World of Warcraft Classic starting Aug 2019

The Game Room
1

For those unfamiliar: there have been many, many changes to how character classes function in the 15 years since World of Warcraft (WoW) launched. Some were definitely quality-of-life improvements, but others were tweaks with unclear or upsetting goals, often to balance player-versus-player combat.

Eventually private servers, unauthorized by the publisher, sprang up, and many of them emulated the original behavior of the game in its early years. This is Blizzard’s gamble that there is enough long-lasting interest in this “classic” ruleset to make keeping a separate set of servers worthwhile. This official Class version will be based on a version released in 2006, albeit with some behind-the-scenes infrastructure, performance and programming improvements.

Optional name reservation will start on Monday August 12, where you can reserve up to three names:

The full launch is scheduled for August 26/27 (depending on your location).

Anyone with an active WoW subscription can also play the Classic version. The Blizzard launcher has an option to choose Classic; this will be a separate download.

Third-party add-ons are supported, but they must be designed specifically for the Classic version.

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I had bought WoW within 3 months of launch (January 2005 I believe, for my birthday). I have enjoyed it immensely over the years, as a purely casual player; I never did raids and only occasionally dungeons. But the trend that kept turning me off is that every major release or expansion brought a change-of-mechanics and undoing of many hours of work (and, of course, changes to your “talents” that required you to rethink your skills). I’m excited about Classic because finally we’ll have a stable, persistent world.

Some examples of what I mean by the frustration experienced by myself and others: you may spend many hours (and “gold”) learning to create super-duper arrows or bonus-granting quivers, or a life-giving bandage from the First Aid profession, only to have a new release eliminate arrows and quivers, or remove the First Aid profession altogether, or removing weapon enchantments as a concept (leveling Enchanting was particularly expensive). Another example is grinding for, or spending a lot of gold on, equipment that provides a boost to a stat, only to have that stat have a reduced role (or be eliminated) in a future release.

So: anyone else planning to play? As of this OP, the Classic realm (server) list has not been released, but it is supposed to be published in the next day or so.

2

I’ll play again. Original WoW was far better than the current treadmill the game has begun. It felt more like a world than a game. The original classes were quirky, not just different flavors of the same thing. Having actually talent trees and not being locked into a role will be nice.

A Paladin will be my main, although I’m likely to have plenty of alts. I prefer RP servers, just to have a modicum of non-leetness.

However, City of Heroes is keeping me occupied. I’m likely to swap back and forth between the games.

3

You have time for… more than one game?

4

When I first started playing in 2005 a Paladin was my first character (and I still have him, of course), and I played him for a very long time. But then after taking over my nephew’s Hunter, I realized just how slow it was to level a Paladin by comparison.

Paladins NOW do pretty well, and that guy in the current release can put out some damage. But Version 1 Paladins are pretty weak in damage output, even in Retribution spec. Conceptually, I love the Pally, but the slog is pretty dreadful (as a solo player).

5

American realms just announced:

Name Type Time Zone
Atiesh Normal Pacific
Mankrik Normal Eastern
Myzrael Normal Pacific
Pagle Normal Eastern

Name Type Time Zone
Faerlina PvP Eastern
Fairbanks PvP Pacific
Herod PvP Eastern
Thalnos PvP Eastern
Whitemane PvP Pacific

Name Type Time Zone
Bloodsail Buccaneers RP Eastern
Grobbulus RP-PvP Pacific

6

I’m trying to figure out what they think demand is going to be based on 11 NA servers. 300,000 for NA?

I like the SM theme for the server names. Don’t like the Naxx names.

7

Apparently the public test that started yesterday will continue through at least Sunday, if not Monday. Anyone with an active subscription can participate.

8

Ah… vanilla WOW. I remember corpse-dragging through the Barrens and trying to hide a brown-red 8 foot tall cowgirl in the green foliage of Stranglethorn Vale to avoid the mighty level 60 gankers…

I’m still playing my Tauren shaman 15 years later. She’s much happier these days, and filthy filthy rich.

9

I can’t imagine anyone willingly choosing to do the paladin epic mount quest again. It took me months of buying thorium at the Auction House, crafting it into Imperial Plate, and selling it at a markup the market would bear before I could afford the mats for it, and then a few more weeks to find a group that was willing to do DM and Scholo so I could finish it.

To say nothing of the fact that the only quest types back then were “kill twenty bears” and “bring me six bear asses” (and, of course, only about one in six bears had an ass that was lootable.)

10

“We choose to do the epic mount quest in WoW Classic and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

That’s essentially the point of it.

11

Blizzard is aware how much more popular Old School Runescape is than regular Runescape and are following in lockstep. Nostalgia is strong.

12

Nostalgia and also a sense of calm, quiet pacing. Current MMOs (and retail WoW especially) are hand in hand with action RPGs to constantly shower the player in new things, bright effects, new spells, YOU JUST LEVELLED, you’ve earned a super item, here’s a million points, go there, do this, dodge that, QUICK ! And do it all before the servers reset !

It’s exhausting, really. I just want to chat with my mates while we’re leasurely strolling through a dungeon, stopping to fish at that spot that’s better than the others. I wanna enjoy gameplay at level 15 for a while, rather than it being a 30s period between 14 and 16, itself a blink of an eye before MaxLevel where the “real” gameplay begins, yanno ?

Anyway, 3 friends of mine and I are discussing which server we wanna colonize ; probably either Hydraxian Waterlords or Zandalar Tribe (the UK PvE RP and PvP RP servers respectively).

13

I think the people who are nostalgic for raids and the ‘oh, this is new’ feeling will be sorely disappointed. Raids especially are going to be ‘meh’ now that everyone knows how to do them and most people realize the main problem isn’t locating good players but just coordinating schedules.

But I’m looking forward to the old leveling areas - the new story focused areas were pretty neat when they were added in WOLK, but they also were made to run through once then leave, and if you play now XP is so fast you just blink by them. I want to sit around a zone finding good killing spots and poking around for quests I half remember, and to bump into other people playing the same zone, and maybe team up for a while. I’m playing a druid, so I’m also going to do a lot of dungeon running (people like you when you can tank or heal in your leveling spec) and stealthing around soloing elites and dungeon bosses.

14

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but since the investment was low, I made some characters on Herod horde-side since that’s the most popular realm.

15

I’ve nothing against the Horde (really!), but I’ve never been a fan of their cities; I get lost…a lot.

So I’ve created my three Alliance “early registration” characters on Mankrik.

16

I greatly enjoyed playing the Stress Test over the weekend.

Reserved a few choice 2-letter names on Bloodsail Buccaneers (RP PvE)

17

Let me guess, Raza, some of your best friends are orcs, right?

18

I live next door to a nice Tauren family. And I think there is a family of Undead across the street, but I don’t think it polite to ask directly. They look Undead and have an Undead-sounding surname.

19

I don’t care much for the Horde, except for Tauren. My first WoW character ever (waaay back in the original beta for the game) was a Tauren shaman named Trample. I have a soft spot for them because of that.

20

Apparently Herod is so overpopulated that Blizzard is anticipating a 10,000 player queue. That ain’t good.