#1 - Nov. 5, 2017, 5:30 p.m.
As mentioned at Blizzcon, when Blizzard made Starcraft Remastered, they worked closely with the community to see what could be improved about the game and what had to stay the way it was. In this post I will try to list all of the positive and negative things about classic so that the community can discuss in this thread whether they want to retain specific features, or if they should be upgraded to make the game a bit less clunky. I'm likely to miss a whole bunch of things I've personally glanced over, so I will also try to edit this post with suggestions from other players so that the thread will stay somewhat manageable. These are supposed to be discussion points, and not my definitive opinion in how these Servers should be run/not be run. I reserve the right to be mistaken about things.
PVEMost classes in classic PvE have very limited viable PvE specs. Warrior
Prot is THE spec for warriors, but fury can also be played. Arms not so much.
PaladinHoly is the only real option for a Paladin, Prot is underwhelming and Retribution only becomes somewhat viable when fighting exclusively undeads. Should Paladins be available for the Horde?
HunterMarksman is the only viable PvE spec for Hunters
Also the only class that actively has to buy ammunition to continuously deal damage.
RogueCombat is the only viable PvE spec for Rogues
PriestHoly is the healing spec in classic. Shadow is largely useless, a single one might be taken for his debuff.
ShamanMostly restoration only. rather weak specs all around. Should Shamans be available for the Alliance?
MageFire mages for most of the content. MC forced mages into Frost because of resistances.
Warlock Outlier in that Warlock worked mostly with mixed "Hybrid" specs. Otherwise wanted for the utility of teleport and Healthstones.
Warlock speciality: Shards. Needed for almost everything, take lots of inventory space and disappear when logged out too long. Arguably a big part of being a classic lock but is it fun? How can it be improved?
DruidHeal only, somewhat limited by the fact that Druids can't "downrank" their spells like other healers due to the fact that you can't "stack" multiple ranks of the same HoT effect.
All Classes
Every non-caster had to level their weapon skill which could be a pain, should this stay and if so, should it still be bound to your intellect stat?
Spell reagents: I touched on Soul Shards and ammunition before, but lots of other spells needed reagents to cast them, from candles and feathers to Ankhs and fish oil, should that remain? Can this be tossed out? Should it be simplified? (Rebirth has 6 different reagents for the 6 different ranks for instance) Should it be made symbolic like an enchanting rod? (You need one in your inventory but it won't be used up by the spell)
Questing and the open World
QuestsMany old quests had very, very terrible drop rates for no discernible reason, should these be improved where necessary?
Many quests were needlessly hidden, to the point where you sometimes found them in entirely different areas, should available quest be able to be portrayed on the map?
Some quest objectives were quite hard to find and thus spawned "quest help" addons that later got integrated into baseline wow. Should this be added to classic questing?
WoW later integrated an "intelligent" reward system that only gave you quest rewards relevant to your class, is this something that should make it's way into classic servers?
Mob respawn while questing could be quite terrible, should this be changed to reduce a needless waiting time on the players side?
Mob tagging has been a pain for many years, forcing players to try and spam instant-damage abilities as soon as something spawned so nobody could "take" the desired mob from them. A later system allowed multiple players not in the same group to "tag" the same mob, should classic receive the same treatment?
TransportRiding originally only had one rank and you had to learn the riding skill of your desired faction for 100gold all in all for the skill and a mount. This was later changed to the multi-tiered riding profession we have now. The purchase level of riding has also changed over the years from 40, to 30 to eventually 20. Is walking for 40 levels integral to the experience, or do we think that an earlier slow mount wouldn't hurt the classic vibe?
Do you want the classic 3 second mount cast, or the more modern 1.5 second mount cast?
Flight masters
Originally you had to click on each path before a patch made flight "paths" become available. After classic a feature was added where you could miss a node and the flight master could still take you to your destination (previous it would only take you to the furthest path you know uninterrupted, and then you had to walk), would this be desired?
Flight length: Classic flight masters like to take the scenic route, should they hurry up a bit?
GatheringFairly recently, Blizzard added the ability for multiple players to gather from the same resource node as long as it happened in a reasonable time frame, would you want a similar system in classic, or do you want to stay with the "first come, first serve" approach?
GraveyardsThese often are few and far between, should the long "corpse run" be kept, or would you like to see a few more graveyards for your dying convenience? (maybe near molten core?) Maybe if the skill is purchased, a mounted corpse run? Maybe even implement the "release puts you back in the instance instead of a graveyard outside somewhere"?
Meeting StonesTechnically the ability to summon people via stone was added in 2.0.1, would it hurt the integrity of a classic server if summoning here was included?
Raid DropsRaid drops were notoriously bad in classic. A 40 man raid boss could end up dropping only 2 or 3 items. Do you want this to be boosted to a more reasonable amount? On top of that, bosses could still drop Paladin/Shaman items regardless of your faction making it a wasted drop.
Modern WoW also added additional ways to gain loot such as bonus rolls.
ItemizationSome items had weird stats, with strength and intelligence or other attributes that were really not needed, should this be "improved" or stay?
ResistancesSome raid bosses had "block" encounters that forced your raid to farm specific resistance gear to survive it, is this something you want to relieve, or can this be fine-tuned to make specific resistance gear less needed?
