I'm wondering how this is going to work... and how much they're going to update the game to make it work. I have several questions - if any of you have any insight, I'd love to hear it.

1. Is this purely a content/gameplay instance? I.E., the talent trees, classes, races, and world/quest/raid content is from vanilla, but other improvements remain, like character models? Or are we just dusting off the old code and throwing it up there to play again?

2. Is it included in your existing subscription? Can I just log out of B4A and into a Classic realm if that suits my fancy? Or do I have to buy a separate game/sub?

3. Is it going to integrate with the Blizzard app? Are we going to be able to chat cross-realm/game? Seems like that would make organizing raids easier...

4. Are the achievements going to be account-wide (yes, I know vanilla didn't have achievements) - I.E., if I loot the Corrupted Ashbringer can I use the appearance on my B4A realm?

I really wonder how "pure" this iteration of vanilla is going to be, and how much Blizzard might be tempted to include a few of those quality-of-life improvements that we've gotten used to (such as not needing a separate bag slot for all your pets...)

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You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake.

I don't expect more than one classic realm by region.

On a side note, with the change on world PVP, subscriber decline and tech progress on servers, realms might be a thing of the past a few years from now.

They dont have much answers outside of "we are working on it" and probably going to be 1.0-1.12.1 or 8.0 I am not sure. But it being set in 8.0 is very improbable.

AFAIK it is just the old code so just vanilla stuff no LFR and stuff. Though you could add cata water stuff and new models, probably on the client side, as you are able to do that on private servers. Personally i dont want transmog in classic, maybe in wrath of the lich king. but before that, nah.

mostly becaus well the stuff about looking at a guy in orgrimmar/stormwind/if stuff.

They have not said anything about subs and stuff, but it will probably come down to buy access vs sub. Because if they are going to do "Progressivve servers" (I.E:going from 1.0->1.1->....->1.12.1 and then into 2.0 and tbc) well the sub fee might be questionable, because it is basically not much "new" content per say.

as it is mostly old content revisited or well old content that was made alot of years ago but now available again because wll yeah i think you get it.
And one of the reasons for sub fees in WoW is because of the rapid free content. and other stuff probably. but yeah given that reason well its hard to say. It is blizzard, But i doubt we will get separate subscriptions, if tthey are goign to do something like that it will probably be if you have a sub to b4a you can play classic.


As for 3:

Most likely implented on the battle.net thing, it will probably be something like PTR/Beta accounts where you have the dropdown menu and stuff.


or. probably jus a new game there the same way SC2 and SC remastered exists.

Supposedly it'll be as purely unaltered as possible (though presumably they'll try to not replicate outright crashes and error-related faults in the old design.)

If it's truly a Vanilla-era rollback, it's hard to say what iteration of Vanilla. True first-day Vanilla with only one raid? End-state, pre-TBC Vanilla with everyraid, dungeon and Battleground up to Naxx 40? Some patch in between? A progressive transition from start-to-finish of Vanilla's patch cycle?

Whatever the case, I suspect its appeal will be quickly tainted for anyone whose preferred class and spec were absolute trash that nobody wanted in their group or raid at the time. Whenever the subject of Classic servers has come up before, people seem to conveniently omit the experience of having to spend disproportionate amounts of time forced by their guilds to either be benched or play classes and specs they didn't enjoy in order to progress, because their chosen class and spec was widely acknowledge as total crap that just plain couldn't meet DPS output requirements or outright lacked tools to do their jobs optimally.

I just want to know if shit like this is going to be possible again...

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You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake.

They don't know themselves yet, about almost everything.
They could just slap the original builds on realms, and that would satisfy some, it would also annoy a ton of people who never played Vanilla and are eager to try something new, but get scared off by the many god awful issues Vanilla had.

I think it's safe to say that they will at the very least fix the technical issues and exploits Vanilla had. They have also already confirmed that there will definitely be no LFD. Other than that, everything is up in the air and we likely won't hear anything definite for another 6-12 months for sure. They have a lot to decide on.

They could go back and retune everything slightly so that you don't actually have to sit down and eat after every 2-3 mobs, and fighting white trash doesn't take 20-30 seconds anymore, but still keep the feeling and combat mechanics of Vanilla.

