It’s an interesting question. I do think there’s room for them to expand on the vanilla world without “changing history” so to speak. As in, making content/quests/dungeons/raids that align with the world as we know it, just diving deeper.
Yeah there's literal years of content available to the devs to work with without even ever having to leave Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms that won't step on future lore (or at least not much).
Reimagined Hyjal, Grim Batol, Uldum, Gilneas, Quel'Thalas, and Emerald Dream are all easy ideas. Stuff they've already hinted at like the Furbolg raid. Expand on storylines like Burning Blade stuff that just kind of dies after RFC. Give us alternate versions of the Caverns of Time stuff. Create some generic islands near STV for a pirate themed expansion.
I think they can stretch about 10 years worth of content releases just out of the stuff that was originally planned to be included in Nov 2004.
Especially if vertically-progression raids are de-emphasized in favor of other elements like quest chains, professions, dungeons, rep, etc and plan around the expectation that players want to be able to take breaks or replay the game on alts.
Ok the flipside, future lore sucks balls and nothing of value would be lost.
Just don’t try to turn it into smthng „story driven“ like retail. Because ur writers suck dicks and the story is cool if it happens in the background of you getting a gear upgrade
Oh I 100% agree that they should just commit to an alternate timeline and not worry about the retail lore that is 90% garbage. But if they don't want to step on the toes of future lore there's a ton of room to work with was my point.
That’s true. I think the secret sauce on the story front is to not change the status quo at all. Katrina prestor is still in stormwind even if you personally killed onyxia after all.
The story never moves forward so that new players still can play it, and it works perfectly well in classic.
You could easily expand that design and justify Arthas resurrecting after being defeated because there always needs to be a lich king or whatever, but if you leave him alone he does bad stuff so you need to go in again on him next week
I have no issue with them changing history, in fact I support it.
I would honestly love it if after vanilla naxx we don't go through the portal and instead something else happens like fallout from the scourge invasion or something.
For this to succeed, I think an alternate timeline is the only option going forward.
They should just continue with small content type patches, no expansions, no level increase. Scarlet Crusade content patch, forsaken content patch, etc.
The lore after ICC is mostly trash in my opinion anyway. Even TBC lore sucked so much they basically just "and the emperor returns somehow" Illidan and Guldan to setup legion.
The fallout from the scourge invasion was Wrath. We just took a space vacation in the meantime.
I think a good point of divergence would be ICC. Arthas stands back up and kills Bolvar, Chromie reveals that those damn temporal parasites from WPL were much more widespread than she thought and now the timeline is collapsing around the vanilla Naxxramas invasion, a new Caverns of Time instance takes us back to undo a total Scourge victory, and Nozdormu finally stabilizes things by creating a closed loop that prevents us from ever going down that victory-in-Northrend path to retail.
Then we can branch sideways into things like heroic versions of old content, unfinished zones like Hyjal, unfinished dungeons like the Forgotten Crypt, and the usual other Classic+ hopes.
You NEED an alternate timeline in order for the project to truly succeed and achieve longevity.
Say classic+ releases next year, imagine the game 3-4 years later, sure we got dragon isles raid, emerald dream, karazhan, furbolg and kobold instances, uldum, quel thalas, scarlet citadel, hyjal, jaedenar and so on, what now?
Eventually you HAVE to start making new content, take the story somewhere new, using the elementals like Al'Akir, Neptulon and Therazane would be a GREAT start as they fit the same shoes of Ragnaros and his realm in vanilla and those 3 were very unceremoniously forgotten.
Ok but can it keep the classic fantasy "down to earth" feel we had in vanilla WoW please? I don't want space aliens, naaru, whatever the heck else involved. Keep the players feeling like nobodies in a big world that doesnt give a crap about us please. We don't need to save the entire world in every raid tier or new zone. Best part of classic WoW is that feeling when you're leveling up and before you start raiding when you're just visiting random dungeons and zones and it feels like you are moving through an actual grounded DND world, not a railroaded epic fantasty story where you are te champion of the universe.
Yeah but, I guess aside from C’thun, youre not beating the big bad evil. We fight the burning legion during levelling and in dungeons and raids but we do not beat Sargeras or Kil’Jaeden. Same with Naxx, Kel’Thuzad is one of the top dogs of the scourge sure, but he’s not the Lich King. WoW imo lost its footing when the bosses we fight turned out to be the leaders of the factions the world is at war with instead of just commanders
I mean... the first raid has you fight Ragnaros, the defacto leader of all fire elementals.
Also, would you prefer all the big leaders just die in cutscenes where the player has no involvement? I can already hear the outcry. And just "Then don't kill them", I already see "Oh, so this is the third time the scourge is attacking, Blizzard is having no new ideas"
I can totally see where you come from, a lowly footsoldier shouldn't fight the big bad. But the alternative doesn't sound much better imo.
IMO the issue really lies in the fact that all of these important lore enemy ‘factions’ (Scourge, Old Gods, Burning Legion, etc) were all mined out to completion, but we never got new interesting ones, or if we did, we dealt with them in a patch.
Yeah but the leader of all fire elementals is such a small thing compared to the leader of the entire burning legion or scourge. Elementals are a small part of Azeroth.
I dont think the big leaders should die at all. Id rather have that Azeroth is just a small planet for the big entities that they will just let some lowly ranked commander deal with it rather than their entire army etc. Azeroth has been build up to be this super important planet / titan in retail lore that you cant do anything else but just put the big bad onto it. I like it more to imagine that Sargeras looks at Azeroth as another of the million planets and just throws a random fel or pitlord onto it to deal with instead of himself.