Setsas listed in the classes section, most classes had one / one and a half viable specs and many sets tended to reflect that, should this be addressed, or should the sets be kept in their "imperfect" form?
In the same nature, modern items switch with your spec, which is extremely convenient. Would it be bad if a classic item did the same, as long as it stayed on the same power-level?
Trash MobsTrash respawned every 2 hours, meaning your average progression raid had to clear it at least twice each raid day. This could be changed to the modern "trash resets on soft reset" approach.
"Raid" DungeonsStratholme, UBRS, and Scholomance were originally "Raid" dungeons that later got capped to 10 and then to 5 players. Should these be capped and balanced for 5 players right away? Or remain open for larger groups?
Boss ResistancesCertain bosses where more resistant to certain spell-elements, lots of Molten Core for instance was fire resistance forcing mages to play Frost for that raid. Is that something you want back or can that be scaled down to keep PvE specs more in line?
Raid releaseAs we all know on a "normal" server you don't get everything at the same time, so should these servers start out with Molten Core and Onyxia only and then wait a certain amount before opening the next raid? Or should everything be there from day 1?
admittedly I don't have the biggest experience here despite playing Shadow Priest so suggestions are very welcome here
PvP Gear"Best in Slot" PvP gear in classic was usually not "everything you could get from the PvP Vendor" but a mix of PvP Vendor and PvE items, (Just ask High Warlord Uro) should this remain? Or should a pure PvP player be able to get his items without having to Raid?
Diminishing returnsThis was a big part of PvP balance and a pain for many players, there even is a somewhat infamous Rogue video including killing players with low level daggers just because a rogue was often able to perma CC a given target if no one came to help. To which state should DR effects be set? Should "Perma stun" be achievable again or shouldn't it?
BattlegroundsAlterac Valley and Warsong got added in 1.5, and Arathi in 1.7, I think it is safe to assume that most players want these to be available baseline with classic servers.
One of the biggest reason for World PvP in classic was that it could take a long long time to get into these Battlegrounds so people went to go kill what they could find, should this be "fixed"?
Alterac itself was notorious for it's very long playtimes with legends talking of Day long matches that just wouldn't end. Do you want that back, or do you want to know that if you queue for a BG you can end it in the same session?
Should you still be able to fish in the middle of AV? (trust me, this made some people very angry)
ModelsThere is an argument to be maid to use the slighty improved models for characters and models we have, maybe on an individual toggle for those that want it (like F5 in Starcraft Remastered)
View Distance/rendering distancethis could also be a low impact-optional thing, many old games look quite a lot better on modern systems anyway. (see Half Life 2 now vs release)
User Interface / general Convenience
Social FeaturesObviously classic wow didn't have the same level of battle.net integration and other such systems. like:
cross realm group invitesObviously we don't even know if there will be multiple servers, but if so, should they be able to interact to shorten waiting times, or should it be a shut off community like it used to be?
Multi SpecA very convenient feature, but not at all a classic one. Should it be in classic? Should it have limitations? Or do you want the "Walk all the way back to your class trainer and completely reset everything every time you want to change something" experience of classic back?
Dungeon / Battleground queue toolThis is a difficult one, is sitting in a city posting a LFG macro, desired? Or do you just want to play the dungeon as fast as possible? Should the tool be limited so that it puts a group together for you, but you have to walk there yourself?
As for battleground queues, should you be required to manually walk to the NPCs and queue? Or should it be doable from the Interface?
Custom Group FinderA feature I could see being a tremendous help in Classic wow, specially if people are against adding the before mentioned Dungeon finder
Dungeon JournalAnother neat little addition that would basically save us from downloading atlasloot again.
Pet/Mount tab in the InterfaceThis will probably split a lot of the players: Should Mounts and Pets be items again that take up your inventory space or do you like the convenience of having them out of your bags? Specially considering 18 slot bags will be the biggest available bags again.
AchievementsNow classic certainly didn't have any achievements originally, but would you want your own, classic related achievements?
CalendarAgain a feature added long after Classic, but one that I don't think would "ruin" the experience, being able to set up invites and regular PuGs with this feature.
The nitty gritty, the bad and the ugly
Classic WoW had a ton and bugs and exploits. (An infamous one for instance being the C'thun oozling exploit, where summoning an Oozling 32 times with a macro would spam out any existing debuff enabling you to ignore certain debuff based boss mechanics) and unlike with Star Craft I'm sure, most WoW players wouldn't mind seeing those fixed right from the start. (although.. I'm almost certain some might like to see the return of throwing snowballs at players using the flight master)
But there remains a lot of interactivity that has been changed, like gameplay automation macros, that enabled certain classes to play their optimal max DPS gameplay rotation by spamming a single button. Will this make a comeback, or will these remain restricted?
Similar problems with classic WoW's API, quite a few things were different back then, and I'm not sure how this would need to be handled. Old WoW with modern API and addon support?
And most importantly, will thottbot come back?
Have I forgotten anything? Is there a classic Feature/Non-Feature that is really important/annoyed you when you played? Post it in this thread, and I'll add it to the list as soon as I can.
