That Classic Plus Survey

Ever since Blizzard first decided to commit to Classic, they've been surveying the community about its opinions on the matter. We first found out that Classic Burning Crusade was going to be a thing through one of these surveys, and when we were wondering what was going to come after Classic Wrath of the Lich King, once again the fact that Blizzard sent out a survey about Classic Cataclysm turned out to be a pretty big hint.

With that in mind, I've been finding it very interesting that a new Classic survey has been making the rounds, and it's not about Classic Mists of Pandaria, but rather (quoth the survey) "a new version of World of Warcraft Classic". People have been calling it the "Classic Plus Survey", which is why I chose that as my post title too, but I actually think that this is largely projection on the community's part and this "new version of WoW Classic" is just as likely to be the next seasonal server after Season of Discovery. Either way, it shows us the general direction of Blizzard's current line of thinking.

Most mentions of the survey that I've seen have been relatively vague, so thanks to Dwarflord for going through screenshots of all the questions in detail, which allowed me to transcribe most of it into this blog post. It starts by asking the player to familiarise themselves with "a mix of features that could be included in a new version of World of Warcraft Classic", consisting of:

• New or unexplored storylines and lore
• New reputations and rewards
• New/reimagined raids
• New/reimagined dungeons
• New/future races pulled back
• New/future classes pulled back
• Minor class changes
• Returning player re-entry feature
• New player experience
• New group events and rewards
• Ongoing class tuning/polish
• Guild bank
• Collections UI
• Dual talent specialisation
• New/future class & race combinations
• Improved social features
• PvP honour system improvements

Most of these are not surprising on a conceptual level, as they are things that players have been talking about for a long time. New or retrofitted classes/races surprised me a little, because even though that's something that private servers have done sometimes, I haven't really seen a lot of community demand for it in the context of Classic. The only things I hadn't thought about at all before were "new player experience" and "returning player re-entry feature", because I'm not sure how either of these would even work in Classic. In retail, the former is a tutorial island, which I guess would technically be possible in Classic but would still feel a little odd to me at least, and the latter is a button that clears your bags and gives you a free set of gear, something that definitely wouldn't work for Classic.

Later on, there are a few questions that pit four of these features at a time against each other, asking the player to rate which one would be most likely to make them want to play and which one least likely.

Another question that I thought was very interesting was the one that basically asked people to declare allegiance to what I would call several opposing attitudes towards Classic WoW. Below I've bolded the ones I personally agree with.

• "A new version of Classic should stick to the original level 60 cap and fit any new content within that cap" vs. "A new version of Classic should expand to higher level caps beyond 60"
• "A new version of Classic should find ways to incorporate entirely new continents or continents from WoW expansions (e.g. Outland)" vs. "A new version of Classic should focus primarily on the existing Classic continents of Azeroth (Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms)"
• "I prefer shorter content phases for a new version of Classic to keep things fresh and keep players interested" vs. "I prefer longer content phases for a new version of Classic so I have time to fully explore the content or level up alts"
• "A new version of Classic should focus more on the levelling journey" vs. "A new version of Classic should focus more on the end-game experience"
• "A new version of Classic should focus on raid content for smaller groups (10-20 players)" vs. "A new version of Classic should focus on raid content for larger groups (25-40 players)"

The main bulk of the survey after that are several detailed lists of new features that could be added, with the question always being whether this particular feature would make you more or less likely to want to play this hypothetical new version of Classic WoW. Several of these make reference to "Classic era", which I'm hoping is just sloppiness in terms of wording, as I don't want them to change the existing Classic era servers and I also think it's probably not what they mean either... in the context of the rest of the survey, I just interpreted "Classic era" to mean something like "the vanilla game as it currently exists in Classic era".

Anyway, first we start with some proposed quality of life changes. I'll add my own opinion after each one:

• Revamping or adding flight paths, boats or zeppelins to Azeroth to make travel around the world more efficient - I'm mostly neutral about this one. I wouldn't mind them making some of the flight paths a little quicker and less scenic, but at the same time I'm not sure I'd really want a lot of additional ones added... having to leg it through the scenery is part of Classic's appeal for me.
  
• Adjusting the way items stack in bags to make inventory management easier - Sure, why not?
  
• Introducing in-game resources to help players find the right guild for them - I never really got much use out of the guild finder in retail, but I struggle to see how this could cause any harm either.
  
• Adding guild banks to Classic era - I guess that's okay? Though there's a certain charm to always having to pester the dedicated guild bank officer for stuff.
  
• Reducing the mana cost / increasing duration of group buff spells (e.g. Prayer of Fortitude) - Sure, why not?
  
• Adding flying mounts to Classic era - Er... no, and as many others have said, how would this even work, considering they had to do Cataclysm to enable flying on these continents in the first place? Maybe they put this question in as a relative measuring stick, knowing that most people will say no to it.
  
• Adding summoning stones to dungeon/raid entrances - I guess I wouldn't mind that one.
  
• Adding chronoboons to safely store world buff effects - Well, the chronoboon already exists and I'm happy that it's there.
  
• Increasing the size of the quest log - I guess this is okay as well? Having to pick and choose your quests/having to abandon some to make room sometimes does influence your gameplay in a way, but not to a degree that I personally care about.
  
• Adding the customisable HUD from later expansions so players can customise their HUD without requiring addons - To this one I would say no, as I use the default UI and the new and customisable UI in retail looks very different.
  
• Introducing a way to help players find groups for group/elite quests - Maybe? I liked the group finder we had back in original Burning Crusade for that kind of thing. But nothing too dungeon-finder-like please.
  
