World of Warcraft Classic Launches August 27UPDATE 8/6/19
Name reservation and server list go live on 8/12/19 at 6PM Eastern time.
If you are interested in playing with (some) of us on PVE Alliance, hit up the discord.
We will be reserving names on PAGLE unless otherwise stated.
https://discord.gg/k6FvH8v
WoW Classic is a rerelease of WoW that simulates the original launch of the game circa 2004. It’s not an exact replica, but sort a museum-style recreation of the original game made with the benefit of hindsight and 15 years of technical advancements.
The game will launch on a version of 1.12, the final retail patch of Vanilla dating to late-2006, and major content will be “phased in” over time.
Name reservation goes live in about 2 weeks on August 13th. You need an active WoW sub to do this.
If you want to read pretty much all there is to read on what Classic is, how it’s being handled, and what to expect, check out this comprehensive guide on Wowhead. It’s good.
https://classic.wowhead.com/guides/classic-world-of-warcrafthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcZyiYOzsSwA guild??
There are several PA vets who will be diving into this.
@Bowen and
@Infidel are putting together a guild an Alliance PVE server that’s to be determined. It’s TBD because streamers ruin everything and they’re angling hard to ruin WoW Classic. Check out
http://www.avoidstreamers.com/ for more on that.
We’ll have a discord link soon if you’re interested in throwing in with us. I don't think they'd collectively categorize it as a "forum guild", but it will have several forumers in it, along with other cool people from elsewhere
Why would anyone want to do this?
Nostalgia aside, WoW Classic gameplay is unique by modern standards in a few notable areas, versus other MMOs and modern WoW itself. I can describe it succinctly as “WoW Classic has a lot of flavor. But sometimes that flavor is ballsack.”
- Gameplay is fairly slow. There will be downtime, travel time, corpse-walking, drinking, farming… compared to live servers this will feel glacial, but some people value the more visceral experience, even if it is sometimes boring.
- Mana matters a lot in Classic. If you have a mana pool, you’ll run out frequently. If you don’t, then there will be some other mechanic to deal with. The net impact is the game is a little different to play at the meta level, as managing scarce resources is at least equally important to hitting the buttons real good.
- The combat tends to be burstier and more extreme, with high highs and low lows.
- Gear is weird. Vanilla WoW itemization, status, and bonuses are just all over the map in terms of value. This can make for some fun/weird anachronisms that have effectively been written out of modern WoW, like cloth-wearing Paladins.
- Mob aggro is very pronounced in Classic compared to modern day WoW. You can fuck up and die in groups if you over-aggro. A lot. This makes DPS equal parts art and science.
- General power level of your class will be highly variable relative to the whole. Some classes are good. Some specs are good. Others are not, or are more niche or serve special roles that are harder to measure. Talent choices are much more freeform and inviting of unique outcomes.
What should I play?Warrior
A lot of armor and a lot of weapons. Warriors are simple melee fighters which function on a snowball mechanic known as Rage. Taking damage and dealing damage generate Rage, which is spent on… you guessed it… more damage (or defensive moves, as the case may be). Warriors signature move is probably Charge, which allows them to jet around a battlefield every so often. Warriors are also the premier tanking class in Classic, and preferred for most progression raiding.
Quality of Life Score: Intermediate - Warriors are conceptually straightforward but there are many nuances to their gameplay which puts them juuuust on the wrong side of easy street. Still an OK choice for beginners, but there are easier paths.
Try if you like: - A melee DPS class that hits hard and can be played in a fairly simple way
- Being the focal point of your group/guild as the main tank
- Chasing things around 97% of the time
Mage
Token spellcasters, glass cannons. Mages turn mana into pain (or cinnamon buns!). They spend most of their time getting huge crits and listening to dubstep. Every guild needs a corps of good mages who will constantly backstab each other for raid slot priority. You’ll either murder each other or become friends for life. Good luck!
Quality of Life Score: Easy - Classic is full of potholes, and mages carry a bag of asphalt with them. As a penalty, you have to give everyone water.
Try if you like:- Being a vending machine
- Doing a ton of damage for 17 seconds and then wanding for 25 hours.
- Mobility and control
Rogue
Rogues blend raw melee DPS and utility into a deadly and often highly annoying package. The details vary by talent spec, but Rogues generally have a lot of control, stun, and poison utility that is a good compliment to pretty much any group. They can also move around while stealthed, which is OP as hell.
Quality of Life Score: Advanced - Rogues are solid but demanding. Their effectiveness is almost linear with skill and knowledge. Plan accordingly.
Try if you like:
- Complaining about mages
- Complaining about everything
- A high APM DPS class which will put your fingers to the test
Warlock
Warlocks are a debuff oriented spellcaster class which have a special demon pet that serves a variety of minor utility functions. While they don’t pack the same punch as a Mage, Warlocks tend to be a little less streaky, and a little more difficult to take down. My personal experience with Warlocks was: incredible in the right hands, nearly useless in the wrong hands.