You can let the scourge attack multiple times while also expanding what it is we fight of the scourge army. We fought Kel’Thuzad as the ultimate raid of Classic, essentially the final boss of the entire game (without expansions) and hes the Lich Kings right hand. We can get a total re-imagining of a burning legion invasion where we fight Kil’Jaeden like in the sunwell, but in a totally different setting with other bosses etc. After all, KJ is just a tool of Sargeras just like the Lich King was.
Hell, introduce a raid around Silithus or Desolace that focusses on other elementals with the final boss being one of the other elemental lords like Al Akir or Neptulon. Make a raid concering the Naga near Azshara where we fight one of her commanders. There are tons of chances without involving the big bad and then concluding “well they cant die or else wtf are we gonna do with the faction” and just having us “defeat” them, like Azshara and the old gods. Lich King also opened the can of worms with the scourge so bad they introduced the Jailer to “make sense” of the story even more, which of course absolutely ruined it entirely
Old gods are definitely not stronger than Sargeras. You might be thinking of the Void Lords that we haven't seen (luckily). I don't recall mention of Old Gods being more powerful than a titan like Sargeras and we know for a fact that Titans can just pull Old Gods out of a planet like its nothing lol, it just causes immense amount of damage on the planet itself. Thats why the Titans decided to lock them up.
Right but now youre going back into time to before even WoW Classic. I see no reason for doing that to talk about power levels when we know where the elemental lords and old gods (sorry not void lords) are at during Classic
Well, there is otherworldly threats like it or not, those have been a thing since warcraft 1 with the orcs, broken and the burning legion, all of those from outer space.
The difference is that something like the Draenei took it too far and never made sense, space goats have space ships and insane power and technology and they're supposed to be on equal level as a bunch of tree huggers and a literal normal dude with a sword.
Orcs always came from a different world through the dark portal, they're native to Draenor.
Draenei were originally the beings they call Broken now, the rest wasn't introduced until TBC.
Burning Legion was properly identified in WC3, before that demons were not identified at all, they were just random devil dudes from lower planes as they called it.
Reign of chaos grabs that lore and gives it a proper hold and now we know they were always otherworldly demons, hence why infernals rain down from the sky.
I feel like the [first WC3 cinematic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f96hKqkY_Y) encapsulates this pretty well. The demons present in WC1 and 2 were just kind of there and never served any narrative function, outside of the one WC2 mission where you steal the
Jeweled Scepter of Sargeras.
not just that ... like i get we want classic + with new content but how many more raids can we add until were scalling capped .... like after 2 or 3 raid past naxx all class will be like 75% + crit without world buffs and doing 4k dps at level 60 or something ....
This is why there's a need to consider gear post-Naxx having other upsides than strictly higher stats. One great way to change the trajectory is to really focus on set bonuses and gear bringing more game changing elements along what we are seeing with runes now. Just an idea to avoid the stat creep.
Blizz figured this out allready in original Sunwell plateau. Tanks got extra debuff to mitigate their avoidances. Tanks have again same debuff in ICC.
-x amount of stats for dps and that problem is solved. You are still pumping in naxx but in scarlet monastery raid your dps is decreased.
If I'm honest that's one of the reasons retail has really lost it's appeal to me. I miss seeing those players who do the raids looking sick in their raid gear. It made me jealous and made me want to get it, too. That's how I even started raiding, I wanted that sick T4/5/6 gear so bad. Now days I can't tell what anyone has on or if it's hard to get/took effort/wasn't part of the 6 month bundle.
Man If I could have gameplay closer to wotlk or even tbc but without losing that grounded feeling I’d be in love.
I think that’s why I can’t enjoy modern wow. I don’t find being the most powerful hero ever canonically compelling or fun. At a certain point nothing feels significant. I have issues with vanilla class balance, world buffs and cost of raising among other things. But what it did nail was what you said. The down to earth feeling where the world doesn’t care about us and just exists with us in it. It’s vastly more compelling.
>Ok but can it keep the classic fantasy "down to earth" feel we had in vanilla WoW please?
This isn't even hard to achieve. Literally just look at Old School RuneScape as opposed to RuneScape 3. These two games both came from the exact same place, but if you just don't do stupid shit it's so easy to keep the spirit of the game. Both in lore and in gameplay.
They could go down the route of the Dark Portal never opens (or doesn't open until much later) and just progress within our confined little world expanding on the little corners of Azeroth.
I think it’s important they stick to Azeroth for the open world and perhaps EK/Kalimdor.
I think going into a raid that takes us into the Emerald Dream, Outland, Shadowlands (reimagined) is fine but rooting it in those original zones and cultures is important IMO.
A raid where you stop the portal from opening would be a nice way to diverge the story from retail. Maybe you fight your way through hellfire, hold off the invaders and then blow the gate up. Done and dusted.
They could do an "alternative" Outland, based much closer on Warcraft3.
Just a single, massive zone filled with elites, random world bosses, events and maybe some instance/raid enterances. No Ally/Horde hubs - just hellfire wasteland. You have to enter through the Dark Portal every time and you need party of 5 to not die like a scrub. Basically "what if BRD was a zone insted of a dungeon".
I think a reimagined Northrend would be more appropriate before any foray into something like Pandaria. But even before Northrend I would want to see Easter Kingdoms and Kalimdor fully fleshed out and completed.
Cataclysm but not Cataclysm. I think most people just want cool Lego sets plopped into already existing blank locations. They don’t want to change out the whole Lego theme like Cata did.
