World of Warcraft Classic

[DehNutCase]

WoW Classic is coming out tomorrow. Not sure if anyone else here will be playing on launch day, especially considering the very likely hour long queues, but I probably will be.

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/world-of-warcraft/23090136/world-of-warcraft-classic-faq-what-you-need-to-know

 

Never actually played vanilla WoW---got in at the tail end of BC and didn't play much until WotLK (didn't even get a char to level cap before WotLK hit), but Classic is probably more similar to WotLK than retail WoW so I'm pretty sure I'll like it. Can't wait to spend 2 months grinding and still not having a single level capped character.

 

My friend's going to be on Aetish, so that's mostly likely where I'll be playing. (Unless the queue times are completely hilarious, in which case I'd probably take one of the launch day servers instead.)

[Tryhard]

troll priest on EU Gehennas. i'll be there, stuck in queue, probably.

I played vanilla but I was literally 12, so I never got anywhere with it really. Trying to play it seriously.

Edited August 26, 2019 by Tryhard

[Parrhesia]

I played vanilla as a child, making a shitton of alts that never got far, and a single level ~32 human warrior who was crippled by the fact that I was, well, a baby, and his gear was awful. I returned later in Lich King, but never really explored the old world until Cata came up; then I left again, only returning about midway through Legion.

I'll be in again whenever Integrity resubs as the natural extension to this, an undead warrior. I... don't really anticipate ever logging on alone, but it'll be nice to look at the old world again, and experiencing the old world as Horde for the first time.

Edited August 26, 2019 by Parrhesia

[Sire]

While a part of me wants to go into WoW Classic (I joined in the dying days of the Burning Crusade, so I mostly played WotLK and Cataclysm), I find it difficult to support Blizzard anymore since they merged with Activision. Their business practices don't set right with me which makes it difficult for me to be hyped about Blizzard products. (I want to be hype for Warcraft 3 Reforged, but its difficult...)

However, if I do head back in, I may try out Night Elf Hunter or Dwarf Warrior. I want to go Human Paladin, but I think Retribution Pallys in Vanilla were a complete joke...

[DehNutCase]

It's probably fine to make joke characters unless you're planning to be in a hardcore raiding guild for some reason. (And I somehow doubt those will exist at all for, like, another 3 months or so, since everyone will be doing the leveling grind.)

 

 

Classic's leveling is pretty much exactly what I expected---something like 5 hours to level 10 and even slower after that, and the combat difficulty is on the level of 'die, loser' if you pull more than 2 mobs. I probably can handle 3+ mob pulls if I bothered playing my mage 'properly,' using his slows and CCs to crowd control the mobs I'm not focusing down, but I only have enough mana to kill 2 mobs anyway so there's no reason to do big pulls, since I need to run out of combat and drink after 1 or 2 kills regardless.

Combat gets a lot easier in a group for obvious reasons, but they also make healers tons better. The reason healer leveling sucks is that their DPS is total garbage in exchange for their amazingly efficient sustain from their healing spells, but healer + bunch of non-mana DPS can probably go through mobs like a meat grinder, since non-mana DPS pretty much only use HP to kill mobs. Total DPS would be lower for a healer + DPS pair vs. a DPS + DPS pair, but the healer + DPS pair has extremely good uptime, and damage dealt is a function of uptime * DPS.

 

 

I don't really like playing a mage too much (they're okay, I don't hate them, but they're not my first pick), but launch time is the time when gold is hardest to make on the AH, meaning even 'maintenance' stuff like buying food, water, and repairing is a serious drain on gold, and mages have the cheapest repairs (clothie) & ability to summon food & water. Warlocks also would've been nice, since they don't actually need food or water, due to natural self sustain, but bags with lots of slots aren't exactly easy to get right now, and I don't want the hassle of messing with soul shards with only ~40 inventory slots to work with. Same reason I'm not playing a hunter despite how good dwarf hunters are. (LUL messing with ammo with only 40 inventory slots.)

Will probably play a warrior like I usually do once the economy picks up.