Quality of Life Score: Advanced - Warlock mechanics were in a pretty poopy state in this era of the game, but still worth playing. You just need to be up to the task. To offset this, leveling is very easy because of your pet.
Try if you like:
- One of the easiest levelling experiences in the game
- Summoning a whole lot of people all the time
- High effort/high reward endgame gameplay, especially in PVP
Hunter
Do you eat glue? Here you go. Stand at 39 yards and rack up the white damage. Jokes (maybe) aside, Hunters are a ranged physical damage dealer, and they have a custom pet. They have a set of utility moves that are themed around traps and marksmanship. I played a hunter in Vanilla and I am struggling to add too much more than this… they’re pretty straightfoward, and once a week you might be asked to do something like kite an enemy around, just pretend to be AFK or that their mic wasn’t working, you’ll be fine.
Quality of Life Score - Intermediate - While hunters have easy gameplay, there’s a maintenance factor with their pet and their ammo bag.
Try if you like:
- Doing ranged DPS while strafing and moving around a lot
- The aesthetics of custom pets
- Stealing trinkets from mages because Arcane Shot
Druid
You can do everything, but 6% worse than your peers. You’ll have really weird gear requirements that will annoy people. You’ll keep asking to tank, and you’ll revel in the forceful rejections. You’ll waste your combat rez out of spite. Just blame it on your cat. Druids are a shapeshifter class that can inhabit every role in the game, just a little bit weirder and quirkier than the mainstream alternative. One nice thing about Druids is that they’re fairly independent, and even in Vanilla they could do some pretty cool stuff solo. A good choice for people who want to try a little bit of everything the game has to offer.
Quality of Life Score: Easy - Druids are broad but shallow. Their various “forms” are often just simplified templates of the classes they are imitating. Their innate healing abilities, stealth, and a few other nice-to-haves smooths over their play experience nicely.
Try if you like:
- A little bit of everything!
- Exploring the game world, stealth + healing empowers Druids to be very independent in the overworld
- Lore! Honestly Druids get some really nice flavorful class perks in this regard, like free trips to the Moonwell!
Priest
The heal bots. Priests are the most healing biased class in the game, and have some unique powers in this area. They have a set of buffs and abilities focused on keeping people alive. Priests have a token DPS spec known as Shadow, which gives them some Warlock-ish offensive capability while levelling up. Healing in Classic is properly hard, so even though healing has some negative connotations in terms of gameplay, some will view this as an appetizing challenge, and it is indeed worthy of great minds.
Quality of Life Score: Intermediate - Arguably “Advanced”, but I knock it down a peg since you’re an absolute staple of all end game content, and in quantity. Your main struggle will simply be getting to level 60, it’s all easy street from there.
Try if you like:
- Healing, duh
- The art of mana management and the awareness required for being a top flight Classic-era Priest
- Always being in demand
Paladin
Paladins are plate-clad magic warriors which trade in top line ferocity for a complex set of unique buffs and raid-empowering spells. This class is unique to the Alliance in this era. Like Druids, Paladins can fill every role in the game to some extent. Of all classes in Classic, Paladins have probably changed the MOST over time… Classic-era Paladins were plodding, methodical, and quirky. Special bonuses against Undead make them flavorful in the end game.
Quality of Life Score: Easy - Although Paladins aren’t the most powerful class, they’re very easy to play, and they get a few special perks along the way to make life interesting.
Try if you like:
- Simple if sometimes boring gameplay
- Pissing off warriors by rolling for all their gear
- A blend of melee and spellcasting
Shaman
The horde alternative to Paladins. Shaman are elemental spellcasters and healers with an optional Melee twist. Shaman are best known for their totems, an area of effect buff/debuff system which takes some effort to effectively manage. Enhancement, the melee specialization, is famous for being able to one-shot enemy players with special builds.
Quality of Life Score: Advanced - Shaman are a pretty complex class to play, and rank right up there with Warlocks in terms of “stuff you have to keep track of in your head”
Try if you like:
- Huge burst damage
- A lot of mechanics and spells to chew on
- Did I mention huge burst damage?
--
Don your rose-colored engineering goggles and post your crazy vanilla fish stories here...
With sincerity, I was a big doubter on this one, but I started reading about the implementation and became interested... and then played the beta... and it was such a good experience. If you played (and enjoyed) release-era WoW, I'll go ahead and give you my seal of approval, it's worth poking your head in. There are so many little things about the early game that are easily forgotten but add a lot of tactile qualities to the gameplay. Feels good to play an MMORPG that has actual RPG elements to it again.
Goes live in 1 month!
Posts
It is not very different. Spamming for 45 minutes in ironforge as a DPS vs clicking a button to do the work for you and still waiting maybe 35 minutes isn't really an improvement necessarily, especially when it absolutely destroyed server community in the process.