• Making mail delivery between players instant - Not gonna lie, I like how the fact that there's a delay when mailing things does encourage interactions between guildies when you want something to be traded immediately, but I wouldn't mind this too much either.
  

Next we have a list of "general features":

• Introducing more seasonal servers with experimental changes that run for a limited time - After how burnt I felt by Season of Discovery, I think it's unlikely they'll come up with another temporary server project that'll interest me.
  
• Creating new servers that are fixed on certain expansions like Classic era is fixed on original Classic - This one made me raise my eyebrows: so they have heard the cries for BC and Wrath era servers! This would still be a loud YES from me, even if it would be kind of late for my OG Classic characters.
  
• Adding more crafting specialisations (e.g. Weaponsmith vs. Armorsmith) - Don't really care about that one. I think there'd be a risk of any new one instantly being much better than all the old ones.
  
• Adding more legendary weapons that can be crafted in raids - Don't really care about this one either.
  
• Introducing avenues to acquiring "BiS" loot from sources other than raids - I guess I wouldn't mind this one? Though again, there'd be a risk in terms of balancing for sure.
  
• Ongoing balancing and tuning of gear/items over time - I'd be okay with this occasionally, but not like they've been balancing things in SoD.
  
• Adding pet battles to Classic - No, that would be a bit too much whimsy for Classic in my eyes.
  
• Making more content account-wide - As much as I've been welcoming the focus on more things being account-wide in retail, I feel things being per character is part of Classic's charm.
  
• Starting new progression servers that start with Classic era and continue through the expansions sequentially - This is another one that I've seen pop up in community conversations quite often. I don't think I'd personally want to go on that whole ride again, but I think it's something enough people would like that it'd be sensible to do at least for Vanilla to Wrath.
  
• Adding the ability to craft gear that is purely cosmetic - I don't really see what the point of that would be in Classic.
  
• Adding an in-game store that allows players to purchase cosmetic items with real money - NO!
  
• Adding achievements to Classic - Please no. Achievements can be fun but are very distracting and change the focus of the game a lot.
  
• New group events or scenarios with unique rewards - Sure, though it would depend on what they are. From what I heard about incursions in SoD they weren't exactly the greatest success in terms of fun gameplay.
  
• An in-game economy for player-driven boosting/farming services - I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I'm not a fan of paid boosting (even if it's done with in-game gold) so I'll say no to this one.
  
• The ability to purchase boosts to instantly level new alts - NO!
  
• Adding expanded profession/crafting options from Season of Discovery to Classic - I never really got to see that part of SoD so I have no opinion on it.
  
• New factions to build reputation with and unlock new rewards - I guess why not? Though the details of the implementation would matter.
  
• Adding customisable instanced player housing - That this is on the list when even retail doesn't have housing yet is just wild to me. I have no real opinion on it though.
  
• Adding the WoW token so players can pay their subscription with in-game gold - NO!
  
• Adding transmogrification to let players change the appearance of their gear - No, thanks. I do like transmog in retail, but it does change the general vibes of the game a lot to have people prancing around in nothing but bikinis and silly costumes all over.
  
• Adding the Crafting Orders system from Dragonflight to Classic - Now this one is interesting to me, because even though Dragonflight's crafting changes didn't fully work for me, I did think that something like the crafting order system might actually work better in Classic than in retail, so I would be up for giving it a go.
  
• Adding the guild levelling and reputation system from Cataclysm to Classic era - No, thanks.
  
• Adding more class-specific quests/quest lines - Yes, please!
  
• Increasing enemy toughness in the open world to increase the sense of danger when exploring - I think enemies in the open world are plenty tough in Classic already? There's a reason hardcore is so deadly. Assuming you're not a warrior running around in Naxx gear.
  
• Adding new zones to Azeroth in Classic era - I'll tentatively say yes, though I'm not sure what exactly they mean by new zones. I'd like to stay in the general area of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdom, but if we're talking something like a Classic Mount Hyjal or a new island off the coast somewhere, I'd be game for that.
  
• Introducing levelling heirlooms to Classic era - Please no.
  
• Adding more group/elite quests that require multiple players to complete - I actually don't really feel that this is particularly needed... but I guess I wouldn't mind it either.
  
• The ability to toggle on "hardcore/perma-death" mode where character death is permanent - I think having the existing hardcore servers where everyone is on even footing is better. An optional toggle where some characters only have one life while others can just respawn feels like an invitation to grief.
  
• Tiered levelling phases with level caps below max level - I thought this sounded really cool in SoD, but seeing how dejected I felt at the start of phase two, I'll say no to doing this again.
  
• Completely revamping quests and quest lines in existing zones - Wouldn't that just be Cataclysm all over again? Please no.
  
• Completely revamping the layouts / geographies of existing Classic zones - Same as above?
  
• The ability to play "solo self-found" (no trading, grouping, or auction house) - Don't care, but if people like it, I don't think this would be harmful. It's already an option on the hardcore servers.
  
• Adding more race-specific quests/quest lines - Yes, please!
  
• Increased XP gain for previous tiers/expansions - No, thanks.
  
• Adding new quests and quest lines to existing zones - Yes, please!
  

Next we have a list of PvP features... I don't need to add my opinion on any of these because I don't like PvP in Classic so I really don't care either way.