They could go and fix some of the specs....read: most, that were utterly unusable for raids. I don't think many people remember that you were pretty much just another body and fairly useless as a Shaman, Druid, Paladin for example. Or that ONLY Warriors could really tank. Or that ONLY Priests were real healers. Or that like 75% of all specs were utterly broken and not viable (hello, Elemental, Retribution, etc).

Would they really keep that in if they wanted to attract players new to Vanilla as well? Do they really want to deal with forums full of uninformed people not reading the disclaimers and bitching about wanting their money back for a broken gameplay experience?

I'm going to lean more towards them finetuning Classic to present an updated, better honed version that is sellable to new players as well. Still with all the rep grinds, the difficulty, all the core mechanics, but updated specs, tuned numbers etc.

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El. Psy. Congroo.

I don't see why they don't do one server that is tuned with stuff and one original

I'm on the fence about this.
On the one hand, I'd like to experience true vanilla classic because I only got about two months of that before BC came out.
On the other hand, I would hate to play without a good group finding tool and without Transmog.
And I'm not sure Classic would be popular enough to get 40-man raids going.

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Hammerbrew commenting on Anders Behring Breivik's killing spree - 2017

To quote the Classic forums...

"You don't want Vanilla, then. Go back to retail."

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Disgruntled Forsaken Stable Master
"Blacker than a moonless night, hotter and more bitter than hell itself... That is coffee."

I'm not talking about what I would want, I'm talking what I think they'll likely do.

I will likely not spend more than a few hours on Classic realms no matter what.

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El. Psy. Congroo.

As long as I can climb into Mt Hyjal, re-explore the untextured mountains around Stonetalon, climb out of AB to be completely useless and AFK for free honor, bug myself into Old Ironforge, and exploit the game's engine like in the good ol' days, I don't care what patch they decide to go with (obviously post-Battlegrounds, otherwise I can't cheat in AB). Climbing walls, bugging through walls, reaching the ends of the map, now that's what Vanilla was all about.

1. Most likely it will be pure vanilla as possible, but they can use some bug fixes/technical improvements what was invented after Vanilla. Like original scripts for escort missions were really terrible, but few xpac later they fixed it.

3. Sure it will be intigrated in Blizzard eco-system

4. Really doubt it

I imagine it will be a seperate game with a cheap initial buy in. It doesnt need a subscription since they wont be adding any new content to it.

I imagine they will probably do the patch right before the BC patch. It has everything in Vanilla. Throw on the bug fixes and go.

I am debating leveling a character when it comes out just to do old AV again. Escorting Rams back to base just to join in a glorious ram charge...

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I don't have any insight but strong oppinions, does that count?

Since they claim to have to do a lot of work on that anyway i'd say it's going to be "Vanilla, just bugfixed and optimized", and i wouldn't be too terribly surprised if they sneak the new characer models in to make it a little more apatizing to newer players. Other than that i expect pretty pure Vanilla.

Considering all the crab they get away with charging for in a subscription-based game... don't expect this to be free. I expect a seperate sub or at the very least a buy-in. I also foresee stuff like a paid secondary character boost just for the Classic Servers to make it palatable to people who don't want to spend months leveling a single character. Vanilla isn't a thing people would play these days anymore, and Blizzard (for once, rightfully in my oppinion - Classic Servers are a TERRIBLE idea imo) needs to make that effort worth it. (Which reminds me - are Classic Servers a sign of the sub numbers being in the shitter? I think they are.)

I would expect cross-everything. Having said that, i too expect not more than two Classic Servers per region at the absolute most. For one, there isn't going to be too much demand for it - especially once people play them and remember "Oh, right, Vanilla grinding was shit". For second, i expect them to start with one progression server, and start up a new one once the first hits Naxx, and probably go slower with that one.

I wouldn't expect achievements to connect to the actual game. I think Classic Servers will get their own tab in the Battle.net App.

It's going to be pure. Which is a shame. I'd be ball for a Lich King server, keeping the old World in tact but getting the overall game up to speed at least a little bit, but pure Vanilla is what i expect, otherwise why bother. And they'll want to milk that small minority that actually wants them; even Blizzard must know they have to nail this to make any money off it.



I mean, does regular WoW stop it's sub model whenever Blizzard decides that a year without new content is good enough? I absolutely expect it to need a sub. Probably a seperate smaller one. That way they scum money from existing players who want to try and still get at least SOME money from people who don't like Retail but would come back for Classic Servers.

