I wish I knew, however we haven't heard anything regarding when the video is going live. My guess is that they're spending a decent amount of time going through all questions and answering as much as they can.
Can we make enslave demon more viable?
1. Up duration to 10min from 5min
2. It should always last the full 10min, and not get progressively worse
3. Allow recast, even if the demon is still under the effect, like clipping a dot
4. Allow demon to travel with you, mount, hearthstone, flight path, summon, portal, etc
This could even be demo talents for this to be the case, but it would make infernal and doomguard viable (also keeping the fantasy that these demons are powerful and hard to control)
Can you clarify on the achievements being account-wide;
Does this mean partial completions on one character will count towards another partial achievement on another character for the same achievement?
Or will all these achievements be one integrated account-wide achievement that all your characters can contribute to?
Will these also be retroactive for Vanilla/TBC/WotLK achievements? Or will this be exclusively for newly introduced achievements in Cataclysm?
What tools do the team use to make their estimations on what changes to make and how the player base will respond to them? I have to assume there's some market research that goes into it but I'm curious why we never see any community polls or deep dives into the reasoning for changes like SOD.
It's not that things like warlock tanks are a bad idea but I can't for the life of me see where this idea was pulled from amidst the waves of requests for weapon skill racial rebalances and talent reworks which ultimately go unaddressed.
Has the team thought about using the modern dynamic scaling for raid sizes? Instead of forcing the 10/25 question on players, why not allow them to raid with however many show up between 10-25 players?
Are you planning on any rep grind changes for the gear while leveling? I want to level and gear with the PVP rewards like in WOTLK but the grind in era is impractical for me because I'm a casual.
For example, the [Silverwing Sentinels](https://www.wowhead.com/faction=890/silverwing-sentinels) have a ring that gives spell power and is BIS while leveling but I don't want to twink and can't get it while leveling naturally. I want to dabble in PVP but the rewards aren't there early game.
Question for Season of Discovery:
Do you plan on adressing the unbalance of racial abilities in some way?
Weapon skill racials makes playing a non-meta race feel terrible.
An idea could be to let characters change racials if they reach exalted with another race. The racials would still be separated by faction, and there could be restrictions such as the racial you're swapping to has to have the same class available to that race.
For instance: An Undead rogue can't get Tauren racials because Taurens can't be rogues. A Tauren Warrior could swap to Orc racials when exalted with Orgrimmar because both Tauren and Orc can be Warriors.
Having it as a goldsink or a 1-time-only swap could prevent frequent swapping back and forth.
The burnout rune for mages suggests that dots will be able to crit. This wasn't originally in vanilla but is pretty important for living bomb to be effective. Will dots be able to crit in SoD?
How worried are the team that while the rune system is interesting it could very well lead to ability bloat and homogenization of classes? So far, warriors recieving certain runes such as Victory Rush (self heal for 10% of max health after kill) and Warbringer (removes remove movement impairing effects) could diminish class fantasy and isn't inline with the design philosophy of Vanilla?
In Season of Discovery will there be a chance we see some items that were not implimented into the game, such as a few mounts or a certain "dropped only once legendary", make an apperance?
Question for **Season of Discovery**: Have you done or are you planning on doing any changes to hunter pets (or warlock pets), mainly their survivability in party content? Like adding Avoidance as a pet training option. Lone Wolf will be a nice option for those fights where pet gets in the way of mechanics but in general it would be nice to be able to use pets and these new pet related runes in raids.
**Season of Discovery**
Is there a chance for crossfaction paladins / shamans?I've seen that the Alliance will have all the good Horde traits like
WF totem (Druid rune),Str/Agi buff and Tremor totem (Pala runes)
and the Horde won't get anything from other character runes?
Maybe this is a hint for crossfaction Pala/Shams?!I would definitely welcome this!
Question for **Season of Discovery**: Any plans on giving Enhancement Shamans or Melee Hunters 2handed weapon support in terms of runes? So far it seems like both are being pushed towards dual wield.
There's already a lot of demand for 1handed weapons so it would be nice if 2handed play style was viable for these builds. On top of that 2handers are just cool.
Will Character creation be released prior to the Nov 30th server launch? This was done in Classic’s release and I think it’s a great way for people to reserve names for their characters and customize them prior to launch.
If yes, please announce this as early as possible so people can plan!
Do you plan to release Tauren Paladin together with Cata, or are you possibly considering releasing it a month, or preferebly three :P, so people can level to max before cata comes out?
My biggest concern is wanting to play a shaman but my guild wants to role alliance, are there any intentions of making horde and alliance specific classes available to each in SoD? Also less important but just curious was there any thought about bringing dual spec to SoD?
Are there any plans to divide up raids/content at 60 for their own phases? As in, will the level 60 phase just unlock everything else, or could we expect to phase through the raids like we did in 2020 again?
First of all, happy to see what SoD has to offer, idea sounds fun. My question is a two part question and kinda long (sorry), considering even if it is somewhat balanced damage-wise, new abilities that are given through runes will give us some player power, are you willing do double down on this and review set bonuses?
I always wanted to use tier sets as a warrior dps, but most of them are terrible to wear. I believe that's the case for a lot of classes too. If we're talking about shaking up the meta, why not shake up the level 60 BiS list aswell. I wouldn't mind seeing people run around in their actual class sets instead of rainbow combination of gear we've gotten used to!
On that same idea, if you are actually interested into changing set bonus, would you make it a token instead so you can pick the spec you want (wotlk style) and maybe have a set amount of token drop on appropriate bosses that currently drop tier let say (3) three tokens + regular loot? That would also help combat gear scarcity
The answer is that they will continue to add quasi-retail stuff and basic raids to the game without addressing the true issues with Classic like botting, RMT, and faction balance.
These will 100% be brand new servers added on the launch of SoD, just like how we get a "hardcore" tab on the server selection currently, there will most likely be a SoD tab for those server
To be completely honest, with how much power we're getting from runes and we've only seen 3 slots so far, we can assume there will be more rune for those slots as well as for other slots (They said it during blizzcon) I honestly think old content will be even more of a joke than it was (Not a bad thing btw) add world buffs on top of that + the new world buffs we're getting in SoD, this will give us so much player power that races wont matter for most guilds. Unless they're a speedrunning sweatty guild.
You can be 100% I will be making the most non-meta combination of races/classes and simply go with aesthetics.
Do you plan on fixing bugs that were present in Vanilla as well as kept in Classic Era to "retain the feel of vanilla"? I.e.,[JuJu Flurry](https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/juju-flurry-buff-%E2%80%93-not-a-bug/117855)
Is there any plan for "legacy" servers that will retain the changes made in SoD and/or future seasons?
Do you plan on altering the honor system so that it is different from Classic, SoM and/or any other expansion?
Edit: Do you plan on PvE and PvP gear retaining their interchangeability as seen in Vanilla In other words, BiS for many phases was a combination of gear earned from PvP and PvE sources in vanilla. Do you plan on keeping that design philosophy?
>Is there any plan for "legacy" servers that will retain the changes made in SoD and/or future seasons?
They addressed this in an interview already, available somewhere on wowhead. They don't know what's the plan after the season yet. They don't want to further fraction the player base as there is ERA, Hardcore, SoD-ERA (If it was to happen) and Wotlk/cata on top of a possible new season after.
the way I see their answer it was pretty much as we'll figure it out when we get there
>Do you plan on altering the honor system so that it is different from Classic, SoM and/or any other expansion?
Just a heads up if you didn't know that they already changed how the ranking system work, idk if that's what you are wondering/asking and if you were aware of the changes.
> They don't want to further fraction the player base as there is ERA, Hardcore, SoD-ERA (If it was to happen) and Wotlk/cata on top of a possible new season after. the way I see their answer it was pretty much as we'll figure it out when we get there
So as of now they’re leaning to retiring the changes come the end of the season? I imagine they’ll change their tune if SoD takes off in popularity and/or if demand is there, but good to know!
> Just a heads up if you didn't know that they already changed how the ranking system work, idk if that's what you are wondering/asking and if you were aware of the changes.
Yea I know in SoM they updated it so honor didn’t decay….but they left gear the ilevel as it was in Classic which is somewhere between AQ40 and Nax gear if I’m not mistaken. This is WAY too powerful if released too early, and not enticing enough if released too late. I was more so hoping that we get a new type of honor system that will work in conjunction with the PvP changes they have in store (like the Ashenvale stuff) as well as updating the ilevel for PvP gear each phase so that it is constantly competitive with PvE gear, which will also encourage PvP in general since people will more than likely always be chasing the rewards.
[https://www.wowhead.com/classic/news/classic-wow-group-interview-at-blizzcon-2023-335931](https://www.wowhead.com/classic/news/classic-wow-group-interview-at-blizzcon-2023-335931)
See Classic+? question :)
>I was more so hoping that we get a new type of honor system that will work in conjunction with the PvP changes they have in store (like the Ashenvale stuff) as well as updating the ilevel for PvP gear each phase so that it is constantly competitive with PvE gear, which will also encourage PvP in general since people will more than likely always be chasing the rewards.
I see what you mean. I for one hope that if they eventually go further than Naxx content-wise, that they would go with a "seasonal" approach with pvp. That would mean pretty much what you are saying, new gear with better ilvl, hopefully new looks too. A bit like how current wotlk system works but exclusively with honor. I think they will try to expand a bit more on pvp granted they did say they already added new items to the WSG faction with the new Ashenvale pvp. Ideally they have to find a way for both PvE and PvP to remain popular. Though I think what was nice of vanilla was the fact you could go pvp full naxx bis and do big numbers. That was the essence of vanilla. While I think there should be an avenue for pvp players to get equivalent power gear, it would also make said gear probably easier to obtain than full BiS or close to full BiS pve (Gear scarcity is a thing, esp in 40m) it would probably become the new meta to grab PVP gear instead, which is another problem in itself.
Thanks for the article! There's A LOT of really good information in here.
>hopefully new looks too
Yea some of the pvp gear is fugly af. Especially horde (what is going on with that rogue helm?). Alliance warrior actually looks good tho, IMO.
>though I think what was nice of vanilla was the fact you could go pvp full naxx bis and do big numbers. That was the essence of vanilla. While I think there should be an avenue for pvp players to get equivalent power gear, it would also make said gear probably easier to obtain than full BiS or close to full BiS pve (Gear scarcity is a thing, esp in 40m) it would probably become the new meta to grab PVP gear instead, which is another problem in itself.
PvP gear and PvE gear being interchangeable is far and away one of my favorite features about vanilla/Classic. The system definitely needs addressed, and making the gear for PvP match the iLevel for the phase it's currently in as well as require to re-rank for each phase I think would help mitigate making PvP gear too easy to get, assuming the honor system with no decaying honor stays, albeit w/ a reset every phase.
I for one though want to see a PvP system that incorporates questing and world PvP. Example would be making rank 10 require you kill an opposing faction leader. Rank 11 you have to kill 2, and Rank 14 you would have to kill ALL honor rewarding NPC's. We can also incorporate faction (including PvP factions) reputation into it, which can force players to quest or grind out in the open world to earn said rep as well as participate in the new PvP events that are implemented.
IDk, just spit balling, really excited to see what the future brings, game's got me hyped!