• Re-balancing PvP to make it more fast-paced and tactical
• A bigger focus on open world PvP
• Adding rated battlegrounds to Classic
• Adding arenas (2v2/3v3/5v5 deathmatch) to Classic
• Re-balancing PvP to make it more slower-paced and strategic
• Revamping/re-imagining the honour system to make honour a currency like it is in later expansions
• Adding more quests focused on PvP
• Adding battlegrounds from WoW expansions to Classic era
• Revamping/re-imagining existing Classic battlegrounds (e.g. Warsong Gulch, Alterac Valley)
• Adding open world PvP events to Classic (e.g. Blood Moon, Battle for Ashenvale)
• Making it easier to track your honour/rank within the existing Classic honour system

Then we have features related to classes, races and skills:

• Giving Horde the ability to play paladins and the Alliance the ability to play shamans - I don't feel strongly about this one, but having that separation is a pretty iconic part of Classic...
  
• Adding races from newer expansions to Classic (e.g. worgen, pandaren etc.) - I think most of them wouldn't fit. I think Turtle WoW has high elves and goblins, and those would probably just about work, but I think most others would feel out of place in the Classic world.
  
• Ongoing balancing and tuning of talents and class abilities over time - I think some occasional balancing might be good, but not like the crazy roller-coaster that has been going on in SoD.
  
• Adding the ability to swap seamlessly between multiple sets of talents - Please no! This was a huge game-changer in Wrath and I was not a fan.
  
• Adding new specs to existing classes - Not really sure how that would work... maybe?
  
• Adding the rune system from Season of Discovery that allows players to gain new abilities or modify existing abilities - I think no. Runes were fun at first but got tedious quickly, and classes seemed to be more defined by their runes than anything else.
  
• Giving classes the ability to play new roles (e.g. mage healer, rogue tank etc.) - I think I'd be up for that one. Shaman tanks in SoD seemed pretty cool.
  
• Adding classes from newer expansions to Classic (e.g. death knight, evoker etc.) - Like the newer races, I think they just wouldn't fit.
  
• Adding new abilities/skills to Classic that aren't from modern WoW - I don't hate this but I think I'd rather not. Classes in Classic already have a lot of abilities as it is...
  
• Re-balancing talent trees to make weaker specs more viable - Maybe a little? But as SoD has shown, this kind of balancing is hard.
  
• Adding select abilities/skills from modern WoW to Classic - I think this is another nah. Many of the runes in SoD were like that, and it just made those new abilities way too OP.
  

Finally, a list of dungeon and raid features:

• Random raid finder that automatically finds you a group for raid content - NO! Though picturing a randomly thrown together LFR group trying to take on Vanilla Naxx is so horrifying it's almost funny again.
  
• Levelling raids designed for groups below max level - I thought this was neat in SoD, but again, ultimately ended up being a bit disappointing, so I'll vote no.
  
• Adding heroic versions of dungeons to Classic - Probably no? I'm kind of intrigued by the idea of something like a heroic Stratholme for example, but... just not convinced it would ultimately be a good thing.
  
• Updated or modified raid loot - Maybe? I mean, this could mean anything.
  
• Introducing a Mythic+ style system for dungeon content in Classic era - No, thanks.
  
• Updated or modified dungeon loot - Same comment as on the raid loot.
  
• Creating new raid content within the original Classic era - I think this is something a lot of people have been asking for, but I don't know how it would fit into the existing framework of the Vanilla raids. Suddenly having a new raid that gives better loot than Naxx would feel... odd.
  
• Adding world buffs from Season of Discovery into Classic (e.g. Blackfathom's Boon) - Neutral on this one. I thought the idea of world buffs that only work for lower levels and do things like increase your run speed was neat, but I can also do without them.
  
• Random modifiers for dungeons that change every time you enter a dungeon - That sounds like the M+ thing, so again, no thanks.
  
• Adding modified versions of raids from expansions to Classic era (e.g. Karazhan, Black Temple etc.) - Not gonna lie, a Classic Karazhan would be intriguing. Though it would also have a lot of potential to be disappointing.
  
• Creating new dungeon content within the Classic era - I think this would actually be nice. I heard the other day that there's actually a new dungeon in SoD phase four, and that alone made me consider trying to level up a character after all, just to see that.
  
• Adding more attunement quest lines that require you to finish them before you can enter a dungeon/raid - I don't mind attunements, but I don't think we need more of them for existing content.
  
• Adding heroic versions of raid encounters to Classic - Please no.
  
• Introducing the Alpha/Beta/Gamma rune dungeon system from Wrath of the Lich King Classic to Classic era - I have no first-hand experience with that, but from what I read about it, it didn't sound that great to me.
  
• Ongoing balancing and tuning of dungeon and raid encounters over time - Same response as to the other balancing questions: a little bit can be good, but the example of SoD has not been promising.
  
• Random dungeon finder that automatically finds you a dungeon group and teleports you to the dungeon - NO!
  
• Re-balancing raids to make more varied group compositions viable - Not sure what that would look like...
  
• Revamping/re-imagining existing dungeons in Classic - I think I'd rather keep the existing ones.
  
• Adding support for GDKPs (raid format where players buy gear with gold) - NO!
  
• Increasing the overall difficulty of Classic era raids - Also no! Classic raiding is meant to be easy; it's why we like it.
  

After that there are only a few more generic questions, such as about your general attitude towards changes in a new run of Classic (would you like to see none, some, a lot, or don't care), and what you look for in your entertainment in general (competitive environment, low price etc.). There were also a few more opposing opinions about WoW in general, where it wasn't clear to me whether this was still meant to be about Classic in specific or retail as well, and as such I wasn't sure how I would answer:

• "The community is friendly and welcoming" vs. "There is a lot of toxicity within the player community"
• "Provides a hub for social interactions among players" vs. "Is not a great game for social interactions with other players"
• "Does not provide an immersive story" vs. "Provides an immersive story"
• "Is for younger gamers" vs. "Is for older gamers"

All in all, I've got to say I think this is a very good survey, even if there are a lot of suggestions in it that I personally wouldn't want to see implemented. It basically feels a bit like Blizzard just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks... but words are cheap so I see no harm in it. Season of Discovery seems to have had a similar approach but with actual patches, which resulted in lots of hype at launch and then a massive drop-off in interest, with people citing sometimes outright contradictory reasons for their disappointment. As such, it strikes me as sensible to directly ask "What is it you people actually want?" instead of just continuing to implement more changes and then seeing how people react.