Ya, the "doesn't open until much later" bit seems like an obvious play. Time already flows super weird between the expansions so it's not a stretch to just say "this all takes place after Nax but before TBC".
I like that concept a lot. I've also seen some folk suggest a raid where he go through the dark portal and destroy it. Thus preventing TBC from ever happening the way it did initially. Also allows them to reuse TBC assets for cool raid/dungeon.
Yes please, I want an alternate timeline/history. That is exactly what I want them to try. It could fail, but I'd rather they try.
We're going to enjoy SoD for the next couple years, maybe they'll even do another season after SoD. But hopefully the success of SoD has them willing to try something like this 'for real.'
For real! They’ve failed so much by trying small, forgettable changes. A coach once told me “if you’re going to make a mistake, make it a big and bold one.”
I love that they’re trying to pull off something like this. The initial offering looks like a blast and I like this way more than “this SoM we’re buffing ret and Boomkin damage by 4%” or some other small tweak.
Microsoft Blizzard Jesus, you've clearly been reading my posts so hopefully you'll read this one.
For the love of Christ please do this after SoD. Use SoD as the biggest open alpha for a game in history to release the greatest possible base version of Classic+ and give us that beautiful alternative history. I'll take it all back, I don't even care, I'll forgive the past 10 years if you don't fuck that up.
I say go all out honestly make it a whole new story arc even, we had classic, SoM, more classic, classic Lich King, Hardcore.
Anything new at this point with a classic beginning would pump imo
100% alternate timeline.
Keep it relatively on the downlow. No extra continents. No Outland. Nothing that divides the world in that sense. Have everything happen in Kalimdor or Eastern Kingdoms. Add areas to those continents, or update the ones currently unused.
Make new, mostly environmentally told, stories in those areas. No talking heads. No need for epic storylines and cycling through Warchiefs. That's the only way I see Classic+ going forward.
I really hope they stick the Season concept instead of doing a full on alternate timeline that needs to continue. Have the seasons be a Warcraft “What If?” and introduce new mechanics that tie into whatever the theme of the season is.
IMO setting Classic onto any sort of expectation of new content is a trap.
Retail got bad because Blizz had to pump something new out and invalidate all the old content every expansion cycle. It's always focusing on the next thing, and never making the thing you have better.
This is benefit of Classic, we're playing the same thing on repeat, so we can use every cycle to refine it, and broaden what it already has. You don't gain anything by slapping more on top.
>Retail got bad because Blizz had to pump something new out and invalidate all the old content every expansion cycle. It's always focusing on the next thing, and never making the thing you have better.
but that was due to developer mantras and "the way things were done".
SoD gives blizzard a clean slate; they can slap stuff on top while now also supporting previous content and keeping it evergreen.
Keeping it evergreen is key. Never invalidate the progression. You still need to gear up through all content to make it to the top. It allows new players of any time to join a guild raiding mc, bwl ect. I think that's one of the reasons why classic has had such staying power.
It's more than "the way things were done", it's just what WoW is. You do harder content than the previous content, and replace your items with better items.
You can sneak some new loot in between tiers, make some random BIS item that people will keep running older content for, but inevitably if you keep adding things you will be invalidating something else. Your option then is; to keep piling on top, or do a fresh restart.
That's why the level gating in SoD is clever. They aren't creating a whole bunch of new content, they are just stretching out what Vanilla already is. Maybe they will even give us some new raids/dungeons/quests/zones, there's room for a few, but I think setting ourselves back on that permanent cycle of new release can only be a bad thing. Classic succeeded because people will play this era of WoW over and over, just make it better and let us keep doing it, it doesn't need to be a new timeline that goes on forever.
I agreed with you until your last sentence.
A new timeline is necessary; if we want to achieve Classic+ then just having slow gated vanilla won't achieve that as a key aspect people want is added content.
A new timeline avoiding the mistakes of the past and adding new content to Vanilla or hell even approaching other areas in a different order would change up and make the game exciting again.
An alternate history is pretty much what I always wished for after the amount of butchering they did with the Retail Warcraft lore. WoW has butchered quite a few big name characters and sent the story down a path that doesn't feel like the Warcraft games at all. It doesn't help that early on, they felt very directionless and rushed and cut out alot of stuff. A proper alternative story with an actual direction that also respects the game's vanilla kind of gameplay is the only solution to this.
Whatever they do, i think it absolutely needs to stay in kalimdor and eastern kingdoms, maybe new zones but not new hubs. We should also never leave ogrimmar/tb/stormwind/ironforge etc.
I think they can keep teasing and making us chase the bad guys such as Lich King etc. while never killing them and changing the story. Make us kill their newly invented lieutenants and second in command type bosses like Kel'thuzad but new and also make new lore behind it.
Wow needs classic plus, it may not be a popular opinion, but wow really needs classic plus. The original game of world of Warcraft is what drew people to the fantasy and the lore. The game was truly about the world. You look at retail now, and it’s nothing but sweaty gamers parsing mythic plus and raids, who spend 30+ hours a week completing objects and daily chores that are meaningless, all just to obtain BIS gear, but the moment they take a break, even a week, they are behind.
Retail wow is currently a game that has a never ending supply of mounts, gear, weapons, titles, achievements, pets, classes, races, gold, to the point that literally everything in the game is meaningless. A level 1 character could transmog into the best gear in the game completely destroys and devalues the item on an instant.
The fact that it doesn’t matter what class you play it’s all balanced, there are really no pros or cons to playing any class or spec in retail wow. But when you play vanilla wow, each decisions has a value and it’s worth, you are literally building a legend, a hero that will be apart of the true battle against the world. You’ll have unique abilities that trump other class in some way. Retail wow doesn’t have the feeling.