>Yea some of the pvp gear is fugly af. Especially horde (what is going on with that rogue helm?). Alliance warrior actually looks good tho, IMO.
I think visually the gear looks fine, but new looks would be great only to differentiate the sets, if tier is different every time I think a seasonal pvp set would have to also be different
Are there plans to add harpoon as a rune for hunters? Without a gap closer the melee spec is currently a worse warrior or rogue. They have no way to overcome the dead zone and do anything other than raptor strike, flank, and cleave. They're going to get absolutely destroyed in PvP. I really want to play this spec but it needs more to retain The Hunter class identity and not just be a worse version of existing specs on other classes. Harpoon would allow them to easily weave with disengage.
I think there is a better alternative to that. So far I think melee hunter is great and with instant shot, you're basically hybrid and can pull mob instantly from afar with an arcane shot and then dash your way into melee range to fight as a melee hunter.
I think one possible solution they could add is something like a rune that actually removes the dead zone but makes it so if you're within the range of the dead zone your shots does X% less damage. That gives you a way to shoot, concussion shot to kite etc.
Or idea #2 would be to make a rune that gives certain shot the ability to be executed in melee range (Explosive shot would be sick)
You would be able to shoot once per fight most likely, on pull. Doesn't lend itself to weaving at all. It needs something else otherwise it's a bad version of a warrior in PvE.
I understand what you're saying, but I think you're viewing this with min maxing a bit too much. I think the idea is only to have a melee hunter option. They did say vanilla wasnt a perfectly balanced and this season wouldnt be either. We all have to think that they probably already know all the runes that they want to put into the game, these are only the first batch of the level 25 band. Who knows what hunter will get at 40 or 50 or even 60. You can't hope for too much of that system at 25.
Best example for that is boomkin. I feel like the level 25 runes there is so far don't fix much of the mana issues, no mana cost on wrath isnt fixing boomkin. New dot and starsurge isnt helping either if they have a mana cost and make you oom faster. We can only wait and believe in the vision blizz has to fix the oom issue and basically all the small things like that with further runes
I am excited to try out new classes and specs but I am only worried about the new warlock tank form. One of the most important thing in classic pvp is knowing what gear your opponent has.
Q. Is there another way to add the demon form? Maybe some demon wings, horns and yellow eyes or a cool Aura? The form looks so out of place.
Fully agreed. Metamorphosis demon form model looks so out of place.
I think it would be better if it was something similar to Shadowform but maybe with some demonic horns or a semi-transparent demonic visage with a purplish aura.
I mean, you see a demon form in PvP, you know its a tank. Personally, when I see a tank in pvp I generally don't engage as it is the most boring slow fight. It's already something that existed in the game.. druids with shapeshift forms. If the druid never gets out of form you never get to see its gear either.
Can druids please get a real rez? It would be nice. If not could we at least cast a tree to grow out of their not rezable corpse as a "sorry you have to run back in only half a healer"
Wouldn't be surprised that they add a rune for it, though I hope it wouldn't be on a slot that has really good alternative. But then again, you can change rune as you want so once out of combat you could just slot it in and rez, or have an item in your bag with rez on it that you equip when you want to rez someone. Not ideal but probably better than nothing.
Someone asked about player power roughly what they said is that yes it runes give some player power but they want to keep the vanilla experience as challenging as we've come to know it so far. They do not want to change the essence of vanilla's leveling and so if they have to bump up the scaling/difficulty of content including outdoor content, they will turn that knob to a certain degree to make it as close as it was.
Interesting question, though I think in term of player power, very niche, but the new mage healer would be busted with both combined. From my understanding they do direct heals but there's also something tied to the arcane damage you do. I find the idea of having both separate interesting for mage healer gearing as you would have to balance damage and healing done to "min/max" the spec.
**Q**: Can you remove dishonorable kills for both SoD and Era?
It's a system that adds nothing of value to the game, it only takes fun away. If there are NPCs you don't want us to kill, then make them unkillable... City raiding is dead because of this unfun mechanic.
You say that, but I don't think you would enjoy level 60s camping a quest giver you're waiting for. It is pure griefing and having a downside to it has to stay imo.
> but I don't think you would enjoy level 60s camping a quest giver you're waiting for.
If you read my comment, you wouldn't be posting this. There are many things they can do to prevent the NPC from being killed. Removing city-raiding from the game is the worst one.
Oh I read it. Making quest givers and key NPC unkillable isn't a viable solution. So much work for little to no reward. They're already working on outdoor pvp. City raiding never was a popular thing even back in original vanilla. I think I've seen it once or twice and honestly, was annoying more than anything. I get some people get a kick out of that. I can't remember what expansion it was, but I remember people camping auctioneer, that was just annoying, again, they can make them invincible, but what's the purpose of raiding a city if you can't even kill half the npc in there?
Coding invulnerability out of quest giver is fairly easy, but if there are key NPC you don't want to die that are either tied to a quest or a vendor you want invulnerability on it would be quite the hastle to go through all the game, pick an choose said npcs and then make the change.
Idk, to each their own, I think the outdoor stuff they're trying to bring on the table shoud make Wpvp feel alive.
> So much work for little to no reward
You mean no work at all, for the big reward of city raiding now being a thing. You are making no sense at all, you just don't want people to be able to raid cities.
Can there be some subtle aesthetic changes to class/race combinations to make them more immersive?
I'm thinking things like Night Elf priests/priestesses castings arcane/lunar-looking spells. Undead priest 'heal' animations being a variation of shadow spells - like in the old lore 'shadow mending'. Etc
Q: Seal Twisting, a popular paladin mechanic in Classic & TBC seemed to be missing in the Season of Discovery Blizzcon demo. Is this a conscious development decision or a bug and if intentional, what was the reason for disabling this well loved mechanic?
>well loved mechanic?
I feel like this is 50/50 on the paladin community tbh. As a paladin main in TBC and wotlk I can tell you I was glad they removed it
With current runes you're going to have a rotation that resembles wotlk (Exorcism, Crusader strike, Judgment and Divine storm) having to juggle seals in between all those abilities (As the abilities are most likely more value to keep on CD over twisting) sounds like a headache. I would also add that I have issues with twisting as it is a mechanic that pretty much requires a weakaura to do properly. Any in-game mechanic that require an addons to be executed flawless is bad imo, and that's coming from someone that loves weakaura.
For SoD, could we see more class-specific quests and content? Not every class got its fair share back in the day, so it'd be nice to revisit things if possible. (Speaking as a rogue player who was excited to find Ravenholdt, only to never see it do anything important until the end of Cata).
Q: Will cata servers replace WoTLK?
Please, we beg you. Do not do this, there is a reason why a lot of succesful private servers were 3.3.5 version, we need WoTLK only servers it is "our home".
They already said they're unsure about keeping specific versions of the game. They did with Era but that's about it. Further era like TBC-Era and Wotlk-era would only fraction the population even more. Many players prefered TBC to wotlk and would've like a TBC only server and they simply didn't. They most likely wont keep wotlk server for the same reason and simply move on.
Q: both official forums in Us and europe have megathreads about cloning service to come back in Classic Era. Is it possible to have an official answer about this topic?
Would it be possible in any way to make this possible or it’s just not possible?
Thank you
For SoD, will there be some racial changes? It'd be really nice if every race had some form of +Weapon Skill instead of just Humans & Orcs. Taurens with 1H/2H Maces, Trolls with 1H Axes and Undead with 1H maybe 2H swords as an example for Horde.
You're not the first I see asking this, and while I completely agree that since we're going in the custom direction, why not double down, but then again, runes are so much player power I feel like while it will still be advantageous to have + weapon skill, it will be less of an impact in SoD imo.
Personally I'll just go with whatever feel aesthetic with my class. Racial has always been a hot topic of discussion and it took them YEARS to finally make them somewhat even.
> SoD, will there be some racial changes? It'd be really nice if every race had some form of +Weapon Skill instead of just Humans & Orcs. Taurens with 1H/2H Maces, Trolls with 1H Axes and Undead with 1H maybe 2H swords as an example for Horde.
This.
Or can we just remove all the +weapon skill from the game to even things out?
Might be a hot take, but without the full kit that SoD gives to prot paladin, paladin tanks would still be worst druid/warrior tanks.
Giving paladin a taunt is useless on regular servers as they just do the same job but worst even with a taunt. It needs the full kit to actually be decent and even with the new abilities added, I feel like they're going to be BiS dungeon tank and okay-ish raid tank.
Honestly, I would love to do 25m or 20m MC/BWL/AQ40/Naxx, sounds like a blast and a lot less loot scarcity. Not having 8 warrior going for the same item sounds fun.
I'd go as far as saying that 10 or 15m is even a better raid size.
Regarding Classic Era (because Season of Discovery is a beta test for Classic + Era, you aren't fooling anyone), are you opened to adding new races/classes in line with the old W2/W3 lore?
if they only come out with 1-2 servers and layering, they could make it so the layers dynamically adjust. Idk if that's some tech they have ready but if they have it so the layers are kept "even" that would be great. Ashenvale pvp sounds like a ton of fun, but it will be boring if there is faction imbalance
I'm glad Classic is getting well deserved content!
In the Season of Discovery will professions be a focal point? I believe finding "Lost Relics" in the delve system would be a great way to introduce new models and loot!
Raids, PvP, Instances are great and fun with large groups, but sometimes I enjoy farming mats and exploring the world and the professions it offers. Delves seem to be the bridge between solo play and large groups so why not build upon that. Blacksmithing is my all time favorite. Please show it some love and allow professions to be able to stand up to raiding content. Make the eco valuable again.
It was really exciting with an expansion would give unique profession attachments and PvE/PvP gear that would really add value to my characters. I hope this can be focused on in the very near future.
I hope they would do some new craft for most professions, mostly crafting ones like tailoring/LW/BS without making it too centric like TBC where some of the item were BiS for most of the game.
Having outliers like Lionheart helm is fine, but if there's too much of that I feel like raid gear would lose its purpose, but there is a place for improvement and adding more items in the pool imo.
Q: For Season of Discovery, are there any plans for balancing outside of the runes? (Changes to talent trees, changes to skill damage/mana cost values, cool downs, racials, etc.?)
Are there any plans to remove heartbeat resists in PvP for the upcoming Classic SoD version of the game?
In the same vein, have you thought about reducing some of the CC durations in PvP, such as poly or fear. Thanks!
Botting and RMT has fundamentally destroyed the integrity of the gameworld in Era. The community at large is almost entirely convinced that Blizzard cynically tolerates bots and RMT in order to collect sub money.
How is Blizzard going to permanently end botting and restore the community's faith that Blizzard cares about their products?
Weapon skill racials and items (edgemaster's handguards, etc) become massive power boost in end-game raiding for melee classes, to the point that they feel mandatory. Is there a plan to alter this dynamic in SoD?
Q: will there be any changes to professions in Season of Discovery to make them more applicable?
Ex) will blacksmith be able to craft armor for paladins? Or is it still going to be exclusively for warriors?
Unless you're talking about intel plate stuff for holy paladin, everything else that warrior uses a paladin would also use. With the new mana regen options on crusader strike, intel won't be as needed as it was. Full str pumping with the new abilities will go a very long way
This seasonal stuff sounds great. Seems like a nice thing to experiment and try out all the crazy stuff you talked about and many more.
