember how aggro used to work. Hoo boy, that's going to kill so many people. The first few weeks are going to be hilarious.

Oh oh oh, my favorite part about them making your character a god is when they pull a bunch of stupid shit during cutscenes. Cataclysm in particular was "great" for that. As far as a character's relative power level is concerned, there were many times that I felt more like I was playing Diablo than WoW, even on my squishier toons.

I'm really trying to figure out where the beginning of the end of humility was. For a while I considered it to be Warlords, but now that I really look back I think Cataclysm is when the game started to plunge into becoming an ego trip. It wasn't nearly as egregious as making the player character a supreme leader in an alien land (then making them go out and collect the Dreanor equivalent of zhevra hooves because fuck you), but--at least as someone who mains tauren--there's some very clear signs as to where Blizzard was going with this.

So in classic WoW, tauren started off assisting their village. One of the first tasks they perform (no doubt a bit of an in-game tutorial) is assisting Greatmother Hawkwind. She's elderly and needs your help bringing water back to the village. Things do escalate, as they do, with you infiltrating a balls hard (well, it was hard until a late-Wrath patch made all of the enemies there yellow :/) quilboar area. After that, you move off to assist another camp, then to the base of Thunder Bluff, then into the city proper. That's around when your journey begins. About the only ego boost you get is that you're told that you have a strong bloodline. Beyond that, you're basically a citizen who's helping your people.

In Cataclysm, you start off in the middle of a battlezone. The quilboar are apparently pissed and started attacking everything OH NOES. You start murdering them left and right, pausing only to occasionally learn a new ability. Then you kill more things! Then click on some people to free them. Then kill some more! Most of the enemies that are red are already locked in battle with someone else, so even face pulling is hard. Valuable lessons aren't taught. You don't need to be careful in this world. Buuuut, I digress. After you kill kill kill murder death kill murder kill you find out that OH NO GREATMOTHER HAWKWIND WAS MURDERED BY BIG BAD QUILBOAR. TIME FOR COW REVENGE. You, Mr. Random Tauren #283, are the ONLY ONE who can stop the leader of the quilboar! MORE MURDER. YAY. You're like a furry version of Bruce Fucking Willis. Die Hard 6: Mul-Gore, amirite?

How FUCKING appropriate that they kill off the elderly character that requires the player character to display a sense of humility. A sense of belonging to a tribe and making your contributions to it. It's a short sequence. I mean, if you know where to go you can be done with that part of the game in 30 minutes, tops. But the thing is, it stuck with me. I hadn't played through the vanilla version of that quest line again until last year at some point and I still remember a lot of it! You get a real sense of the way that the tauren people live. They make you feel like you belong there. It's a means to ease you into the world, but there's some substance to it.

The only reason I remember the new tauren starting area at all is because it completely flies in the face of good storytelling. Funny, I don't think that's what they were going for. But hey, I guess it's kind of appropriate given how modern WoW works. Let's just start the player off killing all the things without even giving them five seconds to get invested in anything, because VIDEO GAMES!

I know that many of the other races don't start off quite that abruptly, but I think it's just an absolutely perfect example of old Blizzard vs. new Blizzard.

And yes, I know I sound bitter. It's because I am.

It's funny, because Cataclysm has the right idea in so many ways. The point you made about TBC being less of a big, big world than vanilla holds a lot of weight. Continent-based expansions like TBC and WotLK did effectively split the player base. Cataclysm brought everyone back together on two big continents (only for Mists to split them off again). Before they added zone instancing (which is a clusterfuck in its own right) the world just felt dead, even when WoW was at its peak. I don't know how they could have fixed that, but I distinctly remember being alone for such long stretches that I was surprised when I finally saw another player.

You know, on top of dealing with difficult areas with randos, I'm eager for classic just to see server culture make a return. I'm sick of it being little more than a meaningless tag next to my name. After helping my friend (attempt to) run a semi-casual raid guild in Legion, I want nothing more than to see these uncommitted fucksticks called out and drug through the mud for guild hopping and showing up to raids whenever the fuck they want to, just like how it used to be. If you repeatedly no-call-no-show to raids, you're reputation tanks and you're done. People are so used to being able to just queue for whatever they want that they don't give a shit about stuff like that anymore. AGHHHHH.

I'm going to have to go through my old hard drives one of these days and dig up my old screenshots. It'd be fun to reminisce a bit.
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