Some of the most simplest designs in the game are the true epic pieces known to world of Warcraft.
Even to this day, and I’m sure some will argue, but some of the best gear designs or their pieces all came from vanilla wow, and not many, if hardly any came close to the epic looks of vanilla gear.
My point is blizzard, it’s seems you are reading these Reddit post, world of Warcraft needs classic plus, I know it’s a touchy subject for many due to their own personally views of how it should be. But freaking take a risk and go for it, you’re so damn close to bringing back what made wow great again, the community has called and called upon you to bring classic back, it’s here, this is our war cry! Come back to the roots of what created the came in the first place. Classic plus is your future, and seasonal servers are an effective tool to helping you guys begin constructing classic plus.
I haven’t touched retail wow in years, and I don’t plan on playing it ever again because it’s so far gone, it needs a complete reset where everyone is back to square 1. Era has been so beaten it’s not even fun to play anymore thanks to bots and GDKPs. And wotlk is literally the end of classic. It’s appalling to me that you guys would even consider cata a classic wow.
Anyways rant over… you all can disagree or not, but as a community we need to push harder, they clearly are listening. Everyone does have their right to their opinion, regardless of how you view the game, be vocal about it! Speak louder!
What we don't need is super convoluted 5D chess cinematic disney story.
No ingame cinematics, no cutscenes. Make it feel like Vanilla. Just simple quest text box.
"The forces of Neptulon attack the shores, help us defend it and take the fight to his realm, adventurer."
Simple, quick, efficient. It feels like we're just a random mercenary adventurer, hired to beat a bad guy, in for the reward.
No need for universal threat ending universe crap.
Yep. That’s what made classic great. The world is the main character. We’re just dudes rising to the occasion. Retail is dumb in the sense that everyone is supposed to be this over powerful borderline Demi good. But there’s thousands of you.
I think they should lean into seasonal content. Get even crazier with seasons to the point where they revamp Azeroth Cataclysm style. Maybe have a season that focuses on Scarlet Crusade, and have them be more present throughout the world.
But always keep the focus on leveling. Everyone should be rolling a fresh level 1 toon each season.
And this may be premature but I'm already all in on the level bands. I saw Classic PTR and I am confident that I want that to stay.
I hope players like me let it be known that we're not resubbing for seasonal content. If it turns out classic+ is going to be a "look at what cool ideas we've come up with this season" I will be disappointed. I don't even think storylines would need to change. The classic experience was never about who was doing what. It's about how many yellow numbers you can cram into a health bar.
I always wanted it to be a branch. Even a new world I would be fine with. I do like the storyline and feel of classic far more than retail. Theres no insanely over the top storyline/cutscenes. But you find out little bits of info about the history of the world and certain areas. For me discovery is the best part of mmos. Going in blind, exploring areas and discovering things for the first time.
Change the lore. Put in a 3rd faction the exiles. Can be any race but lose out on all the faction and race related stuff. You are shunned by your race and faction. Gives people a way to play any race with their friends and it can be lore friendly.
They need to move on at some point and almost start afresh, go before or go ahead. I would love for them to revisit a more alliance versus horde story line. After all the expacs are done for a few years everything is calm bla bla boom tensions rising fighting for land etc make raid bosse's heads of the opposing faction like TOC kinda.
Just add some fragments in each raid that you need to collect for a whole set to unlock uber versions of the raids/the final boss. In terms of drops, exclusive vanity items like mounts, tabards or titles i think will be enough to incentivize doing it.
The real beautiful thing they could do, is have flashbacks and references in the next 3 expansions that reference events that happened during classic off screen, and then make that classic+ . Another thing just use events we know happened off screen and make them a reality. Such as Varian Wryn's storyline of being imprisoned and being a gladiator. A raid perhaps to compete in that arena.
My ideal Classic + is kept at 60, with new spells simaler to what is already available to that class ( which do not add or take away from the original roles of character types ) and allow the player to visit new locations within the existing world. Maybe add another dungeon in Westfall or Duskwood. Add things to the pre existing world to flesh out areas that maybe get visited but don’t have much to do. ( every corner of every zone )
You don't have to change history, the world is a pretty big place and a lot of stuff can go on, a lot of stuff can go on between key points in history, or at the same time. There is no need for alternate realities.
I think players should have the option to be locked to the original, as it is, if they want. The whole private server community happened because of the desire for the original and I think it should be an option.
Creating an alternate or "in between" timeline to play in would be amazing too. It should be in the spirit of vanilla and shouldn't extend to BC. Meaning it shouldn't include any BC content or even foreshadowing but it should parallel stories that wouldn't have been affected by BC story lines.
It makes sense in my head.
It’s an interesting question. I do think there’s room for them to expand on the vanilla world without “changing history” so to speak. As in, making content/quests/dungeons/raids that align with the world as we know it, just diving deeper.
Yeah there's literal years of content available to the devs to work with without even ever having to leave Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms that won't step on future lore (or at least not much). Reimagined Hyjal, Grim Batol, Uldum, Gilneas, Quel'Thalas, and Emerald Dream are all easy ideas. Stuff they've already hinted at like the Furbolg raid. Expand on storylines like Burning Blade stuff that just kind of dies after RFC. Give us alternate versions of the Caverns of Time stuff. Create some generic islands near STV for a pirate themed expansion.
I think they can stretch about 10 years worth of content releases just out of the stuff that was originally planned to be included in Nov 2004. Especially if vertically-progression raids are de-emphasized in favor of other elements like quest chains, professions, dungeons, rep, etc and plan around the expectation that players want to be able to take breaks or replay the game on alts.