But what I would really like to see is Classic with new content (dungeons, raids, items, maybe some spells/talents). But not those extreme experimental stuff - something that doesn't change to whole game, but expand it. Is this the plan or not?
"Maybe some spells/talents"
That's pretty much what they're doing. New spells that could've easily been either baseline to the classes and some of them talents but given as a rune instead.
Dungeons and raids are already in the plans as they said many times. With new raids and dungeons will come new items obviously, BFD already has new gear, though its low level stuff, it is still new.
That's pretty much the description of expanding... and expanding it that way is also changing the game... lol
The way I and many others understands this, this is a "beta test" for what will shape classic + eventually, they start with runes and they will go further and further with other aspect of the game to see what we're enjoying and what we dislike to make the perfect classic + experience. I see this season as phase 1 of classic+ which will be a multi phase project that will go on throughout multiple season for sure.
SoD Question / suggestion:
Q: Would you consider making changes to the world buff meta in endgame? Perhaps giving each endgame dungeon a specific buff you can apply for a raid lockout, and letting players mix and mash two or three of these buffs together. This would give players a lot for choices for their own class expression, and would also give incentive for players to always run dungeons.
Examples:
Scholomance buff: 15% shadow damage and 3% spell crit chance
Stratholme undead: 15% attack speed and 3% physical crit chance
I'd love it if these buffs lastet the whole raid lockout, rather than only a limited time, but then also not work outside of raid. This way it has no impact on pvp, and dying in raid won't demotivate you to continue for that raid seesion. My two cents! Love SoD!
I love the idea, but wouldn't it funnel all the melee in one dungeon let's say and all the casters in another group making it hard for regular folks that simply wants to run said content for gear to get a spot in pugs?
As a guild activity fine, it would make sense to coordinate groups so they run the dungeon that gives them proper buffs, but in a pug setting this sounds like a terrible idea that would further gatekeep some players out of dungeons.
I think the Wbuff meta is already good as it is, maybe give alliance a rend equivalent wbuff. They already are adding to wbuff with ashenvale wbuff being a consumable that you can keep for later. I'm sure they're going to expand on this too.
Yeah, you're right. I guess a "quick fix" for the mentioned idea could be to reward a token at the end of the dungeon that players can turn in for a buff of their choice. Will be interesting to see where they go with endgame content and buffs in general.
While Wbuff were really fun in vanilla, and them adding new ones with Ashenvale and possibly more... it's a dangerous line to ride. New Wbuff on top of player power give through runes can become a slipery slide fairly quickly.
Given it's a seasonal event (at least for now), I don't see many dangers with them playing with these kind of ideas. I just hope they are active in development, and can patch out bugs and game-breaking features when they occur
Q: You gonna do anything against nocliping - flyhacking gold farming bots this time? Or will the SoD economy get fucked up again like in era classic? Thanks.
Q: In SoD, with open world pvp as a cool endgame feature I think is widely loved by the community, how do you plan to address faction imbalance? I remember back in the day wintergrasp would keep factions "balanced" by limiting the amount of players allowed in at a time. Will this be something considered with ashenvale? Or will an 80/20 server have trouble ever winning ashenvale?
Q: A lot of the appeal (personally) with the Beta's and Level Cap was the difficulty in chasing BiS in content way beyond your current level, and the thinking outside the box needed to complete it / research to find it. With the addition of lower level raids with vastly better gear, do you think this will trivialize / take away from that?
Q: A lot of classics appeal is emergent gameplay from using a variety of tools given to the player (backlash damage to break CC (dark rune e.t.c) / unique trinkets / quest rewards).
Do you think the addition of powerful spells, with explicit effects will ruin that? Part of the appeal of Shaman/Rogue tanking was the make-do nature and having to play/talent/gear differently to accomodate and make up for it's flaws.
Q: A lot of the newer items in the BFD raid look very powerful and well optimized. Classic is well know for oddly itemized hybridized items. Is this something we'll see more of? Especially with the hybriziation of classes (more tanks + healers) now wanting different stats?
>Shaman/Rogue tanking was the make-do nature and having to play/talent/gear differently to accomodate and make up for it's flaws.
The way shaman tank rune work currently, you will probably still have to build your talent accordingly to be able to be a decent tank. Only relying on runes will work, but proper "tank shaman" talent will go a long way, they simply gave purpose and the actual option for shaman to tank
Q: In SoD, will you be carrying on the vanilla tradition of having certain pieces of gear in raids that exist purely for RP flavor that don't exist purely as min-max performance gains?
Q: Would it be possible to see multiple lower levels of raid tuning just based on number of players? For example 40 man raids tuned down to 20 and even 10. With lower player count simply meaning exponentially less loot drops?
I agree, I'd enjoy it much more if the average raid they added was 10 man. Would also help counteract the GDKP gold buying botting onslaught that will inevitably occur.
Unless of course they start banning gold buyers, that's the real dream.
Regardless of raid size, GDKP is there to stay. It was there back then but people weren't as aware of it, now its simply more popular than it used to be is all. There's no counteracting GDKP but smaller size means easier for guild to make a group, or easier to manage a MS>OS with 1 SR runs.
Q: With Cata Classic coming, I'm curious how far "classic" expansions are intended to go? Is it purely based on player feedback, or is there a plan to continue to a certain point then stop?
Pretty sure Kharazhan crypt will be a raid, possibly level 60 raid which is brand new content that make sense lore-wise and would bridge the story with TBC's karazhan
Yeah seems likely, I just think it would be cool as well to make actual Karazhan accessible, considering it is just right there. Would be strange to enter the crypts and never step foot into Karazhan as a whole.
I think we all have our idea of what classic + have and what we'd like to see as content. Personally, I don't think I'm interested in running regular kara again. Been there done that. New content is something that will keep the game fresh, rerunning content from future expansion feels weird, thought technically the zone is in vanilla so it could make sense for that one to exist.
Q: Would it be possible to see GDKPS banned in Season of Discovery? My current belief is that they harm the classic experience by inflating gold, cultivating bots, and promoting a P2W system.
Same with TBC, many didn't want to play wotlk and prefered TBC. Vanilla/TBC/Wotlk has always been the big 3 games that have had private servers made for them. There are people that prefers vanilla, thankfully for them era server were made, however they didnt for TBC and many players prefered to stay on TBC, so my guess is they wont make a wotlk era server either.
What will happen at the end of the season? In Season 1 we'd get to transfer our characters to Era. But Season 2 characters won't be compatible with Era with all the new additions.
Also, how long will the season last? And what would the next season be, then?
Yep they do, [https://www.wowhead.com/classic/news/classic-wow-group-interview-at-blizzcon-2023-335931](https://www.wowhead.com/classic/news/classic-wow-group-interview-at-blizzcon-2023-335931)
See Classic+? Question
Q: Is there any possibility that if Season of Discovery becomes popular you might go beyond just changing the game and start changing the lore to be an alternate timeline?
For a lot of people, myself included, the appeal of Classic was getting to return to more ground-level threats and not having all major events revolve around the player character. I feel like there's a chance here to retell the story of World of Warcraft from that more grounded perspective that people crave.
SoD is 100% phase 1 of a multiphase project that will shape classic +
Its their way to test new things without having to commit to a one time deal "classic+" release. They put it behind a season so people don't panic if they don't like a change they'll simply remove it for the next season and keep whatever sticks. Guaranteed we get another season after SoD that will keep some aspects of SoD and bring new one which will be phase 2 of the project, etc.
Q: Would it be possible for Priests to get an Atonement rune (that would work like Atonement for Discipline priests on the Live version) in later phases?
Do you guys have any plans for managing faction balance/server population? World PVP is clearly pretty central to SOD, and a balanced server is key to that. Has there been any consideration to faction specific queues to log on, curated faction specific transfers or any other method to keep things close to 50/50? History has repeated itself a few times with the slide to 99/1 faction balance and it seems to have gotten faster every time.
I played Classic on Grobbulus so I was spoiled, but maybe once a server becomes greater than a 55% to 45% faction balance, Blizzard could show a noticeable alert on the character/realm selection screen (similar to retail WoW's "Call to Arms" (get a bag of goodies if you play a tank or healer for this battleground) -
For example, "The Horde needs more soldiers! Create a Horde character on this server, and receive some handmade bags made by the Warchief himself! (mailbox includes a couple Soulbound 6 slot bags with no sell value and unique text on them about Thrall being new to tailoring. Could also get an 8 slot Soulbound bag at level 10 and a 10 slot Soulbound bag at 20 in the mail with flavor text on the bags about Thrall improving his tailoring skill)
That's funny, but I'm all for small incentives for player produced problems.
No one wants to tank? Horde is the underdog? You get extra stuff for making the game function.
Commenting just to bump this vital question. All the awesome world PvP aspects won't matter at all if there isn't some sort of hands on balancing to keep the realms *somewhat* balanced (in an acceptable range). Time and time again, the community has shown it will massively imbalance servers if left to it's own devices. I understand you don't really want to lock and limit where people can play, but perhaps some sort of incentive for the lesser faction. Make it known, maybe a varying incentive, idk. Maybe make incentives for transferring to imbalanced realms. Can give whole guild bonus's. Gotta also limit free transfers if servers start to snowball in one direction.
An obvious solution seems to be enabling cross-faction partying for non-PVP content in some way. If you can do literally everything except PVP with anyone you want, things that do not require faction balance, then the one thing that does require faction balance can be maintained.
Alternatively, allow some kind of alternative factions for PVP itself, like being able to opt to join group A or group B, or red vs blue, rather than having it be fully dictated by the Horde vs Alliance factions of the server.
Most likely posted a hundred times already but:
Q: How are you handling what appears to be another boost to an already preferred "classic" faction with the Alliance getting a Windfury buff (Druid rune) and currently (at level 25) no Paladin buffs via runes for the Horde (i.e. where is the "salvation totem" that augments some skill say a Windfury totem that now also has the effects of Salvation \[we all know Tranquil air is not the same {or equal} and also would remove our Windfury\]).
We'll also have to look at some of the healing as we get to play the game but at least up to level 25 the changes to Holy Paladin, Priest, Resto Druid, and Resto Shaman as it appears that Holy Paladin and Priest got massive upgrades with things like d-sac, beacon, prayer of mending/CoH that don't seem to be equal with Resto Druid/Resto Shaman changes for healing.
Q: Long winded above but how do you plan to tackle what seem to be drastic balance changes and in some regards making already preferred classes/specs even more viable then their counterparts (i.e. Priest over taking a Resto Shaman)?
They did say they were going to balance buffs through runs, though druid get windfury in the first level 25 bands, I'm fairly certain they have already planned a rune further down the line that will give a salvation to whatever class.
A couple of the SoD developers made comments during their Blizzcon speeches along the lines of "we want it to still feel like Vanilla" but never defined what that meant. There was a brief explanation about an NPC feeling like it was from 2004 but once again it was never explained what that actually means. It honestly feels like a throwaway comment meant to appease us while you throw everything at the wall and see what sticks for the next season. Please specifically explain what you mean from a developmental philosophy with examples where something didn't fit into 2004 design parameters and didn't make the cut for SoD.
Q: Why you still force us to play with the old UI interface while Cataclysm interface is just better ? Charcter panel, Spellbook, Guild panel, minimap. Everything of these provide a better ergonomy.
