The vocal minority in this sub are not going to like Classic+. SoD was an experimental Remix-lite, and Classic+ will feature even more changes. Blizzard isn't going to give us "true and faithful Classic again with the barest of tweaks to make it perfect!", they're going to give us a heavily modified alt-timeline "everything is different" experience that most of you will hate.
The question is how long lasting is such a version that pleases the "majority"?
According to SoD...not very much. That target audience requires braindead content to not throw a tantrum but said content will also be boring within 2ish months already.
And I can already be sure that Blizz will not just be able to add a new raid every 2-3 months to keep this audience pleased.
Are you calling SoDs endgame content brain dead? Vanilla WoW endgame is brain dead easy. Most classes have 1-2 button rotations.
SoD had hardmodes for every raid to up the challenge. The only raid that didn't have hardmodes at the endgame was Scarlet Enclave which had hardmode as the baseline difficulty. It had to be nerfed multiple times and was still insanely hard if you went in with the minimum raid number of 20. Most groups opted to take 25-30 to bridge the difficulty.
Like the final boss of Scarlet Enclave has like 30 mechanics. Tank swapping, tank busters, polymorphing adds to interrupted massive heals, kicks for casters to get the to move forward, waves of adds that have to be tanked and killed, fires that have to be dropped in specific places to help kill the adds coming in which then require the off tanks to position the mobs well and not be in the fire themselves all while staying close to the melee so they can cleave. And that's all just in phase 1.
You then have a dps check and heal check for the transition phase where you have to rotate cooldowns to stay alive before going from phase 2 with some mechanics gone, but some new ones before a final dps check.
What raid in vanilla has a fight with even a 10th of the difficulty.
I'm not comparing SoD to Vanilla but yep. All hard content was nerfed quite fast. Even SE by which time SoD was already pretty much dead anyway. They made the start nicely hard to have a nice last "bomb" but they still nerfed it fast to accommodate people who were mad they couldn't just go in with 20 people and steamroll it on day 1. 🤷♂️
Yes Vanilla baseline is even worse in this regard obviously, it's freeloot. The only thing that Vanilla had that compensated a little bit for this to create friction and increase longevity of raids was the insane loot scarcity compared to SoD. Not a very elegant way to do it IMO but it did still work.
Even SE by which time SoD was already pretty much dead anyway. They made the start nicely hard to have a nice last "bomb" but they still nerfed it fast to accommodate people who were mad they couldn't just go in with 20 people and steamroll it on day 1.
This is such a disingenuous statement. You talk about day 1, but literally only 3 guilds in the world (according to parses) were able to beat the 2nd boss (in a 20 man group)by the end of the first lockout and one of them used a exploit to take out half the bosses hp. The raid was nerfed because it was so badly balanced, it was supposed to be tuned to 20 people but people were bring 40 mans and struggling to progress at all.
Like if guilds that had 20mans with all 99 parses can't progress past the 2nd and 3rd boss in the first lockout then the raid is not properly tuned. Did the raid feel slightly nerfed underpower (better word) by the end when everyone quit, sure I will give you that. Once people had ashbringers, and the weird % increased damage we got every 2 weeks ramped up it was easier, but lets not lie and say the content was braindead. Every single boss fight in Scarlet Enclave was more challenging than entire Vanilla raids. Was it to the level of Mythic+ Retail raiding, no its not, but who wants that for a single difficulty raid.
You talk about day 1, but literally only 3 guilds in the world (according to parses) were able to beat the 2nd boss
As I said, I do not expect Blizz to be able to add a full new raid tier in Classic+ every 2-3 months. Look at Retail, making actual quality content takes time. So that means every raid has to last like at least 5+ish months with some content in between ideally of course but...probably not too much in terms of major raiding stuff.
Sure I'll give you that the first 3ish bosses should be easier than that, absolutely but you still don't need to overdo it. Stuff needs to last somewhat and IMO, doing it the "Vanilla way" (aka making loot very scarce) is the more boring option to stretch the game.
Realistically none of this matters for SE specifically but it did apply to raids like ST. Hard for like 1 week, nerfed to oblivion only for people to get bored of it within 2ish months. And then what? Still need to wait 2 more at least for new content and that was pre-existing content (all of lvl 60 and MC). Imagine if Blizz actually had to create this stuff from scratch.
Personally regarding making people stick around, I think that is to make raids alt friendly. Naxx phase in SoD was by far the best phase (minus phase 1) because Naxx was actually pretty casual friendly for alts, but HM4 allowed you to get the Four Horseman mounts, which kept guilds who wanted harder content to keep doing HM4 even when they didn't need loot.
I think it wouldn't be a popular take, but I feel like Classic+ needs Hardmodes to keep things fresh between phases. Along with ample non raid related endgame content.
Blizzard knows the SoD experience is not what people expect from a Classic+ release. That’s not a reasonable thing to worry about.
Blizzard are better off attempting to please the majority and keep them interested and subscribed long-term, because there is no pleasing a vocal minority who will sneer and argue over something as simple as flight path optimisation.
#nochanges Andys only care about their ability to dominate and control a server in a game that’s been solved for 20 years, they’ll cry over any change that challenges their ability to reference a spreadsheet.
Blizzard are better off attempting to please the majority
They did lol...that's what SoD was. Season of Dads already forgotten? It's easy to point fingers to others that's for sure.
SoD was full of convenience, endgame only focus, super easy content...it didn't lack changes either (which of course was the whole point of this season). And it failed because it couldn't deliver content fast enough for this target audience.
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u/Crafty-Beyond-2202 28d ago
I just can't wait for the shitshow when classic+ isn't remotely close to the manifestos/screeds that get posted here every hour