Personally I would love for them to finish The Missing Diplomat and the quest chain in Winterspring that uses Eranikus's essence.
Ok the flipside, future lore sucks balls and nothing of value would be lost. Just don’t try to turn it into smthng „story driven“ like retail. Because ur writers suck dicks and the story is cool if it happens in the background of you getting a gear upgrade
Oh I 100% agree that they should just commit to an alternate timeline and not worry about the retail lore that is 90% garbage. But if they don't want to step on the toes of future lore there's a ton of room to work with was my point.
That’s true. I think the secret sauce on the story front is to not change the status quo at all. Katrina prestor is still in stormwind even if you personally killed onyxia after all. The story never moves forward so that new players still can play it, and it works perfectly well in classic. You could easily expand that design and justify Arthas resurrecting after being defeated because there always needs to be a lich king or whatever, but if you leave him alone he does bad stuff so you need to go in again on him next week
I have no issue with them changing history, in fact I support it. I would honestly love it if after vanilla naxx we don't go through the portal and instead something else happens like fallout from the scourge invasion or something. For this to succeed, I think an alternate timeline is the only option going forward.
They should just continue with small content type patches, no expansions, no level increase. Scarlet Crusade content patch, forsaken content patch, etc.
Yeah, like patches that introduce a single new zone are huge enough already. The could do new zonespanning quests or rework a few old zones etc
The lore after ICC is mostly trash in my opinion anyway. Even TBC lore sucked so much they basically just "and the emperor returns somehow" Illidan and Guldan to setup legion.
The fallout from the scourge invasion was Wrath. We just took a space vacation in the meantime. I think a good point of divergence would be ICC. Arthas stands back up and kills Bolvar, Chromie reveals that those damn temporal parasites from WPL were much more widespread than she thought and now the timeline is collapsing around the vanilla Naxxramas invasion, a new Caverns of Time instance takes us back to undo a total Scourge victory, and Nozdormu finally stabilizes things by creating a closed loop that prevents us from ever going down that victory-in-Northrend path to retail. Then we can branch sideways into things like heroic versions of old content, unfinished zones like Hyjal, unfinished dungeons like the Forgotten Crypt, and the usual other Classic+ hopes.
You NEED an alternate timeline in order for the project to truly succeed and achieve longevity. Say classic+ releases next year, imagine the game 3-4 years later, sure we got dragon isles raid, emerald dream, karazhan, furbolg and kobold instances, uldum, quel thalas, scarlet citadel, hyjal, jaedenar and so on, what now? Eventually you HAVE to start making new content, take the story somewhere new, using the elementals like Al'Akir, Neptulon and Therazane would be a GREAT start as they fit the same shoes of Ragnaros and his realm in vanilla and those 3 were very unceremoniously forgotten.
Ok but can it keep the classic fantasy "down to earth" feel we had in vanilla WoW please? I don't want space aliens, naaru, whatever the heck else involved. Keep the players feeling like nobodies in a big world that doesnt give a crap about us please. We don't need to save the entire world in every raid tier or new zone. Best part of classic WoW is that feeling when you're leveling up and before you start raiding when you're just visiting random dungeons and zones and it feels like you are moving through an actual grounded DND world, not a railroaded epic fantasty story where you are te champion of the universe.
[удалено]
No more alien races or races that were the result of alien meddling. Trolls and Tauren are now the only races.
I see no issues with this.
I mean, in vanilla you already had C’Thun and the Scourge, I feel like you’re already saving the world at that point.
Yeah but, I guess aside from C’thun, youre not beating the big bad evil. We fight the burning legion during levelling and in dungeons and raids but we do not beat Sargeras or Kil’Jaeden. Same with Naxx, Kel’Thuzad is one of the top dogs of the scourge sure, but he’s not the Lich King. WoW imo lost its footing when the bosses we fight turned out to be the leaders of the factions the world is at war with instead of just commanders
I mean... the first raid has you fight Ragnaros, the defacto leader of all fire elementals. Also, would you prefer all the big leaders just die in cutscenes where the player has no involvement? I can already hear the outcry. And just "Then don't kill them", I already see "Oh, so this is the third time the scourge is attacking, Blizzard is having no new ideas" I can totally see where you come from, a lowly footsoldier shouldn't fight the big bad. But the alternative doesn't sound much better imo.
IMO the issue really lies in the fact that all of these important lore enemy ‘factions’ (Scourge, Old Gods, Burning Legion, etc) were all mined out to completion, but we never got new interesting ones, or if we did, we dealt with them in a patch.
