World of Warcraft Classic

[bmoc]

I am getting pretty hype for the launch of WoW Classic later this month. Some of best online gaming memories are from Vanilla WoW, Burning Crusade, and Wrath of the Lich King. I played in the WoW Classic stress test this past weekend and I had a blast despite the crowds and only being able to go to level 15. I'm going to be playing Alliance on the Pagle (PvE) realm and I've already reserved a few character names. Anyone else planning on playing WoW Classic? If there is enough interest, I can compile a list of who's playing and on what realm.

To kick off some discussion, I pose this question. Fifteen years after its initial launch, is WoW Classic old enough to be considered retro? I know this is a very subjective topic but it is one I don't see often asked about PC games. When I see people talking about games becoming retro, it is often defined by console generation (usually two generations behind). Do PC games have an equivalent metric that a lot of people agree on?

[Mad_Hatter]

I might check it out. I never truly got to experience Vanilla WoW. By the time I got 60, Burning Crusade was released like a month later. I played Vanilla one a private server. I leveled one character to like 30 and another to like 56 and stopped. I felt once Blizzard officially announced it, playing on a private server was a waste of time. I had fun though.

I was not the biggest fan of Burning Crusade. Lot of it felt too sci-fi. I like that old WarCraft 3 feel. That's what got me to love WarCraft. So Burning Crusade was just exhausting to me. Also, at the time, I was still in school and shared a computer with two brothers, so it was not possible to do raids or anything. If they do a private server for this one, I might give it a shot. Questing in TBC was a blast I remember. I loved the zones and their music (Zangamarsh and Nagrad in particular).

Now Wrath of the Lich King, I loved. I had my own computer then. I did Ice Crown Citadel countless times and beat the Lich King. I'd definitely try a private server for WoTLK.

The expansions after that were always "meh" to me. I didn't really like Cata.


Anyways, I'm not sure when I will play it. I definitely won't play it at launch. I don't feel like waiting around for quest items/mobs. That was already a pain on some private servers, I can't imagine how bad it will get on launch day. I rather play it a couple of months later after the servers are nice and steady; and when the devs got whatever glitches worked out.

I will do PvE. I don't miss getting ganked like I did on a PvP server (man, what was I thinking back then?). I want to enjoy the game. Go at my own pace. And not get stressed out because some jackasses are camping me lol.

[bmoc]

I was not the biggest fan of Burning Crusade. Lot of it felt too sci-fi. I like that old WarCraft 3 feel. That's what got me to love WarCraft.

Classic WoW will definitely scratch that itch. It is way more WC3 than TBC.

Anyways, I'm not sure when I will play it. I definitely won't play it at launch. I don't feel like waiting around for quest items/mobs. That was already a pain on some private servers, I can't imagine how bad it will get on launch day. I rather play it a couple of months later after the servers are nice and steady; and when the devs got whatever glitches worked out.

The stress test was pretty stable on the PvE realm at least. Layering seemed to be doing its job. Layering is kind of like instancing for overcrowded areas. My ping was always under 100ms whenever I checked it and I only got disconnected once the entire weekend.

[isiolia]

To kick off some discussion, I pose this question. Fifteen years after its initial launch, is WoW Classic old enough to be considered retro? I know this is a very subjective topic but it is one I don't see often asked about PC games. When I see people talking about games becoming retro, it is often defined by console generation (usually two generations behind). Do PC games have an equivalent metric that a lot of people agree on?

I'd say so. Doubly, given the nature of the release.

I'd say "retro" has lost most of it's actual meaning when it comes to games. The locked-away nature of needing older hardware maybe encouraged that, rather than simply looking at things as older or classic titles (which is probably more the direction PC gaming tilts). On a less-general level though, within a particular genre, you'd probably have an easier time defining a retro game. MMOs have, over time, evolved to be more accessible. Heck, relative to games out at the time, vanilla WoW itself was (a big part of its success), and the modern incarnation makes it seem hardcore.
Deliberately rolling a lot of that back and attempting to recreate a dated experience for a niche audience....doesn't get much more retro gaming than that.



Not personally planning to play it though - I've been playing FFXI since before WoW ever came out, and I'm just gonna stick to that Blizzard added the game to my battle.net account prior to one of the expansions coming out, and I played to around level 70 I think. It's fine, but like anything in that style, it got old fast. Were I to reactivate something of the sort, I'd be more inclined to go see how XIV's Trust system is.

[bmoc]

Deliberately rolling a lot of that back and attempting to recreate a dated experience for a niche audience....doesn't get much more retro gaming than that.

I'm also really excited for Pantheon because it seems to be a good compromise of early MMO game mechanics and modern conveniences. In that regard, I think WoW Classic is also in the sweet spot (for me) of meaningful content without being too punishing or too easy.

Not personally planning to play it though - I've been playing FFXI since before WoW ever came out, and I'm just gonna stick to that Blizzard added the game to my battle.net account prior to one of the expansions coming out, and I played to around level 70 I think. It's fine, but like anything in that style, it got old fast. Were I to reactivate something of the sort, I'd be more inclined to go see how XIV's Trust system is.