I'm also very curious what will come of the answers. I know what I would like and what kinds of opinions I've seen a lot on reddit, but the silent majority that doesn't post in places like that may well have very different ideas.

Expansion Pre-Patch Day

Yesterday (or Tuesday for the 'mericans) was War Within pre-patch day. I think I saw someone say that this might be the biggest patch WoW's ever had (in terms of impact, not file size) and while that sounds hyperbolic, I can't help but wonder whether it's true. Expansions always change a lot of things of course, but moving the game towards everything being account-wide as well as making everything cross-realm at the same time really was a pretty ballsy move on the dev team's part.

I knew about the cross-realm thing on an intellectual level, but I hadn't fully comprehended what it would mean. Suddenly having all my characters from all servers in a single list on the character selection screen certainly put things into a new perspective (it even included "KauvarB87508", the level 3 shaman from Aggramar whose name was released and reclaimed at some point during my years of not being subscribed). There was something funky going on with the character previews as well... all the low-level humans and draenei showed with the same face, hair colour and hair style and all the low-level tauren were identical-looking black cows. I logged into my original paladin, the first character I ever created and whose looks I remembered well enough despite not having played her in ages, and on loading in she appeared as her normal self and the character selection screen also updated, thank goodness.

The realm list feels kind of pointless now... it seems like realms are just like a sort of "last name" that's only relevant when picking a character name now.

And of course there was the warband screen, which everyone is posting screenshots of, so let me join in:

I was kind of surprised to see my old night elf priest be one of my default "favourites", and I can only guess that this was simply based on which characters you last logged into before the patch, because I think I did log her to check something quite recently.

I have to admit I didn't have a lot of enthusiasm for spending time on actually playing though. I don't think I've ever been great with large-scale changes like this, and it's only been getting worse as I get older. Fortunately I don't use a lot of addons, so that wasn't too much of an issue, but for some reason anything but the default action bars had been disabled on every single character and needed manual re-enabling. And of course all those talent resets! Those always exhaust me.

I was also a bit wary of just how broken things were going to be. Taking into account just how massive the changes were that the devs had to make under the hood for this update, I guess we should all be grateful that things weren't any worse, but I saw things like warnings not to use the currency transfer feature (or your currency might just vanish into the aether) and decided not to get too experimental with anything myself.

Mostly I just looked around a lot. There've been a lot of small changes to various parts of the UI like updated icons, and it all looks very busy. I'm sure I'll get used to most of it over time, though I am a bit cranky that they decided to get rid of the green exclamation mark over undiscovered flight masters after twenty years. Instead, the winged boot icon over their heads has a kind of greenish tint now if you haven't talked to them before, which is much harder to spot. (That said, I'm no longer sure how discovering flight paths works anyway. On one Remix character I still had to do it, while another had everything unlocked seemingly by default.)

Dragonriding turning into "skyriding" and becoming available for all flying mounts is kind of cool but also weird. I found myself slipping into the familiar keystrokes quite easily regardless of which mount was summoned, even if it was strange to see my Sunwarmed Furline zoom and leap across the sky in ways it didn't before. On the other hand, I found that evokers' Soar now also works with steady flight, though it looks quite silly the way you wind up for a massive leap just to do a tiny jump into the air and then float around like a butterfly. I'm just not a fan of switching between the two modes being a five-second cast. I wish you could just assign different modes to different mounts to make it smoother.

I also logged into one of my Remix characters whom I'd left at level 60 and had a rather painful questing experience. In anticipation of the level cap going up again with the expansion, the patch massively slashed the experience points required from 60 to 70, and I shot up to in levels in no time... which was not a good thing in this case. People were already complaining about power scaling in Remix in that level range before the patch, but now it gets combined with WoW's standard problem of your character getting weaker if the pace of gear acquisition can't keep up with how fast you gain character levels, and by level 65 I was as weak as a newborn babe. I tried to do one of the intro scenarios to the Isle of Thunder and died on every mob pull (good thing there's no durability or repair bills in Remix). The last fight fortunately offered a protective bubble I could hide in, but the encounter still took something like ten minutes. In regular retail you could at least buy some greens from the AH in that situation, but I'm honestly not quite sure what you're supposed to do in Remix with its trade restrictions when you're too weak to fight anything. Queue for dungeons and hope that others carry you for long enough to pick up a few level-appropriate gear pieces? I don't know.

Hanging With the Freshers on Zandalar Tribe

There is an actual guild called "Freshers" on Zandalar Tribe, so just to be clear on that right away, this post isn't about them. I merely use the term in a general way to refer to players looking for a fresh server experience.

I wrote about the community-driven "fresh Vanilla server" initiative about a month ago, and I noted at the time that this project wasn't really for me, for a number of reasons. Those reasons still apply, however... I'm also a very curious person, and I kind of wanted to know more about how things were going over there, especially after I saw lots of people talking about the US version of the project on the Deviate Delight server, both positively (it's oh so busy, there are so many players here) and negatively (it's all streamers and their fan clubs and there's drama everywhere), yet at the same time heard nary a peep about the goings-on on the European equivalent Zandalar Tribe. Are there no European content creators supporting the project? I mean, WillE gave it a shout-out in one of his video only the other week! What was going on there?