Runescape, Everquest, DAoC all have fairly lively communities on their classic stuff at the moment. There's even a revival of City of Heroes. There's a draw for that 'hard and not forgiving game play' that moves away from the current trend of theme park and gacha games (similar to how mobile games and retail is situated at the moment).
It'll be hard and it'll probably suck if you don't have the time for it, but that's fine, no one really will force anyone to play it! But I also hear people say things like "I don't have 10 hours a day to devote to the game anymore since I'm not a teenager!" then comment about dropping 2 hours a night. 2 hours a night wouldn't make you a casual gamer either. More casual than the 10 hours a day player but, still, you can absolutely still accomplish a lot.
A lot of people like the older game. A lot of people don't like the newer game. That's why they are making this and that's why it's a separate thread.
I made this thread for people who are interested in WoW classic and want to play together. This isn't a referendum on crafting quests.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
I miss stealing rogue and druid weapons to use as stat sticks
Is wow classic gonna have that rare-spawn cat that had a super broken attack speed
I have two personal goals this time around I had a very bad problem playing priests back then as something would happen and I would delete them. I had 9 priests before my blood elf. I have the goal of playing a priest to 60 and get Benediction and Anathema as it was leaf leaf leaf every time when I tired pre cata for it
My other goal is to play a Shaman I never played this class until Cata. So I would like to see what it was like back then. I know I am playing with the two people I played wow with for years since they refuse to play retail and where it went story wise.
I know it's soon you get to lock in your names {I am either reusing my current shaman's name or just rolling and seeing. I don't know what race of priest I am playing {either night elf or undead} and I am basically remaking my current warlock Same Name Same look even going tailoring enchanting again
my general understanding is the entire combat engine is in tact. they've gone as far to "fake" a classic bug or two for authenticity.
I'll be maining ret/prot paladin, and I think warlock and/or on druid on the side
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
Even then, people who complain about time being respected sit next to the AH or in the city hub doing nothing anyways.
Very few actually go do things out in the open world while in queue.
No, you go and farm azerite power!
Which is just an arbitrary extra grind so /shrug
It's gonna be glorious
Do I play the elementist mage since it's 1.12 or 2 minute mage or go for the stupid two handed warrior blood fury if it isn't changed I can't remember the change log
play hunter, so you can get all the loot. it's all hunter loot
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
Shadow Priests though, ye gods only Retribution Paladin even comes close to that monotony. The wand might as well be their main weapon and Elune help you if you don't keep it upgraded. However, your reward for suffering through that hell is getting an absolute terror in PvP. Melting faces originated with Shadow Priests. Plus Mind Controlling people off cliffs. Fun in field duels with your own faction!
mages definitely wanded in raids. certainly pre-1.12, can't say I remember specifically how it was post-revamp
but pre-revamp... evocation only bought you an extra minute
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
I have big memories of being an innervate battery for priests and some mages in Blackrock
and the big thing for my alliance guild was Judgement of.... I want to say Wisdom? Where you gained mana feedback for every white damage hit
so we would have little wand sessions built into some boss fights to recharge before an enrage or something
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
That's in raids, because you don't have the option to drink during a fight. While leveling though, the wand is a stat stick.
well, we didn't have paladins being horde. druids were kind of crucial. shamans were okay but not the same.
This made Enhancement Shaman very dangerous in raids though, because all it took to take threat from the tank and become a red smear on the floor was one unlucky triple Windfury proc
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
Jin'do is great because he was, like, the only boss you can really justify using a druid to tank.
Single cast but also the only way to keep some hunters alive so one poor paladin had the unenviable position of OOC rez and buffer
Goddammit now it's in my head again
no it does not
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
Because I did not play a shaman until Cata. I have vague memories of people asking back in vanilla-tbc what would be a good spec and I remember some said elemental as you could heal and dps
Because this is all will be new to me I have no idea what I would play my shaman as since my brother is going arms on his orc warrior
I remember until a certain era of vanilla 5 minute blessings {this is why I am not going to play a paladin it too was a class I did not play in vanilla}
Restos still there for nature swiftness and manatide elemental works kind of I think and enhancement is dual wield and the windfury of Legends of old is no more
Some sick ass totems tho poison cleanse and like three fire totem you never use cause the st one is the least annoying to use
Paladin blessings where only a hour when reagents where used so remember your favourite vendors and don't forget your stupid battle Rez seeds
5 minute blessings before 60 and the regent is a party buff for longer
wing clip, disengage, concussive, kite while strafing
ezpz
why do I remember it also giving you a kickback before BC? was it added right before bc's launch?
Patch 3.0.2, so just before Wrath.
.........................................? are you sure? I mean... its been 14 years but.... I feel like there was a talent or something that kicked you back.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
I wonder why.
I am too but I feel we are not getting as many servers as they said
I would prefer that they try to keep the server count as tight as possible to avoid ghost towns
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other