I've always heard good things about XIV after the big revamp. Maybe one of these days I will give it a go.

[bmoc]

Less than a week to go! Some WoW Classic devs just did an AMA on Reddit. Here is a consolidated list of questions and answers https://classic.wowhead.com/news=294587 ... classicwow

One thing that was asked that I wished they could have touched on was the possibility of more Classic content after the 6 release phases are done. There were plans for many more zones/dungeons/raids/battlegrounds in vanilla WoW that did not get implemented (or at least not implemented until many expansions later). While there is a very vocal subset of players hellbent on no changes from vanilla, I think it would be pretty great to see some of that 'missing' content in a year or two. There are developers working on WoW Classic that have been there since the beginning. If I were a developer, I would love to revisit and finish areas that I put a lot of work into and got cut. I imagine it would very cathartic, much like it felt for the Nintendo devs that finally saw Star Fox 2 released via the SNES Classic. Regardless, they do seem open to the possibility of doing The Burning Crusade down the road based on one of the responses in the AMA.

Sadly, I am expecting excessive login queues for the first week or two. Blizzard has already added several new PvP realms due to high demand. The realm that I am probably going to play on (Pagle) is classified as "Full". They are encouraging players to move to non-Full realms. All other PvE realms in the US are classified as "Full" or "High" population so I'm not sure if it would be worth moving unless they open up another PvE realm.

[Mad_Hatter]

Less than a week to go! Some WoW Classic devs just did an AMA on Reddit. Here is a consolidated list of questions and answers https://classic.wowhead.com/news=294587 ... classicwow

One thing that was asked that I wished they could have touched on was the possibility of more Classic content after the 6 release phases are done. There were plans for many more zones/dungeons/raids/battlegrounds in vanilla WoW that did not get implemented (or at least not implemented until many expansions later). While there is a very vocal subset of players hellbent on no changes from vanilla, I think it would be pretty great to see some of that 'missing' content in a year or two. There are developers working on WoW Classic that have been there since the beginning. If I were a developer, I would love to revisit and finish areas that I put a lot of work into and got cut. I imagine it would very cathartic, much like it felt for the Nintendo devs that finally saw Star Fox 2 released via the SNES Classic. Regardless, they do seem open to the possibility of doing The Burning Crusade down the road based on one of the responses in the AMA.

Sadly, I am expecting excessive login queues for the first week or two. Blizzard has already added several new PvP realms due to high demand. The realm that I am probably going to play on (Pagle) is classified as "Full". They are encouraging players to move to non-Full realms. All other PvE realms in the US are classified as "Full" or "High" population so I'm not sure if it would be worth moving unless they open up another PvE realm.

What were some instances, zones, raids that they never finished for classic?

[bmoc]

Grim Batol, Uldum, Mt. Hyjal, Karazhan Crypts, Stormwind Vault, Azshara's Crater Battleground, Old Ironforge, Ravenholdt questline for rogues, and the Emerald Dream just to name a few.

Some of these places you could get to in vanilla through bugs or hacked server/clients while others were just heavily hinted at. A good chunk of these were implement in Cataclysm but they were greatly reworked. For example, Uldum was originally intended to be an instanced raid but was changed to be a zone instead.

[Mad_Hatter]

Thanks!

I always remember the Stormwind Vault entrance and always wanted to go inside a a newbie. I would love to see that.

Like you said, I don't think it will be a bad idea. Especially since some of the old devs are back. I'm sure they would love to finish what they started.

And they don't have to have unique drops in these instances either. That way it doesn't cause any balance issues.

[bmoc]

Yesterday evening, I started logging into WoW Classic at just a few minutes after 6PM when the realms went live. The queue on Pagle was in the 6000's. I sat in it for maybe 5 minutes and had like a 30 minute estimated wait time. Then all of a sudden it just let me in. I'm going to have to post a screenshot of the madness that was the human starting area (Northshire) when I logged in. It was so crowded that one of my buddies and I just camped a single spawn point per quest. Once we got to level 3 or so, we left Northshire and ignored quests for a while. We just started killing things to get a few more levels so that some Goldshire quests would open up.

I got to level 10 last night and decided to go get all the flight points on the way to Menethil Harbor (where all the boats to Kalimdor arrive/depart). Running there nearly got me to level 11 just from area discovery xp. If you have ever done that run, you will know that it is very dangerous for a low level character but I managed to get there without dying.

As far as performance goes, the realm held up better than I expected. All the major cities were down for the first few hours. If you tried to zone in, you would be greeted by an empty city - devoid of players and npcs. If you try to leave, you get the same thing outside the city. No players or npcs. I ended up using my hearthstone to get back to Northshire and then I was able to see other players and npcs. Lag was pretty bad for the first two hours or so but it started settling down as it got late in the EST time zone.

All in all, it was a fun launch day. I played at launch back in 2004 and this was definitely a smoother experience.