Plus, taking a new alt through the first twenty levels of the Vanilla world is always good fun, even if I'm somewhat creatively bankrupt at this point and keep recreating my night elf hunter from 2019 Classic everywhere.

Anyway, I kept levelling my way through Teldrassil in very short play sessions initially, and it was pretty quiet there. I did all the quests, even the ones that require a lot of running back and forth, and moved on to Darkshore by level 12 or 13, by which point I'd run into what must've been less than a dozen other characters. However, things started to pick up a bit once I made it to Auberdine, and I figured human lands were going to be even busier.

I had my first grouping experience while doing the mushroom quest in Cliffspring Hallow. I spotted a human warrior the moment I entered and worried whether we were going to compete for spawns, so I immediately turned into a direction away from him. Soon afterwards I saw him trying to take a shortcut by jumping down a ledge instead of clearing a proper path, at which point he quickly got swarmed by naga and died (there were some mobs and distance between us, so it's not like I could've come to his assistance). After he revived we found ourselves fighting next to each other for a bit, and eventually grouped up to kill the rare naga as well as to maybe get the quest starter that can drop from the Twilight guys, though we had no luck with that. At least the rare dropped a mail chest for him. We parted ways again after exiting the cave and it felt very friendly.

I continued questing in Darkshore until level 16 or so, at which point I thought it might be a good time to move to Westfall to get ready for the Deadmines. I had another nice grouping experience when I teamed up with a gnome mage to do the Defias traitor escort. After I had gathered up all the dungeon quests, I continued questing, picking flowers and fishing in the zone while keeping an eye out for potential groups. Once someone whispered me to ask whether I'd like to join their DM group, but at the time I was only logged on briefly and didn't have enough time for a dungeon run. Overall it took several days and me being level 19 to actually find a party, which kind of surprised me. I think I'm relatively patient when it comes to manual group finding so I didn't mind too much, but for what's supposed to be a "fresh" server where the low levels are popping, LFG seemed really quiet and like people were mostly looking for mid to high level dungeon groups already.

The DM run itself was fine - people weren't super chatty, but everyone was nice enough and we had no issues. I whispered the priest to thank them for also healing my pet and they replied that they'd just finished levelling a hunter to 60 so they understood what it was like.

Ultimately I came away from the whole experience kind of wondering what the point was. I had a nice enough time, but in terms of population levels, I think I could've had pretty much the exact same experience on the main era PvE cluster or on hardcore. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if those were actually a bit busier than this was.

I guess Zandalar Tribe could aim to fill the niche of "PvP server that isn't as busy as Firemaw", which is something I thought could be viable ever since Classic era blew up at the start of last year and I spent some time puttering around on the empty second PvP cluster. However, as a "fresh" experience, catering to the kinds of players who want to see everyone starting together and huge crowds in the levelling zones, it doesn't really seem to be fitting the bill right now. I guess things could always change if a large content creator ends up giving it additional publicity, but right now - as much as I'm all in favour of more era servers getting love in some form or another - it doesn't strike me as a huge success for its intended purpose.

Honey, Your Changes Are Showing

I've mentioned before that Classic era is in a somewhat unusual situation, being an MMO that isn't supposed to receive updates and changes, yet that due to the fact that it shares a client and code base with other versions of WoW sometimes experiences a degree of "feature bleedthrough" as bugs. It's not ideal, but bugs happen in any game, and I guess when you're playing what's probably the least popular of all the current versions of WoW, you're not in a position to complain too much about stuff like that.

When last week's patch for phase four of Season of Discovery landed and brought some strangeness to era once again, I think most of us figured initially that it was just going to be one of those days, however a post on the official forums by community manager Kaivax quickly raised both eyebrows and hackles, as it highlighted several changes to era as intentional:

• The Guilds user interface has been updated to provide more ease of Guild management.
• Alliance players now have access to the Might of Stormwind, to a version of the Warchief’s Blessing world buff effect. This new buff is gained for turning in a new quest “End of the Dark Horde” in Stormwind and is mutually exclusive with Warchief’s Blessing.
• The Songflower Serenade and Dire Maul Tribute buffs can no longer be dispelled by enemy players.
• Druids can now train and use polearms.

The new guild UI was the most glaring and obvious change, and I've got to admit my own reaction was very much "thanks, I hate it". There's already an addon to at least partially revert to the old one, but I haven't seen an option to banish the new one from the quick bar entirely.

You see, the Vanilla user interface was very basic, but it understood what's important to people. If I'm in a guild and actually looking to interact with other players, the first thing I'll want to know after coming online is who else is online, what classes they play, what level they are and what they are up to right now (as in, whether they are already busy with something else or whether we might be able to do something together).

At the bottom you also had the box for the guild message of the day, in case there was something the guild wanted to immediately communicate to you.

In comparison, the new UI that's supposed to "provide more ease of Guild management" is dominated by guild chat, which you can already read in the chat window anyway, with the list of people who are online being relegated to a narrow column on the side that doesn't show you what level the characters are or what content they are doing. For that information, you have to go to a second tab, and the guild info hides behind yet another tab. It's cluttered and ugly and I hate it.

In retail, I've at least got some use for the fact that the guild chat in the guild window contains historical information showing chats from before you came online, as I'm in a small guild with friends there and it can be interesting to see who's been about when you haven't logged in for a couple of days. But in a large guild like I'm in on Classic era, I really don't need a backlog of people saying hi and bye, discussing trades and announcing world buffs.