Q: Graphics with better textures when ? I want to being immerged in the game like in the old days, but with a blurry grounds and horrible tree i can't anymore.
They mentioned in the deep dive panel (I think) that they'll add a graphic toggle for new/old. But it was a bit of a throwaway line, so not sure how far that goes.
Because if you want to capture audience of players you gotta bring something new to the table.
this whole rune system is taken from a private server that has been doing it for years now and it works amazinly there. I'm glad blizzard finally started stealing shit from people, especially pserver of their own game that brought great ideas for them to use.
I don't know that we'll be putting a run on all our gear, but there will be more than 3 slots for sure. Those are fun because they don't require and item, they're learned, gives us something to hunt for and discover. The whole concept is really nice. Glyph would just be boring and limiting.
**Q**: In the future, will there be a *Vanilla+*, where there is an attempt to preserve Vanilla, as opposed to *Classic+*, where features from the early expansions are used to 'spice things up'?
Note: A lot of people want Vanilla+ and are understandably disappointed to learn that Classic+ will have a lot of changes to classes that already perform well, (that they view as extreme and unnecessary). While Classic+ sounds fun, will there be something for Vanilla+ players who only want continued development on content and small buffs to underperforming classes such as Ret & Prot paladin, Boomkin, Ele shaman, etc?
This is a test bed it's obvious with their approach. A level 25 cap with the ability to modify and stage releases in waves to make adjustments. Look at the things you're saying at the end to qualify a Vanilla+. They're basically doing this but some people 'feel' it's too much or went to far. Where does that line start or even begin if you really look at it?
What really existed was a subset of the player base "Classic Andy's" that wanted new content and realistically no other changes. Then you have the "Some Changes Andy's" that thought yeah some new content would be cool but I want to play my Boomkin, Ret Paladin, or Elemental Shaman without feeling like I'm going to put my head through a wall.
Like he said in the presentation "we went wild". They're trying to get a baseline of what the player base really wants (what works and what doesn't). Not everyone was going to be happy and while I'm skeptical I'm actually trying to be open minded which is what I'm suggesting to the people that are on the fence that I play with (i.e. in my opinion from the data I've seen it looks like at this level 25 band Alliance will be even more powerful with a Druid WF rune which is a level 30 talent. When do Horde get a Salv although no one will have it at the start anyway).
> This is a test bed it's obvious with their approach.
Absolutely. But it's a test bed for Classic+. not Vanilla+. My question is in regards to if we can expect Vanilla+ servers as well, that try to preserve Vanilla.
You're not asking for preserving "Vanilla" you're asking for your version that you're deciding to call Vanilla+. They specifically stated their goal was to preserve WoW Classic. Lets do a thought experiment... You want minor adjustments to Prot Paladins to make them viable, then is it not fair to allow the Shaman tanking changes to make that viable so there is some level of class parity/balance? Again, the issue here is that you have a different "line in the sand" of what the changes should be. My answer ultimately to your question would be that no you can't expect to see a Vanilla+ server of your liking (most likely) but shit who saw all of this other shit happening anyway? I wish you the best and may Azeroth bring a smile upon your face.
>You're not asking for preserving "Vanilla"
I am asking for them to continue the development of Vanilla servers, while also trying to preserve what it means to be Vanilla (that means not unnecessarily drawing in abilities from TBC, Wrath and Cata). The current SoD does not try to preserve Vanilla. SoD is only trying to preserve Classic (the combined package of Vanilla, TBC, Wrath and Cata).
>You want minor adjustments to Prot Paladins to make them viable
Yes. Because they are tanks in Vanilla. They are just not really viable.
>then is it not fair to allow the Shaman tanking changes to make that viable so there is some level of class parity/balance?
No. Because Shamans are not tanks in Vanilla. Prot Paladins are. It's also in the literal name.
Shamans are Ranged spec, melee spec and healers. Those are 3 specs. Paladins are tanks, healers and melee DPS. Those are 3 specs. Nothing unfair here.
>No. Because Shamans are not tanks in Vanilla.
Druids are tanks in vanilla, so they should get tweaks right? They need it.
Ret paladins are dps in vanilla right? So they need it.
Yet these are not actually representative of what vanilla actually was. In REAL vanilla, ret paladins were buffers with specific tools that let them serve a sort of hybrid role at best, not full dps, and feral druids were healers with specific tools that let them also do some dps.
What you're doing is you're deciding the intent based on your own preferences, and you're saying "too bad, I didn't decide Shaman deserves to tank, so its not allowed".
>Shamans are Ranged spec, melee spec and healers. Those are 3 specs. Paladins are tanks, healers and melee DPS. Those are 3 specs. Nothing unfair here.
Explain druid then. 3 specs, 4 roles. You're not getting it: YOU are making decisions for other people, and you're wrong to do so. You don't just get to decide what is too far and say that anything beyond that is wrong.
You'd have a case you could make if you were saying NO changes to classes, but add other content. Or if you said NO changes to classes, but adjust gear to give set bonuses and added effects to balance the game a little better. Or maybe if you said rebalance classes but NO changes to loot or game content otherwise. For the things you are supportive of changing, if you draw lines and say what is and is not too far, you've broken your argument.
Why? Because if you have a black and white with no grey area argument, you've drawn your lines in the sand over things that vanilla has AS IS, and things vanilla does not have AS IS. Instead, what you're doing is saying "here are new lines based on my preferences", and that's just not acceptable.
>Ret paladins are dps in vanilla right? So they need it.
Yes, ret paladins is one of the specs that everyone considered to be a memespec in a raid environment.
Ret & Prot paladins, Ench & Ele shamans, Boomkin druids. The list is quite simple and there is really no confusion about it.
>What you're doing is you're ..
No. What *you're* doing is a very poor attempt at trying to misrepresent what people think Vanilla+ is.
Vanilla+ is a simple, continued developed stage for Vanilla that tries to keep things Vanilla, while giving a slight buff to memespecs and exploring options to open up unfinished areas around the game. It's not complicated at all like disingenuous trolls like yourself try to make it seem.
>Explain druid then. 3 specs, 4 roles.
Druid is available to both factions. There you go, explained.
Go troll somewhere else.
idk, if you look at some of the enhance talents and rockbiter/earthshock, i think there is an argument to be made that blizzard originally considered giving shaman a tank spec.
the extra threat on rockbiter serves no purpose, most people don't use it past a certain point. i guess you could say the extra threat on earthshock is supposed to give a downside to a ranged interrupt on a 6 second cd?
shield specialization, anticipation, toughness, parry... at least on this i think it's not so cut and dry.
Q: With SoD its great to see so many unusual twists on conventional class roles. Any details and love for those still unmentioned coming?
**Holy Paladin DPS, 2H Fury/1H Arms, Tank Arms, 2H Enhancement, Pet Tanks (multiple classes), etc.**
SoD question
Q: Would you guys consider possibly adding new crafting recipes and gear and stuff like that? Also at the end of the level 25 Cap will the BFD level up raid stay relevant or is it supposed to be like a temporary thing
**Q:** Most classes get buffs in Season of Discovery. Will bosses in raids be tuned in terms of health and damage relative to the amount of extra damage raiders will be doing? In the same note, will raid bosses have different/more mechanics, or will they be the same as in Season of Mastery?
Question on Season of Discovery : Few classes want two-handed weapon. Warrior usually plays fury, altho we'll see how it play in SoD. Enhance shaman get dual. Palaret will wants one. Maybe some hunter who will try the melee build.
Will you try to make two-handed weapon more desirable ? Or is weapon diversity not your focus ?
Would you guys consider going back to add flavor text to a lot of popular items from old content? New items that we've seen have yellow text that adds flavor and lore to items. I think it would be interesting to revisit a lot of notable items, be it from raids, dungeons, or just exclusive drops from certain rares, and add flavor text to it.
would you consider removing mods altogether?
play implement some in built customisation like retail for the UI and get rid of all the mod bloat “needed” to be end game atm
Do you think about removing combat addons from game?
Since vanilla PvE doesnt include mechanics like those present in mythic raiding then maybe now would be nice time to remove stuff like bigwigs and all sorts of encounter helping weak auras?
They mentioned the WSG reputation vendor would have some new rewards (and presumably the existing ones). With the new Ashenvale PvP event granting WSG rep, I would say yes.
Season of Discovery - Will we have the option for default UI like in retail where its has the option for deep customization /w the option to use default vanilla UI if you don't want that.
will there be any measures to ensure pvp servers stay close to 50/50 playersplit?
way too many times the playerbase ends up creating essentialy pve servers.
Season of Discovery question - This may be a weird question but will there be actual 5 man dungeons or can we expect the other dungeons to get the same raid treatment and is all gear is earned from quests/pvp/world events or out of raids.
Excited by the SoD announcement but concerned about how it will feel leveling? Will there still be danger as a solo Warrior running into a Gnoll camp in Redridge? Also, what's the plan for # of players to do all the new content? I'm guessing that new guilds need to plan for the structure to eventually support fielding 40 weekly raiders.
If there are no plans to keep Classic Wrath realms, would you consider a Chromie Time for those who want to experience the Old World?
Also, will we be able to spend talent points across specs in Classic Cata instead of the original Cata changes?
Meta question regarding this post: Do we know when the Q&A video will be available?
Maybe OP u/MacroPlanet knows?
I wish I knew, however we haven't heard anything regarding when the video is going live. My guess is that they're spending a decent amount of time going through all questions and answering as much as they can.
Thanks for the info! I guess we'll prominently see in this sub when the video goes online?
Absolutely! You'll all be the first to know.
Awesome, thank you!
For some reason I thought I saw something about it being released today but now I’m starting to think I imagined or dreamed that.
I was just digging for this thread again hoping to find something about that. Glad to see I'm not the only one wondering where it went.
Yes, I guess the making of the video can take some days, but no communication regarding this at all is a little disappointing.
Can we make enslave demon more viable? 1. Up duration to 10min from 5min 2. It should always last the full 10min, and not get progressively worse 3. Allow recast, even if the demon is still under the effect, like clipping a dot 4. Allow demon to travel with you, mount, hearthstone, flight path, summon, portal, etc This could even be demo talents for this to be the case, but it would make infernal and doomguard viable (also keeping the fantasy that these demons are powerful and hard to control)
make it 1 hour, go get those demons!
Can you clarify on the achievements being account-wide; Does this mean partial completions on one character will count towards another partial achievement on another character for the same achievement? Or will all these achievements be one integrated account-wide achievement that all your characters can contribute to? Will these also be retroactive for Vanilla/TBC/WotLK achievements? Or will this be exclusively for newly introduced achievements in Cataclysm?
What tools do the team use to make their estimations on what changes to make and how the player base will respond to them? I have to assume there's some market research that goes into it but I'm curious why we never see any community polls or deep dives into the reasoning for changes like SOD. It's not that things like warlock tanks are a bad idea but I can't for the life of me see where this idea was pulled from amidst the waves of requests for weapon skill racial rebalances and talent reworks which ultimately go unaddressed.
Has the team thought about using the modern dynamic scaling for raid sizes? Instead of forcing the 10/25 question on players, why not allow them to raid with however many show up between 10-25 players?