This is a great idea. Make it a modified Lich King server, meaning Old Naxx is still available in the Plaguelands, and the old world content is otherwise untouched.

That was the best expansion anyway, and this would be the most ideal "classic" state I'd want to return to.

You can date Bolvar's sister.

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You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake.

They could have a server for each era.

Or start with Vanilla and update to the next expansion every 2 years.
And launch a new vanilla server then.

1. Just Vanilla, old models, no updates, no QoL changes. I expect the game to be just like before BC changes.
2. I wouldnt be surprised if it was linked in that way, however I dont think it will be and will be something like WC3
3. If it used battle.net it may be possible to chat. However I don't see that being extended
4.This is my opinion but nothing should carry into the live game. Now they could use that as an incentive but I still dont think that will happen

To be fair I think they were right when they said "You think you do, but you don't"
Ever since this announcement I have seen tons of topics on "Vanilla needs X". Anything you add to the game post Vanilla is not Vanilla and that includes the pets to a tab. Thats a QoL change.
Like Miff said, tech issues and bugs will probably be fixed, I dont see class balance being fixed, I hope the leashing on Kazzak isnt fixed lol.
Largely I dont think it was the gameplay people miss I think its the Grouping/Community and being known on a server that people miss.

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They will probably focus on the old stuff, and not remove the flaws of the original game. I'm most certain that only the most hardcore veterans will be pleased, and that everyone else will be driven away back to the current game, on purpose.

So yeah, they are going to kill vanilla, because it was never their intention to bring it back. They want you playing the new stuff, and if you insist on going back to the past, you will go back, suffer, and then regret the experience and come back to the present.

Note that custom servers aren't just copies of the game, they had their own stuff too that made them fun. That won't happen with the official version, because again, they don't want you playing the old version.

Then when those veterans who like it and stay complain that those minor problems aren't fixed and are driving everyone else away (problems that would be easily fixed, and most custom servers did), Blizzard will just reply "that's the way it was" or some crap like that.

Mark my words. It's all a bait for old players to come and try the new stuff.

By this point I just wonder why they don't restore the vanilla version of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor in separate map instances. It's what they should have done with Cataclysm, instead of removing all that content.

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Metzen: They are one of the ancient races of Northrend that we haven't spoken of before... because we hadn't made them up before. (laughter)

~Main: Expansion theorycrafting, Expansions list, The Age of Nightmare, Empire of the Tides (coming soon)~
~Fan ficton: Anachronos Journey: The Timeless Heir~ ~Geography of continents series: Old Kalimdor (original), Pandaria~
~Locations as zones series: Azjol-Nerub, Barrow Deeps, Zul'Aman, Demon Hunter zone, Caverns of Time~

Yeah old models 1.x and stuff is good.

Make it progressive, i am happy with that

I would love to have transmog and LFG be an option on the classic server(s), but they likely won't happen.

I think LFG is almost a necessity - it's the single most important quality-of-life improvement the game has seen since the beginning. Not including it is basically Blizzard saying "We really don't give a shit about Vanilla, and we want this to fail."

(which may be true - and that's their prerogative, but if they do that, there's literally no reason for pirate servers to cease operation)

I would be happy without the transmog option, as long as your classic account was bound to your "live" account, and unlocking old item skins made them available to transmog on live servers.

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You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake.

If they're trying to appeal to the classic server community--which, good timing, since the successor to Nostalrius just imploded with drama--then it's probably going to be as pure as possible.

The private servers were adding patches and raids over time so that people could experience Gates of Ahn'Qiraj, the Scourge Invasion, etc., so maybe Blizz will do something like that.

Lfg literally defeats the purpose of classic

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I agree with the feeling, but from what I could gather, people miss the intra-Realm life. Getting to know people, talking, interacting, building relationships with good players... Some say the LFD tool damaged that piece of the game. The base that wants Classic to happens, broadly, doesn't want LFD.

IMHO, while intra-Realm relationships and politics could have been a great part of the game, and forged RL friendships even, things have changed a lot since the early 00s. There are less people playing, and even less will play Classic, so it might be hard to find a decent party. The Blizzard Communities thing may help counteract that, tough...

?
The people who want Classic don't want QoL, be it LFD, transmog, Dalaran portals, group disenchant, working off specs, fixed aggro, mana regen etc ... They'll scream bloody murder if they put LFD or transmog in to hide your 2D murder clown outfits.