Edited August 27, 2019 by DehNutCase

[Tryhard]

2 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

Combat gets a lot easier in a group for obvious reasons, but they also make healers tons better. The reason healer leveling sucks is that their DPS is total garbage in exchange for their amazingly efficient sustain from their healing spells, but healer + bunch of non-mana DPS can probably go through mobs like a meat grinder, since non-mana DPS pretty much only use HP to kill mobs. Total DPS would be lower for a healer + DPS pair vs. a DPS + DPS pair, but the healer + DPS pair has extremely good uptime, and damage dealt is a function of uptime * DPS.

You'd actually be surprised about healer leveling, at least for priests. They have a particular setup that allows them to have no downtime and pretty much never drink solo, which is to pick up a wand ASAP, put points into Wand specialisation and Spirit Tap immediately (gives a massive mana regeneration boost when you get a killing blow for a while), then just frontload spells. Mana regenerations starts from five seconds since your last spell cast. If you frontload your spells in a rotation, holy fire (or smite), mind blast, shadow word: pain, mind flay, and then wand the rest of the enemy down, you will gain about as much mana as you spent on the enemy if not more.

Constant mana regeneration coupled with healing spells kinda makes up for the fact that your single target dps isn't fantastic, even leveling as shadow. They aren't the fastest solo levelers but they are serviceable. Warriors on their own are regarded as the worst levelers.

Of course with all that said a warrior and a priest will be able to get more things done like pulling groups together.

 

The EU servers were really being slammed. I got to the stage where I could make lesser magic wands which was nice, but I have a feeling that the people I'm playing with are going to tell me to move to another less populated server than the one we initially agreed on anyway lol.

Edited August 27, 2019 by Tryhard

[DehNutCase]

1 hour ago, Tryhard said:

You'd actually be surprised about healer leveling, at least for priests. They have a particular setup that allows them to have no downtime and pretty much never drink solo, which is to pick up a wand ASAP, put points into Wand specialisation and Spirit Tap immediately (gives a massive mana regeneration boost when you get a killing blow for a while), then just frontload spells. Mana regenerations starts from five seconds since your last spell cast. If you frontload your spells in a rotation, holy fire (or smite), mind blast, shadow word: pain, mind flay, and then wand the rest of the enemy down, you will gain about as much mana as you spent on the enemy if not more.

Constant mana regeneration coupled with healing spells kinda makes up for the fact that your single target dps isn't fantastic, even leveling as shadow. They aren't the fastest solo levelers but they are serviceable. Warriors on their own are regarded as the worst levelers.

Getting wands early mostly depend on the economy being good is the biggest problem, but yeah, wands are dope. I haven't tried it, but if you can stutter step wands like you can guns then it means you can wand things to death while moving, which is amazing for leveling, since so much of leveling is being able to move while killing things.

 

I swapped to my hunter for a bit, and god damn he's overpowered. Without pets hunter is probably better than most other classes just because of how easily available guns are & and the stutter stepping you can do with them to DPS on the move---you aren't at retail WoW's move and shoot levels, but you can move like 1.5s for every .5s used to shoot once, which is amazing. Add the pet and they're probably completely broken. (3 Cheers for Dwarf's stupid good +5 gun skill. Pity there's no skill that makes bows like engineering for guns or else Troll hunters would be absurd.)

Edited August 27, 2019 by DehNutCase

[Tryhard]

9 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

Getting wands early mostly depend on the economy being good is the biggest problem, but yeah, wands are dope. I haven't tried it, but if you can stutter step wands like you can guns then it means you can wand things to death while moving, which is amazing for leveling, since so much of leveling is being able to move while killing things.

You would only need to stutter step if wands couldn't fire in melee range unlike "ranged" weapons (even though they count as one) They can. But there isn't really a need to kite on priest. I believe you can, but it's harder than hunter because wands can be slow and there's no instant attack skills like hunter.

Lesser magic wand isn't so bad if you take the time to grind some linen and then level tailoring + enchanting. You can drop it after. Took me about an hour, not too bad. And then I sold four more that I made for 64 silver. 

And yeah, hunters are pretty much best levelers for a reason.

Edited August 27, 2019 by Tryhard

[DehNutCase]

1 hour ago, Tryhard said:

You would only need to stutter step if wands couldn't fire in melee range unlike "ranged" weapons (even though they count as one) They can. But there isn't really a need to kite on priest. I believe you can, but it's harder than hunter because wands can be slow and there's no instant attack skills like hunter.