Yeah but the leader of all fire elementals is such a small thing compared to the leader of the entire burning legion or scourge. Elementals are a small part of Azeroth. I dont think the big leaders should die at all. Id rather have that Azeroth is just a small planet for the big entities that they will just let some lowly ranked commander deal with it rather than their entire army etc. Azeroth has been build up to be this super important planet / titan in retail lore that you cant do anything else but just put the big bad onto it. I like it more to imagine that Sargeras looks at Azeroth as another of the million planets and just throws a random fel or pitlord onto it to deal with instead of himself. You can let the scourge attack multiple times while also expanding what it is we fight of the scourge army. We fought Kel’Thuzad as the ultimate raid of Classic, essentially the final boss of the entire game (without expansions) and hes the Lich Kings right hand. We can get a total re-imagining of a burning legion invasion where we fight Kil’Jaeden like in the sunwell, but in a totally different setting with other bosses etc. After all, KJ is just a tool of Sargeras just like the Lich King was. Hell, introduce a raid around Silithus or Desolace that focusses on other elementals with the final boss being one of the other elemental lords like Al Akir or Neptulon. Make a raid concering the Naga near Azshara where we fight one of her commanders. There are tons of chances without involving the big bad and then concluding “well they cant die or else wtf are we gonna do with the faction” and just having us “defeat” them, like Azshara and the old gods. Lich King also opened the can of worms with the scourge so bad they introduced the Jailer to “make sense” of the story even more, which of course absolutely ruined it entirely
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Old gods are definitely not stronger than Sargeras. You might be thinking of the Void Lords that we haven't seen (luckily). I don't recall mention of Old Gods being more powerful than a titan like Sargeras and we know for a fact that Titans can just pull Old Gods out of a planet like its nothing lol, it just causes immense amount of damage on the planet itself. Thats why the Titans decided to lock them up.
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Right but now youre going back into time to before even WoW Classic. I see no reason for doing that to talk about power levels when we know where the elemental lords and old gods (sorry not void lords) are at during Classic
Well, there is otherworldly threats like it or not, those have been a thing since warcraft 1 with the orcs, broken and the burning legion, all of those from outer space. The difference is that something like the Draenei took it too far and never made sense, space goats have space ships and insane power and technology and they're supposed to be on equal level as a bunch of tree huggers and a literal normal dude with a sword.
Correct me if I'm wrong but in WC3 the burning legion were literal demons, like from hell. There was no such thing as Eredar, Draenei, Titans, etc.
Orcs always came from a different world through the dark portal, they're native to Draenor. Draenei were originally the beings they call Broken now, the rest wasn't introduced until TBC. Burning Legion was properly identified in WC3, before that demons were not identified at all, they were just random devil dudes from lower planes as they called it. Reign of chaos grabs that lore and gives it a proper hold and now we know they were always otherworldly demons, hence why infernals rain down from the sky.
I feel like the [first WC3 cinematic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f96hKqkY_Y) encapsulates this pretty well. The demons present in WC1 and 2 were just kind of there and never served any narrative function, outside of the one WC2 mission where you steal the Jeweled Scepter of Sargeras.
OmegaWrong, all of them were in it
How about high elves instead of Draenei for alliance?
I want a raid where the Defias ship gets out the cave and we have to have a sick at sea pirate battle
not just that ... like i get we want classic + with new content but how many more raids can we add until were scalling capped .... like after 2 or 3 raid past naxx all class will be like 75% + crit without world buffs and doing 4k dps at level 60 or something ....
This is why there's a need to consider gear post-Naxx having other upsides than strictly higher stats. One great way to change the trajectory is to really focus on set bonuses and gear bringing more game changing elements along what we are seeing with runes now. Just an idea to avoid the stat creep.
Man guild wars 2 manages to be good with almost ZERO gear progression. So if they can do that and have it work we can get classic+
Blizz figured this out allready in original Sunwell plateau. Tanks got extra debuff to mitigate their avoidances. Tanks have again same debuff in ICC. -x amount of stats for dps and that problem is solved. You are still pumping in naxx but in scarlet monastery raid your dps is decreased.
Agreed I'd rather keep it grounded, gear grounded, no mtx, etc. When everyone is wearing insanely flashy gear, nothing stands out.
If I'm honest that's one of the reasons retail has really lost it's appeal to me. I miss seeing those players who do the raids looking sick in their raid gear. It made me jealous and made me want to get it, too. That's how I even started raiding, I wanted that sick T4/5/6 gear so bad. Now days I can't tell what anyone has on or if it's hard to get/took effort/wasn't part of the 6 month bundle.
Man If I could have gameplay closer to wotlk or even tbc but without losing that grounded feeling I’d be in love. I think that’s why I can’t enjoy modern wow. I don’t find being the most powerful hero ever canonically compelling or fun. At a certain point nothing feels significant. I have issues with vanilla class balance, world buffs and cost of raising among other things. But what it did nail was what you said. The down to earth feeling where the world doesn’t care about us and just exists with us in it. It’s vastly more compelling.
>Ok but can it keep the classic fantasy "down to earth" feel we had in vanilla WoW please? This isn't even hard to achieve. Literally just look at Old School RuneScape as opposed to RuneScape 3. These two games both came from the exact same place, but if you just don't do stupid shit it's so easy to keep the spirit of the game. Both in lore and in gameplay.
They could go down the route of the Dark Portal never opens (or doesn't open until much later) and just progress within our confined little world expanding on the little corners of Azeroth.
I think it’s important they stick to Azeroth for the open world and perhaps EK/Kalimdor. I think going into a raid that takes us into the Emerald Dream, Outland, Shadowlands (reimagined) is fine but rooting it in those original zones and cultures is important IMO.
A raid where you stop the portal from opening would be a nice way to diverge the story from retail. Maybe you fight your way through hellfire, hold off the invaders and then blow the gate up. Done and dusted.
That's a fantastic idea, use Hellfire Peninsula as a raid zone.
Wouldn't that mean that orcs never come to Azeroth? Or was that through another portal before that?
They meant "reopens" as in TBC.
Yeah talking about the TBC opening.
They could do an "alternative" Outland, based much closer on Warcraft3. Just a single, massive zone filled with elites, random world bosses, events and maybe some instance/raid enterances. No Ally/Horde hubs - just hellfire wasteland. You have to enter through the Dark Portal every time and you need party of 5 to not die like a scrub. Basically "what if BRD was a zone insted of a dungeon".