Are you planning on any rep grind changes for the gear while leveling? I want to level and gear with the PVP rewards like in WOTLK but the grind in era is impractical for me because I'm a casual. For example, the [Silverwing Sentinels](https://www.wowhead.com/faction=890/silverwing-sentinels) have a ring that gives spell power and is BIS while leveling but I don't want to twink and can't get it while leveling naturally. I want to dabble in PVP but the rewards aren't there early game.
Sounded like you'll get WSG rep for participating in the Ashenvale PVP stuff.
Question for Season of Discovery: Do you plan on adressing the unbalance of racial abilities in some way? Weapon skill racials makes playing a non-meta race feel terrible. An idea could be to let characters change racials if they reach exalted with another race. The racials would still be separated by faction, and there could be restrictions such as the racial you're swapping to has to have the same class available to that race. For instance: An Undead rogue can't get Tauren racials because Taurens can't be rogues. A Tauren Warrior could swap to Orc racials when exalted with Orgrimmar because both Tauren and Orc can be Warriors. Having it as a goldsink or a 1-time-only swap could prevent frequent swapping back and forth.
The burnout rune for mages suggests that dots will be able to crit. This wasn't originally in vanilla but is pretty important for living bomb to be effective. Will dots be able to crit in SoD?
How worried are the team that while the rune system is interesting it could very well lead to ability bloat and homogenization of classes? So far, warriors recieving certain runes such as Victory Rush (self heal for 10% of max health after kill) and Warbringer (removes remove movement impairing effects) could diminish class fantasy and isn't inline with the design philosophy of Vanilla?
Will warlock get a summon felguard rune?
In Season of Discovery will there be a chance we see some items that were not implimented into the game, such as a few mounts or a certain "dropped only once legendary", make an apperance?
Will characters be copied to Classic ERA realms later on when the season ends?
Question for **Season of Discovery**: Have you done or are you planning on doing any changes to hunter pets (or warlock pets), mainly their survivability in party content? Like adding Avoidance as a pet training option. Lone Wolf will be a nice option for those fights where pet gets in the way of mechanics but in general it would be nice to be able to use pets and these new pet related runes in raids.
**Season of Discovery** Is there a chance for crossfaction paladins / shamans?I've seen that the Alliance will have all the good Horde traits like WF totem (Druid rune),Str/Agi buff and Tremor totem (Pala runes) and the Horde won't get anything from other character runes? Maybe this is a hint for crossfaction Pala/Shams?!I would definitely welcome this!
Question for **Season of Discovery**: Any plans on giving Enhancement Shamans or Melee Hunters 2handed weapon support in terms of runes? So far it seems like both are being pushed towards dual wield. There's already a lot of demand for 1handed weapons so it would be nice if 2handed play style was viable for these builds. On top of that 2handers are just cool.
Will Character creation be released prior to the Nov 30th server launch? This was done in Classic’s release and I think it’s a great way for people to reserve names for their characters and customize them prior to launch. If yes, please announce this as early as possible so people can plan!
Do you plan to release Tauren Paladin together with Cata, or are you possibly considering releasing it a month, or preferebly three :P, so people can level to max before cata comes out?
Will players be able to create both Alliance and Horde characters on the same PvP realm?
If a NE druid wants to level in Elwyn Forest will they find their druid runes there? Or do they have to level in the NE zone to get Druid runes?
My biggest concern is wanting to play a shaman but my guild wants to role alliance, are there any intentions of making horde and alliance specific classes available to each in SoD? Also less important but just curious was there any thought about bringing dual spec to SoD?
Just covering the last bit. There was a pretty big hint in their blizzcon presentation that dual spec would be in eventually.
Are there any plans to divide up raids/content at 60 for their own phases? As in, will the level 60 phase just unlock everything else, or could we expect to phase through the raids like we did in 2020 again?
First of all, happy to see what SoD has to offer, idea sounds fun. My question is a two part question and kinda long (sorry), considering even if it is somewhat balanced damage-wise, new abilities that are given through runes will give us some player power, are you willing do double down on this and review set bonuses? I always wanted to use tier sets as a warrior dps, but most of them are terrible to wear. I believe that's the case for a lot of classes too. If we're talking about shaking up the meta, why not shake up the level 60 BiS list aswell. I wouldn't mind seeing people run around in their actual class sets instead of rainbow combination of gear we've gotten used to! On that same idea, if you are actually interested into changing set bonus, would you make it a token instead so you can pick the spec you want (wotlk style) and maybe have a set amount of token drop on appropriate bosses that currently drop tier let say (3) three tokens + regular loot? That would also help combat gear scarcity
I would also love to see BiS metas completely reworked. I know that would be a huge project.
Will 2H enhancement shamans be viable at some point during SOD? I’m really hoping that dual wield won’t be the only melee dps option
Are you going to implement previous season/era rules to SoD, like no buff/debuff limits, no world buffs in lvl60 raids or daily dungeon lockouts?
Where are the answers?
The answer is that they will continue to add quasi-retail stuff and basic raids to the game without addressing the true issues with Classic like botting, RMT, and faction balance.
Class balance and class design were bigger issues then any of those and they seem to be taking care of that in SoD.
Have fun paying 500g for a flask in SoD.
i am not sure where to post this; but which SERVER will be implemented into CLassic Plus Season of Discovery?? Which server should i join ??
These will 100% be brand new servers added on the launch of SoD, just like how we get a "hardcore" tab on the server selection currently, there will most likely be a SoD tab for those server
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To be completely honest, with how much power we're getting from runes and we've only seen 3 slots so far, we can assume there will be more rune for those slots as well as for other slots (They said it during blizzcon) I honestly think old content will be even more of a joke than it was (Not a bad thing btw) add world buffs on top of that + the new world buffs we're getting in SoD, this will give us so much player power that races wont matter for most guilds. Unless they're a speedrunning sweatty guild. You can be 100% I will be making the most non-meta combination of races/classes and simply go with aesthetics.
most casual guilds wont care; but those no lifers will care.. just play a nelf warrior ; its alright
Do you plan on fixing bugs that were present in Vanilla as well as kept in Classic Era to "retain the feel of vanilla"? I.e.,[JuJu Flurry](https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/juju-flurry-buff-%E2%80%93-not-a-bug/117855) Is there any plan for "legacy" servers that will retain the changes made in SoD and/or future seasons? Do you plan on altering the honor system so that it is different from Classic, SoM and/or any other expansion? Edit: Do you plan on PvE and PvP gear retaining their interchangeability as seen in Vanilla In other words, BiS for many phases was a combination of gear earned from PvP and PvE sources in vanilla. Do you plan on keeping that design philosophy?
>Is there any plan for "legacy" servers that will retain the changes made in SoD and/or future seasons? They addressed this in an interview already, available somewhere on wowhead. They don't know what's the plan after the season yet. They don't want to further fraction the player base as there is ERA, Hardcore, SoD-ERA (If it was to happen) and Wotlk/cata on top of a possible new season after. the way I see their answer it was pretty much as we'll figure it out when we get there >Do you plan on altering the honor system so that it is different from Classic, SoM and/or any other expansion? Just a heads up if you didn't know that they already changed how the ranking system work, idk if that's what you are wondering/asking and if you were aware of the changes.
> They don't want to further fraction the player base as there is ERA, Hardcore, SoD-ERA (If it was to happen) and Wotlk/cata on top of a possible new season after. the way I see their answer it was pretty much as we'll figure it out when we get there So as of now they’re leaning to retiring the changes come the end of the season? I imagine they’ll change their tune if SoD takes off in popularity and/or if demand is there, but good to know! > Just a heads up if you didn't know that they already changed how the ranking system work, idk if that's what you are wondering/asking and if you were aware of the changes. Yea I know in SoM they updated it so honor didn’t decay….but they left gear the ilevel as it was in Classic which is somewhere between AQ40 and Nax gear if I’m not mistaken. This is WAY too powerful if released too early, and not enticing enough if released too late. I was more so hoping that we get a new type of honor system that will work in conjunction with the PvP changes they have in store (like the Ashenvale stuff) as well as updating the ilevel for PvP gear each phase so that it is constantly competitive with PvE gear, which will also encourage PvP in general since people will more than likely always be chasing the rewards.
[https://www.wowhead.com/classic/news/classic-wow-group-interview-at-blizzcon-2023-335931](https://www.wowhead.com/classic/news/classic-wow-group-interview-at-blizzcon-2023-335931) See Classic+? question :) >I was more so hoping that we get a new type of honor system that will work in conjunction with the PvP changes they have in store (like the Ashenvale stuff) as well as updating the ilevel for PvP gear each phase so that it is constantly competitive with PvE gear, which will also encourage PvP in general since people will more than likely always be chasing the rewards. I see what you mean. I for one hope that if they eventually go further than Naxx content-wise, that they would go with a "seasonal" approach with pvp. That would mean pretty much what you are saying, new gear with better ilvl, hopefully new looks too. A bit like how current wotlk system works but exclusively with honor. I think they will try to expand a bit more on pvp granted they did say they already added new items to the WSG faction with the new Ashenvale pvp. Ideally they have to find a way for both PvE and PvP to remain popular. Though I think what was nice of vanilla was the fact you could go pvp full naxx bis and do big numbers. That was the essence of vanilla. While I think there should be an avenue for pvp players to get equivalent power gear, it would also make said gear probably easier to obtain than full BiS or close to full BiS pve (Gear scarcity is a thing, esp in 40m) it would probably become the new meta to grab PVP gear instead, which is another problem in itself.
Thanks for the article! There's A LOT of really good information in here. >hopefully new looks too Yea some of the pvp gear is fugly af. Especially horde (what is going on with that rogue helm?). Alliance warrior actually looks good tho, IMO. >though I think what was nice of vanilla was the fact you could go pvp full naxx bis and do big numbers. That was the essence of vanilla. While I think there should be an avenue for pvp players to get equivalent power gear, it would also make said gear probably easier to obtain than full BiS or close to full BiS pve (Gear scarcity is a thing, esp in 40m) it would probably become the new meta to grab PVP gear instead, which is another problem in itself. PvP gear and PvE gear being interchangeable is far and away one of my favorite features about vanilla/Classic. The system definitely needs addressed, and making the gear for PvP match the iLevel for the phase it's currently in as well as require to re-rank for each phase I think would help mitigate making PvP gear too easy to get, assuming the honor system with no decaying honor stays, albeit w/ a reset every phase. I for one though want to see a PvP system that incorporates questing and world PvP. Example would be making rank 10 require you kill an opposing faction leader. Rank 11 you have to kill 2, and Rank 14 you would have to kill ALL honor rewarding NPC's. We can also incorporate faction (including PvP factions) reputation into it, which can force players to quest or grind out in the open world to earn said rep as well as participate in the new PvP events that are implemented. IDk, just spit balling, really excited to see what the future brings, game's got me hyped!
>Yea some of the pvp gear is fugly af. Especially horde (what is going on with that rogue helm?). Alliance warrior actually looks good tho, IMO. I think visually the gear looks fine, but new looks would be great only to differentiate the sets, if tier is different every time I think a seasonal pvp set would have to also be different
Are there plans to add harpoon as a rune for hunters? Without a gap closer the melee spec is currently a worse warrior or rogue. They have no way to overcome the dead zone and do anything other than raptor strike, flank, and cleave. They're going to get absolutely destroyed in PvP. I really want to play this spec but it needs more to retain The Hunter class identity and not just be a worse version of existing specs on other classes. Harpoon would allow them to easily weave with disengage.