Last year during the patch before the launch of hardcore, Blizzard also updated the settings UI to retail's new look and I grumbled about that, but ultimately I've got to admit I didn't mind that one too much. There were some new accessibility features in there which are obviously not a bad thing, and ultimately the game settings are not something I look at very often. The guild window is a very different matter however, as that's something I and I'm sure many other Classic era players interact with every day, if not multiple times a day, and having to deal with this new abomination is... off-putting.

I feel like user interface changes are one of those ways in which you can boil a frog, because one small change is just so easy to justify. It doesn't change the game! You can always get an addon to modify it! I didn't see anyone shed any tears over the fact that Classic launched with WoW's modern raid frame UI for example, instead of the horrible old one from original Vanilla. But this? This just hurts, man.

What about the other changes?

Adding a new quest and a new world buff for Alliance is easily the biggest change of the lot, but ironically I think that both of the world buff related changes might not have been too badly received if they had been communicated properly. Blizzard also revamped the way the PvP system works on era last year, and from what I've seen, those changes were overall pretty well received. Yes, we want era to be the museum piece, but people are not entirely blind to the fact that things are not the same now as they were in Vanilla, and that there are times when it might be a good idea to tweak something. Just not like this.

To add some more context for the world buff changes for those not in the know: people care a lot about world buffs for raiding, and Horde actually had one more world buff than Alliance. Some Alliance players would go out of their way to get it by getting themselves mind-controlled at the Crossroads via a friend or second account whenever the Horde dropped the buff, but my impression has been that this was both very niche and not all that popular. So I don't think many Alliance players are actually going to be upset about getting easier access to the buff themselves... plus from my understanding they'll still have to do UBRS for it, just like the Horde does now.

And as for the dispelling issue, apparently this has been a form of "PvP" on the PvP servers since the launch of Classic, though I've never heard of it happening on PvE. I think the problem was that people were doing it basically just to grief. If you're a shaman hanging out in Stormwind as a ghost, just to revive and spam purge on someone after world buffs drop, before you get killed again by the guards, you're not really PvPing in the classic sense - you're not winning a fight in any meaningful way; you're just eating a repair bill to make someone feel bad. So again, I can't see most people making a big deal about this. Just some context from Blizzard's end and a heads-up would've been nice.

Now, the druid change is simultaneously the least meaningful and the most worrying part of those patch notes. It's the least meaningful because I've been told by druid mains that it has zero effect on their meta. Personally I vaguely recall an occasion while levelling early in Classic, where either I or someone else was on a druid in Razorfen Kraul, and when Armor Piercer dropped, I was a little disappointed when I realised that it couldn't be used by druids in Classic. So yay for a couple more weapon options for feral druids while levelling?

The problem is that this is a class change, something that's completely unheard of on era, and one that nobody asked for. Up until now, the Classic devs have been pretty good about taking care of era even though it wasn't the most popular mode, and being respectful of the community that plays there wanting to enjoy the game in its original state. I can't blame people for being worried about the team suddenly setting a precedent for implementing random changes in era that nobody asked for, presumably just because it was more convenient to copy and paste the same settings from SoD. I hope they'll hear the loud and clear feedback that this is not something players want or take lightly.

EDIT: OMG, it's like someone is reading my blog! They actually reverted the druid change and the Alliance Rend buff, as well as apologising for the way the whole thing was handled. You can read the blue post here.

Fifteen Years of WoW Blogging

I haven't been very good at keeping track of milestones on this blog. Partially I think this is due to the fact that I'd only been posting for a little over three years by the time that I originally decided to step away from WoW. After this the blog lay fallow for a while, even if it never went completely quiet (I'd still find excuses to occasionally comment on BlizzCon announcements and stuff like that), and it seemed odd to celebrate so-and-so many years of blogging when I hadn't really done all that much for a good chunk of those years.

This year I remembered to make a note in advance though... that today, the blog turns fifteen years old. What a crazy ride it's been. I thought it would be fun to look back on those years a bit.

When I started this blog in July 2009, I was 26 years old, working a part-time job in a bakery and still living in Austria with my mother, though I was saving up to relocate to the UK and move in with my then-boyfriend (whom I'd met in WoW, of course) at the end of the year. World of Warcraft was probably close to the peak of its popularity with its Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Blogging was quite popular as well, and blogging about WoW was a solid niche.

I'd been reading and leaving comments on other people's WoW blogs for a while (many of which have sadly been lost to time since then), and finally figured that it was time to set up my own space to share my thoughts about the game. My very first post was about heroic Oculus, which was certainly... a choice. In those early days I had a lot of free time and not much else going on in my life, so I posted 12-20 times a month, which seems slightly insane to me now, looking back at it as a 41-year-old with a full time job.

It's hard to summarise all those posts in a few sentences as I wrote about a lot of different subjects. I guess one thing I can say is that my posts were perhaps slightly shorter on average than they are nowadays, and I didn't seem to have as many reservations about just how much "meat" there needed to be to a topic to make it worth its own little post. I wrote about random game mechanics I liked and disliked, good pugs and bad pugs (I spent so much time pugging dungeons back then), raiding with my guild, commented on WoW-related news, and talked about pieces of gear I liked. I basically just really enjoyed the game and almost every aspect of it. I wrote about day one of the dungeon finder, which honestly feels like something of a historical document at this point. At the end of the year, I went through with my plan to move to the UK.

I spent most of 2010 unemployed, and therefore continued to have a lot of time to play and blog, maintaining my cadence of publishing a post pretty much every other day. I continued to write about the same kinds of things, though I think if you look closely, you can see a slow decline in the amount of joy I expressed. There were fewer happy stories, and more rants about inconsiderate pugs and changes I didn't like. Plus my guild wasn't doing so well either. Incidentally, WoW did help me get a job in November though - that post was also the first time I heard of reddit, as someone linked it there and I went to investigate the source of that sudden traffic spike.