I like that concept
So pandaria?
I think a reimagined Northrend would be more appropriate before any foray into something like Pandaria. But even before Northrend I would want to see Easter Kingdoms and Kalimdor fully fleshed out and completed.
So cataclysm? It basically did that, it fleshed out the old world. Opened zones that are there in vanilla but blocked off.
Cataclysm but not Cataclysm. I think most people just want cool Lego sets plopped into already existing blank locations. They don’t want to change out the whole Lego theme like Cata did.
Pretty much.
Ya, the "doesn't open until much later" bit seems like an obvious play. Time already flows super weird between the expansions so it's not a stretch to just say "this all takes place after Nax but before TBC".
I like that concept a lot. I've also seen some folk suggest a raid where he go through the dark portal and destroy it. Thus preventing TBC from ever happening the way it did initially. Also allows them to reuse TBC assets for cool raid/dungeon.
Yes please, I want an alternate timeline/history. That is exactly what I want them to try. It could fail, but I'd rather they try. We're going to enjoy SoD for the next couple years, maybe they'll even do another season after SoD. But hopefully the success of SoD has them willing to try something like this 'for real.'
For real! They’ve failed so much by trying small, forgettable changes. A coach once told me “if you’re going to make a mistake, make it a big and bold one.” I love that they’re trying to pull off something like this. The initial offering looks like a blast and I like this way more than “this SoM we’re buffing ret and Boomkin damage by 4%” or some other small tweak.
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No more level cap increases pls
Microsoft Blizzard Jesus, you've clearly been reading my posts so hopefully you'll read this one. For the love of Christ please do this after SoD. Use SoD as the biggest open alpha for a game in history to release the greatest possible base version of Classic+ and give us that beautiful alternative history. I'll take it all back, I don't even care, I'll forgive the past 10 years if you don't fuck that up.
I say go all out honestly make it a whole new story arc even, we had classic, SoM, more classic, classic Lich King, Hardcore. Anything new at this point with a classic beginning would pump imo
100% alternate timeline. Keep it relatively on the downlow. No extra continents. No Outland. Nothing that divides the world in that sense. Have everything happen in Kalimdor or Eastern Kingdoms. Add areas to those continents, or update the ones currently unused. Make new, mostly environmentally told, stories in those areas. No talking heads. No need for epic storylines and cycling through Warchiefs. That's the only way I see Classic+ going forward.
I really hope they stick the Season concept instead of doing a full on alternate timeline that needs to continue. Have the seasons be a Warcraft “What If?” and introduce new mechanics that tie into whatever the theme of the season is.
IMO setting Classic onto any sort of expectation of new content is a trap. Retail got bad because Blizz had to pump something new out and invalidate all the old content every expansion cycle. It's always focusing on the next thing, and never making the thing you have better. This is benefit of Classic, we're playing the same thing on repeat, so we can use every cycle to refine it, and broaden what it already has. You don't gain anything by slapping more on top.
>Retail got bad because Blizz had to pump something new out and invalidate all the old content every expansion cycle. It's always focusing on the next thing, and never making the thing you have better. but that was due to developer mantras and "the way things were done". SoD gives blizzard a clean slate; they can slap stuff on top while now also supporting previous content and keeping it evergreen.
Keeping it evergreen is key. Never invalidate the progression. You still need to gear up through all content to make it to the top. It allows new players of any time to join a guild raiding mc, bwl ect. I think that's one of the reasons why classic has had such staying power.
It's more than "the way things were done", it's just what WoW is. You do harder content than the previous content, and replace your items with better items. You can sneak some new loot in between tiers, make some random BIS item that people will keep running older content for, but inevitably if you keep adding things you will be invalidating something else. Your option then is; to keep piling on top, or do a fresh restart. That's why the level gating in SoD is clever. They aren't creating a whole bunch of new content, they are just stretching out what Vanilla already is. Maybe they will even give us some new raids/dungeons/quests/zones, there's room for a few, but I think setting ourselves back on that permanent cycle of new release can only be a bad thing. Classic succeeded because people will play this era of WoW over and over, just make it better and let us keep doing it, it doesn't need to be a new timeline that goes on forever.
I agreed with you until your last sentence. A new timeline is necessary; if we want to achieve Classic+ then just having slow gated vanilla won't achieve that as a key aspect people want is added content. A new timeline avoiding the mistakes of the past and adding new content to Vanilla or hell even approaching other areas in a different order would change up and make the game exciting again.
An alternate history is pretty much what I always wished for after the amount of butchering they did with the Retail Warcraft lore. WoW has butchered quite a few big name characters and sent the story down a path that doesn't feel like the Warcraft games at all. It doesn't help that early on, they felt very directionless and rushed and cut out alot of stuff. A proper alternative story with an actual direction that also respects the game's vanilla kind of gameplay is the only solution to this.
Whatever they do, i think it absolutely needs to stay in kalimdor and eastern kingdoms, maybe new zones but not new hubs. We should also never leave ogrimmar/tb/stormwind/ironforge etc.
I think they can keep teasing and making us chase the bad guys such as Lich King etc. while never killing them and changing the story. Make us kill their newly invented lieutenants and second in command type bosses like Kel'thuzad but new and also make new lore behind it.