Lesser magic wand isn't so bad if you take the time to grind some linen and then level tailoring + enchanting. You can drop it after. Took me about an hour, not too bad. And then I sold four more that I made for 64 silver. 

And yeah, hunters are pretty much best levelers for a reason.

Stutter stepping is so that you get to where you need to go next while still killing mobs, it's not really due to the fact they need to be 8 yards away to use their ranged stuff. Like, any time a mage is walking somewhere, the hunter will take like 30% longer but also be killing mobs at basically full efficiency the whole way, and mob exp is a pretty huge chunk of exp gain. It's the same reason I backwards walk a lot on melees, so that I kill stuff on the way.

[Sire]

Welp, I caved in and decided to try Classic. I went in with a Dwarf Warrior, which was the very first character I ever made for WoW. (I ended up maining a Human Retribution Paladin and a Blood Elf Death Knight, Blood Spec).

Nostalgia hit like a truck. While I mostly played during the WotLK days, playing Classic reminded me a lot of why I loved playing WoW in the first place. The simplicity of things and the discovery aspect is amazing. One does not take on multiple enemies or elite foes unless prepared. People naturally form groups to tackle difficult content.

It is threatening to suck me back into the void, even though I have so many other games and things I want to do...

[DehNutCase]

I think what I like the most about classic is that the leveling is just hard enough that any power ups you get actually feel meaningful. Like, caster classes depend mostly on spell ranks (or wands, for the less fortunate) for damage, so every level you get a new spell rank on your primary damage spell you feel like a god, and then the spell slowly gets weaker relative to your enemies as you fight harder and harder mobs until you get the next rank.

Same for physical classes and getting a stronger weapon. The damage boost is so noticeable that even a casual player without any addons or anything would go, 'oh, wow, this new gun/sword/whatever is amazing' just from how fast they're going through mooks. And, of course, as they level up the weapon gets relatively weaker and weaker until they get a new upgrade.

 

You don't get that high of feeling like a total boss without feeling like shit for the last few bits before getting that new upgrade, and retail leveling is the exact same difficulty from level 1 to level cap, pretty much, thanks to heirlooms, auto-leveling spells, etc.

[Tryhard]

On 8/27/2019 at 1:45 PM, DehNutCase said:

Stutter stepping is so that you get to where you need to go next while still killing mobs, it's not really due to the fact they need to be 8 yards away to use their ranged stuff. Like, any time a mage is walking somewhere, the hunter will take like 30% longer but also be killing mobs at basically full efficiency the whole way, and mob exp is a pretty huge chunk of exp gain. It's the same reason I backwards walk a lot on melees, so that I kill stuff on the way.

I see what you mean now.

7 hours ago, Sire said:

Welp, I caved in and decided to try Classic. I went in with a Dwarf Warrior, which was the very first character I ever made for WoW. (I ended up maining a Human Retribution Paladin and a Blood Elf Death Knight, Blood Spec).

Nostalgia hit like a truck. While I mostly played during the WotLK days, playing Classic reminded me a lot of why I loved playing WoW in the first place. The simplicity of things and the discovery aspect is amazing. One does not take on multiple enemies or elite foes unless prepared. People naturally form groups to tackle difficult content.

It is threatening to suck me back into the void, even though I have so many other games and things I want to do...

I will say that leveling seems like an afterthought in the retail version of WoW. In vanilla it was the complete opposite, because when it came out it had a severe lack of level 60 content. I believe that Molten Core was rushed through development in a week.

Leveling in retail seems like a chore to get to the level capped dungeon and raids, but it pretty much is the game when vanilla came out. That, and other things like professions mattered more. That, and the much slower pace when leveling and improving your character.

TBC and Wrath were both good expansions IMO even if some purists dislike them and I played up to the end of wrath. I just didn't like flying mounts because it destroyed world PVP and the fact that the increased level cap meant that level 60 content was worthless that they eventually added.

Edited August 30, 2019 by Tryhard

[Bastiny]

What do you think, if I have never played games of such genres before, then should I start?

[Waltana]

Just now, Bastiny said:

What do you think, if I have never played games of such genres before, then should I start?

You should definitely do it! I am sure that you will love this game very much 🙂