At the end of the year, the Cataclysm came, and my boyfriend's physical copy of the expansion got lost in the mail. (If I remember correctly, Amazon refunded him but then the parcel randomly showed up in May the next year or something.) The new content gave me a lot to talk about, something that lasted into 2011.

However, somehow things weren't quite the same. I still posted quite a lot that year, but 12 posts a month went from being my lower limit to being my upper one, with the average being closer to 8. I posted about lacking lustre in February, and nostalgia and doubts in July. When Mists of Pandaria was announced, I was decidedly underwhelmed. I stepped down from raiding and focused on my rated battleground team instead, which brought with it a brief revival of the joy I used to feel when playing. But then Star Wars: The Old Republic came out, and my interest in WoW just petered out. I only made 6 posts in 2012, the last of which was me declaring that I was done with the game and retiring the blog. Funny how that worked out, isn't it?

I did indeed not post for more than one and a half years after that, but things changed in my real life during that time. I broke up with my boyfriend (insert some snarky comment about how he was my "WoW boyfriend" so naturally I had dump him when I stopped playing) and started a relationship with the guy who I'm now married to. This included moving house and being unemployed again, which was not so great. As my new love scrambled to find ways to keep me from being too depressed by the circumstances, we ended up realising that he'd also used to play WoW at one point, and we rolled up a new pair of alts at the end of 2013 to check out the changes since both of us had last played. This ended up keeping us busy a few months into 2014, but it wasn't long until we both lost interest in the game again, so I only got a little over a dozen posts out of the whole adventure. In real life, I also got a full time job a couple of months later.

The next revival of the blog came from an unexpected source in mid-2015, as Nostalrius took the private server scene by storm and really made the whole concept of going back to Vanilla go mainstream. I actually never played there myself, as I rolled up on its much smaller competitor Kronos instead. That was super exciting for about a month or ten posts, but then my interest flagged again... though not so much due to lack of appeal this time and more a general lack of time to engage with multiple MMOs at once. At the end of the year I posted about BlizzCon (and shared a video by some medium-sized YouTuber I'd found, called Asmongold) and felt an urge to get back into the saddle on Kronos. I continued to post about my private server adventures at a rate of a couple of posts per month throughout 2016.

By 2017 my enthusiasm for that was starting to dry up again though. I'd left Kronos the previous year since I couldn't stand life at max level on a PvP server, and there always seemed to be something wrong with every other server I tried, so I only made about half a dozen posts throughout most of the year. That November of course was when Blizzard officially announced Classic. I made a few posts related to that in a flurry of initial excitement, and then set in for a long wait until Classic's release, only checking in with the blog occasionally throughout 2018.

The release of Classic in August 2019 is when I feel the blog was revived "properly", as that's when I started posting several times a month again (even if I only made half a dozen posts or less, it was still more and more regular than I'd been for the last seven years before that). I was all in on playing Classic on Horde side for more than six months, followed by me levelling a night elf on an RP server by myself, but I did start to feel the doldrums a bit by spring of 2020 as I didn't have any real friends left to play with.

Through a series of fortunate events, I ended up joining a pug raid in August, and found myself recruited into a great guild shortly afterwards. I also ended up checking out retail again for the first time in more than six years. Hanging out and raiding with my Classic guild - plus an increase in working from home time due to the pandemic - carried me through most of 2021, though things started to go a bit pear-shaped during Classic Burning Crusade as the vibe of the guild changed and Blizzard decided to soft-close the server I was on by enabling free transfers.

I got a few more months of enjoyment out of that expansion in 2022, but my guild eventually folded and when it became clear that there would be no BC era servers, I felt I was done with Classic as it was. I decided to try my luck on Classic era instead and once again fell in with a great guild, though I also kept playing retail on the side and got excited for the Dragonflight expansion.

Throughout 2023, I continued to post about my adventures on Classic era, mixed with posts about retail, which started to gain more ground. Changes at my work meant that raiding with my era guild didn't really work anymore and I had to give up on that, which provided even more of an incentive to focus on retail with my husband and some friends instead. I also tried out Hardcore when it launched, and got excited about Season of Discovery in December.

Sadly, that excitement didn't carry over into 2024 for more than two months, so since then it's mostly been retail with the occasional dip into one of the Classic modes sprinkled in here and there. We'll see where things go from here, but it's certainly been one hell of a journey.

Re-evaluating MoP Content in Remix

All the content people are engaging with in Mists of Pandaria: Remix right now has been in the game for ten years or more, but I reckon with how little reason WoW gives people to go back to old expansions, most players haven't actually seen or thought about any of it in a long time. Or they might never have played through it in the first place if they only picked up WoW for the first time at some point after 2014.

I've seen quite a few "I forgot how good this was" comments around the internet when people talk about Remix, so I wanted to give my own re-review of some of the content. I did play through most of MoP back when it was the current expansion, and I do have blog posts that talk about my initial impressions from back then to fact-check myself when it comes to what I actually thought of it at the time.

Quests & Story

Looking back at my writings about Pandaria's early questing zones from 2014, I was somewhat more critical of them than I remember, in the sense that after I'd just spent the last two years playing SWTOR almost exclusively, WoW's questing felt a bit clunky and dull in comparison. I did think the zones were beautiful though, and it did occur to me in Remix that I was somewhat reminded of Dragonflight in terms of how much the world is just pleasant to spend time in.