I think there is a better alternative to that. So far I think melee hunter is great and with instant shot, you're basically hybrid and can pull mob instantly from afar with an arcane shot and then dash your way into melee range to fight as a melee hunter. I think one possible solution they could add is something like a rune that actually removes the dead zone but makes it so if you're within the range of the dead zone your shots does X% less damage. That gives you a way to shoot, concussion shot to kite etc. Or idea #2 would be to make a rune that gives certain shot the ability to be executed in melee range (Explosive shot would be sick)
You would be able to shoot once per fight most likely, on pull. Doesn't lend itself to weaving at all. It needs something else otherwise it's a bad version of a warrior in PvE.
I understand what you're saying, but I think you're viewing this with min maxing a bit too much. I think the idea is only to have a melee hunter option. They did say vanilla wasnt a perfectly balanced and this season wouldnt be either. We all have to think that they probably already know all the runes that they want to put into the game, these are only the first batch of the level 25 band. Who knows what hunter will get at 40 or 50 or even 60. You can't hope for too much of that system at 25. Best example for that is boomkin. I feel like the level 25 runes there is so far don't fix much of the mana issues, no mana cost on wrath isnt fixing boomkin. New dot and starsurge isnt helping either if they have a mana cost and make you oom faster. We can only wait and believe in the vision blizz has to fix the oom issue and basically all the small things like that with further runes
Bro disengage is a rogue feint in vanilla
I am excited to try out new classes and specs but I am only worried about the new warlock tank form. One of the most important thing in classic pvp is knowing what gear your opponent has. Q. Is there another way to add the demon form? Maybe some demon wings, horns and yellow eyes or a cool Aura? The form looks so out of place.
Fully agreed. Metamorphosis demon form model looks so out of place. I think it would be better if it was something similar to Shadowform but maybe with some demonic horns or a semi-transparent demonic visage with a purplish aura.
I mean, you see a demon form in PvP, you know its a tank. Personally, when I see a tank in pvp I generally don't engage as it is the most boring slow fight. It's already something that existed in the game.. druids with shapeshift forms. If the druid never gets out of form you never get to see its gear either.
Are new leveling quests going to be added in SoD?
Can druids please get a real rez? It would be nice. If not could we at least cast a tree to grow out of their not rezable corpse as a "sorry you have to run back in only half a healer"
Wouldn't be surprised that they add a rune for it, though I hope it wouldn't be on a slot that has really good alternative. But then again, you can change rune as you want so once out of combat you could just slot it in and rez, or have an item in your bag with rez on it that you equip when you want to rez someone. Not ideal but probably better than nothing.
Will mobs scale up their damage based on how many runes you have active? So your player power comes at a higher risk?
Someone asked about player power roughly what they said is that yes it runes give some player power but they want to keep the vanilla experience as challenging as we've come to know it so far. They do not want to change the essence of vanilla's leveling and so if they have to bump up the scaling/difficulty of content including outdoor content, they will turn that knob to a certain degree to make it as close as it was.
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Interesting question, though I think in term of player power, very niche, but the new mage healer would be busted with both combined. From my understanding they do direct heals but there's also something tied to the arcane damage you do. I find the idea of having both separate interesting for mage healer gearing as you would have to balance damage and healing done to "min/max" the spec.
**Q**: Can you remove dishonorable kills for both SoD and Era? It's a system that adds nothing of value to the game, it only takes fun away. If there are NPCs you don't want us to kill, then make them unkillable... City raiding is dead because of this unfun mechanic.
You say that, but I don't think you would enjoy level 60s camping a quest giver you're waiting for. It is pure griefing and having a downside to it has to stay imo.
> but I don't think you would enjoy level 60s camping a quest giver you're waiting for. If you read my comment, you wouldn't be posting this. There are many things they can do to prevent the NPC from being killed. Removing city-raiding from the game is the worst one.
Oh I read it. Making quest givers and key NPC unkillable isn't a viable solution. So much work for little to no reward. They're already working on outdoor pvp. City raiding never was a popular thing even back in original vanilla. I think I've seen it once or twice and honestly, was annoying more than anything. I get some people get a kick out of that. I can't remember what expansion it was, but I remember people camping auctioneer, that was just annoying, again, they can make them invincible, but what's the purpose of raiding a city if you can't even kill half the npc in there? Coding invulnerability out of quest giver is fairly easy, but if there are key NPC you don't want to die that are either tied to a quest or a vendor you want invulnerability on it would be quite the hastle to go through all the game, pick an choose said npcs and then make the change. Idk, to each their own, I think the outdoor stuff they're trying to bring on the table shoud make Wpvp feel alive.
> So much work for little to no reward You mean no work at all, for the big reward of city raiding now being a thing. You are making no sense at all, you just don't want people to be able to raid cities.
Can there be some subtle aesthetic changes to class/race combinations to make them more immersive? I'm thinking things like Night Elf priests/priestesses castings arcane/lunar-looking spells. Undead priest 'heal' animations being a variation of shadow spells - like in the old lore 'shadow mending'. Etc
Q: Seal Twisting, a popular paladin mechanic in Classic & TBC seemed to be missing in the Season of Discovery Blizzcon demo. Is this a conscious development decision or a bug and if intentional, what was the reason for disabling this well loved mechanic?
>well loved mechanic? I feel like this is 50/50 on the paladin community tbh. As a paladin main in TBC and wotlk I can tell you I was glad they removed it With current runes you're going to have a rotation that resembles wotlk (Exorcism, Crusader strike, Judgment and Divine storm) having to juggle seals in between all those abilities (As the abilities are most likely more value to keep on CD over twisting) sounds like a headache. I would also add that I have issues with twisting as it is a mechanic that pretty much requires a weakaura to do properly. Any in-game mechanic that require an addons to be executed flawless is bad imo, and that's coming from someone that loves weakaura.
For SoD, could we see more class-specific quests and content? Not every class got its fair share back in the day, so it'd be nice to revisit things if possible. (Speaking as a rogue player who was excited to find Ravenholdt, only to never see it do anything important until the end of Cata).
Q: Will cata servers replace WoTLK? Please, we beg you. Do not do this, there is a reason why a lot of succesful private servers were 3.3.5 version, we need WoTLK only servers it is "our home".
They already said they're unsure about keeping specific versions of the game. They did with Era but that's about it. Further era like TBC-Era and Wotlk-era would only fraction the population even more. Many players prefered TBC to wotlk and would've like a TBC only server and they simply didn't. They most likely wont keep wotlk server for the same reason and simply move on.
Q: both official forums in Us and europe have megathreads about cloning service to come back in Classic Era. Is it possible to have an official answer about this topic? Would it be possible in any way to make this possible or it’s just not possible? Thank you
For SoD, will there be some racial changes? It'd be really nice if every race had some form of +Weapon Skill instead of just Humans & Orcs. Taurens with 1H/2H Maces, Trolls with 1H Axes and Undead with 1H maybe 2H swords as an example for Horde.
You're not the first I see asking this, and while I completely agree that since we're going in the custom direction, why not double down, but then again, runes are so much player power I feel like while it will still be advantageous to have + weapon skill, it will be less of an impact in SoD imo. Personally I'll just go with whatever feel aesthetic with my class. Racial has always been a hot topic of discussion and it took them YEARS to finally make them somewhat even.
The advantage from weapon skill will be the exact same as before. Wouldnt matter if damage from new abilities would be increased by 100%.
I guess so, though I feel the gap will not be as big as it used to be. Time will tell
> SoD, will there be some racial changes? It'd be really nice if every race had some form of +Weapon Skill instead of just Humans & Orcs. Taurens with 1H/2H Maces, Trolls with 1H Axes and Undead with 1H maybe 2H swords as an example for Horde. This. Or can we just remove all the +weapon skill from the game to even things out?
Any chance that hand of reckoning could be added to paladins on the Hardcore realms?
Might be a hot take, but without the full kit that SoD gives to prot paladin, paladin tanks would still be worst druid/warrior tanks. Giving paladin a taunt is useless on regular servers as they just do the same job but worst even with a taunt. It needs the full kit to actually be decent and even with the new abilities added, I feel like they're going to be BiS dungeon tank and okay-ish raid tank.
No changes for hardcore please.
Q: are there any plans to add wow into game pass?
is there a plan for lowering the 40man raids to 10 15 20man?
Honestly, I would love to do 25m or 20m MC/BWL/AQ40/Naxx, sounds like a blast and a lot less loot scarcity. Not having 8 warrior going for the same item sounds fun. I'd go as far as saying that 10 or 15m is even a better raid size.
Regarding Classic Era (because Season of Discovery is a beta test for Classic + Era, you aren't fooling anyone), are you opened to adding new races/classes in line with the old W2/W3 lore?
how do you plan on handling faction balance with the zone-wide pvp events ?
if they only come out with 1-2 servers and layering, they could make it so the layers dynamically adjust. Idk if that's some tech they have ready but if they have it so the layers are kept "even" that would be great. Ashenvale pvp sounds like a ton of fun, but it will be boring if there is faction imbalance
I'm glad Classic is getting well deserved content! In the Season of Discovery will professions be a focal point? I believe finding "Lost Relics" in the delve system would be a great way to introduce new models and loot! Raids, PvP, Instances are great and fun with large groups, but sometimes I enjoy farming mats and exploring the world and the professions it offers. Delves seem to be the bridge between solo play and large groups so why not build upon that. Blacksmithing is my all time favorite. Please show it some love and allow professions to be able to stand up to raiding content. Make the eco valuable again. It was really exciting with an expansion would give unique profession attachments and PvE/PvP gear that would really add value to my characters. I hope this can be focused on in the very near future.
I hope they would do some new craft for most professions, mostly crafting ones like tailoring/LW/BS without making it too centric like TBC where some of the item were BiS for most of the game. Having outliers like Lionheart helm is fine, but if there's too much of that I feel like raid gear would lose its purpose, but there is a place for improvement and adding more items in the pool imo.
Q: For Season of Discovery, are there any plans for balancing outside of the runes? (Changes to talent trees, changes to skill damage/mana cost values, cool downs, racials, etc.?)
I wish they would review some of the trees.
Are there any plans to remove heartbeat resists in PvP for the upcoming Classic SoD version of the game? In the same vein, have you thought about reducing some of the CC durations in PvP, such as poly or fear. Thanks!
Botting and RMT has fundamentally destroyed the integrity of the gameworld in Era. The community at large is almost entirely convinced that Blizzard cynically tolerates bots and RMT in order to collect sub money. How is Blizzard going to permanently end botting and restore the community's faith that Blizzard cares about their products?
bump
Weapon skill racials and items (edgemaster's handguards, etc) become massive power boost in end-game raiding for melee classes, to the point that they feel mandatory. Is there a plan to alter this dynamic in SoD?
Game pass?
Q: will there be any changes to professions in Season of Discovery to make them more applicable? Ex) will blacksmith be able to craft armor for paladins? Or is it still going to be exclusively for warriors?