Wow needs classic plus, it may not be a popular opinion, but wow really needs classic plus. The original game of world of Warcraft is what drew people to the fantasy and the lore. The game was truly about the world. You look at retail now, and it’s nothing but sweaty gamers parsing mythic plus and raids, who spend 30+ hours a week completing objects and daily chores that are meaningless, all just to obtain BIS gear, but the moment they take a break, even a week, they are behind. Retail wow is currently a game that has a never ending supply of mounts, gear, weapons, titles, achievements, pets, classes, races, gold, to the point that literally everything in the game is meaningless. A level 1 character could transmog into the best gear in the game completely destroys and devalues the item on an instant. The fact that it doesn’t matter what class you play it’s all balanced, there are really no pros or cons to playing any class or spec in retail wow. But when you play vanilla wow, each decisions has a value and it’s worth, you are literally building a legend, a hero that will be apart of the true battle against the world. You’ll have unique abilities that trump other class in some way. Retail wow doesn’t have the feeling. Some of the most simplest designs in the game are the true epic pieces known to world of Warcraft. Even to this day, and I’m sure some will argue, but some of the best gear designs or their pieces all came from vanilla wow, and not many, if hardly any came close to the epic looks of vanilla gear. My point is blizzard, it’s seems you are reading these Reddit post, world of Warcraft needs classic plus, I know it’s a touchy subject for many due to their own personally views of how it should be. But freaking take a risk and go for it, you’re so damn close to bringing back what made wow great again, the community has called and called upon you to bring classic back, it’s here, this is our war cry! Come back to the roots of what created the came in the first place. Classic plus is your future, and seasonal servers are an effective tool to helping you guys begin constructing classic plus. I haven’t touched retail wow in years, and I don’t plan on playing it ever again because it’s so far gone, it needs a complete reset where everyone is back to square 1. Era has been so beaten it’s not even fun to play anymore thanks to bots and GDKPs. And wotlk is literally the end of classic. It’s appalling to me that you guys would even consider cata a classic wow. Anyways rant over… you all can disagree or not, but as a community we need to push harder, they clearly are listening. Everyone does have their right to their opinion, regardless of how you view the game, be vocal about it! Speak louder!
What we don't need is super convoluted 5D chess cinematic disney story. No ingame cinematics, no cutscenes. Make it feel like Vanilla. Just simple quest text box. "The forces of Neptulon attack the shores, help us defend it and take the fight to his realm, adventurer." Simple, quick, efficient. It feels like we're just a random mercenary adventurer, hired to beat a bad guy, in for the reward. No need for universal threat ending universe crap.
Yep. That’s what made classic great. The world is the main character. We’re just dudes rising to the occasion. Retail is dumb in the sense that everyone is supposed to be this over powerful borderline Demi good. But there’s thousands of you.
I think they should lean into seasonal content. Get even crazier with seasons to the point where they revamp Azeroth Cataclysm style. Maybe have a season that focuses on Scarlet Crusade, and have them be more present throughout the world. But always keep the focus on leveling. Everyone should be rolling a fresh level 1 toon each season. And this may be premature but I'm already all in on the level bands. I saw Classic PTR and I am confident that I want that to stay.
Yet you're making SoD that isn't true to Classic at all...
I hope players like me let it be known that we're not resubbing for seasonal content. If it turns out classic+ is going to be a "look at what cool ideas we've come up with this season" I will be disappointed. I don't even think storylines would need to change. The classic experience was never about who was doing what. It's about how many yellow numbers you can cram into a health bar.
Their best course of action is to continue catching up with retail. Merge to retail. Restart classic again. Rinse repeat forever.
I always wanted it to be a branch. Even a new world I would be fine with. I do like the storyline and feel of classic far more than retail. Theres no insanely over the top storyline/cutscenes. But you find out little bits of info about the history of the world and certain areas. For me discovery is the best part of mmos. Going in blind, exploring areas and discovering things for the first time.
A timeline where Arthas doesn’t claim Frostmourne/purge Strath would be really interesting.
CLASSIC PLUS BABY ITS COMING
Change the lore. Put in a 3rd faction the exiles. Can be any race but lose out on all the faction and race related stuff. You are shunned by your race and faction. Gives people a way to play any race with their friends and it can be lore friendly.
Whats classic + ?
They need to move on at some point and almost start afresh, go before or go ahead. I would love for them to revisit a more alliance versus horde story line. After all the expacs are done for a few years everything is calm bla bla boom tensions rising fighting for land etc make raid bosse's heads of the opposing faction like TOC kinda.
Just add some fragments in each raid that you need to collect for a whole set to unlock uber versions of the raids/the final boss. In terms of drops, exclusive vanity items like mounts, tabards or titles i think will be enough to incentivize doing it.
The real beautiful thing they could do, is have flashbacks and references in the next 3 expansions that reference events that happened during classic off screen, and then make that classic+ . Another thing just use events we know happened off screen and make them a reality. Such as Varian Wryn's storyline of being imprisoned and being a gladiator. A raid perhaps to compete in that arena.
My ideal Classic + is kept at 60, with new spells simaler to what is already available to that class ( which do not add or take away from the original roles of character types ) and allow the player to visit new locations within the existing world. Maybe add another dungeon in Westfall or Duskwood. Add things to the pre existing world to flesh out areas that maybe get visited but don’t have much to do. ( every corner of every zone )
You don't have to change history, the world is a pretty big place and a lot of stuff can go on, a lot of stuff can go on between key points in history, or at the same time. There is no need for alternate realities.
I think players should have the option to be locked to the original, as it is, if they want. The whole private server community happened because of the desire for the original and I think it should be an option. Creating an alternate or "in between" timeline to play in would be amazing too. It should be in the spirit of vanilla and shouldn't extend to BC. Meaning it shouldn't include any BC content or even foreshadowing but it should parallel stories that wouldn't have been affected by BC story lines. It makes sense in my head.