I also liked the pandaren more than I expected, though I was rather put off by the way the factions were portrayed. I saw someone say while talking about Remix that Pandaria showed how to do the faction conflict right, and all I could think was "haha, no". I hated how the introductory quest to the expansion has you machine-gunning down enemies from a helicopter, both for stretching the definition of "steampunk elements" to its limits and for making both factions look like horrible warmongers. No, their behaviour is not portrayed as a good thing in the context of the story, but it's not exactly condemned either? You bring so much suffering onto Pandria and except for Taran Zhu, everyone's just weirdly chill about it. Making me dislike my own faction is not great writing in my opinion.

Speaking of not great writing, I'd forgotten how MoP was also the era of... certain other narrative choices, such as Jaina's "I'm gonna be really mad and kill people" arc. Which, you know, is a valid direction to take her, I just never thought it was well done at all, and it still didn't feel that way upon replaying that storyline in Remix either. Mostly it felt like someone saw how people made fun of Jaina's weepiness in ICC at the end of Wrath and decided to make her do a 180 by making her a "badass" instead, even if it felt forced as hell. And oh, I remember all the grousing about the "A Little Patience" scenario and Varian lecturing a night elf leader who is thousands of years his senior about how to be patient...

Still, after recently spending some time in Cata questing zones and realising just how dire they were, Pandaria was definitely a step up in many ways.

Scenarios

On the subject of scenarios, this is another feature that I saw several people comment on with lines like "gosh, scenarios were so fun; I don't know why Blizzard didn't carry them forward into future expansions". Not me! For me it's really just been a reminder of how clunky and awkward they were and that I don't miss them one bit. Though Blizzard did improve one thing about them in Remix: unlike in original MoP, in Remix, mobs in scenarios actually drop loot.

Dungeons 

I apparently never wrote much about MoP's dungeons, and I didn't have any particularly strong memories associated with any of them. On re-visiting them, they are a pretty varied and fun bunch, even if having the revamped Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance in the mix just because they were redone during that expansion seemed odd, considering that they have nothing to do with the expansion story otherwise. I do have a slight dislike for Mogu'shan Palace, because for some reason it's always that dungeon where I end up with an extremely weak group and everything takes forever to die, a problem I haven't had to the same extent anywhere else.

Raids

My experience with MoP's raids back in 2014 consisted of doing a couple of them in LFR, which went fine at the time. I apparently didn't write about it, but I'm reasonably sure that I must've done at least a couple of wings of Throne of Thunder as well, as it seemed quite familiar upon revisiting it. I never set foot into Siege of Orgrimmar.

Now, you can't really pass any judgement on raid mechanics in Remix, considering that LFR quickly turned into a zerg that has bosses dying in mere seconds, and even when we tried to under-man higher raid difficulties, we weren't too worried about mechanics and basically just wanted to see whether we could burst things down before they could kill us. I do think the first tier of raiding being split into three raids was a good decision back then and also makes that tier more enjoyable in Remix because you get to see a greater variety of environments, in smaller chunks. Comparatively, Throne of Thunder and Siege seem impossibly long with their 12-14 bosses, even when you're just zerging through them. I can't imagine how much of a drag that must've felt like when people were actually raiding those places properly.

Also, it's interesting to see how Blizzard clearly hadn't quite figured out how to handle the RP bits in raids yet back in 2014. Some might complain about things like Lorewalker Cho's endless monologuing between encounters in Mogu'shan Vaults, but I think that actually kind of works in Remix as it provides pacing and gives slower members of the group time to catch up, preventing the resident demon hunter from just rushing to the last boss with no care for anyone else. However, boss fights that are hard-coded to take a certain minium amount of time while some RP plays out, regardless of how fast you kill things, do not seem like great design. I'm looking at you, Galakras. Waiting for Lei Shen to finish humping his pillars is another one that I'm particularly un-fond of.

Isle of Thunder

I didn't write much about the Isle of Thunder back in 2014, other than to mention that I found it kind of disappointing after the way a friend had advertised it to me, and that I hated the chain of solo scenarios required to unlock it. At least I was mentally prepared for the latter this time, though I still wasn't a fan of the mechanic. The Isle itself was... fine, though? It's weird that fighting the forces of the Thunder King is made to be so much more annoying than fighting the enemy faction, but in general, the level of OP-ness in Remix makes it a much more chill place than it was back in the day. Back then, the mob density made it kind of dangerous, but in Remix that's not really a problem. While I haven't spent any Bronze on upgrading my shaman's gear, thousands of threads in her cloak still make it a breeze to waltz into the enemy camp and AoE everything in sight. I also got to see the Trove of the Thunder King scenario through to the end for the first time.

Timeless Isle

The Timeless Isle was somewhat interesting to me in 2014, and I praised it back in the day for encouraging grouping and providing an amazing loot rush for newly minted max-levels (among other things). In Remix, I've admittedly found it a lot less compelling. It's nice to finally have a cloak for easy access to Ordos, but in terms of Remix-specific rewards it doesn't really have much to offer. Similarly, it's convenient to be able to solo all the mobs with ease, but it makes hunting for rares even more of a futile endeavour than it was back in 2014. If a star mob doesn't spawn right in front of you, you'll basically have no chance of ever tagging it, and even then it can fail if someone else manages to one-shot it before you can even get your own instant cast off.

Obvious gameplay differences aside, I've got to admit that Remix has done a pretty good at letting people relive the general "vibe" of late Pandaria, encouraging you to zoom around a beautiful landscape to hunt down rare mobs and grinding endless dailies for rewards. I wonder whether another expansion would have worked quite as well with this framework.