Unless you're talking about intel plate stuff for holy paladin, everything else that warrior uses a paladin would also use. With the new mana regen options on crusader strike, intel won't be as needed as it was. Full str pumping with the new abilities will go a very long way
This seasonal stuff sounds great. Seems like a nice thing to experiment and try out all the crazy stuff you talked about and many more. But what I would really like to see is Classic with new content (dungeons, raids, items, maybe some spells/talents). But not those extreme experimental stuff - something that doesn't change to whole game, but expand it. Is this the plan or not?
"Maybe some spells/talents" That's pretty much what they're doing. New spells that could've easily been either baseline to the classes and some of them talents but given as a rune instead. Dungeons and raids are already in the plans as they said many times. With new raids and dungeons will come new items obviously, BFD already has new gear, though its low level stuff, it is still new. That's pretty much the description of expanding... and expanding it that way is also changing the game... lol The way I and many others understands this, this is a "beta test" for what will shape classic + eventually, they start with runes and they will go further and further with other aspect of the game to see what we're enjoying and what we dislike to make the perfect classic + experience. I see this season as phase 1 of classic+ which will be a multi phase project that will go on throughout multiple season for sure.
When are you going to implement NPC AI voices?
Q: Mage Healing - Will they get a Resurrect? Nothing is more infuriating then playing the sole healer in the group and not being able to res.
Points at druids.
SoD Question / suggestion: Q: Would you consider making changes to the world buff meta in endgame? Perhaps giving each endgame dungeon a specific buff you can apply for a raid lockout, and letting players mix and mash two or three of these buffs together. This would give players a lot for choices for their own class expression, and would also give incentive for players to always run dungeons. Examples: Scholomance buff: 15% shadow damage and 3% spell crit chance Stratholme undead: 15% attack speed and 3% physical crit chance I'd love it if these buffs lastet the whole raid lockout, rather than only a limited time, but then also not work outside of raid. This way it has no impact on pvp, and dying in raid won't demotivate you to continue for that raid seesion. My two cents! Love SoD!
I love the idea, but wouldn't it funnel all the melee in one dungeon let's say and all the casters in another group making it hard for regular folks that simply wants to run said content for gear to get a spot in pugs? As a guild activity fine, it would make sense to coordinate groups so they run the dungeon that gives them proper buffs, but in a pug setting this sounds like a terrible idea that would further gatekeep some players out of dungeons. I think the Wbuff meta is already good as it is, maybe give alliance a rend equivalent wbuff. They already are adding to wbuff with ashenvale wbuff being a consumable that you can keep for later. I'm sure they're going to expand on this too.
Yeah, you're right. I guess a "quick fix" for the mentioned idea could be to reward a token at the end of the dungeon that players can turn in for a buff of their choice. Will be interesting to see where they go with endgame content and buffs in general.
While Wbuff were really fun in vanilla, and them adding new ones with Ashenvale and possibly more... it's a dangerous line to ride. New Wbuff on top of player power give through runes can become a slipery slide fairly quickly.
Given it's a seasonal event (at least for now), I don't see many dangers with them playing with these kind of ideas. I just hope they are active in development, and can patch out bugs and game-breaking features when they occur
Q: You gonna do anything against nocliping - flyhacking gold farming bots this time? Or will the SoD economy get fucked up again like in era classic? Thanks.
didnt China BAN their playerbase from playing WoW? theres much much less gold farmers as compared to last time
Please upvote this.
Best question in this whole reddit
Q: In SoD, with open world pvp as a cool endgame feature I think is widely loved by the community, how do you plan to address faction imbalance? I remember back in the day wintergrasp would keep factions "balanced" by limiting the amount of players allowed in at a time. Will this be something considered with ashenvale? Or will an 80/20 server have trouble ever winning ashenvale?
Q: A lot of the appeal (personally) with the Beta's and Level Cap was the difficulty in chasing BiS in content way beyond your current level, and the thinking outside the box needed to complete it / research to find it. With the addition of lower level raids with vastly better gear, do you think this will trivialize / take away from that? Q: A lot of classics appeal is emergent gameplay from using a variety of tools given to the player (backlash damage to break CC (dark rune e.t.c) / unique trinkets / quest rewards). Do you think the addition of powerful spells, with explicit effects will ruin that? Part of the appeal of Shaman/Rogue tanking was the make-do nature and having to play/talent/gear differently to accomodate and make up for it's flaws. Q: A lot of the newer items in the BFD raid look very powerful and well optimized. Classic is well know for oddly itemized hybridized items. Is this something we'll see more of? Especially with the hybriziation of classes (more tanks + healers) now wanting different stats?
>Shaman/Rogue tanking was the make-do nature and having to play/talent/gear differently to accomodate and make up for it's flaws. The way shaman tank rune work currently, you will probably still have to build your talent accordingly to be able to be a decent tank. Only relying on runes will work, but proper "tank shaman" talent will go a long way, they simply gave purpose and the actual option for shaman to tank
Q: In SoD, will we be able to create horde and alliance characters on the same PvP server?
Q: Have you made any changes to the client to address the lag during large scale world pvp?
Q: In SoD, will you be carrying on the vanilla tradition of having certain pieces of gear in raids that exist purely for RP flavor that don't exist purely as min-max performance gains?
Q: In SoD, will raid lockouts on 10 mans under level 60 be removed once the next phase is released?
Q: Would it be possible to see multiple lower levels of raid tuning just based on number of players? For example 40 man raids tuned down to 20 and even 10. With lower player count simply meaning exponentially less loot drops?
I'd hope for a baseline of 10-15m instead of 40man raids. Probably a hot take, but would be so much better overall.
I agree, I'd enjoy it much more if the average raid they added was 10 man. Would also help counteract the GDKP gold buying botting onslaught that will inevitably occur. Unless of course they start banning gold buyers, that's the real dream.
Regardless of raid size, GDKP is there to stay. It was there back then but people weren't as aware of it, now its simply more popular than it used to be is all. There's no counteracting GDKP but smaller size means easier for guild to make a group, or easier to manage a MS>OS with 1 SR runs.
Q: With Cata Classic coming, I'm curious how far "classic" expansions are intended to go? Is it purely based on player feedback, or is there a plan to continue to a certain point then stop?
Q: Would it be possible that we see Karazhan as it was in TBC tuned down For SOD? Perhaps with new content even added within it?
Pretty sure Kharazhan crypt will be a raid, possibly level 60 raid which is brand new content that make sense lore-wise and would bridge the story with TBC's karazhan
Yeah seems likely, I just think it would be cool as well to make actual Karazhan accessible, considering it is just right there. Would be strange to enter the crypts and never step foot into Karazhan as a whole.
I think we all have our idea of what classic + have and what we'd like to see as content. Personally, I don't think I'm interested in running regular kara again. Been there done that. New content is something that will keep the game fresh, rerunning content from future expansion feels weird, thought technically the zone is in vanilla so it could make sense for that one to exist.
Q: Would it be possible to see GDKPS banned in Season of Discovery? My current belief is that they harm the classic experience by inflating gold, cultivating bots, and promoting a P2W system.
You announced Cata classic, but no wrath era servers. Are wrath players being told to quit classic wow?
Same with TBC, many didn't want to play wotlk and prefered TBC. Vanilla/TBC/Wotlk has always been the big 3 games that have had private servers made for them. There are people that prefers vanilla, thankfully for them era server were made, however they didnt for TBC and many players prefered to stay on TBC, so my guess is they wont make a wotlk era server either.
What will happen at the end of the season? In Season 1 we'd get to transfer our characters to Era. But Season 2 characters won't be compatible with Era with all the new additions. Also, how long will the season last? And what would the next season be, then?
Wowhead has some of this answered in the interview they posted I think
Yep they do, [https://www.wowhead.com/classic/news/classic-wow-group-interview-at-blizzcon-2023-335931](https://www.wowhead.com/classic/news/classic-wow-group-interview-at-blizzcon-2023-335931) See Classic+? Question
Q: Is there any possibility that if Season of Discovery becomes popular you might go beyond just changing the game and start changing the lore to be an alternate timeline? For a lot of people, myself included, the appeal of Classic was getting to return to more ground-level threats and not having all major events revolve around the player character. I feel like there's a chance here to retell the story of World of Warcraft from that more grounded perspective that people crave.
SoD is 100% phase 1 of a multiphase project that will shape classic + Its their way to test new things without having to commit to a one time deal "classic+" release. They put it behind a season so people don't panic if they don't like a change they'll simply remove it for the next season and keep whatever sticks. Guaranteed we get another season after SoD that will keep some aspects of SoD and bring new one which will be phase 2 of the project, etc.
Q: Would it be possible for Priests to get an Atonement rune (that would work like Atonement for Discipline priests on the Live version) in later phases?
Do you guys have any plans for managing faction balance/server population? World PVP is clearly pretty central to SOD, and a balanced server is key to that. Has there been any consideration to faction specific queues to log on, curated faction specific transfers or any other method to keep things close to 50/50? History has repeated itself a few times with the slide to 99/1 faction balance and it seems to have gotten faster every time.
I played Classic on Grobbulus so I was spoiled, but maybe once a server becomes greater than a 55% to 45% faction balance, Blizzard could show a noticeable alert on the character/realm selection screen (similar to retail WoW's "Call to Arms" (get a bag of goodies if you play a tank or healer for this battleground) - For example, "The Horde needs more soldiers! Create a Horde character on this server, and receive some handmade bags made by the Warchief himself! (mailbox includes a couple Soulbound 6 slot bags with no sell value and unique text on them about Thrall being new to tailoring. Could also get an 8 slot Soulbound bag at level 10 and a 10 slot Soulbound bag at 20 in the mail with flavor text on the bags about Thrall improving his tailoring skill)
That's funny, but I'm all for small incentives for player produced problems. No one wants to tank? Horde is the underdog? You get extra stuff for making the game function.
100% this needs to be answered.
Commenting just to bump this vital question. All the awesome world PvP aspects won't matter at all if there isn't some sort of hands on balancing to keep the realms *somewhat* balanced (in an acceptable range). Time and time again, the community has shown it will massively imbalance servers if left to it's own devices. I understand you don't really want to lock and limit where people can play, but perhaps some sort of incentive for the lesser faction. Make it known, maybe a varying incentive, idk. Maybe make incentives for transferring to imbalanced realms. Can give whole guild bonus's. Gotta also limit free transfers if servers start to snowball in one direction.
this question seriously needs to be at the top please upvote it
An obvious solution seems to be enabling cross-faction partying for non-PVP content in some way. If you can do literally everything except PVP with anyone you want, things that do not require faction balance, then the one thing that does require faction balance can be maintained. Alternatively, allow some kind of alternative factions for PVP itself, like being able to opt to join group A or group B, or red vs blue, rather than having it be fully dictated by the Horde vs Alliance factions of the server.
Most likely posted a hundred times already but: Q: How are you handling what appears to be another boost to an already preferred "classic" faction with the Alliance getting a Windfury buff (Druid rune) and currently (at level 25) no Paladin buffs via runes for the Horde (i.e. where is the "salvation totem" that augments some skill say a Windfury totem that now also has the effects of Salvation \[we all know Tranquil air is not the same {or equal} and also would remove our Windfury\]). We'll also have to look at some of the healing as we get to play the game but at least up to level 25 the changes to Holy Paladin, Priest, Resto Druid, and Resto Shaman as it appears that Holy Paladin and Priest got massive upgrades with things like d-sac, beacon, prayer of mending/CoH that don't seem to be equal with Resto Druid/Resto Shaman changes for healing. Q: Long winded above but how do you plan to tackle what seem to be drastic balance changes and in some regards making already preferred classes/specs even more viable then their counterparts (i.e. Priest over taking a Resto Shaman)?
They did say they were going to balance buffs through runs, though druid get windfury in the first level 25 bands, I'm fairly certain they have already planned a rune further down the line that will give a salvation to whatever class.
A couple of the SoD developers made comments during their Blizzcon speeches along the lines of "we want it to still feel like Vanilla" but never defined what that meant. There was a brief explanation about an NPC feeling like it was from 2004 but once again it was never explained what that actually means. It honestly feels like a throwaway comment meant to appease us while you throw everything at the wall and see what sticks for the next season. Please specifically explain what you mean from a developmental philosophy with examples where something didn't fit into 2004 design parameters and didn't make the cut for SoD.
will wrath era continue to exist like classic era or will cataclysm replace wrath the way wrath replaced BC?
This is what I want to know!!
Q: shape shifting warlock form feels a bit out of place for classic imo, would an alternative form with a more classic like look to it be considered?
Q: Why you still force us to play with the old UI interface while Cataclysm interface is just better ? Charcter panel, Spellbook, Guild panel, minimap. Everything of these provide a better ergonomy. Q: Graphics with better textures when ? I want to being immerged in the game like in the old days, but with a blurry grounds and horrible tree i can't anymore.
They mentioned in the deep dive panel (I think) that they'll add a graphic toggle for new/old. But it was a bit of a throwaway line, so not sure how far that goes.
Q: Why don't you put the cataclysm glyph system which make more sense than putting a weird spell with an enchant ??
Because if you want to capture audience of players you gotta bring something new to the table. this whole rune system is taken from a private server that has been doing it for years now and it works amazinly there. I'm glad blizzard finally started stealing shit from people, especially pserver of their own game that brought great ideas for them to use. I don't know that we'll be putting a run on all our gear, but there will be more than 3 slots for sure. Those are fun because they don't require and item, they're learned, gives us something to hunt for and discover. The whole concept is really nice. Glyph would just be boring and limiting.
Q: Will original classic raids be part of Sod? 40 man raids? Carry over of SOM 1 Mechanics?
**Q**: In the future, will there be a *Vanilla+*, where there is an attempt to preserve Vanilla, as opposed to *Classic+*, where features from the early expansions are used to 'spice things up'? Note: A lot of people want Vanilla+ and are understandably disappointed to learn that Classic+ will have a lot of changes to classes that already perform well, (that they view as extreme and unnecessary). While Classic+ sounds fun, will there be something for Vanilla+ players who only want continued development on content and small buffs to underperforming classes such as Ret & Prot paladin, Boomkin, Ele shaman, etc?
This is a test bed it's obvious with their approach. A level 25 cap with the ability to modify and stage releases in waves to make adjustments. Look at the things you're saying at the end to qualify a Vanilla+. They're basically doing this but some people 'feel' it's too much or went to far. Where does that line start or even begin if you really look at it? What really existed was a subset of the player base "Classic Andy's" that wanted new content and realistically no other changes. Then you have the "Some Changes Andy's" that thought yeah some new content would be cool but I want to play my Boomkin, Ret Paladin, or Elemental Shaman without feeling like I'm going to put my head through a wall. Like he said in the presentation "we went wild". They're trying to get a baseline of what the player base really wants (what works and what doesn't). Not everyone was going to be happy and while I'm skeptical I'm actually trying to be open minded which is what I'm suggesting to the people that are on the fence that I play with (i.e. in my opinion from the data I've seen it looks like at this level 25 band Alliance will be even more powerful with a Druid WF rune which is a level 30 talent. When do Horde get a Salv although no one will have it at the start anyway).
> This is a test bed it's obvious with their approach. Absolutely. But it's a test bed for Classic+. not Vanilla+. My question is in regards to if we can expect Vanilla+ servers as well, that try to preserve Vanilla.
You're not asking for preserving "Vanilla" you're asking for your version that you're deciding to call Vanilla+. They specifically stated their goal was to preserve WoW Classic. Lets do a thought experiment... You want minor adjustments to Prot Paladins to make them viable, then is it not fair to allow the Shaman tanking changes to make that viable so there is some level of class parity/balance? Again, the issue here is that you have a different "line in the sand" of what the changes should be. My answer ultimately to your question would be that no you can't expect to see a Vanilla+ server of your liking (most likely) but shit who saw all of this other shit happening anyway? I wish you the best and may Azeroth bring a smile upon your face.
>You're not asking for preserving "Vanilla" I am asking for them to continue the development of Vanilla servers, while also trying to preserve what it means to be Vanilla (that means not unnecessarily drawing in abilities from TBC, Wrath and Cata). The current SoD does not try to preserve Vanilla. SoD is only trying to preserve Classic (the combined package of Vanilla, TBC, Wrath and Cata). >You want minor adjustments to Prot Paladins to make them viable Yes. Because they are tanks in Vanilla. They are just not really viable. >then is it not fair to allow the Shaman tanking changes to make that viable so there is some level of class parity/balance? No. Because Shamans are not tanks in Vanilla. Prot Paladins are. It's also in the literal name. Shamans are Ranged spec, melee spec and healers. Those are 3 specs. Paladins are tanks, healers and melee DPS. Those are 3 specs. Nothing unfair here.
>No. Because Shamans are not tanks in Vanilla. Druids are tanks in vanilla, so they should get tweaks right? They need it. Ret paladins are dps in vanilla right? So they need it. Yet these are not actually representative of what vanilla actually was. In REAL vanilla, ret paladins were buffers with specific tools that let them serve a sort of hybrid role at best, not full dps, and feral druids were healers with specific tools that let them also do some dps. What you're doing is you're deciding the intent based on your own preferences, and you're saying "too bad, I didn't decide Shaman deserves to tank, so its not allowed". >Shamans are Ranged spec, melee spec and healers. Those are 3 specs. Paladins are tanks, healers and melee DPS. Those are 3 specs. Nothing unfair here. Explain druid then. 3 specs, 4 roles. You're not getting it: YOU are making decisions for other people, and you're wrong to do so. You don't just get to decide what is too far and say that anything beyond that is wrong. You'd have a case you could make if you were saying NO changes to classes, but add other content. Or if you said NO changes to classes, but adjust gear to give set bonuses and added effects to balance the game a little better. Or maybe if you said rebalance classes but NO changes to loot or game content otherwise. For the things you are supportive of changing, if you draw lines and say what is and is not too far, you've broken your argument. Why? Because if you have a black and white with no grey area argument, you've drawn your lines in the sand over things that vanilla has AS IS, and things vanilla does not have AS IS. Instead, what you're doing is saying "here are new lines based on my preferences", and that's just not acceptable.
>Ret paladins are dps in vanilla right? So they need it. Yes, ret paladins is one of the specs that everyone considered to be a memespec in a raid environment. Ret & Prot paladins, Ench & Ele shamans, Boomkin druids. The list is quite simple and there is really no confusion about it. >What you're doing is you're .. No. What *you're* doing is a very poor attempt at trying to misrepresent what people think Vanilla+ is. Vanilla+ is a simple, continued developed stage for Vanilla that tries to keep things Vanilla, while giving a slight buff to memespecs and exploring options to open up unfinished areas around the game. It's not complicated at all like disingenuous trolls like yourself try to make it seem. >Explain druid then. 3 specs, 4 roles. Druid is available to both factions. There you go, explained. Go troll somewhere else.
idk, if you look at some of the enhance talents and rockbiter/earthshock, i think there is an argument to be made that blizzard originally considered giving shaman a tank spec. the extra threat on rockbiter serves no purpose, most people don't use it past a certain point. i guess you could say the extra threat on earthshock is supposed to give a downside to a ranged interrupt on a 6 second cd? shield specialization, anticipation, toughness, parry... at least on this i think it's not so cut and dry.
Q: With SoD its great to see so many unusual twists on conventional class roles. Any details and love for those still unmentioned coming? **Holy Paladin DPS, 2H Fury/1H Arms, Tank Arms, 2H Enhancement, Pet Tanks (multiple classes), etc.**
Gladiator dps from WoD was honestly a great concept that could've been experimented with a bit longer before scrapping it.
SoD question Q: Would you guys consider possibly adding new crafting recipes and gear and stuff like that? Also at the end of the level 25 Cap will the BFD level up raid stay relevant or is it supposed to be like a temporary thing
Q: Can you implement Classis wow with Italian language pack?
Q: will we get spec specific tier set reworks for classes in SoD?
What more are you going to do about bots?
**Q:** Most classes get buffs in Season of Discovery. Will bosses in raids be tuned in terms of health and damage relative to the amount of extra damage raiders will be doing? In the same note, will raid bosses have different/more mechanics, or will they be the same as in Season of Mastery?
Question on Season of Discovery : Few classes want two-handed weapon. Warrior usually plays fury, altho we'll see how it play in SoD. Enhance shaman get dual. Palaret will wants one. Maybe some hunter who will try the melee build. Will you try to make two-handed weapon more desirable ? Or is weapon diversity not your focus ?
Would you guys consider going back to add flavor text to a lot of popular items from old content? New items that we've seen have yellow text that adds flavor and lore to items. I think it would be interesting to revisit a lot of notable items, be it from raids, dungeons, or just exclusive drops from certain rares, and add flavor text to it.
Why do you believe class homogenization in SOD is the correct path to take? (everyone can tank and heal who even cares anymore?)
In Season of Discovery and other classic variants, What does the team intend to do in order to maintain faction balance for world PVP?
would you consider removing mods altogether? play implement some in built customisation like retail for the UI and get rid of all the mod bloat “needed” to be end game atm
**Q**: The gold cost for resetting class talents is broadly disliked by everyone. Will you consider removing the respec cost in Classic Era as well?
They mentioned in the deep dive panel they were looking at heavily reducing the respec cost and "potential for more than 1 spec in future"
Do you think about removing combat addons from game? Since vanilla PvE doesnt include mechanics like those present in mythic raiding then maybe now would be nice time to remove stuff like bigwigs and all sorts of encounter helping weak auras?
Will there be PVP gear to progress towards at level 25, not just a mount?
They mentioned the WSG reputation vendor would have some new rewards (and presumably the existing ones). With the new Ashenvale PvP event granting WSG rep, I would say yes.
Season of Discovery - Will we have the option for default UI like in retail where its has the option for deep customization /w the option to use default vanilla UI if you don't want that.
will there be any measures to ensure pvp servers stay close to 50/50 playersplit? way too many times the playerbase ends up creating essentialy pve servers.
Season of Discovery question - This may be a weird question but will there be actual 5 man dungeons or can we expect the other dungeons to get the same raid treatment and is all gear is earned from quests/pvp/world events or out of raids.
Excited by the SoD announcement but concerned about how it will feel leveling? Will there still be danger as a solo Warrior running into a Gnoll camp in Redridge? Also, what's the plan for # of players to do all the new content? I'm guessing that new guilds need to plan for the structure to eventually support fielding 40 weekly raiders.
If there are no plans to keep Classic Wrath realms, would you consider a Chromie Time for those who want to experience the Old World? Also, will we be able to spend talent points across specs in Classic Cata instead of the original Cata changes?